Reunion (A Psychological Suspense with Murder, Mystery and the Paranormal) (23 page)

Larry smiled back.

“I think I know where those are,” she said with her sweet voice. “I think they’re in that yellow cabinet.” She pointed inside the crib.

“Thank you, Rosie. Take your time.”

“Thank you, dear.”

After several minutes sorting through her keys, Rosie arrived at the crib and unlocked the latch. A single fluorescent light hung from the ceiling, moving a little with the airflow from the ventilation system. The room was full of storage boxes and file cabinets, and smelled of damp cardboard. She pointed at the cabinet and directed Larry to open it. He began to pull on the handle, but Rosemary rebuked him.

“Not that one, sweetheart!” Larry jumped from the shock of her command. “That one.” She pointed at a cabinet labeled Employee Records.

Larry opened the cabinet drawer and began thumbing through it when she interrupted him with a question.

“What exactly are you looking for, sweetie?” she peeped at him through her bifocals.

“Harold Flynn’s retirement papers.”

“Okay then.” She stepped closer. “Let’s see here. F…F…F. There we are. The
F
file.” She opened the cabinet drawer labeled “E—H” and began thumbing through the folders.

In no time she cried out in triumph, “Aha! Here it is…Harold Flynn.” Rosemary smiled at Larry. “He was a nice man.”

“Yes he was, Rosie. May I have a look?” Larry reached for the file. Rosemary reluctantly handed it over.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He flipped through the papers until he came across the one he was looking for: Harold Flynn’s request for retirement benefits.

“Almost twenty years to the day,” he said out loud.

Rosemary stood guard over her precious documents. Larry observed her watching him suspiciously out of the corner of his eye and silently chuckled to himself. He continued reading, but found nothing of significance. Disappointed, he handed the file back to Rosemary.

“Is that all you wanted, sweetie?” she asked.

“Yes. I thought I’d find something there.” He paused and sighed. “It’s just that he was so young to retire when he did.”

Rosemary nodded. “They all were.” She put the file back exactly where she had found it.

Confused, Larry asked, “Who?”

“The other two gentlemen,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“What other two gentlemen?”

“The two other men who retired on the same day as Harold, silly!” She waved off his ignorance.

“Exactly who are we talking about?”

“Judge Brubaker and the coroner. Hmmm…what was his name? Ah, yes! Donald Stout. Judge Mickelson Brubaker and Donald Stout, the coroner. They retired the same day as Sheriff Flynn. I forget a lot of things nowadays, but I still remember that!” Rosie smiled and tapped her temple, affirming her wits with her index finger.

“Are they still alive?” asked Larry.

“Well, let’s see here…” Rosie put her index finger on her chin and her other hand on her hip. “No…Judge Brubaker died a few years back, but I believe Mr. Stout is still with us. If my memory serves me correctly, he lives down the road from my sister Louise on Market Street.” She shuffled back toward the file cabinet. Eventually, she pulled out Donald Stout’s file and confirmed the address.

“328 West Market Street. See? I still got it!”

“Thank you, Rosie!” Larry reached down toward the fragile woman and gave her a gentle hug. She smiled as he turned around and rushed back up the stairs two at a time.

Time to make a house call, he thought. Something isn’t right, and this Stout guy might be a missing piece of the puzzle.

• • •

Within ten minutes Larry stood on Donald Stout’s front porch, knocking at the door. Like many of the houses in the neighborhood, Donald’s home was a small, red brick ranch with striped canopies over each window. The front porch had a black cast iron rail and two plastic sitting chairs. Donald answered the door with a raspy voice. When he opened up, Larry saw that he had a ventilator mask hanging from his neck and an oxygen tank in tow.

“Hello, officer.”

“Hi there. Are you Donald Stout?”

“Yes, sir.”

“May I have a word with you?”

“Sure. Is something the matter?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Okay then. Can we sit outside? I love the”—Donald coughed—”fresh air.”

Larry helped Donald to a chair, and then he sat down as well.

Donald looked up at the clear blue sky and said, “Beautiful day isn’t it?”

“Sure is. Is this your favorite season?”

