The Professional Corpse (The Departed Book 1)

by Sean Arthur Cox

  After bandaging the arm where I had drawn blood—the spell duplicates the body exactly as it was when the sample was collected to include the needle wound, I grabbed a bathrobe and sat down on the toilet to clear my mind. There are obvious adjustments that I need to make when I becomes another person. Physically I was shorter. I would need to reach more or climb step ladders to reach high up things. My joints ached a little when I moved, so running would be out of the question. My vision blurred a little. I would need reading glasses at least. But these are simple, quick adjustments, much the way after a hard workout, we can easily adjust our routine to accommodate the fact that every muscle aches like we have been trampled by a mountain.

  But there are also strange adjustments. Each mind is different, with neurons forming their own unique web of connections. We have different specialties and flaws. Some people just don’t get scared. Others take medication for it. Being in Bill’s body meant I was thinking through Bill’s mind. I was relieved to find it hadn’t lost its edge. For his advanced age, he was still sharp as a tack. However, there were other things, things we don’t even think about. For starters, Bill, I could tell, had a libido like a runaway freight train. I felt an overwhelming desire to bed anything that moved. To the outside observer, this may seem strange. After all, nothing in my interaction with Bill had suggested he had the heart of a ravenous Casanova beating in his chest, but that’s because Bill had no doubt spent his whole life with these sorts of hormones pumping through him. These were normal levels for him probably, so he must have learned long ago to live with them, work through them, ignore them. I had not. That would take some getting used to, and I would have to wait a few moments to get my thoughts under control before walking out of this bathroom in nothing but a robe or else things could get embarrassing quickly.

  I told the Marquis about this sort of thing once a few years ago and he likened it to computers. Our souls are the software, the programs, and our bodies are the hardware, the actual circuits and electronics and whatnot. What I’m doing, the Marquis told me, was transferring my programming into someone else’s hardware, and while for the most part I would still be able to access my files and use my programs, there would naturally be glitches because of different security settings and different processors and graphics cards and other computer terminology I can’t remember but he swears makes for an accurate analogy. He even had an analogy for how I can, on rare occasion, access the memories of the body I’m in, but that one is long since gone. It’s hard to hold on to metaphors like that when you don’t understand one of the things being compared.

  Thinking about my body and mind in such analytical, computer terms seemed to quell my raging lust, but then I remembered the sort of videos and images I could find on the computer and it all came rushing back.

  There came a knock at the door.

  “What is it?” I asked, and almost choked on my words. No matter how often I change bodies, it always startles me the first time I hear a new voice coming out of my lips. Even if I build up to it, try my best to recall exactly what the voice sounds like and how my words will come out in that voice, it catches me off guard. No one’s voice sounds the same in his own head.

  “You’ve been in there for some time, Jaime,” the Marquis said. “Is everything good?”

  “Yes,” I said, adjusting to the strange resonance the foreign voice took on inside this foreign head. “I’ll be out in a moment. Just need a minute to adjust is all.”

  “Well, do hurry,” he said. “Bill is becoming quite anxious.”

  I ran my hand under scalding hot water to take my mind off these wild thoughts. For a few flashes, just fractions of seconds, I saw these images, pornographic in nature. A young woman in a spring dress doing things that were gone too quick to catch. An African woman, middle aged, body sagging in the back of an eighteen-wheeler, but desperate to love and be loved. A blonde with short bobbed hair, a scratched Elvis Presley record in the background, crooning in an awkward loop about a hound dog crying, and moving in time to the skipped groove. At first, I couldn’t tell if these were my memories or his, but I soon remembered I had never been inside an eighteen-wheeler. I was feeling bleed-over from his past. Rare, but it happens. It takes a particularly strong memory to pop so easily out. He must have visited these moments often in his mind.

