by C. L. Bevill
“A deal with Herman,” Tavie said. “You didn’t work for Darren before he went somewhere.”
Herman’s face crumpled into a frown. In his other life, he had dealt with curious people, and he clearly had never liked them. “You ask a lot of questions, doll.”
Tavie shrugged. “What were you doing a few hours ago?”
“I was with my girlfriends,” Herman said immediately. “Tawny and Inari. Who are you?” he asked Tavie.
Tavie flicked the edge of her jacket back and revealed the badges clipped to her belt. She had worked on that movement for weeks before it looked just right. Now she could do it effortlessly. She got to show off both badges.
Herman laughed. “This is Deadsville. We don’t have laws here.”
“The elders do,” Tavie said. “I just got the job today, or is it yesterday, it’s hard to tell time here.”
“I have a watch that works if you want to trade it for the badge,” Herman said cunningly.
“I have a watch already. I won it in a game of horse. Know any Latin, Herman?” Tavie asked.
“Just what I learned in catechism school,” Herman said.
“When did you find out about Darren?”
“Tully, the fella who used to work for him, came by a while ago. Then he said he was going to work for Mad Marge,” Herman said. “News gets around here. Darren’s out. I’m in. It isn’t a big deal. Deadies go all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if a reaper wandered by here every few minutes.”
“What did you choke on, Herman?” Tavie asked.
Herman froze. After a long moment, he looked down at himself. Then he nudged the man next to him. “Jake, what do I look like?”
The man next to him had been systematically sliced by something very sharp, as if he had fallen into a giant Cuisinart. Perhaps he had. His cover was a twentysomething man wearing an Obama campaign t-shirt and ripped blue jeans. He looked at Herman and said, “What you normally look like. Suit, tie, shirt. Ready to do business.”
“Him?” Tavie said with a nod at Jake. “Big food processer? Someone push you in?”
Jake gulped.
The third man decided it was time to leave and skittered away. Tavie gave him a long look so she could remember him. Tall, blonde hair, red shirt, blue pants. He’d been shot several times. His cover faded in and out as he went.
“Oh, it’s true,” Herman said to the skies. “That word got around, too. It’s the new sheriff, Jake. She can see everything. There aren’t any secrets from her.”
Jake gulped again. “Maybe she’s not a deadie at all. Maybe she’s one of them, the gods of the dead, pretending to be a deadie.”
“Oh shut up,” Herman said.
“I need to know about Darren’s business,” Tavie said. “And you’re going to tell me, Herman. Everything.”
“And if I don’t,” Herman ventured.
“Then I turn into a very nasty person,” Tavie said, “and you don’t want to meet Ms. Nasty. Trust me.”
Chapter 9
On death all accounts are cancelled.– Japanese Proverb
~
“I saw her once and she scared the seriouscrap out of me.”– Jake on Octavia Stone.
~
It turned out that Darren’s business wasn’t all that. Inside the building was a table that doubled as a desk along with a camp chair for the business minded individual who didn’t care about that uber swanky professional look. Carefully packed barter items sat along one of the walls in the shantytown shack. Tavie saw watches and clothing, hats and a box of wedding rings. She saw a few books and an iPad. There was a pile of flyswatters and two Christmas trees complete with decorations were propped in a corner. Along the back wall were three snow blowers and two push lawn mowers.
Tavie touched the handle of a Honda self-propelled gas mower with auto choke. (It said so on the side and she couldn’t remember the last time she had mowed a lawn.) “Guess people died while mowing the yard,” she said and wondered if she sounded stupid. What would someone do with a lawn mower in Deadsville? There wasn’t any foliage except the strange black trees and they didn’t need mowing.
“More people have heart attack at the first few weeks of spring and at the first snow,” Herman remarked as if he was having a conversation with someone at a party. “Sometimes we get naked people too, if you know what I mean. There’s nothing like seeing a naked deadie scrambling through the streets looking for something to wear. That last orgasm was a killer.” He laughed at his own joke.
