Long Eyes and Other Stories

by Jeff Carlson

  #

  When Shawna emerged from the basement lab, there was still some sunlight left, but she didn't stop to enjoy it yet. She double-checked the side door to make sure it was locked, then hurried up out of the box-like well of concrete that housed the stairs, which reeked of urine and was littered with cigarette butts again. Homeless people often camped there... but why did they pee and leave garbage in the same place where they slept?

  Once out of the stairwell and near her car, Shawna paused to examine the bruised sky. She’d never seen sunsets like this back in Ford County. There wasn’t enough pollution back home.

  "Rush hour" had ended ninety minutes ago, but in Shawna's experience the maddening congestion of cars was permanent. Errands that had taken her thirty minutes back home — dry cleaning, groceries, gas — now required most of two hours and her whole day had to be planned accordingly.

  Every sixty seconds or less she found herself backed up at a stoplight with dozens of other vehicles, most of them containing only a solitary driver like herself. It was horrendously wasteful and stupid, but nobody was going to the same places on the same schedule. Someday someone would invent a better system. Meanwhile they all hated each other for being in the way.

  Shawna hated feeling so self-conscious, too. Singing along with the radio helped pass the time, but whenever they came to a halt she shut up, looking neither right nor left, keeping her expression neutral, like a mannequin. The natives simply ignored the world outside their shells of steel and glass, chatting on cell phones or picking their noses.

  At home, her neighbors were at it again, their TV cranked up so loud that each voice made the wall buzz. Shawna had taken down her family photos almost as soon as she'd hung them because the rattling of the frames only increased her irritation. She had gotten better at ignoring the noise, but she still wasn't sleeping well. Months ago she'd started off nice, apologizing for being bothered, but lately she’d taken to banging on the wall and harassing the landlord's answering machine. No one cared.

  #

  Mr. Morrow, as Shawna's boss insisted on being called, showed little interest in the brain deformities of the jane doe, who wasn't a jane doe anymore but Joan Kristyn Tarwater. Mr. Morrow was right that they were behind on their case load, yet Shawna didn't think that excused doing less than a thorough job.

  The updates to Tarwater’s file offered little personal history and no record of health problems, not even something as subtle as dizziness or fatigue, but Shawna was transfixed. Twenty-nine, single, an admin assistant for a fax and copier sales company, Joan Tarwater really could have been the friend Shawna had been looking for since moving to California.

  "Joan's condition may have contributed to her death," Shawna said.

  "The client," Mr. Morrow answered carefully, "was killed by severe head trauma. That's all we need to know."

  The bloated old coot had obviously been down in Autopsy for ten years too long. His office was above ground, but he kept the blinds three-quarters shut, allowing no more than a dim shine. Shawna didn't like the way the place smelled, either. Even the meat-and-disinfectant stink downstairs was better than Mr. Morrow's gastronomic endeavors.

  "I'd like to get a specialist's opinion," Shawna said. "Joan's family has a right to know..."

  Mr. Morrow shook his pumpkin head. "There's no room in the budget for that. It's just not necessary." He waved her back to work. "Get used to not always having all the answers."

  #

  Shawna might have forgotten about Joan. She worked ten hour days while Oakland experienced one of those bizarre cycles where the elderly gave up, the sick wore out, and coronaries and accidents struck down the out-of-shape and the unwary. But that four days later, she found almost exactly the same abnormalities in the frontal lobes of a seventeen-year-old boy. His name was Steven Huff. The police report said he’d fallen off the roof of his three-story home while goofing around with a friend. Maybe they'd fought. Steven might have escaped with nothing worse than a broken leg except he’d failed to clear an awning, spun around, and landed head first.

  Shawna decided not to bother Mr. Morrow. The lazy coot was obviously mostly concerned with keeping their 'files closed' rate above par. But she had to wonder if the bizarre cerebral deformations would have been found in any of the six skulls that she hadn't opened during the past four days, or in any of the eleven that Mr. Morrow had handled himself.

