The Ebony Finches: A Transition Magic Thriller

by J. E. Hopkins

  He handed her a laminated page. “Read the smallest line you can on this.”

  Again, she had no trouble reading the bottom line.

  “Anything I haven’t asked you that you think might be different?”

  Natalie thought for a second. “Nope. Not about my eyes anyway.”

  PJ smiled. “Something other than your eyes?”

  “I’m kinda achy and if I run, I pant like a dog.”

  PJ glanced at her dad and then back to her. “Okay. You’re in luck. We’re having a special for young girls who pant like dogs. You’ve qualified for a complete exam. I’m going to have the nurses come in and take some blood plus do an electrocardiogram. You know what that is, right?”

  “Sure. Do they have to take blood?”

  “Yeah,” PJ said. “As I said, we’re having a special. All girls with black eyes get their blood taken. I’ll tell you what. I’ll get Nurse Palmer to do it—she’s the best.”

  “Right,” Natalie said. “I won’t feel a thing.”

  PJ laughed. “While she’s doing her thing, I’ll make a few calls to some other pediatricians I know. See if they’ve run into anything like this.”

  He left the room and pulled the door closed behind him.

  “Doc PJ is smart, huh?” Natalie asked.

  “Very.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good omen that he has to call other doctors.”

  “Nah. Doctors do that all the time.”

  Natalie shook her head. “Just sayin’.”

  Nurse Palmer came in, did the EKG, drew four tubes of blood, and left them alone. Ten minutes later she poked her head into the room. “Boy, are you special. Doctor ordered some pizza and it’s waiting for you in his office.” She led them down the hall and showed them into a cramped office lined with bookcases. Doc PJ sat on the other side of a small, dark wood desk, moving some books to the side to make room for a large pepperoni pizza. Normally the smell would have made Natalie’s mouth water, but now it turned her stomach.

  “Come in, sit, enjoy while I fill you in on what I’ve found. Or, in this case, didn’t find.” He pointed to two chairs on the opposite side of the desk, then reached over and took a slice of the pizza.

  Natalie and her dad sat.

  “What about your other patients?” she asked. “We’ve been here two hours already. Won’t they be pis—?”

  “Nat,” her father warned.

  “Angry,” Natalie said. She tried not to smile and failed.

  “Thank you for worrying about them,” PJ said. “Unexpected things come up pretty often in a doctor’s office. Each of the docs pitches in when that happens.”

  Natalie’s father took a slice of pizza and held the box for her.

  She shook her head. “Not hungry right now.”

  He placed the box back on the desk and faced the doctor. “What did the exam show?”

  “We still using the same ground rules?” PJ asked.

  Doc PJ had come for dinner one night when her mom was still living and Natalie’s dad had told him about his promise not to withhold medical information from her. Natalie could tell the commitment made the doctor uncomfortable, but Doc PJ agreed to go along. Until he no longer agreed, he’d said.

  Her father surprised her by hesitating for several seconds before answering. “For now, yeah. No secrets.”

  For now?

  She’d ask her father about that later. Now didn’t seem like a good time.

  PJ stared at the two of them for a moment, then focused on Natalie. “I’m board certified in Transition medicine as well as pediatrics. That means I’m supposed to know a lot about kids’ diseases and about the impact of Transition on kids’ bodies. I’ve never seen or read anything about black irises. Neither has anyone else I called. I’ll run a literature search, but I think we can assume this is rare.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with Transition,” her father said.

  “Yeah,” PJ said, “but it’s a hell of a coincidence.” He kept his gaze on Natalie. “There are a couple of diseases that present with dark eyes. But not an absolute black like yours and not with red flecks. The good news is that your eyes appear healthy otherwise. I’ll get an ophthalmologist to check you to be sure.”

  “What else?” her dad asked.

  “My exam didn’t turn up anything, but I don’t like your achiness and the shortness of breath.” He glanced at the pizza then at Natalie. “Or the loss of appetite. You just not hungry, or are you feeling sick to your stomach?”

  Natalie shrugged. “I dunno, just weird. The pizza smell is gross.”

