Doyle After Death (18 page)

But here in the afterworld . . . I did miss it. I felt its absence.

There was darkness and light, alternating, in our connection. In the darkness there was a pathos, a wounded otherness that was never fully healed. For just a moment, her guard dropped, and I caught a telepathic image of her, maybe one of her memories; I saw her as a young woman, her shape glowing phosphorescently in a dark little room: she was crying on the floor of a musty closet, with clothes dangling from hangers overhead. She was kneeling in that little booth, holding the door closed against someone trying to force their way in.

Then a bolt of electricity crashed down my spine toward her—­toward Jocelyn, in the afterworld—­and the frightened young woman vanished as the older, afterworld Joselyn and I writhed together in something as painful as it was satisfying.

“I
t's those psychic storms,” Jocelyn said, almost whispering it, later, when we were drinking her brandy. We were lying back on her bed, nude, the window open, cool air washing over us, clasped brandy glasses poised. There was a casual, relaxed intimacy between us. But I didn't feel terribly close to her. And once more, that bothered me.

You should have known,
I told myself.
But you leapt at it. You haven't changed much . . . Dying and resurrecting hasn't changed you much at all . . . Doyle was right about that. . .

“Those psychic storms don't affect me that way,” I said. “You affect me that way, though.”

But I was remembering that frightened young woman on the floor of a closet—­a literal closet, with coats on hangers overhead. Just that glimpse of her right before that flash of light shattered the shape in the darkness.

Jocelyn's own protective sheath was up now. Still, she was thinking along the same lines, because she said, “You can only see ­people in layers, any time, even here. You think you know ­people . . .”

“I'm pretty willing to be open to ­people here,” I said. “I wasn't open to it in the Before. I'm trying to be different here.” But the truth is I didn't want to be entirely open. I didn't want to talk to Jocelyn about Marissa.

“Me, I come from Minnesota. St Paul. The Twin Cities.” She swirled her brandy. “My dad was a construction boss, real ‘hard-­nose in a hard hat.' My mom was just trying to stay out of his way, most of the time. I wanted to be a dancer . . . I did dance some, too. Not just stripping either. But I never did get out of St. Paul, not really. I came back to town and talked to my sister and the next day I got hit by a cement truck and I think it might've been my old man driving . . . and then I was here.”

I was startled. “You think your
father
ran you down? With a
cement
truck?”

“He found out I was going to tell on him. See, he would get drunk and paw my little sister. I used to have to hide from him myself when he was smashed. Made me afraid of men, in some ways. I think maybe I overcompensate for that . . . or . . . act out around it or . . . whatever they call that.”

I was still processing the part about her dad running her over, on purpose, with a cement truck. “You seen him here?”

“Far as I know the prick is still alive—­I mean, he's still in the Before. You know, he was in the Army Corps of Engineers when he was a young guy. Real racist, too. Laughed about Katrina . . . ­People get over race fast after they die, but I know one guy here in town who still claims he hates Jews.”

“Moore?”

“Yeah. And I've run into one other hereabouts. But ­people have to let that racial stuff go, or they don't get the Summons, they don't go on to another place.”

“What place?”

“The next one up in the ladder. Oh but there's this guy Arnie, hated Arabs . . .”

Turned out, Jocelyn's second biggest joy was gossiping. After the Arnie story, she told me all about Lucio Geranno, who made brass pipes, hinges, picture frames, ornate metal cups, tools, metal things of all kinds, at the north side of town—­he didn't use much formulation. He had an actual smithy. She told me how he made a metal crossbow and was using it outside, firing at a target, and how Doyle had come up to him when he was doing it and told him to take it off into the woods, and how Geranno had threatened Doyle with said crossbow . . .

So was this Geranno another possible suspect in the murder? Especially as he worked in fire, he had an artisan way of thinking, and who knew what else he'd learned . . .

“How'd the whole thing with Doyle and Gerrano turn out?” I asked.

