The Corpse Whisperer

by H. R. Boldwood

Weston opened the door slowly, like he was afraid of interrupting. He must have heard Cap’s every word. Bugger.

  I slunk down in my chair, as he walked into the room and nodded at Rico and me.

  Then, he turned to Cap. “Hey, sir. I spoke to Elena, Ortega’s wife. She’s a mess,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his hand. “I called her sister. She’s coming to stay with Elena and the kids tonight. When I left, the department psychologist was there with her. I told her anything we can do, you know?”

  Weston looked tired. Beyond tired. Shell-shocked. Weren’t we all?

  He leaned back against the door and changed topics. “The forensics guys were able to get some samples before the Director ran them off. I figured you’d want to know. Like we anticipated, they got a lot of prints. They’re running them, but it’s going to take a while. Same with the trace evidence they collected. They asked me to collect prints and DNA samples from Rico and Nighthawk, you know, for exclusionary purposes.”

  He pulled a couple of print kits and some swabs in plastic bags from his jacket pocket.

  Rico nodded, inked his fingers, and let Weston roll them across the print card. Then, Rico opened his mouth while Weston swabbed the inside of his cheek and bagged it.

  Weston peered at me from the corner of his eye.

  I sighed and gave him my hand.

  “Does this mean we’re engaged?” I asked, just because, well, just because I’m me.

  Weston rolled my fingers across the card. When I opened my mouth with no further objection, he came at me slowly, like he was about to do a cheek swab on a pit bull.

  “Just do it already,” I said. “If I wanted to bite you, I’d have done it a long time ago.” As his hand neared my mouth I said, “But it’s way past lunch time and I haven’t eaten, so—”

  He jerked away with a frown. When I laughed, he jammed the swab into my mouth, yanked back his hand, and bagged the sample.

  Weston got up to leave but Cap motioned for him to stay put. “You need to hear this, too. Before we were ordered off the scene, I sent some officers to canvass the neighborhood, hoping we’d turn up some information. One of our guys spoke to a local man, who was out walking his dog around seven-thirty this morning. He heard what he thought were firecrackers in the distance and continued on his way. About fifteen minutes later, he came across a scene that struck him as odd. He said a black Lexus and a white Crown Vic, with city plates, were pulled to the side of the road. The driver of the Vic had exited his vehicle and was leaning into the driver’s side window of the Lexus. As dog walker got closer, dude from the Vic turned his head and glared at him. Dog walker got a hinky feeling and pretended he hadn’t been paying attention. He went on home and didn’t think anything more about it, until we knocked on his door.”

  Weston sat on the edge of Cap’s desk and bit his lip. “Did he get a plate number on the city car?”

  “Only a partial. CCE3 something. Said he got scared and turned his eyes to the ground. But here’s the thing. He mentioned that he’d seen the black Lexus around there before.”

  Rico’s head snapped up. “Did the dog walker give a description of the drivers, Cap?”

  “Not much. He only saw their faces for a second. He said the driver of the Crown Vic was tall and had light hair. But he saw the dude in the Lexus handing the guy in the Vic a brown paper bag.”

  We all exchanged glances, no doubt sharing the same suspicion: money.

  Cap sat a little taller and laid down the law. “I know you all want to be out there looking for Leo. And you will be. But first, we’re going to figure out where we stand with the pending investigations. Obviously, the biter attack at the range, the deaths of Miriam and Fingerello, the mob boss, and BOLO Guy must be connected to Leo. Any theories, people? And that freaking black Lexus. What’s the story on that?”

  I threw a side glance at Rico, whose fingers had dug into the arms of his chair.

  His words came out with an edge. “We got a tip from…an informant…who said he’d seen it parked up the street from the safe house all day. He even gave us a plate number. We traced it, Cap. It’s registered to some outfit called Stanous Electric. There’s construction going on up the block from the safe house. The Lexus was parked along there, with twenty other contractor’s cars. It seemed legit, so we gave it a pass.”

