Beyond Physical

by D Pichardo-Johansson

  He looked at Joy as she held the girl’s hand and dried her tears, gently encouraging her to talk. He could feel Joy’s soothing energy enveloping the girl as a power field. His first thought was admiration. He pushed it away in his new commitment to fortify the boundaries between them.

  All that apparent compassion had to be a façade. Nobody could be that devoted to a job so dark and not have something wrong with them. Joy was either immune to the patients’ suffering, or she was a ruthless businesswoman, profiting from people’s death. That’s it, he reminded himself. She’s the woman the government paid to convince people to stop fighting for their lives.

  The painful session finally ended. As was her custom, Joy hugged each one of them, starting with Lena and leaving the little girl for the end. To hug her, she knelt down to be at her level and then stayed on her knees, holding her hands and looking in her eyes.

  “Promise me that you’ll work on your scrapbook, Shannon. This is your chance. Get all the baby pictures and pictures of your birthdays you can find. Ask your mom to tell you stories about every one of them and write them down. Take my word for it: someday, you’ll have many questions you’ll wish you could ask her. Ask her as many as you can now.”

  There was a hint of tears in Joy’s eyes. She added, “You’ll be all right. Even the worst thing that happens to us brings something good with it. I know it, because that’s the way I found my mission.” She paused. “My mommy had breast cancer too. She went to heaven when I was your age.”

  Richard was shaken by the surprise.

  Looking at Joy, he could now see the pain of years in her eyes. The woman in front of him had transformed into a sad nine-year-old girl. Like a picture unveiled, he suddenly understood her career choice, her devotion to a job anybody else would call creepy, her need to believe in a world beyond death.

  After the last goodbyes, Joy left the room, and Richard followed her in silence.

  Once at her office, Joy let herself drop into her desk chair, and all the poise she’d shown until then disappeared. Hiding her face in her hands, she breathed deeply. She didn’t cry, but her pain was obvious. Richard considered leaving the office to give her privacy, but he didn’t know if he’d be abandoning her. He remained still.

  A few moments later, Joy lifted her face from her hands; and without a word, she turned back to work at her computer.

  Richard didn’t think he was capable of remorse, but that was the only word to describe how he felt at that moment for having accused Joy of being a ruthless businesswoman.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

  She looked at him, confused. “Excuse me?”

  He avoided her eyes. “I’m sorry for everything I told you my first day here, and for that day I said you gave people false hope. Now I understand how much this work means to you.”

  Joy was startled.

  Still looking away, he continued, “Your patients and their families are very lucky to have you. I’m sure that, if it’s true that there’s a heaven somewhere, your mother is looking down at you right now and feeling proud of you.”

  Joy burst into tears. “Why are you telling me this? Now all I want to do is crawl under the blankets and cry all afternoon.”

  He joined her behind the desk, grabbing a box of tissues from a shelf on his way there. She pulled a tissue and dried her eyes, but the tears kept running. And soon, she was sobbing.

  Not daring to take her in his arms to console her, he pulled a small side table close to her and sat on it, stroking her back as she cried.

  When she calmed down, he spoke. “I can only imagine what you went through. My father died of throat cancer; but by then, at least I was older and could understand things a little better.”

  It was the first time he’d mentioned his father’s death aloud in over two decades.

  Joy gasped. “Oh, Richard, I didn’t know. How old were you?”

  “Thirteen.”

  She held his hand. “Also a kid. You’re a survivor of a parent with cancer, too.”

  Nodding, he spoke slowly. “That’s why I admire you more now. You took the worst thing that could happen to a child and turned it into something good.” He paused and added, “I didn’t do that. When my father was diagnosed with cancer and then died so quickly, nobody explained to me what was going on, let alone try to inspire me to find meaning in my loss. All I did was build on the anger, hate the whole world, and get in trouble. I wonder, now, if that was the beginning of my anger toward God.”

