Paul lifted one hand and then lowered it gently to his lap again. “There are common traits running through almost all reported near-death experiences and yours certainly falls in line with them. The sense of leaving your body, the light in the corridor—or tunnel as it’s often referred to—the message you received from your friend, Brian.”
“And that woman with the rose,” Emma added. “I’ve never seen her before but somehow she’s important.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” he said quietly.
“So you think I did have a near-death experience?” Emma crossed her arms over her stomach and tried not to shiver as her excitement grew. “That I saw God in that golden light and that I came back with the power to communicate with the dead?”
“No.” His pale blue eyes glowed with sympathy. “I believe that cases of near-death experience are examples of delusion or simple chemical reactions in the brain.”
Disappointment jolted her. “Oh.”
“Emma.” His voice softened. “You want to believe that you had a near-death experience and as a result of it you now experience psychic incidents. You see the spirits of those you autopsy and they tell you truths regarding their deaths.” He tilted his head. “But consider this—perhaps you feel guilty for surviving the hit-and-run when your friend did not. In your mind, it isn’t fair that you didn’t die too. So your subconscious fabricates these incidents to justify your survival.” He steepled his fingers under his chin. “In other words, subconsciously you’ve convinced yourself that you survived because God had a purpose for you. That purpose being to solve how other people died. But the truth is that there are no hard facts to support the theory of near-death experiences, any more than there are facts to prove that ghosts exist.”
Emma wasn’t ready to give up. “But how did I know about Amalia Campanero’s brother?”
“It’s a well-known fact that most murder victims are killed by people they know, often by relatives. It wouldn’t be difficult for your subconscious mind to suggest that one of Ms. Campanero’s relatives killed her. You knew from her file that she wasn’t married so a sibling would be the next logical choice as a suspect. And since most murders are committed by men, it had to be a brother.” Picking up his pen, he tapped it gently against the notepad. “Your mind simply made connections that, in this case, were coincidentally true.”
“But I knew his name. Jaime.”
“Not an uncommon Hispanic name along the Texas coast.”
“But how did I know they had argued?”
Paul lifted one shoulder. “A coincidence?”
Frustration seized her. Rising, she paced around the office, twisting her fingers together. “Okay but what about Robert Harris?”
“Robert Harris was well-known in Clear Harbor. He was an award-winning fisherman.” Paul drew checkmarks in his notebook, as if ticking off points. “Once I saw the photograph in his newspaper obituary, even I recognized him. He’d won several awards and was active in community services, as are you. It’s likely that your paths crossed at some time in the past or that you saw his photo in the local newspaper. You probably recognized him on a subconscious level and, again, your imagination made the connection for you.”
He was making too much sense, which only increased her frustration. She swatted one hand at the drapes as she paced by the window. “But what about his wallet? How did I know where it was?”
“Perhaps Mr. Harris mentioned in some interview that he kept his wallet wrapped in plastic inside his cooler. It was probably a fact that was filed away in the recesses of your mind. Or it was just your own common sense at work.” He watched her as she came back around his desk. “A cooler sounds like a logical place to keep a wallet dry during a fishing trip. When you saw him lying on the table, your mind—which is trained to solve medical mysteries—pulled forth what clues it had and solved a different kind of mystery for you.”
Emma sat back in her chair. “Blast it.”
Paul chuckled. “It’s more romantic to believe you’ve been given a gift to use for the benefit of mankind. As doctors, we’re already inclined to believe we possess divine powers, that we can save the world. You want to learn why people die so your subconscious mind comes up with a way for you to do it.”
Emma looked him straight in the eye. “I guess there’s only one way to find out if you’re right.”
Paul tilted his head again. “How’s that?”
“Perform another autopsy.”
* * * * *
Jason slammed a file folder down on his partner’s desk. “Can you believe that Hosken is giving us another case?”
Charlie looked up from the bagel he’d just smothered with cream cheese. “That, my friend, is because we’re the best.”