  In 1977, a stunning incidence of childhood arthritis had led a group of Yale physicians to identify a new bacterial disease transmitted by ticks in a small Connecticut city called Lyme. About the same time, a wasting sickness predominant among homosexual males in San Francisco had caused scientists to discover HIV. There were more examples like this than Shawna had fingers and toes. Nature was not all postcard beaches, fuzzy animal babies, and flowers. Parasites and viruses were a normal part of life — and it was only the energy of trained professionals that initiated the battles against such killers.

  Shawna saw both an opportunity to help and, maybe, a second chance at medical school.

  She scanned MedNet during breaks and lunches, entombing herself in the windowless file room, the door shut to avoid questions, knocking back cold coffee as if it were shots of tequila. She tried a variety of key words, uncertain at first if she was wasting her time. Many private offices and even some major hospitals had yet to upload their files — and yet if anything there was too much information, too many undiagnosed curiosities of the cerebrum. Nature was a tricky bitch, complex, sometimes cruel. The human race still knew very little about their own bodies.

  Shawna ruled out major afflictions like retardation and other obvious handicaps. Joan Tarwater and Steven Huff had both been healthy, functioning individuals, at least on the surface.

  That was the interesting part.

  #

  Shawna had no authority to begin an investigation or any experience conducting one, but she was painfully unsatisfied with the police department's verdict. They just said it was open case, which meant they would ignore the file unless some new information hopped up and bit them on the butt.

  It was tough to blame the police for this, given how badly outnumbered and overworked they were, but a human life should never be shelved so perfunctorily. Joan was more than a computer file to Shawna. Worse, if she had discovered a new brain disease, it was crucial to learn what caused it and how it could be stopped.

  Shawna sent blandly worded e-mails to Steven and Joan's physicians, Joan's gynecologist, Steven's teacher, even their dentists, stressing the need for discretion, not sure what she was looking for yet hopeful that a clue would arise. She planned to visit their families before the end of the week, but her regular work could not be put on hold, especially now that Mr. Morrow was allowing her some real responsibility.

  Joan Tarwater had lived in a duplex set practically under the freeway. Idling in the middle of the street, Shawna gawked at the building until a delivery truck honked behind her. She’d thought her place was awful. The view here was of massive concrete pillars and perpetual shadow, while the windows of what must be converted attics peeked out on four lanes of hurtling traffic.

  Shawna had driven here on her own time, and at six-thirty in the evening, the wide mud lots under the freeway were packed with residents' cars, an impromptu parking lot. There wasn’t room anywhere else for all those vehicles now that everyone was home. Shawna finally squeezed into a bit of red curb nearly three blocks away, obstructing a fire hydrant but hoping that the city ID she put on the dash would save her from a ticket, although it seemed unlikely that anyone was enforcing petty laws in the area.

  She kept one hand in her purse as she walked like she'd seen other solitary women do. The theory was to scare off muggers with sheer potential. What caliber are you packing? The small plastic rod of her pepper spray wasn't especially reassuring.

  The front steps and handrails of Joan's building were coated in grime. So were the windows that Shawna had thought were tinted. Exhaust, dirt. Maybe t
hose were her first clues.

  If there had been a police seal on Joan's place, it was gone now. A neatly scissored section of brown grocery bag tacked to the door gave upcoming dates that the apartment would be shown as well as the landlord's phone number. Shawna wondered what had happened to Joan's belongings while she dug into her purse for a notepad. She wondered who would attend the funeral.

  She knocked on the door opposite Joan's, not feeling nervous until footsteps creaked toward her. She managed a smile when it struck her that she was being examined through the peephole.

  Whoever spoke could have been male or female: "What?"

  Shawna held up her little wallet, folded open to display her city employee's health benefits card, which had her photo, and a generic business card used by everyone in the office. "I'm Shawna King, Oakland M.E. I wanted to talk to you about your neighbor for a minute."

  Three locks snapped open and the door yanked inward. Black, very tall, the man was bald except for a salt-and-pepper mustache and gray eyebrows. Shawna wouldn't have matched his reedy voice with his body. He had seven inches and at least sixty pounds on her, which would have made her wonder about his caution not so long ago — but paranoia was very natural here.

