by David Jobe
He would have rathered the orderly beat down. Though he couldn’t even think about drinking anything right now, the absence of that coffee felt like the doors of heaven swinging shut. “I needed it to have my vision.” He kept his head down but looked at her through his hair.
She shook her head in solemn disapproval. “I have worked here six years. For three before that, I worked in a place just liked this. You know where ‘I need it for my visions’ falls in the junkie top ten of reasons to get high?” Her tone reminded him of the year he spent in a catholic school where the teachers spoken with a conviction that went beyond knowledge and lingered at the edge of holy indignation. “Fourth. Congrats. You are not as uninspired as the top three. I had such high hopes for you.”
“Please listen.”
“No. I have heard it all before. The whole song and dance about spiritual enlightenment and how the drugs help you commune with the other side. I get it, it’s artist’s talk. It’s escapism at its best. You aren’t seeing the future, you are hiding from the present. You think I don’t get it? That you don’t want to be here. That you don’t want to wake up and find yourself in this place. I get that, but drugs aren’t the answer. Whatever started you down this path, it doesn’t deserve to keep pushing you that way.”
The last line hit him like a ton of bricks. “It’s not like that. These are real. You are going to be killed tonight.”
Silva took a guarded step back. “Did you just threaten me?”
“Oh god no.” Chris stood but wavered on his feet.
Silva took a step back, turning her head ever so slightly to watch him and the door. He knew this tactic all too well. She prepared herself for an attack and had decided on a path to flee should she need it.
“I promise. It’s not a threat. Please. Just hear me out. Someone in here gets a hold of a butcher knife and comes after you. They cut you here first.” He drew a line with his finger across his forearm. “Then they cut your throat.” He sat back down. Standing did not appear to be on his list of abilities at the moment. Plus, he needed her to listen and not be in fight or flight mode. “I try to stop them and they kill me too.” The last slipped from him like a child admitting something that would get him grounded.
For a long moment, she stood staring at him, her shoulders easing a fraction. “So, who does this?” Her tone dark and still angry.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to reason it out, but I wasn’t smart enough. Or I missed a clue. I don’t know. I just know it happens in the medical closet where you keep all the meds for everyone.”
Her face remained impassive. “Where did you get the drugs from?”
“That’s not important.”
“That’s nice of you to think so. And stupid. You are in a mental ward with people who are suffering, taking doctor prescribed meds and are dealing with addictions. You think that access to street drugs is not important? I thought you were a cop before all of this. Have you ever. Ever. In your life run into a scene where the inclusion of street drugs made the situation anything but volatile?” She stormed toward him, her fear seeming to have vanished. “You tell me right now who gave you the drugs, Chris. None of this horse manure about needing them to peer into the future, the ether or whatever stupid name you’ve given your high. You tell me right now. And I swear to God if you say anything about not being a narc. You. Then I will…” she let the threat hang without an end, but it didn’t matter to Chris.
She had hit him so many times with truths he felt like he was sparring against a verbal Muhammad Ali. She had it right. This was no place for drugs to be given out. At least to anyone but him. “I don’t know his name. He has a Mohawk and a bunch of earrings.”
“Randall.” She said the name like one might utter a curse. A gypsy curse as his mother would have said. “I should have known.” She leaned back, eyeing him. She crossed her arms again. “I haven’t given up on you, Chris Tailor. But the road back to where you were with me will not be won with cute comments and pretty smiles.”
“You like my smile?”
Her lips twitched, but the frown remained. “Get some orange juice and go to your ten o’clock session.” With that, she turned and marched away.
Chris stared at her in silence, his mouth hanging open. After a few moments, he asked aloud, “what just happened.”
“You got caught. You narced. And now you are up shit creek without a paddle. Hell. I’m not even sure you got a boat at this point.”
Chris turned to see Trip sitting on his bed, back to the farthest corner with his knees up to his chest and his arms around his legs. He had forgotten that he had a roommate. “Yeah. I think you are right.”
Trip nodded. “Can you really see the future?” He peered at Chris over his knees, his face hidden behind the bulk of his legs.
Chris sighed. “I can. Fat lot that it does me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had the vision. It told me what happens, but I couldn’t figure out who. Hard to stop a murder if you don’t know the perp.” Chris put his head in his hands, his skull throbbing.
“what is a perp?”
“It’s short for perpetrator. It means the person who does the crime. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out who it will be.”
He heard Trip rustle in his bed. When Trip spoke, the voice had become closer. “Can you tell me about the dream?”
Chris stifled a sharp comment about the fact he called it a dream but thought better of it. He himself couldn’t say what it was called. He also came close to telling Trip no, but the more he thought about it, the more the idea made sense. Not that he thought Trip could help him, but that walking through it aloud may help him put together a piece he might be missing. He had used this tactic quite a bit with witnesses back in the day. “Alright, Trip. But come sit over here on the floor or something. My throat hurts and I don’t want anyone else to hear.”
He heard Trip move off the bed and then saw him slip into view on the floor in front of him. Once seated, he curled himself back up like he had been, staring up at Chris with wide eyes. In that instance, he looked like a poor lost kid ready for a bedtime story.
