by C. L. Bevill
Tavie pointed to a building. “Everyone behind the end of that structure,” she directed loudly. “I don’t want to see a single person closer. Not even a toe.” She glanced meaningfully at the group of elders. “And that means you, too.” Surprisingly everyone did what they were told and without fussing at all.
Enoch sighed as she stepped closer to him. “My idea of heaven is having a good ol’ gal like you in it. You shore you belong here, because you should have wings.”
“I don’t think angels are as irritable as I am,” Tavie said. “Or all those statues of benevolent figures with harps and wings are dead-wrong.” She paused to think about what she’d said and grimaced. “No pun intended.”
Enoch kept his distance from the body, taking in the scene, holding up the lantern, and systemically looking around. Tavie nodded approvingly. “We need a list of people in the crowd that were here when we got here,” she said, “on the basis that I don’t think we have a camera. We need to identify that man. We need to figure out how he died. Forgive me if I’m telling you how to do your job, but investigation is my area of expertise. Is. Was. Whatever.”
“I don’t mind,” Enoch said. “We don’t get a lot of this around here. Don’t get any of this around here. Not since I been here and I been here a long while.” He scratched the side of his head. “He don’t seem like any of the recognizable dead. That means the ones that you can tell how they died in the living world. Like you can see that I was stabbed.”
Tavie stood back from the body and thought about all the things she learned over the years of being a police officer. There had been three years of patrol, a year in vice, and three in violent crimes. In nine cases out of ten, being cautious in one’s approach was key. Keeping the scene clear of contamination was a close second. Here, both of these tenets had gone by the wayside. Bye-bidy-bye.
Remember, you aren’t the sheriff here, Tavie told herself. This is just one of those things. A little good karma never hurt anyone. She could do them a solid. Maybe that would help her out in the long run. Besides which, she was curious, in the way that all detectives were curious.
Tavie refocused herself on what was happening. The first thing was most important. There was a man lying on the ground in front of her. Besides the fact that he was down on the ground, and he wasn’t moving, there wasn’t anything that stuck out.
She began to make a list in her head. He looked to be in his eighties and dressed in a hospital gown. He was on the skinny side and his flesh sagged. There was no “cover.” There wasn’t an obvious cause of death as she could see in many of the other deadies. If she had to guess, his “real” death had been some event related to aging. Alzheimer’s? Perhaps his heart had simply stopped beating. He had died like all of the rest of them.
“Do the deadies have pulses?” Tavie asked Enoch. He nodded without looking away from the body. She said, “Check his.”
Enoch squatted next to the body. He touched the tips of his index and middle fingers to the carotid artery. Seconds later he shook his head. “Ain’t nothing. This is weird. Them fellas you shot had pulses. Their bodies are warm. They didn’t die because they already dead. He’s cold, like the grave cold. Weird.”
“He’s dead. We’re in the land of the dead,” Tavie said. “What’s weird about that?”
“We don’t have dead dead people here,” Enoch said. “Not really dead people. The reapers takes them. Sometimes they vanish and we reckon something else took them, not that we ever see that. Ain’t never seen a dead dead person here. It’s weird, all right.”
“Get the names of everyone here,” Tavie said. Clearly this wasn’t going to be something that was easily resolved. The case of a single car wreck could be easily resolved. It happened on a rainy night and there was an oil slick in the middle of the road and an empty pint of Jack Daniels in the passenger seat. The case of a skeleton discovered in the desert with a rusted gun in one hand and the remnants of a bullet in its brain pan was easily resolved. The case of a man who was covered with his wife’s blood and his fists swollen and scraped as he sat next to her rapidly cooling body was easily resolved.
Enoch nodded and went to work. He handed the lantern to her as he walked past. A moment later, she heard him talking to the crowd in a calm manner that brooked no refusal. “Don’t none of you be running off,” he advised. “I saw you and I ain’t goin’ to be happy if I have to track you down later. I know ya’ll think since we have eight jail cells, that limits us but ain’t no ACLU around here telling us we cain’t have three and four people per cell.” He considered. “I bet it would be just like stuffing one of them telephone booths. We could go for a record.”
