Dead Man Talking

  DEAD MAN TALKING

  DETECTIVE OLIVIA BROWN MYSTERIES BOOK 3

  A. J. Gallant

  What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.

  P. D. James

  A detective sees death in all the various forms at least five times a week.

  Evan Hunter

  PROLOGUE

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  ANITA, WEARING A BLACK BIKINI WITH SMALL WHITE HEARTS was holding hands with Tim while standing on a beach in heaven. He was wearing muted red swim trunks and was enjoying the view and the scents in the air. The sound of the waves rolling on shore was a nice touch and the fresh air never more satisfying. The beach was a lot like Champagne Beach on the island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, beautiful clear blue water with powdery white sand. Anita had been to the South Pacific region once before and loved it. She had imagined the scene and so that’s why it was a close match to Champagne Beach. Anita had added a couple palm trees and two swings so that she and Tim could swing side by side. The swings behind them were moving gently with the wind.

  Tim added a couple of swordfish jumping in the water and a surprise for Anita, although she wasn’t yet able to see it yet, he thought that she’d spot it soon enough. He was excited for her to find it without having to point it out.

  There was a blue sailboat on the horizon that was tied with a red and white boat, it looked like fun as they were floating together, whoever they were they had jumped in the scene and were enjoying the beauty of it all. No need to worry about storms and such when one was already dead or any other calamity for that matter. Stress in heaven was virtually nonexistent, although a soul would worry about their family now and then. Because a family member would end up in heaven when they died it lessened the worry, one looked at things differently from here.

  Anita had visited her family yesterday and they were doing as well as could be expected. It was strange listening in especially when the topic of conversation shifted to her, with her father telling stories of what a wild little girl she had been. How she had scared the mailman by jumping against the glass door; he had fallen off the porch and she had run and hid fearing that she would go to jail.

  Anita felt the warmth of Tim’s hand as she thought about things. It sounds funny but I am finally getting used to being dead. It still feels strange not to have any weight, no gravity pulling on me. And one day I’ll be reunited with my family. It was fun Spending the day with my grandmother who now looks twenty, I can’t believe how wild she was when she was young. It was nice to see her and Pape running through the forest like kids.

  Three boys ran by on the beach chasing one another and having great fun as a small black dog trotted along behind them. The weather was perfect as usual, although sometimes it did rain when one wanted, running in the warm rain on the beach was enjoyable. They had enjoyed a warm shower earlier that morning.

  Tim put his right arm around Anita’s shoulder. He wanted her to notice it but he couldn’t wait. “What is that?”

  Anita looked but couldn’t see anything. She tried to follow his line of sight but still couldn’t spot whatever he was looking at in the water. “What are you talking about? The boats? You want to go for a sail?”

  “No, there’s something in the water.” Tim pointed. “There, do you see it? Way out bobbing up and down.”

  Anita tried hard to see whatever he was talking about. She considered that maybe someone from one of the boats had tossed something in the ocean. “I don’t see anything, oh, I see it now. What is that?” Something white was slowly getting closer to them, it was coming in on a wave and then it slipped between the waves. “I think it’s a bottle. Wouldn’t it be funny if there was a message in it?”

  “It is a bottle,” said Tim. “One of those boats must have dropped it. I’m gonna swim out and get it.”

  Anita was tempted to say be careful but there was no need of that. She watched as he swam out and retrieved it. He waved the bottle as he stood up and walked out of the water towards her. It was a wine bottle and it did, in fact, have a note in it. Tim hit it several times and the note slid out.

  Tim handed her the note. “Here, you read it. Maybe it’s a treasure map.”

  Anita unrolled the small scroll. “I love you Anita, signed Tim.”

  Tim smiled. “What a coincidence, there must be another couple around here with our names. What are the odds?”

  Anita hugged him and gave him a kiss. “You’re a sneaky one, aren’t you?”

  “I try to be.”

  Cuthbert, a short and fat fellow wearing a top hat appeared and he was in earnest. “Anita, take my hand or Olivia will end up here right beside you! Quickly!”

  CHAPTER ONE

  DETECTIVE OLIVIA BROWN was driving her Tesla Model S and was quite a distance behind the old Ford truck as it turned on the rural road. Olivia was wearing a black pantsuit with a white shirt beneath her blazer. Her Glock 17 sat comfortably in its holster on her side. The smell of strong Starbucks coffee wafted through the vehicle as it did on many occasions. There was a light rain and the intermittent windshield wipers were doing their job, swish tick, swish tick. The detective thought that wipers were more dependable than a lot of people.

  Olivia liked the ambiance of the rain, it was soothing. She had a clock that played the sounds of a thunderstorm with a heavy downfall for twenty minutes that often lulled her to sleep. She had liked the rain on her tent in her backyard as a twelve-year-old, remembering that she had to get the hell out of there as soon as the sun came up because she was roasting.

  Olivia took a drink of her coffee and wondered if it was bad for the baby? If so, she had never heard anything about it. She would check it out online when she got back, but if this little one was really a gift from God it was unlikely that a little caffeine would hurt her. Life was starting to feel too much like a movie rather than reality, accepting the veracity of ghosts still made her shake her head. It was something she thought about every single day, such an abnormal way to live. She sometimes felt like screaming out her window as people walked by on the sidewalk below wake up people ghosts are real!