“Bull. He just wants to keep us from following up on Ty’s case so we won’t notice he’s made no progress. And Emma’s hit-and-run—”
“Emma, is it?” Charlie lifted one eyebrow.
Jason glared at his friend. “Don’t start.”
Charlie smiled innocently. “I was just wondering how your date went with Detective Simmons.”
“Don’t ask.”
Charlie gestured left and right with his bagel. “Don’t start. Don’t ask. Is there no topic we can discuss?”
Jason grabbed the folder again. “I can see you’re gonna be impossible today.”
“Sorry.” Charlie placed his bagel on a napkin. “A night with a beautiful woman should make a man happy. Mine did.”
“Well, I didn’t spend the night with a beautiful woman. I spent part of the night with a…” He cut off the derogatory term that tipped his tongue. “Layne went wacko on me last night, Charlie. She had too much to drink and started talking about relationships. She’s never done that before. Our times together have always been completely casual.”
“Don’t let one bad experience put you off all women. Now, Emma St. Clair—”
“Is not up for discussion.” Dismissing the topic, Jason opened the folder. “Here’s our new case. Dennis Turner, a known drug dealer—”
“I certainly knew him,” Charlie interrupted, growing serious at last. “He killed someone?”
“Someone killed him.” Jason scanned the preliminary report. “He was gunned down at point-blank range.”
“Any obvious suspects?”
Jason flipped a couple of pages and sighed. “Oh, yeah. We’ll be all week running these guys down.”
* * * * *
“Campanero still claims his confession was coerced.” Marta kept her voice low as she and Emma wandered among the members of the Clear Harbor Women’s League gathered at the Civic Center dining room. “Right now it’s his word against that of the detectives on the case. Without evidence, we can’t hold him much longer. We’ll have to turn him over to Immigration and they’ll just send him back to Mexico. He’ll probably sneak back across the border within a week.”
Passing a side table, Emma picked up a program for the fundraiser. “You’ll find a way to get the evidence you need.”
“You bet I will.” Marta gestured toward a table near the front of the room and then pushed through the group of women who had paid fifty dollars a plate to support a local literacy program. “But it’s going to be tough. The murder weapon hasn’t been found and there was no physical evidence at the scene. We know the caliber of the weapon that killed her and we know when and where she died. But that’s all.”
Amalia’s image crept into Emma’s mind as she sat at the table with Marta. She heard again the elderly woman’s voice as she implicated her brother. Paul believed the image had been a hallucination from Emma’s guilty subconscious and that the information she’d “received” from that image had simply been coincidentally true.
But Emma wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t experienced that hallucination. Without her suggestion, would Jason have thought to check Amalia’s family background or would Jaime Campanero have escaped justice forever?
And as for Robert Harris…
She did draw comfort from Paul’s theory on that one. She probably had read about the fisherman or seen him on television. But that didn’t make the prospect of performing another post mortem any easier to bear. Part of her looked forward to her next autopsy. The curious part. But another part of her, the part that lacked self-confidence…
“Ah, well.” Marta reached for a poppy seed roll in the basket on the table. “If everything was too easy, the DA’s office wouldn’t need so many assistant district attorneys like me.”
Too nervous to eat, Emma pushed her own bread plate aside. “What would you do then?”
Biting into her roll, Marta considered as she chewed. Finally, swallowing, she nodded. “I’d probably be a cop.”
Emma smiled at her friend. “You’d have to be involved in getting the bad guys somehow, wouldn’t you?”
“We can’t let people get away with crimes.” Marta paused while a passing waitress filled their water glasses and then she said, “I hate to lose a case where I know the defendant is guilty. Sometimes I want to just grab the nearest bailiff’s gun and execute my own sentence on an acquitted scumbag.”
