by E. C. Bell
I dialed out before the 911 operator had a chance to call me back and waited, staring at Rosalie’s chest as it worked up and down, for James to answer his phone.
I jumped when he answered on the first ring. Rosalie snorted and wheezed as though, somehow, James answering had frightened her as well.
Arnie did nothing. Just stared at Rosalie’s broken head and shattered jaw as though mesmerized by the extent of the damage that one small bullet could do.
“Are you safe?” James asked. I could hear motor noises in the background and knew he was driving. “I called the cops. Told them what I knew, but I was afraid to return your call. I didn’t want your kidnapper to find out you had your phone. Please tell me you’re safe.”
“Safe enough,” I said. He sounded half-crazed, so I tried to keep my voice level and calm. “The cops are on their way.”
“Where are you?”
“At the John J. Fitzsimmons Memorial High School,” I said. “Ask Mom how to get here. It might not be on the map. It’s being torn down.”
“I’ll find you,” he said.
“Please let my mom know I’m okay,” I said quickly.
“I’ll let them all know,” he said.
“Thanks.”
To be honest, talking to James nearly undid me, but I still had work to do before the cops and ambulance arrived. I turned to Arnie.
“Get over there,” I said. “By her.”
He shook his head, once, quick. “I don’t wanna.”
“Well, do it anyhow,” I snapped. “This is your fault.”
“Why the hell do you think this is my fault?”
“Because she did this,” and I pointed at her ruined head, “to be with you. You have to convince her to hang on until the ambulance arrives.”
“And why should I do that?” he asked. “All we had was an arrangement, Marie. Nothing more. When I wasn’t with you, you know, I hung around with her. For comfort and whatnot.” He blinked a couple of times, then glared at me. “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s yours.”
I looked at him incredulously. “You seriously expect me to believe that pile of crap?”
“Yep. Because it’s the truth.” But he didn’t look like even he believed his own lies anymore.
I didn’t, that was for sure.
“I’ve done a lot of things wrong in my life, Arnie, but this isn’t one of them.” I pointed at Rosalie once more, and saw that her gasping breaths were coming slower and slower. It wouldn’t be long.
“So get over by her and prepare yourself. You have to either talk her into clinging for all she’s worth to her own body and life, or you have to help me talk her into moving on.”
“And what if she doesn’t want to do either?” Arnie sneered.
“Then she’s going to be here with you for a long, long time,” I said. “Remember, she brought your spirit here in that jar, and then I released you. Here. So this is where you’re going to stay. If she dies here, she is going to stay here too. With you. Forever.”
“Jesus,” Arnie muttered. “I didn’t like the girl that much.”
“Oh, one more thing,” I said. “She’s the one who killed you, Arnie. Killed you dead.”
He looked at me, blank shock on his face.
“No fucking way,” he finally said. “No way.”
“Ask her,” I said. “She’ll be with you in about a minute.” I heard Rosalie’s death rattle in her throat. “Maybe less.”
Arnie:
Face to Face with Rosalie
I DIDN’T BELIEVE what Marie said about Rosalie, not for a second. Figured Marie had said what she’d said to get back at me for screwing around on her while she was living in Edmonton or something.
There was no way in the world Rosalie would hurt a frigging hair on my head. After all, hadn’t she driven all the way down to Edmonton to pick me up? Hadn’t she given me a ride to Fort McMurray, and then spotted me the cash for my first night out?
Yes. Yes, she had.
No way she’d kill me.
Rosalie stopped breathing, and then seemed to shrink. Even if her face hadn’t been so blown to shit, I don’t think I would have recognized her anymore.
“How long is this going to take?” I asked Marie, without taking my eyes off Rosalie’s body. “Because first thing I’m going to do is get her to tell you, to your frigging face, that she didn’t have a thing to do with my death.”
“Oh, Arnie, I’m here already.”