“Doyle challenged him to target shooting! Doyle won, and now they're great friends. Gerrano claims he never would've shot him. They're touchy about weapons around here, even though ­people can't really die exactly . . .” She looked at me. “Or can they? I heard you guys found someone on the cliff by the sea? Or . . . what was left of them?”

“Somebody's been talking too much.”

“But
did
you find someone there?”

“Some kinda remains. Morgan Harris. But we saw his soul flying upwards, on its way somewhere. So something of him is around.”

“Sure, but—­destroying a person's body here . . . that's like . . . some kind of murder anyway. I mean, even more than on Earth, your body is real intimate with your soul. That must've hurt.”

“Did you know Morgan Harris?”

“A little. Hey, you want me to read your fortune?”

“What? Oh yeah, Bertram mentioned you do that . . .” Why was she changing the subject to fortune-­telling? Was she mixed up in Morgan's death?

She put her glass on the floor, then rolled on her side and looked at me. “Move that glass.”

I moved it. Then she slapped my belly, hard, with the flat of her hand and all five splayed fingers.

“Ow!”

“Sorry. Arch your back a little. Good. Now hold still.”

She stared at the red imprint of her hand on my belly.

As I watched, the imprint's exterior outline faded, leaving a tracery inside, like the veins in a fallen red maple leaf.

“Huh. Says you have a long road of choices ahead of you. Says you will have a profound relationship, one you've been looking for most of your life. It's not a sexual one. Says your faith in others will be tested. Says your loyalty will falter. Says that I can trust you. Says a second death is a possibility but it depends on a critical choice.”

“Wait, second death? For me? Like Morgan Harris had?”

“I'd guess that's what it means. It's a maybe. Never seen that before.”

“How are you
reading
that?”

“It's written here in English, in tiny little cursive . . .”

I looked closer and saw the traceries were cursive words . . . which were fading now, and gone.

“You want me to try another reading?”

“No! How come there was a message for you, too, in it?”

“It just happens that way sometimes. Probably because I had a question in my mind about trusting you.”

“You feel like you can trust me now?”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“So you're ready to tell me about Morgan Harris now?”

“Not that much to tell. I tried to seduce him, realized he was gay. We had a nice time hanging out anyway, though he got boring about his afterworld theories of, what is it, botany.”

“None of that sounds like anything you had to worry about trusting ­people with.”

“I do some work . . . it's not exactly work . . . for Merchant, sometimes. There's something else. And I got the impression Morgan was afraid of something to do with Merchant. And I didn't know if I could tell you that, really . . . I don't want Merchant to know that I told you . . .”

“Oh. I won't tell Merchant. Anything else—­what specifically was Morgan afraid of?”

“I don't know. He just said he didn't want to go back to Merchant's place. You want something to eat? I gather food from the forests, and there's something I know how to make . . .”

“If you want.”

“You know what I really want?”

“I have a suspicion . . .” I reached for her. A man has a duty not to disappoint a lady.

Sometime later, spooning pleasantly in the breeze from the window, we fell into the trancelike state that replaces sleep here . . .

I
got out of the cab, wincing, still feeling the thumping in the belly I'd gotten from Wax's professional thumper.

Lucinda got out on the other side; the cab driver drove off. We were standing on a highway, at the edge of town, a sudden wind whipping through. Lucinda waved vaguely at the Desert Wind Motel, across the street. “Last I knew she was in twelve over there.”

“Okay.” Down the highway to the right was a strip club, with a ­couple of limos and several trailerless semitrucks parked in front of it. Glowing against the sky on the strip club's sign was the outline of a dancing girl, in pink neon—­like a cartoon caricature of the one I'd seen on the ceiling at Fremont Street. She was kicking a bare leg at the glare-­dimmed stars. To the left were two more motels and, farther down, a liquor store and a card room and, eventually, the cavern-­phosphorescent glow of downtown Las Vegas.

Lucinda walked back to her own motel, yawning. “I been up for two days. I got to get some real crash time.” She wasn't particularly talking to me.

