by Peg Herring
Seamus took Tori’s hand. “Remember, no talking,” he cautioned. The man looked around as if he heard something, but aside from an even deeper frown, he ignored it. Behind him came a second man, handsome by any standard. This one looked carefully around, surveying the place as if new to it.
Seamus, who still held Tori’s hand, took the opportunity offered by the men’s momentary pause. She felt herself lofted through the air with no effort on her part at all. The movement was so quick she hardly had time to react when there was a mild jolt, a sudden stop, and everything changed.
She was inside a man, vaguely aware Seamus was there too. Exactly where they were, she couldn’t say. They were part of the man, they were him, yet they were aware of themselves as separate entities and aware of each other as well. Her vision seemed filtered, like a ’70s movie.
Suddenly their host stepped ahead, and the weirdness increased. His movement was heavy and slow, like slogging through neck-deep water. Sound, too, was distorted. The other man’s comment dragged like a phonograph record played at a too-low speed.
“What—did—they—find—here—Madison?”
“Nothing—that—didn’t—say—Susie—Good—Citizen.” Madison’s voice came from two directions, through his ears as well as her own. She longed to ask Seamus if it was normal but remembered his command to remain quiet.
As Madison moved about her home, Tori became somewhat accustomed to the feeling of being human again. Aware now of the unwieldiness of the living body, she missed the lightness of death. If what she had experienced already was so superior to earthly life, how much better the next step must be!
With Tori and Seamus as interested observers, the men perused her papers, her things, her life. Tori sensed their disappointment in the mundane records: the cable bill, a letter from Doctors without Borders, a note to call the building manager about her bathtub drain.
From time to time they spoke to each other, and she learned they were police detectives, partners. They were intent on finding the killer, which pleased her. Their first jump had been a good choice, but of course, Seamus and Gabriel had arranged it that way.
Madison, their host, knew more about the case than the handsome one, Jaime, which Madison pronounced in the Spanish way, Hi-mee. The younger man had a lively curiosity, it seemed, and quick understanding.
“You said you talked to the girl’s friend, uh—”
“Carmon. She claims Tori had no enemies.”
“That she knows of.”
At that moment, a timid knock came on the door, and Madison went to answer it. Tori was becoming somewhat used to his cumbersome movements, but the few steps seemed to take forever. She was surprised to see a familiar face when the door opened, but what name went with it? Her neighbor, Mr…
“Louisineau, isn’t it?” Madison said. “This is my partner, Detective DeMestrie.”
“I’m taking care of Tori’s cats until things get sorted out here, and I wanted to see if she had an extra bag of food for them.”
“I saw one,” Jaime told him. “I’ll get it.”
“Thanks. I’ll probably have to give them to a shelter. I don’t even know what to do about Scruffy…” Letting the statement trail away, he changed the subject. “I wondered too if you found out anything yet about who—um—hurt Tori.”
“We’re working on it. Have you thought of anything we should know?”
DeMestrie returned with a bag of cat food labeled “for less active cats” and placed it on the floor near the doorway with a small thud.
“No,” he looked aggrieved at the admission. “I really tried. I keep thinking if I’d been a little faster getting to the door, you know?”
“What we know is the guy who shot her was probably Llewellyn J. Simms, an addict known as Judd. Ever seen him?” Madison pulled a photograph out of his jacket pocket. Tori experienced the movement as if she were performing it but not controlling it.
Mr. Louisineau peered carefully at the picture. “No, and Tori never mentioned no one named Judd.” His wrinkled forehead condensed even further. “Tori wouldn’t spend time with no doper. She walked my dog, like I told you, and she’d bring me groceries and things I needed. I got a son does a lot for me, but he lives in Flint, drives over Sunday afternoons. Tori checked to see what I needed every day or so.”
His gaze lost focus. “My son says maybe it’s time I moved. You know, somewhere people can help me.” A slight quiver in his lower lip belied the nonchalant air he was aiming for, and Tori tried to look away. She could not, though, apparently because Madison did not.
“Maybe it’s time,” the detective said matter-of-factly. “You should be on the ground floor, you shouldn’t have to cook with those hands, and your son’s probably tired of running over here on weekends. Better for both of you.”
Tori could hardly believe it: the man had no heart at all! Poor Mr. Louisineau agonized over the prospect of giving up his independence, and this brute calmly told him he was helpless and a bother besides. “Be nice!” she said aloud before she remembered Seamus’ admonition.
The reaction was instant. Madison jumped as if he had been stung, and she felt his consternation. “What?” DeMestrie asked in concern. “Are you okay?”
Madison hastened to reassure himself and his partner. “Yeah, but I feel like I’m coming down with something. Just kinda not myself.” He turned to Louisineau. “I bet if you and your son talk about things, you can work out something that suits you both.” Tori maintained silence, sensing Seamus’ disapproval.
