Advocate For The Dead (Complete Novel)

Chapter 8: Two Cops & A Ghost

Thankfully, when the police came to the hospital to question me, it wasn't Sheriff Deacon himself. I wanted to question him on my own terms and turf. If what Summer told me was true, then things were going to get crazy and unpredictable real soon. If Deacon set the explosion, the big question was why. What's the motive? He had no advance knowledge I'd be there, so it couldn't be that he was after me. Was he after Jeff or something he had in the home? Maybe Dennings had some dirt on him? After all, Jeff's sister was apparently romantically linked to Deacon's daughter. Maybe she had told Jeff something, or given him something before she died. No matter how I turned it over in my head, it just didn't seem right. Sheriff Deacon didn't seem like the type. I knew he could be nasty and mean sometimes, and he was a hell of a fighter, but to blow up a house? Deacon took his law seriously, and so did the two officers who came to see me about the explosion.

Both of them must have been new to the department because I didn't recognize them. But they did everything by the book, just like good little rookies. The tall one (why do they always pair a tall one with an overweight one?) took out his little book and started asking all the standard questions. Why were you there? What's your relationship with the victim? Do you have any known enemies? Blah, blah, blah...

The over weight cop hung back by the door as if I were going to spring out of bed and make a run for it. I could have told them I used to be a cop too, but I hate telling people that. They always ask the inevitable 'what happened to make you quit' questions.

I answered all their questions politely and to the point, though I felt like at times Mr. Tall was trying to make some sinister connection between me and Jeff Dennings. But after the third time, they finally seemed to buy that I was just a friend visiting. By the time they left I figured they'd go back and tell Deacon I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I couldn't agree more.

They held me at the hospital for observation for two days. I got out the day of Jeff's funeral. Since his parents had made me leave their home I figured it probably wouldn't be a good idea to attend the funeral. Summer told me she went, but as before, she didn't feel anything for the stranger they were putting in the ground. She said her mom cried while her dad kept a tight, grim composure. I asked her if she noticed anyone unusual at the service.

"Everyone's unusual to me", she replied.

Leaving the hospital, I felt like I'd been in a movie theater for way too long. I squinted my eyes against the sun and decided on my next course of action. Go to the site of the explosion and see if I could find something the police overlooked. But first, I wanted to do what I should have done at the very beginning...visit the library.

When I was younger, libraries used to be all peace and quiet, and if you got too loud you'd get a stern look. Now there's kids running everywhere like it's a playground. People talking loudly, and every kind of distraction that shouldn't be allowed in a library. It seemed the only quiet person in the place was the librarian herself, a young woman with jet black hair pinned up off her collar, dressed as if she'd born thirty years before her actual birth. Her clothes looked like they might have been in fashion in a 1950's coffee shop, down to her bobby socks and black and white shoes.

"Hi, Clara," I said. Her real name was Clarice I think, but she didn't bother to correct me. She never did.

"Ah, Mr. Winter. It has been ages. What do we owe the pleasure?"

I smiled. She even talks like an old schoolmarm, even though I know she's not much younger than me. "I'm searching for an obit," I replied.

She stopped what she was doing, and began to punch something up on her computer. I was inept at such things myself. Didn't even own one. I had learned early on that spirits had no problem manipulating new technology, so I didn't have any of that stuff at the office or home. I didn't even own a cellphone, and because of computer chips in cars, I didn't drive if I knew I was going to be working a case. Most of the time, my car was kept under wraps in storage.