CHAPTER 9
L’Da escorted Gregory and Tony to the basement of the police station where the angel used his skeleton key to open the door of the combination janitor closet/water heater room. When he flicked the lights on, the PI’s could see the dust swirling around the red bulbs. The floor was still an unfinished gray. Metal closets were latched up on most of the also unfinished stone walls. Janitor supplies from brushes to brooms dangled from hooks all around the room.
“What is this?” the PI asked. “Where’s your morgue? Your ME chamber?”
“There isn’t any,” the angel told him. “Just this makeshift space.”
“Are you kidding me?” Gregory asked, astonished. “This is ghetto.”
“What choice did we have?” L’Da asked him rhetorically. “A forensic morgue was never needed in Heaven before. Look over here.”
The angel led them to an area of the room where, after switching a blue light on, they saw a polished silver morgue refrigerator sitting against a wall. Next to it was a metal table which had purple rubber gloves, alcohol sponges, and clipboards on it as well as a few pieces of autopsy tools like intestinal scissors, a scalpel, bone saws and other surgical items in a metal tray.
“This was brought from HVAC Heaven,” the angel said, indicating the fridge. “It took five days to get here because it had to be built quickly. Before that she was simply on ice.”
Opening the morgue’s square door, L’Da slid out a flat metal table with a cloth-covered body on it. Peeling back the sheet to her abdomen, a clearer view of the deceased was revealed. The singer sported black bouffant hair, full lips, albeit blue in color, excessive eye liner, multiple tattoos on each arm, and half black, half red fingernails. Donning the gloves, Gregory inspected her face, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, neck, chest, and finally, abdomen, scrutinizing the area with the psychedelic rose like a beachcomber with a metal detector.
“She’s in pretty good shape,” he noted, checking the turgor of her skin. “Well preserved. If she wasn’t in this box, I would’ve thought she was just asleep. And there was no blood loss, right?”
“Right,” L’Da answered.
“Maybe the shock of being poked with a hot iron got her,” Tony suggested.
“If you knew Amy,” L’Da noted, “a steel rod the size of your arm wouldn’t scare her. She may have been a singer/songwriter, but she was tough as titanium.”
“Did you know any of her songs, Tony?” Gregory asked as he continued his inspection.
“‘Rehab’,” he answered. “That’s about it,” then sang –
“They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, no.”
“How come she’s in R&R, anyway?” he continued. “As far as I know, she’s a soul, jazz and R&B singer.”
“Her request,” L’Da explained. “She wanted to meet Janis Joplin, one of her heroes.”
“How’d those two get along?” Gregory inquired.
“I believe it was amicable,” the angel summated. “Then again, I’m not really privy to the relationships that form around here. Like I said, we pretty much have a hands-off approach when it comes to the citizens.”
“You know what?” the inquisitive PI asked. “How come you don’t just walk around town and read people’s minds?”
L’Da shook his head; once again, disappointed with Gregory. “I’m an angel, not a genie.”
“Yeah, but you know magic, right?” Gregory insisted. “Like, you can fly. You know how to fly, right?”
The being in white looked him straight in the face like he could clobber him to death; the perpetually clownish PI quickly got the hint.
“You don’t have a sense of humor, that’s for sure,” Gregory mumbled to himself. “Can I see the forensic reports when you get a chance?” he asked the angel.
L’Da darted his eyes upwards. “Yes. We keep them locked upstairs.”
Climbing to the second floor, L’Da opened the door near a water fountain in the hallway; all three marched into the room. Turning the light on, Gregory noted the chamber was pretty nondescript in appearance – wooden walls and floorboards, conventional lights, heating vents, etc. Apart from a rustic cherry desk, a few padded office chairs, a handful of wooden file cabinets, a well-stocked floor to ceiling bookcase, and an x-ray illuminator on the wall, there was barely little else in the office. The angel, using a vintage Victorian skeleton key, opened one of the file cabinets, rifled through a few sections, and produced the folder he was looking for – the forensic report on the deceased singer. Handing it to Gregory, he stood idly by as the PI and his assistant perused it.
“Well,” Gregory noticed, “like you’d said, she lost no blood. No hint of necrosis in the wound, no foreign materials in her tissues. It also must’ve happened very quickly because she didn’t put up a fight. There were no signs of struggle under her fingernails, no foreign fibers, hairs, fluids, nothing. He or she was holding her up after she got zapped then laid her down gently. There are no marks on her knees or elsewhere to suggest otherwise.”
Removing the abdominal x-rays from the chart, he immediately noticed they felt different than radiographic film he was used to seeing in his cases.
“What kind of paper is this?” he asked L’Da, holding it up. “It feels light.”
“Does it matter?” the angel asked.
“No,” he answered, “it’s just that, since there’s no plastic up here…”
“Radiology is digital,” L’Da answered. “The image is just transferred afterwards to translucent wax paper.”
“Translucent?” the PI asked as he started putting them up for display on the illuminator. “So, the picture’s not clear?” he said as he switched the backlight on. “I’ll be damned,” he blurted, noticing the image was not as cloudy as he thought it’d be. “It is crystal clear,” he noticed, utterly surprised. “What’s the technology behind this?” he asked the angel.
“That backlight is OLED,” L’Da answered, “Organic light emitting diode. The wax paper is tuned to match its electroluminescence – the technology can differentiate between actual structures and tissue so there’s no ambiguity. In other words, sharp, contrasted pictures for your convenience.
“Oh,” Gregory fawned, “you’re too good to me.”
