Deja Blue

by Walker, Robert W.

  “That’s all I ask.”

  She reiterated with, “Can’t promise anything more than that I’ll do my best.”

  “Fair enough. All anyone can ask.”

  Detective Amos Kunati remained stubbornly silent, and she felt his skepticism stronger now than ever as she climbed from the car. A gathering of neighbors all along the block, on both sides, were held back by barricades and uniformed police. Most of the local TV crews were on hand, while others had arrived just behind them, following from the airport. The noise and backscatter could be a problem, Rae feared.

  They climbed from the cruiser to totally

  inappropriate cheers and clapping from the crowd. On entering the threshold, she continued to hear all too well the throng outside. In fact, the swarm of people sounded as if it’d grown.

  Windows had been thrown open to combat the odors, and the door she had stepped through remained open to the outside as a quick escape route to the cops coming and going, many just here for a look-see from the entry to the bedroom where all the blood and gore awaited Rae.

  “Can we please close out that noise as much as possible?” she asked Orvison.

  “Absolutely.” Orvison and Kunati worked to shut all the doors and windows to the house while she easily found the bungalow bedroom. At the entryway, she felt it. A strong presence in the room. Looking on the brutalized corpse, the sight set her reeling. It was one thing to see nails driven into a victim’s head and eyes in crime scene photos, quite another to see this first hand.

  She gasped and felt a sharp pain in her eyes as if those nails had been driven into her instead of the victim. She pulled her eyes away only to find blood spatters everywhere.

  Blood on every surface.

  Bureau drawers and mirror.

  Walls, ceiling, floor, bed.

  And of course the body, where Rae’s eyes, in the end, returned.

  There was nowhere in the room that blood had not rained.

  The work of the flying, bloodied hammer, acting like a heavy paintbrush dipped in the red fluid of life.

  She closed her eyes on the horror of the scene and tried instead to concentrate on the presence she felt. It’d waned. Gone actually. May as well be attempting to pull fog together with a rope, to tether mist. To regain that initial contact with the victim now would be as difficult as taming a seahorse.

  When she opened her eyes again, Rae Hiyakawa, stood over the victim, and looking across to the other side of the bed, she saw the shadowy figure of a man, a man of atoms racing and struggling in all directions to hold his form together, a kind of hologram, and inside this moving, whirring shape, features fought to come together, to show her who he was. Doctor, lawyer, beggar man, thief? Thief of lives, yes.

  She could hardly believe it herself.

  It’s never this easy, her mind screamed.

  Can’t be, yet…here he is. Taking shape.

  Perhaps the fiend, at the root of his soul, wanted nothing more than to be identified, cornered, and stopped— perhaps even killed. Perhaps he meant to show himself to the visiting psychic in order to end this nightmare; perhaps it’d all begun as an elaborate death by suicide, the reason for the in-your-face-god-awful-modus-operandi with the hammer and nails and letters to local newspapers laying claim to his murder spree the result of sleepwalking! The absurdity of the claim itself part of the plea to “Find me, corner me, kill me.”

  If so, this desire for his own end had begun with the Dream Killer’s very first victim.

  The apparition of the man was large, muscular as it came into a more distinct shape. Rae’s partitioned mind was in part aware of Kunati and Orvison watching her watching the shape come into focus. They did so from the entryway to the room, unable to see what she saw. Carl Orvison with a digital camera, filmed Rae’s every step and grimace.

  A special part of Rae’s mind focused on the phantom taking shape, while a voice in her head told her to not work too hard in trying to see the features of the dark form across from her, the other side of the bed in a cracked bureau mirror. The killer’s form looked down over the corpse almost counterpoint to her position the other side of the bed; but he was not there—but in the mirror only. A shapeless figure in an aura of green.

  Don’t look too closely, came the warning, something about her sanity, that if she did dig too deep, look too long, the features of the vision across from her would fade faster than water through a sieve—like that first faint contact with the victim’s spectral remains. It was the voice of experience, her own voice, repeating a lesson learned from Gene Kiley. She forced herself to completely relax, a difficult thing with the stench of freshly shed blood assailing the nostrils while getting an image of a killer, however vague, however shapeless in overalls.

  Shapeless in overalls. She put that detail away in another compartment of her mind for later.

  She closed her eyes on the shape in the glass, daring it to disappear, to leave this place. She felt the heaviness of this spirit, the sadness, the loss, and then a surprise: love, compassion, understanding. How did this compute? She felt a wave of confusion wash over her.

  This forced her eyes open to see that the shape’s countenance had indeed filled with eyes, nose, cheeks, hairline, chin, ears but all remained scattered and whirring within the orb of the face. She gasped now, knees almost buckling at the sight, and she spoke his name. “Gee? Gene? Is it you?”

  You can do this, Rae, Gene’s spirit replied. “You’re here…with me.”

