Free The Dead Soul by M. William Phelps Page A

Back to basics here for the time being. It’s all we have at the moment.”
    “No, Jake. You’re wrong. We got teleforensics!” Dickie laughed, mocking Jake’s iPhone crime-solving app.
    “Funny. Hey, I mean that about Rookie—I want someone on his ass.”
    “Maybe tie him to Ray. I get it. Ray brought Rookie into the fold. Bring’em both down. Ray’s after your ass, anyway. Rookie is Ray’s eyes.”
    Jake’s mind raced.
    Mr. Taylor opened the door. Looked at the two of them. Then noticed the gold badge hanging from around Jake’s neck. “What’s this?” he asked. “Who are …?”
    Jake and Dickie looked down.
    The Taylor father dropped his head in his hands, bawling as if he had been waiting for this knock on the door for the past two years. The mother shook her head, one tear falling down her right cheek, a sad frown, her shoulders slumped. “My baby,” she said softly. “My baby girl is gone …”
    After allowing the Taylors to catch their breath, Dickie asked the standard set of questions. He took notes as Jake wandered around the downstairs, looking at knickknacks, family photographs, admiring some of the window-size paintings in the foyer.
    “We’re going to need all of her computers, cell phones, friends’ names.”
    “She had all that stuff with her,” the mother said. “When we filed a missing persons report days ago, they told us not to worry.”
    “We’re sorry, Mrs. Taylor.” Dickie was terrible at delivering bad news.
    Mr. Taylor did not speak.
    “Can I take a look in Lisa’s room, Mrs. Taylor? I hate to ask,” Jake said, “but it would be very helpful.” He kept his voice streamlined. Professional. Devoid of any emotion.
    “No one’s been in there, Detective, since she’s been gone,” the father said, speaking up.
    “Even better.” Jake headed up the stairs. He noticed a picture of Mr. and Mrs. Taylor, Lisa Marie, their other two kids, taken at an amusement park. They were wearing western outfits. The photo was in that rustic, yellowish black and white. Every household had one of these. The kids were young. Everyone seemed happy.
    “Hon,” Mrs. Taylor said to her husband, “go with the detective.”
    Dickie stayed with the mother downstairs while Jake and Mr. Taylor walked up the long, three-foot-wide, arcing staircase. Lisa Marie Taylor’s father was a Harvard professor who taught philosophy. He had been written about in many of the Christian journals because he believed religion needed to play a larger role in grammar through high school classrooms. He’d written books. But it wasn’t Harvard money—or his literary endeavors—that had made the Taylor family wealthy. Mrs. Taylor’s father, Artimus Raymore Samuels, took over a brewery in Boston opened at the turn of the century and turned it into one of the most successful ale companies in America.
    “Those flowers out front, you know what they’re called?” Jake asked as he and Mr. Taylor approached the top of he stairs. He had his hands in his pockets.
    Mr. Taylor had a balled-up fist to this mouth. “Lisa … she,” he had a hell of time getting the words out, “… she planted them. Called them Nightblooming Cacti, or something like that. They open up at night after the sun goes down.”
    A faint smell struck Jake as he and Mr. Taylor walked down the hallway toward Lisa’s bedroom. If you hadn’t been around the dead before you wouldn’t notice. It might instead smell like an expired mouse under a bureau. Or a family bathroom after a few days of the stomach flu.
    They entered Lisa’s room. The odor was far more pronounced inside. Rotten eggs and spoiled meat—that empty Dumpster odor in the summer. Maybe a funeral home.
    All of them combined.
    “Holy shit,” Jake said under his breath, covering his nose and mouth.
    Amid posters of Paris and Rome and a Pulp Fiction Uma Thurman, the smell made Jake’s nose wrinkle. Acclimating himself to it, Jake noticed it was mixed with a fake air freshener