Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack

time?” I asked.
    “Just like being a doctor. Some nights you’re on call, some nights you’re not.”
    “The press pick up on this yet?”
    “If they haven’t, they will soon.”
    “You notified the decedent’s next-of-kin?”
    “Why don’t you let me ask the questions, Mr. Denton.”
    “I just thought she ought to be called.”
    “What’s it to you?”
    I looked up at him. There were dark circles under his eyes as well. Guess everybody looks like hell in the middle of the night.
    “That’s who I’m working for,” I said, at least savvy enough to know that in this state, client privilege doesn’t extend to P.I.s. “Fletcher’s wife hired me to get him out of a jam.”
    Sergeant Spellman’s eyes flicked from his notebook to me, then back down. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to talk.”
    Which is how I found myself on the way to the Metropolitan Nashville/Davidson County Criminal Justice Center at just shy of two o’clock in the freaking morning.

Spellman offered to give me a ride downtown; I was too tired to argue otherwise. We pulled out of the med center parking lot onto 21st Avenue. The white and fluorescent blues of the emergency room faded quickly into the dark oranges of the city streetlights and the neon rainbows of restaurant signs, retail shops, all-night pancake houses. At two in the morning, Nashville’s a strange compound of insomniac music types, graveyard-shift workers, and people looking for love or trouble and not caring very much which one they find first.
    I sat in the unmarked Ford Crown Victoria and rested my head against the back of the seat. Every time we hit a pothole my head felt like it was coming apart. But I was too tired to sit up straight.
    “What happens next?” I asked.
    “We just want a statement from you. That’s all.” Spellman navigated expertly through the thick traffic on Broadway. I thought of the line from some twenty-five-year-old Rolling Stones lament:
Don’t people ever want to go to bed.…
    “There’s not much to say, I just came across the guy—”
    “Not now,” Spellman said. “Wait till we get downtown.”
    I settled back as we crossed over I-40 and drove past Union Station. My uncle, the one I’m named after, worked the L & N railroad for decades before he died, back before the automobile makers conspired to screw the trains into oblivion.Now only freight trains came through the station, and it’s mostly home for pigeons.
    Ten minutes later, I followed Spellman into the police station, down the earth-tone carpeted halls to an interview room. It was quiet there in the middle of the night, a cold kind of quiet.
    I sat at a table in front of a portable tape recorder. Spell-man sat across from me and opened his notebook. Then he leaned across and fiddled with the tape recorder.
    “Want anything? Coffee, a Coke maybe?”
    “Cup of coffee’d be great,” I answered. “Milk, half a sugar.”
    He stood back up, left the room for a minute. There was a mirror on the wall behind me. I wondered who was watching from the other side. Figured I’d better not pick my nose or scratch my crotch.
    Spellman came in with a Styrofoam cup in each hand. Steam wafted off the coffee.
    “Powdered’s all we had. Can’t keep milk around here. It starts stinking after awhile.”
    “No problem.”
    I sipped the coffee as Spellman jacked around with the tape recorder again, then pressed the RECORD button. He recited his title and name, the date and time, then asked me to state my full name and address into the mike.
    So asked, so done. Then Spellman opened his notebook and scanned a page of notes. “Tell me what happened from the time you got to the medical center until you found Dr. Fletcher’s body,” he instructed.
    I began the narrative. It felt strange trying to recollect, and recreate in my mind, an entire evening’s events. Like most people, I go through life relatively oblivious to everything around me. There’s so much stimulation, so much stress,