The rest of Madison’s day provided a variety of informative snippets. Tori saw her autopsy report. She studied along with the detective his notes on the case, noting Carmon was “very upset” and Abe might be hiding something, at least that’s what she assumed from “hidg smthg?”
She found it was possible to tune in to Madison’s thoughts by quieting her own. If she pictured a blank screen in her mind, his mental shorthand came through. Of course, people don’t use complete sentences in their own heads. His thoughts were a constant stream of interrupted bits and pieces, so it was sometimes difficult to follow. Falk liked her was followed immediately by could be lying, and Stupid woman might know, which made little sense. Being inside someone’s head was not easy, and she struggled to winnow out extraneous material like, Stomach going to growl, and Damn! Forgot to call insurance guy.
As the day progressed, she got better at it, focusing on thoughts pertinent to her case and trying valiantly to ignore others. It was embarrassing to be inside a man’s body, aware of his innermost thoughts, and when Madison entered the men’s room at the station, she could almost feel Seamus’ amusement at her discomfort. Think about something else, she told herself, praying at the same time the detective did not look down.
The day was exhausting, and she found herself wondering how anyone lived inside these inefficient hulks, where every step was like pushing a boulder through a swamp. Her post-life form was far superior to Madison’s unconscious, constant efforts. Better they don’t know, she thought.
She had forgotten, too, the pace of life on Earth, where a hundred things went on that must be tuned out, ignored, or disregarded. Madison didn’t notice the traffic noises that interfered with Tori’s concentration. He ignored the sound of his own heartbeat and breathing, which to her sounded like diesel pumps in an engine room. He paid no mind to telephones ringing all around him, a smutty discussion going on in the hallway, and an ache in his knees that hurt Tori although they were not her knees.
What she learned was her murder had been solved, at least partially. She looked at the face of Judd Simms in the autopsy photo and recognized that, yes, it was the man who had asked her name and then shot her. That was all.
Madison wanted to know why he had done it, and Tori was grateful he didn’t give up once he’d discovered who and how. She picked up something about a death in another officer’s jurisdiction, caught phrases like fell or was pushed downstairs and used to be a PLK client. What’s the connec
tion?
Still, Madison had other cases to deal with. His mind was divided, his time limited. She felt his frustration at his partner’s being called to yet another day of testimony at a trial which Jaime termed “a week at the circus.” She hoped Madison would not accept that he might never know if Judd Simms acted alone.
The detective ended his day alone in an apartment on the northwest side that trumpeted “single man, few visitors.” He was able to separate himself from the job with clinical efficiency, and his mind dwelt on mundane tasks once quitting time came. He made an omelet Tori named “the Kitchen Sink,” since some of everything in his refrigerator went into a pan with four eggs, even a portion of the beer that accompanied his meal-making. It tasted pretty good, she had to admit.
Afterward he put the dishes in the dishwasher but didn’t run it and sat down to watch MSNBC until nine, when he changed to a golf match. He alternated that with bits and pieces of other shows in typical male fashion, using the remote as a weapon against commercials. It drove Tori to the brink of sanity, if, she thought, one could lose her mind after losing her life.
At midnight, Madison shut off the TV, checked the lock on the door, and folded his pants carefully over the back of a chair so the wrinkles would fall out, at least in theory. Hanging the jacket over the pants, he threw everything else into the bathroom laundry hamper except his briefs, which he slept in. A quick brush of his teeth, a final occasion for Tori to think “other thoughts” while he used the toilet, and he was in bed. Shortly afterward, he slept.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Trust and Obey
“So what do you think?” Seamus asked.
Madison snored softly in the dark room, and she felt as if she floated on a cloud of dim, incoherent images. “It’s weird! They’re so heavy, and so confused.”
Seamus was unsympathetic. “I warned you.”
“He can’t hear us talking now?”
“Well, he can hear our voices, but he thinks it’s a dream. They feel us, too, but not in a way they can relate to. We’re kinda like the flu.”
“As long as we don’t hurt them.”
“The worst part for the host is the jolt they get when we come and go. Other than that, it isn’t bad for them. Two of us will be harder to ignore, though.”
“Madison seems to be coping, although he did say he felt sick.”
“Not himself.” Seamus chuckled at the irony. “It’s what we got to work with.”
“Will he get used to it?”
“If we hold still and keep quiet, he’ll function pretty well.”
“And if we’re not still and quiet?”
“We can make them uncomfortable, but that’s not what we want, because then they don’t think clearly. Quiet, still, and small, we’re not much of a problem.”
“Too bad we can’t let them know we intend no harm.”
Seamus snorted in contradiction. “Don’t even think about it! Everything about us scares them. Anything we try to communicate makes things worse, like your little lesson in manners this afternoon.”