  I collected myself, wrangled in all of wild Bill, and left the bathroom. When I entered the living room, Bill’s jaw dropped so low it could have told me whether the box of old vinyl albums I stashed in the basement had started to mildew. I worried he might die of fright, especially the way he kept gasping, struggling for breath. He began to collapse, but the Marquis caught him and pulled him over to the dingy hide-a-bed. Words tumbled out of his mouth on top of each other, as though if he could just get them all out, they might miraculously fall into place on the floor like a puzzle assembling itself.

  “…s’imposiblebutitcan’tbebutit’srealit’sallrealbutitcan’tberealitcan’tbereal…”

  Tears welled in his eyes and the words “impossible” and “real” barely managed to slip out between wet, blubbering sobs. I wish I knew if this sort of reaction were normal, but I’ve never dropped both the resurrection and shape-changing on a person within five minutes of the other. I imagine it’s a difficult combo to process, especially all at once.

  The Marquis offered him a glass of wine, the motor oil Riesling, which Bill blindly took, drank, and offered the empty glass for a refill. Maybe he was too shaken up to notice the smell, or maybe the flavor really was all the old Frenchman made it out to be once you got past the odor. Either way, after the second glass, Bill’s nerves seemed to settle enough for him to look at me without panicking.

  “Can… can you take off the robe?” he asked, stammering.

  I did as he requested, though I don’t know what he hoped to see. For all I knew, he might have fantasized about having sex with himself. Probably not, though. It didn’t feel true when I thought it. Still, I haven’t really had a sense of self as a physical thing, haven’t associated my appearance with my identity in so long that it’s hard to imagine I ever did. Hell, I don’t even know what pronoun to use for myself anymore. How could I possibly hope to imagine what sorts of things run through a person’s mind when he seems himself standing before him naked as the day he was born.

  “Turn around,” he whispered.

  I did as he asked, and I could hear him gasp in fright or amazement or confusion.

  “It’s so strange,” he said, and I could see boyish wonderment in his eyes when I turned to face him once more. “You have my birthmark, the one shaped like a bean, right there on the left cheek. You couldn’t possibly have known I had that. My infantry tattoo on my right arm, though, must be a dozen pictures of me with it. Everybody knows I have it, but you left it off of your disguise.”

  I felt like there was a question there, one unspoken because he hadn’t yet found words he wouldn’t feel foolish speaking aloud. “It’s not a disguise,” I said, answering his eyes. “I’m you. I have the birthmark because it’s naturally a part of you. Your scars, your skin tags, all of that is naturally you. The ink isn’t, so no tattoo.”

  “It really is magic, isn’t it?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Alright then,” he said, steeling himself as he offered his hand to me. “Let’s save my life.”

  Chapter 3

  OLIVIA

  BUT WAITING HERE ALONE

  The plan is simple. Bill Thompson plays golf solo every Monday morning at nine a.m. I read in his file that he is something of a philanderer, so I figure if I mingle with the club caddies in a tank top, tennis skirt, and one of those visor hats he will pick me to carry his clubs. I’m not what most people would call a looker. I can pull off “cute” most days, while arrogant dicks have called me a “generous five,” most guys I overhear talking about me behind my back usually give me a six and a half, and lonely guys might even give me an eight. I take no pride or feel no shame in any of this. A ga
l can’t do much about the body she’s born into. In fact, I’m generally pretty indifferent to their petty, shallow scoring system. I only bring this up because given the choice between a young man saving up for his first car and a girl who isn’t unattractive, a dirty old man will choose the totally acceptable looking young woman every time.

  I will offer Thompson a beer that I conveniently have a cooler of. His favorite brand, a nice high gravity brew. “Why do I have a cooler of beer? I was going to go to the beach with my boyfriend after work, but he stood me up for some dumb video game that came out this week.”

  Then Bill Thompson, dirty old man that he is, will say “there, there,” hold my hand, call me pretty, and maybe try to cop a feel.