  His shape in his crime scene unit overalls dissipated, devolving into gray and then nothing.

  “What is it?” asked Orvison, still filming, having stepped closer. “What do you see, Dr. Hiyakawa?”

  “Nothing…nothing useful.”

  “You tensed up there, reacting to something.”

  “Yeah, you think so? A body with nails in the head maybe, the smell of blood maybe. I’m human, Chief, or hadn’t you noticed?” She fought back a tear at having encountered, for the first time, Gene Kiley’s spirit. It’d come as a complete surprise.

  What’re you doing in West Virginia, she silently asked Gene but not surprisingly, she received no answer. “You OK, Doctor?” asked Orvison again.

  “Please, silence, please,” Rae pleaded. She also heard Kunati making tsking sounds, either picking his teeth or shaking his head at her procedure or at his boss’

  interests in filming Rae’s work here. Aside from this, Rae could hear a pair of uniformed cops in the next room talking about a local football game; atop this, she could hear the dull closed-out sounds of the crowd outdoors.

  Concentrate, she told herself.

  She lifted the victim’s hand and held it in hers. No item in the room was likely to carry more kinetic energy reserves than the body itself. Orvison had orchestrated this opportunity, keeping everyone out of the room, including the CSI techs and the ME, everyone but himself with that damn camera.

  She placed the victim’s hand again on the bloodpainted flower-print sheet, and next pulled out her own gizmo, Copernicus’s palm-sized CRAWL. She placed the electrode attachments to each temple, held the image screen in one hand, and again touched the body. This time she placed her fingers lightly over the cranium, within a hair of touching the nails in the dead woman’s head.

  Orvison got it all on film.

  Kunati leaned against the doorjamb and thankfully made no more snickering, snorting, or grunting sounds. The cops in the other room had silenced, now staring in at the goings-on in the death room.

  All of this must be highly irregular for the Charleston cops, although they’d seen more than their share of domestic abuse and murder cases, according to crime scene stats that Rae had looked into.

  “Wanna hear my theory of the crime?” asked Kunati with a sudden ease, and without awaiting a reply, he added, “I believe that this is the work of a man seeking revenge, a man who has something against all the victims, or all women who are of a certain body type and look.”

  Rae only half listened.
She’d read of his opinion on the case in one of the files. Kunati had taken classes in forensics on his way to becoming a detective, classes at Mountain State University. One such class was profiling.

  Rae’s mind, despite how busy it was with the death room, blipped on the question of how long Chief Orvison would hold his job.

  Rae concentrated harder, working to get images from the body. Some pain and horror began showing up in the form of symbols and images on the CRAWL screen. The device in her hand worked with Y-5, and so these images may or may not be beaming back to her support team in Quantico, headed up by Dr. Miranda Waldron. The images and visions would require a thorough analysis and interpretation by Waldron’s handpicked think tank. Perhaps this time the think tank folks would be out ahead of her; the last time, they weren’t. Their exceptional conclusions came too late the case that had cost Gene Kiley his life.

  If people wanted to point fingers as to who got Gene killed, there were some ten people making up the think tank. But as was the way of things, all fingers had pointed instead at Rae alone as scapegoat. Obviously, Gene didn’t agree, and this gave Rae courage and strength she’d felt missing until now, until Gee showed himself, telling her that he supported her here—if not in the flesh, then in spirit.

  She stared now at the body below her fingertips, and she started as the body rose off the bed, floating in midair. The floating woman of her precognition all the way back home in Quantico, Virginia. The body remained on the bed; what floated over it represented the spirit, the out of body existence. At some point, the young grandmother had left the pain and trauma behind, rising above the brutality acted out on her. That’s how Rae interpreted this floating woman.

  But this was a mere leftover image; this woman’s spirit had long ago left this place.

  She had actually lifted out of body and off the bed during the attack. The floating image had been real at one time. She’d had a strong sense of loss as the woman’s mind had been clear and energetic, a strong mind. On the CRAWL screen, Rae saw the floating body as it moved upward through the sky. The words ‘float through the sky…float through the sky’ kept flowing rhythmically through her head like a song. What did it mean? Peace? An end to pain?

  “Troubles and I,” she muttered, not knowing why. “Been too long…too long together with myself…my troubles and me. Too long together.”

  She sensed that Orvison was dying to ask her about her mutterings, but as he had captured each on film, he kept mum as she’d asked.

  Her hand and fingertips still hovering over the cranium of the victim, now moved as if controlled by a force other than her own. It moved to the area of the blue lips and frozen scream, and from here the chest and heart.

  From his perspective through the camera lens, Orvison thought her hand moved like the pointer on a Quija board.

  Rae focused, concentrated at each area where her hand stopped. She followed the areas of the charkas in an attempt to learn more, although she felt nothing would come. Feelings of dread and pain, horror and trauma rippled through Rae’s mind and body but these proved her own empathic nature, and in fact counterproductive. She imagined the emotions and pain that shot through her were but a small percentage of what this poor woman had undergone; she could hardly imagine the ordeal, and in fact feared the attempt here and now. She must hold something back. Must not become embroiled in the horrible pain and suffering.

