Whispers of the Dead

by Kope, Spencer

  Fiz is preoccupied scraping some of the plaque off his front tooth with his thumbnail, and finishes before answering. I get the impression he doesn’t think much of me. “Just other stuff he said about the girl,” he eventually replies. “He talked about peeping at her through the window at night; even said he had a pair of her panties. Stuff like that.”

  “Do you remember what day it was that you last saw him?” Jimmy says, and then stresses, “The exact date?”

  Fiz looks up at the ceiling and scratches under his chin. He turns his head half-cocked to the left, and a few seconds later he switches to the right. “That’s a tough question,” he finally says. Raising the beer to his lips, he finishes it off and then tries crumpling the can in his fist, but fails. “Pretty sure it was the twelfth or thirteenth.” He nods. “Yeah, one of those two.”

  “That’s almost a month ago,” I say. “At some point didn’t you think it was kind of odd that he disappeared just days after getting out, leaving all his worldly possessions behind, even his toothbrush, which he just might need?”

  “Like I said, he was talking about a trucking job. It’s none of my business what he does or where he goes. Besides, he paid his rent two months in advance.”

  “You charged him rent to sleep on the couch?”

  “Better than on the street,” Fiz says defensively. “A hundred and fifty bucks a month is cheap, even if it is just a couch.”

  “Yeah,” I snort, “but this is HUD housing, isn’t it? I met a woman not long ago who was paying two dollars a month for her HUD apartment—and it was a lot nicer than this. How much are you paying, Fiz? Ten bucks? Twenty?”

  “Thirty-seven dollars,” Fiz grumbles.

  “So, you charge Larry a hundred and fifty—which I’m pretty sure is against HUD regulations—and after paying your subsidized rent you clear a hundred and thirteen dollars. That’s not a bad racket. I’d think you’d want to keep a closer eye on your meal ticket.”

  “Screw you, Fed!”

  “All right,” Jimmy intercedes, trying to calm things down. “We’re not here to cause problems for you, Fiz, we’re just trying to get some answers.”

  “I told you everything I know,” Fiz blurts.

  “So you don’t remember any threats, no nasty phone calls or letters. How about any visitors? During the few days that Larry was here, did anyone stop by to see him or ask about him?”

  Fiz immediately shakes his head vigorously from left to right, but then he stops abruptly, an odd expression on his face. “There was this guy that stopped by,” he says, scrunching up his eyes. “Said he needed to talk to Larry about a debt. He was dressed in a suit, so I figured it was legit.”

  “When was that?”

  “The day after Larry moved in. I remember because when it happened I thought it was just bad luck that Larry would get out of prison after more than a year, and here’s this guy claiming he owes money.”

  “Did Larry talk to him?” Jimmy presses.

  “No, no. He wasn’t home. Dude kept asking me when he’d be back and I finally told him to get lost. He didn’t say another word, just gave me this weird smile and started whistling this song—kept whistling it even as he walked back to his car.”

  “Whistling? What was he whistling?”

  “I recognized it, I just don’t…” Fiz screws up his face, obviously thinking hard. “It was the song from one of them James Bond movies, the Paul McCartney song. I remember ’cause I always liked the Beatles.”

  “‘Live and Let Die’?” I say hesitantly.

  He brightens. “That’s it. That’s what he was whistling.”

  Jimmy gives me an ominous look. “Can you describe this guy?”

  Fiz shrugs. “He was about my height.”

  “Five-foot-seven?” Jimmy guesses.

  “Five-foot-eight,” Fiz corrects. “I’m not good at guessing weight, but he was about average, maybe a little on the leaner side, and he had short sandy hair.”

  “How about an age?”

  “Maybe thirty.”

  “Good, good,” Jimmy says, scribbling on his notepad. “Caucasian, Hispanic, African-American?”

  “He was a white guy.”

  “Is there any chance he gave you his name?”

  “No, and I wasn’t asking.”

  “How about his car? Do you remember what he was driving?”