On a wall made of vinyl siding, Darren had a list pinned to the wall. Written in marker on faded newsprint, it detailed people who owed him things. A smaller list recorded what he owed people. Both were attached to the wall with tie tacks. One was a silver skull. The other one was a gold die.
Outside, Tavie could hear Jake asking Coco a question that sounded as if he was trying to flirt with the sixteen-year-old deadie. Coco laughed and Tavie relaxed minutely because she wasn’t sure of anyone’s security in Deadsville. If Coco was laughing then she didn’t feel threatened.
“You going to honor that?” Tavie asked, indicating the lists.
Herman nodded. “Be bad for business if I didn’t.”
Tavie read down the first list. Someone named Frank owed him a pint of ecto juice. Someone named Jilly owed three favors. The favors were not detailed and Tavie hoped it wasn’t favors. Another person owned Darren a haircut and three stories about the NFL. The list wasn’t dated but she assumed it was in chronological order.
The other list was limited to three items. Darren owned Jack a favor. Darren owed Roy the first quart of ice cream he came across, and it didn’t matter what flavor it was because the words, “any flavor”, were boldly underlined three times. Finally, Darren owed Patrick, no last name, a bible. There was a little skull and crossbones next to the name, whatever that meant.
“What happens if the person moves on before you get paid off?” she asked.
“It’s a risk of doing business,” Herman admitted. “It’s always a gamble. The only folks we don’t take IOUs from have the fade. You know, like your deputy, Enoch.”
Tavie smiled. “How do you know about Enoch?”
“Lots of folks have varied interests in Deadsville,” Herman said. “Folks in here try to figure out ways of telling who’s next. I know this scientist guy who does a history of everyone with the fade. He owes me two favors for all the paper I gave him.”
Tavie looked around the office. She had performed a comprehensive search under Herman’s diligent observation. She hadn’t found anything hidden, nor had she found anything suspicious. There wasn’t a note saying that “If I’m found dead, that dirty rat George did it.” It was a shame, really. Police work hadn’t gotten any easier after she died. Too bad Thana hadn’t given her the power of infinite omniscience.
“Did you have a reason to kill Darren?” she asked Herman.
“Kill Darren?” Herman asked in a numb tone. “You mean while he was alive? I think he came from the ought’s. I came from the nineties. If anything, he would have killed me. It was a meatball that did me in. I should haunted that place I ate at last. I hope I see that rat bastard, Giuseppe, again. I’d like to have a little chat about his nonna’s recipe.”
“What do you know about the living Darren?” Tavie asked, unwilling to explain the semantics of the dead dead Darren.
“He was a doctor by the name of Darren Tucker,” Herman said. “An emergency room doctor, I think, from New Mexico. He talked about some of the most gruesome cases. Heads lopped off. Having to cut folks out of wrecked cars. Druggie wars. You name it. On the living side, he was an M.D. Not much need for physicians on this side, so he did barter instead. I don’t understand. He went to the next place, so why are you asking these kind of questions?”
Tavie stared at Herman. His confusion was almost certainly genuine. “What did your grapevine say about what happened to Darren, here and now?”
“Someone got to him and then he vanished,”
Herman said. “Deadies don’t always get collected by the reapers. Sometimes they just vanish. But I don’t remember anyone ever seeing it before.”
“I suspect Darren was murdered,” Tavie said calmly, waiting to see Herman’s reaction.
“A deadie was murdered?” Herman said with obvious confusion. “But he’s dead. You can’t murder the dead.”
“That would be the problem, wouldn’t it?”
* * *
“Did he do it?” Coco asked as they walked toward the Deadsville Jail.
“Herman the Hippo?”
“He’s not that big.”
“They don’t call him that because he’s overweight,” Tavie said. She didn’t know why they called Herman that name. It probably had to do with how much stuff he bartered for or a weird tattoo on his butt. She’d have to remember to ask Nightshade when she saw her again.
