The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  “Tell me something, Rabbi.”

  “Tamara, please.”

  “Okay, tell me something, Tamara. Do you do exorcisms?”

  “Well.” She looks dubious. “I mean, I guess I could―if I absolutely had to. There are spells I could recite from the Book of Raphael, for instance. But in RPGs you just get a card or a token. Why do you―?”

  “Are you scared of ghosts?”

  “Shitless.” She laughs. The sound is merry, like a little bubbly coffee machine. “How come?”

  “Because this place is full of them.” The room is more crowded than a family sitcom soundstage. I guess shades are drawn to comic book stores. Or rabbis. Or maybe it’s just this part of town.

  She shudders. “Are you serious? Because now you’re actually scaring me.”

  “Sorry. I’ll just have a quick word with them. Ladies? Gentlemen? A little privacy here, please? At least leave us some space on the couch? You really don’t want me calling my friends in, I promise you. You won’t like them.” A couple of shades who look like they were the victims of a bad fire get up and wander off. “Okay, thanks. This place must have burned down not too long ago, huh?”

  “You can…see them?”

  “And hear them. It’s part of being dead. Well, undead. You hear lots of chatter― ‘white noise’, I guess the slasher flicks call it.”

  Now she looks at me like I’m the psycho-bitch date from hell. Which I guess I pretty much am. I sit down on the couch with a sigh.

  “The thing is…I need to confide in somebody, Tamara. Sometimes a complete stranger is the only person you can trust with a secret. Which I guess is a pretty sad comment on my life.”

  “You can trust me,” she says, but she’s pretty freaked. She’s standing sort of frozen on a little Andean throw rug, glancing wildly around for someplace safe to be, her eyes round as her glasses. The woman is nothing but one big O.

  “Because your lips are sealed by the secrets of the confessional or something?”

  “Um, no. You’re confusing me with a priest again. If you tell me anything really terrible, like you’ve committed a murder or something, then I have to tell the authorities. I mean, I would want to. But you can tell me anything else, I guess.”

  Okay, nice to be warned on that specific point. Since the murder part is pretty relevant, I mean. I decide to take the plunge anyway. Because it’s well after sunset―and I could be summoned anytime…

  “Come here and touch me, Tamara. No, I don’t mean it in a flirty way; I mean, come here and hold my wrist. Like you’re looking for a pulse, okay? Don’t be scared.” But of course, she is; she’s trembling like a rabbit. A rabbi rabbit. Nevermind. Anyway, she visibly mans up and walks over to me, then touches my wrist and flinches.

  This is getting to be almost like sex all by itself, this slow striptease of my vital signs, leading up to the slow reveal of the pouting hole over my left boob. Am I crazy to let one more person in on the secret? Totally. It’s just, well…it’s like I told her earlier, sometimes a complete stranger is the best person you can throw yourself on the mercy of. And I have a really good feeling about her; it’s like she’s come along at just the right time for me.

  I mean, don’t misunderstand me. There is no way in hell I’d ever have a relationship with someone like Tamara, sweet though she seems to be, and hot though my mother is at the idea, I could never be into her that way. So acting as my bedside salt-pocket monitor is about as intimate as we’re ever going to get. Of course, there’s got to be a quid pro quo in every relationship; I get that. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, the rabbi seems happy enough to take me up on my offer of the free use of Devon’s room for as long as she likes. It’s apparently closer to the synagogue, plus I think she’s lonely. And she likes cats. But I think it was my mentioning all the burn-victim ghosts hanging around here that’s got her packing a couple of suitcases so cheerfully.

  However, a sudden thought occurs to her, and she stops in mid-sock-drawer. “Is your house haunted, too, Rishya?”

  “Yeah, I have a couple of ghosts,” I admit cautiously. “One of them hangs out in my bedroom, actually―I think she’s scared to sleep alone. The other helps me with my job. He’s a dead detective. It’s kind of sweet, actually; I think they’re in love. But I really don’t know how these things work out on the other side. Probably as badly as on this one.”

  This seems to depress Tamara, though whether she’s bumming over the fact that my place isn’t de-ghosted or is spooked by my cynicism about love, I don’t know. Both, maybe. The evening probably hasn’t exactly worked out the way she was hoping, I guess―but, hey, at least she’s being invited back to my place. And I’m getting something out of it I need a lot more than a sleazy one-night stand with another woman.

