All this time Vicky Victoria has been silently watching us from atop a small sliding board on the terrace. She is holding a large book, open on her lap. As soon as Georgia goes inside the house, Vicky slides on down and comes over to join us. Alison and I are seated at the patio table. Vicky carefully deposits the book on the table and moves around behind to perch on my lap.
I catch the expression on Alison's face as she is inspecting this little squirt. She is obviously "taken" by what Cochran himself has described as the "uncanny resemblance" to Jane Doe. I can see it in Alison's eyes, the recognition, the wonderment, as she says, "Well, I see that you two are old friends."
Vicky Victoria apparently has no comment to that. She just sits there on my lap, sort of cuddling.
I smile past her shiny little head at Alison, reply, "We just met last night. Well, sort of met. We met with the eyes. Right, Vicky?"
This is a small ten-year-old. Dainty, all girl. Very soulful eyes. She places a hand on mine, just sort of rests it there, swivels her head to jolt me with very close eye-to-eye contact, leans over to place a soft kiss on Alison's cheek.
Alison is strongly affected by that. The eyes contract and the lips tremble just a bit before she says, "That was very sweet. Thank you, Vicky."
Vicky Victoria scoots off my lap and goes inside the house.
I comment to Alison, "Some kid, huh?"
"Uh-huh. Such a loving little thing."
Manuel-Manuel tells us, "Not always. She gets very angry sometimes." He is sitting at Alison's feet, rolling a toy car on her leg.
She shows me a quick smile, says to Manuel: "Sometimes anger is just love in disguise."
Manuel replies, "Mom says it's frustration. I don't take it personally."
This kid has verbal ability surpassing that of some teenagers.
Alison gives me a pursed-lip look, scratches Manuel's head, tells him, "Mom is pretty smart. So are you. Just hang in there, guy."
Georgia reappears with a pitcher of iced tea, Vicky close behind carrying a tray of glasses. Everybody gets some. The kids join us at the table.
Georgia apologizes, "I hope decaf is okay."
Alison and I agree that decaf is just fine, and Alison adds, "I had enough caffeine for breakfast to last me all day."
Manuel announces that he had enough oatmeal for breakfast to last him the rest of his life.
We all laugh about that—Vicky and Manuel, too, joining in, then Vicky slides her tea over and finds her way back onto my lap.
Georgia smiles at me and says, "I think you've made a conquest."
"You have a beautiful family," Alison volunteers, almost wistfully. "So loving. But come clean with this career girl now; is it always this great?"
"It is," Georgia replies, smiling and nodding her head for emphasis. "I was a career girl, too, once. And I have no regrets."
"What did you do?" Alison inquires with genuine interest.
"I was an actress," Georgia says. She laughs as she adds, "I'm utterly destroyed that you haven't recognized me."
Vicky Victoria has an arm under my coat. I can feel the little hand on my back. I am beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable.
Manuel-Manuel is saying, "She was a soap star. Didn't you ever watch Begin the Dawn? I didn't. I wasn't born. But you were."
Alison replies, "Gosh, I ... never saw much daytime TV."
And I am thinking it is time to leave.
I lift Vicky Victoria off my lap and deposit her in her own chair, kiss her on top the head, gruffly tell her, "Check you later, kid. See that your dad gets his package."
Georgia walks us to our car, leaving the kids behind. Alison again comments on "the beautiful family," then adds, "Vicky is simply precious. Such a quiet little thing."
Then Georgia hits us with the bomb. "She's aphasic," she tells us with about as much emotion as it would take to tell us she's blue-eyed. "It's congenital. But she manages to get her ideas across, most emphatically sometimes."
Alison and I get into the car and drive away.
Not a word is spoken until we are back to the Hollywood Freeway and streaking south. Then my eyes lock onto Alison's haunted ones in the rearview mirror and I say, very quietly, "Well, kiss my ass."
Chapter Thirteen: i.e.
