But damn it, he didn’t make up the cheerleader’s voice. He didn’t know her, hadn’t even met her. And he didn’t make up people like Edwin. The kid died of polio. Murray didn’t think he had ever heard of polio till Edwin told him about it. Bottom line? Even if he was delusional, at least he had friends.
When Pearl asked him again, he’d tell her he’d done research. The result? He didn’t know what was going on and no one else did either. Hearing the girl crying? He simply couldn’t explain that. Nobody could. And he would admit that the Nikki Parker thing could have some different explanation. Like maybe he’d noticed the fresh grave and wondered about it. Maybe Murray’d heard the guy digging the night he buried her but didn’t make anything of it. Forgot about it. Whatever, there was probably something real that explained finding the body, even if he didn’t know what it was. The whole thing was a mystery, and life and love and death have lots of mysteries. That’s the way it is.
Maybe Pearl would have mercy on him. Maybe she’d feel embarrassed that she’d been pressing him so hard and would back off before she pushed him all the way round the bend. If she’d ease off, everything would be fine. Really, who cared? Nobody but her. Nobody but her and the dead.
There was no sugarcoating it, Murray wasn’t going to stop. The dead needed him. That was obvious. And sometimes they were surprising, amazing even. Didn’t exactly have to worry about what people thought of them, right? But some of the dead were unsettled. Not resting in peace. Had things that bothered them. You can see how frustrating that would be. Stuck in the ground but still having troubles.
Murray was embarrassed to admit it, but he was afraid of the dead who were the most upset. As soon as he talked to them, they wanted him to fix something from their past life, and usually he didn’t want to. All those feelings? He could comfort the dead, but he couldn’t deal with the living. They were too mean. Sad cases, a lot of them.
* * *
Back at the cemetery, on his way to talk with Edwin, Murray noticed a new grave. He didn’t have time to check if it was a kid who needed visiting, but he’d come back later. Right now he needed some advice, or the thing Janochek sometimes talked to Pearl about, perspective. A different viewpoint.
Murray spoke as soon as he’d sat and touched Edwin’s headstone. “Why do you think we can talk to each other?”
“Uh, we like each other?”
“No, I mean, am I clairvoyant?”
“I thought you were Protestant.”
“Damn it, I’m serious.”
“Maybe if you told me what this is about.”
“Pearl knows I talk with dead people and wants me to find a missing guy because she says I have a gift.”
“I don’t get it.”
“She says I’m clairvoyant, and Janochek thinks so, too, and I looked it up and it says it’s false science. So, how can you and I talk? What’s going on to make that possible?”
“I’m not following you. We talk because we’re friends. We talk because you visit me. Uh, you think living people and dead people shouldn’t talk? You think dead people don’t talk? Who am I?”
“Edwin.”
“We have a winner!”
“But you’re dead!”
“You want me to shut up?”
“No! Crap! I just want to understand what’s going on.”
“I think you should ask somebody else. I spent all that time in the iron lung and I never really even understood polio. I’m just glad you found me … buddies.”
“What happens to you when I’m not here?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Murr, the square root of nothing is nothing.”
CLASSMATING
The new grave was on the far south side near the 44 border, a little out of the way, and Murray hadn’t noticed it until he’d gone to talk with Edwin the last time. The funeral must have taken place when he’d been in school. Murray sat carefully, respectfully, and reached out to touch. Read the name and got a surprise.
SANDRAY VANCE
AUGUST 24, 1997—JANUARY 28, 2014
ALWAYS LOVING, ALWAYS LOVED
Sandray. The junior from Endeavor High across town who’d gotten killed at home. The whole gun argument had once again divided classmates. Murray’s school vibrated with the girl’s death. And he’d seen her, at a couple of sports assemblies. She was so … what word would do her justice? He’d asked the person next to him, Who’s the girl at the front of the dance team? A girl behind him answered—Sandray Vance. That’s all he knew. He’d never spoken to her. And then she got killed, and when he heard about it, it seemed like such a waste. Why always the best ones?
And now she was buried in his cemetery! How cool was that?
“Hey. You go to Endeavor?”
“Did.”
“Dance team at the rallies?”
“Did.”
“So what happened?”
“I died.”
“I can see that … How?”
“It’s a long stupid story.”
“I got time.”
“Who are you?”
“Murray. I saw your routines.”
“You go to Endeavor?”
“Sierra, but you came to our assemblies a couple of times.”
“You played ball?”
“No. They wouldn’t want me.”
“Why not?”
Murray sat back and took his hands off the metal marker. He didn’t want to get into that. When he put his hands on the plaque again there was no connection at all. No reception, no transmission. Silence. Is she mad at me? Gradually he felt the slight tingle, heard the familiar soft hiss like a PA system coming on.
“Sandray’s a pretty name.”
Nothing.
“So what happened. How’d you get killed?”
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said.
“Uh…”
“Don’t be a child.”