  Cap rubbed his eyes. “Jesus. Put another BOLO out on the damn Lexus, with the plate number this time. And find out everything you can about Stanous Electric. Any more on the biter attack at Brasshole’s?”

  I figured I’d field this one since Rico looked ready to implode.

  “It’s like we said last time, Cap. It could have been anyone with access to the Perptown schedule, to know when I was going to be there. Someone who knew where the security cameras were. Someone with a key. That narrows it down to most anybody on the force. To be honest, with Leo and everything else that’s been going on, Rico and I haven’t been able to take it further.”

  It was time for a little game of hot potato. “Weston, if I recall, you were digging into that. What’d you come up with?”

  Weston looked like I’d drilled him in the face with a tuna. “I… I… Well, what Nighthawk said, Cap. Short of investigating every single cop in the district, we may never find that out.”

  “And BOLO Guy,” Cap said. “Did we ever figure out who he works for?”

  “Actually, no,” Weston said.

  “Did we at least figure out who he was, based on his prints, DNA, or facial recognition?”

  You could have heard a pin drop.

  Cap’s face puffed up like a big red blowfish. “Did I, or did I not, give you an order? And I’m including you in this rant, Weston. What the fuck have you people been doing?”

  “Babysitting Leo,” I yelled.

  The flaw in that response was obvious the minute it came out of my mouth. But damn it, Cap had us by the cojones and it wasn’t sitting right.

  “How about we move on to new business,” Cap said, ignoring my outburst. “We now have a white Vic with a partial city plate to find. Rather than ask you…overworked…folks to chase that lead, I’ve requested the daily logs from the various city departments to find out who had that car. That’s one less lead for you princesses to follow.”

  His mouth opened like he was about to go for round two, but his phone rang.

  Thank you, Jesus.

  Cap picked up the line, grunted several times and hung up. “That was the morgue. Powell’s body is back and the D.A. got his court order. Time for you to do your thing, Nighthawk. That is, if you aren’t too busy.”

  17

  End of Watch

  We might have had a court order to raise Powell, but Little Allie made it clear there was a matter of moral importance that needed to be addressed, before we began.

  Denise Powell, Greg’s widow, stood behind the glass walls of the conference room in the City Administration building, watching Rico and me approach.

  Someone needed to explain what was about to happen to her husband and why. That someone was me. Rico had known Denise for years, so I asked him to come with me. I hoped he could comfort her. And maybe me, too.

  It was late in the day. Denise’s husband had been dead for almost ten hours. And while that wasn’t long enough for her to fully grasp the impact of his death, she’d already witnessed the shameless intrusion of the pandering press—which included Jade Chen, uber-bitch.

  When we walked through the conference room door, Rico immediately moved to Denise and wrapped his arms around her. He was sturdy as an oak, eyes flat, lips taut, as she sobbed against his chest. She struggled to compose herself, then sat in a chair and turned to me with sad, inquiring eyes.

  I spoke softly and chose my words with great care. “Thank you for meeting with me, Mrs. Powell. Please accept my condolences. Your husband was a wonderful officer, and although I didn’t know him well, he struck me as a caring, selfless man, who devoted himself to his family as well as his job. He will be missed by all who knew him
.”

  Denise’s unblinking eyes never wavered.

  “Greg was working with us on a special project for the FBI. He died before he could give us information about his attackers. We need to raise Greg, to find out who killed him and Officer Ortega.”

  She sucked in a breath and waited for me to continue.

  “I want to personally assure you that I will handle this raising with the utmost respect and decorum.”

  Denise let out a muffled moan. “No! No, you won’t. Leave him in peace. He’s given his life. Isn’t that enough? What are you? Some kind of freak? Some kind of monster?”

  Although I’d wondered that myself on occasion, I doubted she cared to hear that. I tried to find an answer she could accept, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Rico sat in the chair beside her and took her hands. “I know this is the most difficult decision you’ve ever had to make in your life, Denise. But ask yourself what Greg would do.”

  “I don’t care! He’s my husband,” she cried. “You’re not going to desecrate his body. You’re not going to destroy his sweet…face.”

