by Lawton Paul
“Well, I don’t have any answers, but I don’t think Walt’s death was an accident. Do you want to help me figure this thing out?”
“If it means I’m going to the corridor, then yes.”
The next morning Greg calls. “She’s gone,” he says, sniffling and high-pitched like he’s about to cry.
“Who?” says Angela.
“Kaufman.”
“Yes, Greg, honey. We know she’s gone.” says Angela, in the soft, nursery school teacher voice that Bo uses on her.
“No. No. I mean she’s been cremated.”
“Oh, shit. How?”
“They say it was my fault and now I’m on leave. They called it leave. I told them I quit, but now I’m starting to regret it. We needed her. I was going to prove she was too young.” He goes silent for a moment and Angela can hear his heavy breathing, then he blows his nose. “Can you come get me? My car’s at home and I can’t use one of the city cars because I don’t work for the ME anymore,” he says.
Dog sees Greg before Angela does and sits up in the truck, sticks his head out the window. Greg’s standing in front of the ME’s office holding a cardboard box, white lab coat sticking out of the top, badges and pens hanging off the side. He looks sort of like a professor with his corduroy pants, buttoned-down collared shirt and brown leather shoes.
“Are you okay?” says Angela.
“No. But thanks for asking,” says Greg. He puts his box in the bed of the truck and sits down next to Dog. “Take me to the JPD main entrance. Got something to show you.”
Angela parks the truck and they walk together up the steps where Angela clung to the rail two days earlier. Funny how I can be out of my mind with anxiety one day and then waltz in without a care another day. Greg being here helps.
Greg sits her down on the same bench that Grace brought her to. They sit there for a moment, Dog sniffing the grass.
“I’m sorry you got shit-canned,” says Angela. “That’s what Bo called it.”
“She got it right. They say I signed off on cremating Kaufman. Which I did not. Someone just wanted her body gone.”
“Where’d the order come from?”
“Who knows? Her body was cremated the day before I’d arranged for a specialist from the lab to do an aspartic acid test on her tooth enamel to determine her approximate age. It’s not exact but it might have proven she wasn’t as old as her birth certificate said she was.” He picks up a pebble from under the bench and throws it into the parking lot and it bounces off a JPD cruiser. Dog pricks his ears up, then settles back down into the soft grass. “Good thing there’s no loose bricks around.
“I know the feeling,” said Angela.
“Listen, uh, new topic,” says Greg, turning to look at her. “I’ve got something to show you and it’s a little odd. I know you had an episode here the other day, but me and Dog are here for you.” On cue Dog comes and rests his head on her lap. “You took your pills today, right?”
“Now you’re freaking me out,” says Angela.
“I just don’t want you to think I’m screwing with you in any way. I care about you and know that you just went through a very bad time and are in the middle of a shitstorm right now and—”
“Stop. Have you forgotten who you are talking to? I don’t need your pity.” She gets up and heads for the truck.
“Angela, please. I know you are strong. Just come.” He motions her towards the JPD main entrance. She stops, takes a deep breath, then follows him inside.
They both stand in the main entrance way in front of a long line of plaques, each with a picture, a name, a rank, and years of service. Most are older men who had climbed the ladder: chiefs, captains and few rank and file. But at the end is a young girl with dark hair: Grace Chandler, Cadet, Years of service: 2009-2011.
Did this mean she made the force? thinks Angela. And then she reads the message above the plaques: For Those Who’ve Paid The Ultimate Price For Our Safety.
Greg gently takes Angela’s hand and they go to the truck. Greg sits her down in the passenger side with Dog in the middle. “But how can that be?” says Angela.
“I don’t know,” says Greg. “When you told me you saw a kid named Grace I though it was a coincidence, but you described her perfectly. I remember her. That was three years ago, though. She got hit by a bullet intended for Jansen Crowley, a killer who got off on a technicality. The shooter was the victim’s father.”