  The detective had awoken a little on the depressed side, dealing with the dark side was finally getting to her, or maybe it was just mood swings from being with child. Humans were moody beings in any manner, part of having such a complicated brain she imagined. Even when some people were happy they were still looking for a dark shadow around the corner. Olivia had finished a bottle of dill pickles last night, even drunk most of the juice, already craving more. She couldn’t see the baby being deficient in pickle juice, that made her shake her head, wondering if it might thin her blood.

  Moving forward was just one foot in front of the other, she didn’t know how Aunt Stella managed to keep such a stiff upper lip all the time because to her it was just the way of things. Stella had such fortitude in the face of overwhelming adversity, she seemed to take those damn ghouls and goblins in stride. It must have been terrifying if she saw them as a kid because that could really do a job on a developing child.

  I think I’ll get a mighty meat pizza for dinner, I could eat one right now. Drown it with a couple of cans of Pepsi. Making my stomach growl. Extra cheese, extra bacon. It’s a good thing I work out with all the extra calories I’m eating. I’d be as big as a moose if it wasn’t for the weights, probably look like one too.

  Olivia preferred the days where nothing happened, but she had a feeling this wasn’t going to be one of them. The vehicle Olivia was pursuing was now in front of a dump truck that had managed to turn in front of her be
fore she got to the dirt road, making it an obstacle between her and the old Ford which was a bit of a relic from 1969. The blue and white vehicle had seen better days but was still chugging along while others had long ago rusted away.

  “And this was supposed to be my day off,” she said to herself. Olivia took a drink of her coffee, she loved waking to the smell of hot java in the morning. Technology was great, at six every morning it was ready. Now if there was only a machine to make her breakfast. Would the future have robots chasing the bad guys? She envisaged that it would. Drones everywhere to keep an eye on things? Most likely.

  There was a man on the side of the road watching her as she drove past. It caught her attention because he was a Confederate soldier dressed in gray holding a single-shot breechloading rifle, he wasn’t in a battle recreation he was a ghost. The detective had no idea why some people didn’t move on, she had no intention of sticking around when her time came. Seemed terribly boring just watching life pass you by, especially where a spirit wasn’t able to interact with the living, at least for the most part. What must he think of the progress of things as the years passed? Was it possible that some people didn’t know they were dead? Or maybe a century felt like a minute?

  Olivia was sucking on a mint and trying to get a better look at the driver to see if he was the BOLO. The man behind the wheel didn’t appear to have been paying any attention to her earlier although now he was swaying to his left and looking in his side mirror a lot, to say that he was distracted was an understatement. Garth was talking to himself, arguing really. It had all gone down too fast in a haze of booze and painkillers. Some of it was a blur but he knew exactly what he’d done and there was no going back now. The dead could not be brought back to life.

  Olivia took another mint as she was thinking about Anita. The idea that nothing could happen to her was just weird, but Anita was already dead. Bullets just whizzed through her, and of course, one day she would be in the same boat. No one lived forever, it was all part of the deal. Her repeated questions about heaven to Anita didn’t give her many facts, one had to be there to understand, or so she was told. Might be a cop-out, or maybe she wasn’t supposed to know what it was like, maybe one really did have to be there.

  She hadn’t heard from Anita for almost a week and in a way, it was a relief. It was also strange that she was missing a ghost but that was her new normal. The poor girl had been murdered in Central Park and nothing could change that. Had they met when she was alive, they would have been good friends, of that she was sure. Anita was obviously a good person and now a good spirit. Olivia wondered if Anita hadn’t been fated to die young so she could help them from the other side? God’s plans were known to no one.

  Sixty-year-old Garth was dumpy looking, balding, short and fat, unkempt, with as much hair on his chest as a woolly mammoth used to have fur. He was bouncing around in the truck as he tried to think of his next move because he had few remaining. Garth had let himself go over the last few years. Bathing was no longer a priority. He pounded his fist on the steering wheel as he confirmed he was being followed, had been so preoccupied that he wasn’t thinking straight. With what had transpired that morning he was lucky to be thinking at all. When a person snapped bad things were liable to happen, and, in fact, they had. In a way, he was sorry for what he did, but in another, he wasn’t. Life had been miserable and this would surely hurry along the rest of it.

  The spirit of Garth’s father sat in the back seat with his arms crossed, wanting to see how this was going to play out. Having gone through his life with a fine comb he now regretted how he had treated his son, had a big hand in shaping the man that he had become. He had to admit that he had been an asshole and a poor excuse for a father. Most of his decisions concerning his son were either cruel or just plain wrong.

  Garth had been unhappy with his life for several years, his wife running off with the mailman was like some crazy scene in a movie, and that had been the beginning of the end for him. The recent loss of his job had been more than he could tolerate, the fuel on the campfire that burned down the forest. He had a flashback to when he was seven and had been shot playing war, letting himself fall out of that tree had left him with a broken arm, just one of many bad decisions.

