“Yes.”
“Welcome to the unit.”
Suzuki slaps Whistler on the shoulder. “Come on. I’ll order some food. We’ll be here late. You like soosh?”
Whistler snatches the box, follows Suzuki. “No,” he says. “I hate sushi.”
“That’s because you never had good soosh. Trust me. The soosh is on me. I’ll order hot sake too. Enough hot sake and any soosh tastes good.”
Whistler bumps along behind his new partner, resigned to an unpleasant few hours stuck in a confined space with Suzuki talking and the smell of raw fish. Hopefully he will stop saying “soosh.” Whistler has never had sake, but the idea of hot booze makes his stomach roll. He sincerely wishes he were about to share a plate of hot shrimps and cold beer with Moe.
Baby Talk
It’s after midnight and Calvert lies atop his covers in the dark, like a corpse spread out at a wake. He’s unable to sleep. His brain spins like a gyroscope yanked into motion by his day. The first several hours had been deeply challenging: leaving New Horizons, visiting his old home where he was accosted emotionally by fragments of his past life, and physically by an overzealous patrolman. He moved to a new place, had a job interview, got lost, and navigated an exhausting shopping trip. An unexpected highlight had been meeting Rosa. Since arriving home, he’d had nothing but unstructured time alone with his centrifugal thoughts. In the end, all he could do was let things spin and stare at the ceiling.
Despite being off, one halo-shaped fluorescent bulb glows slightly over his kitchen sink. The mercury vapor housed in the fragile glass retains a weak charge. This is much the same as his busted biochemistry. His system is turned off but has juice to fuel a fraction of a life. A term springs unbidden to Calvert’s mind—“bioluminescence.” A free-floating artifact of the lost knowledge of his former life.
His brown suit was soaked through when he returned from shopping. He hung it on its hanger. He was unsure how to purge the scent of his corpse sweat from the material. He knows suits are meant to be dry-cleaned. The concept of cleaning without water is absurd, though he thinks chemicals are used. Perhaps it’s like embalming. He doubts it as soon as he thinks it.
Recalled knowledge rushes in. When bodies are embalmed, an incision is made, and arteries are filled with a mixture of formaldehyde, water, and other mystical chemicals. Simultaneously, all blood is drained from the circulatory system. To embalm the average adult requires two gallons of fluid. This proves his skepticism about dry cleaning. How could clothes remain dry with so much fluid? He knows his logic is faulty. Perhaps dry cleaners blast clothes with baby powder. The memory of baby powder tickles his nose. The imagined sensation summons a wave of personal history crashing into him, as real as when he first experienced it.
* * *
Mere had a sister, Franny, who was pregnant with her first child. Calvert and Mere were traveling in Eastern Europe. They’d had sex before going down to breakfast. They watched a matinee of Les Misérables at the Prague Opera House. After a late lunch, they strolled along the Charles Bridge.
“If we have a boy,” Mere said, “We should name him Charles.” She browsed a stall of acrylic cityscapes, lazily passing the beautiful afternoon.
“I always hoped to name my first son Anton, after Chekhov,” Calvert said.
“What about Calvert Junior?” Mere teased.
“God no. Well, depends if we like him. If he’s a horrible human, he may deserve to be Calvert Junior.”
“How will we know if he’s horrible when he’s the size of a sack of sugar?”
“A tiny Hitler mustache is a good indication.”
Mere laughed at the joke. Mere had a warm, full laugh that made him content in his core. She took his hand and led him across the bridge, between milling tourists. She looked at a rack of hand-dyed silk scarves. “It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “I’ll have a girl. My mother cursed me. One day you’ll have a girl as selfish and mean as you’ve been to me.”
“That’s good parenting.”
“Yeah,” Mere said. “She set a high bar. How will I ever live up to it?”
“You’ll be a great mom.” He pecked her cheek. While browsing he picked up a silk tie, more flamboyant than he would normally go for. He held it under his chin. Mere made a disapproving face and put it back. “So if we have a girl …?” he said leadingly.