He began examining the photos one by one. From his experience, nothing seemed out of place, and that, in itself, was an issue. “It’s all intact,” he mused, rubbing his chin in confusion. Then, sitting down at the desk, he took a blank piece of paper from the top draw and drew a sketch. Seconds later, he held up his drawing for all to see.
“This is what you’re looking for,” he professed.
L’Da took the paper and scrutinized it from left to right. Based on Gregory’s sketch, it looked like the hilt of a dagger with a flattop umbrella tip about 4” in length attached to the top of it. The hilt had two buttons. The angel passed the drawing to the young sax man. “Good luck with your quest,” he told him, then turned to Gregory. “Interesting instrument you’ve rendered there, Gregory. All that based from those photographs?”
“Call it a strong hunch,” the PI said. “No entrance or exit would, quick jab with a round, flat tip that can be quickly heated, no irregular side by side movement…”
“Well,” L’Da said, “if we’re done here, I must get to a previously scheduled appointment. Feel free to drop by if you have any questions.”
“Bye,” the PI and Tony said as L’Da exited.
“Well, young man,” Gregory told his assistant, “seems like we have a lot of work to do. Where do you think is a good place to start?”
“The pizza shop in the Green,” came the novice’s immediate reply.
“Why?” the PI asked. “You know someone there we can talk to?”
“Nope,” the young man said. “If Tony doesn’t eat soon, Tony can’t work.”
Gregory nodded. “I heard that.”
The two private investigators sat in the cozy pizza restaurant enjoying their lunch, Tony his two Sicilian slices with lemona
de, and Gregory his Eggplant Parmesan and lager. On the red and white-chequered table cloth sat their missives from the police station, including the sketch of the dagger. Most of the tables in the restaurant were occupied by at least two diners. Indie rock was wafting from the full-range cubical speakers hanging off the ceiling. One young waiter was going around asking visitors if they were okay; the two older cooks behind the counter, wearing aprons that had seen better days, were busy preparing Italian-inspired meals.
“Gregory,” the novice sleuth began, “did you ever see an accident so gruesome you wanted to quit police work?”
“All the time,” came the elder’s response, “but what can you do? Somebody has to take out the trash. Tag, I’m it. Anyway, after a while, not that you get used to seeing carnage, you just learn to block it out so it doesn’t affect your feelings. That’s when the danger starts. Somebody did something bad, there’s the aftermath, go get ‘em. Business as usual; nothing personal.”
Tony grabbed his midriff. “Wow,” he groaned, “I think I’d need a cast-iron stomach.”
“Or a good collection of barf bags,” Gregory suggested.
“Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” asked the waiter who’d arrived unseen.
“I’m okay,” Tony claimed.
Gregory handled his empty beer stein to the waiter. “I’ll have another.”
As the employee turned to leave, he saw the crude drawing of Gregory’s rendition of the alleged murder weapon on the table. “What is this?” he asked to no one in particular.
“A sketch my partner came up with,” Tony proudly answered.
“Can I see it?” the waiter asked. “I’ve always had a fascination with knives.” Picking up the paper, he studied the drawing. “Pretty unusual.”
“That’s what I said,” Tony explained.
The curious waiter flicked the draft paper, turning his attention to the older investigator. “Were you looking to buy one of these?”
“Have you seen these before?” Gregory queried.
“No,” the dark-haired employee replied. “Is it middle eastern?”
The PI shrugged. “Beats me.”
“Let me show this to the boss,” the waiter suggested. “He’s a knife freak, worse than I am.”
Gregory nodded. The young man took the paper with him to the kitchen area.
“How’d you learn to draw?” Tony asked his partner.
“That’s drawing?” Gregory laughed. “I’ve seen better sketches by quadriplegics.”
“It’s not bad,” the young man admitted, sighing. “I wish I could draw. One of the things I resented from my upbringing is I was never really exposed to the arts. After my dad bounced, it was work, work, work. Everybody else was having fun, but there I was, rolling up my sleeves in the hot sun moving boxes and hammering shelves all day long. Ridiculous. No wonder I’m still a virgin.”
“You just haven’t met the right guy yet. What about him?” the PI asked, referring to the waiter.
“He’s cute,” Tony admitted, “but he wouldn’t want me.”
Gregory pointed to his assistant. “We gotta work on your self-esteem.”
Just then the waiter returned with the sketch and a full stein of beer which he placed in front of the anxious PI.
“My boss is old school,” the waiter explained. “He saw something like this in a book years ago, but that book’s been out of print. Anyway, the dagger’s just a myth, kind of like Excalibur. In the book, it was called Anima Furabatur, or something like that.”
“Thanks,” Gregory said, taking the sketch back. “You’ve been helpful.”
Minutes later, the two dicks were sitting in the Woodstock Library looking up Anima Furabatur on a holographic computer. Small in size, the library was, nevertheless, as up to date as any super-sized metropolitan depository of information. Gregory, tap-tapping the wireless, bamboo keyboard with the furiosity of a tomb raider, seemed to be getting nowhere.
“I think I must be spelling it wrong,” he mused. “All I get are dead ends.”
“You’ve already tried Spanish, German and Italian,” Tony noticed. “What’s next?”
“I don’t know,” Gregory admitted, relinquishing the com. “You try.”
Exchanging positions, Tony started typing commands in the computer.
“Let me try a different spelling,” he suggested. Nearly a minute later, something finally popped up. “There it is,” he said, pointing to the screen.
“Soul stealer,” Gregory read. “Stealer of souls.”
“It’s Latin,” his assistant remarked. “What’s a soul stealer?”
“I don’t know,” the trained detective answered. “We’ll ask L’Da later.”