by Baxter Clare
"Hit it again!" Frank bellowed. The uniform swung again, harder. Frank winced at the shock of the blow, but the dog let go. Frank scrambled back on her ass and the legs around her jumped beyond the reach of the chain. Frank saw the hole the dog had made under the fence, wondering what would have happened if a little kid had walked by instead of her.
She grayed out a little, thinking it was Haystack who said, as if from a distance, "That's a lot of fucking blood."
Jill, equally distant, screamed for an ambulance. Frank tried to protest, but was stunned by the ferocity of a sudden memory. The remembrance was so vivid it cleared her head and erased the fire in her arm. The dog lunging on its chain, the pain in her bloodied arm, the feet shuffling around her, Jill screaming for the ambo—she was reliving it over again.
"I've already done this," she said to herself.
Jill bent next to her and the deja vu vanished.
"What'd you say?"
"Nothing," Frank mumbled. She was watching the dog. It danced on its rear legs, slavering and barking wetly. Its jaws were slick with drool and blood. Her blood.
"It's red," she said.
"What?" Jill asked, lifting Frank's mangled arm over her head to slow the bleeding.
"The dog. It's red."
"Yeah, Frank, it's red."
Frank's vision darkened and tunneled inward. She felt queasy. The Mother's honeyed voice teased, "Watch out for a red dog," then Frank heard laughing.
The Mother was still laughing, but farther away. She stood against a red sunset, trailing black and red and white gauze. The wind flapped her wrapping, unraveling her like a mummy. The Mother held a bloody sword above her head and a hand stretched to Frank. Blood dripped from the sword into pools at the Mothers feet. She laughed, beckoning Frank.
Bobby was asking her if she could stand.
"Yeah," she answered, but didn't try. She thought she was going to puke.
"Let's just wait for the ambulance," Jill said.
"I think we should get away from this dog," Bobby maintained. "He pops a link we're in trouble."
Frank felt hands under her arms, tried to help raise herself. Couldn't.
"Give me a sec," she whispered. Her cops ignored her, dragging her across the street.
"Wait. Wait," Frank tried again, fighting the nausea and grayness. They hesitated and she breathed, "Let me sit a sec. I'm okay."
She slumped onto a fender and dropped her head between her knees, rushing the blood to her brain. Jill told Bobby to go get something for her arm. Jill was trying to support it in the air and at the same time keep Frank propped against the fender. Seeing the blood smeared on her pants and the arterial stream plopping steadily onto her shoes, Frank thought, I'm gonna have to throw these away.
People from the station crowded around. Frank kept her head down, hoping she wouldn't hurl. By the time Bobby raced back the shock had lessened. She was able to sit up with her good arm braced against her leg. Frank focused on the pain. It was deep and sharp, like her ulna was being forged of molten steel.
Bobby tossed Jill a towel and a pack of gauze. Jill glared at her old partner.
"Do you think I could get a little help?"
Darcy had joined the knot of people and he grabbed the gauze. Frank bit against her teeth as he unrolled the spool around her wrist.
"If we had some Saran Wrap we could package this up and sell it as hamburger."
He grinned at her and Frank asked, "Did you find him?"
Darcy shook his head. "No one saw him. He just disappeared."
Frank corrected weakly, "People don't disappear."
"This one did."
He wrapped her arm in the towel but the blood soaked through even before he was done. Looking into her face, Jill asked, "How you feeling?"
"Fine," Frank lied. "This is gonna fuck up my range marks.”
“You should put your head back down. You're really pale." But Frank insisted, "I'm all right," even as she felt herself slide onto the road and into darkness.
21
Yawning, Frank padded barefoot into Gail's guestroom, which was really her home office. The doc twisted from her computer, pulling her glasses off.
"Hi, poor baby. How do you feel?"
"Pretty good, considering."
Considering it had taken the emergency room surgeon three hours to sew her wrist back together.
"Have you taken any Vicodin yet?"
