The Sleeping and the Dead (18 page)

“I think it's his best design.” She opened the folder, in which lay a single Xeroxed copy of the front page of the Memphis newspaper. She slid it across the table. On the right was a headshot of a gorgeous young woman, mid-twenties, with short dirty-blond hair and supermodel cheekbones. She looked familiar, and now I knew where I'd seen her before. The headline read “FedEx Pilot's Wife Found Brutally Murdered.” The caption under the photo read, ‘Police say Ashley St. Michael's husband is not a suspect at this time.' Because the copy was reduced to fit on a single piece of paper, I couldn't read the story. I didn't need to. I knew now where I'd heard James St. Michael's name before, because I'd taken the crime-scene photos of his murdered wife.

“Jacqueline, please tell me you're not dating this man,” my mother said in a trembling voice.

 

Sunday

 

23

M
ARY WAS MY DEAD GRANDMOTHER'S
name, the woman I never met save in photographs and graveyards. Jacqueline was for Jackie Kennedy. If I'd been a boy, I would have been named Robert Enoch—Robert after the younger Kennedy brother, Enoch after my dentist grandfather. But my father wouldn't allow these bits of Democratic family trivia to be known, lest he offend some Republican and lose a contract. In 1966, the year of my birth, Democrats still ruled Arkansas government top to bottom, but it paid for a man like my father to avoid political conflict. He never voted.

My mother told me the tragic history of my name when I was nine. She thought Jackie Kennedy was the most beautiful woman in the world, not least because she had been married to the most beautiful and tragic hero in American history. When Jackie married Aristotle Onassis in October 1968, my mother felt personally betrayed. She tried to get people to start calling me by my first name, Mary, but by that time, I was little Jackie Pastor to the whole town.

Of course, Robert Kennedy had been assassinated in June 1968, so no matter what, I was doomed to bear an inauspicious name. It was enough to make a body superstitious.

When my brother Sean was born in December 1968, my mother picked the name Sean Wallace out of a Jonesboro phone book. My father agreed without telling her that he had always wanted to name his firstborn son after the original James Bond. At least Sean Connery never let my father down, except in
Highlander 2
and
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
.

Sunday morning, Mom sat on the edge of my bed and begged me to go to church with them. I hadn't brought any church clothes, but she said there were dresses in my closet I could wear. She opened the closet to show me clothes from high school and college, plus my old Coast Guard uniform. I wouldn't even get out of bed. I hadn't worn a dress in five years. My old dresses wouldn't fit. Two of me could fit inside some of them. I didn't particularly care to remember that fat fifteen-year-old girl. I still had nightmares in which I was two hundred pounds and sprouting a mall claw as big as a rhinoceros horn.

Mom and Dad dressed and left as though going to a funeral. I watched them back out of the driveway in Mom's Oldsmobile. I shuffled downstairs to the kitchen. Mom had left me half a pot of coffee, which I drank black and lukewarm. I sat at the table and flipped through the Sunday edition of the
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
. The front page was all about Arkansas beating No. 1 LSU in triple overtime the previous Friday afternoon. That hadn't just been a game, it was a historic event, like the Athenian defeat of the Persians at Marathon. I no longer followed Arkansas football, but I still felt that familiar rush of tribal joy reading about their victory.

On page A7, I noticed a three paragraph mention of the Playhouse Killer's most recent victim—internationally famous playwright Cole Ritter, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, two Tony awards, and any number of European honors. There was little in the story that I didn't already know, save for the general level of astonishment that someone so famous should die in so “theatrical a manner.” No pun intended on the part of the reporter, I'm sure. But this was bound to put our Playhouse Killer on the national and international stage. I hadn't thought of that.

I folded the paper and laid it on the kitchen counter. I called Adam on the telephone. When he answered, I said, “James St. Michael.”

“What?” He sounded like I had woke
him
up for a change.

“What do you know about James St. Michael?”

“Other than he killed his wife?”

“Why isn't he in jail?”

“We're still building a case against him.”

