Just across the street,
grass, trees, toads, the water.
And the moon--Debisu
The breath. Pay attention to the breath.
At my back, the Jade Pagoda’s block wall feels like sponge. Spangled by snowflakes, the scene before me is a meaningless pattern of dark and light. The visual dissonance warns of an impending hallucination and I have nothing to hold it off with—no cigarette, no drink, no drug—only my resolve to stay present. Death, from which I have run so far and so fast, has found me.
Don’t feed the fear, focus not on the emotion but on the physical sensations associated with it: tight chest, shallow, rapid respiration. See that they’re not permanent, they wax and wane in intensity. This too shall pass, this too shall pass. Relax. If I slow my breathing, the panic will subside along with it. The breath, pay attention to the breath.
This breath brings with it the peaty smell of dead leaves from the woods, the tang of motor oil on wet asphalt. I name these, then remember not to get caught up in naming them, simply acknowledge there are smells and return to the breath.
The shakes and nausea are back. I want a cigarette.
That’s Desire again. Note its physical sensations: anxiety, salivation, clamminess. Desire is transitory. The shakes will stop and so will the craving.
This too shall pass, this too shall pass, I intone like a mantra.
Sloppy wet snowflakes plop on my bare head and melt in my hair. The shifting black and white patterns resolve into a striped parking lot, the black ribbon of Forbes Road, and the trees in the snow-dusted field beyond it. My back is cold, even with my jacket on. I’m braced against something cold and solid. The block wall of the Jade Pagoda. Here, on Forbes Road, not Terminal Road. I am still here, not there. And I am alive.
But the poor soul in Room Eight ...
I turn my head just slightly to the right, glance at the door, leprous with flaky white paint, ajar. Through the opening I see a man face up on an unmade bed, his head hanging over the edge.
Please, God, don’t let him be dead. But I know he is, I can smell it. More than simply spilled blood or guts or bodily wastes released when muscles relax their hold, it is also that final exhalation hanging in the air, humid and stale.
My next breath brings another scent, something aromatic. It’s ... Don’t struggle to name it. Return to the breath.
I number inhalations, exhalations, barely get to four before shouted thoughts throw off my count. Run! Get away before Death turns its hot red eyes on you.
No! Stay. Calm yourself. Beat this thing.
I cut myself a deal. The maid went to call the police, they’re on their way. They’ll want to talk to me, learn what I know. I will tell them. After that I will leave. I will report to Sister Clyde. Then, done with death, I will go far away. The edge of the forest. Live a long peaceful life.
Yes, the police will arrive soon. Until then I will stand and wait. And breathe.
*****
The red and blue lights on the roofs of approaching cruisers are furred in the falling snow. Tires skid to a stop on slick pavement. Uniformed men step from their cars, take charge of the scene. Secure the area, talk to the maid, to me. If they recognize me, they don’t show it. A patrolman tells me, “Wait here, sir. The lieutenant will want to speak to you.”
In response, I can only nod, afraid that if I open my mouth, I’ll puke.
From squad cars, the calm, gentle voices of the dispatchers alternate with the crackle of attention signals. Preoccupied with their own duties, patrolmen move about with restrained urgency. They do not bother me, standing quietly out of harm’s way.
A car door creaks open with the grind of metal-on-metal and heavy footfalls announce yet another arrival.
“Will Mansion.” Lieutenant Crowberry’s voice is as stiff and resentful as the last day we spoke. “You gonna tell me what’s going on or you just gonna stand there with your eyes closed?”
Not completely closed. The point of the lowered, unfocused gaze is to stay aware but reduce distractions.
I open my eyes to a bald, dark-skinned man who knows how to plant every inch of his five-foot-eight, one-hundred-ninety five pound frame for maximum effect.
“Not much to tell, sir,” I reply and brief him: the time of my arrival, how the maid found the room, what was touched and not touched. “Didn’t want to contaminate the scene.”
Crowberry’s nod is curt but there is approval in his voice when he says, “You’re a good detective, Mansion.”
Was.
“Wait here,” he says, and goes to confer with the uniformed men, talk to Dispatch. He steps inside the room, emerges a moment later, and tells me little I don’t already know, that a man is dead, and recently.
