Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  “Not at all,” Feigleman answered, removing his eyeglasses in an effort to appear more earnest. “I am in private practice and merely a part-time consultant to the department. An important aspect of that job is counseling, not only police officers but their loves ones. Laurel certainly fits that criteria, but in order that there be no question, I will be resigning my post as of this afternoon to devote more of my time and energy to this case.”

  “Who are these other personalities, what are they like?” a sleek, honey-blond anchorwoman wanted to know.

  “We know of four, in addition to Laurel,” Feigleman said enthusiastically, relieved to see the questioning back on track. “That is not to say that no others exist. Some MPD victims have had as many as ninety-nine different personalities, each with distinctly separate identities, physical characteristics, attitudes, speech, handwriting and values. They can be different ages and sexes, with varying degrees of intelligence. In this case one of them, a male personality named Alex, appears to be antisocial and the root of many of the patient’s problems.”

  “I have met a frightened little girl named Jennifer and a flirtatious young woman who calls herself Marilyn,” Sloat said, seizing the spotlight. “As well as Harriet, a woman who is apparently the housekeeper among them, adept at cooking and cleaning and homemaking.”

  Jim’s incredulous expression caught the eye of one of the reporters log-jammed outside the door. “What do you think, Detective?”

  “It’s all bullshit. Do they get an Academy Award now or later? This is nothing but a circus, a fucking three-ring circus. Lookit those guys,” he said angrily, staring at the screen where Sloat and Feigleman were now talking in tandem.

  It was the night of the full moon over Miami. The shooting started early.

  Irate shopkeepers, employees and customers armed with soda bottles, guns and CB radios won a bloody gun battle with two armed robbers. The manager of a produce market was beaten to death in a fight over who would unload a truckload of onions from Texas. An enraged auto repairman shot down a dissatisfied customer who had stopped payment on a check. And a troubled Vietnam veteran held his landlady hostage at rifle point in a rundown hotel for hours, demanding to talk to the president. Cuban gangs stomped Puerto Ricans, American blacks fought Haitians and Anglo rednecks warred with blacks and Latins.

  The afternoon shift went on overtime, and the midnight crew was called in early. The story of Laurel’s courtroom appearance and the press conference that followed was stripped across page one in the afternoon paper. When Jim arrived at the office, a copy folded under his arm, he found an apologetic secretary cleaning out Rick’s desk. “The lieutenant says we need the room. We have to be have some place to put your new sergeant.”

  Among his messages was one from Sloat. Jim crumpled and tossed it. The lawyer called again five minutes later.

  “Sorry to bother you, Detective, but we plan to confer with my client this evening, prior to her transfer to the hospital in the morning. The parents will not be present. They’re exhausted. It’s been quite a day.

  “The judge has suggested that, in the interests of propriety, someone from your department sit in on this meeting. We have no objection. We want it made clear that there is no coaching involved, no prompting of the defendant on our part.” He paused. “I know the revelations today may have been a surprise.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said, “and I don’t like surprises. Neither does Rick. He’s been released from the hospital and saw the news this afternoon. He talked to the parents last night. They didn’t mention this multiple personality business.”

  “It was a surprise to them too. Everything has been happening so fast that Dr. Feigleman and I haven’t had much opportunity to report to the family first. If you’re busy,” Sloat said, almost too accommodatingly, “we understand. But we wanted to extend the invitation, per the judge’s suggestion.”

  Jim sighed and picked up a pencil. “Gimme the time and place.” He called Rick, filled him in, grabbed a slice of pizza, his first food of the day, then took his next call, a routine DOA. Full moon, he thought, as he drove there alone, with all hell breaking out in the city and they give a routine case to the most experienced man in homicide. Another demonstration of the brainpower in charge. The department was like a freight train roaring downhill at top speed with nobody at the helm. He, Dusty and Rick had been a terrific team, the cases they had solved, the hours they had worked. The years. They should have been bringing us gifts of frankincense and myrrh, he thought. Instead they don’t give a shit what happens to any of us.

