CHAPTER TWO

Gimble didn’t wake up in the ambulance. I knew that because I rode in the back with him. He could come to like normal, just his usual cheery self, or there were other options. The kind that had made me insist on staying by Gimble’s side even though the paramedics had assured me that I could follow in my car to the hospital. I’d stayed with Gimble no matter how many medical professionals tried to get me to step outside the little curtained area in the hospital, too. I had let hospital security take me back so I could put Gimble’s weapons in a locker, which both I and the security person signed off on. When the security person suggested I could put my own stuff in a locker, I told him that what attacked Gimble might be coming back for him, which absolutely was a lie, but there was no way I was giving up my gun or anything else unless I had to, and I didn’t think I had to.

Gimble and I were finally upstairs on the very top floor, which housed the Metaphysical Injury Unit. He was still unconscious in the bed, and I was trying to answer the doctor’s questions. Dr. Paulson was a couple of inches taller than me, at least six foot five, positively willowy in his nice white coat. I felt like a muscular bull in the proverbial china shop standing next to him. “Are you seriously telling me that an angel did this to him?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slow. I’d told the story to the paramedics, several nurses, and at least one intern who had hunted up the doctor on call. Apparently, the intern had felt that an angel-induced coma was above his learning curve.

“Detective Gimble seeing an angel in its pure form caused him to pass out, but the angel didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I thought angels didn’t do anything by accident,” Dr. Paulson said.

“Short of God, no one’s perfect,” I said.

“Angels are,” he said, as if it was true.

I smiled and tried to think of how to explain how very wrong he was, without pissing him off or oversharing with him. He was the doctor in charge of this area, so if he disliked me enough he could make me leave Gimble’s side, and that wasn’t happening.

“Maybe the angel thought that Detective Gimble could handle it,” I said, though I knew that wasn’t true. The angel hadn’t been thinking about Gimble at all; it had thought about its message and getting it to me. Angels with a mission are very narrow of focus.

“You’re both with the Heaven and Hell Unit; shouldn’t he have been able to handle it?”

“The Metaphysical Coordination Unit handles things besides Heavenly and Hellish incidents, so not everyone in the unit is equally good with angels.”

“But you’re fine,” the doctor said.

“I’m good with angels.”

“Are you sure it was an angel and not something just masquerading as one? That would explain why your colleague has been harmed.”

I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. The doctor didn’t know my background, so he didn’t know he’d insulted me. Heavens, there were people in my unit who didn’t know all my background, so I really couldn’t get upset with the doc, so why was I?

“I know the difference between an angel and the things that pretend to be angels.”

“I’ve had patients in the ER that talked of winged demons, Detective Havelock.”

“There are more things above and below with wings than just angels, Doctor, and most of them have little or nothing to do with any of the Abrahamic faiths.”

“Abrahamic faiths? Oh, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim,” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

“I haven’t heard them referred to like that since med school when I took the required metaphysical medicine courses.”

“I take it you aren’t a religious man, Dr. Paulson.”

“My sister and I joked that we were raised Jewish light.” He smiled as he said it.

“And nothing you’ve seen in your medical career has made you more religious?”

He shook his head. “I’ve seen miracles and curses and they both worked. I’ve seen spells from white witches and black, and everything in between. I’ve seen too much to want to follow any of them.”

I wanted to ask him what he did when he dealt with illness that only faith would cure, or dangers that only belief would protect him from, but I didn’t. He’d made his choice; if the Big Guy couldn’t persuade him to join the fold, then nothing I said was going to change that. I know I’m supposed to want to convert everyone I meet to the one true way; trouble was I wasn’t sure it was the only way into Paradise. I hadn’t been sure since I was about nineteen.

“I respect your choice,” I said at last.

“I take it that you are religious,” he said.

“You could say that.”

He looked at me as if he expected me to say more. I just smiled at him.

“What, you’re not going to try to convert me to your path of faith?”

“Me talking about my personal belief in God isn’t going to help Detective Gimble.”

“Don’t you mean personal belief in Deity, Detective Havelock?” said a deep voice from outside the curtain.

I smiled and said, “Sorry, Lieutenant Charleston, I forgot my political correctness for a second.”

A large, dark hand parted the curtain and my boss, Lieutenant Adinka Charleston, stepped through. The rest of him matched the hand. He was as tall as the doctor but built more like me. He’d gone to college on a football scholarship and played pro as an offensive lineman for two years before injuries took him out. He was a little thicker around the middle than he had been in the NFL, but not by much. Other than the hair going gray he looked pretty much like the pictures in his office when he was in uniform for the Denver Broncos.

“Don’t forget again, Detective. We wouldn’t want the doctor to think we were insensitive.” His voice sounded serious, but I knew that he thought the new PC vocabulary regulations were a crock of shit, which was what he’d called them when he was forced to give us the lecture about using them. I didn’t know why he was pulling the doctor’s chain, or maybe mine, but I knew he was.

“Yes, Lieutenant,” I said, but I gave him a sideways look to see if I could figure out what was up.

He looked down at Gimble, who looked even smaller lying in the bed surrounded by the three of us. All traces of the smile faded from Lieutenant Charleston’s face. “So, what are you going to do to wake up my boy here?”

“If he truly saw an angel, then he shouldn’t be in a coma, but he is, so if we can figure out what did this to him, then we can put together a course of treatment.”

“Did the angel touch him?” Charleston asked.

I shook my head. “No, if it had he’d be dead.”

“I thought angels healed with their touch,” the doctor said.

Charleston and I both shook our heads. “You explain, Havelock, you’re our angel expert.”

“If they are sent from God to heal, they can, but angels that are pure spirit like the flame we saw, they mostly follow orders, and he wasn’t there to heal.”