I whirled around and was face to face with Rosalie’s ghost. Wondered how she could speak so clearly without a bottom jaw. She looked like shit, she truly did.
“I’ve seen you look better, girl,” I said, when I could manage the words. “And that is the God’s own truth.”
“Well, you don’t look like a bouquet of roses yourself,” Rosalie said, and giggled. That giggle was the creepiest thing I’d ever heard in my life—and I’d just listened to the girl die, for Christsake!
“I imagine I don’t,” I said. Then I grabbed around in my brainpan for something else to say to her. Anything. Anything at all.
“Ask her who killed you,” Marie suggested from somewhere behind me. “Like I said, you’ll want to know the truth about that.”
Rosalie’s translucent eyes snapped angrily to Marie’s face, as if to say, “What the hell are you still doing here?” Then they snapped back to me, and she attempted a smile.
That didn’t go as well as she’d hoped, I was sure. Her upper lip wrinkled and flapped as the tiny muscles demanded action as always, but since they were no longer attached to anything remotely resembling a jawbone, they could do nothing more than make her look even more grotesque.
“Darn it,” she said when she saw my reaction on my face. “I’m going to have to practice that.”
“Did you kill me?” The words burst out of me before I could stop them. “Did you do that to me, Rosalie?”
She had the good grace to look down at her hands for a second. I thought she was embarrassed until she looked up at me and I saw her upper lip grimacing and flapping all on its own. She was trying to smile again.
“Of course I did, sugar,” she said. “You broke the Golden Rule, after all.”
She sashayed up to me, and put her hands into my brain matted hair, and then I watched as light string after light string leapt from her to me, tying me more and more tightly to her by the second. Every one of them felt freezing cold. She did it effortlessly, as though she’d been doing so her whole life.
“Don’t do that,” I said, trying to pull away. “I don’t like it.”
“Oh, you’ll love it, after a while,” she said. “You just have to get used to it, is all.” Her lip wriggled, like worms on a hook. “Remember when you said that to me?”
Oh God. Don’t talk about the kinky stuff in front of Marie!
“I seem to,” I said, glancing sidelong at Marie, and then to Rosalie’s ruined face. “But I’d much rather hear about how you think you killed me. When did I have time to break the Golden Rule? I’d only been home a day, for Christsake.”
I thought I heard Marie say something, but it felt like she was a couple of miles away, and not standing next to me.
“What?” I asked, turning and staring at her. “I can barely hear you.”
“Make her let you go,” Marie said. “Right now.”
“Is she making it hard for me to hear you?”
“Yes.” Marie’s face looked urgent.
Is this the way it had felt for Roy, when I’d clung to him? It was overwhelming. Like I was smothering.
I glanced at Marie. Had it been that way for her?
Jesus, it was horrible. No wonder she’d tried so hard to get away from me. It was suffocating.
I gave Rosalie a great big psychic shove and was rewarded with the snap snap snap of the light strings popping loose, and Rosalie’s spirit flying away from me at least three feet.
“I told you to let me go,” I said gently. When you won a round, you didn’t have to yell.
“Now, from over there, you tell me how you think I broke the Golden Rule.”
“You called me her name,” Rosalie snivelled. “That first night.”
“I didn’t!” I yelled. “I couldn’t have! You were at work all night. All fucking night.”
“No, I wasn’t,” she whispered.
That caught me off-guard. I didn’t remember seeing her after she dropped me off at the Blue Ox Inn. “You’re lying,” I said. “Stop lying.”
“I’m not,” she said.
Dammit, she was almost ready to cry. I didn’t have a clue how to slap the blubbering out of a ghost. “Stop that,” I said. “Just tell me what happened.”
“Hurry, Arnie.” I could hear Marie’s voice clear as a bell. Then I heard the sirens. “The cops are on their way.”
That got my attention. If they took Rosalie’s body away, her spirit would be trapped in this place. And so would mine. That was definitely not my idea of heaven on earth.
