The Death Agreement (6 page)

I heard someone clear their throat
and looked up to see an old lady with blue-tinted hair sitting
behind a Plexiglas window. Yang walked over to her and slid a piece
of paper through the small opening. She read it and pressed a
button. Another door buzzed, which I opened and stepped
through.

"Hello," a voice called from down
the hallway in front of me. "Come on in!"

Yang pushed past me, and I
followed him to a frosted glass door printed with the words: Cold
Storage. Inside the room, a medical examiner stood over a
stainless-steel slab covered in blood.

"Oh, sorry about the mess," he
said. "You're here for the Taylor case, right?"

"Yes," Yang said. "Took us a while
to find someone for positive identification."

"Used to that." The medical
examiner walked over to a wall with nine mini-fridge-sized doors.
"He's in three."

"You okay?" Yang asked me as the
medical examiner opened the door and grabbed the handles of the
tray.

"Yeah, let's get it over
with."

The medical examiner pulled on the
handles and a covered corpse slid out of the ice-cold mist. Yang
grabbed the sheet and peeled it off the body.

"Jesus Christ!" I
screamed.

"What? It's Taylor,
right?"

I stumbled backward. "Oh God, what
the fuck!"

"What's wrong, Jon?"

"
What's
wrong?
!" I screamed as loud as I possibly
could, then pulled up my left pant leg, revealing my prosthetic.
"You said he was killed by a lightning strike…" I looked back down
at Taylor's body. "His leg is gone, Detective! What happened to his
fucking leg?"

Yang shot the medical examiner a
surprised look.

The medical examiner clicked his
tongue. He shook his head, then said to Yang, "You boys need to do
a better job of reviewing the updated reports."

Yang raised out his hands, palms
up. "What are you talking about? What report?"

"The reports my office sends
over."

"Just tell me what it
said."

I stared at Taylor's dead face.
The corners of his lips were upturned as if he knew the punchline
of a joke that he couldn't wait to share.

"Initially we reported Mr.
Taylor's cause of death as a lightning strike. Most of his wounds
were consistent with that conclusion. Upon further evaluation I
determined Mr. Taylor did indeed suffer from some sort of
electrical discharge, however this happened days prior to his
actual death."

"You mean he was electrocuted but
that's not what killed him," Yang said.

"Exactly."

"What did kill him
then?"

"Blood loss," the medical examiner
said. "As your friend here pointed out, the body is missing its
left leg. Though rare, it's not completely unheard of for lightning
to sever an appendage, but in this case…someone cut it
off."

"What are you saying?" I asked.
"Who did this to him?"

Yang stared at me, studying me
through narrowed eyes.

"Actually," the medical examiner
shrugged, "the angle of the wound suggests it was
self-inflicted."

Yang spun around and faced the
medical examiner once more. They spoke for a while in hushed tones
but I was in no condition to comprehend any of what they were
saying. The only thing I heard was the metallic humming sound of
the cold storage cases. My gaze locked on Taylor's missing leg, and
I stared, nearly catatonic, until Yang took me by the arm and
walked me out of the building.

"Thank you for the identifying the
body, Jon. The department appreciates your assistance."

"Cut the bullshit!"

Yang flinched. "What're you
talking about? I told you we needed your hel—"

"Stop. I know what that was,
Detective." I said, walking up to the passenger side of his Crown
Victoria. I waited, ready for any rebuttal, but all Yang did was
open his door and climb inside. I followed his lead then slammed my
door as hard as I could.

"I know what that was," I said
again with more conviction.

Yang started the ignition and
pulled out of the parking lot. It was several minutes before he
spoke again. "I'm sorry, Jon. It wasn't my call."

"Yeah, but you agreed with
it."

"We found out about the leg this
morning. Before we even spoke, I had already sent that unit to
bring you in." Yang took a sip of his coffee. "We thought you would
slip up if given the chance."

"That isn't right. We're talking
about my best friend and his family. How would you feel if someone
did that to you?"

"Don't turn this around, son. I'm
doing my job."

"Did you get what you want? Still
think I'm involved? And don't call me son."

Yang took another drink of coffee.
I hoped it was as cold and bitter as I felt.

"Sorry…" he said. "And no. We
didn't have the news that it might have been self-inflicted, so I
don't think this is on you. But that isn't conclusive. The
department is still going to look your way until we can say for
certain that Mr. Taylor acted alone."

"Look all you want." I
shrugged.

"Jon, why does anyone kill?
Affairs, money, revenge. Or in your case, they think you just
snapped. The file the hospital had on you suggested you're prone to
outbursts, perhaps even experienced a bout of temporary insanity
after your accident."

"I don't care about what they
think. Like I said before, my only goal is to help you find his
family. I'm not going to stop. They're going to be devastated. I
need to be there for them, Yang. Don't you get that? He was like a
brother to me, and we made promises to each other, signed a
contract. These things you wouldn't understand."

"Jon—"

"No. It's your turn to listen.
Just know that it falls on me to look after his family. I can't
afford to think of anything else right now."

"We don't need your help finding
them," Yang said sullenly.