  PJ sighed and leaned back in his chair, pulling at his beard and looking at the ceiling. Natalie didn’t think he was in the room with them anymore.

  “Could be coincidental,” he muttered. “But coincidences can be deceptive and dangerous.” He came back from wherever he’d gone. His face looked like her dad’s when he’d put together her swing set with a thousand pieces. Determined and frustrated, almost angry. “I’m not going to take any chances. I’ll arrange a room for you at the hospital. You’ll be in for a couple of days while we run some tests.”

  Natalie’s first impulse was to try and convince PJ that she didn’t need to go into the hospital. Her dad could take her to the other doctors, so why lock her up? It occurred to her that there could be other reasons for the hospital. Like if she was really sick. Sick like her mom.

  So much for no secrets.

  Natalie had been in West Memorial for two days when she confirmed that her father was no longer abiding by his promise to share medical information. She’d been awake for an hour, staring out the window next to her bed and watching the sunrise.

  “Morning, Brian. Glad I bumped into you.”

  The voice was Doc PJ’s, speaking in a barely audible whisper somewhere outside her half-open door. The hospital was as quiet as death. As far as she knew, this was the first time the two had actually seen each other since she’d been admitted. Her father came at six each morning, usually waking her up, and spent an hour before going to work. He returned in the evening and stayed until she fell asleep. Doc PJ usually didn’t do rounds until late morning.

  She couldn’t understand her father’s response, so she climbed from the bed and crept across the cold floor in her bare feet until she was standing behind the door. Her heart was pounding.

  “The cardiologist called me a bit ago,” PJ said. “He’s on his way into the hospital for rounds.”

  “What? You’re scaring me.”

  Natalie shivered and it had nothing to do with the cold floor. Her father’s voice sounded like it had many times before. Images of her mother, getting sicker and sicker, played through her mind.

  “Natalie has heart failure, which is why she’s tired and short of breath.”

  “What are you telling me? How does a twelve-year-old get heart failure?”

  “It’s uncommon, but it happens. In Natalie’s case, the valves and structure of her heart are normal. So is the electrical system that controls it. But the cardiologist believes her heart muscle has been damaged by a virus.”

  “Jesus wept. How do you treat it?”

  Her father’s voice broke, sounding like he was about to cry. Tears welled up in Natalie’s eyes. She was scared, but more than that, she was worried about her dad.

  “There are several medications. But, Brian…”

  PJ’s voice trailed off.

  “What else?”

  “They ran the heart function tests twice—the day she was admitted and again yesterday. Yesterday’s results were worse than from the day before. Not much. Probably just test variability, but it’s also possible her condition is deteriorating.”

  “Is this related to her eyes?”

  Natalie turned and began walking slowly back to the bed, her mind numb.

  “I don’t know. I’m going to keep digging until I find out.”

  7

  New Boston, Texas

  Wells, Lobster, and Cole were
assigned to T25, a lower security General Population unit in the Telford complex. Wells and Cole were there because of their pending release. Lobster had been transferred into the unit two months prior when he’d earned trusty status.

  Wells sat alone in a back corner of the T25 dayroom, waiting for Lobster and staring down the length of the high central core of the two-story structure.

  Tables, plastic chairs, and a couple of large, potted fig trees were scattered throughout the unit’s gathering space. Vinyl-covered sofas angled around a large, wall-mounted TV at the far end of the room. Inmates were playing cards and checkers, hooting and hollering. The TV was too far away to see clearly, but the sounds of a screaming woman echoed off the walls.

  Three things I won’t miss. The fucking Mexicans, the fucking infernal racket in this shithole, and the fucking green paint that’s slapped onto everything.

  Two floors of windowless six-by-eight foot cells paraded along the left and right sides of the building, facing each other across the dayroom. Corrugated steel stairs connected the first floor with the second, where open-grate catwalks led from the cells. There were no doors in the cell openings; prisoners could come and go as they wished.

  The sun baked the building like a clay oven. Wells guessed that the temperature inside was on the wrong side of ninety degrees. The air was a fug of sweat and semen.