“If we have a girl, we will name her Olga, after Chekhov’s heroine.” She said it in her Professor Calvert voice. “Little Olga Greene.”
“I prefer Meredith,” he said. “After the loveliest person I know.” She moved into the circle of his arms. Then he added, “Or Bubbles. The stripper from my bachelor party.” She punched his shoulder. “Bubbles could be the middle name.” She punched him again. “Actually, she prefers to be called an exotic dancer. It’s an art form.” She had punched him a third time, and he knew it would leave a mark.
Minutes later, in their hotel lobby, only yards away from the banks of the Vitava River, Mere’s sister called from a hospital on another continent—her water had broken, she was going into labor a month early. She was scared.
“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” Mere had promised.
They cut their trip short, made a series of pricey arrangements, and arrived at the maternity ward forty-four hours later. There were complications; the baby was delivered by caesarian and was in an incubator, but stable. Mere began consoling her sister, comforting her and reassuring her that the baby would be fine. Calvert walked the hall, dead with exhaustion, the scent of baby powder irritating his nose.
* * *
One last splinter of knowledge flies into the reminiscence: the day Franny was discharged, she named the baby girl Meredith.
The memory abandons him as quickly as it appeared, leaving him to stare forlornly at his ceiling and consider what tumbledown dominoes may have led to his well-deserved death. A lingering sense of loss settles cold on his prone body like morning dew, but he has no inkling where the feeling originates.
Deceitful Furnishings
When Whistler arrives, he grabs his tablet on the way to his desk. He walks through to see who else is around and checks the conference room. He’s thankful it aired out from the previous night, the trash can emptied.
Despite Ruther’s insistence he would apply enough pressure to make short work of the ME’s report, the report isn’t around and neither is Ruther. Ruther had bet his life on his ability to get the report expedited. I hope he’s not dead. “Ha,” Whistler says aloud at his own silent sass.
He gets coffee brewing before turning on his tablet. When he logs in, he finds a link from the digital forensics department. He clicks it and is rewarded with a clone of Anna Beth Harpole’s phone data. He makes a cup of lukewarm coffee and sits at his desk to learn about her life.
It’s boring reading and exclusively work related. The most frequent correspondence is with her boss, Greg Kidd. After picking through the four most recent months of tedious exchanges, Whistler is convinced they maintained a professional relationship. He finds nothing suspicious, no veiled innuendo to sets off alarms in his suspicious mind.
There are confirmations of travel arrangements, notifications from American Express, and a great many reservation notices for lunch and dinner for Mr. Kidd, arranged through her phone. Even though Suzuki had warned him that supplies are tight and he should be frugal about the laser printer, he sends everything to the printer. It’s easier for him to have something he can get his hands on.
Whistler shifts his rump in the office chair. He drinks coffee for the first time since beginning to read. It’s gone completely cold. He doesn’t mind. He sets the “Crafty Ass Bitch” mug aside and grabs the tablet, leaning back. He throws one foot up to the edge of his desk, and the chair goes over backward. He’s pitched so fast he does a back roll and finds himself belly down on the slick, smelly carpet.
“Jesus!” Whistler says.
He gets to his feet fast. He checks that the tablet’s screen isn�
��t damaged. It’s fine. Thank God for small miracles. He sets the tablet carefully on his desk. He moves slowly, expecting some other catastrophe. He sets his chair up, inspects it, and finds nothing obviously wrong, but he will never trust that piece of furniture again. He abandons the chair and moves into the conference room to continue working.
Anna Beth’s contacts are all business related. Each entry is accompanied by a job title and the name of an organization or company: Joseph Dunn, Executive Director of Futurist infrastructure at the Marconi Group. Whistler doesn’t understand what any of these people do. There are no plumbers, teachers, or roofers. No cops or firemen or factory foremen. The number of contacts isn’t too daunting—over a hundred but less than one fifty. There are no Harpoles to call, no obvious family members. Kidd’s cell number is there, of course, and he is the next most likely avenue of contact.