“Bullshit. It's been two years. What are you waiting for?”

“What's your interest in him?” he asked.

“Just wondering. I was going over some old photo files and I couldn't remember.”

“You wake me up to ask me about some old case, when I haven't slept since Thursday night?”

“Sorry.”

“Sorry, my ass. If you know something, tell me.”

“I don't know anything,” I said. “What do you know?”

“I know he was in large to some guys.” He covered the phone with his hand and mumbled something to someone, then came back, “He needed money.” He wasn't alone. I don't know why that surprised me.

“Drugs?”

“Gambling. Up to his neck. He had a good job, brand-new FedEx pilot straight out of the Air Force. Her family had money. She had a big insurance policy.”

“Did he collect?”

“No. Last I heard, he was suing FedEx to get his job back.”

“They fired him?”

“They didn't want a suspected murderer on the payroll. I don't blame them.”

“But what if he didn't do it?”

“She was killed in their bedroom. No sign of a break-in. Doors and windows locked, house key in her purse. He had the only other key with him when we questioned him. She wasn't raped, but he beat the hell out of her, strangled her. You took the pictures, Jackie. You saw her. It was pure rage. A murder like that is personal, not some random act.”

“So why haven't you arrested him?”

“He was working the night of the murder,” Adam said. “We have witnesses who were with her while he was on a plane to San Diego.”

“That's a pretty good alibi. So how do you figure he killed her?”

“Obviously he hired it done. He may have been in San Diego, but that doesn't mean his house key was with him. Sooner or later we'll find out who he hired, but we can't move on him until we do.”

I lit my very last cigarette and opened the window above the sink. It looked cold outside, but with the window open it felt about sixty degrees and damp, like it might start pouring down rain any minute. The last of the snow had melted away.

“Where are you?” Adam asked.

“My parents' house.”

“Are you clean?”

“Sure I'm clean. You think I'd use here?”

“You have before.”

“I forgot I told you about that,” I said. Though Adam never had my eye for details, he never forgot anything. “In the future I'll try to remember not to tell you anything you can throw in my face.”

“I'm not throwing it in your face. I'm just trying to keep you honest about yourself,” he said.

I decided to change the subject. “I just saw something in the Little Rock paper about Cole Ritter.”

“I was up until two last night talking to some newspaper from Paris.”

“Don't you think it's a hell of a coincidence that the killer's last two victims were from Michi Mori's house?”

“You know me,” Adam said. “I don't believe in coincidences.”

“Michi's a suspect?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because Thursday evening he had a heart attack.”

“No shit! Is he dead?”

“Not yet. Friday afternoon he was still in IC at Methodist Hospital.”

“Maybe Michi killed Cole and that's what gave him the heart attack,” I suggested.

“Cole rode with Michi in the ambulance to the hospital. He told the EMTs he was Michi's personal physician. Idiots believed him.”

“So what happened?”

“About nine o'clock, Cole leaves the ER, tells the nurse he's going to get a cup of coffee and make a phone call. Security cameras pick him up exiting through the Union Avenue doors. That's the last anybody sees of him. He didn't call a cab. He didn't get on a bus. He didn't make a phone call. He didn't get a cup of coffee.”

“Shit.”

“Shit is right. I'm starting to wonder if we'll ever catch this guy. He doesn't fit the profile. What if all we think we know about serial killers is based on the stupid and unlucky ones we've caught? The good ones we never catch, so we have no idea who they are or what they're like.”

“This guy's not a ghost, Adam.” If he were a ghost, I'd have seen him by now. “He's just a guy. He'll fuck up and you'll be there to give him the chop. You just need some sleep.”

“When are you coming back to Memphis?”

“I'm just putting on my shoes.”

“Call me when you get in. I want to see this place where you're going to meetings,” he said, and hung up. I felt sorry for him. It felt good to feel sorry for someone other than myself for a change.