“I’m seventeen.” Murray tried to think of a response to why he didn’t play sports that wouldn’t make him seem like a loser. “Okay, I’m not super coordinated and I haven’t played on any teams. You probably wouldn’t know me, even if we’d gone to the same school. My mom got in trouble with … I guess I usually keep to myself.” He could feel the tingle step up a notch like the girl was really listening.
She was quiet for a moment more. Trying to imagine him? She moved on. “I’ve been here a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah, the ground is pretty fresh.”
“I wanted to be cremated but nobody listened.”
Murray was surprised. Hadn’t met anyone who wanted to go that route. He guessed that the girl thought burning was a greener method. This correctness stuff never ended.
She went on, “My uncle Jake, Dad’s youngest brother, got back from Afghanistan a while ago. It was pretty hard on him and he’s been acting kind of strange.”
Murray could imagine. War would change a person.
“Anyway, he’s been angry, jumpy, yells a lot … god, it’s so crazy…”
Murray relaxed. Patient.
“He’s been staying with his ex-girlfriend’s family, and he got in a big argument and they threw him out. He came to our house blitzed and raging about them and the Vets clinic, and everything. I was upstairs in my room, working on trig, and he was so loud I could hear him. Dad must have said something like calm down or be cool and Jake completely lost it. Started screaming. He had a pistol and he was firing it into the ceiling. Didn’t know I was above him. And he got me. Twice. One under the arm and the other through my leg and up into my body. I knew he didn’t mean to. I wanted to tell him. Tell my dad … but I died before anyone found me.”
What do you say to something like that? “Jeez, that’s … awful.” It reminded him. “I got shot last year but it didn’t kill me.”
“Where?”
“Here. About fifty yards over toward the street. A drunk.”
“No. Chest? Arm?”
“Sid
e. I was lucky. Missed everything major.”
“Really lucky. Even if he hadn’t nicked my heart I would have probably bled out with the leg thing. Never thought I’d die like that. From a bullet.”
“I’m sorry,” Murray said. “You were so lively, so pretty.” He looked away from the headstone, remembering. “You had great moves—” The hiss ceased like someone had pulled a plug. No energy. Nothing but silence. “I’m sorry,” Murray said, feeling like an idiot. Great moves would be pretty hard to hear if you were dead. Newly dead. “I’m really sorry.” But he was talking to a bronze metal plaque.
* * *
Before school the next day, Murray stopped by Feathers’s marker. Got a surprise.
“Who the hell are you?”
No one had challenged him before. It was sort of shocking. Who else sits in front of your stone and touches it? “Um, Murray” was all he could think of.
“Yeah, so?”
“Uh…”
“What ya got?”
“What do you mean?… News?”
“I need news like I need ’nother hole in the head. You got a forty?”
Murray snorted, couldn’t help himself. “You can’t drink. You’re dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Eisenstein.”
“What do you want?”
“You got a girl?”
Murray nodded. “Matter of fact I do.” He got up. Let’s see how you get along with Pearl.
NEW TRACT
Deputy Roman Gates wedged his pickup into a parking spot, far corner of the sheriff’s compound. Crossing the blacktop to the office, he was momentarily distracted when a bedraggled man approached.
“I done stuff you wouldn’t believe,” the man said. “You ought to lock me up.”
Gates believed jail might look like a pretty good option if he was in the man’s torn shoes. Gates tried to imagine how he would feel wearing the same clothes day after day, no shower. The older fellow was filthy, raised red sore on his forehead, grimy windbreaker, stained wool sport coat worn like a blanket. He stopped, asked the man if people he knew were disappearing.
“Disappeared a long time ago. Piss on ’em.”
Gates didn’t want to pursue that. “I mean recently. Other people in the life you’re living.”
The man stared at Gates. “Yeah. Call this living?”
“I heard street folks are going missing. Know anything about that?”
“Happens all the time.”
“More than usual lately?”
The man studied Gates’s name tag as if he might want to file a complaint for harassment. “There something you’re not telling me?”
“I’m not…” Gates looked away for a moment, uncertain what to say. “If you’re usually careful, be more careful.”
The man shook his head. “I don’t got enough trouble…”
Gates made sure the man knew about food and bed at Good Hope and Faith. Gave the guy an orange and the cheese crackers from his lunch sack. That exchange made him a couple of minutes late to the morning briefing, where he caught something about a fight at the skateboard park.
He got focused in time to hear about the hit-and-run on Old Alturas Road—victim hospitalized. Two armed robberies: ShopMart on Churn Creek and FastGas on Placer—less than a hundred dollars each and no one hurt. The only vandalism was spray-painting, poorly drawn but nonetheless obscene pictures, on the girls’ gym at Redwood Middle School.
Duty sergeant’s closing words, an admonition. “Still a wolf in the Garden, Mr. Gates. Make us proud.”
Gates checked his desk for new messages or further interview sheets. None. He half filled the to-go cup he’d brought from home with the bitter dregs from the squad room pot and grabbed his vest and a clipboard so he could jot notes as he drove. Down the steps and into the parking lot, he saw the homeless man was still there, now following a young deputy toward the coroner’s office. Maybe safer, but probably not the kind of accommodation the man was hoping for.