I waited for a limo to pass on the highway, started across, then had to step back so a white convertible could rocket by with a bunch of drunk college students in it, howling as they went. A beer bottle went spinning out the back of the convertible, smashing on the road about five feet in front of me. A piece of amber glass landed on my right foot.

“Dumbass kids.” I shook the shard off, jumped over the rest of it, grimacing again from my bruises, and dodged across the road to the crunching gravel of the motel parking lot. The wind swirled around me, making me blink with dust, smelling of sage from the desert, and truck exhaust. Sure, Desert Wind Motel, what else.

I walked between parked cars, ignored a drunk young woman throwing up behind a Lexus, her boyfriend patting her on the back. “Be okay, babydoll. Be okay.”

“Shut up,” she said, between heaves.

I glanced at the motel office. I saw a grumpy-­looking purple-­haired elderly woman glaring out the window at me. I could tell she didn't have her teeth in. She was probably thinking about asking where I thought I was going without paying at the office first, but she wasn't sure she wanted to go to that much trouble.

The hell with her. I found the exterior stairs, of concrete and metal, and clattered up them, located room twelve.

There was a light on, inside, somewhere. I could hear a TV talking to itself in there, too. I tapped on the door, and said, “Marissa . . .” But my voice trailed off as the door swing inward. I saw it had been jimmied, forced open, and that was not good, not at all. And I could see that the lamp had been knocked off the bed.

I thought about calling the cops. This was one of those times I wished I had a gun. But if I rushed in with a gun it might get me shot.

Just do what you have to.

I pushed through the door. “Marissa? You here? I just want to see if we can work things out with . . . Lenny . . .”

I saw her feet then, one red pump on, one shoe off, where she lay on the floor between the rumpled bed and the bathroom. The TV was showing a rerun of
Two and a Half Men
. Charlie Sheen was smacking his forehead on the screen and saying something about how someone was just so, so, so . . .

I made myself walk over to the other side of the bed. She was stretched clumsily out, one leg drawn up, a brass lamp lying beside her head, unplugged.

Marissa's throat was all puffed up and red around the lamp chord the hire had used to strangle her. Lenny's hire, probably. Her eyes were bugged out, staring, her mouth open, filled up with caked blood. Her fingers were still clawed beside her neck, where she'd tried to tear the cord off. Her purse was lying beside her, open. Her wallet was half out of the purse. They hadn't bothered to make it look like a robbery. I could see a ­couple of twenties sticking out of the wallet.

There was a Happy Meal lying beside her, too, spilled out of its little cardboard container. Looked untouched. A child's meal. The little girl's backpack, with Hello Kitty on it, was lying beside her mother's bags, in the cone of overhead light by the bathroom door. They hadn't been here long.

I heard the little girl snuffling from the bathroom. I tried to remember the little girl's name, and couldn't.

Figures
, I thought
. You jerk. You never bothered to learn her kid's name. Marissa probably said it but you weren't listening.

So the guy had strangled Marissa while her kid was in the bathroom, and . . . the kid was lucky he didn't know she was in there. If you can call anything lucky, in that kid's life.

I went to the phone, and dialed 9, then called 911. I told the dispatcher what I'd found. Said I'd found the door open. Heard the child . . . they needed to send Child Protection Ser­vices too . . .

I wasn't supposed to touch anything but in case the little girl came out, I took one of her mother's blouses, lying on the end of the bed, and covered Marissa's face with it.

I was going to have to explain that to the cops. I was going to have to convince them I hadn't killed Marissa, too.

What else could I tell them? Should I tell them about Lenny? Probably I was going to have to make up a story about having heard Marissa might be in trouble . . .

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. It wasn't long before the sirens started wailing near.

I just sat there, trying to control the expression on my face. I had to get it real neutral.

I didn't want them to see the self-­loathing.

Sirens. A little girl crying. Radio dispatch voices . . .