Chapter 1.10
It was ten before Evelyn managed to reach Dagger McKenzie, a private investigator she’d met at the previous law firm she’d worked for. It was another hour before he got to the office.
He didn’t bother to take off his sunglasses when he came in, nodding to her and scowling, saying nothing until he’d downed the large coffee he’d brought with him. Evelyn had considered Thomas tall, but Dagger was taller—six feet five, jet hair pulled back tight in a short ponytail and long, thick sideburns that hid the hard planes of his face, and muscles that strained the seams of his black denim jacket. She thought he had the look of ex-military. But Evelyn only guessed at his background; she knew little about him other than that he was good, discreet, and fairly expensive.
“This better be good,” Dagger said, folding himself into Evelyn’s chair. She had expected him to have some sort of reaction when Thomas appeared as a ghost. But Dagger just sat there. “Well, what do you need me for?”
“To help solve my murder,” Thomas replied.
“Cops got somebody,” Dagger said. “I heard it on the radio coming over here. The reporter said a dark fey basically put you through a paper shredder.”
“There was a little more to it than that, I think.”
“Then spill,” Dagger said.
“I decided to put in a late night at the office,” Thomas began.
O O O
It wasn’t that Thomas didn’t have anything else to do or that he had an extraordinary amount of backlog to plow through, he just loved the law. In fact, he didn’t so much think of it as work, but as his life and his mission. Nothing else to do with the Holder case—until the Honorable Vernon Vaughan rendered a decision. He had another case simmering, and it involved building codes, historic preservation, and this very structure … and Pete on the roof. He dug through the material, more than an hour passing before he came up for air.
His stomach rumbled. The micro-brew and a few crackers hadn’t been enough. He reached for the phone, punching the “3” on speed dial and quickly placed an order with Asqew Grill. Thinking about the whole eating dead flesh thing from court that morning, he selected the grilled pear salad with a side of citrus couscous, an extra-large pink lemonade, and said he’d come pick it up. Just down the street, he’d grab it, bring it back, eat at his desk, and study building codes and floor plans the rest of the night.
Thomas slipped his suit coat back on and out of habit dropped his cell phone in his pocket.
The Buick chugged by again, even slower this time. The backseat tinted window rolled down, Thomas saw the visage of some sort of fey. He heard the car stop, probably finding a place to park in front of the empty building next door, same car he’d seen at the bus stop at the courthouse. He’d flipped the sign to closed, but he would correct that, never one to turn down the possibility of a new client, especially an OT who obviously had been cruising to find him.
Thomas had to go out anyway to pick up his food order, and so he craned his neck around the office front, seeing the Buick about twenty feet away, parked a little too far from the curb. The fey got out.
“I’m still open,” Thomas called—just in case they were here to see him rather than to go drinking at one of the two bars across the street.
Thomas caught himself impolitely staring; he hadn’t seen a fey like this before. One of his favorite characters from vintage X-Men comic books had been Nightcrawler, the black-blue mutant with a prehensile tail, a shock of curly hair, and bright yellow eyes. This fellow looked quite a bit like that, but without the hair. The ears were sharply pointed, but instead of black-blue, the skin was black-red. As the fey stepped closer, Thomas saw that it was covered with scales, snakelike, and that its tail undulated, further invoking the serpent image. The only clothing was a loincloth in camouflage army print and a muscle shirt.
“Here to see me?” Thomas asked, putting on his stoic, businesslike face.
The fey didn’t answer, but the driver side door opened and a second individual got out—this one human, wearing stylish tight jeans and an overlarge hoodie, the hood of which was pulled up and shadowing the face within.
“Yeah, we’re here to see you,” the man returned. He had a deep voice with a trace of a Latin accent. “A case to discuss with you.”
“By all means come in,” Thomas said. He’d held open the door and gestured.
The fey went inside first, and the hooded man followed with the swaggering walk of a street punk. But the man didn’t smell like a punk, he smelled expensive, cologne trailing him. His right hand was thrust in the slash pocket of his hoodie, but the left was free, and there was a big watch on it, a Swiss Hublot King with diamonds circling the face. Thomas recognized it because his father favored the expensive brand.