I went upstairs and changed clothes, got my stuff together. I had to get out before my parents made it back from church. I'd be disappointing them by cutting out, but they were used to being disappointed. It was easier this way for everyone, no clumsy goodbyes, no making promises everybody knows you won't keep. As I was dressing, I found six hundred dollars lying on top of my suitcase—five hundred for the camera, and another hundred to tide me over, because that's the kind of guy my dad was. He knew I was planning to skip out on them. If I had hung around to thank him, he might've been embarrassed.

Before I left, I made one more phone call. I had Jenny's number in my cell phone. It rang a few times and then her voice mail picked up. I left a message for her to call if she had a minute. Before I got downstairs with my suitcase, she was ringing me back.

“I'm glad you called,” she said.

“Why?”

“I was worried about you. Are you OK?”

“I wanted to apologize.”

“For what?”

“For leaving like that.”

“It's OK. We knew why you left.”

“It wasn't him. It wasn't the guy from the bathroom. I screwed up.”

“I heard what happened,” she said. “I thought it might have been you, but I didn't know for sure.”

“Thanks for not telling to the cops.”

“What was I going to tell them?” She paused. “Are you sure you want to be telling me this?”

“Not really.”

“I'm about to go into church,” she said. Somebody said good morning to her.

“OK. Well, thanks again.”

“Don't mention it.”

I didn't hang up right away. There was another thing I needed to ask her, but I was afraid to ask it, because I already knew the answer. But I had to ask it. “Who is Ashley?”

“A friend of ours. She was killed Thanksgiving weekend a couple of years ago. We meet at Bosco's every year to drink to her memory.”

“Why Bosco's?”

“That's the last place we saw her,” Jenny said. “In fact, we're probably the last people who saw her…” Her voice caught and she cleared her throat. “… alive. Jesus, it doesn't get any easier to talk about this.”

“Talk about what?”

“Please don't think I'm crazy, but the night Ashley was killed, I knew something bad was going to happen. I begged her to let me drive her home, but she said she wanted to stop and say hi to somebody.”

I felt my gut wind up in a knot.
She knew her murderer
.

“Did you tell the police that?”

“Of course.”

“One more thing. Was her name Ashley St. Michael?”

“Oh my God!” Jenny was quiet for a long time. I heard the clock in the hall ticking, then it started to chime eleven o'clock. “Did you know her?” she asked in a whisper.

“No, but I saw her picture in your phone. And I met her husband.”

“You know Jimmy?” She sounded very relieved about something. “God, I haven't seen him in what, more than a year? How's he doing?”

“That's hard to say. I don't know him that well. We only met last week.” It was hard to believe it had only been a week.

“I'm glad he's getting out and seeing people again.”

“Do you think he killed his wife?”

“Jesus, no! No way. No way in hell.”

“How do you know?”

She cleared her throat and told somebody to go on inside. “Listen,” she said in a low voice. “You know how rare it is to find that one person who is perfect for you in every way?”

“Sure. I see it all the time in movies.”

“Most people never find it, or think it doesn't really exist except in books and movies, but Jim and Ashley had it. It was the real thing. You should have seen them together. It breaks my heart. It sounds corny as hell, but they were true soul mates. When Ashley died, I thought it would kill Jim. He wasn't the same person. He was a broken shell. Anybody could see that. And then the police started accusing him of her murder! God, there's no fucking justice in the world. I'm sorry, excuse me.”

“It's OK,” I said.

“Anyway, whoever killed Ashley killed Jim, too. Will you ask him to call me?”

“I will. Well, thanks. I'll let you go.”

“I'm glad you called, Jackie,” she said.

“So am I.” What she had told me about James meant nothing. It just meant she believed in fairy tales. A therapist will tell you the kind of relationship James and Ashley St. Michael enjoyed almost never lasts. They are an aberration of the moment. The years pass and people change, they grow apart, or one grows away, leaving the other behind, bitter, hurt, and jealous. Perfect compatibility only exists in television commercials for dating websites. Compatibility isn't necessary to have a successful marriage. My parents were the perfect example. Forty-five years of quiet desperation, yet they were inseparable.