Detective D. Case

by Neal Goldy

  D. wondered where Chief Advert was right now. He knew that he asked himself the same question before, and forgotten where, but still he wondered. Adding to this question was the whereabouts of Oliver Henry, but he didn’t put much thought into it. The man nearly killed him, but he only thought about it to figure out how to take him out of the equation. Oliver Henry claimed friendship and a business partnership with McDermott, but how was he supposed to believe this? Even he could claim such a thing without evidence, and there were no files on this person Oliver Henry either as an acquaintance or a friend. Lots of choices were brought out, which made the mystery thicker.

  A female doctor came in one day, but during the latter half of D.’s stay in the hospital, nurses and doctors showed up at very few parts of the day. It made him think whether he was staying at a hospital or a mental institution. The room’s color scheme and equipment were, to his sake, quite mistakable if you weren’t informed well enough. Despite the mind-rumbling, the nurse who came in had a brisk pace to her walk. Her hair had been cut to the shoulder, straight, so it bobbed when she walked. He suspected her to be Asian from her thin eyes, but nothing else stood out for any nationality or heritage. She carried a yellow clipboard, almost matching the golden glitter in her eyelashes. “Hello. It’s nice to see you again.”

  “Yes it is,” D. said. “It’s a pleasure to see you, too.” The last time he met he could not recall, but he suspected a couple of days or so.

  “How have you been feeling?”

  He told her he felt better than before, at the very least.

  “That’s good to hear.” She crawled closer to the bed.

  In his opinion, too close.

  She began stroking his hair. D. glared – he wasn’t a child to be pampered.

  “Do you know how long it will be before releasing me?”

  The nurse put a finger to her lips, but she wasn’t signaling him to be quiet. She was toying with him, thinking up of an answer. Didn’t this lady know the schedule and time of recovery more than the old detective did? “How about a few weeks from now?” she said.

  Hellish screams came from a room not too far away. Old D. might have thought a couple of rooms, maybe three or four down the hall. The screaming had the quality of a grown man, but the doctors wouldn’t want to harm their patients now, would they? Even from the room they were in, the screams were easy to hear; it might have been because of the easy-to-hear walls they built in the place. Or the facility just liked to eavesdrop on their patients before entering their rooms. However, when the old detective saw the young woman, she didn’t seem to mind it. She’d gotten use to the deadly screams that broke eardrums.

  She noticed his uncomfortable reaction to the screaming. “Don’t worry about it,” she told him. “He’ll get better.”

  But D. listened closer. The man surely used the word “liar” a lot. Well, that and something to do with lasers and light rays? It sounded cryptic.

  D. pushed himself to the back of the wall. “What is this nonsense?” Then with his attention full on the young nurse: “Don’t you know when the treatments end? What kind of nurse are you?”

  “A very nice one,” she said, almost breathing the words into his mouth. Her breath smelled of cheap mints at a convenience store muddled with hospital equipment. D. tried moving back, but then he realized there was no other place to go. The nurse, shrinking back like a predator refusing to kill, tilted her head down. “I wasn’t being too . . . close, was I?”

  D. pushed her out of the bed. “Way too close for my taste. Do you mind fetching me a drink? My throat is parched.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not some filthy servant, old man!”

  D. winced. Her words stung deep.

  But then she softened. “But I can’t.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  She twiddled with her thumbs, some kind of child not wanting to tattle on their friends or sister. “Well, see, the thing is . . . they put me here.”

  “Who did?”

  But he already knew the answer. “They did,” the nurse said. “It was their idea to put me in here and never let me out.”

  “Until . . . until when?” he demanded. They could not be stuck here forever.

  “I don’t know.”

  D. grabbed the nurse’s collar. “Don’t lie to me!” he screamed. “Tell me when they’re letting me out! I have to know!” He searched around the room as if the place held hidden answers if you looked hard enough. “I can’t live here forever . . .”

  Already she was crying, staining her uniform and D.’s hand. “I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

  “There’s work to do,” he said. “I need to find out who…”

  “You mean who killed McDermott?” The young woman took off her coat. Underneath it looked like what belonged to a Halloween party: a provocative version of what a medical uniform should be. D. shut his eyes. “I know about it.”

  Still keeping his eyes closed: “Apparently everyone knows about it except me.”

  “That’s not true,” she said, caressing his face as worried mothers do. “Many people don’t know about him. Sometimes they wonder if he’s a ghost . . .”

  “Please!” D. pushed her hand away. “I don’t want to hear that word –”

  “What, ghost?”

  D. turned and fell over the bed, all his bones ready to break again. He screamed, tried to use his hands to break the fall, but none of them succeeded. He lay shivering in cold despair, reaching up to the bed rail at least to get back up. The nurse didn’t help but stared.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Of course she didn’t. “Could you please help me up?” He groaned, clutching his leg. She went over and picked him up.

  “What kind of nurse are you?” he asked. “I remember you before but . . . you were different.”

  “This is my first time, actually,” she answered. “I’m just . . . disguised. But they found me.”

  “Then where do you really work?”

  She covered her face. “It’s a small place, nothing too big.”

