Dee: A Wyrdos Tale

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  Dee

  A Wyrdos Tale

  By Gwendolyn Druyor

  Wyrdos.net

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  Gwendolyn

  Text Copyright © 2014 by Gwendolyn Druyor

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  “Welcome, Detective Morton.” Dr. Anne Pershing opened the door to her small office and invited the redhead inside. “Please sit.”

  “I thought you were supposed to have a couch.”

  Anne laughed. “Have you never been sent to a shrink before?”

  “Are you allowed to call yourself a shrink?” Deirdre Morton ran a finger along the mystery novels lining the top shelf of the small office’s single bookcase.

  “Please sit.” The tall, impeccably dressed doctor settled herself in one of two comfortable brown faux-leather chairs.

  Both touched a large glass window that took up nearly the entire wall of the seventeenth floor office. Detective Morton sat in the indicated chair. Then she stood again. She took the attractively-matching but uncomfortable throw pillow from the chair and looked around for somewhere polite to toss it. The office was small. The giant window made it seem roomy but essentially there was space for the two comfy chairs, the simple bookcase on the wall beside the door, and a closed secretary desk with a rolling stool against the wall behind the doctor’s seat. The detective sat back down, holding the pillow on her lap. She looked up at the doctor who was failing to hide her amusement and her breath caught at what she saw. After a moment, she sighed and handed the pillow over to the psychiatrist’s outstretched hand.

  “Are you okay?” The doctor tossed the pillow behind her, missing the stool.

  “That’s a rather obvious opener, don’t you think?”

  Dr. Pershing ignored the deflection. “You paled just now, when you looked at me.”

  Det. Morton looked away, smiling ironically to herself. Then she noticed the view. “Awfully dangerous view. Don’t get many suicides do you?”

  “Homicides mostly.”

  The cop quickly looked back at the doctor’s deadpan expression. She hadn’t been expecting to enjoy her department-mandated therapy session. The psychiatrist, probably in her mid-thirties, was wearing the required perfect skirt-suit. She wore librarian glasses and an immaculately coiffed blond bun low on the back of her head. But she also had mischievous dimples and a glint in her eye.

  “Detective Morton, this process—“

  “Please call me Dee. Everyone does.” She thought about this, “Everyone I like calls me Dee.”

  “Alright, Dee. I’m Anne. The process begins with a couple of sessions in which I evaluate how you are handling the death of your partner. It will be my decision at that point whether or not you are mentally ready to resume your duties on the force. Whether you return to work then or not, you will continue speaking with me for a minimum of six weeks. If you disagree with my findings—“

  “I don’t think I will. I apologize for interrupting but it’s not often I meet someone I can speak with openly and we don’t have a lot of time.”

  The doctor smiled uncertainly. “Eager is good. Would you like to talk about Detective Nellwin?”

  Dee scoffed. “Nerdwin.” She shook her head. “Kyle. Let’s just call him Kyle.”

  Dee looked out the window again at the city laid out below. She looked down to avoid her reflection. She never looked at her reflection. She knew that she looked an awful lot like her brother, Orin. At least everybody said so. Both could have just gotten off the boat from Ireland. They had the same round face with apple cheeks and giant green eyes on top of a long neck. Orin wore lots of facial hair which changed monthly. Dee kept her orange hair cut too short to be attractive but long enough for the curls that made it easy to style without a mirror. Dee owned a brush, but she only used it once a week before her shower. Otherwise, the curls were finger-combed and left to their own whims.

  Kyle recommended she wear hats. But hats made her head sweaty which demanded more frequent showers and she found running water made her uncomfortable. She cut her hair short in late spring and let it grow out for some winter warmth. Now, in late October, the curls were starting to need some bobby pins to stay out of her eyes. She brushed the bangs back and re-pinned them. Then she remembered that she was supposed to be sharing her feelings about how earlier this week her partner of fifteen years had been shot in the line of duty.

  “Kyle was the best partner I’ve ever had. And I’ve been a cop for a long time.”

