The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  My second: what if it wasn’t the Gypsies who did this to me, after all―maybe it’s this crazy Haitian voodoo queen or whatever she is.

  “Vini non, lespri zonbi,” she chants now. “Etap nan sèk la sakre ak pou prepare w pou kite kò sa a. M ‘mande nou! Tonbe ajenou devan mama loa a!” Meanwhile the drummer behind her has sped up the rhythm of his beat.

  Against my will, moving like a spastic puppet, I shuffle forward, my feet burning from the proximity of the candle flame―and from the wood branches, which seem to affect my whole body like some kind of radioactive isotope. As I enter the circle, the huge woman, her eyes still rolled back into her head, gropes with one hand across the ruined carpet and then pulls something out from under my favorite recliner. An axe. My axe; a Huskie―the long-handled Husqvarna I keep in the basement for wood-splitting and dead-tree clearing in the yard.

  “Tonbe! Tonbe!” she screams as she rises massively and clumsily to her full height. Kneel. Or at least I assume what the word means, because that’s what I’m suddenly doing.

  She isn’t planning to possess me or send me off on a mission to kill somebody. She’s planning to chop my head off.

  While Devon, my so-called husband, is just sitting there on the couch watching…

  I find that I’ve already knelt and even bowed my head. The Smith & Wesson has long since fallen from my numb fingers and lies uselessly on the welcome mat just inside the open front door. The Haitian woman moves slowly toward me, stately and deliberate as an elephant, raising the axe high above her head. Then she stumbles, almost trips―and I see that Kitty has appeared out of nowhere, tail bristling, eyes wide, teeth bared, to deliberately cross her path. The voodoo woman kicks, then aims a wild swing at her; my brave little black cat dashes to one side, then slashes the woman’s huge hand as the axe misses her, its sharp heavy blade sheering through the shag pile carpeting to bury itself in the wood floor.

  The woman shrieks, and I can see her pupils for the first time. She hoists the axe up again, and, outraged and horrified, I fight against whatever spell she has me under, straining and fighting to move, to break away to rescue Kitty. This time, Kitty feints, and then as the axe falls again, dashes under the woman’s skirts to leap up and rake her bare shins. The woman curses loudly; “Shit! I kill me dat fokin’ cat!” in plain English.

  The drumming stops all at once. A ghostly naked young blonde woman has entered the room, a deathly figure with a noose around her neck. Her features are bloated, and her tongue is hanging out. She seems almost to float across the candlelit carpet, her arms outraised, slowly moving toward the two men on the couch. At almost the same moment, the head of a monstrous apparition comes to life inside the thick dark smoke; a living, moving skull, its flayed flesh peeling, its eyeballs bulging out in a ghastly grin.

  “You—die—now,” the disembodied head of Bull McGuinness says to the Haitian woman, which is all it takes for her to brush frantically past me, heedless of the cat still yowling and spitting and slashing at her bare feet, out the front door and into the night. The man with her, the drummer, leaves his congas behind in his haste to follow, bowling me over and knocking me half outside the circle. The touch of the wood branches feels scalding even through my clothes. I manage to crawl over to the open doorway and retrieve my gun as the screen door slams shut behind our departed guests.

  Devon, meanwhile, has risen from the couch and now presents a comical picture of horror, like an extra in one of those Wayans Brothers Scary Movies. His mouth is open, his eyes staring, his arms pulled up as if to ward off a blow. Lorna stops pretending to be strangled long enough to give him a look of loathing and flail at him with the end of her rope; then fades, if not from my vision, then at least from his. Bull follows suit, after laughing loudly and theatrically, sort of like “Bwahaha!” a few times.

  “God damn, kid, does that ever take it out of you,” he says to Lorna, hacking and coughing and resting his hands on his knees. “The materializing ain’t so bad, but doing the funny voices…I can tell you I’m gonna be wheezing for a week.” He glances up at his ghostly friend. “Say, you did good for your first time.”

  eanwhile, I’m still wheezing myself. I’m sitting on the floor of the front landing, with my back propped up against the wall, waving the Westie in the general direction of Devon.