  But I’m a respectable girl. I would never. So, he offers me a beer. I take out one with the torn label, my identifier for those I’ve switched for non-alcoholics yesterday. “Okay Mister Thompson. Oh, call you Bill? Okay, Bill. I’ll have just one, but only if you join me. I don’t want to drink alone on the job like some alcoholic or something.”

  So, Bill is now two beers down in five or ten minutes. I pry open a beer for me, actually alcoholic. I take a sip. A sexy sip with tongue, maybe use the icy bottle to cool off, because it’s just so hot today. I should just run this beer along my young skin. I know the dialogue is a little Skinamax, but I’ve read accounts from women he’s slept with. He’ll go for it.

  Of course, what I really want to do is drive the cart, because I’ve never actually driven one, and maybe he could teach me. But I’m a good girl, I say, as his hand closes on my shoulder. I can’t drink and drive. Maybe he should hold onto my beer while I figure out how to steer. He won’t be able to resist. My lips and tongue and tits have been on this bottle and soon he’s putting away his third high alcohol beer in the span of half an hour. At this point, his judgment is impaired and if I see he isn’t drunk enough, I run a hand along his arm and we both drink, he a heavy-hitter and me another baby brew. Repeat until he’s drunk. I drive the cart. If he insists on driving, which nothing in his file suggests he would need that sort of manly validation, I’ll tell him I want to take him to a secret spot. It’s a surprise, so I have to drive.

  Once Bill and I are in his golf cart approaching the back nine while the links are still mostly vacant, I’ll play up the flirtatious girl next door. There’s a water hazard near the fifteenth green that gets deep. They have a lovely bridge that crosses it. Wooden and white. Really romantic, I’m sure. Club legend says that if you walk across that bridge with a lover, you’ll be lovers forever. Maybe I’ll mention that to him to seal the deal. Anyway, that water hazard is particularly deep in the middle. A guy actually drowned in it about ten years back. Precedent eases suspicion.

  As we cross the bridge, I floor it and bank the cart hard to the right. We crash through the wooden rails and plummet down into the water. Did I mention Bill never learned to swim? All that time and money, and he never learned. Maybe it’s because Omaha is landlocked. Either way, the next person to pass through will find poor Bill, floating face down with a BAC of at least point eight, surrounded by empty beer bottles. Legally drunk, legally dead, out in public and not long after ten a.m. Such a tragedy. The club will no doubt temporarily ban drinking on the course as a result until such a time as the members complain too much about missing cocktail hour, but by that point it is way too late for old Bill Thompson, may he rest in peace. Meanwhile, I will have slipped off into a car I parked in the woods nearby, using a branch that conveniently “fell” across the fence, allowing me to avoid those nasty electrified wires.

  The plan would work brilliantly, except Bill Thompson never shows. I wait around the clubhouse for an hour, convincing everyone who asks about me that I’m the new girl in whatever department they don’t work in. Finally, they get wise-ish. They figure out I don’t work here, but assume I’m probably somebody’s mistress, or if not, I’m trying to be. I get the proverbial boot, but park my car just down the long winding road to the club anyway and pop my hood, the universal sign for car trouble. If I can’t pick up Bill on the links, maybe I can flag him down early and get him to escort me in. Still, he never comes.

  I grow impatient with each passing car. Bill should be dead by now, and I should be sipping celebratory piña coladas by some pool somewhere. Instead it’s almost noon and I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of our would-be corpse. Digging through my purse, I pull out my cellphone and ring Houston.

  “Done for the day?” he asks. No hello. Straight to business. I guess because it’s my first professional job, he’s keeping it all formal.

  “Haven’t even started,” I say, trying not to sound too frustrated. “He’s late.”

  “How late?”

  “He’s late like a cheerleader three weeks after prom is late,” I say. “I’ve been here over three hours already and he hasn’t shown up. The guy’s like clockwork, never misses his tee time. What gives?”

  “Well, you know what they say. No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy,” Houston offers.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, incredulous.

