Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues by Steven Womack Page A

these days, that if you paid attention to everything, you’d never get anything done and lose your sanity in the process. It’s like some New Age fruitcake telling you to live every day as if it were your last; hell, that’s impossible. You’d be so overloaded you’d explode, and it
would
be your last day.
    It only took a few minutes to recite the tale. I tried to remember everything like a professional. It was impossible to tell from Spellman’s face what he thought. He sat there in his tan shirt and brown flowered polyester necktie like a law enforcement sphinx, making a few notes here and there and watching the tape recorder spin.
    Then his tone changed. Suddenly, we were into details.
    “Where did you park your car?”
    “Off 21st, a block or so from the hospital.”
    “Where off 21st?”
    I thought for a moment. “I don’t know the name of the street. I mean, this is Nashville, man. I saw a space, I grabbed it.”
    “You don’t know where your car is?”
    “Of course, I know where my car is. I just don’t know the name of the street.”
    “Who else knew you were going to the hospital?”
    “Nobody.”
    “You didn’t call anybody?”
    “I live alone, Lieutenant. My landlady was asleep.”
    “You didn’t call a girlfriend? Maybe tell her you were meeting her later?”
    “I’m not seeing anyone right now.”
    He raised an eyebrow. “No relationships with women, huh?”
    I cocked an eyebrow right back at him. What the hell was going on here?
    “I said not right now. I didn’t mean never.”
    “Who’s your client?”
    I hesitated, then remembered he already knew. “Rachel Fletcher, Conrad Fletcher’s wife.”
    He was firing questions like this was the freaking Double Jeopardy round: When did she hire you? Where? How much did she pay you?
    “Why did you wait until ten at night to go to the emergency room?”
    “My ankle didn’t start hurting bad until then.”
    “Why did you go looking for Fletcher?”
    I felt myself going dizzy again. “I don’t know. Not really. I was thinking I ought to connect with the guy. Maybe talk to him. I was going to wing it, make it up as I went along. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”
    “Tell me again the sequence of events in the hallway.”
    “I heard a noise behind me. I turned. There was a nurse coming out of a room.”
    “Was it the room where Fletcher was?”
    “Maybe,” I said. “I’m not sure. It was dark. I was at the other end of the hall.”
    “Get a look at her?”
    “I vaguely remember thinking it odd that she didn’t have a clipboard or anything. She just stood there, staring at me.”
    “Then?”
    “She seemed stiff, awkward. Then she reached up and kind of smoothed down her blouse. I turned away for a sec. When I turned back, she was gone. I don’t know where. Maybe into another room. There’s a stairwell exit down at that end of the hall, too. Anyway, I thought it was weird. That’s when I headed down the hall and found him.”
    Then the clincher: “Why did Rachel Fletcher hire you?”
    I hesitated, decided I’d had about enough. “Client privilege,” I said. “That’s personal information between me and my client.”
    Color rose in Spellman’s face. Twenty-five years ago, he’d have brought in a couple of the boys with rubber hoses to work me over. But that was then, as they say, and this is now, and I’ve got to give Spellman credit: he kept his cool.
    “Client privilege is not recognized in a private investigator-client relationship. We can either have you deposed by the district attorney, or we could stretch it and have you charged with interfering with a police investigation.”
    I thought I saw the faintest trace of a smile on his face. “What’s it going to be?”
    I smiled back at him. I had a feeling I’d lost this one; may as well flow with it. “She told me Fletcher was a compulsive gambler. Up to his ya-ya with some bookie. She didn’t know who. Said they’d been threatening him, and she wanted