  The doctor laughed. “It must seem like a lifetime with all you’ve seen. And you made detective very young. Your file says you’re still in your thirties?”

  “Yeah, I look good, don’t I? I’m a runner.” Even as she said it, Dee didn’t really know how that could explain how very young she looked. But people needed something to hang their hat on. She barreled on before the time ran out. “I’m a good detective. But I was a better beat cop. It’s not what I set out to do but as a civilian I was getting some flak for showing up around so many dead people. I was actually arrested on suspicion a couple of times and once for tampering with a crime scene. That’s how I got the idea. To become a cop. It’s been a good gig. But this week has been . . .” She thought for a minute, accidentally looked up at the doctor’s face and quickly looked away again, settling for, “challenging. The holidays are always a rough time for me from All Hallows’ Eve with the murders to Christmas with the suicides and right in the middle there, Thanksgiving . . . with the family. It’s nice being in this city. One of my brothers lives here. We spend the requisite dinners together, with his friends, with Kyle and Jeannie and their little girl, KJ.” Dee stopped again, thinking about how KJ’s life was going to change.

  The doctor interrupted her musing. “Do you want to tell me about this week?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Dee stretched, scrubbing her face with her hands and scratching her head wondering where to begin. “You’ve heard about the gang war? The Prez, the DVs, and the 2E are slaughtering each other. Which people are saying is okay by them. But a life is a life you know? Plus, they’re kids. And yeah, other people are getting hurt too. Kyle and I were working on a couple of those homicides. We were supposed to meet with Sister Sue Carter up at St. Ignatius.”

  Dr. Anne nodded in recognition. “The nun who ran the Jump On organization. I heard she was having some success getting the gangs to talk.”

  “Oh yes, she was having great success. But even though she was hosting parleys with all three gangs, the killings increased. And it seemed like anyone wearing the colors of the three gangs was getting killed. A group of Packers fans leaving a bar were attacked. Clearly not gang members. We wanted to ask Sister Sue what she thought was causing the increased killings. So we went to the church Wednesday morning to catch her after her yoga class. She was locking up her bicycle as we pulled into the parking lot. She waved and told us to come downstairs to meet her in the community center. She’d get a pot of coffee started. We parked as she dashed over to the building. At the top of the stairs, she turned and yelled, ‘Regular or unleaded?’

  “That’s when I saw the pallor. She’d been fine the moment before. But then suddenly she had a bright, almost blindingly white pallor around her.” Dee shivered remembering the instantaneous drop to freezing temperatures. “I almost called out. Reflexive, even after all these years. There is a part of humans that just wants to believe we can stop the inevitable. Of course, she fell. We couldn’t see from where we were. Kyle ran over to try to help but she’d bounced down all of th
e cement stairs and was piled in an awkward crumble of limbs in the tiny space between the bottom step and the door to the community center.

  “Kyle and I went down the stairs after her, carefully. The right hand railing had pulled away from the stone wall and the steps felt slick. Sister Sue was alive but she was bleeding heavily. Kyle started to look for something to stop the bleeding. Then he remembered who I was and looked at me. I shook my head.

  “We were considering how to make her comfortable when Sister Sue’s eyes opened and she grabbed Kyle’s arm to get our attention. Her lips moved like she was trying to speak but no words came out and then she shut her eyes again. Kyle leaned his head closer and asked wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be hearing her confession. I told him he could repeat it to me. In her last gasp of breath Sister Sue yelled. . . well, she clearly intended to yell but dying and all you’ve got to make allowances. She gasped ‘God forgive her.’ And that was it. Her light went out.”

  Dr. Anne smiled. “That’s such a nice way of putting it.”

  “No,” Dee corrected. “That’s what actually happened. Her light, the pallor, was extinguished. I can see it. You see, I’m a banshee.”

  Dee could see that Dr. Anne was finally, truly interested. Though she hid her smile, Dee saw the glint in the psychiatrist’s eye.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what that is.” The doctor managed to say this evenly with no judgment.