“Did I see someone else?” says Angela. “Who was the Grace I saw? There’s a lot of things now that don’t make sense.”
“Yeah, I know,” says Greg. “They shut down the cadet program after she died two years ago.” He starts the truck and grinds the gears searching for reverse.
“Three on the tree,” Angela says. She reaches over and puts it in reverse.
“When we’ve got an unsolvable problem at work, we usually get all of the good minds together and talk it through,” he says. “I mean, that’s what we’d do before those A-holes framed my ass!”
“Anger. Good. When you hit depression we can talk. In the meantime we need to get our own little brain trust together. We got murders in Chickasaw, people who look too young, who don’t get sick, all sorts of weird shit going on. This little chat with Grace is just another piece of the puzzle.”
The Council of Elrond
Everyone is sitting at the big table in the main dining room at Bo’s. “It's just like the Council of Elrond,” says Jesus, sporting a faded, Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt. Larry starts to snicker. He goes for a fist bump and Jesus just leans back and leaves Larry’s fist hanging.
“You're supposed to do this,” says Greg, and fist bumps Larry.
“What is this, revenge of the nerds?” says Bo. Then Carl walks in and she says, “Thank God someone invited a man.” Carl smiles, sits down next to Angela.
“Dog get into a pile o’ poop, or what?” says Carl waving his hand in front of his nose. Dog’s head pokes up, but everyone’s looking at Jesus. Angela jumps up, opens a window.
“I could just leave,” says Dave standing. “You all reek of chemicals anyway.”
“Please stay, Dave,” says Angela. “I need you. She needs you.” But he remains standing.
“No. She needed me. And I wasn’t there,” says Dave.
“I understand,” says Angela, reaching for his hand. “Please stay.” Dave sits down again and Angela moves to the front of the table, gives Carl a cool look. Carl shrugs, takes off his hat and nods towards Dave in apology.
“We are all here because I trust you and need you,” says Angela. “And I think each of us, for his own reasons, want the same thing: To free Johnny, to find out who killed Walt and Mrs. Kaufman, and to understand just what the hell is going on with the, uh—”
“The unseen force that is holding you and me together and keeping countless others in close proximity in perfect health,” says Dave.
“Yes. That,” says Angela. Then she explains Walt’s research and how he and Larry discovered the corridors starting in Germany.
“I’m sorry, but this tale is a little flimsy,” says Greg. “We’ve got no data except some anecdotal accounts of general well-being, some line the people from Jax say about how you can ‘get a charge in Chickasaw.’ This is not definitive. We need to run a test, a quick study to deter—”
“That test has already been run,” says Larry.
“By whom?” says Greg.
“By Walt. I’ve been looking at Angela’s logbook and now I understand what the last page of numbers mean. He wrote Angela at the top with a series of dates, each with one corresponding number. The numbers are consistently normal, in the 5-10 range. But here, in late winter, the numbers jump to 22. And I’m pretty sure the numbers here are white blood cell counts. Any increase means the body is fighting infection. So at 22, which means 22 x 10 to the 9th power per liter, Angela had a two-fold WBC increase.” He put the paper on the table and pointed to the date: 02/24. “Where were you then, Angela?”
; “Walt got it in his head we were going to go skiing. I’m not fully recovered, but doing much better, and suddenly we are heading to Sugar Mountain in North Carolina,” says Angela.
“I thought he was nuts,” says Bo.
“No, it was a test,” says Larry. “He wanted to prove the power was here so he took you outside the corridor. How did you feel on the trip?”
“Bad,” she says in a small voice. “I guess I can never leave here.”
“Angie, we don’t know anything for sure. You might be able to leave now that you are stronger,” says Greg, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t fill her head with that shit,” says Larry.
“I’m a doctor!”
“So am I! And you’re just a doctor for dead people.”
“Oh, so an economist is better suited to dole out health advice?”
“Enough!” yells Angela. And then Dave stands up.