  “Okay, so how is this salt thing going to work?” Tamara asks me, once we’ve driven home and I’ve installed her in Devon’s room and then fed Kitty and taken my shower. The place still stinks from all the cleanser chemicals (plus you can still see dark spots on the rug), so we’ve had to open the windows. I’m just about to answer when my cell phone rings. It’s Val.

  “Hey, sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner,” he says. “I was AFP all day.”

  “AFP?”

  “Away From my Phone.” He says this like it’s a thing; you know, some kind of new fad that people are doing now to holistically get away from technology or commune with nature or something one afternoon a week. And then post about it on their Facebook pages.

  “I just wanted to tell you that I spotted one of the Horvaths’ Mercedes and followed it back to a kind of caravan camp way out in the middle of Podunk.”

  “Holy shit,” he says in an unfocused kind of way. “Are you okay? Did they see you tailing them?”

  “I doubt it. Anyway, I’ve got a regular shift tomorrow, but I thought we could maybe meet up after EOW and check the campsite out. Maybe talk to the local sheriff, bring along some snooping equipment.”

  “You mean, actually get a warrant?”

  “Why not? There must be half a dozen wanted or bail-jumpers out there.” Not to mention Gluckstein’s murderers. If I can find an excuse to collect some DNA from the Hovaths, it might tie them to the crime scene. Not that DNA is enough to get a conviction anymore―but it will still get you an arrest ticket. “We could probably go crazy just serving truancy orders on them.”

  “Okay, it’s a date, Richelle.” He still sounds distracted but distinctly warmer. “Maybe we can sample one of the restaurants in Podunk afterwards.”

  “Was that your sweetie?” says the rabbi when I get off. She sounds a little wistful maybe.

  “Not yet.” I try not to smile too goopily. “But I’m kind of working on it. So…the subject was salt?”

  And that’s when Rabbi Tamara takes over. It turns out she has definite opinions about the coolest way to wear salt. As a fashion accessory, I mean. They involve my PJs having too few pockets and the possibility of loose grains being bad for me. She’s already decided that rock salt is way stronger than sea salt, so I have to dig some up from the basement.

  “What the hell are you wearing under your pajamas?” she asks, eyeing me critically when I return from this errand.

  “My Kevlar vest.” It’s belatedly occurred to me that if I get summoned to kill somebody again by the Horvaths, their next set of victims might be armed. Like with assault rifles or something. And my wounds would never heal; I could easily end up like those two women in Death Becomes Her―you know, with huge festering ugly holes in me. And parts falling off. I just wish I owned more body armor, maybe even a hockey goalie’s helmet.

  I’ve also locked my Smith & Wesson away in the gun safe I keep in the closet. You know, just in case the salt doesn’t work.

  “Well, I think you need more pockets, for sure. Maybe we can cut up some old sweatpants or something. Three just isn’t enough―your butt needs protection, and you should have some side-pockets on your pajama top. You know,
like a jacket. And maybe something on your lapels. Maybe we should use one of your old pantsuit jackets and tear out the panels and stuff them with salt sachets.”

  Which is actually kind of a genius idea. There’s only one problem with it: I can’t sew.

  However, Tamara can, and willingly sits up until midnight with her needle and thread, looking like a little orange leprechaun mom sewing her kid’s first Halloween costume. Honestly, I don’t know what I’ve done all these years without my own personal rabbi.

  Lorna for one can’t take her eyes off her, though her fascination seems horrified, like I’ve brought home some kind of a zoo animal.

  “Where’s Bull tonight?” I ask the ghost-girl when we’re briefly left alone.

  She shrugs. “I don’t know. He hasn’t called. He said something this morning about having a hot lead; he and Gimpy were following up on it. Doesn’t that ghoul just give you the creeps?”

  Yep, especially during foreplay, I think but don’t say aloud. “Well, you can’t always choose your boyfriend’s friends,” I tell her soothingly. Or your housemates.

  “Is that strange woman gonna be staying with us now?”

  “I don’t know, hon. For a while, maybe.”

  She shudders. “She gives me the creeps, too.”

  “Everything gives you the creeps,” I say unkindly. On the other hand, maybe Lorna’s got more sense than me.

