Silent Echo (12 page)

With these photos in front of me, photos of the dead, I jump at the sudden knock on the door. For an instant, I think it is the killer come to destroy what life I have left on this earth, and I instantly move my hand to the gun I have stashed in a nearby drawer. I used to not be so jumpy. I used to be calm and collected, trusting my instincts and street smarts to get me through any case. Now, I operate on a fear-based level, and I hate that about myself.

No fear,
I think to myself as I stand on weak legs.

Who would come here now? Numi would let himself in. Mary promised to call. Detective Dobbs is waiting for my professional opinions and conclusions. There’s no one else in my life. No one, at least, who gives a damn.

I realize it is getting dark and I have not turned on any lights. I take a sip of the green tea, which is, incidentally, refreshing after all the caffeine and alcohol I’ve ingested lately. After a few sips—and after I wonder if this will be my last cup of green tea on this earth—I get up slowly. I switch on a nearby lamp, and then head over to the front door where I look through the peephole.

Eddie, Olivia’s husband, is standing outside my door rocking back and forth, impatient. Eddie has always been a little impatient. He’s glancing over his shoulder at something I can’t see, and as he reaches up to knock again, I open the door.

“Eddie,” I say, but my voice trails off. I wasn’t expecting to see my onetime friend standing outside my door. My onetime friend who’d just discovered his wife had been brutally murdered. I’ve dealt with grieving families before, yes. But rarely someone so close to me.

He nods sadly.

“Come in,” I say.

“Thanks, Jimmy.”

“How you holding up?” I say lamely as I shut the door behind him, my brain not quite firing right. Then again, what the hell else am I supposed to say?

Eddie is running his fingers through hair that seems a bit greasy. In fact, he looks like a royal mess. No surprise there. His wife had been found murdered just a few days earlier, her throat slit. Jesus, it is amazing he is even cognizant.

“I’m okay, I guess,” he says. He seems to lose his train of thought, blinks once, twice, looks at me again, and then says, “I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

I’m touched. Eddie seems to have done a complete one-eighty with me, from ignoring me to checking in on my health. Then again, my health has a direct bearing to me being able to work on this case.

I lead him into my living room and for some reason, I wish he didn’t have to look at my easels. My puzzle. My case. But he does see everything as he takes a seat. From the couch, he can’t quite see everything, but he understands that I am working.

I stand in front of the easel with Olivia’s details. I am not aware if Eddie has seen his wife’s photos or not. They’re not a pretty sight and certainly no way to remember a loved one. I see the tears in his eyes. Too late. He’s seen them. He finally looks away, collects himself.

“You are working on the case,” he says.

“Hard as I can,” I say.

He nods, fighting the tears. The tears aren’t for me. They are for the woman he had created a life with, a woman he struggled with, a woman he often fought with. A woman whose murdered body is presently on display behind me.

“I hope I didn’t come at a bad time.”

“Probably never going to be a good time, Eddie. Not anymore.”

He looks at me for a long time. “It’s good to see you, Jimmy.”

“What’s left of me.”

“You look, um, good.”

I laugh. Why I find my failing health funny, I don’t know. But I know Eddie’s sense of humor and it gets to me. With the exception of Numi, Eddie probably knows me best. At least he did back when I was healthy. Back when I didn’t know who my true friends were. Now I do, and Eddie isn’t one of them. Not anymore.

“I look like shit, but thanks for sparing my feelings.”

Eddie smiles weakly, not really hearing me. He’s lost in his own grief. His lower jaw suddenly quivers. “I don’t know how to go on, Jimmy.”

I nod. I don’t know what to say to him.

“I don’t know how to recover from this. I feel broken. I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do.”

“Finding this asshole is a start,” I say.

He nods, waits, and then nods again. “Yes, I suppose so. Then what?”

“We’ll take it one step at a time.”

“One step,” he says. He then looks around me at the pictures of his slaughtered wife. “Where do you think she went, Jimmy?”

“What do you mean?”

“That part of her that’s Olivia. Not this… this physical husk.”

I’d never heard of a human body referred to as a physical husk, but I play along. “Somewhere better than here, let’s hope.”

“Is that what you hope for when your time comes, Jimmy?”

The question is more personal than I am prepared for. But I am game. I have thought long and hard about where I might go, if anywhere. “Yes,” I answer. “That’s what I hope.”

“Somewhere better than here?”

“Yes.”

“Is here so bad?”

I think about his question as I feel my body losing strength. I finally sit next to him, stepping away from the easels. “It’s not so bad, Eddie. But it could be better.”

He nods, and when he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper. “Better, yes.”

“Where do you think she’s gone, Eddie?”

He snaps his head up and says almost immediately, “Infinity.”

“Infinity?”

I’ve never heard of the Great Beyond referred to as Infinity, but who is to say he is wrong? Infinity is as good an answer as any.

I say, “Either way, she is at peace now. No one can hurt her anymore.”

Eddie nods at this. I can see he’s trying to stay calm, to keep it together, to hold back the tears. He doesn’t need to hold back the tears. I get the tears. I’ve seen the tears. Hell, I’ve cried them enough for myself.

Finally, he says, “I never got to say ‘sorry’ to her. I think that’s what hurts more than anything.”