  “Here’s what I want you do to do, Dev,” I tell him when I’ve recovered the power of speech. “No arguments. First, I want you to drag all that wood out of the house and across the street. Put it in the Asombas’ trash pile next to the sidewalk.”

  “But Richi, I never meant for this to happen, I swear.” He starts crying. “She was only supposed to threaten you with the axe―I just wanted her to…”

  “To what?”

  “Well, to exorcise you. To holistically convey your restless spirit across to the other shore. I was only thinking of you!” he yelps, as I raise the gun and point it at him.

  “To kill me, you mean, you lousy fucking bastard! You are in such deep shit, Devon, don’t you get that? Vandalism and willful destruction, assault on a police officer, conspiracy to commit murder…do I really need to go on? You really want me to call this in? My radio’s just out in the car.” He shakes his head miserably. “Then do what I tell you. Now. I want those fucking branches out of here. They hurt me. What are they?”

  “Hawthorne. She promised it wouldn’t hurt―she said they would help separate your astral zombie spirit from the rest of you.”

  “Just get them out of here. Take them out through the carport; keep them away from me, or I swear I’ll kneecap you. When you’re done, you can come back and open all the windows. Then pack a suitcase. One suitcase. And, okay, your laptop. I’ll send the rest of your shit along to you later.”

  “But where am I supposed to go?” he wails. “It’s a grading weekend!”

  “Move in with your girlfriend,” I suggest. I can’t stand it anymore inside the room and drag myself out the front door. My little cat precedes me, and we sit together on the front stoop. She hates physical PDAs but allows me to put my arms around her and restrain her from dashing off in pursuit of the Haitians’ Voodoo-mobile, which is tearing off down the street, its bald tires screeching. Kitty isn’t normally allowed outside; she stops cars by standing in the street, follows big dogs around, and constantly gets treed by the neighborhood toms. Which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t try to sneak out every chance she gets.

  “You know about that?” Devon asks timidly through the screen door behind me.

  “Brilliant deduction, Holmes. Who the hell were those two, anyway?”

  “Mama Lourdes and Noel. I found them through Megan’s doula.” Megan is the head of his department. Great. That means he’s been going around telling everybody he knows I’m a zombie. Well, what I did expect? “Um, I really hate to ask this, Richie Rich, but―I kind of maxed out my Visa this month hiring them. Could you maybe give me some gas money?”

  “I keep an emergency stash in the Joy of Cooking in the kitchen,” I tell him wearily. “You can take a hundred.” This is what happens when you marry a man-child. From now on, I’m sticking to adults.

  After he leaves, Bull and Lorna come out and sit beside me on the front stoop. Lorna has put on a wrap and a pair of slippers, and they both light cigarettes, a habit that’s looking more and more attractive to me by the minute. I’d probably take it up now myself, except I can’t afford it. We’re joined by two more shades who drift over from across the yard, a young woman named Chloe, who seems to be a pal of Lorna’s, and a wispy middle-aged schoolmarm who introduces herself as Miz Ernestine Kilgallen. Miz Kilgallen is a real motormouth but manages to never answer a direct question.

  “Where are these people coming from?” I whisper to Bull at the first opportunity.

  “Boardinghouse down the road.” The old homestead seems to have had a pretty high death count. I’d assumed, from Lorna’s constant presence, that my house stood where the boardinghouse once had; however this is not the case, i
t turns out. The building, an old-fashioned frame Victorian with porches on every side, is a block away and half-hidden by trees. Lorna had her throat cut and was buried on its grounds, basically where my basement laundry room is now, says Bull.

  “But she looks so natural.”

  “Don’t she?” He sounds proud. “Like it happened only yesterday. It’s because she’s so good with makeup. She’s always nagging me to give my ugly mug a go, but I tell her it’s a lost cause.” I suspect he’s secretly attached to that fright-mask he calls a face.