Donald took a deep breath of oxygen from his ventilator and answered, “Spring?” Cough. “No. I’m more of a fall person myself. I love it when the leaves turn and the cool air chills the night.”

“Me too,” said Larry. “I’ve always been partial to the colors. Besides, there’s something about spring that doesn’t feel right. Not like it used to anyway.”

Donald tapped his hands on the chair. “Yeah, well, I hear we’re heading for some nasty weather.”

Larry looked at the blue sky. “That’s what they’re saying.”

Donald smiled and nodded his head in agreement. “So, what can I help you with, Sheriff?”

Larry sighed and looked at the old man. “Well, I really don’t want to be a bother, but there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

Donald carefully turned toward the sheriff. “Go ahead. Ask away.”

Larry put his elbows on his knees and clenched his fingers. “I was thinking about my old friend, Harold Flynn, and I remembered how early he had retired.”

Donald shifted slightly in his chair. “Yes?”

“Earlier today I was looking at the archives with Rosie. You remember Rosie, right?”

Donald nodded.

“Well anyway, she informed me that two other men retired the same day that Harold did: you and Judge Brubaker. And honestly, I found that a little odd.”

Donald said nothing.

“Do you find that odd?” asked Larry.

Donald looked away. “Mmmm. No. No, I don’t find that odd at all.”

Cough.

Larry grunted. “Were you aware that Harold and Judge Brubaker retired on the same day as you?”

“Yes.”

“Did the three of you plan it that way?”

“No.”

Larry grew frustrated by Donald’s lack of detail. “Well, I find it very interesting that you all retired on the same day and in the year of the school shooting. Did that have anything to do with your decision?”

“Of course it did! As coroner, my job was pretty uneventful before that. You know, I’d have an occasional”—cough, cough, cough—”death here and there, but nothing terribly traumatic. But after seeing all those children gunned down like that, well, I just wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t prepared to pronounce that many children dead all in one day…not here in our town. So, I had to hang it up.”

“And the others?”

“Oh, I think they both had similar reasons. It was more than they could handle. There was a lot of pressure on the judge to blame someone, and pressure on the sheriff to figure it out. The truth is, what happened back then will never make sense. We’ll never understand why that young man did what he did. It was just a part of our life that will remain a mystery forever.”

Both men were quiet.

“Does that help?”

Larry sat forward in his chair. “Yeah. It does. Thank you.” Larry stood up and extended his hand toward Donald. “Thank you for your time.”

“My pleasure.” He shook Larry’s hand and took another breath from the ventilator.

As Larry began walking down the steps, he paused and sighed, remembering that he had another question. He turned and looked back at the old man.

“Did you forget something?” asked Donald.

“Yes.” Larry’s hands pressed awkwardly against his hip. “I know it’s going to sound crazy, but I have to ask…”

“Go ahead, I’m all ears.”

“Okay. Did you pronounce David Ray officially dead?”

“Yes.” Again, there were no details. He pressed Donald further.

“Was he resuscitated?”

Donald looked away for a moment. He appeared alarmed that Larry would ask such a question. He had another coughing fit before he answered.

“No,” he said looking away. He paused and then looked straight at Larry.

“He did that on his own.”

Astonished by Donald’s answer, Larry simply stared at the retired coroner. Donald’s response changed everything. His mind immediately rushed back to Nick’s words and Deputy Jacob’s confirmation that it was David Ray’s face in the glass. He felt a rush of heat in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t seem possible. It wasn’t what Larry had hoped to hear. He’d hoped the ghost thing was just part of Nick’s troubled lifestyle, just a part of Nick’s past that still haunted him. But at that moment, he wondered if he had a live suspect. A dozen thoughts raced through his mind. Was David still alive? Was he trying to finish what he had started? What would the community think when they found out? Fear would run rampant!

He began formulating a plan. If David Ray was alive and at large, he had to be stopped. There would have to be dogs and search and rescue teams. The community would be up in arms over the fact that David Ray had never been brought to justice. They would feel deceived. Elected heads would surely roll if this was true.

Larry reeled in his thoughts and brought his attention back to the old man.

“I don’t understand. We were told that he died from self-inflicted wounds.”