Whistler puts off calling Kidd for several hours. Time zone differences are as good an excuse as any. He returns to nosing through the dead woman’s e-mails. He still finds nothing suspicious or noteworthy. According to the techies, the laptop is new, activated in the past few months, and contains nothing not available on her phone other than a PowerPoint presentation and a web browser history of virtual shopping: shoes, twelve-dollar deodorant, three tank tops, and a room humidifier that looks like a frog on a lily pad base.
He searches social media and finds Anna Beth tagged in a high school photo with bushy, overprocessed hair, eyebrows that look like they were badly drawn with a fat Sharpie, and a large hoop-style septum piercing like a doorknocker for her face. He also finds her at Carnegie Mellon on stage in a production of Steel Magnolias, her blonde wig pushed back, revealing her dark hairline underneath. He finds a headshot on LinkedIn. Beautiful. Her position is listed as assistant to Mr. Kidd and his consulting group, Kingfisher. He also finds a long list of impressive professional bullet points. He sends some images to the printer and hears it start to spit out pages.
I can’t put off calling her boss.
He dials and the phone rings and rings. Finally a canned voice says: “You’ve reached the phone of Greg Kidd. I’m away for the weekend, hopefully doing something pointless, but I doubt I’m so fortunate. You can reach me on Monday during business hours. If it’s an emergency, please contact my assistant, Anna Beth.” The affable Greg Kidd gives the number of Anna Beth’s cell phone, which currently sits in a plastic bag in an empty office one floor above Whistler. He’s relieved to have dodged the conversation.
He’s hungry. He takes the stairs down to the canteen, which is what they call the room in the basement with three vending machines: one for soda, one for snacks, and one for coffee. He feeds the dollar slot and punches up some salty peanuts in a cellophane sleeve. He tears it along the marked line; it rips down the long side and spills its innards. He catches the majority of the nuts in his palm and kicks the others under the machine with the side of his foot.
Back upstairs, Ruther still hasn’t arrived. Maybe he really is dead. He wonders who would take over the unit. Oh please, not Suzuki.
He picks up a stack of laser prints and goes to the conference room to sort through the boxes of potential evidence he hadn’t yet touched. He sets up two tables so he can spread out, inspect, and label the items Ezekiel sent the previous evening. He snaps on gloves. He unzips her sleek wheelie suitcase. He removes a pair of slacks and searches the pockets, finds petite silver earrings, and bags them. The missing earrings? Looks even less like a mugging. He methodically moves to the next item.
It’s early afternoon when he hears someone rattling around in the front office. Whistler folds one of Anna Beth’s tops and slips it into a bag. The label reads “Eileen Fisher.” A quick search of the internet reveals the item is a Cashmere Boucle Bliss Box-Top in light gray and sells for full retail at four hundred and sixty-eight dollars. It’s a nice top, feels great, clearly of high quality. Whistler’s entire wardrobe might cost less. He’s beginning to suspect Anna Beth was somewhat high maintenance.
Suzuki arrives like he’s making an entrance at a comedy showcase and dressed like he’s ready for a drunken round of golf: bright plaid pants, orange Polo shirt, boat shoes with no socks. Whistler is momentarily happy to have company. Then Suzuki says, “Hey, partner, did I mention my wife’s sausage-only diet?”
Whistler stops mid-reach for the next item.
“You get it?”
“You mean because sausage is slang for penis?”
“Yeah. You get it.” Suzuki turns as if including an imagined audience. “This guy gets it.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
Whistler hands Suzuki the stack of printouts: lists of contacts and other text-based documents, and images of Anna Beth from his digital surfing. “Start arranging those on the board. When you’re done, call the airline and get a list of passengers for both of her flights, confirm she was flying alone. Cross-check her contacts with passenger manifests and the conference attendees.”
“What for?”