  With that she collapsed against Rico’s chest, and clung to him like a lost child, crying with a sorrow so deep it pained me to watch.

  “I want to see his face,” she whimpered. “I want his family to see his face at the funeral, to say goodbye. You can’t take that away from me, too! You can’t.”

  “Denise, you can still have an open casket, if that’s what you want. I will use all of my skills to make sure that can happen.”

  This was getting more complicated. The only way to give her his unblemished face was to take him at the back of his neck. That was a lot to promise.

  She turned to me, her head still resting on Rico’s chest, and murmured, “We’re Catholic. What you do, this thing you do, where does the power come from?”

  I knelt beside her and looked straight into her eyes. “It comes from God, Denise. It’s this amazing, inexplicable power from God that helps me right wrongs. Something Greg did every day. Please, Denise. Please. Other lives depend on information only Greg can give us.”

  I was starting to doubt my decision to talk her through this. The last thing I wanted to do was pull rank on her, by whipping out the court order. Not because Jade and the press would shred me, although they would. But because I didn’t want to cause this woman another minute of grief.

  Rico gently pulled Denise back and looked in her eyes. “Honor his memory, Denise. It’s what Greg would choose if he were here.”

  Denise pulled herself upright and smoothed her hair. Her voice shook, but rang clear. “You promise me that if you raise him, we can all see Greg’s face at his funeral.”

  Promise was such a strong word, given the unpredictable nature of raising, but I stuck out my neck and said, “Yes.”

  Rico wrapped his arms around Denise’s shoulders and escorted her out of the office.

  I stood at the door and watched him pull one of his cards from his wallet, and write what must have been his personal number on the back. He showed it to her, slipped it into her coat pocket, and kissed her cheek.

  She climbed into the passenger seat of a cruiser and let the officer take her to her empty home, where she could dream of kissing Greg, just one more time.

  God help me, if I couldn’t deliver on my promise.

  Rico and I walked into the city morgue wondering what kind of reception we’d get from Doc Blanchard.

  Sure, earlier at the safe house we’d been working in tandem, singing Kumbaya, doing our level best to smuggle the trace evidence we’d collected past Director Dickhead. We were on the same team, the team that got kicked to the curb by the FBI. It was all for one and one for all, right?

  But my recent efforts at the morgue had resulted in…significant…damage. The insurance adjuster declared it catastrophic, but what did she know? She’d never witnessed the havoc that I…that raising a corpse could wreak.

  Doc hurried out of his office to meet us in the foyer. It was time to find out how tight we’d bonded in our battle against the Evil Director.

  “Nighthawk, if it weren’t for us losing two good men today, I wouldn’t let you within fifty feet of this office.”

  Well, that was short-lived. I’m not a bonder anyway.

  “I’ll try to keep the scene contained,” I said. “You know the drill. Is Powell restrained now?”

  Doc sighed. “Yes, much as I find that distasteful. Powell was a good, good man. Let’s make this as fast and painless as possible.”

  Jesus. Did he really think he had to tell me that? Did he not realize that this was ten times harder for me than it was for him? Taking a soul at rest, the soul of a “good, good man” and bringing it back to a pitiful state of fear and confusion? Sometimes, it seemed like my gift was more of a merciless monster.

  All the other bodies had been put away in the morgue drawers, with the exception of one aging corpse that was stored in the freezer.

  Rather than risk contaminating the inside of the freezer, I decided to take my chances raising Powell on the open morgue room floor. If a clean-up was necessary, at least the bodies would still be properly stored to ensure their integrity.

  Such a sterile environment, the morgue, with its stainless-steel sinks and sparkling white tile.

  Powell rested on a gurney parked about twenty feet from the vestibule door. Blinds covered the window for privacy. I picked up a scalpel from an instrument tray, then glanced at Rico, standing beside me, and nodded that it was time to begin.

  Cap walked through the door and took his place next to us, in a gesture of solidarity.

  I bowed my head and prayed.