  “A Banshee. A harbinger of death, a mourner, and also I bring peace to the passing.” Dee waited but the doctor just nodded encouragingly, probably not trusting herself to speak. “Sister Sue was the passing.”

  The doctor realized that she was going to have to say something. She managed, “I see.”

  Dee considered what she was risking, telling her secret to the department psychologist. But the woman was only taking notes, not recording the session. For almost ten years she’d had Kyle to talk to.

  “I’ve been able to talk to Kyle about this stuff for almost ten years.” She said. “Now, I might be alone again. Before you ask, that makes me feel awful. I can’t even run away and start over in a new city like I used to do every dozen years or so because I’ve got his wife and kid I’m responsible for. And apparently there is a demon in the city.”

  The doctor coughed. “A demon has been killing the gangs?”

  “It’s okay, doctor, you can plan my incarceration in a mental institution in the back of your brain. Just do me one favor and for the rest of our hour, listen with an open mind. Believe. For one hour, believe in all the creatures you thought were fairy tales. Some of us are real. No, I believe the demon who was killing the gangs is gone. This demon is the one who signed the order for my mandated therapy today.”

  “Oh,” Dr. Anne actually sighed with relief. “A metaphorical demon.”

  “Unfortunately no. Real demon. Pure old pre-Cambrian demon. But it turns out she’s not all evil. I guess it’s a choice we can make. She’s a man eater but I think she’s selective in her choices. She’s probably responsible for Danny Caviedes’ disappearance. But, life or no, I won’t hold that against her. It probably took his soul a very long time to traverse the veil and gauntlet. If I’m there to mourn for you . . . or anybody, for example, I can make your journey easier. But you have to pay your own debts.”

  “What exactly does a Banshee . . . do you do?”

  Dee took a deep breath. She hated doing this without a soul to cradle but the doctor deserved to know, deserved to see. The temperature dropped in the room and the lights dimmed, flickering. Dee tilted her head back and began a soft, high-pitched keen. She let her hair grow and straighten. As the red locks flowed down past her shoulders and down her back it turned blond and then white. It blew out behind her as a wind lifted in the office. A bright white light, intense as the keening extended from Dee’s entire body like a halo. She opened her eyes, now a cold piercing blue spiking Anne in her seat. The keening continued deep in her throat as she intoned, “I will mourn the loss of you. I will eat your sins so your soul may leave your body’s husk and not be trapped for eternity watching the ripples of sorrow and despair caused by your life, your wrongs, your sins, your debts. Confess to me and be loved.”

  The wind died. The lights recovered. The temperature returned to normal. Dr. Anne blinked and Dee was sitting in front of her with green eyes, short red hair, and no halo of light surrounding her.

  Dee didn’t expect a response. She filled the awkward silence for the doctor’s sake. “I inherited the ‘gift’ from my mother’s family and my banshee genes showed early. I came keening out of my mother’s womb. She died three hours later. Kyle is the only person who knows about it. Besides you. And my family. My pops was the one who told me the name for what I am. Mom had been one too. Wanted to pass it on. That’s why she had six children. Boy after boy after boy until finally I showed up.” Dee paused. She risked a glance at the doctor who was pouring herself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table between them.

  “Water does help. But it has a way of increasing my sensitivity. When I’m near the lake I can sense impending death days in advance. We took a family vacation on a Mississippi river boat when I was about ten. I went missing and my brother James found me curled up in a closet bawling my eyes out because my father was gonna die . . . in twenty-five years. I couldn’t look at anyone on the boat. I’d just know.”

  Dr. Anne picked up the pitcher and looked around for someplace to hide it. Dee smiled sadly. She really did like this woman.

  “Anne. It’s okay. It’s a pitcher of water. It doesn’t hold the proverbial candle to that.” Dee gestured out the window where a sudden downpour was washing the city.

