The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook Page A

your photos. He said to thank you.”
    â€œHe can thank me by paying me.” A bus bucketed by, sheeting water onto the sidewalk. “How’d it go last night?”
    â€œYou mean the parents?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThey said their son wasn’t gay.” That didn’t surprise me, but the bitterness in Adam’s voice did. The world is full of parents who can’t admit their kids are gay. “They said they sent him to a Christian camp run by Reverend T. Roy Howard to have the demon of homosexuality exorcised from his soul through SSA therapy. They said he was cured and had a girlfriend from Abuja.”
    â€œDon’t tell me you believe them.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter I think. They believed it.” He yawned into the phone.
    â€œHave you been to bed yet?”
    â€œI think I slept an hour this morning. I can’t wrap my head around this killer, Jackie. The body, the pipe, the mattress—everything was clean, no fingerprints, no physical evidence at all, nothing, nada. He’s getting better at this and we’re still just treading water.”
    I didn’t tell Adam about the backstage photos Deiter found on my Leica. I wanted Deiter to pull out more detail before I said anything, just in case it turned out to be nothing. I didn’t want to get Adam’s hopes up. “Wiley’s working fast this time, running that evidence. It’s not like him to share his results so quick.”
    â€œDirector Boykin’s riding everybody’s ass.” A car passed slowly, rap music vibrating the trunk so deep the rain danced on the surface. “The media is crawling all over the place. Why do you think I haven’t slept?”
    I told him to get some sleep and let him get back to his work. I don’t know why he called. He didn’t even harass me about going to NA. I hadn’t even got the phone back in my pocket before it rang again. I never used to be this popular.
    â€œHi,” I said to James. “I have your money.”
    â€œFantastic. I’m at the airport,” he answered. “I’m headed down to Biloxi to pick up an Embraer Ipanema.” I heard a door open onto the sound of a passing bus.
    â€œIsn’t that a song?”
    â€œIt’s a Brazilian airplane—a type of crop duster. It runs on alcohol.”
    â€œSo you’re a crop duster pilot.”
    â€œYeah. For the time being.”
    â€œIsn’t crop-dusting a little dangerous?”
    â€œOnly if you get careless. Listen, this job just came up. I’m running behind and I’ve got to catch a flight. I’ll be out of town for a couple of days. I was wondering if you have family in town.” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because I don’t have any family here and I thought if you weren’t doing anything, we could have Thanksgiving dinner together after I get back.”
    I couldn’t tell if he was asking me over to his place for Thanksgiving, or if he expected me to cook for him. When I didn’t answer, he said, “Of course, the only place that’ll be open is Cracker Barrel.”
    â€œCracker Barrel is fine.” He made it easy to say yes.
    â€œFantastic!” he said. That was two fantastics in one phone call. He was nervous about something, but I didn’t know what. I hoped it was just me. “I’ll call you when I get back Thursday.”
    I gave him my address and told him to pick me up at six o’clock.
    â€œI’m about to go through security so I have to hang up.”
    So hang up . Instead, I said, “Have a safe flight.”
    â€œThanks. Bye.” He finally hung up. I tried to picture James’s face. Mostly, I remembered how young he looked. He didn’t sound young on the phone. I felt a little guilty about being so attracted to him. But only a little.
    *   *   *
    I found Trey and Deiter digging through a garbage can at the back of