“What was he there for?”

“To deliver a message,” I said.

“To the patient?” the doctor said.

I shook my head. “No, not for Gimble.”

“Doc, I need to talk to my detective alone for a few minutes.” Charleston smiled at the doctor as he said it, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. They showed that he was smiling for social convention and nothing else.

Dr. Paulson seemed to understand, or maybe he had other patients with less complicated complaints; whatever the reason, he gave us the room.

Lieutenant Charleston’s smile faded until his expression matched his eyes, sort of unfriendly and taking no shit. “So, the angel had a message for you?”

“It gave me the message,” I said.

“Don’t play word games with me, Havoc. One of my detectives is lying in a bed unconscious and no one knows why, or how to wake him up. Answer my damn question.”

I told him what little information the angel had given me. It sounded even less helpful than it had at the crime scene.

“So, the murderer isn’t a demon, but it’s somehow part of the Devil’s plans?” Charleston asked.

“The Adversary, yes.”

“That’s just another term for Satan, right?”

“It’s what I was taught to use at the College of Angels,” I said.

“Just making absolutely certain we’re talking about the same being.”

“It’s the same,” I said.

“Could the murderer be possessed?”

“The angels are aware of what a possession is, Lieutenant. This was something new, or unusual, and whatever the murderer is, it’s something that the angels don’t understand, and that is powerful enough that it can hide its movements from Celestial powers.”

“If it’s not a possession, then the hot lead I was going to tell you about just got colder.”

“What lead?” I asked.

“There was a security video in the parking area across from the apartment building. The camera caught a man leaving the building at the right time to be the murderer. Looked like there might even be blood on his clothes, but if we’re looking for something supernatural this kid isn’t it.”

“Kid, so you have an ID?”

“Mark Cookson, nineteen; his grades have fallen in the last semester enough that he’s on academic probation at UCCA, University of California, City of Angels. He got some complaints by female students for being overly persistent in his attentions after they’d made it clear they weren’t interested; nothing violent, nothing illegal, just socially awkward and bordering on stalking. He’s definitely a creeper. One of the students that had complained about him was our victim.”

I looked at him and felt that eager rise when everything starts to fall into place on a case. “Did you find him yet?”

“He’s not in his dorm and his roommate changed schools midsemester so no new roommate to question.”

“Is there anything in the dorm room that says he’s into black magic, or demonology?”

“Had to send someone else to see the dorm room and try to find any friends he might have, because I got a call that one of my detectives was in the hospital.” He gave me a look.

“Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“Mark Cookson sounds like he could be good for this, Havoc, but your angel makes it sound like we are looking for someone a lot more dangerous than a horny teenager with bad social skills and no criminal record.”

“If they find things in his room that say he’s been messing with black magic, then he may still be the guy.”

“But if he is, then we’re looking for him right now. He’s from an upper-middle-class family, he’s not going to know how to hide from the police. We will find him, probably soon, which makes me think he’s not it, because if he was, why would we need a message from the angels?”

“I don’t know. The angel shouldn’t have given the message to me at all, Lieutenant. It should have gone to an Angel Speaker at the College, then they would have given the message to their handler, they would have given it to the administrative assistants, and they would have contacted the prophet on duty.”

“How long would all that have taken?”

I thought about it. “Hours, maybe a few days.”

“This is a murder investigation, Havoc; maybe God knew we needed the information sooner rather than later.”

“The Big Guy can do anything He wants to do.”

The lieutenant sighed. “Then he sent the message to you personally, because he knew we needed to know sooner.”

“Perhaps, but in the twelve years I’ve been gone from the College I’ve never had a message given to me.”

“You’ve never had another angel speak to you since you left?”

I looked away then, not sure what my face would show. I chose my words carefully, because Charleston wasn’t just a good cop, he was a Voodoo Priest, and I knew he worked his own brand of magic to give him better insight into people when he needed information from them.

“I’ve worked my brand of magic with the angels since I left the College, but I’ve never had them seek me out to tell me some message as if I were still an Angel Speaker.”

“You’re an Angel Speaker and a detective on the case; it sounds like you’re the perfect person to receive a message about the crime.”

“I’m not an Angel Speaker.”

“Maybe not officially, but you can talk to them without ending up in a coma, or worse.”

I let out a long breath because I’d been trying hard not to think about worse. “If any part of the holy fire had touched Gimble he’d be dead.”

“Or insane,” Charleston said.

“If he wakes up, that’s still a possibility, sir.”

“How serious a possibility?” he asked.

“He could wake up with no memory of it happening, or wake up screaming, or violent, or blissed out.”

“Blissed out, what does that mean?”

A deep breath from the bed made us both look down. I put a hand on Gimble’s shoulder so that if he tried to get out of the bed and hurt himself, or us, I could keep him down until he could be restrained.

He blinked up at us. “Hey, Havoc.”

“Hey, George,” I said, and smiled because he looked normal.

“Hey, Lieutenant.”

“Hey, Detective, how are you feeling?”

“I saw an angel, did Havoc tell you, I saw an angel?”

“He told me.”

“It was beautiful, so beautiful, like looking at the sun just standing in a room, except it had wings, but they were made of fire. It was amazing, wasn’t it, Havoc? Tell the lieutenant how amazing the angel was.” He touched my hand, which was still on his shoulder. “Tell him, Havoc; I don’t have the words.” He held my hand and started to cry softly, but his face was full of wonderment and awe. I’d seen that look before on other Angel Speakers, and in the mirror. It was like being born again into God’s chosen faith.

I held Gimble’s hand and looked across at our boss. “This is blissed out.”