“Tell me what happened,” I said to Rosalie. “Right now.”
“You called me,” she said. “On my cell. I wasn’t supposed to even be taking calls at work, but I knew it was you, so I answered it. You said you wanted to see me. That you were dying to see me.” Her upper lip rippled, but her eyes looked sad. “So I got Rudy to cover for me.”
“Did this Rudy guy clock you out?” Marie asked.
Rosalie ignored her. Kept her sad brown eyes fastened on mine. “Did he?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “And I came to the Blue Ox Inn to get you. We went to my place, and you said you wanted to make love.”
Now, that didn’t really sound like me. Usually I suggested playing hide the pickle, but I didn’t correct her.
“So, we did.” Her eyes flickered, looked angry at the memory. “And that’s when it happened. You called me Marie. In my own bed.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t let you get away with that, now could I?”
“No,” I said. “I guess you couldn’t.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have hit you so many times. It’s just, you made me mad. You know?”
“I know,” I said.
“Will you accept my apology?” she asked.
I ignored her question, and turned to Marie. “How do I get her back in her body?”
“What?”
That was Rosalie, but I kept my eyes on Marie. The sirens were so close, I didn’t think I had much more than a minute.
“What do I do?”
“Grab her and hold her spirit as close to her body as you can,” Marie said. “I’ll start CPR.”
Rosalie tried to fight me off, but I’d learned a few tricks riding Roy. I clung to her like a tick as one light string after another grabbed and held her.
“Back you go, you silly bitch,” I said, and pushed her spirit at her body.
She fought as hard as she could. “I want to stay with you,” she cried. “Forever!”
“Ain’t gonna happen,” I said. “I just used you, when Marie wasn’t available. You understand? I never really felt anything for you. If you stay here with me, it’ll be just the same. Only you’ll know the truth. I don’t give a shit about you. Never have. Go back to your life, or what’s left of it. Go!”
I gave her one more big psychic shove, just as Marie started chest compressions. As Rosalie’s blood began to flow, I could feel other strings, from her body I guess, attaching to her spirit. As they connected, I released my connection to her. And then Rosalie’s spirit was back in her body and secure.
I didn’t think she would have stayed in there very long if Marie hadn’t given her the breath of life. Somehow. I don’t know how she managed, since Rosalie had blown most of her bottom jaw away, but she did, and I watched Rosalie’s chest rise and fall and rise and fall. First in time with Marie’s breaths, and then, on its own.
“Holy shit,” I said, as the paramedics and the cops and everybody else who owned a uniform burst into the boys’ locker room and the room erupted in frenetic action. “I think you saved her life.”
“We saved her life,” Marie said, her face smeared with Rosalie’s blood.
“Yeah,” I said. “We.”
I didn’t get a chance to say much more to her, because then Asshole Lavall showed up, and between him and the cops, Marie didn’t have time for me.
Once, she walked by me, and I reached out to grab her. I could ride her away from this place, I thought, but before I could do more than think, she said, “no,” and walked away.
But as they were leaving, she glanced over at me and mouthed, “I’ll be back,” before she disappeared along with everyone else.
So I waited. Couldn’t do anything else, it seemed, because Marie was right. I was stuck there. I couldn’t get away, even if I wanted to.
Rosalie had seen to that.
Marie:
Safe, but Not Sound
THE DOCTORS WHO ended up trying to put Rosalie back together said it was a miracle that she survived. Said that if I hadn’t been so diligent with the whole CPR thing, she would have died, right there in the boys’ locker room.
I nodded and thanked them for their kind words, but I knew it was a bigger miracle than even they realized. After all, I was the one who let her spirit leave her body so that Arnie could face her. So he could learn just how bug-nut crazy she was.
I figured he wouldn’t want to be stuck with her for eternity, but I hadn’t thought it would take him so long to cut her loose.