Tavie thought about the crime scene. If it was a crime scene, she would have to do everything manually. There wouldn’t be a crime lab nor experts in blood or even someone to do an autopsy. Whatever she saw here, held the clues she would be provided to figure out what had happened.
Deadsville didn’t have dead people. Not real dead people.
But yet here was a real dead man.
“Does anyone know his name?” Tavie asked loudly.
Silence answered her. She let it fill the air and knew that someone would feel compelled to answer.
“His name’s Darren,” someone called.
Tavie glanced over her shoulder and saw a young man pointing toward the body. Enoch was on it almost immediately. He separated the young man and put him in a spot where people wouldn’t ask him any questions until she was ready for him.
Tavie went over to the young man and saw under his cover that he had been beaten to death with something. If she’d had to guess, and she was doing a lot of that lately, it would have been a baseball bat. The man was barely into his twenties and wore a Snoop Dog t-shirt. “What’s your name?” she asked quietly.
“Tully,” he said. His brown eyes flicked between her and the body. The uncertainty was clear on his face.
“Who beat you to death?”
“My girlfriend’s father,” Tully said and then started. He looked down at his appearance, unmistakably checking to see if something had failed. “How’d you do that?”
Tavie shrugged. “What was up with your girlfriend’s father?”
“I got her pregnant and he didn’t approve,” Tully said. “He went back to the joint for it.” He lifted his shoulders in evident disregard. “I don’t remember much of it.”
“How do you know the dead guy?” Tavie asked.
“Darren?”
The compulsion to be sarcastic nearly undid Tavie. How many other dead guys would she be asking Tully about? She reconsidered. There were a lot of dead guys around Deadsville. Technically. She was going to have to get used to that. “The one lying there. The one whose name you said was Darren.”
“Do work for him sometimes,” Tully said. “Is he really dead? Sometimes it takes a little bit of time for them to come back, especially if they got something done to their head.”
“Looks like it. Never seen a dead guy before?”
“Not like that, not around here,” Tully said with a visible shudder. “Usually a reaper comes and I’d piss my pants if I was able.”
“What kind of work do you do?” Tavie asked.
“Bartering,” Tully said, “or run errands for Darren. He hooks people up for barter. You know, figures out who needs what and who’s got what, then gets them talking to each other. Then he takes a percentage. Or he takes a favor for payment.”
The more things change…
“So Darren was kind of a freelance entrepreneur?”
Tully nodded. His long brown hair fell into his face and he flipped it away with a smooth movement.
“You see him lately?”
“Earlier,” Darren said. “Said he had to talk to a guy about something. Darren was so keyed up he let his cover come and go, which is why I recognized him.”
“What guy?”
“Dunno. He was the boss. He didn’t always share.”
Tavie stared at Darren. She
didn’t exactly know why she was doing this. The urge to remind herself that she hadn’t accepted anything official and that she was just sticking her nose in where it didn’t belong was strong. She looked at the body again.
That was it. As soon as everyone around started freaking out, it was obvious that this wasn’t normal for Deadsville. This wasn’t a common thing. Enoch was bugging. Tully was tripping. If Tavie looked at the elders, she knew she would see their confused and concerned faces. The entire area had an air of rancid trepidation, as if everyone was waiting for the other boot to drop.
Earlier Enoch had said something about serendipity. Tavie had never believed in serendipity, blessed or otherwise.
She had come to Deadsville for a reason. Maybe this was the reason.
Number one: secure the crime scene. That was as done as it was going to be. She only had a few resources to use. It was being done. Enoch was directing people. Even the elders were helping. Somewhere the deputy had found a notebook and a pencil and was jotting names down. Of course, finding people later might be difficult. Was there a directory for Deadsville? Tavie couldn’t imagine that being the case.