“Of a stab wound,” I suggest.
Crowberry responds with raised eyebrows. “I thought you said you didn’t go in the room.”
An educated guess. I didn’t smell gunpowder, which surprised me. That left poisoning, strangulation, smothering, bludgeoning, and stabbing. If the victim had been poisoned, he probably would have regurgitated, but I smelled no vomit. Neither strangulation nor smothering let the quantity of blood I detected.
“Come see for yourself.”
If it wasn’t for wanting my theory confirmed, I would decline, be done with this and away from here. I follow Crowberry into the room and it is then I get my first close look at Hector Waltann.
The sight is so gruesome I have to turn away. I had forgotten how dead dead people are. Devoid of life they are reduced to organic compounds that decompose, puff, ooze, and stink. Lividity has left the uppermost surface of Waltann’s face and arms unnaturally white, while settling blood mottles the lower surfaces, a grotesque marbling. Flies drawn by the siren scent of death crowd the moist places. Waltann’s lips are grayish purple and shiny.
When I can force myself to look again, I barely recognize the robust Hector Waltann pictured in the photo Christmas card his wife Marybeth gave me. Cheekbones are sharp planes in a formerly fleshy face that had paled even before death drained the blood from it. Heroin had made him a skeleton even before he died.
Apparently I guessed right. He was stabbed, not blasted with a shotgun. Blood outlines a single slash in the front of his white crew-neck undershirt a few inches above his belt. No hacking administered in the heat of a struggle, this was one neat killing stroke. Someone who knew how best to do damage with a blade attacked unimpeded. Over the undershirt, a finely tailored but dingy, wrinkled white dress shirt is unbuttoned and untucked. Black gabardine slacks are zipped, the belt is buckled, and Waltann still has on his shoes—black leather tasseled slip-ons in need of a shine, not to mention socks. My first thought is he was dressing, or undressing. So he was surprised by his killer. Or they were intimate.
“What we got, Lieutenant?” Grady’s voice booms from the doorway. “Mansion? What are you doing here?”
“It’s the missing guy I was looking for,” I reply.
“Not missing anymore, is he?” Grady leans over the body.
“No.” To Crowberry I say, “Can I go now, sir?”
“First tell me everything.” Crowberry nods toward the door. I follow him outside to the sidewalk and tell him about Sister Clyde, about Marybeth Waltann, about Marvin Overshort and Facets but stop short of mentioning Carlotta Trephino or her cigar club or the gunshots from the Eterniti. Or Shrike. Or Nirvana. Not quite everything.
“Hmph. I don’t know. Guy looks like a junkie to me,” Crowberry says. “Man could have got himself killed over drugs. You don’t know anything about that?”
It’s a good possibility. Hector had an enemy in both Shrike and Carlotta. However, I can’t clue Crowberry in without incriminating myself. “I’ve told you everything I can, sir.” Where have I heard that before?
The lieutenant looks over his shoulder into the room. “Man, you are way ahead of us on this.”
“Will that be all, sir?”
“After all this time you’ve spent looking for this guy, don’t you want to get who did him?”
A week ago, when I was fairly certain Hector brought his misfortune, whatever it was, on himself, I may not have cared. Now I’m not so quick to blame him. But let Grady and Swbyra find his killer. They have the resources and the support system. How could I even consider going back to work when anywhere, anytime, a flashback can whisk me off to Oz? “No. Lieutenant, may I go now?” Sickness is about to double me over.
“What you can do is get busy finding the doer.”
I shake my head. “I resigned.”
Crowberry sucks in his cheeks, thinks for a moment. “Seems to me I know something about that. Yes, yes, I got a form on my desk about that right now. Needs my signature. Haven’t signed it yet.” He looks me in the eye with both barrels. “You want that form signed?”
“Yes I want it signed.”
“Fine. Your doc and your shrink cleared you to return to duty. So make this case. Then I’ll sign it.”
“Lieutenant, you don’t need me on this.”
“I think we do. ‘Cause I don’t think we’re going to solve it ‘less we know everything. Including what you’re holding back. Or are you prepared to tell me about that now?”