Only this story was a nightmare. Still, he began as best he could, walking through each piece he could remember. The whole time Trip sat in silence, unmoving and watching with his big eyes. After he finished, he found himself frowning. He hadn’t thought of anything else. In fact, he was even less sure of what he had reasoned out. Perhaps he had been wrong about so many of the meanings.
Trip interrupted his thoughts. “Well, at least you have one piece of good news.”
Chris frowned at Trip. “I don’t follow.”
“You said there was no blood trail to the other room until you decided that you were going to do something about it.”
“So?”
Trip smile peeked from behind his knees. “It means you have the power to change it. A lot of the books I read say that if we ever could see the future, that we wouldn’t be able to change it. No matter what we did, our actions would just make it happen. In our arrogance, we would bring about the very fate we tried to put off. If you couldn’t change it, then the blood path would be there when you first walked up. It wasn’t. So, what that means is if your actions have the possibility to change the outcome, this time for your own death, it is not unlikely there exists a third option that sees you both alive.”
Chris found himself with his mouth gaping open again. “That makes sense. It hurts my head, but it makes sense.”
Trip did something Chris had never seen him do. He gave a small laugh. “I’m not in here because I’m a moron, Chris. Some of the smartest people are thought to be the least sane.”
Chris laughed. “I can’t argue that logic.”
Trip smiled again. “Did you see anything else in your dream? Maybe something around your body?”
Chris shook his head. “No. It was just me with a knife in my eye. Which, if I am being honest, it’s impressive that I got that far from the
attack to fall down.”
“Did you?” Trip hugged his knees tighter. When he spoke again, it was quieter. As if he were afraid the words might enrage Chris. “You followed a blood trail. Doesn’t mean it came from a wound on your eye. You said he had cut Miss Silvia before the final one. Might be you had a cut that you didn’t see. But the reason I asked is that maybe you drew something with your blood to give you a hint. After all, you know you will see your corpse. Might be that you hid a clue in your dying moments as to who the killer might be.”
Chris rubbed his temples. Trip had a point. “Alright. Give me a second.” He closed his eyes and tried to even out his breathing. It had been another trick he had used with witnesses to a crime. It helped to shut out all the sights and sounds and focus on one picture at a time. He willed his mind to go back to when he saw his corpse in the shadowy room. He focused his breathing. For the longest time, he stood there in his mind, looking down at himself. After awhile he began to become frustrated. There was nothing there. Nothing near his fingers.
Then his eyes caught something. His right index finger had blood on it. He had drawn something in blood. Trip had been right! But where? He began to scan the body. His eyes found it straight away. There was a symbol drawn on the white sheet near his head, close to the eye that had the new stainless steel jewelry. He kicked himself for not realizing it. Of course, he would draw it there. Chris had been trained to notice the weapons first, both for forensics and for being wary of it being used again on him. The irony of this situation notwithstanding.
“I did leave a clue.” Chris smiled.
“Jinkies.” Trip replied back, with his own grin.
Chris laughed. “I have no idea what it means, but I drew something. Do you have something I can write on before I lose it?”
Trip scrambled over to his side of the room. There he rifled under his bed for a few moments before pulling out a large drawing pad. A bit more rummaging and he withdrew a pencil. He handed it to Chris somewhat reluctantly. “This is all I have left of him.”
Chris knew Trip referred to his deceased brother. Though Chris had never learned the history behind what had befallen Trip’s brother, something in the way Trip spoke about him made him think it related to why Trip lived in this place. “I won’t-“ He stopped. The front side of the pad had a cover of a light tan to brown. Whatever the words had been written on it when it was new, they no longer existed under the various doodles that dominated the page. Whoever had drawn this, presumably Trip’s brother, had been very talented. That was not what had caught his eye. Up in the left corner, drawn onto what looked like a stone tablet was the symbol that had been drawn beside his corpse on the bed. This drawing was the Mona Lisa version and his the third-grader version, but there was no mistaking it. Here, the symbol made more sense. It was two curving wings outstretched with the letter P in the center. “It was this symbol.” He pointed at it and looked up at Trip.
Trip looked at the symbol, then looked back at him. Tears touched the side of his eyes. “Are you sure?”
Chris nodded. “What does it mean?”
Trip sighed and sat down, collecting the pad from Chris as he did. “It means so much, and yet so little.”
“Now is not the time to be cryptic. What does it mean?”
Trip stared up at him with wet eyes. “First. Tell me what it means to you.”
Chris frowned. “This is nonsense. It means nothing to me. You or your brother drew it.”
“And you hadn’t seen it before now, right?”
Chris shook his head. “I wouldn’t have gone through your stuff.”
Trip smiled, though it only made tears roll down his cheek. “Not what I meant.” He sighed and leaned his head against Chris’s nightstand. “It’s a symbol my brother created for his parrot, Jeeves.”
“My clue is ‘Jeeves’?”
“It would appear so.”
Chris rubbed his temples, the pain had become a bit more intense. Perhaps he was slamming those two remaining cells together too hard and too often. “Is there someone in here named Jeeves?”
