announced was the penultimate volume. The last book in the series, he promised, would answer all the questions his loyal readers had been asking ever since those first expeditions into the Death Swamp. It would also be the longest book in the series, maybe seven hundred pages. (Which would allow the publisher to tack an extra buck or two onto the purchase price.) And once Roanoke and all its mysteries were put to rest, he had confided to my mother on one of her visits to his upstate New York compound, he intended to begin a multi-volume series focused on the Mary Celeste.
It all sounded good until he dropped dead at his desk with only thirty or so pages of his magnum opus completed. He had been paid a cool three million in advance, but with no book, the advance would have to be paid back, including our share. Only our share was either gone or spoken for. This, as you may have guessed, was where I came in.
Okay, back to the story.
9
As we approached the unmarked police car (I knew what it was, I’d seen it lots of times, parked in front of our building with the sign reading POLICE OFFICER ON CALL on the dash), Liz held open the side of her parka to show me her empty shoulder holster. This was a kind of joke between us. No guns around my son, that was Mom’s hard and fast rule. Liz always showed me the empty holster when she was wearing it, and I’d seen it plenty of times on the coffee table in our living room. Also on the night table on the side of the bed my mother didn’t use, and by the age of nine, I had a pretty good idea of what that meant. Death Swamp of Roanoke included some steamy stuff going on between Laura Good-hugh and Purity Betancourt, the widow of Martin Betancourt (pure she wasn’t).
“What’s she doing here?” I asked Mom when we got to the car. Liz was right there, so I guess it was an impolite thing to say, if not downright rude, but I had just been jerked out of class and been told before we even got outside that our meal ticket had been revoked.
“Get in, Champ,” Liz said. She always called me Champ. “Time’s a-wasting.”
“I don’t want to. We’re having fish sticks for lunch.”
“Nope,” Liz said, “we’re having Whoppers and fries. I’m buying.”
“Get in,” my mother said. “Please, Jamie.”
So I got in the back. There were a couple of Taco Bell wrappers on the floor and a smell that might have been microwave popcorn. There was also another smell, one I associated with our visits to Uncle Harry in his various care homes, but at least there was no metal grill between the back and the front, like I’d seen on some of the police shows Mom watched (she was partial to The Wire).
Mom got in front and Liz pulled out, pausing at the first red light to turn on the dashboard flasher. It went blip-blip-blip, and even without any siren, cars moved out of her way and we were on the FDR lickety-split.
My mother turned around and looked at me from between the seats with an expression that scared me. She looked desperate. “Could he be at his house, Jamie? I’m sure they’ve taken his body away to the morgue or the funeral parlor, but could he still be there?”
The answer to that was I didn’t know, but I didn’t say that or anything else at first. I was too amazed. And hurt. Maybe even mad, I don’t remember for sure about that, but the amazement and hurt I remember very well. She had told me never to tell anybody about seeing dead people, and I never had, but then she did. She told Liz. That was why Liz was here, and would soon be using her blipping dashboard light to shift traffic out of our way on the Sprain Brook Parkway.
At last I said, “How long has she known?”
I saw Liz wink at me in the rearview mirror, the kind of wink that said we’ve got a secret. I didn’t like it. It was Mom and me who were supposed to have the secret.
Mom reached over the seat and grasped me by the wrist.
Her hand was cold. “Never mind that, Jamie, just tell me if he could still be there.”
“Yeah, I guess. If that’s where he died.”
Mom let go of me and told Liz