The L.A. County Morgue is in a sizable building sharing the grounds of the county hospital. A lot goes on there, other than storage for homeless corpses. The coroner is there, the forensic medicine people are there. For a county this size, a full-blown bureaucracy is housed there. But it still feels like a morgue, a house of the dead. Not the sort of place to list as a tourist attraction. And you can't just walk in there and shop for bodies, which is why I had Alison at my elbow. Her credentials dissolved the red tape and passed us on through to the cold-storage area.
But something was awry in this bureaucracy. The attendant evidently rolled open the wrong drawer. This "Jane Doe" was about fifty years old and black. The guy double-checked the tag on the toe, consulted his list, muttered something under his breath, went to another drawer. The Jane Doe on that slab looked like the remains of a bag lady—about seventy, terribly wasted.
The only other Jane Doe locker was empty. The attendant stood there for a, long moment studying his list, then took us back to the office and consulted another list. Then he picked up a telephone and consulted a list with someone somewhere else.
Finally he sighed, showed Alison a tired smile, said, "There's a screw-up somewhere. I'll have to run this down. Would you like to check back later this afternoon?"
Alison told him, "She was here at three o'clock this morning. I called and confirmed it."
The guy said, "Well, yeah, she's here now, too, according to the records. I just don't know where, exactly."
I suggested, "Autopsy, maybe."
He scratched his nose and replied, "No, that's scheduled for tomorrow. We're backed up. It's been one of those weeks. Look, she's here. No chance she could have been released prematurely. Just give me time to run it down."
Alison seemed a bit pale. And the voice was a bit out of control as she told the attendant, "This is very important. I must see that body. I mean, right now."
The attendant stared at her in silence for a long moment, then asked her, "Exactly what do you have in mind?"
She said, "We'll just have to look for her."
He looked at me with a lopsided grin and asked, "Do you know what she's saying? Know how many corpses are cooling back there? Know the shape some of them are in? Can she handle this?"
I told him, "I guess we're game if you're game. It is important. Wouldn't take your time otherwise."
The guy said, 'Time? What time? I got all the time in the world. One thing you learn on this job is time. If you're breathing, you got time. If not ..."
You never know where you will encounter a philosopher. But all the time in the world would not have helped that fruitless search. We shook the place down thoroughly, even invaded the autopsy rooms, then went over to the med school and checked out the cadavers.
But we did not find our Jane Doe.
And I did not know whether I should be sad or glad. The thinking mind tends to rebel at too much mystery. I found that mine was growing numb, withdrawing. Alison's had already gotten there. Her body was not far behind. As I sent the Maserati hurtling toward Ojai she withdrew to the far side of her seat in a dark study, brooding, almost cataleptic.
I was definitely worried about her by the time we hit the Ventura Freeway. I did not feel much like talking about it myself, but I patted her leg and said, "Cheer up, kiddo. It's unraveling. We'll start separating some strands pretty quick now."
She looked at me then, and I shot a quick glance at her, necessarily quick because I was merging into a fast-running interchange off the Hollywood. And I damn near lost the whole ball game right there because I had to look back again with direct attention to verify what I thought I'd seen in the quick glance.
I'd seen it, all right.
They were Alison's eye
s, yes, but with an altogether different cast and sparkle. And they were deviated full left.
I really did not think it out first. As I said, I was mind-weary. And I was hurtling along within a sea of traffic. I guess it was pure reaction. I let her have it with the back of my hand, hard enough to rattle her teeth and snap the head back. She woke up screaming. And I sent a quick prayer of thanks to wherever.
There was no going on after that. I left the freeway at Studio City and took her to Sportman's Lodge, a landmark motel where once you could catch your own trout from the man-made streams and ponds on the grounds and have them prepared to your own specifications by the chef. The waters are still there, but the "sportsmen" are not unless you broaden the concept to include bedroom games. But it is still a very nice place to spend a few hours or a few nights, has good restaurants, convention facilities, banquet rooms, etc., and a very popular lounge.