Frank shook her head and bent to kiss Gail, holding her arm well away. It throbbed, and hurt if she flexed her hand, but over all the pain wasn't bad. She had some minor nerve damage, but nothing that wouldn't heal with time and therapy.
"I don't like it. Makes me feel flat."
"Well, you take it if the pain gets bad. And if you want I'll get you something else. It's a fact that people heal faster when they're not in pain."
"It's a fact, huh?"
"Don't get flip with me. Oh. I've got a surprise for you."
Gail rummaged through the chaos on her desk, finally placing a stack of faxed pages into Frank's left hand. It was Danny Duncan's preliminary autopsy report. The doc made a face, saying, "It looks like he was still alive when they bled him."
Frank scanned the first sheet. Death was attributed to exsanguination due to a single incised wound. The anatomical summary listed obvious pallor and evidence of exsanguination, and one incised wound to the neck, resulting in gross transection of the left and right carotid arteries as well as gross transection of the left and right internal jugular veins.
"Are you hungry?" Gail interrupted. "Can I make you something to eat?"
"Coffee?" Frank asked.
"That's all?"
Frank nodded and Gail admonished, "Your diet's atrocious."
"Don't start," Frank warned, making herself comfortable on the guest bed. She skimmed the generalities: External examination revealed the normally developed body of an adult black male weighing 167 pounds and measuring 71 inches in length. Decedent appeared muscular and well-nourished. Rigor mortis was present and generalized; livor mortis fixed and posterior. Tattoos, abrasions, and scars were duly noted, as well as continuous, circular contusions around each wrist and ankle.
Frank took the mug Gail handed her. Pointing at the remarks about the bruising, Frank asked, "Did Paul say anything about this?"
"Uh-uh," Gail scanned quickly. "Do you think he was bound?"
"Appears that way."
Frank put the mug down and pushed the papers in her lap until she found the body sketch. Paul had only indicated the contusions with a slash mark. She checked the clothing and valuables section for anomalies, then scanned the systemic review.
But for an absence of blood, Duncan's insides were unremarkable. The trauma was localized to his neck. There, Frank read to Gail, "A deeply incised wound starting from the left sternocleidomastoid muscle stretches seven-point-five inches to the anterior border of the right sternocleidomastoid muscle. The wound is smooth-edged and gaping, exposing the larynx and vertebral column. The incision passes cleanly through the thyrohyoid ligament and hypo-pharynx and point-five inches into the C3 vertebrae.
"Translated"—Frank looked up—"that means whoever cut Duncan was one strong motherfucker."
"Do you have to talk like that here?"
"Sorry."
"Not only is he strong, but he's probably left-handed, too."
"So it's highly unlikely that someone the Mother's size and age could slice so cleanly and deeply through a grown man's throat that she goes half an inch into his neck bone."
"Highly unlikely," Gail agreed.
The opinion section of the report concluded that due to the incision's cleanness, smoothness, and regularity, the decedent was likely immobile during infliction of the fatal neck wound. The lack of blood in his body indicated his heart had still been pumping when he was cut, but he probably lost consciousness within seconds, if he wasn't already out. That would explain the immobilization, Frank thought, squaring the papers with one hand.
&nb
sp; Gail spied over the edge of her glasses.
"Does that help?"
She was wearing shorts and Frank admired her legs.
"Some. What are you working on?"
"I'm finally getting back to my friend in Canada. I told you about her, didn't I? Tempe Brennan? The forensic anthropologist? She's a neat lady."
Gail had a wide network of associates and colleagues. She'd put a lot of effort into her career, unlike Frank, who'd had it thrust upon her. Joe Girardi had taken her aside only three few months after Maggie died, outlining her advancement to command. Frank hadn't wanted to climb the LAPD ladder; Detective Grade II was good enough for her. But she'd numbly accepted Joe's tutelage, partly to fill the black hole inside her, but more to please Joe. He'd been her angel and she couldn't let him down. In retrospect, he'd probably known that was exactly what she'd needed to distract herself from an alcoholic oblivion or swallowing a bullet.