  Joy extended her hand and touched his arm. “But you did find a way to channel your anger. You could have become a delinquent. Instead, you became a law enforcer. You did become someone your father could be proud of.”

  Sighing, Richard shook his head. “I just kept going on with my life and refused to think about what happened. You, however, used your loss to fuel your dreams, and now you’re touching so many lives. Joy Clayton, you have my admiration and my respect.”

  He extended his hand in an offer to shake hers. She took it to pull him toward her and hugged him.

  They hugged for a long time in silence. Richard remained still, drinking in her energy and savoring the fantasy of inhaling her soul with every breath.

  He now knew he had to get out of there as soon as possible. He was irremediably biased in favor of his suspect.

  Chapter 16

  Early morning, Richard arrived at Samuel’s office. He’d sounded extremely excited on the phone when he asked him to come right away.

  Samuel got up from his chair and rushed to hug him effusively. “Richard, you’re a genius!”

  “What happened?”

  Samuel extended a folder to him with documents and pictures inside while explaining, “They found a coin in Senator Marcia Flowers’s remains exactly like the one in O’Hara’s body! Nobody can explain how it was missed in the autopsy. They also found one while reviewing the debris in the car Senator Hall was driving the day of his accident.”

  Gasping, Richard clapped. “This supports the theory that the LOTU group is linked to all these deaths!”

  Excited, Richard paced around the room, ruminating. He then said, “But why are the coins there? According to Dr. Sullivan, the metal pieces weren’t deep enough in O’Hara’s body to have anything to do with his mechanism of death.”

  “If the coins weren’t there as a cause of death, could they be a message or symbol? Who’d do that?” asked Samuel.

  Richard pondered. “Maybe the type of grandiose personality Dr. Andrews described. Someone full of toxic righteousness who saw the death of these people as a punishment for their sins and is leaving a warning for others to never commit the same fault.”

  “It fits the theory. But, Richard, we still have another unanswered question. How were the victims killed? They were already dead at the time of the crash. What happened?”

  He hesitated. “Can the LOTU have the type of powers that the crazy Laura Bonas claimed? Could the victims have been given an order to die?”

  Sam looked at him intently. “We may need to explore unconventional possibilities. And we need to do it soon, before anybody else gets killed. I’m convinced that the best source of information about the minds of these criminals is Andrews. Has he agreed to give you access to his book?”

  Grunting, Richard shook his head. “He gave me a preparation part that’s complex, and I have a meeting with him in a couple of days to try to convince him that I’m ready for the real material.”

  “You’re my last hope. We searched all his properties; we hacked all his computers. I’m starting to fear he spoke the truth when he said he destroyed all the copies of the book. Man, you’re the ultimate charmer. Sugar him up like you’ve done with the shrink, O’Hara’s widow. You have her eating out of your hand, don’t you?”

  He didn’t answer. Samuel added, “Which reminds me, you don’t have to follow her anymore.”

  Richard was surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s no longer relevant to the cas
e. We need to focus all resources on the Lords of the Universe. Go ahead; give the order to stop her surveillance.”

  An inexplicable mixture of relief and disappointment came over Richard.

  Putting his hand on Richard’s shoulder, Samuel asked, “Aren’t you happy? You hated following her around!”

  Richard frowned. “It hasn’t been that bad. The work is terrible, but this woman puts so much heart into doing it that somehow it becomes bearable, almost interesting.”

  Sam raised his eyebrows. “I see that you’ve changed your initial opinion about her.”

  Samuel was right. In the past few days, something had shifted inside of Richard.

  He was surprised to hear his own voice saying, “I’ve never met anybody like this woman. She’s like an undercover angel. If I ever thought she could’ve killed her husband, I must have been losing my instinct, or losing my mind. O’Hara must have been an exceptional man, or a very lucky one, to get a woman like that to marry him.”

