by Gillian Zane
“I picked him up from day care early, they were closing for some reason,” Chance O’Neal said.
“The air conditioner wasn’t working properly,” Debra O’Neal expanded on her husband’s statement.
“Right, yes, they had an issue with the A/C and it was unexpected, so I picked up Liam, but I forgot something at the office, so I headed back into the city instead of going home. I should have just gone home.” From the aura of truth that radiated off him, I knew what Chance was saying was the truth. But the pulsing black oil that pooled around him, spreading it’s sickness with each breath he took, told me that was all the truth I was going to hear.
He placed his head in his hands, his elbows on the table, and his shoulders jerked like he was sobbing, but he didn’t make a sound. I had to give him credit; the man was truly torn up about the death of his son, even though he was the one who had killed him.
“They surprised me at a red light, opened my door. He had a gun in my face and he pulled me out of the car. He was so strong. I think I might have blacked out. He hit me with the gun, I think, I don’t know, it’s all so muddled,” he lied.
“They called that night, demanding money we didn’t have,” Debra said, wiping at her eyes.
“It was that damn car, I bought it on auction. That’s how I could afford it. But all they saw was that car.” Chance didn’t lift his head out of his hands. He didn’t want to meet our gazes. He thought we were judging him, his actions, his story. He was right.
“Detective, can I have a word?” I asked and Troy’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. He jerked his head toward the door and I got up quickly and walked out into the hallway.
“What’s up?” he asked the moment the door closed.
“It was the father,” I said. I had seen the dark oily splotches all over his aura the moment I walked in. The mother was only tinged with the gray of sorrow, and nothing like the man drowning in a sea of darkness. The moment he started talking, the final pieces fell into place and I saw the truth behind his lies.
“The father? He had no reason, though…” Troy said, glancing in the viewing window at the father who still had his head in his hands, the wife rubbing his back in big circles.
“He forgot the child in the car seat when he went back into work. It wasn’t long, only an hour maybe, but it was the middle of summer. When he realized, it was too late. The boy was dead. He knew his wife would never forgive him and he might go to jail, so he staged the carjacking with the help of a childhood friend who’s gone a bit bad. He buried his son in a field, near the Baywater Bridge.”
“Wait, what? You got all that after only five minutes with that man?”
“Basically,” I lied again. I saw it all in a matter of seconds.
The mother and father of the dead child were brought with us to the bridge. The closer we got to the bridge, the more I knew this was the right path. This was where the boy was buried. Troy wanted a confession and thought bringing the father here would force one. I had to give it to Troy; he was putting a lot of faith in me. If I was a charlatan, this could be a fiasco. We had about ten officers in uniform with us. I recognized almost all of them, but couldn’t place their names even though the hazy memories were clambering at the back of my brain to come forward. I didn’t have time to get lost in the past, not right now.
“Why are we here?” The mother’s voice was strained on the verge of panic.
We had told them we were following a lead and needed their input. The mother was getting agitated. She knew something more was going on, but didn’t know what it was. The husband had gone quiet. His eyes were as round as saucers as we pulled onto the gravel access area.
I turned in my seat and looked at the father. He looked guilty as hell.
Troy held the door for them, and the wife got out looking around at her surroundings like we were in some foreign country.
The goal was to get a confession from the husband. With his wife there and faced with his child’s body, it should be easy. Or so Troy said. That was if I was right. I knew I was, but there was always that bit of doubt at the bottom of my logical brain.
“What could possibly be here? Why did you bring us here?” The wife’s voice was getting more high-pitched and nervous as she repeated herself. The father was staring at his hands, refusing to meet any of our eyes.
“Do you sense something, Cas?” Troy said in response.
“Is that why we’re here? She’s led us here? What is she, really? I can’t believe you would do this to us, Detective.” She pointed a finger at me, her voice fading.
Troy didn’t answer her, he only looked at me. I could feel his anxiety. He was worried, doubting himself, and me, under the ire of the mother.
“Why would you do this to us, Detective?” she repeated. “Why would you put us through this?” Her voice was shrill and Troy’s eye twitched.
Even though I wanted to ease the woman’s pain, I knew that wasn’t going to happen today. It would only get so much worse for her, and there was nothing I could do about it. Her husband had killed her child and then lied about it. Covered it up to save himself and then caused even more pain and suffering by staging a kidnapping. He had done it for some kind of displaced love he felt for his wife, or so he told himself. But it was truly fear of going to jail; the man had turned a tragedy into a horror show.
“Chance, where is your boy?” I ignored the wife and focused on the man.
“What?” His head shot up, his cheeks flushed with emotion. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead, even with the cool temperatures and the cold wind blowing off the river.
“Where did you bury him, Chance?” I asked and the man stumbled back like I had slapped him. He gripped his shirt near his heart, his eyes huge, his mouth open in a pant.
“What is she talking about? What the Hell is she talking about?” the wife demanded of Troy. She couldn’t look at her husband. Deep down, did she know?