It was by now late afternoon. It had been a hell of a day, coming also on the heels of a hell of a night. We'd forgotten about lunch, had consigned nothing whatever to the belly since the early-morning doughnuts, except a few sips of decaffeinated tea at Cochran's. Then that gruesome afternoon ...
Well, I guess we were both pretty well shot. I checked us in at Sportsman's, and we went straight to the coffee shop for a quick fix to the stomach. We talked very little over the food, but Alison took a cigarette with her coffee, though obviously unaccustomed to sucking smoke, and leaned toward me in a conspiratorial huddle across the table to say, "I have never had an hysterical reaction like that in my whole life. What happened?"
I really did not want to tell her what happened, nor even to think about it, not at that moment. So I just shrugged and told her, "That's your field. You tell me what happened."
She laterally wiggled her lower jaw, made rueful eyes, and replied, "You slapped the shit out of me, that's what happened. But thanks ... I guess. Really, though ..."
I sighed and said, "Really, though, it has been a tough day. I think you need to regroup. There's food in the belly now. Next in order, I think, is a leisurely hot shower or a long soak in a tub and then some sleepytime. Then we need to skull this thing through before plunging off into the abyss. That is, unless you'd rather just forget the whole matter and get back to your sane, ordered existence."
She asked me, "Is that what you want to do?"
I said, "I was talking about you."
She said, "I am talking about you."
I told her, "I live for cases like this."
“You do?”
"Sure." I took a sip of my coffee, worked at the cigarette. "But it really is not your bag. So if you—"
She said, "Are you inviting me to leave? Are you afraid I will start screaming every time I get a little tired?"
"'Course not." Should I tell her what I was really worried about? Was her head settled enough now to handle that? "You've been a big help. I like having another opinion at my elbow, so to speak. And you were a lot more familiar with Jane than I was. But ..."
“But..?”
I took the plunge. "I believe Jane has attached herself to me."
"How do you mean?"
"I don't know how I mean. Just attached somehow. She's been battering at my brain all day. I won't let her in. I know how to control that. You don't. Neither did little Vicky Victoria. I believe that Jane invaded Vicky while we were there today. And I believe that she invaded you in the car a while ago."
Alison just stared at me blankly for a very long moment, then she took a deep breath, shuddered, began to hyperventilate, got it under control, said to me in a strangled little voice: "You're right, this—it's not—this is not my bag. It sounds ... totally crazy to me. So why am I so damned scared?"
"Call it awe," I suggested, "and go with it. But control it. Stay in charge. Keep questioning, don't let go of that, never stop questioning but question intelligently, not fearfully, keep the left brain dominant, don't surrender to the emotional right brain. Know what I'm saying?"
She nodded her head, reached for another cigarette, said, "I could get hooked on these damn things. In your crazy world, anyway. What do cigarettes do for you?"
"Other than load me with carcinogens?" I shrugged. "Recent research indicates a relief to the stress centers in the brain. Maybe they keep me from flying away."
She said, "You're not afraid of dying, are you? I mean, it doesn't ..."
I replied, "I don't want lung cancer, if that's what you mean. I also don't want ulcers, boils, or AIDS. But I don't subvert my expression of life to a plan for dying. Whatever death is, we're all going to experience it, you know. I am not afraid of that idea, no. And I'm damned if I'll direct my whole life toward that point. It will find me, in whatever form seems appropriate. Meanwhile there are a lot of interesting things to focus on."
"We've got one now, haven't we?" she said.
"For me, yeah, very interesting. For you ...?"
She smiled. "For me too." The smile faded but hung on there, sort of pasted on. "You think she invaded me, huh?"
I said, "Yes. You were physically withdrawn, almost cataleptic. Your eyes became Jane's eyes, even to the left deviation."
Alison shivered, placed the cigarette between her lips, lit it, choked mildly on the smoke, showed me a wan smile. “Why would she do that? If she's attached to you ... ?”
"I don't know how to explain it," I replied. "Don't really understand the process. But possibly she is trying to interact with me. I won't give her direct access, so she is trying alternate routes."