  Frowning, Samuel nodded. To Richard’s relief, he didn’t ask more questions. Richard then added, “Sam, it would look suspicious if I left with no notice. Better not burn any bridges. I’ll tell her that my last day will be Friday.”

  Samuel considered it. “You have a point. Go ahead; stay until the end of the week.”

  * * *

  That night Richard walked into the monitor room feeling melancholic. He’d given the order to disconnect the surveillance at Joy’s house, and the cameras had been programmed to shut down at midnight. He couldn’t explain why he’d chosen that time instead of giving an order effective immediately. He also couldn’t explain why he was there that late, eager to see her play with her children one last time.

  After his conversation with Samuel that morning, he’d announced in the Hospice House that he was leaving at the end of the week. The staff had been heartbroken. Joy had wished him luck politely, but the sadness in her eyes spoke more than words, saying that she was going to miss him.

  Richard took a seat in front of the monitors, planning to rewind to watch the usual bedtime routine. To his surprise, something was different that night. A young woman had joined Joy in the family room. He remembered Joy had mentioned her sister was coming from San Diego to spend a few days with them.

  The two sisters sat with their feet up on the couch, hugging cushions, engaged in an animated chat. He decided to watch and see if there was any reference to Michael O’Hara.

  Joy was making her sister laugh by telling stories about recent mischief from the kids. She was gesturing effusively when her sister grabbed her left hand and gasped.

  “Joy! You took off your ring! Thank God! Are you finally dating?”

  Joy pulled her hand away, looking uncomfortable.

  “What? No, Hope! I’m not dating. Just . . . a good friend convinced me that it was time to take it off.”

  Hope was beaming. “But this is a huge step! I couldn’t believe that after almost two years you were still wearing that thing. It’s like you’ve been sending the message to all men around you, ‘Stay away. I’m taken.’”

  Joy rolled her eyes. “Please save me the speech! I know it by heart. Now you’re going to tell me that I’m too young—”

  “Too young and beautiful.”

  “. . . that I’m too young and beautiful to close my doors to love and that I really need to start dating. Please, I’ve heard it a million times. When it’s not you, it’s Donna, or my friend Fe—Please leave me alone.”

  “I’m glad to hear I’m not alone in this! C’mon, you must have a few men revolving around you, eagerly waiting for the first signal that it’s okay to come closer.”

  Joy chuckled with mockery. “Of course! My eighty-something-year-old patients are asking me out all the time. I’m a magnet for octogenarian men! Let’s face it, Hope, I’m a thirty-five-year-old mother of three. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”

  “Joy!”

  “And about me being beautiful, I may look beautiful, with my clothes on and wearing the right underwear. But my body is not what it used to be. Yes, people say, ‘you look wonderful,’ and then immediately add, ‘for a mother of three.’ It’s like saying, you look wonderful, considering that you have leprosy.”

  Hope sighed and shook her head. There was compassion in her eyes. “Sweetie, listen to you. Why are you putting yourself down like that?” She held both of Joy’s arms above the elbows and shook her. “Stop putting so much pressure on yourself. I have four words for you: turn off the light!”

  Chuckling, Joy shook her head. Hope let go of her arms and asked, “What’s your problem, woman? Don’t you miss it? It must be ages since you’ve had sex!”

  Feeling uncomfortable, Richard turned off the monitors.

  He rubbed his eyes, feeling terrible as a realization hit him. Even now, he was invading her privacy. He’d treated an innocent woman as a criminal and lied to her for weeks, and she had called him a good friend.

  He groaned. After Friday, he’d never see her again, and he still hadn’t thanked her for what she’d done for him and Ray. He wished there was a way to apologize to her for having lied, a way to show her the real Richard Fields at least once.

  Slowly, an idea creeped into his mind. It was crazy. He’d never done something like it during an undercover mission, but he felt strongly that it was right.

  He took his cell phone and dialed a number.