  "Which neighbor?" he asked.

  "Joan Tarwater, right across from you."

  "The police came by already."

  A lie came surprisingly easily, as did a bored tone of disgust. "They managed to lose their transcripts," Shawna said.

  "Typical." He seemed to take satisfaction at the thought of incompetence, and actually smiled as he gestured past Shawna's shoulder. "Well, she was a real bitch, I can tell you that much, always telling everyone where to park, how loud to play our music. It wouldn't surprise me if she got bumped on purpose."

  For some reason, Shawna felt mad at him. Well, she thought, who gets along with their neighbors in this city?

  #

  But Joan's co-workers at CNG Copiers thought she was a bitch, too, and weren’t hesitant to say so.

  Two days had passed since Shawna began her slapdash investigation. She'd had no luck with her e-mails or with the phone calls she made to press the issue, not even after arguing with a file clerk or threatening a receptionist who wouldn't put her through. None of the professionals in Joan and Steven's lives had anything definitive to offer. Steven had been a minor disciplinary problem at school, and had teased some of the pets in his neighborhood so badly that the cops had been called, twice, yet that was all very normal stuff for a teenager.

  Shawna was swinging in the dark at this point, hoping to nail down some preliminary characteristics or symptoms before she submitted her report. After that, her discovery would be open game for better trained and more prominent people. Shawna hoped to luck into attaching her name to it first.

  She'd found excuses to open up the skulls of an elder stroke victim and a drunk who'd smothered in bed, yet neither of them had showed abnormalities. That was good news, really. Shawna felt disappointed.

  Getting through security at the CNG building was much easier than convincing Mr. Morrow to allow her a long lunch "to take care of errands." He never spoke to her anymore without mentioning their workload, and she never laid eyes on him now without wishing that she could tell him off. Fortunately, there was room for them to avoid each other most the day.

  The ladies who'd shared a small glassed-in office with Joan Tarwater were a modern Tweedledee and Tweedledum — tight StairMaster bodies, short, simple hair, and an abundance of attitude. "Joan's job wasn't exactly what you call demanding," the first lady said, and the second didn't even try to hide her catty smirk. "Talk to Prince," she muttered. "Joan used to date the hairball."

  Shawna spent fifteen minutes looking for Jim Prince in a maze of gray cubicles before she was told she was on the wrong floor. In the elevator, she wished bitterly that she'd gone back to Dee and Dum and shaken some politeness into them.

  Jim Prince was a pale young man with rumpled clothes, rumpled hair, and dark puffy patches under his eyes. He hunched over his desk, practically hugging it, but let go to grab at Shawna's ID. "Let me see that," he said

  "I just have some very simple questions."

  "I'll try to give you some simple answers." His laugh was a quick bark. He dropped her wallet onto the desk, perhaps an inch closer to her than himself.

  Shawna tried to keep her voice cool. "Joan may have had a disease. Were the two of you intimate?"

  He didn't react the way she'd hoped. If anything, his belligerence increased. "Sure. But we were safe, you know? What kind of disease?"

  "Did she ever complain about feeling nauseous or dizzy? Or have any problems with her hearing?"

  "She complained all the time." Prince barked again. "She was a queen bitch, you know, her way or the highway. So I told her to get cranked."

  If Shawna hadn't learned that assholes were as common as cracks in the sidewalk, and if she hadn't been stepping so far outside the bounds of her job, she might have checked with the police to see if Prince was on their suspects list. His intensity seemed out of place, even for an ex-boyfriend.

  But no murderer would act so obvious.

  #

  No one came to the door at Steven Huff’s residence, although Shawna was certain she glimpsed somebody through the drapes in the front window. She knocked twice, then pounded until she scraped her knuckles. She was tired and hungry and knew she'd be late back to work, and she didn't look forward to keeping her mouth shut as Mr. Morrow lectured her about responsibility.