Frank patted the space beside her.
"Come here."
Gail filled the indicated spot, carefully wrapping Frank in a hug.
"You know something?"
"I know a lot of things," Frank said against the flat plane where Gail's left breast used to be. She kissed the scar through Gail's shirt as her good hand found warm skin underneath.
"I was worried about you last night."
The doc pulled back to look at Frank.
"It surprised me. I've never felt like that before. I felt so protective. I don't want anything bad to happen to you."
Frank was ready with a flip answer but Gail's earnest expression stopped her. She nodded instead.
"Do you ever feel that way about me?"
"All the time," Frank admitted.
They touched in the gentle and private way that lovers do when words are too much or not enough. This was so different from Maggie. Maybe because Frank was so different. She felt older, more stable. There'd always been so much excitement with Maggie. Big melodramatic fights ending with one of them stalking out, then sheepishly coming back, and lots of great make-up sex. They learned a lot along the way, but with Gail it felt like Frank was taking what she'd learned and putting it to use.
Gail murmured, "What would you say if I said I was falling head over heels in love with you?"
Frank continued caressing the warm skin. It was such a lovely distraction from the fear fluttering inside her chest.
"I'd say that was a wonderful thing."
"But you wouldn't say you were falling in love with me," Gail fished.
I couldn't, Frank wanted to say. Flirting with the thought was so much easier, and safer, than admitting it, than actually saying the words. Frank remembered Tracey tapping her on the chest.
"Maybe," she hedged, "I've already fallen."
Gail didn't press for specifics and Frank was grateful. It was so much easier to show the doc how she felt. They made love softly and slowly, feeling each other's heartbeat when they returned to words.
"How's your hand?"
"Fine."
Frank kissed the head against her chin, marveling at the range of emotions she'd had in less than twenty-four hours; her anger and curiosity as she picked up the thing in rags, the subsequent alarm and puzzlement when it disappeared, the shock and pain of the dog bite, relief in the hospital, and finally safety in Gail's bed. And again now in her arms. Safe harbor after rough passage.
And that was the thing Frank was dancing around. It wasn't the dog mauling her or the stitches nor the considerable blood loss. That was rough but not extraordinary. What made her want a safe haven was what she'd seen while she was sitting on her butt staring at the frenzied pit bull. The vision of the relic laughing in the Mother's voice had been frightening enough, but the clarity of the deja vu that followed was inexplicable and bordered on terrifying.
In the hospital she'd dismissed it as a brief but intense hallucination brought on by shock and stress. The explanation had worked for a little while, but Frank ultimately had to admit it was no hallucination. What she'd seen and heard had been real, as real as Gail in her arms. Not only that, the moment had felt as familiar as coming home at night and stepping into her house. That sense of normalcy, of time unfolding in its ordinary pattern was jarring. It scared Frank that a moment so intellectually alien could be so physically real.
Frank murmured into Gail's hair, "What's predestination?"
"Hmm?"
"What's predestination mean? Like in psychic phenomena or religion."
"Gee, let me think. I'm not used to theology quizzes in the midst of my afterglow."
"What are you used to?" Frank grinned, tilting Gail's lips up for a kiss.
"Something more along those lines," Gail said rolling onto her elbows. "Well, the Christian definition is that God has ordained the future as well as the past. Everything that's happened to you, and is going to happen is writ in stone. Even who gets to be saved and who is damned."
Gail said "damned" with an eerie conviction.
"Do you believe that? About being damned?"
"No. Being damned is committing the same senseless actions over and over again. We do that right here on earth. People that don't grow and learn from their mistakes, that keep repeating them over and over and stay mired in their misery, that's hell."
"What's heaven?"
"Love," Gail said instantly.
Frank smiled, tucking the doc's bob back behind an ear.
"Everything's so simple for you."