Trip shook his head.
“Well, I remember Jeeves being someone’s butler’s name. Do we have a butler here?”
Trip laughed, though another set of tears rolled down his face. “Does this look like a place with a butler?”
Chris laughed too. “No, and I would have probably already met him if we had. I just have no idea what that means.”
Trip sat forward, staring up at Chris. “It means this isn’t the first try at solving this.”
Chris frowned. “You got me again. What does that mean?”
Trip set the drawing pad down on the top of the nightstand, giving it a loving pat before turning to Chris. “The fact that you used a symbol you just now learned means that we had this conversation before, or something much like it. Perhaps last time you had left yourself a symbol that meant even less to you. So, you started pouring over other ideas. For some reason, you settled on Jeeves. My guess is that it may become apparent later on. At least, that is my hope. Hopefully, you will figure it out in time to make a difference. And there isn’t another you down this mental rabbit hole that is thinking up a better symbol. It’s like that movie Groundhogs Day, but with more mental gymnastics.”
“I think I follow.” He thought he might be lying. “I need to keep an eye out for the- Holy shit!” He started to laugh. He laughed so hard it hurt his head even more.
“Care to share?”
Chris nodded, working to get himself under control. “I was going to say that I need to keep an eye out for the butler.”
Trip laughed. “Keep an eye out. That’s funny.”
Chris laughed again. “It gets worse. My clue is ‘The butler did it’.”
They both laughed for a good long while. Finally, when they started to get their laughter under control, they watched Silva walk by the room. She gave them a long hard glare before marching off again.
“I’m not sure that even saving her will change her opinion of me,” Chris admitted.
Trip smiled wide, no longer hugging his knees. “Yeah, if she gave your coffee to Isaac, then you really pissed her off. That’s DEFCON 4 for her. She hates Isaac.” Trip thought about it for a moment. “But, that could mean she actually likes you and wasn’t just doing the carrot and stick routine with you like she does the rest of us. Might be you still have a chance. Provided you both don’t die here shortly.”
Chris nodded. He looked over at Trip. “Thank you. If I do pull this off, it will be because of you.”
Trip nodded, looking at the doorway. Standing up he scooped up his drawing pad and tucked it back under his bed. Then he walked to the door. There he stopped and smiled back at Chris. “And if you ever treat me like the chauffeur again, I’ll choke you in your sleep with a chess piece.”
Chris stared at the space where Trip had been in awe. He had no idea if Trip had been kidding and the dramatic shift had been chilling. A shiver ran down his spine. He decided he might need to find out why Trip lived here.
Chapter Twenty
In the Stillness
Lanton eased the old car to a stop next to Officer Bentley Grimm’s cruiser. The man himself leaned against the black and white fender talking on his cell phone. From the looks of it, the conversation was not going Grimm’s way. Lanton stepped out of his car, scooping up both coffees from the cup holders. Handing one to Grimm he gave a familiar nod and leaned against his own faded brown bumper.
“This is unacceptable. I need someone down here now.” Grimm gave the nod back, raising his coffee in salute. Today Grimm wore a nice black and white suit, the badge displayed where a handkerchief might have gone. He also wore black and white Nike sneakers. One of the high dollar models, Lanton guessed. The thing about Grimm was that he could never seem to find his style. He would try some new style and then make a fashion choice that didn’t fit with the look. Like sneakers with a suit. If he just owned the decision, it would have been an interesting style
and might have been what set him apart from the rest. The problem with Grimm and his wardrobe was that he never had the conviction to stick to it. The first time someone pointed out the odd pairing, he would scrap the whole thing. Next time you see him, he would be wearing raggedy clothes and be unshaven. This would last for about two weeks to a month and then he would be back with a new odd pairing.
Grimm clicked the phone closed. Yes, he still had a flip phone. “I am so glad you are here. Maybe you can do something about this nightmare.”
“Sure. What seems to be the problem?”
Grimm took a sip of his coffee. “Follow me, and I will fill you in.” He began to walk toward the apartment complex.
Lanton fell into step next to him. As they ventured off the sidewalk and onto the dew covered grass, Lanton decided to mess with his old partner a bit. “You sure you want to get those shoes wet?”
Grimm paused, looking down at his sneakers. “They should be fine.”
Lanton nodded. “Your call. Just figured that since you were going out on a limb with the whole suit and sneakers, you might want to at least keep the shoes with that high dollar look.” He gave Grimm a shrug and began walking through the grass toward the open door.
Grimm retreated to the sidewalk and hurried to meet him by the door. He didn’t mention the shoes. “As I was saying. This is a nightmare. What’s the longest the department has had you babysit a corpse?”
Lanton stopped, turning to look at his friend. “How long as it been here?”
“Since yesterday morning.”
Lanton whistled through his teeth. “What’s the holdup?”
Grimm motioned for Lanton to follow him inside. “Medical examiner is busy with a multiple just north of here. Murder-suicide with some grisly details. I tried to call your girl, that Carrie Anne woman, but no one is answering down there. You have her cell?”