  Walking back to her car, Shawna stumbled in the tiny scrap of yard because she wasn't looking where she was going. Just a few blocks away, the I-80/580 interchange dominated the hills, a tangle of no less than six overpasses sweeping through and alongside one another. The roaring traffic sounded like a storm tide, violent and unstoppable.

  Could pollution be the common denominator between Joan and Steven? Nature was clever, karmic. It always gave back what had been given to it. Lately the papers had been full of the state's efforts to remove a fuel additive from gas supplies and production after traces of this chemical had been found in their drinking water.

  Driving away, Shawna slowed at a corner and shook her busy thoughts from her head, studying the street signs. Somehow she wanted to bypass southbound 80 and get to 580.

  Checking her mirrors for police before making an illegal left, she noticed a yellow car in her rearview. A moment later, she noticed it again. It had made the same awkward turn after her. The car was an older four-door.

  Shawna groped in her purse for her pepper spray as she made another sudden left at random. Bad decision. The street narrowed to one lane as she passed a dumpster and then loose piles of flattened cardboard — and then there was nowhere else to go. The walls were broken only by a few barred windows and occasional side-alleys that would have been too narrow to turn into even if they weren’t full of pallets loaded with boxes and green produce.

  The yellow car did not follow.

  Shawna took three measured breaths, but she didn't let go of the pepper spray, ticking her thumbnail over its textured grip again and again. Paranoid, she thought. I've gotten just as paranoid as everyone, impatient, irritable, and stupid...

  She didn't like the way she was changing.

  She considered going home, not her cramped, noisy condo, but home. She had friends there and two guys she'd known well, a third she'd been interested in. Odds were that at least one of them wouldn't have hooked up with anyone else yet. Things moved slower in Ford County. In fact, life there was too slow, but there was a lot to be said for peace. She could find work, wait for a veterinarian's assistant job to open up... But failing med school had hurt her badly, and Shawna wasn't sure she could ever settle for a regular job like waitressing or running a register. For one thing, she still had school loans to pay off. More importantly, being a professional had become a treasured part of herself. It was too late to ever go back.

  The street ended in a T, but a parked truck blocked th
e left branch. Idling in the right branch was the yellow four-door.

  Shawna stared, frozen, with her foot on the brake. Her car was at an angle halfway through the tight turn.

  In this light, the other car was the same shade as the paint that had been dug out of Joan Tarwater's flesh. It was also much heavier than her late-model Honda, and when it lurched forward it shoved her car back a full yard, shattering her plastic fender.

  Shawna's seatbelt tightened across her sternum like a broad fist. Her pulse was deafening. Mixed with her heart's thudding were footsteps that rattled over the hood of her car. She tried to shake off her shock.

  She didn't recognize the man who threw open her driver door. He slapped aside the pepper spray as she thrust it forward, his palm blocking the brief squirt of fluid — and when he slapped the same hand back across her face, her right eye exploded with more than pain. It burned with pepper spray.

  He dragged her out, smashing the air from her as his blunt fingers punched her breast. The panting against her cheek smelled like cinnamon. For an instant, they stood motionless between her open driver door and her car, the man embracing her tightly from behind. Shawna's mind churned, but at the same time she felt as thoughtless as a rabbit.

  "Shit, dude, gimme room—"

  There was a second man. A baritone. Shawna glanced around, sucking air to shout for help.

  Jim Prince stood directly behind the first man, near Shawna's car, leveling a small automatic pistol. "Gimme roo—"

  Then she was moving again. The first man pushed her away like a dance partner, his hands controlling her hips. In her peripheral vision, Shawna sensed motion as Prince took aim.

  She went limp, dropping straight down, putting as much of her weight as she could into her right foot as she kicked at the first man's ankle. Her heel ground across the bridge of his foot and slammed into his shin. He toppled toward her.

  Prince's wild shot blew the back of the man's head off.

  Seconds later, Prince stepped forward, almost standing over her, as Shawna wasted time dragging her arm across her eyes to clear the sticky red spatter of blood. His scream felt like her own. She tried to roll away, but the first man's twitching body blocked her.