“I can’t leave either,” he says to Angela. “As to whether there is, what Walt called, a corridor, or not: I don’t have a doctorate, but you don’t need one to feel the energy field spreading out in all directions from Marlina’s house. I smell like the Earth, yes, but I’m also more connected to it. You people are lost, so caught up in numbers and theories you can’t even see and feel God’s creation.
Two years ago I had lymphoma and was weak and shaky, but then I stepped into the corridor, just on the outside edge, and I felt it. I walked away from a team of plant biologists right in the middle of a study at Pottsburg Creek, drawn in by the power of the energy field. I breathed better, walked better, was hungry for the first time in forever. It felt good. And so I walked towards the energy. To the source. And I ended up in Kaufman’s backyard, just standing there with my arms out, swimming in this unseen power.
And then a voice says, ‘What ails you, Boy?’
I say, ‘Lymphoma.’
And she says, ‘Lymphoma has no power here.’
She told me not to turn around, said she was old and not much to look at. And then she said to come back whenever I wanted.
And that’s when I left UF. So there is no question we are in the energy field.”
“So if this is the epicenter, what exactly is the power source, and how does it work?” says Greg.
“I don’t know the source. Only that it extends out about ten miles in all directions, growing weaker the further it is from the epicenter. As to how it works my guess is the power is like a battery that emits a field that protects the body on a cellular level. It creates a bio-electrical shield around the cells so no free-radical damage, no infection, no disease. Don’t get sick. And maybe, if you are close enough, you stop aging altogether.”
“That’d explain why Kaufman looked so young,” says Greg. “She stayed mostly out of sight for years. You thought she was just a recluse, maybe she didn’t want you to know how young she was.”
“And how a woman who claimed to be in her 60s could have brown hair, yet color it gray,” says Angela.
“She only spoke to me through the window screen,” says Dave. “Always with a hat on so you could barely see her face.”
“We’ve got one picture,” says Angela, putting the old black and white photo on the table. “We think it was taken in the late 40s or early 50s. We think she was a nurse in the war. Not sure if this is in the States or Europe.”
“Well if this was her during the war then she’s over 100 years old,” says Dave.
“Yeah, and amazingly, the last time I saw her she didn’t look any older than this,” says Greg.
“Maybe we can find her military records. I got a friend that works in Washington,” says Carl.
“You won’t find her records there,” says Larry. “Try Berlin. Look at her uniform. German. And the boy, his clothes, the shoes. German.”
“That’s why I couldn’t figure out what car it was. I don’t know German makes,” says Carl.
“Notice anything about the boy?”
“Yeah, the boy kinda leans like Walt,” says Larry.
“He’s got a bandage on his leg. Walt said it was a baseball accident when he was a kid,” says Angela.
“This photo may be Oppenheim, or one of the corridors just after,” says Larry. “Obviously they started running just after Berlin fell. During the war, they’d hang you in the center of town if they thought you were deserting.”
“So she found the power source in Oppenheim, then started moving with the boy—with Walt, straight for France, then she made the jump to the US,” says Angela.
“And I did a little digging into Walt’s mention of 1979,” says Greg. “He wrote about a change in Chickasaw in ‘79. Now, I’m no economist with a big data set,” he says, glancing over to Larry, “but it seems that, excluding deaths due to unintentional trauma like car accidents, etc., and intentional stuff like suicides, deaths in Chickasaw from heart disease, cancer, chronic respiratory issues fell precipitously starting in ‘79.”
“And that’s exactly when Marlina Kaufman moved in next door,” says Bo.
“Obviously we’re in the corridor,” says Larry.
“I’m still searching for other explanations,” says Greg.
“You’re wasting your time. The power is here,” says Larry.
“Hey, look at the corner of the pic,” says Dave, pointing to the bottom right. “Is that our dog’s tail?” Everyone looks at Dog.
“I doubt it,” says Bo. “Even with this crazy shit story ya’ll are concoctin’. Ain’t no way to tell.”