Startled, Emma sat back. “Marta!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t really do it.” Marta’s dark eyes gleamed as she reached for the butter. “But I can fantasize about taking out someone the system doesn’t punish properly. You probably think the same whenever you perform an autopsy on a child who’s been abused to death by some Neanderthal who should’ve been castrated at puberty. Anyone with a trace of compassion or a sense of justice would want to make sure that evil people get the punishments they deserve. Take what happened to you and Brian as an example. Don’t you want the person responsible to pay?”
“I want justice, Marta but I just can’t make myself feel bloodthirsty about it.”
Marta’s eyes widened as she licked butter off her thumb. “Do I sound bloodthirsty?”
“You certainly make it sound as if it would be all right for a person to take matters into their own hands.”
“I don’t believe in violent revenge, Emma but it eases a lot of stress to fantasize about dealing personally with a bad guy. It’s just a mental exercise.” Lifting her chin, Marta glanced around the crowded room. “Are we going to get this fundraiser started or what?”
Sipping her water, Emma pondered her friend’s words. She’d known that Marta was gung-ho about her job but she’d never realized her friend had such violent fantasies. Marta claimed that Emma was the same. Considering what her brain might be doing on its own, Emma realized that Marta might be right.
* * * * *
Jason stepped inside the gloomy bar and paused to get his bearings. This was his fifth stop of the day and he was getting tired. He had to remind himself that it wouldn’t be smart to walk into a place like this blinded by the noonday sun. Once the heart of Clear Harbor, this area of town had degenerated in recent years so that few legitimate businesses operated there. A few bars had sprung up along with tattoo parlors and a liquor store but most of the buildings stood empty. The dock lay about two blocks south, close enough to make this the perfect environment for drug runners like Dennis Turner to ply their trade.
Jason’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he approached the sagging bar. The bartender, a fat guy with fewer than a dozen scraggly hairs on top of his shiny white head, looked only slightly more reputable than the handful of patrons he served. But Jason trusted bartender Willy Berber to tell him the score and Willy trusted Jason to treat his regular customers with at least a pretense of respect. Willy didn’t really care how Jason treated the non-regulars.
“Hey, Willy.” Jason eased down on a wooden barstool that rocked beneath his weight. Leaning forward, he spoke quietly. “You heard about Dennis Turner?”
“Young kid who got popped night before last?” Willy answered just as quietly. “Scraggly-haired blond with a droopy eye? Pushes or pawns whatever he can lay hands on?”
“That’s him.”
“Yeah, I heard.” Willy grabbed a can of cola from under the counter and passed it to Jason. “Nobody’s owned up to it.”
“You haven’t heard anything? Not even a rumor?”
Willy shifted bloodshot eyes toward the back corner of the room and murmured, “Carrot-top back there has been whinin’ about a lost piece. Said he’s worried somebody might’ve used it to pop someone and then dump the blame on him. The way he told it sounded like something that might’ve already happened.”
“Did he mention who that somebody was?” Jason ran a finger down the condensation forming on his soda can.
“Naw, he was blubberin’ so bad I couldn’t catch half what he was sayin’.”
“Thanks.” Rising, Jason strolled toward the restrooms at the back of the bar. He passed a small table where a redheaded youth sat with a couple of tougher-looking guys. None of them seemed to notice him as he passed, so he caught them off guard when he whirled, shoved the table aside and lifted the redhead against the wall. The kid squealed in fright while his friends tumbled onto their backsides.
The youth stared at Jason with terrified eyes. Spittle formed on his slack lower lip as he tried to form a coherent sentence but he was too high or too drunk to speak clearly. Apparently, Jason would have to haul him to the station and wait for him to come down before he’d give up any useful information.
“I’m going to have to arrest you, kid,” he said. “You look like you’re under the influence of some illegal substance.”
Behind him, a foot scuffed the floor. “I don’t think so, mister.”
Glancing over his shoulder, Jason saw the knife in another young man’s hand. Adrenaline surged through his blood and he welcomed the burn of it. Maybe some physical action would use up the extra testosterone that had built inside him over the past couple of weeks. He sure wasn’t going to spend it on sex.