  His mind was made up by the time he reached the scene. When he got back to the office he would find the forms and fill out his retirement papers. The bastards! Dumping Rick, treating Dusty like her life didn’t matter—no reason to hang around now. He was eligible for retirement, and he would take it—make it effective in thirty days. With the vacation time he had coming, he could leave next week. He had no plans beyond that. In the old days he and Molly used to talk about what they would do when he retired. Too bad it was too late. Twenty-seven years and what did he have to show for it. Time to walk away. Should’ve done it a long time ago, he thought.

  The call was at an old house, fallen into disrepair, in a changing neighborhood. The man who lived there for fifty years had died there, slumped on the bathroom floor. Elderly people who die of natural causes generate routine paperwork, distasteful tasks, and they remind detectives of their own mortality. They offer no challenge to investigative skills, and because so many older people live and die alone and their corpses often lie undiscovered for days, dealing with them is decidedly unpleasant. That was the case on this call. Flies had led the uniforms to the dead man after they broke in through a front window.

  A neighbor had become suspicious and called it in just before dark. She had not seen the old man for days and his porch light had been burning constantly. She was concerned. A frugal man who just got by, he was never one to waste electricity. He tried to keep expenses down. His budget was too tight to take a newspaper or even own a telephone. Death appeared to be from natural causes.

  In the bedroom Jim found a locked metal file box. The likely place for burial instructions and personal papers with the names of the next of kin. Sure enough, the key was taped to the bottom, probably so it would not be mislaid. So many of the elderly who lived alone were forgetful. Jim opened the box and found a scrapbook of faded family photos that appeared to have been taken in pre-World War II Europe. Beneath the scrapbook was what made him gasp. Stacks and stacks and stacks of bills, hundreds and fifties, almost all old-time silver certificates, worth more than face value now. Thousands and thousands of dollars, and a smaller metal box with gold jewelry and coins, old silver dollars in mint condition and an antique gold pocket watch. Another survivor of the Depression, Jim thought. Many go to their graves still distrusting banks, hoarding away life savings in shoe boxes or coat linings or mattresses.

  Jim turned to summon one of the young uniforms to witness and help inventory the find, then hesitated. Why should the man’s uncaring relatives cash in? This kind of money could set him and Rick up in any sort of business they chose. Neither had ever taken a dime, and look where it had gotten them, he thought bitterly.

  He strolled into the kitchen, found a big brown, double grocery bag and carried it folded, at his side, into the bedroom. A lanky uniform cop stood a few feet inside the front door, his nose wrinkled in distaste at the odor. “Do me a favor, will ya,” Jim said. “I think the medical examiner’s wagon must be lost. They should’ve been here by now. The driver is probably having a problem with the address. Go down to the corner and see if they’re looking for us on Sixty-seventh Terrace instead of Sixty-seventh Street.”

  “I thought you just called them.”

  “Nah, they should’ve been here already.”

  The officer shrugged and stepped out onto the porch.

  His heart thudding painfully in his chest, hands shaking, Jim filled t
he big brown bag with the stacks of bills and the smaller metal box. He moved fast. There was so much. He stuffed old receipts and bills from a bureau into the top of the grocery bag along with some newspapers to camouflage the contents. He dropped all of the old man’s unopened mail, old papers and letters into the file box. He would conspicuously examine it in front of witnesses at the station, in case someone asked questions later.

  He carried the grocery bag out the door, past two young patrolmen, and set it on the front seat of his unmarked Plymouth. “Give me a hand, will ya, and bring out the file box in there.”

  An officer carried the box out onto the porch. “I haven’t look in here yet,” Jim announced, “but there may be some clue to next of kin. Open it up.” He lifted the scrapbook and stirred all the papers he had shoved beneath it. “Yeah, there must be a name to contact in here. Somebody’s got to foot the funeral bill,” he said. “We don’t want to stick the taxpayers with it. Put this in the trunk for me, I’ll go through it back at the station along with that other stuff in the bag.”