“Where is he, Chance? I know you wrapped him in his blanket, and placed his bunny on his chest. What did he name that rabbit?”
“Sam,” Chance’s voice broke, tears were streaming down his face in dark rivulets.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“He was so small, but there was nothing left of him. He was just like Sam, limp.” Chance’s voice was barely a whisper. Was he really comparing his dead child’s body to a stuffed animal?
“Chance?” His wife’s entire demeanor had changed. Her body was frozen rigid with the impact of the emotions taking her over. She went from outrage to horror, the emotions flitting across her face as she turned like a robot to face her husband. When she took in his face, the guilt, the fear, her entire body began to tremble.
He shook his head in a panic. Denying the words that had come out of his mouth, denying what he had done. He looked from his wife to me and then to Troy. We gave him no reprieve.
“I didn’t mean to, it was an accident,” he whispered. The wife was so quick, going from outrage to anger in an instant. Her husband crumpled to the ground under her blows, which weren’t that strong but the emotional weight behind them took him down. With each impact she screamed his name until a cop pulled her off him. He wasn’t fighting back, he let her hit him. He knew he deserved it.
When the cuffs were slipped onto his wrists, I buckled under the onslaught of the negative energy, my knees giving out as the intensity of the darkness hit me full force, the guilt, the pain, all the lies. Troy caught me and leaned me against the squad car.
I watched through blurry, watering eyes as Chance led two of the cops to the grave of his son, stumbling every couple of steps because he wasn’t used to walking with his hands behind his back. He stuttered out the real story in a guilt driven confession along the way. His wife was placed in the back of a black and white. Her screams blurring with the hiccupping sobs of a woman destroyed would haunt my waking thoughts for a long time.
“Are you okay?” Troy asked me, concern lacing his words.
“Yes,”
I said, the buzz in my ears fading. It had been intense. “It takes a lot out of me,” I lied.
“I can’t believe it was the dad. I didn’t suspect him at all,” Troy said.
“It’s hard to see the darkness sometimes, even if it’s obvious,” I sighed watching as the dark splotches spread over Troy's aura in liquid-like movements, almost impossible for me to look away from now that I was flush with karma.
“Right,” Troy said, looking up when he heard a shout from one of the officers.
“We’ve got remains.”
4
Insecurities & Orgasms
Drake found me in my bed an hour later. An officer had dropped me off at my shop and I somehow made it back to Karma in a daze. I had taken a shower and was still wet and wrapped in a robe. I barely used this bed, since I didn’t sleep, but it was soft and welcoming and at the moment I couldn’t move. He said nothing, only took one look at me and slipped into bed with me, wrapping his arms around my body. He didn’t care that he was getting wet, and somehow that meant so much to me.
He knew where I had been.
He probably thought I was freaking out about going back to my old precinct, but I couldn’t find the energy to tell him what had happened. I still heard that woman’s sobs in my head like an echo.
When he didn’t say a word, no prodding, or questioning, I relaxed into his arms until the chills faded, until I could finally whisper what had happened in a stuttering recount of the day’s events. As the story went on, his arms tightened around me, and his hands were running up and down my arms to reassure me.
When I finished he sat up and looked down at me, wiping the hair from my face.
“That’s horrible. I can’t believe Oversight would put you in this position.”
“And it isn’t even that, the boy was horrible. The mother, I can’t even imagine her pain. But I keep circling back to myself. To why I’m here, why they would put me in a position to be faced with my own case. I’m so selfish.”
“You’re not selfish, Cassandra.” He ran a finger over my lips as if to steal the words away and I almost believed him. “Your instinct is telling you something is off about this entire thing.”
“This isn’t a coincidence,” I said, realizing this was the underlying reason for my fear and my freak-out. I knew deep down that something, someone, was guiding my hand, forcing me in this direction and I had no idea if that guiding force had my well-being or destruction in mind. If I was being honest with myself, it had destruction written all over it.
“No matter what it is, we’ll get through it.” His words were a comfort. His hands slipped into mine, warm to my cold, they brought stillness. I could have cried. I could have broken down right there if I would have allowed myself. He couldn’t possibly know what those words did to me. To not be alone in this. It was all I had ever wanted.
Instead of crying, I turned to face him, intent on showing him exactly what those words meant to me. To reassure him with my touch that I appreciated that he was here, that we were now a team. I could honestly admit to myself that he was the only thing that mattered to me in this screwed up afterlife we both lived within.
At first he was hesitant, unsure if this was what we should be doing. So Drake, always worried about my delicate sensibilities, and if he was taking advantage of me. The more I kissed him, the looser his muscles, the more responsive he became. Until finally that passion that I so loved from him flared, and he was covering my body with his.
He parted my robe, my naked body underneath exposed for his exploration. My skin erupted in goosebumps and my nipples tightened to hard buttons. He watched my body react and his eyes darkened in lust.
When he captured one of those hard buds between his teeth, I cried out, urging him on by running my hands through his hair.
“The last thing you need is me fucking you right now.” Drake looked up from my breast, trying to talk me out of it.