  Lobster slid into the seat across from him. “Still spooks me that you use this spot for your office,” he muttered. “I could piss on the hacks from here.”

  The guard’s offices were a dozen feet away, separated from the cons’ area by a set of doors and a wall of observation windows.

  “Human nature,” Wells whispered. “The assholes assume no one this close would be up to anything. They focus their cameras and their attention on the opposite end of the block.” He leaned toward the table. “You still got the bottle of 151 Bacardi? The one I told you not to drink?” Wells had arranged for the rum to be smuggled in, supposedly as a gift for Lobster’s elevation to prison trusty.

  Lobster scowled. “How many bottles of rum you think I got? And who gives someone a bottle and tells him not to drink it? I’ve moved that son of a bitch all over the fucking place to keep it hidden.”

  “We’re going to need it,” Well said.

  Lobster stared at him for a few moments. “So the fucking rum wasn’t a gift for making trusty. You just didn’t want to risk taking the heat if the hacks found it.”

  “Being a trusty is its own reward,” Wells said.

  “Right.”

  “The library here has some strange books,” Wells said. He worked six hours a week in the prison library and had become an avid reader during his time as a guest of the state.

  “Wouldn’t know. Can’t read for shit. What’s that got to do with my rum?”

  “I found an old book on British trials. It had a story about these dudes in the 1800’s who killed people and sold their bodies for autopsies. One was named Burke, the other one Hare. They figured out how to kill without leaving marks. They got caught, but it made them famous. The trick they came up with is called ‘burking.’ That’s what we’re going to do to Cole.”

  “You’re one strange dude and I’m not talking about your skinny white face. What makes you think something these guys dreamed up a long time ago will get past an autopsy today?”

  “Trust me. We do it right, no one will know it wasn’t an accident.”

  “You’re askin’ a lot.”

  Wells laughed out loud like Lobster had just told him the best joke he’d ever heard, then lowered his voice to soft snarl. “I don’t give a shit if you don’t believe me, you’ll do what I tell you.” He leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Relax. It’ll be fun and you’ll learn a handy skill.”

  Lobster stared at Wells for several seconds, then shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

  “First, you gotta use that bottle of rum to get Cole so drunk that he’ll pass out.”

  “Is that all? In the middle of a prison, with cons coming and going everywhere, and cameras every damn place? Hell, they probably leave cameras up our asses when they do a cavity search.”

  Wells snorted. “We’ll wait till they kill the lights.”

  Five mercury-vapor streetlights hung from the dayroom ceiling. Four of them were turned off from ten at night to five the next morning, leaving the unit washed by dim blue-green shadows.

  “I get that,” Lobster said, “but the cameras—”

  “Can’t see in the dark,” Wells interrupted. “I overheard a guard bitching that the low security units never get the good gear. Means they have to get off their lazy asses at night and patrol the place.”

  Lobster’s toothy grin made the hairs on the back of Well’s neck stand at full alert.

  “All the fuckers do is stroll through the dayroom every two or three hours,” Lobster said. “They don’t even shine their lights in the cells unless they want the whole place to go apeshit.”

  “Exactly,” Wells said. “The peckerwood who Cole was whining to in the yard—Bert. He and Cole bunk in the same cell, right?”

  Lobster nodded.

  “Is Bert afraid of you?”

  “Everyone in this building is afraid of me.”

  “Uh huh. Pay a visit and give him the bottle. He and Cole are to start celebrating Cole’s release as soon as the lights go out tonight. I want Cole passed out drunk by eleven. Then you and I will join the party.”

  “Good job, Bert. I owe you one.” Wells’s voice was a hoarse whisper.

  It was eleven ten. Wells and Lobster had through the opening of Cole’s cell to find him on the concrete floor, leaning against the back wall. He’d passed out and was breathing the deep, easy sleep of the damned.

  Bert sat on the bottom bunk next to him, eyes wide, looking like a rabbit about to dodge for cover. The empty bottle of rum lay on its side between the two men.

