Speak Ill of the Living by Mark Arsenault

as he slid the note back where he had found it.
    Dr. Crane had been falsifying his reports. Cutting corners to help prosecutors close their cases.
    Eddie had never heard his police sources chatter about Crane—nobody had ever suggested that Crane’s work might have been suspect, except defense lawyers. But they got paid to discredit the state’s witnesses; they’d do it to their own mothers.
    Forty years?
How many bodies were in the wrong graves? No, to hell with the graves—Crane had been an expert witness at
thousands
of criminal trials over the past four decades. How many innocent people had he helped put away?
    The body rocked back. Eddie smelled the stench. He grimaced at the stain on Crane’s overalls.
    Wait… his pants… still wet?
    Eddie grabbed Crane’s hand—cooler than the living, but still warm.
    Holy Jesus, this just happened!
    Eddie threw himself down the ladder and sprinted out, slamming the door behind him.
    He ran toward his car.
    The slam echoed in Eddie’s mind.
    Who made the door slam when I first got here?
    Not Crane—it had been barely two minutes between the noise and the moment Eddie opened the door to the barn. Even if the rope had been ready, would Crane have had time to hang himself dead? Eddie couldn’t say.
    Was somebody else here?

Chapter 5
    The police arrived in their Ford Crown Victorias, white with blue and gold stripes. A belligerent lieutenant named Brill wanted to hear Eddie’s story again.
    â€œBut I told you guys everything,” Eddie protested. He looked down Dr. Crane’s driveway, past the barrier of police tape, and saw a television news van pull into the cul-de-sac. Word of Crane’s death had leaked.
    This is crazy. I’m the only reporter with the full story, and I can’t get away to write.
    The lieutenant was short and built like a power-lifter. His shirt collar dug deep into his thick neck. “So why were you in the man’s garage?” he asked.
    Eddie started to sigh, but stopped himself. No sense aggravating this lieutenant and dragging out this interview longer than it had to be. “I heard a door, all right?” Eddie said, “I went looking for Crane. Found him hanging in the garage. Ran to my car. Called you guys.”
    â€œUh-huh. So you heard a noise and then broke into the garage,” the detective paraphrased, scratching notes on a pad.
    â€œDon’t write it
that
way,” Eddie said. “The door was unlocked. I just went in.”
    Lieutenant Brill looked up from his notes. His eyes were the lightest blue Eddie had ever seen. “Doesn’t really matter, under the law.”
    Eddie sighed. Couldn’t help himself. “Somebody else was here,” he said. “That’s the person you ought to be interrogating.”
    â€œCrane lived alone,” the detective said. “There’s no evidence anybody else was here, except you and him.”
    â€œI’m telling you, I heard somebody.”
    The lieutenant went back to writing. “Mm-hm,” he said.
    Eddie felt the sudden stab of caffeine withdrawal. It quickly grew worse, as if his skull was a diving bell that had gone too deep.
    Another voice said, “When I heard that a reporter found the body, I hoped it wouldn’t be you—”
    Eddie turned. It was Detective Orr. She looked ticked.
    â€œâ€”but I
knew
it would be, Eddie.”
    â€œI explained everything three times already,” Eddie said. “I need to go.”
    Orr ignored him. She nodded to the lieutenant, and the two of them walked out of earshot. She murmured to Brill, he mumbled to her, and then Orr came back alone to speak to Eddie.
    â€œCrane left a note,” she said.
    Eddie shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He didn’t say anything.
    â€œDid you read it?”
    A second TV news van pulled into the cul-de-sac. The reporter from the first van was taping her report with police cars