Tori accepted the reprimand meekly. “I guess we’d never convince them they aren’t crazy or that we’re not demons or something.”
“Right. They’re slow and they’re hard to reach,” Seamus said, “like children who can’t understand a concept.”
“‘When I was a child I spoke as a child.’”
“‘But when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.’”
“Sunday school in your youth, Seamus?”
“Everybody went to Sunday school in my youth,” he replied. “Are you wishing you’d taken St. Paul’s advice and given up this plane of existence?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not like I imagined. I wonder if it matters as much as I thought it did.”
She felt as if his gray eyes turned her way. “That’s how it happens.”
“The forgetting, right? Why didn’t it happen to you?”
She sensed hesitation. Seamus, she was sure, didn’t share himself with others much, but they’d been through the passage together. That had changed their relationship, made them more than client and hired help. The memory of the pain was still vivid in her mind, and she recalled Seamus’ soothing, encouraging voice, helping her cope even as he suffered the same agony.
“I won’t let it, I guess,” he finally answered. “The life I had, it was mine, and I refuse to let it go. If you work at it, you remember, though it’s hard to keep the emotional part.” She sensed a grin with his next comment. “I never had much of that anyway, so I just hang on to what’s concrete.”
Something in his voice struck a chord. “Did you ever hear of Dashiell Hammet?”
“Who?”
“Dashiell Hammet, the author who created Sam Spade. We studied him in high school, and I think he might have based the character on you.”
“Don’t think so. I met a Hammet once, but his first name was something normal, Sam, I think, and he was a Pinkerton man, not a writer. I never paid much attention to detective novels. Junk writing, most of it.”
Tori returned to their present situation. “They found the man who shot me.”
“Dead.”
“Then we could have stayed on the ship and found him?”
“Probably not. It’s a big operation. I doubt he’d be on your level anyway, being a murderer.”
Tori considered this. So much of it was beyond comprehension. How did they handle the varieties of wrong humanity was capable of? “Nancy said almost everyone got the same treatment.”
“But not at the same time,” Seamus rejoined. “It’s beyond you and me, but they know what they’re doing.”
Tori was beginning to understand how little she knew of the larger scheme of existence, and her resentment of The Process lessened. “I suppose they do,” she admitted. “It’s much more complex than we can ever imagine.”
“Yeah,” Seamus agreed. “We’re like babies, taught how to act because we haven’t got the reasoning power to protect ourselves. If I get it, that’s what religion is supposed to be: rules to protect mankind from itself. The reason behind the rules might not be clear, but most people understand we need them. The ones that don’t get it have to be treated differently.”
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way?”
“Something like that.” Seamus’ tone changed, a stubborn note crept in. “I understand rules, but I still gotta be myself, y’ know?” Tori wondered if he’d explain, but he turned businesslike again. “Tomorrow we’re going to try to reach your office.”
“How do we do that?”
“You never know. We take it as it goes.”
“There’s a lot of that going on.”
“I’ll stay with Madison. Pick someone you’re comfortable with.”
Tori had a moment of apprehension. Jump alone, without Seamus beside her? He apparently sensed her hesitation. “We can still talk when they’re both asleep,” he assured. “I can reach you anywhere you go if there isn’t interference from their conscious thoughts.” Feeling somewhat better to hear that, she listened as Seamus told her the plan.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morning Has Broken
Madison awoke with the same feeling of unease as the day before. As water dripped slowly through the steaming, sputtering coffeemaker and filled the place with a pleasing aroma, he examined his eyes, tongue, and forehead in the bathroom mirror. In the case of the first two, he looked for signs of illness. As to the latter, it was his habit to track the growing hairless expanse. If a man’s eyebrows were healthy enough to scare small children, why did the hair three (or more) inches above it get wimpy and die off?
Expertly breaking three eggs, he built a cheese omelet for breakfast. He wondered briefly if all the eggs he consumed were hardening his arteries, making him sick like the health nuts warned. Then he reminded himself of all the good stuff in his omelets: peppers, onions, mushrooms, even broccoli or green beans left over from TV dinners and take-home meals. That sh
ould counteract the cholesterol, all those vegetables, he thought.
He had intended to go to the office first, but his mind led him in a different direction. If he stopped at PLK early, he could catch people before they got involved in whatever it was that kept them hopping all day long. Maybe someone there knew Judd Simms or had seen him hanging around. Judd’s gun had indeed been the murder weapon. He had residue in all the right places, and the jacket the witness had described was found in a nearby trash bin. Alongside the rest of the garbage, Simms had died the way he lived.
After his shower, Madison unwrapped a package of new white T-shirts. Although he ignored fashion, he liked a fresh white undershirt each morning and seldom wore one a second time. Their blinding whiteness pleased him, but they were never quite the same after washing. He put the other two in the drawer and pulled on a clean shirt and the same suit as yesterday.
