by Vic Kerry
Ashe flipped a small device, similar to an MP3 player, over in his hands. He smelled the port where a USB cord could be attached and then where the electrodes were plugged into the device. Nothing of the usual acrid smell of burnt electrics was present.
“What did you say it was doing?” he asked.
“When I plug it into the computer, all the data comes up as gibberish,” a middle-aged man with dishwater-blond hair said. Erik Rogers tapped on a computer keyboard. “I made this recording earlier this week with a student volunteer.”
Ashe looked at the string of squares and dashes on the screen. He didn’t really know what could have caused his device to malfunction.
“You’re sure you haven’t gotten it wet or anything?”
Rogers shook his head. “I keep that thing in an airtight, waterproof box when not in use. I wouldn’t risk the safety of the machine that helped me discover the third law of psychology.”
“What about the computer program? You programmed that. Have you checked it?”
“Several times. There are no changes in it.”
“Virus.”
“Mac-based.”
“Power surge?”
“All my equipment is protected from that. Plus the other one doesn’t seem messed up.”
“You have the other one,” Ashe asked, “and the component box, right?”
“Of course, and it works fine,” Rogers said. “I’ve just gotten so many volunteers since the discovery that I need both to keep up with the subject pool size. I wish the prototype engram machine hadn’t been stolen or whatever when we moved labs.”
In all the hubbub surrounding Marianne’s death, Ashe had forgotten about the missing prototype, but it couldn’t have been the one that was used on Marianne’s body. He’d rendered it inoperable after producing the two devices that Rogers now used.
“Let me take this and see what I can find out. I’ll have this back to you in a couple of days. Will that be okay?”
“Take as long as you need. I’m not in a huge rush. Even if I was, I wouldn’t push you after the whole thing with Marianne.”
Ashe dropped the device into his shirt pocket. “You heard.”
“Everybody on campus knows. The dean emailed us, but I know about the other thing too. Scott called me.”
“So you and he are pretty good friends?”
“He’s my lawyer too.”
“I’m glad to see he doesn’t have problems with confidentiality,” Ashe said.
“Don’t worry. He just told me because I asked out of concern. I feel like I have a vested interest in your well-being.”
Ashe smiled. “Don’t try any of your psychology stuff on me, Dr. Rogers.”
“What psychology stuff?” Rogers twirled his finger at Ashe. “All kidding aside though, I think I have a friend you need to talk with. I asked him to drop by your office about a quarter until six this evening. He’s a psychologist, a clinical one.”
“I’ll be there, but I don’t think I need a shrink.”
“He’s not like that. You’ll like him, and he’s a great person to confide in. His confidentiality is a lot more secure than Scott’s.”
“That’ll be all right then. I’ve got a set of tests to grade. One of the work-studies is going to help me out, so I should be able to talk to him.”
Semmes stared at the computer screen until his eyes felt like they might fall out of his head. He blinked to bring the moisture back to them. The coffee he’d poured over an hour ago sat cold in its mug. He hadn’t taken a sip of it. The cream coagulated on the top. He scrolled down the screen reading name after name of people from other cities and states. Every one was a supposed death where the body went missing. A brief description told of the details of the investigation.
Nearly all of them had been solved quickly. Some of the cases like the other two he found in Mobile and Baldwin Counties had been mistakenly labeled. The toe tags had somehow gotten switched with a person who had already been processed. The others varied from a necrophiliac embalmer in Portland, Oregon, to a case of wrongful death in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
“This is hopeless, a wild goose chase,” he said aloud to no one in particular.
“Try limiting your parameters,” Cooper, his newly assigned partner from the sex crimes division, said from over his shoulder.
The detective looked up at the thirty-something woman in a Hillary Clinton pantsuit. “How long have you been there?”
“A few minutes,” Cooper said. “I heard about this case. I thought our new partnership could get started on the right foot by me helping you out from the get go.”
Semmes smiled. “You’re a rookie. I don’t think you’d be much help.”
“I’ve been on the force for eight years. That’s not exactly a rookie status.”
“I meant a rookie detective.”
“I solved sex crimes for six of those years,” Cooper said.
Semmes shrugged his shoulders and typed unsolved corpse disappearances into the search line and hit the enter button. A little hourglass turned over and over as the computer searched the databases all over the country, maybe the world. Semmes had no idea how thorough the database they used was. The small icon quit flipping, and a shorter list of names popped up on the screen.
“Told you so,” Cooper said.
Semmes glanced over his shoulder at his not-so-rookie partner, and then looked at the dates on the list. Most were over thirty years old. He figured there was no connection to anything happening in his city. Then he stopped near the bottom. The date was the same as Marianne’s death. He clicked on the hyperlink, and the whole report popped up on the screen.
Carol Heinz went missing from the morgue of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham. He looked up at Cooper who read over his shoulder, a trait he detested.
“I think I found something,” Semmes said. “I guess you might be of some help after all.”
“Anything else that I can do for you?” Cooper asked.