Larry stands up, takes a deep breath and the yells out a sharp command in German: “Sitzen!” Dog stiffens, ears up and alert, sits with his chest out and tail wrapped around his feet.
“That sounded like ‘sit’ in English. What does that prove?” says Greg.
“Okay. How about this?” says Larry. “Patrouille rund um das Haus!” And Dog lets himself out the kitchen screen door and goes around the house.
“What’s he doing?” says Angela.
“Well, I think I told him to patrol the house,” says Larry.
“That’s an old dog, dudes,” says Dave.
“This little fairy tale ya’ll come up with is all fine and dandy, but Johnny’s still rotting away in a cell in Jax and we got nuttin’,” says Bo.
“On the contrary, Mrs. Bo,” says Larry. “We know with a fair degree of certainty why someone killed Mrs. Kaufman, and probably, Walt, too.” He takes a sip of iced tea to let the moment sink in.
“So is the great economist going to enlighten us country bumpkins?” says Greg.
“What did Kaufman have that someone would kill for?” says Larry.
“The power source,” says Angela.
“So someone found out about it, but obviously they didn’t take it away. And the power didn’t die with her,” says Dave.
“And who would want the power more than anyone else?” says Greg.
“A sick person,” says Angela. “Besides me and Dave, who else was sick that moved here and got better. Someone close.”
“Yeah, but the power was here so why kill Marlina and Walt?” says Carl.
“Maybe someone wanted it for themselves?” says Bo.
“Or maybe Walt was going to publish. And then everyone would know about it. And then here comes Big Brother to take it away,” says Larry. “Walt and I desperately wanted to publish.”
“And I think Walt had the save-the-world mentality. Maybe he thought he could do good with it,” says Angela.
“The government gets wind of this thing and it’s long ass gone,” says Dave.
Angela stands up again. “There’s a lot to digest here. But in the meantime, we’ve got some things to do. One: we need to find the source. I think I’m going to take another close look at Mrs. Kaufman’s house.”
“What about Dr. Death and the brain trust?” says Bo, jabbing a thumb at Greg, Larry and Dave.
“Larry, I want you to find out who moved in to Chickasaw with an illness in the last few years,” says Angela.
&nb
sp; “How am I gonna do that? I’ve got no data and a weak ass, insecure internet connection here,” says Larry.
“I’m sucking off a Comcast trunk line via a hard wired T1 in the woods. They couldn’t get the lines underground because it was too wet so they went with old-school telephone lines,” says Dave.
“Secure?”
“Yeah, the whole thing runs through a TOR router. It’s virtually untraceable.”
“And Dave,” says Angela. “I need you to find an old car.”
Spy Jesus
Dave crouches on the bow of the boat like a cat as Carl navigates Dogwood Creek, a minefield of sandbars, submerged logs, and even the occasional bit of rebar sticking up here and there. Carl grumbles about how the truck would have been easier and only an idiot would take a shrimp boat through this tiny canal, but Dave just laughs at him.
There’s just enough water to get down to the faint hint of a trail that leads right to the edge of Millvale Rd. The truck is easier, but everyone can see you coming in the truck.
Soon Dave points to a bramble of vines and low scrub on the east bank and Carl nudges the bow onto the silt and muck until the boat stops. He cuts the engine and everything goes quiet. The sun is going down, the spaces between the trees getting darker.
Dave stands up, lean and tall, wild hair, and looks down on the shrimper. “Wait here. Tide’s coming in so you should be fine,” he says.
“Ain’t the damn tide I’m worried about. You sure you can make it in from here, Dave?” says Carl.
“Dave ain’t goin’,” he says, takes off his red t-shirt and throws it at Carl. “Hang onto that. That’s my dress-up shirt.” He bounds like a deer into the muck, sinks knee deep, grabs a low-hanging vine and pulls himself up and onto the shore, grinning like a madman. The trail is there waiting for him and it feels good to be himself again. To leave all the soap-smelling worriers behind. To run like a deer and feel the wind on his face.