“My desk is the third one in. The conference table is all the way to the back.”
The fey seemed uncertain, casting furtive glances here and there, appearing a little nervous or perhaps ill. Thomas didn’t think much of it; he was more concerned about the man, who hadn’t removed his hood and who nudged the fey in deeper.
Something didn’t feel right, but Thomas was never quick to judge anyone. He hoped that perhaps this might be another wealthy client crossing his threshold. Still, he dropped his hand into his pocket and touched the cell phone inside and flipped it open. Just in case.
“So this case,” Thomas prodded, following the pair to the back. “Tell me what it’s about.”
“The Northern Structure’s bringing you some business.”
“The Northern Structure?” Thomas had never heard of that organization. “This case, you mention—” He suddenly worried that the hooded man might have had a gun in his pocket, but that wasn’t the situation.
It was a syringe, and the man brought it out and jammed it into the fey’s back. Then he stepped to the side and the fey whirled.
Thomas’s fingers found the “9” and the “1” and punched them.
“This case,” the man taunted, twitching his neck in a hip-hop dancer’s move, “We’re all over your case. You’re in the hat, lawyer man. Dust. It’s time for you to grow daisies.”
Thomas reflexively hollered.
The fey, ugly to begin with, became horribly grotesque now, face contorting in a mix of pain and rage, eyes shimmering with utter madness. The fey sprang at Thomas, driving him into the floor next to the conference table and shredding his clothes. Some detached part of Thomas heard the hooded man toss things around, breaking his computer, pulling out drawers and repeating “Your case is gonna be closed, chapete. Your case is gonna be closed.”
Thomas tried to fight the fey, but it was impossibly strong. And although Thomas was an athlete, his strength was nothing next to the beast that ripped into his flesh.
“Your case is all bloody, Mr. OT Lawyer. Your case is history.”
Thomas felt pain at first, hot and horrible, but it didn’t last. Somehow his brain mercifully disconnected from all that, granting him a measure of peace. Still, he could hear the hooded man tear through his office, continue to rant loudly about the Northern Structure, and faintly he heard someone talking from his pocket.
“Sir? What is the nature of your emergency?”
The nature? I’m getting killed, Thomas thought. “Help!” he managed, praying that the listener could hear what was going on. That’s the nature of my emergency.
“Your bloody case is closed. Hear me, lawyer fool?”
“Help!” Only one more strangled word would come out, and then half his throat was torn away.
Thomas thought about Evelyn, hoping she wouldn’t see the mess that he was certain the fey and the hooded man were making, that she wouldn’t have to look at whatever was going to be left of him. And he thought about Holder, about how he wouldn’t be able to represent the ghoul come Monday morning in the Honorable Vernon Vaughan’s chambers, and about how he’d never get to try the building codes case that was so intriguing.
Then he thought about dying … diving.
Thomas had excelled at the backward press. Standing on the platform, a regulation ten meters above the water, he would do an inward takeoff, arcing fast and making the slightest of splashes when he hit. He only ever had seconds to register the feel of the chlorine-tinged air against his skin before he cut into the water, down down down, then turning up and surfacing to the applause of whoever was watching. It was an amazing rush he never got enough of—diving his special “crack” that gave him a high like nothing else could ever approach.
The only Olympic events he’d watched in August had been men’s diving. In front of the television, he saw David Boudia—who’d claimed he was once afraid of heights—twist and somersault from a platform three stories high, attaining a speed of nearly thirty-five miles an hour, and garner the gold medal for the United States. Boudia had placed only tenth when competing in Beijing in 2008; Thomas had nearly made the team then, right after his first year in law school.
Thomas knew he could have done better than Boudia that year, and a sizeable part of him regretted not even trying to make the team for London. But he’d stopped diving as often after 2008, focusing more on his studies, and then after graduation in 2010, focusing entirely on his new practice. It had been at least two months since he’d ventured to the university pool and gotten permission to use the platform. The public pools and the ones at health clubs only had lower springboards, and though he visited the health club to dive every week, it wasn’t the same as a platform.
Dying had been like diving, falling, accelerating, hitting the surface and going under. Down down down and turning up for whatever reason, breaking the surface and coming back out into his office, hovering above a body that looked like it had been through his paper shredder.