  Garth stomped the pedal getting the old clunker up to eighty-five miles per hour, leaving a trail of dust behind him, the ground not yet sufficiently saturated to keep that from happening. She went around the dump truck with her lights now flashing. He took the Winchester rifle in his lap and actioned the lever making it ready to fire, through the dust the detective thought she saw him do it. Olivia hoped the situation wasn’t heading into the shots fired category but she was thinking that’s exactly where it was going. The career of a detective was inherently dangerous and with this baby inside her was reconsidering her priorities.

  No way in hell Garth was going to be taken alive. He wasn’t about to spend the rest of his life behind bars with nothing to do but think of what he had done. He had done enough pondering for three people and anyway there was nothing left to think about; God would either forgive him or he wouldn’t. This life was now a dead-end street.

  Garth slammed the brakes and then stomped the gas, causing the detective to hit her breaks, touching his back bumper with her front. He managed to put some distance between them and then stopped the truck and fled into the woods with his rifle, dragging a seven-year-old girl behind him by the hand, with the girl having no choice but to run. Olivia got out, pulled her sidearm and aimed it, but the target quickly vanished from view. The detective hadn’t even seen the girl until now.

  Olivia called it in but knew that it could take twenty minutes or even longer before help got to her out here. She also knew that she might hesitate to take a shot with the girl. It could be life-changing for the child to see someone killed in front of her if it came to that. Would he use her as a shield?

  Olivia followed him into the forest cautiously. It would be easy for him to sit and wait for her to show herself; he would have the advantage, at least initially. Never mind that there had been a scope on the rifle. She saw an old house through the trees, not sure what the hell a house was doing way out here, definitely looked abandoned, but maybe that’s where he was headed. Perhaps he was familiar with the area, maybe he had hunted around here?

  Olivia pulled her head behind a tree a split second before a bullet shot bark off the oak. Her heart was pounding from the close call as she readied to return fire, it was definitely meant to be a head shot. Nothing will get your attention more than a bullet with your name on it. A flock of birds made a racket as they took flight. She knew he was somewhere near the old house but hadn’t yet pinpointed him. But where was the girl? Hopefully, he hadn’t harmed her, but desperate people often acted irrationally. He could have strangled her for all she knew. Might be time to get the hell out of this business.

  Garth watched as his granddaughter ran off into the woods and he wasn’t able to chase her because the cop would have had the advantage and the opportunity to shoot him. He didn’t want to yell at her because then the cop would know that he didn’t have her to use as a shield. This was one day that he would like to have back. Might have been better if he would have put a bullet in his own head. He considered that it might be his best choice but couldn’t get there.

  Garth looked through the scope searching for the Detective though most of her were behind that damn tree, although he knew sooner or later he would have a shot. Didn’t really matter how many he killed now; he figured that he wasn’t getting out of this day alive so why should she.

  Olivia considered that it was a strange place for a hideout if that’s what he was going to use it for because it was falling down and even part of the roof was missing. She wanted to take a peek but that’s exactly how people got killed. However, he could be trying to make his way around to get a better line of sight.

  Some spirits could see into the future but she had no idea how that worked. One of those damn demons had laughed at
Olivia half the night as if it knew something that she didn’t. Life had left her with one foot in this world and the other being tugged on by the other side. The detective definitely didn’t want to end up on the other side now. Olivia was definitely in a sticky situation.

  Olivia, almost two months pregnant, knew that once she took maternity leave she might never return to her chosen profession. Whether she went back or not she was aware that she might never get away from the ghosts and goblins.

  She had a peculiar feeling that something was going to happen, maybe there were spirits hanging around. The Glock felt like an extension of her and she was a good shot, but fate was fickle and for all Olivia knew she was about to be standing next to Jim Diallo in heaven. Olivia thought she saw a shadow in the distance but wasn’t able to pay much attention to it lest she got her head blown off. She hoped he wasn’t patiently waiting for her.

  Another bullet struck the center of the tree as he was trying to flush her out. Instinct was telling her to run but she knew that was a bad idea. No question in her mind that he was trying to kill her. The scope hunted for something to shoot at but she was completely behind the tree now.

  Garth had killed his Eighty-year-old father as he slept. His old man always had a way of getting under his skin and he had poked him one time too many that afternoon. Garth had sneaked into his bedroom in the middle of the night, shooting him as he slept. That he had been drunk would not be accepted as an excuse by anyone.

  Suddenly, Anita materialized, she knew that Olivia was supposed to die here. “Olivia, don’t move! Don’t you move an inch!”

  Olivia had begun to shift for a shot when she pulled her head back, the Two-twenty-three ammo whizzed by her head, less than a half inch from her temple as she pulled back. Had it not been for Anita the detective would be laying in a pool of her own blood, joining the world of spirits. Anita knew that Olivia was supposed to have fallen here, but if the dark side could cheat then so could she. They certainly weren’t following the rules. Anita didn’t know if there would be any consequences, after all, she was working for heaven, more or less. Didn’t think it was possible for her to be kicked out.