I knew they fought often. She had left him because of such a fight. Eddie is like most men. Neither good nor bad, just a guy doing his best with the psychological makeup he’d developed over the years. His personality was a bit of a hothead. A bit of a dick. But a big heart. Yes, I knew he had been infatuated with Jewel, perhaps in love with her, too. But the sorrow on his face convinces me he loved his wife as well. Two women he cared about. Both dead.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“And please don’t say she can hear me, that she’s near. She’s not near,” he says bitingly.

According to Eddie, she’s in Infinity, wherever the fuck that is. I say nothing and wait. I haven’t planned on telling him she was near, but if my dreams and visions have anything to do with it, she is damn near. Closer than he might think.

That thought comforts me.

Infinity… not so much. I do not want to think that when I die, my soul will be scattered into Infinity, to be swept away in the great ethereal tide, to never return.

“Are you close, Jimmy?”

I know what Eddie is referring to. I hear it all the time.

“Hard to say.”

“Please help me find the bastard.”

“I’m doing my best.”

“Your best is better than most.”

“Not anymore,” I say. “Not these days.”

Eddie suddenly frowns. He’s been studying the pictures behind me. “Do you mind if I have a look?”

“Are you sure, Eddie?”

“I’ll be okay.”

Eddie looks at my display of easels, scanning them as I have already done a hundred times. “What connection do you see?” he inquires, without taking his eyes off my masterpieces.

For some reason, and without hesitation, I return the question. “That,” I say, “remains to be seen.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I am sitting alone on my balcony.

What would have been a spectacular view of the Los Feliz area was rendered into a mediocre view, thanks to my neighbor and his damned eucalyptus trees. Had they been properly trimmed, my view would have been endless. A sea of lights that stretched from the Hollywood Hills to downtown Los Angeles, and everywhere in between.

Lots of humanity between those two landmarks. Lots of crime, too. And one killer. A child killer, no less.

But I’m not thinking about the damn trees, although every time I do I feel mild irritation. No, at the moment, I’m relaxing in a cushioned chaise longue and feeling the wind on my face… trying to get the most out of a body that would soon be dead.

I did not know that I would spend my last days on this earth chasing my brother’s killer. I’d thought I would be wasting them away at The Coffee Bean or, worse, dying alone in my bedroom. Then again, with Numi around, I am never alone now, am I?

So, with the cool wind in my hair and the eucalyptus trees swaying in front of me, doing their damnedest to block out the Los Angeles night skyline, I again go through the last day I saw my brother. The last minutes, in
fact. I do this often. And why wouldn’t I? It was the last time I saw him alive. The last time he would have been happy. Before I failed him. Before life failed him. Before God failed him.

I’m also thinking about last night. I don’t want to, but I do. Numi had broken the “bathroom rule” when he’d insisted that I take a bath with baking soda and Epsom salts—a combination he’d insisted would draw toxins out of my degenerating shell of a body and allow my skin to absorb the important minerals. I did not argue with Numi. I knew better. Anyway, he’d done his best to give me privacy—even holding up a towel so that I could undress with what dignity I had left.

Turns out it wasn’t much. I nearly fell over and Numi caught my naked body before I hit the towel rack next to me. The impact surely would have done some serious damage. I didn’t thank him. I yelled at him for distracting me and ordered him out of the bathroom. He said nothing, merely nodding, and waited just on the other side of the door in case I should need him.

I’m a dick sometimes.

The concoction worked, amazingly. After forty minutes of sitting in the stuff, the water turned a darkish, muddy gray. I felt like shit for chewing out Numi, and so, after I’d showered and had plenty of water to drink, I apologized to my friend. He said no problem, cowboy, and helped me into bed where he tucked me in. I was asleep before I could feel weird about being tucked in by another man.

I awake in the middle of the night to find Mary next to me.

This doesn’t make sense. I went to bed alone. Surely, I am dreaming. But no… my reaching fingers are rewarded by something very real and warm. Numi must have let her in. My bedroom door is closed and I can hear Numi snoring lightly in the living room.

They are both here.

Keeping vigil over me.

I know this can’t be good. Yes, I am feeling weaker than ever. Yes, I should probably be in the hospital somewhere. Or a hospice. But Numi is
my caregiver. And now, so is Mary. And I have made the decision to die at home. It’s my right. It’s anyone’s right.

Yes, I have been feeling weaker than normal, but not so weak that two people have to keep vigil over me. As I gaze upon her bare shoulder, as she sleeps quietly facing me, her hand resting lightly on my inverted stomach as the ambient street light touches her upturned nose, I know that I am close.

Very, very close.

Now, as I lay with the warm wind on my face and the traffic sounds rising from below, thinking of everything and nothing, I close my eyes and fall into a deep sleep, knowing that Numi, even in sleep, is watching me quietly from my living room.

Always watching me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Like my thoughts these days, my dreams are also scattered, incoherent, and borderline hallucinogenic. Hell, I might as well have scavenged the local parks for some wild mushrooms.

Maybe I have. Maybe this is all one, long mushroom-induced nightmare.

But I’m not so lucky. I really did contract AIDS. My AIDS really did help spread the cancer within me. The connection between HIV/AIDS and certain cancers is not completely understood, but the link likely depends on a weakened immune system. The cancer cells are within me, flamed to life by the HIV. I must have really done something to piss off God.