"It is now but that doesn't mean it didn't take me a while to get here. Why are you asking about all this?"
"I don't know," Frank evaded. She hadn't told Gail about the freakish occurrences during the dog attack and didn't plan to. "So basically predestination is fate. Do you believe in fate?"
"Actually fate was the Greek version of predestination. I think there were a couple goddesses responsible for determining human destiny. See? There's another word for you. Predestination, fate, kismet, karma—a rose by any other name is still a rose. Every culture has their belief in divine rule."
"So you believe all that."
"To a certain extent. I believe we choose the lives we're going to live and the choices we'll be confronted with. If we choose loving choices we grow and evolve. If we choose safe, comfortable choices, we stay stuck in our quagmires. They may be perfectly comfortable quagmires, too. A lot of us don't even know we're in them. I didn't, before the cancer."
Another subject Frank was less than eager to talk about.
"You ever had a deja vu?"
"Yeah," Gail nodded. "Is that what this is all about?"
"They're kinda weird, huh?"
"I think they're fun. I can count on one hand how many times I've had them, but they're always so bizarre. It's like a veil gets pulled away and until it's dropped back into place we're seeing a world we're not supposed to know anything about."
"What is it you think we're not supposed to know?"
"What happens when we die and before we're born."
"Why aren't we supposed to know?"
"I don't think we're emotionally or intellectually capable of dealing with it. We're too enmeshed in our corporal comforts. I think cosmic truths go against our biological imperatives for survival."
"I love it when you talk dirty. Could you say that in English?"
"Meaning our body and mind have evolved to keep us alive. Physically safe. It's a temporary situation, and inevitably we all lose. We all die. Our biological drives are counterintuitive to what our souls know—that our bodies are only temporary structures. They die, but our spirits don't. Our bodies are just rentals our souls use to drive from spiritual lesson to spiritual lesson."
Frank had to laugh, asking, "Why did I even open this can of worms?"
"I've been wondering that same thing," Gail said.
The conversation shifted to mundane matters and for a while longer Frank was safely anchored at harbor.
22
Her family still teased her about marrying a man named Helms, but Jess
ie's sister never took part in that foolishness. Crystal was long on vision but short on humor, as serious most times as a bullet to the brain. The only time she loosened up was when she sipped tea in Jessie's cramped, sunny kitchen.
With a sharp eye Crystal watched Jessie add pinches of valerian and skullcap to the chamomile. She poured boiling water over the herbs and pushed the brew toward Crissie. Fussing with the strainer, as if that would make the tea steep faster, Crissie said, "Marcus told me that poh-leece woman come by here."
Always uncomfortable with words, Jessie just nodded. She marveled how one minute her sister could sound like a lawyer and the next like some old do-rag off the street. Crissie'd always had a way with words, easily mimicking her clients to put them at ease or testifying in front of a jury as if she had a PhD from a back-east college.
"What she axe about?"
Jessie lifted a shoulder in answer.
"I wasn't home. Wardell talked with her."
Her sister's face clouded.
"Wardell!" she bellowed. "Come in here right now!"
A moment later Jessie's husband loomed over the kitchen table. A big, loose-jointed man, he was as affable as his wife and sister-in-law were stern.
"Woman," he sighed, "why you holler at me like that in my own home?"
Crystal demanded, "You talk with that police woman?"
"Yeah, some," he nodded. "She axed about you."
"And what you tell her?" the Mother snapped back.
He raised his big hands.
"Nothin', Crissie. Just talked mostly about ol' times, is all. Wasn't nothin' to it."
"Wardell Helms you ain't got the sense Spirit done give you and you tell me ain't nothin' to it."
The Mother shoved a chair away from the kitchen table, jerked her head at it.
"You set right down and tell me every word that passed between you two."
"Aw, come on, Crissie. The game's on."
She flapped a hand.
"I don't care nothin' 'bout no foolishness on the TV. Now sit down!"