  Later, we all three troop into my bedroom, and I climb into bed. Tamara pulls the covers up over my knees. Though sleep-deprived, I am so not sleepy right now, but I know that’s just fear. I can’t stall on this forever.

  “Ready?” asks Tamara.

  I nod, swallowing hard. Rabbi Tamara starts sticking salt sachets in my pockets, including all the extra new ones she’s sewn on. I’m half-expecting this will burn like the hawthorn branches, but I feel nothing. However, when she’s done, I find I totally, utterly cannot move. Not at all. Not even to close my eyes. I’m completely paralyzed. It’s like having GA at the hospital, except that I’m fully conscious. And really, really terrified now.

  “You okay?” she asks. I try to nod, but, of course, I can’t. I’ve warned her this might happen, so after a minute she gives up waiting for a response and pulls the covers up the rest of the way over me to my chest. I can tell she’s pretty freaked, too. “I’ll be back at five to wake you up. We’ll need kind of an early start if you’re going to take me to the garage tomorrow morning, right? Sorry, maybe you can’t hear me. Well, goodnight then, I guess.”

  She peers at me anxiously, then turns off the bedside lamp and half closes the door behind her, so that the cat can come and go. When she turns out the hall light, my bedroom is plunged into near-darkness.

  The eyes wide open thing is a major problem. Because it makes it impossible for me to get to sleep. I keep thinking a bug is going to land on one of my eyeballs. And what if I need to pee in the night? I mean, emptying your bladder requires your muscles to relax, right? But what if they’ve already relaxed? Most of the many corpses I’ve seen over the years have pissed and crapped themselves―I realize I should have at least laid a towel down under my butt before I lay down as a precaution. So tomorrow night, if there is one, I’ll make sure to close my eyes first and lay a towel down. Maybe even a bathmat. Hell, I probably should be wearing incontinence pads.

  And then I think: what happens if I can’t trust Tamara? What if she gets up tomorrow morning and just takes my car keys and goes off to work? Hell, she could take over my life, couldn’t she? She could squat in my house for months, empty my bank accounts if she finds my PIN number, pretty much behave like Devon has lately. I mean, there must be dishonest rabbis in the world. Right?

  Or what if she dies in the night? Has a heart attack from being overweight? Or slips in the bathroom and cracks her head? I could lie here for weeks―even months―before anybody notices and breaks in to find us. And when they did…they would just assume I was dead. Immobile, not breathing, no heartbeat, cold to the touch. They’d cart me off to the morgue and cut me open. Fuck!

  Because I totally don’t trust Cappy to notice or care if I suddenly stop showing up at work. As far as he’s concerned now, I’m just a problem he wishes would go away. Just as I can’t trust Ayon to have my back.

  So now I’m in a total panic, when I suddenly feel a weird tingling along the top of my head and along one side of my face. At first it scares the living crap out of me, but then I also hear a soft humming noise, and assume it’s just Kitty purring and rubbing up against me. But it’s never felt like this before. This sensation is more like when the ghost walked through me last night, only way more powerful; almost like an electric current that I can feel stroking me both on the surface of my skin and inside me. It’s kind of…well, I’ll admit it, erotic. I could get really turned on if it was happening anywhere else but, you know, inside my head.

  But I’m wrong; it isn’t Kitty. It’s Lorna. “Geez, you weren’t joshing me,” says her voice in my ear. “You really can’t move, can you? Poor helpless baby.”

  After a few minutes, she stops. I think. By then, maybe from the supernatural stroking, I’m falling asleep.

  “Poor helpless baby?” is the last conscious thought I have. Okay, that is definitely creepy…

  hings get way weirder after that.

  Sometime in the night, at a guess about three A.M., I slowly wake up. No, maybe a better description would be half-awake. Think a couple Ambiens on top of a dozen Starbucks Double Grandes. Bull McGuinness and Lorna are hovering over me staring down as if I’m on the operating table. Or coroner’s slab.

  “Hey, toots! We gotta talk.” Bull looks anxious.

  “She can’t,” Lorna says to him in a slightly pleading tone. “Can’t you see she’s stuck? Me, too―that rabbi dame poured a circle of salt around the bed and mumbled some prayers at us or something. Now you can’t get in and I can’t get out. And Richie can’t move.”

  “Why are her eyes open?”