“You’re right,” I said on a sigh as he shifted his weight from my breast. He started to move away, but I stopped him. “I need you to make love to me.” I was self-conscious about my words, about the pressure it might put on him.
He smiled and nodded. His mouth went to exploring my body again, this time gently as if with a light touch he could distinguish his intentions. He continued to give a lot of attention to my breasts, palming one while sucking on the other, making me squirm underneath his big body. Finally, when he had bored of my breasts, he began to move down my body, stopping every few inches to kiss and suck, until he settled between my legs.
Spreading my legs to gain better access, I moaned his name when his lips and tongue found my core and began to bring me pleasure.
All thoughts of coincidences and interfering PTBs flew out of my head as he settled in. I whimpered his name as he directed all of his intent focus on my pleasure, on making me come.
When I released, he didn’t let me come down from the high. Instead, he rose over me and slid his erection into me in one long, hot stroke before my cries had faded from my lips. Pulling me up to meet him, I tasted myself on his lips as our mouths clashed and I rode him, wanting to feel myself orgasm again. Wanting to forget. Wanting to be consumed by Drake over and over again.
We came together in sweet oblivion, him deep inside me, and me wrapped around his body like a vice. The only thing I allowed to cross my mind were thoughts of Drake and the way he made me feel.
As my breathing slowed, and my body chilled, thoughts crept back into my head, pressuring me with their constant doubts and fears. To force them at bay, it was my turn to give back, so I leaned over my man and took his very unready dick into my mouth.
“I’m not clean,” he growled, but it faded as I didn’t stop and he hardened in my mouth. I loved the reaction I could give him. I loved how it made me feel to share this with him, to give him pleasure. I loved how he overwhelmed me.
We ended together with him taking me from behind. Our slow love-making devolved in heated passion to the fucking I thought I hadn’t wanted. But we had lost our minds in it. Lost our minds to the sensations. I had needed it.
“Thank you.” I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. I looked over at him when I could feel his smile.
“Any time.” His smirk never faltered, but it slipped slightly when he realized that I was being uncharacteristically conciliatory.
“You don’t have to do it; you don’t have to know who killed you. You can say you’re not getting anything with your gift, or whatever you call it.” He ran a finger up and down my arm, making me shiver.
He was right. I could do that. I could ignore my own case; working on everything else Troy gave me until I found out how to expose his secrets. But the mystery called me. It was a weakness in me, or maybe a strength. I wouldn’t know until the end, until it either destroyed me, or set me free. All I knew was I needed to solve this mystery. I needed to wrap it up if I wanted to move forward. And from the look in Drake’s eyes, he needed it just as much as I did.
I glanced at my dresser; the two vials were where I had left them not too long ago.
“What are those?” He followed my gaze.
“That’s what I was looking for, when I said we could fix things. One vial restores memory, one makes it go away- that's how they make us forget before we get assigned our Afterlife positions.”
“Where did you get them?” He propped himself up, ready to get out of bed, but I placed my hand on his bicep to stall him.
“From another goddess who talks in riddles, so I can’t know if they’ll work, or make things worse.” He frowned at my words. “It’s all games, Drake. Always a game.”
“Not between us.” He leaned down and kissed me. I placed my hand on his cheek and smiled against his lips.
“Finally,” I sighed, falling back onto the pillows with him following me.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the darkness that had haunted him since his death touching his tone.
“About what?”
“That I ca
n’t remember. It must be hard for you, that I can’t remember us. I could try to take the memory one,” he said and I shook my head.
“No, this is enough.” I let my head fall back as he kissed down my neck.
“What are you going to do about the case?” he asked. I don’t know how he managed to get the words out while he was doing what he was doing to me.
“I don’t know, I really can’t think right now,” I laughed.
“Oh, I’ll stop.” His head shot up, but I grabbed his head and pushed him back down onto my breasts.
“Don’t you dare,” I groaned because he didn’t need my permission. All thoughts of my life and death flitted from my over-stimulated brain. Drake was good at that, making me forget. He was good at a lot of things, but this was one of the things I truly enjoyed from him. If I could stay within this moment, return to this over and over again, I could accept what I had to do during the day. I could accept this as my afterlife. Because this was worth it. This could make me hope for a happily ever after in death.
“So, you’ve decided what you’re going to do?” he asked, and even though he didn’t specify, I knew what he was asking.
“I’m going to try to solve some other cases, ones I can most likely solve with ease, and I guess I’ll figure out my own along the way. I don’t even know if I can actually solve many of the cold cases, much less my own murder. The O’Neal case was so obvious. They won’t all be that easy.” I stood in front of the mirror, trying not to look at Drake sprawled on my bed, tempting me to ignore everything else but him.
I chose my look carefully- professional, but still psychic— and nothing like the woman I used to be. I had foregone the teal hair for short and black. Even though I had loved the bluish tones, in a cop shop it stood out. Didn’t want to be mistaken for someone from the intake, and I needed to be as professional as possible. I knew what most cops thought of psychics. That it was all a show, a scam.