“Look for connections. Also, we got the list of conference participants, but that wasn’t the only conference at the Echelon. We need those other participants and every guest. Plus a list of all employees. Everything needs to be checked—run names through the database to look for criminal records. Who knows? We could get lucky.”
“She obviously didn’t fly home with anyone. Because, you know, she didn’t fly anywhere.” When Whistler doesn’t respond, Suzuki adds, “Because she’s dead.”
“Doesn’t mean someone she knows wasn’t booked to fly out with her.”
“Fair enough,” Suzuki concedes. “Odds are good, people leaving the conference could be flying back on the same flight. Doesn’t mean they are stalking her.”
“We’re trying to make whatever connections we can. Find someone to talk to, whoever might have spoken to her.”
“I suppose so. What are you doing?”
“Going through her personal effects.”
“I’d be happy to go through her lingerie. Anything lacey or leather.” Suzuki grins.
Whistler finds Suzuki extremely not funny. “No, thanks. It needs to be handled with care. That’s why you are using Scotch tape and push pins to stick things on a wall. That’s why you get the data entry.”
“You catch on fast,” Suzuki says. He seems to relish being an object of scorn.
They turn their backs on one another and settle in for more long hours of drudgery.
The Inevitability of Death and Taxes
It is full-on daytime when Calvert rolls off his bed. The crepitus of his desiccating joints announces his body’s ongoing protest. Perhaps postmortem lividity has begun. He rattles his skull to shake out the feeling of dread that seeped in during his sporadic slumber. His exhaustion is due to a combination of his unconscious mind burning itself out and yesterday’s activities.
In the bathroom, he rolls his damaged shoulder. It makes crunchy sounds but doesn’t hurt. He can’t feel it at all. He empties his excess fluids in the commode. On the back of the toilet is the newspaper he found when Wrinkled Agatha dropped him off. Seeing the paper gives him an idea. He gets his robe from the floor.
He leaves his apartment open, tromps down the stairs, and shoves open the door that leads to the street. On the sidewalk he finds another paper with a sticker addressed to the previous tenant. His body idles in neutral while he contemplates his new address. It reads “201½.” The half feels right. That is how he is: about halfway between what he once was and where he will end up.
He doesn’t know when the USA Today subscription will run out, but he’s pleased to have the paper. He puts it under his arm, as is his habit, and lumbers back upstairs. There are two apartments above the veterinary hospital: his studio and a sprawling warren of patrician walls that make up an unauthorized artist’s co-op. Or so the owner told him when he and Abbey had met her to look at the place.
“Please let me know if the neighbor gives you any trouble,” she had whispered conspiratorially, leaning
toward Calvert. Her hair was tied into a cascading fountain on top of her head, and it whipped about as she checked both directions. “The self-proclaimed artist who lives next door has a long-term lease. But I’d love to get him out of there. When I heard he was holding art exhibitions, performances, and whatnot, I mailed him a stern letter. He replied through Lawyers for the Creative Arts or something like that. For now my hands are tied.”
Calvert hadn’t known what to say. He was confused by the word “whatnot.” He’d looked to Abbey for guidance. She was on the landing, staring at her phone, either attempting to look like she wasn’t listening, or actually not listening.
The plumage on the woman’s head flicked Calvert’s face as she glanced around. “If you see any illegal things going on, let me know. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“What things?” he asked.
“Illegal drugs, deviant behavior, proof of a business being run on the premises, pets, anyone not on the lease living in the space.” She slipped a business card into his hand. The card told him her name was Megan Ranch. What do they raise on a megan ranch? He didn’t give voice to the question. She had a presence that even his stunted perception had easily decoded as “not fond of speculative musings .”
The door to the co-op opens as Calvert tops the flight of stairs. A bear of a man in his sixties steps out, lighting a doobie. He sparks the wheel of a disposable lighter until the flame licks the point of the fat joint. He sips the other end and holds the lighter’s chrome band near the hot tip to watch the cherry of heat swell. Satisfied, he draws on it and holds the smoke in his chest. When he exhales, his face floats in a cloud. He winks at Calvert.
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