Coco scrunched up her face. “I don’t get it.”
“He died with his hand on one of those games,” Tavie lied because it was more interesting than saying she didn’t know.
Coco said, “Ooooh. That’s just not right. I can’t wait to tell the serial killer girls that. I’ll see you.” She took off jogging down a side street.
“Wait!” Tavie called. “I thought you needed back up.”
Coco paused and called over her shoulder, “Now that everyone knows I’m with you, I’m a lot safer. Thanks!”
Tavie’s conclusion was that it made her either a lesbian or a sucker, and the truth was that she liked boys too much to be the former.
* * *
It was a long time later that Tavie admitted to herself that she had gotten lost. She thought she could remember how to get back to the Deadsville Jail, but the town’s rambling, roughshod setup was confusing. She’d walked all over the place before, or so she’d thought, but she kept seeing new and unusual things she hadn’t seen on her previous trek.
She came to the assumption that someone had made a house out of the engine room and passenger cabins of the zeppelin, the Hindenburg. A burned segment of the fixed walls said “—denburg.” The letters were huge, red, and looked like a large old Germanic font. One great rudder with a faded swastika was being used for a wall on a nearby building.
Once she had passed the zeppelin, Tavie knew she didn’t want to disclose to anyone she needed help. Cops weren’t supposed to need help; they were never supposed to admit that they didn’t know something. Never say die.
Finally, she stopped in the shadows of one of those huge twisting black trees atop a small hill. The trunk was a conglomerate of spiraling shapes that knotted their way upward. The leaves drooped around her, forming a dark canopy that concealed her from most prying eyes. She looked around her and she finally allowed her face to relax from the mask of neutrality she had forced upon it.
Tavie sank to her knees and looked at the black dirt underneath her limbs. She twisted her fingers through the grit and momentarily marveled that she could still feel each little minute portion of the grime. The uncomfortable sensation of soil being forced under her nails was entirely too real to discount. It was real, but it wasn’t real. She was dead, but she kind of wasn’t dead.
“What am I doing?” Tavie asked herself, but she knew what she was doing. She was still a cop. She was a dead cop, but she was still a cop. Someone had died, no, “died”, in a mysterious fashion, and she was trying to figure out what had happened to him. It was her job, something she had been good at doing, something she had taken pride in performing. Just because she had died it didn’t change her basic constitution.
“But why am I doing it?” she asked, wincing at the pitiful way it sounded. Tavie was dead. She couldn’t get past that. Something had happened to her. Something very bad had happened. First one on the scene. No matter how many ways she attempted to ignore the reality of her death, she would still come back to that. Mysteries weren’t limited to the world of the living.
Suddenly, she opened her eyes and saw a clown. Tavie’s head came up but Arnold the felony loving clown wasn’t really there. It was only a memory.
Tavie could bemoan her death. She had been only thirty-four years old. It surely hadn’t been a heart attack or something that was thrust on her because of age or infirmity. She had relatives who had lived into their nineties, and in one case, a great-grandmother had made it to 105 years, and still had an active life past the century mark.
Abruptly it was as if someone had flipped a switch in Tavie’s head. Somewhere her mother was hanging a triangular shadow box on a wall. Tavie recognized the place as her parents’ living room. The shadow box contained a traditionally folded American flag. The little brass plate had a name, a title, and two year dates engraved on it. Her mother adjusted the shadow box and touched her fingers to her mouth. Then she touched the brass plate with the same fingers. “Octavia,” she said. “I love you, dear daughter. I’ll always love you.”
Tavie’s father said, “Come have some coffee. Tavie wouldn’t want you to grieve so much.” The words were practical but there was a little tell-tale hoarseness in the voice, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. The utter pain they both felt like a cloud of black tinged despair.