“Yeah, get on the phone to the Birmingham PD and ask them to send down what they can about the Carol Heinz missing body investigation. Tell them that we’ve had something similar here.”
“Can do.”
Cooper walked away, and Semmes stopped feeling as if a vulture peered at him from a nearby perch. He stared at the words on the screen and tried to process things. The same section kept drawing his attention. Heinz died after being in ICU for three days. Her body was stored prior to organ harvesting. The body went missing under strange and classified circumstances.
“I bet she just got up and walked out.” Semmes thought about Marianne coming up from the autopsy table and leaving the morgue with the mysterious man.
Cybil propped her feet up on an empty desk in the corner of Ashe’s office. She leaned back in the office chair, twirling a pen between her fingers. The first page of a test flopped over the top of her other hand as she read over it. Ashe watched her but tried not to seem like he watched her. He could hear the faint sound of the music she listened to on her MP3 player. Why would a girl like her want to spend her evening helping a professor grade papers? Most work-studies kept to normal business hours and just made copies and coffee. Cybil looked over at him. She smiled. He returned the gesture.
“You want me to make some coffee?” she asked.
“You don’t have to.”
“What?” She pulled the earbuds free from her ears. The music from them became louder.
The song was familiar but played at a faster pace and seemed hard-edged. Ashe recognized it as an old Neil Diamond tune, “Sweet Caroline”.
“I said you don’t have to.”
“I want some, but I’m not going to brew a whole big pot if you aren’t going to have any.”
“That’s fine then. I’ll drink some.”
She took her feet off the desk and
put the test down. She shoved a red pen behind her ear, pulling back a small amount of hair.
“Be back in a minute.” She put one earbud back into her ear.
“You’re going to make yourself go deaf listening to music that loudly,” Ashe said.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Sure thing, Dad. Dr. Shrove, you act like you’re old or something. I’ve seen the music you’ve got loaded on your computer. You don’t listen to that kind of stuff softly.”
Before he could protest like a proper professor should, she walked out. He supposed that he would bring up that fact of snooping on his computer when she came back with the coffee. The next answer on the test he graded was wrong. He marked it with his purple-ink pen. During his time in college, he hated professors who used different colored inks to grade papers, and now he did that very thing. Red got boring. Grading papers pushed the limits of tedium. His mind started to drift to Marianne.
He remembered the night she died. She’d been listening to a lecture she’d downloaded from Columbia University. Ashe had asked her to review the lecture by a professor there to help him plan an activity for his students. She’d gone to the library because he was working on his next project. Rogers needed a new device to capture his emotion engrams that could hold more data. Ashe had made schematics for a device with larger storage capacity while working on the original engram devices. He’d figured Rogers or some other researchers would want a bigger and better recorder and something more streamlined than the MP3-like device that had to be attached to a larger recording unit with USB external storage. Even thinking about it seemed clunky. Marianne understood. They both thought that getting involved with Rogers’ research would skyrocket him alongside the psychologist. That rocket ride always excited Marianne. Now, he’d be going to the moon alone.
A soft tap stirred him back to his purple-marked test paper. Ashe looked at the door expecting to see Cybil with the coffee. Instead a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair stood framed in the door. He wore a black suit with a lavender shirt under it.
“Can I help you?” Ashe asked.
“You’re Professor Shrove?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Dr. Smalls, Erik Rogers’ friend.”
“Oh yes.” Ashe stood up. “He told me you would drop by. Erik seems to think that I need a psychiatrist.”
“Psychologist.” Smalls entered the office. “Psychiatrists can write prescriptions.”
“Should have said headshrinker.”
“That I can do.” Smalls smiled. His teeth were small and straight.
Cybil walked back in carrying Ashe’s coffee mug and a Styrofoam cup. She stopped midway in the office and made a face that said that she wasn’t expecting someone to be there.
“It’s okay, Cybil,” Ashe said. “This is Dr. Smalls. He works in the psychology department as a part-time teacher. He’s come by to chat.”
“Hi,” Cybil said. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Thank you, that would be lovely.”
She gave him her cup and sat Ashe’s on his desk, then left the room. Ashe motioned for Smalls to sit down.
“I guess Erik told you that my girlfriend—fiancée died.”
“He did, but he didn’t think that was the part you needed to talk about.”
“Her body was stolen from the morgue.” Ashe drank his coffee.
“Erik said she walked out as if she weren’t dead.”
Ashe took another long drink of his coffee. “That’s right.”
“How does that make you feel?”
“Confused. I guess that’s the best answer.”
Smalls sipped his coffee. “I’d think that would be a mild reaction.”
“Surprised. Terrified. Dead people don’t just get up and walk around.”
“Zombies do,” Smalls said.
“I don’t think that’s funny.”
“Neither do I. I’m being serious.”
“And you teach psychology?”
Smalls laughed lightly. “Among other things. I also study paranormal activity that has potential religious overtones, like spontaneous resurrection.”
Ashe almost spat out his coffee. “So you’ve come to investigate this, not help me out?”
“Both.”