  “Yes, okay, but what is it?”

  She buried her face now, avoiding a veil of tears. Then she muttered something nobody would be able to understand even at the closest range, much less if you were on a bed after crashing to the floor like what had happened to D.

  “What was that? Speak up!”

  The young woman said something: the word girl, probably. She said it three times while mumbling through her hands and tears. In some way, she was silencing herself. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  “I won’t,” he promised. “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean not yet?” She looked up now clearly showing fresh tears stained on her cheeks and a mouth like salty rain. “You won’t tell on me, will you?”

  “Am I a child to you? There are much more mature ways to deal with this situation.” He paused. “Why are you here anyway?”

  “West Lake sent me. He wanted a message given to you, and he told me this while he was at the place I worked. Specifically he hired me to do his bidding.”

  West Lake . . . that man, one of the contenders for McDermott’s disappearance – he existed? This couldn’t be possible. D. thought the man was only a suggestion. Why did the man he was chasing after want him? “Well, what was the message?”

  The young nurse sniffed. “He said you will try to stop the police department from going away. You will not realize it but the department will be forever gone in everyone’s memory. It will be too late when you want to stop the event, and you’ll do nothing. Trying to plan things out won’t help; he’ll think of something else.” She sniffed again. “Lake has been haunting that place for years, he told me. Ever since . . .”

  “Haunting the police department?” D. noticed. “So he’s the one responsible for the constructed web in the locker room?”

  The young woman nodded. “We helped.”

  “What do you mean ‘we’? Are there more people working at that pl
ace of yours?”

  Her voice rose. “That place isn’t mine! A woman owns it, but us girls helped with the journals and cutting out the newspapers and everything . . .” She trailed off.

  “Oh.” He pressed a hand to his forehead, then rubbing his eyes. “I suppose he didn’t want you telling me this?”

  “I’m not sure if he cares or not.”

  “He might.” He touched her arm. “Tell me, since when has he been doing this?”

  “Lake won’t allow me to say it.”

  “But he won’t notice,” D. promised. “Just tell me, it’s important.”

  And then she mouthed, cameras.

  But of course the young lady was correct. D. didn’t need to do a check; in fact, why did he forget about the damned cameras? He should have looked around before releasing any tidbit of information that spewed from his mouth like germs. And like germs, words spread. Well, not the words but the information. How was he to talk with high security like this?

  And then . . .

  “Come with me,” he ordered the young woman.

  She stared at him with doe eyes. “Where to?” she wondered.

  “Here” . He pointed to the bed. “Sleep with me. It seems like you wanted it so badly when you got here. You must remember.”

  “’Course I do.” She approached him, crawling into the hospital sheets with her hands like cats’ claws. “And what would we do in bed?”

  “Exactly what you wanted when you arrived.”

  She may have been naïve, but the young lady wasn’t telling the truth.

  *****

  Winnie the Doll was priced for over one thousand two hundred dollars. Its delivery to the desired person’s home had cost extra, according to the service that provided the doll and its expensive sale. For the toy company, it had been a rare case for them to sell a Winnie the Doll to customers; with prices that high, who would? The last time they sold the doll was to the McDermott family. Their youngest daughter, Winnie, still relives the day her brother came back home to see them, bringing gifts in a bag like St. Nick. He had doling out presents to everyone jolly as he could be, giving the perfect Winnie the Doll to, well, Winnie. When she tore the package open, it took a few moments before she gave up asking herself why her brother bought a doll that had the same name as she.

  “Why Winnie?” she said, which was her exact words.

  Her brother, Paul, knelt down and whispered in her ear so only she and he knew why. Everyone else had been busy with their own things, so it made it even more special to Winnie. “So that you’ll always remember who you are.”

  At first it hadn’t made any sense to her. She always knew who she was, no matter what. Her name wasn’t that easy to forget – their parents chose the name for the very same reason. Until now, Winnie hadn’t forgotten the wish Paul had made to her that day, when a week later it would be Christmas Eve and then the holiday afterward.

  “Winnie? Winnie, where are you?” It was her Mother. She ignored her.

  But then it happened . . .

  A beautiful movie was playing on TV. The night outside was chipped with ice and snow so nobody wished to go there. There they were, witnessing not just a movie but an event unfolding beneath their eyes like a scroll rolling out its story and truths, none of their eyes blinking (at least they thought it that way). Flakes of snow dotted the window glass, frosting it over like a junior blizzard--movement nobody thought about. All their attention was geared to the bride-to-be wandering in an endless forest of wonder, somehow killing herself in tragic beauty.

  Two family members who weren’t there were Father and Paul. This must have happened a year or two after the Winnie the Doll present, so Paul was still in that other country Winnie forgot the name of and was coming home for the special occasions. Father, at the time, was on his way to the docks so he could pick his son up from where the boats were. Winnie was so excited for Paul to come over (finally!) that although she watched the movie with the rest of the family, her knees couldn’t stop bouncing. She kept a serious face about it, though.

  Winnie, now in the small closet in her bedroom, swallowed hard. She felt her throat clutch and tighten. When her eyes were closed . . .