  The young cop nodded, closed the box and placed it in the trunk of Jim’s car.

  “Jesus, that damn pizza.” Jim winced and pressed his fist into his chest to relieve the heartburn. No more lousy rubbery pizza for me, he thought, sliding heavily behind the wheel. This is it. Time to retire. Thank God for the call from the neighbor across the street. The treasure trove he had found was a crack monster’s dream. Had one of them broken in, there would have been nothing left.

  He wondered what the gold coins and silver dollars were worth. The dead man had held them for decades. He would call Rick after the meeting at the detention center. He would just tell him, at first, that he was putting in his papers. It was over. Never again would he see or smell another dead body. He was never again going to have to look at maggots, wipe gore off his shoes or be stared at by the empty eyes of some corpse.

  He wondered why the old man had never moved out of that crummy house and this stinking neighborhood. He could have had the best. Sometimes, Jim thought, we cling too long to familiar things. This neighborhood was one of the worst. He shook his head as he drove past rows of dilapidated homes and run-down apartment buildings. This guy was lucky he didn’t get ripped off a long time ago. Probably because he looked like he had nothing to steal. He obviously did not whip out his gold pocket watch to check the time in this neighborhood. In the thirties and forties, it had been top drawer. But that was long ago. The corner he was passing now was where the 1980 riots had begun, a bad neighborhood.

  His career was at an end. Fuck the police department. Fuck all the dead bodies. He almost said it aloud, thinking for a moment that Rick was beside him. They had been partners for so long they could almost read each other’s thoughts. He knew what Rick would say about what he was doing. He could hear his voice: “It makes you as bad as they are.”

  He remembered the pastor. “There is justice … a higher justice.”

  Shit, he hated the pricks, the connivers, the thieves on both sides of the badge. He sighed aloud, knowing suddenly that he could never be one of them. No matter how justified or providential it might seem, he thought, this just ain’t right.

  He sighed again. Some damn relative, who probably never gave a hoot about the old man, is about to come into a nice inheritance. He had joined the department an honest man, and that was the way he would leave it. At least he would have that. He shook his head and almost smiled. Once a chump, always a chump.

  The squeezing sensation in his chest intensified—heartburn city. He rolled the window down for some air and breathed deeply. The pain struck with such cataclysmic intensity that his knees jerked up and cracked against the steering wheel. He knew what it was. But it can’t be, he thought. Not now. Not now. The pain was agonizing. His clenched hands gripped the wheel as the car mounted the sidewalk and thudded to rest against a telephone pole.

  A fucking heart attack. He hoped the pain would ease up long enough for him to use the radio. Faces—he saw faces in the shadows out on the street. They had seen the car mount the sidewalk and roll into the pole. He reached for the walkie, next to the paper bag on the seat next to him. But the radio slipped from his trembling grasp and fell to the floor as pain convulsed his entire body. He needed help. Groping blindly for the door handle, he pushed it hard, with all the strength he had left. It fell open, swinging wide. He would have fallen with it, but his seat belt held him securely in place. He saw the faces. Closer now, wary and curious at first, now more confident. Help—they would get him help. The first was a scrawny, swaggering teenager, a street thug, the local purse snatcher, Jim thought. But he was a cop, and he needed help. “Help me, call the squad,” he gasped. “Police.”

  The thin young face with crafty, soulless eyes was close to him now. “Police,” he repeated. He was grinning and unfastening Jim’s watch. The detective saw a glint of gold tooth as the still grinning youth reached across him for the police radio. Other faces moved in closer, bolder. The car doors were all open now. Jim felt hands on his body. His gun, his wallet, his badge case. The big brown bag disappeared from the seat beside him, passed from hand to hand with inquisitive murmurs until there was a sound like a sigh and then scrambling noises among the scavengers that surrounded the car.