Dead. Thomas Brock was dead.
Had he been in heaven? Or had he been going there? Thomas had thought he was a fairly religious man, raised Presbyterian, attending a private church school in his elementary years, before going to San Francisco University High School for college prep, and then eventually onto Stanford. He’d not attended church since high school, save for Christmas celebrations with his family, weddings, and funerals.
Funeral.
Thomas forced himself to look away from his bloody corpse.
Had God thrown him back?
Or had he not been ready to face the hereafter … whatever the “hereafter” was?
Had there been too much unfinished business in his life?
Was he that tied to this office?
He floated along the ceiling for a while, watching the hooded man pick up a treasured diving trophy and bring it down hard on the back of the dark fey’s head. Then the man left, backup hard drive under his arm, pockets full of whatever else he’d taken … money, probably, Thomas guessed, judging by the open and empty petty cash box.
The fey had struggled to rise, but slipped in the blood, fell and lay there until sirens keened in response to Thomas’s 9-1-1 call. The fey covered his ears, the noise clearly bothering him, and once more he worked to get up, finally succeeding and staggering toward the door—only to be met by a pair of patrolmen rushing in, guns drawn.
Thomas noted the look of disbelief on the fey’s face—not just at the police’s arrival, but at what he’d wrought.
“I—I—I killed that man,” the fey stated. His words were thick, like a patient coming out of the effects of anesthesia. “I thought he was going to help me. And I—I—I killed him.”
The rest was a blur of activity.
The police called for backup and more arrived, the medical examiner’s people came shortly thereafter.
The fey was read his rights, handcuffed, and shoved into the back of a cruiser.
Barricades were put up, officers dispatched to keep the growing crowd at bay.
A seasoned woman detective arrived. She started barking orders like a drill sergeant, the officers around her complying.
So many pictures were taken, and little numbered markers were set here and there like Thomas had seen the actors do on the various incarnations of the CSI television shows.
Curious and repulsed, he watched them gather his body, put it in a vinyl bag, and wheel it outside.
Thomas followed it, hovering above the sidewalk, watching it all with a morbid curiosity and wondering where Valentino Trinadad was. Could spirits see each other? Val had said he’d died from a drug overdose on this corner and had come back to haunt the spot. Thomas had come back.
Maybe it was the corner.
Maybe it held souls to it.
Thomas noted familiar faces in the crowd, restaurant wait staff, people who lived in the apartments above the bars and the deli across the street, the fruit vendor and his family, hookers who worked the neighborhood. Evelyn. He thought his heart should seize at seeing her arrive on the scene of his murder.
But his heart did nothing.
It didn’t beat.
He couldn’t feel the blood pounding, and he thought it should be thrumming out a serious beat against his temples.
He should feel something, shouldn’t he?
Evelyn … he’d tried to call to her, but words wouldn’t come.
He watched her collapse, policemen helping her up and leading her inside the office, turning her in Gretchen’s chair so she wouldn’t see the blood and all the little numbers on plastic stands, heard an officer ask her questions, heard the detective ask her more, ask her if anything had been taken.
My backup hard drive, Thomas had tried to say. Petty cash. Maybe more, files I think. I saw the man messing with my files. But I’m not sure. Still, the words remained at bay.
But Val talked. Thomas had shared numerous conversations with the dead hippie. If Val could talk, why couldn’t Thomas?
He concentrated, picturing veins standing out in his neck from the effort.
Still nothing.
He watched Evelyn leave, going around the side of the building and up the stairs to her apartment. Then he watched the policemen finishing, taking still more pictures, picking up their little numbers, closing the door and stretching crime scene tape across the entrance, collecting the barricades.
Two officers remained out front for another hour.
Three officers searched through his apartment, not really disturbing anything.
Then they all left, and Evelyn went back downstairs.
O O O
“That it?” Dagger asked.
The ghost nodded. “That’s all I can remember.”
“No names? Not of the fey or the other man?”
Thomas shook his head.
“All right, I’m on it.” Dagger rose and dropped his empty Starbucks cup in the waste can. “Take care, Evey. I’ll meet up with you later.”