  “It means, as Robert Burns said, the best laid plans of mice and men-”

  “I know what the expression means. What are you actually trying to say that might help, because I’ve already determined that the plan as written isn’t going to work.”

  “What I’m actually trying to say is, what’s your backup plan?”

  I can hear a loud crunch in the background. “My backup plan? You mean my Plan B?”

  “I mean your Plan Z. You’re a professional now. No room for mistakes, no room for improvising. Always have a fallback plan for when your main plan goes wrong, and then a fallback for that and then a fallback for that.”

  More crunching.

  “Are you eating my cereal?” I ask.

  “The fruity one, with the colorful balls?”

  “You know exactly what cereal I’m talking about,” I shout into the phone.

  “Then yup, I’m eating it.”

  “But it’s mine!” I cry. “I’ve been busting hump putting this plan together, trying to track down the target, and you’re sitting on the couch, probably still in your pajamas eating my cereal.”

  “Cereal is for winners,” he says. “Now close this contract so you can buy your own and stop mooching off me. You’re twenty-three for crying out loud. It’s time you had a paying job.”

  “But I don’t even know where he is!” I say. “What do you do when a guy who’s like clockwork suddenly isn’t?”

  “You assume something big must have happened and you Google him or check his Facebook page or Twitter account. He may not have one, but I assure you, if he doesn’t, he has an assistant who runs one for him.”

  That’s actually a really good idea, though my pride won’t let me tell him that. Maybe Thompson is sick or caught in traffic. His social media might say. This is why Houston makes the big bucks.

  “Gotta go,” I say.

  I can hear Houston playfully chiding me as I hang up the phone. “Oh sure, no thank you. No goodb-”

  I check my phone for service. A few bars for calls, but no data. Figures. My rental car, a nice, inconspicuous 2006 off-white Camry, takes back toward the city, and all the while, I keep eyes on my phone’s screen, waiting for that LTE icon to light up. It takes sixteen miles of frantic racing down country roads before I get the first blip of a signal, two more miles before it gets reliable enough to prevent my attempts from timing out.

  A quick Google search brings up his accounts. I tab over to Twitter. Houston teases me about it, saying a social media presence is the enemy of a discreet killer, but how else am I supposed to keep up with Death Cab for Cutie or Corey Doctorow? I plug in @therealbillthompson and find the reason I wasted my morning staring me straight in the face.

  @therealbillthompson: What good is running a fortune 500 company if u can’t take time 2 smell the roses? On sabbatical. Seeing the world now; see u n a few weeks.

&n
bsp; It’s frustrating, to say the least. All my best laid plans for naught. Still, it’s funny watching a guy like Mister Thompson try his best to speak properly in 140 characters. All his punctuation where it should be, even a semi-colon, but condensing words like you and to and in to stay under character limits.

  I hop back on Google and do another search, trying to sift through the noise for any details about where he might be going, but it seems his announcement took the business world as much by surprise as it did me. A Forbes blogger speculates health. The Wall Street Journal guesses he’s planning on taking Thompson’s public and is using the time to finalize paperwork. According to my earlier research, I doubt that one. Rumors about his company going public have circulated for at least the past decade, but he has always been too worried about losing control and falling victim to a hostile takeover. Some cattier bloggers say it must be to engage in another of his illicit affairs, or that his sabbatical is probably a matter of him having already had the affair and having to sleep on the proverbial couch for a while. Nothing, however, helps pin down where he might be taking his unplanned vacation. He could be anywhere, and I don’t have time to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I really need to learn to do that track-a-dude-via-cellphone-towers trick I see on TV all the time

  “If you can’t go to him, have him come to you.”

  Thumbing through the company directory on the Thompson’s corporate site, I find the big man’s office extension. I know he won’t be in, but his secretary will be.

  “Hello, you’ve reached Bill Thompson’s office. This is Beverly speaking. May I ask who’s calling?”