“He did.”

“But you just told me that he resuscitated himself! Didn’t he pass away after that?”

Donald swallowed hard. “No. He’s alive. He’s just not living.”

Puzzled and afraid to hear the truth, Larry asked, “What do you mean?”

Donald took a deep breath from his oxygen tank and looked up at the sky.

“I promised to never tell. But, what the hell, I’m dying. It would be good to go without this on my conscience.” He stood up, limbs shaking, and stepped to the edge of the porch, staring intently at Larry. Holding tight to the rail, his eyes squinted and his secret poured out of his mouth. “I remember walking into the school that morning, just sick over what had happened. All the dead bodies and cries from wounded children were like a mountain resting on my shoulders. With each step I felt as if I sank deeper into the ground, like my feet were made of lead. Truly, it was the worst day of my life and the lives of many others. You know that.

“Anyway, Sheriff Flynn sent us into the school only minutes after David had killed himself. As I approached David’s body, I slipped in a pool of blood from one of the children nearby. My shoes were dripping with blood. It was everywhere, splattered on everything. Harold wanted me to pronounce the killer dead as soon as possible so that the parents could feel safe in knowing that the killer was no longer alive. They were forbidden from entering the school. Naturally, they were distraught, impatiently waiting outside and demanding answers. We had to act fast. We had to be proactive to ensure a hysterical parent didn’t do something crazy.

“As it turned out, David had made our job easy. He shot himself in the head. Some of the buckshot went straight through his neck, just missing his jugular vein. The rest pummeled his face and skull, leaving him clinically dead upon our arrival. The cause of death was obvious: self-inflicted wounds. The wounds were severe and appeared to be terminal.” He paused. “But they weren’t.”

Larry came back to the steps and sat back down, mesmerized by what he was hearing.

Donald sat down as well, and his eyes looked away from Larry, into the distance.

Larry asked, “So he
was
dead, correct?”

“Yes, he was. There was no pulse. His face was ripped to shreds. I had no reason to believe that he was anything other than stone-cold dead. So we made the decision to release the news to the media after I had signed and sealed his death certificate.”

“Then when did he—?”

Donald interrupted with a bout of coughing and said, “…come back to life? When we were on the way to the hospital to place him in the morgue. David’s body was on the gurney, covered in a white sheet. Standard practice is to attach a pulse-oximeter even if the patient is pronounced dead. In this case, I was in the ambulance when the machine began to chirp. Surprised the hell out of the attending paramedic and me! Unfortunately, it kept on chirping.”

“What did you do?”

“When we arrived at the hospital, we wheeled him down to the morgue and kept him under lock and key until city officials could decide what to do. His face was treated, but he remained in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery; he had barely had any neurological activity and had to be fed intravenously. And to this day, he’s remained in that state. Everyone who knew about it was required to sign a nondisclosure document, and I believe there were payouts of various sorts.”

“But why didn’t you pull the plug on him? I mean, come on, after what he did?”

“Oh, believe me, we talked about it! But it was not my decision to make and the doctors have their Hippocratic oath. Some of us didn’t want him to go quietly, or restfully. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to finish him off either. That would have made us like him.” Donald clasped his age-spotted hands and squeezed them anxiously together. “So, unable to make a decision to end his life, we agreed to let him lie there for the rest of his days. No one could have known he would still be alive after twenty years! Anyway, at the time we couldn’t release the information of his resuscitation. If anyone had known of his whereabouts, he would surely have been killed by one of the parents.”

“So where is he now? What did you do with him?”

“He’s an hour away, at Mount Carmel State Institution. Close enough to visit, but far enough away to keep out of sight. Part of my pension retirement contract was to go check on him every Saturday and he’s still there. I went every week faithfully until recently when I became too ill to travel. He looks like death warmed over with all the scars, bruising and bed sores, but he’s alive.” Cough. Cough. Donald wiped his chin with his handkerchief.

Both men sat there quietly for a moment. Donald took a breath of his oxygen and Larry stood up to stretch his legs. He walked down the steps, holding loosely to the rail, gathering his thoughts. Donald broke the silence.