* * *
His second full day of his patrol of the Garden Tract was no more effective than the first. From today’s briefing, Gates knew there had been another robbery in the area. Conclusion? So far he was a waste of taxpayers’ money. And gasoline. What had he missed? He’d been looking for a male in dark clothing, sixteen to thirty-five. Slender because it would be easier to get in and out of houses without knocking things over or making too much noise. Caucasian because that was this neighborhood’s predominant race. Hadn’t seen a one.
What had he seen? Nothing, nobody … except three or four people, housewives or parents or college students walking their dogs. That didn’t fit a robbery—tie your pet outside while you burgle? Nope. His assumptions about the thief had probably been wrong. In what way?
He parked at one of his favorite places, the driving range on the Sierra River, and watched families of geese puttering around, squabbling with inland seagulls. Wildlife, water, and beautiful country helped him think. He had planned to reimagine the robberies: the way a particular house would be chosen, perhaps a different suspect profile; but his mind drifted back to Pittman and the recently missing homeless. Was sport hunting completely off the mark?
Peggy Duheen, a friend of his, social worker at County Mental Health, had told him he was lucky to have an “unconscious process.” Said it helped his investigations. Gates hoped she was right. Or maybe occasionally he just got lucky. Someday he would ask Duheen what the hell an unconscious process was.
STRIKE TWO
“You’ve been avoiding me.” Pearl stood blocking the shed. One hand on her hip, the other clutching the stocking cap down by her side.
Not a good sign. “Uh, no. You’ve been gone a lot.”
“Softball tryouts. I made the team. The homeless guy’s still a no-show.”
“Maybe he moved on. They do. All the time.”
“Maybe something happened to him.”
He brushed past her and went inside, not wanting to argue where Janochek might see them.
She came through the door and turned over an empty bucket to sit on. “Nobody will help.”
“Maybe because it’s not really a problem. There’s a million explanations why you haven’t seen him again.”
“If somebody you knew was missing would you just ignore it?”
Uh-oh. This was exactly the way Pearl had pressured him into locating the cheerleader’s body. “Look,” he said, “this kind of thing, this clairvoyant crap, just makes people think I’m getting crazier.”
“So it’s all about you. You really don’t care that an older man, a guy who’s weak and pretty helpless, might be in trouble.”
“Pearl, you’re making all this up. It’s not about this guy you don’t even know. It’s about you and proving you’re a good person.”
Pearl reddened, eyes narrowed.
“Besides,” Murray said, sitting on the cot, holding its edges. “Bad news.”
Pearl waited.
“I did some research. Clairvoyance is a pseudoscience. You know what that means?”
Pearl’s frown became a grimace.
“It means there’s no such thing. Like I told you before, I’m nuts.”
Muscles in her jaw compressed. She was up so fast the cap dropped and the bucket tipped over. “So my dad’s a dope or a liar?”
“No, I—”
“You’re a coward! You’ve got something that could help people and you’re so … gutless you won’t even figure out how to use it.”
“I know how to use it. I help my frien—”
“They’re dead, you moron! They don’t need help. The living do. You helped Nikki’s family find their daughter. You do something good like that and then you crawl back in your grave? Spend your life in a goddamn lawnmower shed? I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”
This time she was the one who stormed away.
Murray shuddered. Like having a cannon go off in front of you. Pearl was so hair-trigger. Impossible to reason with. But he thou
ght about what she’d said.
Mr. Janochek was a wonderful man. Neither a fool nor a liar. Maybe he was just too optimistic. He’d said Murray was clairvoyant to protect Murray. To shield him from being a suspect. To keep him from being hurt by the rough police interrogation. And Janochek had believed Murray was onto something about the missing girl that deserved to be followed up. Janochek thought clairvoyance explained how Murray could get information about the dead. The nice man had probably never looked the word up.
Had Murray made a mistake? More likely him than Mr. Janochek. Murray would go back to the library. Maybe he hadn’t understood the concept. No matter what explained it, Janochek was right. Murray did talk with the dead. Just part of being crazy. And one other thing. The voices outside the cemetery were getting louder. Harder to ignore.
It was happening again. He couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it, but he was involved. Stuck knowing something he shouldn’t be able to know, stuck with exposing his … his what? Gift? Curse? Letting people see he was abnormal or nuts. He couldn’t just shut up about it? Sure he could. But what if he did and then the voices got even louder and began following him and driving him so crazy they had to come and take him away?
LINGERING STAIN
Pearl was convinced her touch-the-cap idea was a good one. Over dinner the same day she decided to ask her dad. Wouldn’t he think it was possible? She waited till he was a couple of bites into his turkey, bacon, Jarlsberg, serrano, and tomato triple-decker.
“I’ve been thinking,” she began.
Janochek paused with the sandwich halfway to his mouth. Put it back on his plate and turned to look at her. In his experience, her ideas sometimes required his very careful attention. He could never predict what mischief might grow from Pearl’s cogitations.
Dead Investigation Page 3