  “Because she forgot to close them, I guess. And there’s no call to take that mean bullying tone with me, mister―this isn’t my fault!”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay.” He hangs his head sheepishly. “Sorry about that, doll. We need to bust you out is all. Hey, Detective Dadd, I want you to try something. Sounds a little kooky, I guess, but you gotta trust me on this. Remember when that poor dumb shyster lawyer got himself bumped off? Remember how confused he was inside that closet until we talked him round? Well, the same deal’s going on with you. Half of you’s dead, see, just like him. And now that half’s gotta just let go of your meat and bones and float. Pretend you’re in a swimming pool, okay?”

  And incredibly, the moment he says these words, my consciousness starts drifting towards the ceiling. The sensation is exactly as Bull has described it; as if I’m floating up through the warm waters of a dark, tranquil pool.

  “Hey, hold it right there―don’t go through the ceiling! Now I want you to turn over and look down at us. Can you do that for me, kiddo?” Very slowly I rotate, feeling like a harpooned whale. Their ghostly faces stare up at me from below; Bull from outside a glowing greenish circle on the carpet, Lorna from the bed inside it. But it’s the object lying beside her that draws my horrified attention. It’s me. My own waxy lifeless body lying under the bedclothes like a really realistic store window dummy, mouth slightly open and eyes straining mutely and imploringly straight back up at me.

  “Try blinking,” says Lorna.

  “What’s happening to me? Am I dead?” I find I can blink my eyes―and talk―but my voice is as insubstantial as the rustling of dead leaves. All my senses feel weirdly different, too; I’ve got a bad case of tunnel-vision, my nose is on fire, and my ears are filled with a rushing sound, as if I’m swimming underwater. Everything looks glowing and translucent.

  “Nah, not exactly,” says Bull. “You’re just stuck inside your own shade now. All them spiritualists and yogi flim-flam artists have a lot of fancy names for it like ‘astral envelope’, th
at kind of mumbo-jumbo, but I guess it just boils down to being your eternal soul. Like where you visit when you’re dreaming. Now, try reaching down and taking Lorna’s hand.”

  Lorna stands on the bed reaching up to me; when our hands meet, it feels almost as real as flesh and blood except for the tingling. She clasps my right wrist firmly, as I grip hers in mine. This time when we touch, we don’t pass through each other but instead fuse together somehow, bone to bone. It strikes me suddenly how intensely amazing this tingly, merged feeling could be, you know, in a deep kiss or soul-sex with someone I really loved.

  But that’s crazy thinking. Because we’d both have to be dead to be doing that. And I don’t want to die.

  Or do I?

  “Now hoist her up to you. Yeah, like that. Keep floating up through the ceiling, and I’ll meet youse two outside on the roof, okay? The rabbi dame’s magic circle won’t work so good up there, I bet.”

  I can barely hear him now as I go into a kind of involuntary Peter Pan stage act, hauling Lorna up from the bed as I bump against the ceiling and then start to go through it. She is light as a feather. Her pale face looks like a big balloon rising from below me; there is something else, too, trailing down past her shoulder into the bed. A sort of rope or cord, like an astronaut’s tether, so filmy that it looks like an optical illusion. But everything does right now.

  I keep rising… up, up through the ceiling, up through the fiberglass insulation in the attic space, then higher still through the roof beams and shingles and up and out into the night. Each time I encounter something solid, it’s kind of like I’m breaking through a crust of dough or maybe glazed cake icing, but one that carries a slight electrical charge. And makes a vibrating noise. Then I’m crunching through it and into the next layer. Once outside, though, everything changes.

  The world is very black and cold and filled with a huge roaring, like an upside-down ocean. Everything vibrates and seems, well, galvanic―there’s really no better way to describe it, like all the glowing solid surfaces are a Hollywood special effect simulating electron flow. Yet, totally organic at the same time, if that makes any sense. For example, most of the sky over the city is covered by a sort of humming, writhing mass of what look like tiny roach eggs or tapioca pudding. In the distance individual grains drift up and down, some hitting the ground. I do not. I look downward to see that I’m hovering above my own rooftop, just a few feet away from where an old TV aerial is still rusted into place. Devon was supposed to get rid of it but turned out to be scared of heights. I can still gaze into the house from here; Bull has already left my bedroom, and the rabbi is asleep in Devon’s bed. It’s like a game of Sims.