Number two: walk the scene. Tavie stood in the middle of the scene, crime or otherwise. She couldn’t say automatically that it was, in fact, a crime. She couldn’t say that it wasn’t a crime. If people didn’t “die” in Deadsville, then something very strange had happened. She could hear Charlie whispering in her ear, “Knowledge is power, kiddo.”
Tavie made mental grid of the area and started in one corner. She systematically walked the squares of the grid, stepping over the body, and only peripherally aware that everyone in the crowd had gone quiet. They were watching her actions.
“Tully said Darren had a ‘cover,’” she said to herself. “What was it?” she asked herself. Then she asked Tully. Tully nodded. “I think it was the way he looked in the sixties,” he said. “Dark hair. Blue eyes. Looked like he was in his thirties. He had a Nixon pin on his shirt. ‘You can’t lick Dick.’”
Darren had changed back into himself as he had died. The three men Tavie had shot hadn’t lost their covers as they lay on the ground.
“Did he have enemies?” she asked Tully.
Tully nodded again. “Lots of people want to make trades. Sometimes it’s the one with the quickest offer who gets it. Lots of those same people get angry that they didn’t get it first. Mostly it gets forgotten or people get past it. Mostly.”
Tavie made a mental note to ask Tully who hadn’t got past it. Maybe even Tully had wanted to be the head honcho.
But there was the whole issue of whether or not Darren had been murdered.
“Maximillian,” Tavie called to the elder, “if someone commits a particularly vile act here, then do the reapers come sooner for them?”
Maximillian said, “It’s been known to happen that way.” The unspoken part was the part that Tavie had heard before. They didn’t have all the answers in Deadsville. Maybe life here would be easier if they did. Or maybe death would be.
Tavie began to work the grid again. It was strange here. There wasn’t a lot of trash. There weren’t a dozen cigarette butts of a half dozen brands lying smashed into the dirt. It was just dirt and the oddly mashed together buildings. She paused to gesture Enoch over. “Make sure you put a little star next to the people’s names who live in these buildings or work here,” she told him.
Enoch nodded. “Gotcha.”
When Tavie was finished she stopped to look around again. Her gaze passed over the crowd and she saw the man who had spoken to her before. His name was Nica and he burned from within, showing her that something longed to get out. He watched her with intent eyes, but that wasn’t uncommon at the moment. There were many people watching her.
Tavie looked at Darren again. She wasn’t sure why she was holding off. She knew she wasn’t a forensics specialist, but there wasn’t one to be had. She carefully approached the body and hunkered down by it. As she put the lantern down beside her, she heard someone come up behind her and had an idea it was Enoch.
When the deputy said, “Maybe something under them hospital duds done kilt him?” Tavie wasn’t surprised.
Carefully moving the cloth, Tavie looked under the top at his chest. There was nothing really wrong with the man other than the fact that he was no longer walking around. He wasn’t asleep and he wasn’t like the other deadies anymore. She gestured at Enoch. “Help me roll him over,” she said.
Enoch crouched beside her and said, “On three? One, two, three.” They both rolled Darren onto his side and Enoch held him in place while Tavie pulled the cloth up and looked at his back. “What’s that?”
Enoch blew out a breath. “That ain’t a tattoo. Is that glowing? It’s glowing like the ectoplasm in the lanterns.”
“Do you know Darren?” she asked. “Did you know him?”
“Shore,” Enoch said easily. “Fella trades lots of stuff. But I dint recognize him like this. He dint look like this before. I don’t care what people say at class reunions. Enough years pass and you ain’t gonna recognize no one no how.”
They both looked at the words on Darren’s back. “You’ve never seen that before?”
“I seen tattoos on folks before,” Enoch said. “They don’t glow. This looks like someone writ something with ecto on the fella’s back. Maybe you shouldn’t touch that.”