"Maybe she's in love with you," Alison said quietly.
"There could be that element," I admitted. "But I believe the problem goes much deeper than that."
"So why doesn't she just appear in her own body again? You know the only implication possible from that fiasco at the morgue. She stole her own body. How could she do that? And if she can do that, why is she buzzing around our brains now, out of body? None of this really goes together, Ash- ton."
I said, "It goes together somewhere. Maybe not in this world, but ..."
"Where is her body now?"
I said, "Hell, I don't know, Alison."
"Well where could it be?"
I said, "I don't know."
"Well, just what do you know, Professor Ford?"
I said, "For sure?"
"Yes, for sure. What do you know?"
I said, "Nothing."
"Nothing?"
I said, "Now you've got it. That is exactly what I know."
Chapter Fourteen: Belly of the Flea
My problem, you see, is that I have too much respect for the observed physical orderliness of the universe. This whole thing appears to be a living system, with our own earth and its biosphere in an intimate relationship with the rest of creation. I get this vision not from intuition but from the very precise revelations of natural science. We do not live in an accidental universe (despite pronouncements to the contrary by various scientific technicians) but in a beautifully ordered and brilliantly conceived evolutionary process that could—who knows?—be directly involved in the development of the ultimate God Being itself. In other words, if that is not clear enough, our solar system could be an atom in a cell of a toenail being developed on the embryonic God. Or if you don't like that analogy, make it an atom in a nerve cell of the embryo God's brain. Either way, that does not confer particular importance upon our solar system. Our sun and its planets constitute but one of several septillion similar systems in space. Our entire galaxy, which contains at least a billion stars, would constitute perhaps a single cell of the embryo.
This order of magnitude is difficult to handle by the human brain, so let's try another analogy. If we could shrink the known universe to the size of the North American continent, our galaxy would then be the size of a baseball lying somewhere in Mexico or the U.S. or Canada. You could then cover our solar system with the head of a pin.
So, see, you've just naturally got to respect the size of this universe—and it is getting larg
er all the time. If our solar system is no more than a flea upon the back of a dog somewhere in North America, where does that leave you and me in this scheme? Somewhere in the flea's belly, I would suspect.
So who the hell am I to be making pronouncements as to the nature of reality? When you say reality, pal, you're talking this whole magnificent production that is just the known universe so far.
Next time you find a flea on your dog, don't annihilate him right away. First put him in your ear and try to hear the hollow oration inside; see what the message from the belly of the flea can tell you about the American economic system, the arms race, or the rotation of crops in Illinois. Then see what he can tell you about acid rain in Canada, the financial crisis in Mexico, and the crime rate in New York City.
On second thought, don't bother.
The "reality system" within the belly of the flea surely could not even tell you the name of the dog upon whose backside he feeds.
Do I sound properly humble? Okay, then let me go on to say that, flea's belly or no, the human mind has become startingly aware of the dimensions and apparent attributes of the processes going on around us. We think, with reasonable confidence, that we know how and approximately when it all began. We think that we can count the atoms of the universe and compute their total mass. We think that we know how atoms are made and that we are made of them ourselves; we even know, we think, how many atoms and what kind constitute the human body and the processes that bring them together in a living system. We can know these things, or at least hypothesize them, only because the processes are so orderly no matter where they are encountered. It is not a capricious universe. Every time you step aboard an airplane or take a dose of medicine, you are acknowledging that fact with your faith that neither will kill you. We live in an orderly physical system. And the system was built with us in mind. We know that because our observations of the system tell us so. The atoms that now make your body were built inside a star, which itself may have been built inside another star, and so on back to the initial creative bang itself. Our astrophysicists find evidence to believe that our particular star, the sun, is a fourth-generation star, it is a great-great-grandchild of the big bang. Some of the atoms that now make up your body could have belonged to other bodies before yours, or they could have been part of a tree or a rock or a piece of volcanic ash; so say our gentlemen of science.
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