“Why?” the word sounded ripped from Tavie’s soul. Three tiny letters were cruelly snatched from the very essence of her being. “It isn’t fair. Why?” Then she could feel the ragged course of tears dripping down her face and she bowed her head so that her hair fell in front of her, obscuring all. “Let them get past this. Let them have some peace.”
“Eventually,” another voice said.
Tavie didn’t lift her head. She didn’t feel like she had the strength to do so. It didn’t really matter. “But their hurt is like a knife thrust in my soul.”
“And some will never have that hurt to assuage their souls,” the voice said. “They’ll never know what it feels like to know that someone cared for them, missed them, loved them.” His voice was as dark as Tavie’s humanity felt. It was a voice she had heard before. Her fingers clenched at the handfuls of dirt and she finally let go of the grit. She mopped the tears away with the back of one hand. When her eyes were clear, she lifted her head and saw the man who had introduced himself as Nica. The shadows mostly concealed him, but she could see he crouched five feet away, not close enough to be threatening. He rested his arms over his thighs, with his hands palm up, a man without a weapon.
For a moment, Tavie could see the concern on his face, the intensity of his feelings, and then she could see the burning eyes underneath. She blinked because she shouldn’t have been able to see anything in the gloom under the strange tree. Then the underneath was gone. “You were the one who brought me here,” she said. It was a flash of recognition that picked away at the tenuous part of her brain.
Nica’s head inclined. She had been wrong about one aspect of him. He wasn’t really ugly, but his marked delineations didn’t hold up to a 21st century form of male beauty. His eyes were black but full of feeling. The lines of his face demarcated his inner strength. A core of power emanated from him in waves. He was striking; no one would ever forget him. “It’s what psychopomps do,” he said.
“Why do you keep watching me? Why are you here when I’m in pain?”
Nica looked at the ground. The shadows were his friend at the moment, concealing his expression from her. “You’re special,” he said. “In all the years I’ve escorted the dead, I’ve never met another one like you.”
Tavie took a breath. “Do you escort the dead from Deadsville?”
“Yes.”
“To where?”
“To where they need to go.”
“That’s a crap answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’ll get.”
“‘But that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country from whose bourn, no traveler returns, puzzles the will and makes us bear those ills we have, than to fly to others that we know not of.’,” Tavie murmured. Hamlet was the only Shakespearean play that she had read over
and over again. She had the DVDs of three versions. The Olivier version was the best, and although she was partial to the Mel Gibson one, she wouldn’t have turned down watching the Branagh adaptation.
And more importantly, there had never been a person alive that Tavie would have admitted to that she could quote from the play. Yet, she had spoken the words, never more appropriate at the moment. Never a person living.
“The undiscovered country,” Nica said agreeably. “And in death, there is yet to come. There was a man here once. I think he was William Shakespeare, but he would never admit it. I think he thought if he admitted his identity he would go to hell for having written such thought-provoking works.”
“To go to hell for thinking,” Tavie said, “then so too, shall all of us go to hell.”
“Good. Bad. Evil. Virtuous.” Nica stood slowly and backed away so that she could not see his face, nor could she see the burning of those dark eyes or the red eyes underneath the black orbs. “There’s no definitive. There’s no line that marks the edge that you cross and never can return from. It’s never like that.”
“What do you know about the deadie, Darren?”
Nica took a breath. Then he laughed. “So sad. So heart wrenching, but intent on doing something that needs to be done.”
“Will you answer me?”
“I know that Darren lived a long life. He had a family. He regretted a few things in his life, such as the patients he could not save. He kept pictures in his office in the living world, of those who had died while under his care. He liked to be reminded that he was not God. He wanted to reinforce that being a doctor only strengthened his humanity.”
“Darren doesn’t sound like the people in Deadsville,” Tavie commented. She had a reason to repent, and so did some of the people she’d encountered. But then there was those like Coco and Anatoly. Both were young and didn’t seem to have a reason to be here, stuck in the middle with only a hope of redemption.
“Do you think I have all the answers?” Nica asked.