  Then something happened. Her hand hovered now over the center of the body, at the belly button. It gave her an image of passages, dark and congested with tight areas one must squeeze through as in a deep dark cavern that tightened and shrank as one went. Then she realized, on seeing the image on the screen held in her other hand, what this cavern was—the victim’s throat.

  Rae’s hand shot back to the lips and mouth.

  With her hand in this location, Rae again heard the words stronger now, like a chant, words about floating and trouble wafting through her consciousness.

  “There’s something here,” she announced. “He shoved something into her mouth.”

  “There’ll be a note with words scribbled on it,” said Orvison.

  Kunati had come off the wall, stepping closer, his brow twitching in confusion. “We told no one about the notes left inside their mouths. No one. They were even kept out of the autopsy reports.”

  Orvison exchanged a long look with Kunati. “I told you she was good, Amos.”

  Kunati frowned and shook his head.

  Orvison told her, “Leave the folded note for Dr. Hatfield. He’ll be expecting it.”

  “If the killer handled it, then I should handle it.” “You’ll get your chance, later.”

  “What is it? An ongoing letter? A poem?”

  “Song lyrics.”

  “Song lyrics? Really? Our mutilator is interested in music? Don’t tell me, bedtime lullaby?”

  “A little known tune from Gordon Lightfoot. My Troubles and I.”

  “I want a copy of it, every line. Maybe it’ll tell us something about this creep.”

  “Trust me. We’ve gone over every line for clues, but sure,” said Orvison, “you’ll get a copy.”

  “Someone in the earlier FBI team told you about his stuffing song lyrics down the victim’s throat, didn’t they?” asked Kunati.

  “’Fraid not; we don’t communicate so well. They have less faith in me than you do, Detective.”

  “I never made out I believe in this stuff.” “But your chief brought you to Quantico with him, why?” she asked both men.

  “Kunati has a lot to learn,” Orvison shot back. “There’s more between heaven and hell than thought of in any one man’s philosophy.”

  “I see. So not only am I here to help solve a murder but to ahhh…educate Detective Kunati?”

  “Kill two birds with one stone.” Orvison shrugged. “He may look black, but his prevailing color is green.”

  Kunati exploded but kept his outburst controlled, saying through clenched teeth, “Come on, Chief! She got the business about the lyrics from one of the other agents. They may be FBI but their lips are as loose as any public office.” Kunati stormed out.

  “I promise you, I didn’t know until now!” Rae called after the black man. “Bite me,” she muttered to herself.

  “I take it the session is over?” asked Orvison, pressing a button that closed off his camera lens. He then got on his cell phone and said to the man at the other end, “Tell Dr. Hatfield that he’s got my all clear now.”

  Rae stepped from the death room ahead of Orvison, who caught up. Just as she opened the outer door on the street noise and the crowd of curious and reporters, the Chief whispered in her ear, “Best say nothing to the press right now, especially nothing of the information we’ve held back. Besides, I wanna keep this as low key as possible.”

  “What? That you’ve got another victim? Or that you called in a psychic?”

  “Both,” he said, but his slight twitch gave it away as a lie.

  “It’s ultimately your show, Chief. I’ll follow your lead.”

  Orvison waved at the press and assured them. “My department is on the cusp of capturing the maniac that’s created so much havoc…a larger fear than this city has ever known.” Orvison then forced open a path for himself and Rae. Once at the cruiser, he scoured the crowd for Kunati, and Rae spotted the tall black detective at the same time that Orvison did. Kunati was busy gabbing with another detective who’d come by with a CSI unit. She got a quick glimpse of Dr. Hatfield’s help, as Orvison whispered, “Hatfield’s decided not to show at all. Guess we hurt his feelings.”

  She and Orvison climbed back into the cruiser. The brilliant sunlight and contrast of blue against fluff-ball clouds overhead, instantly sent a feeling the sick juxtaposition through Rae, the irony of life and energy just outside this house so full with death, and yet Gene had come to her in that house, here in West Virginia. Why? To absolve her? Or was he afraid for her? Was he unable just yet to stop looking out for her? Had she in a sense brough
t him with her from Quantico? Had he all this time been hovering nearby? With her whenever she went into trance? Was Gene unable to end the role that had identified and defined him in life—Rae’s protector? Her loving protector and friend.

  Kunati stuck his head in the car and said he’d get a ride back to HQ with a fellow named Keller, to which Orvison replied, “Not a word about the damn case to anyone outside HQ.”

  “You got it, Chief.” To Rae, he gave a perfunctory peace sign and said, “Enjoy your stay at the Embassy Suites. Understand they have a helluva Jacuzzi.”