"I don't care. You can't stop
me."

"No Jon…they aren't missing
anymore. We found them."

"What? Was that another part of
your twisted game? Where the hell have they been?" My hopeful
questions kept firing from my mouth, even though I knew better.
"Why haven't they called me at all?"

Yang had to speak over me, louder,
"No, you're not understanding. I mean…while we had you under guard
in the interrogation room, divers were busy pulling body parts from
the bottom of a pond."

Detective Yang's words crushed me
worse than the Black Hawk had. He glanced at over at me.

"Six bodies, Jon," Yang whispered.
"They're dead…all of them."

SECTION III -
OBITUARY

Former NYC resident, Major Jesse Taylor, 33, died March
3
^rd
, 2013, in Bloody
Pond, MD. Major Taylor was born April 25
^th
, 1979, in Cooperstown, NY. He graduated from Cooperstown
Central High School in 1999 and went on to become a decorated pilot
in the United States Army. When not in uniform, he spent his time
coaching Pee Wee football for under-privileged kids. Major Taylor
was preceded in death by his wife, Lorie; son, Jon; father, Hunter;
mother, Christina; older brother, Kyle; and younger sister,
Tiffany. He is survived by his grandfather, Howard Taylor of
Williamsport, PA. A service will be held on Friday, March
15
^th
, at Hardesty's
Funeral Home in Annapolis, MD.

***

Mary Stallings of the Baltimore
Sun newspaper sat across from me, shaking her head.

"How does that sound?" I
asked.

"It sounds kinda—"

"Kinda what?"

"Emotionless. Sterile. Why don't
you liven it up, say something about him as a person?"

"I mentioned he liked to
coach."

"Don't you want to say something
substantial, Mr. Randon?"

I took a deep breath and looked
around her office. Two Excellence in Journalism awards, one from
2008 and the other from 2010, hung on the wall next to her diploma
from Louisiana State University. All three plaques were caked with
a layer of dust.

"I told you a dozen times, I'm not
talking about the case. The only reason I'm here is for the
obituary."

She frowned.

For the past three years, Mary
Stallings had been the police liaison. Her primary job was to
collect information for the
Crime
Beat
section of the paper.

When she came poking around, I
flat out refused to talk to her. That did nothing to stop her
resolve. She kept coming back, day after day, trying new ways to
pique my interest. In the end, it wasn't Mary's persistence which
changed my mind; it was The Death Agreement.

Taylor had needed an obituary.
Funeral homes usually take care of that kind of thing once payment
is made and all the documents are in order. I didn't have the money
to pay out of pocket right then, and the military was dragging
their feet with Taylor's paperwork. Without his will, no one, not
even the funeral homes, would help me with anything involving
Taylor's estate. The one exception: Mary Stallings.

I had agreed we could talk but told
her there was a big
If
attached. My terms were simple. She would help me write the
obituary, and
maybe
I would tell her about Taylor. Of course that's the official
reason why I had gone to see her. Unofficially, my life had
unraveled past the point where I could pull it back together alone.
Yang was alright, but I needed someone to talk to other than the
police.

"Jon," she said and brushed her
wavy auburn hair away from her brown eyes. "You asked for my help,
remember?"

"I know."

"So let me help."

I met her eyes and admired the
pale freckles across the bridge of her nose. I nodded, and wondered
if she was sincere, or if she only saw me only as a meal ticket.
Even if that's all I was to her, it wasn't so bad.

I knew the story would get out
sooner or later. Fact is, the only reason it hadn't hit the
newsstands was because Mary had left Taylor's case out of the crime
section of the Baltimore Sun. At that point, all that anyone knew
was the family had died.

"All right. If you want to help,
tell me about those." I said, nodding to the wall.

"Okay. What would you like to
know?"

"For starters, how did you go from
an award-winning reporter to sloshing through piles of police
reports?"

Her jaw clenched shut and her
stare turned to daggers. I lowered my gaze to the papers scattered
across her desk. "I didn't mean to be insulting. I'm
sorry."

Her shoulders fell and she relaxed
against her chair. "It's okay. Let's call it office politics. The
editor in chief and I butted heads once too often and now I'm
here."

"Sounds like the Army."

"Is your commanding officer a
loud-mouthed son-of-a-bitch?"

"His name is Colonel Litwell, and
yeah, he is, actually."

Mary laughed and it was the
sweetest sound I had ever heard. I might have fallen in love right
then. In another time or place I would have acted on the feeling,
but the moment of relief had only lasted a second. Suddenly, I
wondered what Taylor would think of her, wondered when I could
introduce her to him. Then reality crashed down and the family of
corpses weighed heavily on my conscience once more.

"The police still consider me a
suspect," I blurted out.

In a serious, yet nonjudgmental
tone, she asked, "Are you involved?"

"No."

"Why do you think he did
it?"

"I don't know that he did. Imagine
someone you've been close to for years waking up one morning and
saying something like,
Hey, today's a good
day to kill everyone I love.
It doesn't
happen." I bit my lip. "I mean, it's not supposed to
happen."