  “Which bunk is Cole’s?” Wells asked, his voice a silky whisper. The two bunks were welded, one on top of the other, and anchored to the cement floor.

  “What?”

  “Which bunk?”

  “This one.” Bert slapped the rumpled sheets beside him.

  “The hacks are gonna ask you what happened,” Wells said. “Tell ‘em, but keep it simple. You and Cole were celebrating. The bottle was his. He went to bed as soon as it was empty. You could hear him snoring. You went to the john, came back, and got into your rack. That’s all you say, got it?”

  Bert nodded.

  “Now, go take a shit. You’re all plugged up from eating the food in this place, so it’s gonna take you a half hour. When you get back, Cole will be asleep in his bunk.”

  Bert scrambled to his feet and headed to the door.

  “And, Bert?” Wells asked, whispering.

  Bert turned and looked back.

  The cell was rendered in shades of gray, but Wells could see the look of terror in the gaunt man’s face. “Forget that Lobster and I were ever here if you plan to go on living.”

  Bert bobbed his head, scooted through the open door, and disappeared.

  Wells placed a hand on Lobster’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “Lay him flat. Careful. Don’t wake him up.”

  “No shit, don’t wake him up,” Lobster mumbled.

  He grunted as he lifted the comatose man and placed him gently on the floor in the center of the cell. “I don’t think I could wake him up if I wanted to. He’s used to drinking Sterno, not 150-proof rum.”

  Wells sat on the floor beside Cole’s head. “I’m gonna pinch his nose shut and hold his jaw closed. As soon as I do that, you sit sideways on his rib cage, like he’s a nice fluffy pillow. Don’t kneel on him, or you’ll cause bruises or maybe break one of his ribs. Just sit down nice and slow.”

  “Are you crazy?” Lobster’s hoarse voice was filled with panic. “He’ll scream and jerk around like a sonofabitch.”

  “Nah. That’s the magic of the burking trick. It’s why we got him drunk. He’l
l just go over the rainbow to see Dorothy and Toto.”

  Wells didn’t wait for a response. He gently pinched Cole’s nose and pressed his jaw shut. “Now.”

  Lobster turned sideways and sat, carefully lowering his three hundred pounds onto the comatose man’s rib cage. Cole never moved.

  “Now we wait five minutes,” Wells muttered. “One Mississippi, Two Mississippi…”

  At one hundred and sixty Mississippis, Wells felt Cole’s body relax, but he kept counting.

  “Won’t he get blood specks in his eyes?” Lobster whispered. “That’s how they always tell someone has been suffocated on TV.”

  Wells ignored him until his count reached three hundred. “That’s just TV bullshit. Happens, but not often.”

  “But what if this is one of those—”

  “It’s done. Lay him out on his bunk, face down into his pillow. If they find anything in the autopsy, they’ll just think he got so drunk that he suffocated himself.”

  Lobster struggled to his feet, bent down and lifted Cole’s body, and arranged it on the lower bunk as Wells had commanded.

  Wells used a handkerchief to pick up the empty rum bottle, which he placed on the floor next to the bunk.

  As the two moved to the door to return to their cells, Wells patted Lobster on the back and whispered, “Sleep tight, don’t forget to say your prayers.”

  “One short,” the guard said. Wells and the other inmates in T25 were gathered in the dayroom for the morning count. The guard looked around the room. “Who’s missing?”

  Wells turned and looked around, as if wondering who was late. He found Bert staring back at him. The little man was standing as far from his second-floor cell as he could get. He jerked his gaze to the floor, and answered the guard’s question. “Cole’s still in his bunk. I yelled at him to get up, but he ignored me.”

  “Shit,” the guard said, then yelled at the upper level of the unit, “COLE, GET YOUR GODDAMNED ASS DOWN HERE!” When there was no answer, he nodded at another guard who was standing near the stairs. “Roust him.”

  Five seconds after the guard stomped up the stairs and disappeared into Cole’s cell, he stepped out on the catwalk and looked down. “We got a problem. Everyone back into your fucking cells.”