When I touched her ruined face, trying to make some kind of seal when she didn’t have anything left of her jaw, I could feel that she was already starting to cool.
She was really dead, and I didn’t know what convinced her spirit to reattach to her battered body and actually try to live again.
I really didn’t.
JAMES DROVE ME from the high school to the hospital. After we made certain that Rosalie was going to live, he drove me to the cop shop.
One more time, with feeling.
The place was absolutely teeming with cops. The officer manning the front desk saw us through the throng, and waved us over.
“Officer Tyler’s waiting for you,” he said. “In there.”
He took us to the back, and I expected that we were both going to be ensconced in the “interview” rooms for a couple more six-hour interrogations. We weren’t, though. He took us to the office just past the interview rooms, knocked on the door, and then opened it.
“He’s in here,” the officer said.
Tyler was talking on the phone. He waved us to the two chairs in front of his desk as he finished his brief one-sided conversation. Mostly, all he did was grunt into the phone. I wondered who he was talking to.
“All right,” he finally said. “I’ll make certain that I send you a complete copy of the final report. Thank you for checking in with me, Sergeant Worth. Yes, I’ll let them know.”
He hung up the phone and smiled at both of us. My guess was, he wanted to laugh at the looks on our faces. On mine, at least.
Sergeant Worth worked for the Edmonton Police Department, and she always seemed to be involved in our business.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“Just checking up on you,” Tyler replied. He glanced at James. “She’s expecting a copy of your PI licence, soon. You know that?”
James hung his head. “Yes,” he said. “I know. I’ll get it to her as soon as we’re in Edmonton. As soon as I’ve passed.”
“Ah,” Tyler said. “Well, good luck with that.” Then he looked around, as though checking to make certain no one but us was listening to him. “You might want to take the test up here,” he said. “I’ve heard they’re a little more—lenient.”
James’s eyebrows rose. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
“You do that,” Tyler said.
Then the three of us sat and stared at each other.
“Didn’t you want to talk to us?” I finally asked.
“Oh!” Tyler chuckled. “Yeah.” He looked at m
e. “Did the docs check you out?”
“Yeah,” I said. “They did. I’m just fine.” I touched my face, where Rosalie’s blood had so recently been. It felt like it was still there. “Nobody would tell us anything about Rosalie, past the fact she’s still alive. Do you know how she is?”
“She’ll survive,” Tyler said shortly. “But that’s all. That bullet made a real mess.” He shook his head. “She probably won’t even go to trial.”
“What about me?” I asked. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. I had to finally be done with all this stuff. “I was standing right there when she made that 911 call accusing me of kidnapping her. You don’t think I did that? Or shot her, either. Do you?”
“Oh yes, the competing 911 calls,” he said. “Sort of a ‘she said, she said’ situation, wasn’t it?”
“I called first,” I muttered.
“Yes,” he replied. “You did that. You also had a GSR test, right?”
“The gunshot residue test? An officer did that at the scene,” James said. “I was worried about cross-contamination, because Marie performed CPR on Rosalie.”
“We took that into account,” Tyler said. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“But—” I started, then stopped, not certain what I was even trying to prove. My adrenaline rush was finally giving way, and all I felt was exhausted. I figured I’d probably sleep for a week. Maybe more. But first, I had to make sure we were both in the clear.
“You kept bringing James in for questioning,” I said, exhaustion starting to slur my words. “You must have thought he’d—we’d—done something.”
Tyler smiled. “The first time we brought Mr. Lavall in, yeah, we thought he was connected to the Stillwell murder. But that was before someone started making calls to the Crime Stoppers Tip Line. A young lady. She never left her name, but she was overly eager to make certain that we understood that both you and Mr. Lavall here were responsible for what happened to Arnie Stillwell.” He smiled. “She called so often and left such long and detailed messages that the Crime Stoppers staff became convinced she was more involved than she admitted. They asked us to figure out who she was.” He smiled even more broadly. “So, we did.”