  No! No! he thought, gasping for breath. Not like this. This isn’t fair. Molly! Oh, Molly! Pain exploded in his chest. He listened to his own moans and could not move. His last conscious thought was about his shoes. They were taking his goddamn shoes.

  The medical examiner’s wagon arrived ninety minutes later after Jim had left the dead man’s house. Twenty minutes later, after the body was removed, the waiting uniforms checked back into service, or tried to. Their radio transmissions to the dispatcher were disrupted by playful citizens. Hoots and hollers. “Hey, we got your radio!” Loud laughter and music. A police radio had obviously fallen into the wrong hands. It happens. Forgetful officers occasionally leave them in restaurants or on the roofs of their cars. Sometimes they are stolen, or dropped during a foot chase. Strange voices intruding on police frequencies could also mean the officer that radio was assigned to is in trouble and needs help.

  Between the curses and insults broadcast over the wayward walkie, the dispatcher conducted an on-the-air roll call. Every man and woman on duty responded, except one. Jim Ransom. The location of his last call was broadcast and a manhunt launched.

  Rick heard the news when he went to the station to pick up his belongings and wait for Jim to come back from the conference at the women’s detention center. He joined Dominguez and Mack Thomas. “Jesus, will you look at that moon,” Dominguez said, as they drove toward the address of Jim’s last call. The huge yellow disk hung low over the city. “We are in for it tonight.”

  “Never fails,” Mack said.

  They passed the corner where the 1980 riots had started.

  “Something’s wrong,” Rick said. “It’s too damn quiet.”

  “Yeah,” Dominguez said. “Where is everybody? Nobody’s out on the street.”

  “If this neighborhood had birds they wouldn’t be singing. This must be how the settlers felt just before the Indian attack,” Mack said, scrutinizing the oddly deserted streets and alleyways.

  Rick saw it first. “Is that … that can’t be one of our cars. It is!”

  “Oh, shit!” Dominguez said, screeching to a stop. Jim’s unmarked was difficult to recognize. The hood and the trunk lid were up, the battery was missing and the city tag was gone. So were the tires and the wheels. Pale bare feet hung out the open passenger side door. The dead driver was sprawled naked across the front seat.

  Rick called the married daughter in Orlando from Jim’s desk at the station. He asked her to call Molly. He sat there alone for some time. The office was nearly empty. Everybody was out on the street.

  A clerk switched on a TV news report. The police chief expressed his outrage. The mayor delivered an emotional speech. “What has this city become,” he
asked, “when scavengers rob the dead? When a dedicated public servant, a law enforcement officer who devoted his entire life to the city of Miami, is picked clean by human vultures and left to die like an animal in the street?”

  Had he been with Jim, Rick thought, he might have saved him. He knew he could have prevented what happened after. What was it Jim had always said? Even the dead aren’t safe in Miami. Jim was right. He shouldn’t have died alone. He wouldn’t have—I would have been with him, he thought, had it not been for Laurel. Dusty would have been with him, if not for Laurel. He remembered what Jim had said about Laurel. In the rescue van, after the shooting at the Japanese Garden, when Rick thought he was dying. Jim had held his hand, raging, “I shudda been there. I shudda realized … she knows everything.”

  She knows everything. Everything. He checked his watch. The session at the women’s detention center was already under way.

  Though the doctor and lawyer could scarcely conceal their elation, Laurel appeared nervous, gnawing at her lip. She faced them across the wooden table in the interview room. They were somewhat relieved that no one from the department had joined them after all. They could speak more freely.

  “I thought I was going to the hospital right away,” Laurel said, her voice tense. “I don’t want to stay here another night.”

  “The admittance had to be arranged,” Sloat said. “First thing in the morning—you’re outta here. Don’t worry. Things could not be progressing better.”

  “You would not believe the interest your case has already generated,” Feigleman said.

  “We’ve already had inquiries about book rights and at least one call from a major Hollywood studio. Once we sort out all the offers, we can negotiate a deal,” the lawyer said.

  Laurel acted as though she had not heard. “What will it be like?”