  “I never saw his car,” Fiz says, shaking his head. “I assume he drove one, though. This isn’t exactly the kind of neighborhood where guys in suits wait for the bus. He walked out to the street and turned right, that’s all I know. I didn’t watch where he went.”

  Jimmy pumps him for additional details, but there’s nothing more to give. Fiz looks spent, exhausted. God help him if he ever has to stand up to a real interrogation. He watches me suspiciously as I retrieve a twenty-ounce can from the Quik King bag and pop the top. I hand him the beer and he gives me a big grin. “Guess you’re not so bad after all,” he says, then downs the bug killer.

  We leave Fiz at the door, cradling his beer in both hands, and start down the stairs to the shabby parking lot below. A thought occurs to me and I turn around and wave at the door to the adjacent apartment. “See ya, Bob,” I say, giving a big smile. There’s a small thump, like someone banging their knee on the door, or maybe jumping back from the peephole in surprise.

  I don’t know why I do some of the things I do.

  Northbound Betsy—September 6, 3:13 P.M.

  There’s something enchanting about the hum of a jet engine.

  Even after so many hours and miles in the sky, it’s impossible not to relish the sound. For within it lies power, and not just the brute force necessary to thrust a seven-ton aluminum tube through the sky. No, there’s power to enchant the mind with promise of adventure; there’s power to deliver one to new places and new experiences. There’s power to change everything one believes, feels, and knows.

  It’s an impossible allure.

  I’ve tried to hate Betsy, and for good reason: she delivers me to the dead, again and again and again. Like Charon the ferryman, she carries me across the Rivers Styx and Acheron to that far dreary coast wherein lies the underworld realm of Hades. Corpses, empty of souls, await me at the end of too many flights. They may as well have coins upon their eyes: a tribute to Charon and payment for passage.

  Still another thought torments me.

  Perhaps Betsy is just the boat … and I am Charon.

  To say that I’ve gotten used to tending the dead would be a lie; to say that I’ve learned to tolerate it is closer to the truth.

  It’s been an hour since we lifted into the sky above El Paso, filled with that familiar feeling of going home. Jimmy has been reclined in his chair with his eyes closed almost as long, his breathing comfortable and relaxed. Meanwhile, I’m absorbed in the pages of a wickedly clever book.

  “I’ve got one for you.”

  The words startle me; even more so because they come from the sleeping man. Glancing over, I note that he hasn’t moved; both eyes are closed. I chalk it up to sleep-talking and go back to my book.

  “I’ve got one for you.”

  My head snaps up, and this time I see one eye open and gazing in my direction. It’s a bit creepy at first; something out of a Poe story: The Tell-Tale Eye.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I say.

  “In and out,” Jimmy replies with both eyes now closed. A second later he raises the seat to its full upright position and he’s suddenly wide awake and fully alert. I don’t know how he does it. Must be something they teach you at the academy.

  “I’ve got one for you,” he says for the third time.

  “One what? What have you got?”

  “Plane Talk,” he says. “I still owe you a subject. You did the torture tree—”

  “Manchineel tree,” I correct.

  “And I didn’t have a subject. Now I do.”

  I push forward in my seat and lean on the armrest.

  “Have you ever hea
rd of something called Swahili Time?” he says, overemphasizing the last two words like I’ve never heard them before. I shake my head no.

  “Well, it seems that in a number of East African countries, time is calculated differently than in the rest of the world. For them, the day starts and ends at dawn rather than midnight, so if it’s August third, for example, it doesn’t become the fourth at midnight like it does here, but at six A.M. And where our one o’clock is an hour after noon or midnight—depending on which side of the day you’re on—one o’clock in Swahili Time is seven o’clock our time. Likewise, if you tell someone from, say, Kenya, that you’ll meet them at eight, that means two in the afternoon.”

  “How confusing,” I say. “What happens as the year goes by and dawn arrives at five A.M. instead of six, or at seven-thirty, for that matter? Does their whole time-and-date system shift with it?”

  “You’re thinking like a nonequatorial person,” Jimmy says.

  “I am a nonequatorial person.”