“The police are already trying to find out what’s going on, and it wasn’t spontaneous. Someone showed up and brought her back from the dead,” Ashe said.
“A resurrectionist. Maybe a faith healer or a shaman.” Smalls seemed to mumble this to himself.
“Dr. Smalls?”
“Sorry, my mind was wandering. I need to go. I have something else scheduled in a little while. Why don’t you come by my office tomorrow around lunchtime? We’ll talk more about your loss.” Smalls stood. He took a business card from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to Ashe. “I’m going to want to know the name of the person down at the police station that’s doing the investigation as well. If that’s okay.”
Ashe looked that the card. It had a crucifix on it. He thought about Dr. Van Helsing in the old Dracula movies. Then he noticed that Smalls’ office was in St. Mary’s-by-the-Bay on Conception Street downtown. “You’re a priest?”
“Yes, but don’t let that discourage you. I do secular therapy as well as pastoral counseling.” He swallowed his last bit of coffee and tossed the cup into the trash can beside the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Smalls walked out of Ashe’s office. He nodded at Cybil as she came back in with a fresh cup of coffee for herself. Ashe put the card in his top desk drawer. Cybil sat back down at the desk she had been at.
“You look rough. Maybe you need to go home and sleep.”
“I can’t,” Ashe answered.
“Go home or sleep?”
“Both. I can’t stand home right now, and every time I try to sleep I have nightmares.”
“Let’s go downtown then,” she said. “We’ve got about an hour before the Buttercups have their parade. It’ll take your mind off of things for a little while.”
“I don’t think I should,” he said.
“It’s not anything. I run into professors all the time at parades. During Mardi Gras, it doesn’t matter. It’s all about fun, beads and MoonPies.”
“MoonPies?”
“Come on. You’ll find out.”
He knew that he needed to finish his papers, but they reminded him of Marianne. Home reminded him of her the most. Attending a Mardi Gras parade with a student seemed like something that could get him into hot water with the dean, but she was right, he needed to try and get his mind off of things.
“All right, but I’ll drive,” he said.
“Good, because I ride a Vespa.”
Ashe shook his head as he stood up from his desk. “You are a strange lady, Cybil. It’s wintertime, and you’re riding a scooter.”
“Come on; it’s Mobile. It rarely gets that cold.”
“True, but it does rain a lot.”
“Who am I, the Wicked Witch of the West? I’m not going to melt.”
“But you might catch a cold.” He thought he sounded like his mother as the words came out.
“Okay Dad, I’ll buy a Civic. Chill out, Dr. Shrove.”
“I’ll try.”
He switched off his light as they walked out of his office. Cybil pulled the door closed behind her.
Chapter Three
Ashe parked near the old train station on Water Street. All the other streets into downtown were closed off to regular traffic. Rivers of people flowed down the sidewalks on both sides of the street. When traffic lights stopped the flow of cars on Water Street, tributaries of revelers crossed toward downtown.
He and Cybil walked across the parking lot. Shards of broken glass glittered in the streetlight. The smell of the shipping canal hung heavy in the air
. Ashe didn’t go downtown much and when he did, it was mostly to Dauphin Street where the bars and bohemian shops and cafés were. The stench of fish and diesel fuel didn’t waft that far up. The wind off the water added a bite to the February air. He pulled his trench coat around him and knotted the belt around his waist. Cybil buttoned up a black peacoat and tugged at a fuzzy-looking pink scarf around her neck.
“It’s a little bit colder than I thought it would be tonight,” she said as they stepped onto the sidewalk and headed toward the nearest crosswalk.
“I was thinking that myself.” Ashe shoved his hands into his pockets. “You want to go back to school?”
“No. It’s the first parade of the season, and maybe the weirdest.”
“This is my first Mardi Gras parade, ever,” Ashe said.
As they stopped to wait at the crosswalk, Cybil cut her eyes over at him. “Really? How long have you lived here?”
“This is my second year. Marianne and I talked about coming down last year, but it rained on Mardi Gras day, and we didn’t feel like standing out in that.”
The light changed, and the walk sign flashed white. He and Cybil started across the street with a handful of other people. Kids ran past them as their parents yelled for them to wait. On the other side of Water Street, Cybil took the lead and cut across the parking lot of a bank.
“Parades run every night for two weeks before the actual day,” she said.
Ashe walked faster to catch up with her. They crossed a blocked-off street at an angle. “We didn’t know that then. We had planned on going to a few parades this time, but.”
Cybil stopped at the corner of Royal Street and St. Michael. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t mean to get you feeling bad. We came down here to have a good time and to get your mind off of things.”
“Everything is going to make me emotional right now,” Ashe said. “My fiancée just died.”
A burst of noise that sounded like an old air raid siren from World War II movies echoed down the street. Cybil grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him across St. Michael. They trotted. Ashe pulled his hand back. He didn’t want to risk a student or worse a colleague seeing him being pulled along by a work-study. He reconsidered coming to the parade with her. If the chair of his department heard, he would be in trouble or least have a hard time explaining things. Ashe slowed down.