  “It sure came in handy back there,” I tell him. “Thanks, Bull. Give Lorna a hug for me.” Before the gang breaks out the gin and ukuleles and starts crooning old show tunes by the light of the silvery moon or whatever, I excuse myself and drag the cat back inside. The shades are all keeping clear because of the smell of angelica and wormwood, which I seem to be allergic to, too. The living room is a smoking ruin, and I need to make some kind of stab at cleaning things up before I collapse from exhaustion and sleeplessness. Who knew the undead needed so much sleep? It seems counter-intuitive. That must explain why they spend so much time in their coffins. You know―just to get away from it all.

  Okay, first order of business is the blood that’s all over the carpet and splashed across some of the furniture. After I blow out the candles one by one, I pour cold water on the bloodstains and cover them up with towels to soak, just like they tell you to do online. I’m in the kitchen mixing an ammonia rinse when I hear the front doorbell chime.

  It takes me a moment to recognize who it is in the outdoor front entrance light―and when I do, I open the door with a great deal of reluctance. Because what I really feel like doing is screaming at her to fuck off. But I don’t, because I’m basically an emotional wuss, I guess. At least with people who’ve been close to me.

  “What do you want, Malena?” I ask her through the screen. She looks shocked at my tone, like I’ve just slapped her. “If you’re coming to plead Devon’s case, you can forget it.” She’s probably panicked at the thought of him moving in with her. As far as I know, six weeks is her personal best at living with any guy.

  “Oh, he told you, huh? Look, I’m sorry I went behind your back, Richie; is that why you’re pissed at me? Okay, I know I shouldn’t have done it. But I was worried about you.”

  “Worried about me?” What the hell is she talking about? She was so worried about me that she slept with my husband?

  “Sure, after I busted him a few months ago. I knew you’d be hurt. Look, can I come in, gata? This is crazy, making me stand out here like this; I’m gonna get eaten alive by bugs. Holy shit!” Ayon says, as she enters the living room. “What the fuck happened here? A gang shootout?”

  “Devon didn’t tell you?”

  “No, no, I only saw him the one time. The other night. I was trying to talk some sense into him about your marriage. About you two staying together. You know, after I spotted him out with what’s-her-face. His ex. I should have told you, it’s just that Devon promised me nothing was going on with them and that he would work to save things between you. Then you sort of went crazy the other night and now you don’t talk to me or take my calls or answer my messages― “ She suddenly notices me staring at her. “What?”

  “He’s been seeing Jennifer all this time? His ex-wife?” I can’t help myself―I start laughing. Now Malena totally thinks I’m crazy. Finally, she grins, too.

  “Oh crap, you didn’t know? I thought you knew. Sorry, yeah, that little sweet-looking fake-innocent redheaded bitch, that’s who I saw him with. Anyway, I guess it’s out in the open now, so I don’t have to go around pretending not to know anymore. But seriously, Richie―shit! What happened here? Did somebody get shot? Did you murder Devon or something? Because, I mean, I’ll help you get rid of the body or whatever, but there is no fucking way we are ever in a million years getting the DNA stains out of this carpet. And he is so not worth doing body beef time for. Pitt or Clooney, sure, but not that afeminado, excuse my language. So maybe we better get the carpet up. I know a guy―” She crouches down and starts rolling up her sleeves.

  “It’s not Devon.” I show her the dead chicken that I’ve put in the mop bucket. “He hired these Haitians to― “ Okay, what can I tell her? I do not want Malena Ayon of all people finding out that I’m one of the undead― “to exorcize the house.”

  To my surprise, she just nods. “Yeah, I thought he seemed pretty tweaked on that subject. He kept telling me you’d been shot through the heart and were dead or a zombie or something. Totally crazy shit.”

  I improvise desperately. “That was kinda my fault. The thing is, Mal―and don’t you dare give me any crap about this―after that prank where I was posed and crime scene processed as being dead, something really strange happened to me. I started seeing ghosts.”

  “Ghosts?”

  “Yeah. You know, like the Ghost Whisperer or something. I see dead people now everywhere I go.”

  “And you can talk to them?” She looks less skeptical than fearful; in fact, when she thinks I’m not looking, Malena quickly crosses herself. “And they talk back? Are there any of them in here now?”