  Father, in the rain, was stricken with tears and rain but looked the same. Mother was weeping on his shoulder, much later, as everyone else watched. Winnie herself ran up the stairs, not crying at all, but just looking . . . she just didn’t know what it meant then. The beautiful movie still played, but none of the family wanted to watch, not anymore. She only watched the snow.

  “Winnie.” Mother was with her now, probably already knowing where she was hiding. Most people in her family didn’t, but somehow her mother knew everything about her, not caring if she knew about it or not. “Winnie, someone’s here for us.”

  She looked at her mother. “What do you mean, mother?”

  “There’s a man at the door. He wants to see us all.”

  Winnie sighed. “The whole family?” she said, trying to not sound like she was whining. Apparently she failed at that part.

  “Yes, Winnie, the whole family has to come.” She grabbed Winnie’s hand.

  “Can you at least tell me who it is?”

  “An officer,” her mother told her. A police officer or officer of security, she didn’t know.

  The officer’s name was Lincoln Deed. Winnie found it out from the name tag he wore. When she saw him, the officer named Lincoln looked like he’d gotten into a fight with cats. Under her parents’ orders, she managed to ask no questions to the officers and only watched. She would only answer when spoken to.

  “. . . And this is our daughter,” both her mother and father said in some special presentation of their youngest daughter.

  Officer Deed stooped down so he got a better look. “So what’s your name, little girl?”

  “Winnie,” she choked. Never did she favor talking to strangers.

  “Hmmm,” the officer mused, sounding like her name tasted good. “Winnie McDermott, is that it?”

  “What about it?” The question didn’t make any sense.

  “I think it’s a beautiful name, Winnie. How old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Winnie.” He went back to Mother and Father. “Mind if I come in? There’s some very important information we need to go over. See, I was with a family called the Davidsons . . .”

  Winnie prodded her mother, tugging her sleeve and all, and asked if she could go back to her bedroom. “Not now, Winnie. We all need to participate and see what the officer needs of us. Just be patient, okay?”

  She made a face, a pouty one. “Okay.”

  They all sat down in the living room where Winnie’s parents had a gorgeous dining table where they ate every day. It went all the way to the other side of the room, which when Winnie measured it, added up to about sixty Winnie hands placed in one line. It was a lot of hands and besides, when you sat on the very end of the table, the other end was so far that it had a vanishing point type of look. Winnie sat at either ends so she could see the vanishing point. Father had told her about the phrase, “vanishing point”.

  “Sit here, Officer Deed,” her mother told the officer. “Right over here . . . better?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Officer Deed, unfortunately, sat on the best side of the table. It was Winnie’s favorite seat with the other side placing second. “There seems to be a problem with the case you brought up. You know the one about your missing son, right?”

  But Winnie’s mother just said “Paul” and then stayed silent.

  “Yes, Paul.” Even Officer Deed sounded like he would tear up, which made no sense to Winnie because police officers never cried. They never acted human when she saw them, but this one somehow was different. “There’s another case I, uh, discovered recently, involving a family, the Davidsons. I mentioned that at your doorstep.”

  “Yes, you have,” Winnie’s father said. “What is it that concerns you, officer? Does it have to do wi
th Paul?”

  “Kind of,” said Officer Deed. “I spoke to the Davidsons recently, which is how I got these . . .” He pointed at all the scratches he received. Winnie wondered how a person could get hurt like that; you probably needed surgery or something to make it all better again. One bruise was right under the officer’s eye, which swelled like a bumble bee sting. Winnie shivered, wincing. Do families end up hurting each other? She wondered about that, hugging her knees on her chair.

  Mother watched her. “Is there something wrong, Winnie?” she whispered, lowering her voice away from Officer Deed’s louder one.

  Winnie looked up, saying, “No, mother. There’s nothing wrong.”

  “It looks like it to me.” The long, etched lines that were not wrinkles carved through her forehead and by her temples like indented marks of never forgotten pain. A concerned face that turned the eyes downward and looked up, resembling a disheartened saint. The world was accustomed to this expression, especially mothers to their children. Mother had this one on right now. Winnie thought her mother would be less concerned if she wasn’t the family’s only child still alive.

  Silent talk between the mother and daughter – they both knew it.

  The mother’s tight frown and opening arms spoke: let’s go upstairs to your bedroom. Winnie understood more than any words. She had an instinct for language, but not the one that people were most comfortable with.

  Her bedroom had been an artist’s vision of creating work. Although the girl never understood architecture or building foundations, she knew well enough about what colors of paint should cover the walls, and how the bed’s design and scheme should be. Winnie made her choices precisely and with caution, taking days or even weeks before arriving at final decisions; she never understood why some artists preferred to splash colors and streaks across a board or canvas – the result looked like some two-year-old finger painting project on a late afternoon that you paste a name on and hang in the public art museum. Worst of all, people loved it! You should have seen the way Winnie spun into that grouchy shade of green so apt with vomit and disgust. People had their opinions, but things like that were an insult to art, and worst of all the technique of abstraction. She preferred to keep her art, in a sense, normalized but not in the way people think. Winnie deviated from the regular penchant of human nature.