  Rico turned away. I didn’t blame him, really. He had been longtime friends with Powell and knew him far better than I did. In that split second, I got a taste of what raising a loved one is like for civilians who happened to be in attendance.

  Can’t say I liked that feeling any better than I liked my own kettle of fish.

  Greg Powell was one of the few officer’s corpses I’d ever been asked to raise. And he’d been dead less than twelve hours. It gave me hope that the humanity that made him both a good, decent man and a stellar officer, still glimmered inside him.

  Eyes closed, I centered myself, and made the sign of the cross.

  Then I took off Powell’s restraints and channeled the strange, awesome power God had given me.

  Energy coursed like blood through my veins.

  I placed my hands on Powell’s chest, and began. “In the name of God, I command you to rise.”

  Powell’s body twitched.

  “Rise, Greg Powell, Rise!”

  He moaned low and long, then bolted upright on the steel table, dazed, confused, an empty husk of the Powell he had been, only hours earlier.

  His tongue was thick. “Cold. Cold.”

  Rico grabbed a linen from the supply shelf and wrapped it around Powell’s shoulders.

  “It’s Nighthawk, Powell. Can you see me?”

  Powell, shivering, cocked his head toward me.

  “Who did this to you? Who killed you and Ortega?”

  “Sleep,” he mumbled trying to lay back, but I stopped him.

  “Powell, answer me. Who did this? What did they look like? Anything. Tell me anything you can remember.”

  Powell’s body tensed. He flailed his arms and tried to climb off the table.

  “No! No! Stop.” He thrashed like a fish tail and screamed. “Don’t shoot!”

  Oh, God. He was reliving his death.

  “Stay with me, Powell. It’s Nighthawk. That’s all over now. Who were they, the men who attacked you?”

  His eyes swept from side to side. “Don’t know.”

  “Help me, Powell,” I begged. “What did they look like?”

  “Didn’t see,” he whimpered.

  My heart sank. After all this, he really didn’t know a single thing that could help us.

  “Nighthawk?” he said, his fingers brushing against mine.
/>   I looked in his eyes, and for a moment, the Powell I knew stared back at me.

  Tears trickled down his face. “Am I dead?”

  Oh, sweet God. If you want me to do this, you’re going to have to help me.

  I sat behind him on the gurney and cradled him against me. My voice quivered as I offered what little peace I could.

  “It’s okay, Powell. Can you feel me holding you? I’m not letting go.” I leaned my head against his and whispered, “Denise loves you. She’ll be seeing you again, someday. It’s end of watch, buddy. Time to go home.”

  When I felt him relax against me, I pulled out the scalpel and drove it deep into his brain stem.

  He went down easy. Denise would get her wish.

  Rico stepped away and vomited in the sink, then sat down beside it, staring at the floor.

  I took Powell’s precinct pin off his shirt, then brushed his eyes closed and walked toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Cap asked.

  “Give me a moment,” I muttered.

  “Nighthawk, we need to get these bastards. For Powell and Ortega.”

  I stopped and turned, flipping Cap Powell’s precinct pin. Denise would need it for his dress blues. “Consider it done.”

  18

  Bitches and Snitches

  I walked out the door to the coroner’s office, and the media-razzi descended on me like a swarm of locusts.

  Naturally, Jade led the charge. “Nighthawk, what happened inside the morgue? And what happened earlier today on Jora Lane? Why were you there?”

  Little Allie cautioned me to zip my lip.

  “No comment,” I said, making a beeline for Rico’s car.

  While the Feds had kept the media behind the crime scene tape at the safe house, and they’d confiscated Rip’s videotape, a few reporters managed to record the scene unnoticed, including the removal of the body bags, and my little dust-up with Director Dickhead. I wasn’t about to put my size-ten foot in my mouth like that again.

  Exhausted to the point of dizziness, I crumpled into the passenger seat, locked the door and instantly regretted my choice. All that stood between me, and the media horde, was a thin sheet of glass that did nothing to filter the barrage of questions.