  “What I mean is that dawn is pretty much six A.M. every morning. We’re talking about countries that are on or near the equator, like Kenya, the Congo, Tanzania, parts of Somalia, and even Uganda. We’re used to days growing shorter or longer, but that’s not the case along the equator.”

  “It’s still confusing,” I say.

  “Just wait, it gets worse. It seems that this system of time only applies if you’re speaking Swahili. If the conversation is in English, even if you’re in an East African nation talking to a local, then standard date and time are used. The time reference is dependent upon the language spoken.”

  Jimmy leans back, puts both hands behind his head, and just smiles. He knows this kind of thing drives me up the wall. It’s the illogical nature of it; midnight is such a commonsense breaking point between the days that it’s hard to imagine why it wouldn’t be embraced by all.

  I mull it over until my head starts to hurt, and then mutter, “I’ll never complain about daylight savings again,” and go back to my book.

  Across from me, Jimmy continues to grin.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lynden, Washington—September 7, 1:22 P.M.

  It’s DD1: Down Day One.

  Usually we’d be relaxing and catching up on sleep the first day back from a mission, even a mission not yet complete, but there’s a new remodeling sheriff in town, and her name is Jane Donovan.

  At five-foot-seven and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, Jane is a Zumba-infused, auburn-topped whirlwind of energy. Her movements are those of a dancer, balanced and smooth, and she has a simple, natural beauty that doesn’t come from a bottle.

  Jimmy met Jane while stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado. His roommate was dating Jane’s best friend, so they were constantly crossing paths. At first they pretended that they couldn’t stand each other, but there was an instant and powerful attraction between them. The magnetism was so unexpected and irrational that they wasted months feigning disdain for one another before the walls between them finally came crashing down in a spectacular manner.

  That was the beginning.

  Jane’s most endearing trait is an abundance of kindness. It’s a rare quality in our hurry-up world. Like most who are abundantly kind, she seems to have an extra gas tank full of patience tucked away someplace for emergencies.

  Therein lies our problem: Jimmy and I sucked the first tank of patience dry several months ago, and have been working on number two ever since.

  We’ve put the kitchen remodel off as long as we can—longer than a calm, intelligent woman like Jane would normally allow. We’ve worn out excuses, retreaded them, and worn them out again. Jimmy bought us an extra three weeks when he insisted on the acquisition and prepositioning of all the necessary materials.

  “I don’t want to be on a roll and then have to stop and run all the way into Bellingham because we need a piece of molding or some nails or a faucet,” he said.

  It was brilliant!

  But that was three weeks ago.

  His garage is now packed full of crated kitchen cabinets, custom-cut granite countertops, high-end appliances, tile, grout, paint, even a gorgeous—and expensive—farmhouse kitchen sink of fourteen-gauge hammered copper.

  Yep, we’re out of excuses.

  And Jane made sure we know it.

  Betsy was still taxiing to Hangar 7 last night when Jimmy’s phone rang. It was Jane, of course. I knew it was Jane because her ringtone is the theme to Jaws—personally, I’d be offended, but she thinks it’s funny. I didn’t hear the conversation, but Jimmy’s head was nodding up and down and every once in a while he’d throw in an “Okay” or a “Sure thing, hon.”

  When he hung up the phone he wouldn’t even look at me. “Boss says we start at eight A.M.,” he said. And that was it. Our stall tactics had ultimately failed. We were doing this remodel whether we liked it or not.

  * * *

  I showed up at 8:07 A.M. on purpose and Jane gave me a disapproving look, glancing at the clock on the wall, then back to me, then back to the clock. My more audacious plan was to show up at eight-thirty, but I’m just not that brave.

  Five hours into the project we’re actually making good progress. All the old appliances have been removed and shuffled out to the garage. They’re a little dated and dented, but still work fine, so a local charity is picking them up on Monday.

  We also have all the upper cabinets off the walls and are just finishing removal of the countertops when Jimmy’s phone rings. It’s Diane. The theme from The Pink Panther echoes through the dismantled kitchen. Jimmy has separate ringtones for everyone.

  Jimmy has separate ringtones for everyone!