  Both women stared helplessly at the rain. It was beautiful. Anne spent a lot of time watching people cry when she knew they were worth so much more than they thought they were worth. And now she had this woman of power in her chair. This woman of a power so dreadful and sad that Anne couldn’t bear to let her down. She watched the rain and it felt like the city crying. And she saw what she often saw in her patients. The city was letting go, washing away the stale and the dirty. And she saw how much like a river it was. She stood.

  “Dee, would you like to go talk in the hallway? Or I’m perfectly comfortable in the ladies’ room. I believe I began my practice in the ladies’ room at my high school.”

  Dee gestured for her to sit down. “You are remarkably kind, Doctor. But the window doesn’t make any difference. I’ll know it’s raining. We can talk right here.”

  Anne settled again. She looked out the window and then turned back to Dee. “So your day started with the death of a nun.”

  “And a really good nun too. I helped her pass and when I came back to myself, Kyle was gone.” Dee saw Anne react. “Not dead. Gone. Away. He left a note. ‘Your phone rang. Seb needs help. Nerd.’ That’s what he calls himself to me. Short for Nerdwin which is what I use in place of his last name, Nellwin.”

  “Which is seriously nerdy.” Anne agreed.

  They laughed.

  “The next few hours were incredibly boring. I called in her death as a likely homicide. Kyle did not return to help me with the bureaucracy of death. Once it was clear the techs had taken over the scene, I went to speak with the pastor who said he was close with Sister Sue. I was hoping he might know who the ‘her’ Sister Sue wanted God to forgive. Fr. Shvchyk didn’t know anything useful. He took me to Sister Sue’s office. He sat down at her desk and checked her message machine, a physical message machine. No messages. Then he started going through her datebook. I sorted through the files on her desk. She didn’t even have a computer. Everything was written down. No codes. She wasn’t hiding anything. Fr. Shvchyk was making calls, cancelling her appointments for the day. Most of her meetings were with parishioners, normal in the context of her duties with the church. But he noticed that she had a 9:30 meeting scheduled with Councilwoman Leo at the Sheridan Sub Shop.”

  “That seems awfully late for a meeting.”

 
“That’s what I said. Fr. Shvchyk told me the meeting was scheduled for that morning, Wednesday morning. Well, Sister Sue had fallen around nine a.m. It was twelve-thirty when we were in her office.”

  Dr. Anne sat up. “Did she have a cell phone?”

  “Nice thinking, doctor.”

  “I’ve been working with law enforcement for too long. I’m sorry Detective. Please go on.”

  “No cell phone. No email. And no message on her machine. Over three hours later and Councilwoman Leo hadn’t called to see why Sister Sue missed their meeting.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Did you call her?”

  “Kyle has taught me to prefer face to face interviews. And unannounced visits tend to get you the most honest answers or at least the most poorly planned lies.”

  “What was her excuse?”

  “She wasn’t there.” Dee poured herself a glass of water, considering the councilwoman’s involvement in all this. “Her staff told me she was at a publicity event on The Wooded Island in Jackson Park.”

  “I saw that. She did a press conference about the new playground she wants to build there. She claims the trees and lakes are a waste of land and that our kids need a space for active play.” Dr. Anne poured herself a glass of water. She set her notebook and pen down on the small table.

  Dee smiled at the doctor avoiding her eyes. “You have an opinion, Doctor. Are you allowed to have opinions?”

  “Absolutely.” Anne looked right in Dee’s face, successfully gluing on her neutral mask. “Just not during a session. What is your opinion?”

  “My opinion of destroying one of the most beautiful parks in the city has no relevance to the case. They were playing the news conference on a monitor in the waiting area with the sound down. The councilwoman, surrounded by fat little kids. The kids looked like they’d love to be running around playing in the leaves that kept blowing in their faces. I noticed that Leo wasn’t really paying any attention to them and despite the wind, her perfect blond hair didn’t move at all. I’m fascinated by people who spend so much time crafting how they look. I chatted up the office secretary but Kyle called me before I could talk my way into the councilwoman’s office for a look around. He said he was following King, the head of the 2E on a hunch and could I meet him at m. henrietta.”