  “Nope―they’re all outside right now. Hanging in the front yard.” Singing something about “twilight in the gloaming” or some shit like that. The most surprising thing about shades is how much they like partying. I guess because there isn’t much else to do when you’re dead. I mean, it’s not like you can start a family, right? “Devon was trying to drive them out of the house.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I don’t mention that he was also trying to have me killed; Malena evidently thinks the axe next to the La-Z-Boy was only for the chicken.

  “They’re my friends, Mal. I’d much rather have them around than my rat-bastard husband.”

  We spend the next two hours discovering that there’s no way to lift all the stains out, and finally, after we’ve done our best to straighten the place up, I cave and let Malena call a friend at SID, waking him in the middle of the night, to get the number of a crime scene clean-up service that specializes in blood removal. They use hydrogen peroxide, he says. By then, it’s too late for Malena to go home, so I tell her to just spend the night.

  “In a haunted house?” she says.

  “All houses are haunted,” I tell her impatiently. “There are ghosts everywhere―there are more of them than there are of us.”

  “Well, I’m not sleeping alone here.”

  Which means she ends up sacking out in my bed with me. Which is no big deal―no different than the front seat of a car or sharing a motel room on a stakeout, both of which we’ve done like a zillion times. But after a few minutes we’re joined by Kitty, and Malena practically goes through the roof. I tell her to relax. Jesus, who do I have to kill to get some sleep?

  “It’s not a ghost? You promise?”

  “It’s just Kitty. You’re not allergic to her.”

  “Actually, I am, but I always take Benadryl before I come over. You promise there’s nobody else in the bed with us?”

  Define “nobody.” Because right now Lorna is lying between us in the dark stroking Malena’s hair, which is really soft and silky and which, to be honest, I’m totally jealous of. Why is that dramatic, raven-colored shade of hair always so much prettier and more manageable than mine? It must be some kind of texture thing.

  “Look, shades―ghosts―sleep with the living a lot. They don’t mean anything by it; they’re attracted to our body heat, just like cats.” Except in my case, of course, since I have no body heat.

  “This isn’t helping. I’m getting my gun.”

  “Okay, okay, I promise,” I say quickly. “There’s nobody here but us.”

  “Fingers crossed,” whispers Lorna in my ear.

  he next morning, I wake up with a problem. My original plan was to spend my Sunday, the last of my days off, staking out Roosevelt’s Automotive Recycling Center in the hopes of spotting a silver Mercedes coming or going. But now t
hat Malena Ayon has attached herself to me like a limpet, how the hell do I explain my obsession with Gypsies to her? It’s not like she’s going to believe I’m still that upset about Uncle Sylvestro.

  And it’s really annoying trying to hold a normal breakfast conversation with Bull or Lorna with her around―every time I say anything to either of them, Malena gets that startled rabbit expression on her face and says something like, “Is one of them here now?” or fingers the little gold crucifix she wears around her throat. Hearing me snicker, she asks what they said.

  “Bull calls you the Mexican spitfire.”

  This makes her mad. “Fuck that!” she tells him indignantly, staring at an empty chair. “I’m not Mexican―I’m Salvatrucha!”

  “He’s not sitting there anymore. They sort of fade in the sunlight.”

  Which isn’t totally true, since Bull is still sitting in the other chair, but Malena brightens immediately at the thought. For someone who’s a cynical, trash-talking, street-hardened, and totally unsentimental cop, my partner is certainly a scaredy-cat when it comes to anything to do with ghosts or the supernatural. Though that term certainly isn’t fair to Kitty, who risked her life last night to save mine―as a reward for that I’ve put half a fresh kidney in her food dish; her favorite treat.

  I’m grateful to have Ayon around, but I have to remind myself that just because she hasn’t been banging my husband doesn’t mean she’s in the clear for my murder. In fact, she’s still the likeliest suspect, mostly because I can’t think of another one right now, aside from Cappy. There’s no getting over the inescapable fact that she introduced me to the Horvaths in the first place. And was there when I got my scratched arm. So all this BFF crap on her part may just be a big act. There’s no way of telling from her face; I of all people know just how devious she can be.