  It suddenly hits me: I’ve never heard my ringtone—I’m never there when I call.

  I listen to the lopsided conversation, trying to discern meaning from Jimmy’s one- and two-word replies. “Sure,” he finishes. “We need to run to the hardware store anyway.” He looks at me and shrugs. “We’ll swing by the office and you can fill us in. Okay. See you then.”

  He hangs up the phone and slides it into his back pocket.

  “She knows it’s Sunday, right?” As the words leave my mouth I wonder why I even bother. “She should be out paragliding, or knitting mittens for squirrels, or something—anything—just not at work.”

  “I reminded her.”

  “So what’s so important?”

  “Tony called; sounds like they just got another hit on the RFI. Someone dumped a body in Baton Rouge, minus its feet.”

  “Baton Rouge? That’s a long way from El Paso.”

  “It’s got to be a thousand miles,” Jimmy agrees. “That’s a little far for someone to drive to dispose of a body. Who knows, maybe it’s just coincidence. Still, we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. Tony’s emailing the report to Diane as we speak.”

  I glance around at the destruction zone that used to be Jimmy’s kitchen. “So, either we stay here and try to put this all back together, or we go to the office. How’s that going to play with Jane?”

  “We … have to go to the hardware store?” Jimmy offers.

  “Right.” I nod. “The hardware store. What do we need at the hardware store?”

  “Uhh…” Jimmy glances around the kitchen quickly. “Tape,” he says. “We need masking tape.”

  “That’s what you’re going to tell Jane?”

  “Masking tape,” Jimmy repeats, “and we had to stop by the office for an important break in the case.” His face suddenly brightens. “It could take all day. Besides, Jane is running errands with Pete. She could be gone for hours. I’ll just leave her a note.”

  Jimmy scribbles something barely legible on a white napkin and tapes it to the side of one of the lower cabinets.

  “It’s going to be hard explaining our need for masking tape when you used some to hang up the note,” I point out.

  Jimmy pauses, but then just waves away my concern.

  As we’re heading out the front door I dial Jimmy’s number. Seconds lat
er, Judy Garland begins to belt out “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the confines of Jimmy’s back pocket. Startled, he fumbles for the phone and rips it from his pocket, quickly stabbing buttons in a desperate attempt to silence the naïve Toto-toting farm girl. It’s too late.

  “Really?” I say, incredulous.

  “Oops,” Jimmy replies with a shrug.

  “No—really?” I insist.

  “Ah, come on, Steps. I picked that ringtone five years ago when I was first assigned to the STU. I didn’t even know you. I picked it because of the … you know”—he leans in close and whispers—“shine,” even though there’s no one around.

  “You just got a new phone last year,” I challenge.

  “So? I kept the ringtone. I’m a creature of habit.”

  I’m shaking my head and my finger at the same time. “No way,” I say. “We—no, I—I’m going to find a new ringtone. And you’re going to like it … whether you like it or not.”

  “Fine.” Jimmy laughs.

  I make my way around the curvy walkway connecting the porch to the driveway and I’m halfway to the street before I realize Jimmy’s not with me. He’s at his car door holding both hands up in the air and looking at me like I’m the idiot.

  “Uh-uh, we’re taking mine,” I say, pointing at the dark green 2003 Mini Cooper snuggling the curb. Jimmy looks at my Mini, then back at his banged-up silver 2004 Kia Spectra, then back at the Mini. Without a word, he closes the driver’s door—a little too hard, because the whole car shakes and rattles—and scoots across the parking lot.

  With a chirpy boop boop I unlock the doors with the key fob and slide behind the wheel. Jimmy is still settling into the passenger seat when Gus—that’s my Mini—clears his throat and begins to growl. I wait for my partner to buckle up, then slide the little British beast into first and start up the street.

  Jimmy’s playing with all the buttons on the dash, as usual, and keeps looking in the backseat for some reason. “Whenever I open the door on this thing,” he finally says, “why do I get this odd feeling that ten clowns are going to suddenly jump out?”

  “It’s not a Volkswagen.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s about the same size.”