  Chapter 17

  Wednesday at noon, Joy’s routine of finishing dictations in her office was pleasantly interrupted by an unexpected visit from Ray bringing chocolates and a thank you card.

  For the brief time he was there, the office was filled with the boy’s contagious enthusiasm as he talked about the basketball game he’d attended. Without talking, Richard watched Joy grin as she looked at Ray with delight, and he felt reassured that he’d made the right decision bringing him there.

  As abruptly as the boy had come in, he was gone, rejoining his ride to return to school before the end of his lunch break.

  As they walked under the burning sun to the plaza where they usually grabbed lunch, Joy placed her hand on her heart. “Oh, Richard, thank you for bringing Ray over! He’s so cute! He’s so handsome! And I still can’t get over how much he looks like you! You’re like twins!”

  Smiling, Richard considered teasing her by explaining that, by the rule of three, she’d just said that he was handsome and cute, but he decided to give her a break.

  “Joy, for days I’ve wanted to tell you how great our game night was, but nothing I could’ve said would’ve been enough. I recruited help from Ray because the joy in his face speaks more than a thousand words. I guess what we mean to say is thank you.”

  Joy gave him a beautiful smile. “I’m more than repaid. Seeing Ray’s excitement while talking about your night felt so good it makes me want to do it again for selfish reasons.”

  After placing their Chinese food orders at the counter, they sat at a table.

  Joy resumed, “Your boy seems so charming and self-confident for a kid his age. You must be doing something very right in your parenting. I can tell he has great self-esteem.”

  Richard blinked rapidly. There was that word again, self-esteem. That was the next topic in Andrews’s manuscript, which was giving him quite a hard time.

  The word also reminded him of Joy’s conversation with her sister, which he had watched on the monitors the night before—Joy and her poor body image. He’d often thought that Joy was the most put-together woman he’d ever met. He never imagined that behind her strong appearance she could be hiding self-doubt.

  “Self-esteem . . . that’s such a complex topic. You’re the shrink, Joy. You tell me, how could somebody who’s incredibly successful—and good looking and loved by many—have poor self-esteem?”

  Joy sighed. “Self-esteem has little to do with the world’s standards of success. It begins to form long before we’ve had a chance to achieve anything. It starts in our infancy, with that very first time
when our eyes are able to focus on something and we start staring at our mother’s face.”

  Self-absorbed, she used her straw to twirl around the ice in her glass of water. “I read once that the most important emotional need of a child is to see himself reflected in the mirror of his parents’ eyes. I agree. Long before we understand words, we read our parents’ faces by looking at their expressions as they react to us. We read: I’m okay, I’m lovable, I’m wanted; and we grow up feeling all that. Or, on the other hand, we read: I’m bad, I’m annoying, I’m a burden; and we grow up feeling inadequate, no matter what we do. In my case, I hardly had any mirroring. I had a very sick mother and a busy and absent-minded father, both of whom wouldn’t notice me no matter how hard I tried to please them. So I grew up feeling invisible.”

  Richard nodded. He thought she must have never looked at herself in the mirror if she believed she could go anywhere and be unnoticed. “This topic is hard for me to grasp because I’ve never suffered from low self-esteem.”

  Joy raised her eyebrows. Her look was skeptical. “Really? You never have?”

  “No. On the contrary, my problem’s the opposite, too much self-esteem. My mother used to say I had a super-inflated ego.”

  She frowned. “I find it hard to believe that you don’t have any self-esteem issues. We all do! We all have some degree of ongoing negative self-talk. We all have those voices in our heads.”

  Richard chuckled. “Joy, if you have voices in your head, you’re on the wrong side of the shrink’s couch, and you should start prescribing yourself some medication.”

  Laughing, she shook her head. The sound of her laughter filled his heart with light, but he quickly pushed the feeling away.

  “I’m not talking about auditory hallucinations,” she said. “I’m talking about those internalized voices of our significant figures as we grew up—our parents, our teachers, our caregivers.”