But Tavie was already reaching out to touch the letters. It wasn’t just written on the man’s flesh, but inscribed into the meat, as if it had sank into the very essence of his being. It tingled against her fingers.
Charlie would have been screaming at Tavie about contaminating the site, but Charlie wasn’t here. He was sitting on a couch somewhere, watching the game, and wondering how long it would be before he stopped thinking about Tavie and what had happened to her.
Tavie pulled her fingers back and looked at the blue stuff staining her flesh. “This is ecto?”
Enoch looked closer. “Looks like it. Looks like it was forced into his skin. It made groves in the skin.” He made a low disapproving noise.
“What?”
“Where I come from they gots big rocks in the desert, the kind carried around by glaciers millennia ago. American Indians used to mark them rocks. They actually dint paint the images on the rocks, they chipped out the image so it would last a long time. Painstaking process that takes a lot of patience and a lot more time.” Enoch shrugged. “Someone wanted this to last. Makes me a little nervous on account that a fella has to be right determined to do it in that way.”
“And the words?”
Enoch studied them. “Lex talionis? I don’t know what that means. I don’t even know what language that be.”
“Sounds like something I read in a law book,” Tavie murmured.
“It’s Latin,” a voice said behind them.
“I told you to stay behind that building’s line,” Tavie said. It was the scarred man, Nica. She slowly looked over her shoulder at him. His eyes were still dark and his hair nearly black. His face was still ugly, but he was oddly compelling. He was dressed the same way that she had seen before, in black t-shirt and jeans with Dr. Martens on his feet.
“What are you going to do about it?” Nica asked politely.
“Do you know him?” Tavie asked Enoch, jerking her head toward Nica.
Enoch looked. “Yep. He’s an odd one. Don’t get in trouble much, but he seems to be where the trouble is. I don’t know what his story is.”
“You can read these words?” Tavie asked.
“You going to take the sheriff’s job?” Nica asked instead of answering.
“I guess I am,” Tavie said.
“Then it means, ‘law of retribution,’” Nica said.
Tavie nodded. She had heard the phrase before. She had taken enough varied classes in college to remember some of her Latin. She had been all over the board while she had taken classes. She had finally qualified for a liberal arts degree because she hadn’t been sure what she had wante
d to end up as. That had been before someone had suggested she might enjoy being a police officer. She had even taken a few pre-law classes, thus the Latin.
“Law of retribution?” Enoch repeated.
“It means that if someone kills someone else, then they’re punished the same way,” Tavie said.
Enoch looked at the man on the ground and winced. They carefully lowered him back to the way they found him.
“It means an eye for an eye,” Tavie said. “It means this man was murdered. A man was murdered in the land of the dead.”
Chapter 7
Murder breeds murder. – Proverb
~
“Why me?” – Nancy Kerrigan
~
“Murder?”
The elders didn’t like that word. Tavie crossed her arms over her chest and waited for the thunderstorm to commence. The elders wanted to rip the word apart and dissect it and do a few other things that probably were immoral. They really wanted to argue the point. Arguing the point was evidently much better than admitting it might be true.
“There isn’t a damned thing to indicate that he’s been murdered,” Lillian snarled. “He’s just dead. Maybe the reapers are late. Maybe it’s just a glitch.”
“You didn’t find anything wrong with Darren?” Maximillian said over Lillian’s words. “Not the normal methods of murder? No wounds? No strangulation? No cut marks? How can it possibly be murder?”
Sternstein even weighed in with, “No one here can remember anyone dying in this manner here?” He looked around. “Anyone? Ever?”
The group that made up the elders shook their heads. Tavie had learned that they were generally the people who were around the longest who wished to perform a public service, although their longevity was sometimes questionable. She thought about Sternstein who had lied about the way he’d died. Did being murdered have more cachet than having committed suicide? Who could tell the best murder story in this place? Or perhaps it was that that big crucifix hanging around his neck that was the big clue. Suicide was seen as a serious sin in some religions.