“Ready when you are,” he said to the kid with the knife.
“Carrot-top” squirmed against Jason’s grip while the kid with the knife started forward. A shadowy figure moved in from outside. The gentle prod of Charlie’s gun against his naked throat stopped the knife-wielding thug.
“I got tired of waiting in the car.” Charlie frowned at Jason as he took possession of the knife. “Looks like I got here just in time.”
Disappointed, Jason yanked the redheaded youth away from the wall. “Can I help it if I got carried away? Let’s all take a ride down to the station, shall we?”
* * * * *
Emma tied the drawstring of her green scrub pants. Her nerves sizzled like water in a hot skillet.
What’s going to happen this time?
Tugging a lab coat over her scrubs, she stepped out of the curtained dressing room. To her surprise, Edgar stood outside.
“I thought you and Skitch might need an extra hand today,” he said.
Her stomach clenched. “You want to help us?”
“Sitting behind a desk all these years made me pretty rusty on post mortems. But I got back into it while you were gone.” He grabbed a set of scrubs off a shelf. “I realized I need to keep in practice.”
She narrowed her eyes and studied his still face. “You’re not checking up on me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Why would you send me to a shrink?” She raised one hand when a guilty flush colored his face. “Never mind. You were right about that. It helps to have someone to talk to.”
Edgar stepped inside one of the dressing rooms. “I’m glad to hear that.” The curtain muffled his voice. “You had your second session this morning, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” Stepping to the scrub sink, she tried not to resent Edgar’s lack of trust. If their positions were reversed, she would probably have felt the same as he did. “You don’t have to watch over my shoulder, Edgar. I promise you I won’t crack up.”
“I don’t expect you will. But I haven’t anything else to do this afternoon.”
“Why don’t you just take off early?”
“Beca
use I’m taking off tomorrow to go fishing.”
Emma thought about the drowned fisherman.
“I haven’t taken a three-day weekend in a while,” Edgar went on. “So I’m looking forward to this.”
Emma considered what Paul had suggested about her subconscious recognizing clues. “That man I autopsied on Monday,” she said casually. “The drowning victim, Robert Harris. Have you ever heard of him?”
“Robert Harris? Is that who that was?” Garbed in his green scrubs, Edgar joined her at the sink. “I didn’t realize. I’m still a little behind on my reports.”
Emma squirted antiseptic soap in her palm and hoped her boss wouldn’t notice the tremor in her hands. “You have heard of him?”
“Harris is a legend among Clear Harbor fishermen. Wins every fishing tournament along the Gulf coast.” Edgar began to wash his hands too. “The Sunday magazine even did a cover article on him last winter. I’m sorry to hear that was him.”
Emma nipped her lower lip. Paul was right. She subscribed to the Clear Harbor Gazette and had probably seen Harris’ photograph on the Sunday magazine. Her subconscious must have recognized him when he’d shown up on her autopsy table.
She turned off the water with her elbow, surprised to realize she was disappointed by the simple explanation. “Ready?”
Edgar nodded, turned off his faucet and then followed Emma into the autopsy suite.
“Hey, Doc. Hey, Dr. Powell.” Skitch looked at them from across the draped body at Emma’s station. He didn’t seem surprised by the Chief Medical Examiner’s presence. “Did you have a nice lunch with Ms. Zamora, Dr. St. Clair?”
“Yes.” Emma drew near the table. “She sends her best.”
“Really?” Skitch’s eyes widened. “Me? She… To me?”
“Of course.”
“Wow.” Almost dreamily, Skitch drew down the sheet that covered the body.
Edgar handed Emma a face shield. “Turn on the recorder, Skitch,” he said, fitting his own shield into place.
“Yes, sir.” Reaching up, Skitch turned on the overhead audio recorder. Then he read from the red file folder that lay open on the side table. “The victim is Dennis Turner. Died last night from a gunshot wound to the back.”
Final Words Page 12
