Collecting the Dead (13 page)
Maybe she’s not here to apologize; maybe she doesn’t feel bad at all about the article or the way we ended; maybe she really doesn’t have feelings for me at all.
Maybe she’s here to get another story
.
As we work our way through ample portions of salmon and chicken and mashed potatoes and cornbread pudding, I find myself glancing at the folder with increasing frequency. She’s up to something, I just know it, only she’s too clever to just throw it out for discussion. She’s trying to bait me.
Now I feel insulted.
Does she honestly think I’m that easy, that predictable? I couldn’t care less what’s in the folder. I couldn’t care less about her agenda, or whatever angle she’s trying to play.
It’s just a portfolio.
Why would she need her portfolio for a dinner date
?
I make it all the way to dessert before I can’t take it anymore and blurt, “What are we doing here, Heather? What’s in the portfolio?”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I think, S
he just won. She broke me
.
There’s a smug look … no, a confident look on her face, a look I remember so well, a look that says she knows something I don’t. It’s been nine months since she was embedded with the unit, but I remember how hard it is for her to hide her emotions.
The girl has no poker face.
Without a word, she opens the portfolio and extracts four sheets of typed and stapled paper. The pages are neither crisp nor clean and appear as if they’ve been folded and unfolded dozens of times. A coffee stain graces the lower edge of the top page, and every corner is dog-eared. She sets it on the table and pushes the stained and worried mess slowly across, her eyes intent on my face.
“What is it?”
“Something I want you to read.” Her face is blank. There’s no emotion in her eyes now and the corners of her mouth are unmoving, giving no hint either up or down.
She’s been practicing her poker face.
I feel my stomach ball up and my intestines go to water.
“Last time I read something you wrote, we didn’t speak for nine months.”
“
You
didn’t speak for nine months,” she clarifies. “I’ve called every couple weeks, or have you forgotten? If you don’t remember, I could call Diane. She and I have become great phone pals.” She gives a short shake of her head, truncated and abrupt. “It’s funny, when I was embedded with the team, I didn’t really get to know her. It took you, Steps, to help us get close. Did you know she went to Hawaii with me over Christmas—I’m sure she told you?”
“Hawaii…?” I shake my head. “I remember she said something about a beach … was that when she showed up all tan? Or … or…”
Jimmy’s right
,
I’m not a Viking
. I quickly slug down some water from my perspiring glass.
I’m drowning here; suffocating, choking
.
Setting my glass down, I cross my arms over my chest … then remember that Heather studied body language … extensively; she’s like the Amazing Kreskin of reporters. I always thought that reading body language was the purview of law enforcement, a skill used to help decipher a suspect’s guilt.
It never occurred to me that such a skill could also be useful to reporters … until I met Heather. Maybe it’s something they teach at journalism school, or maybe Heather took it on herself to learn, realizing its great potential. In either case, she’s good at it; I should have remembered that. In the short span we’ve been in the restaurant I’ve probably shifted my gaze from one eye to the other, then to her lips, at least a dozen times.
That’s bad.
I quickly uncross my arms and take another drink.
The left corner of her mouth twitches up half an inch and her eyes smile, letting
me
know that
she
knows what
I
just remembered.
Damn!
She gives the worn pages a push closer. “Just read it.”
I hesitate … then hesitate some more … and then realize that the only thing that’s going to make this go away—make
her
go away—is to give her what she wants. With my right index finger I spin the pages around so they’re right side up and read the title aloud, “‘Signs of Passage: The FBI’s Special Tracking Unit.’” Pushing it away, I say, “I’ve already read this.”
“Has anyone told you you’re stubborn?” she hisses.
“No one that’s credible.”
“This,” she said, picking up the paper and shaking it in my face, “is what I wrote, not that tripe they printed.”
Confusion
.
“You’re saying the article that was printed wasn’t what you wrote?” I shoot back, disbelieving, wanting to disbelieve. “So … who wrote it?”
Heather pushes back from the table and studies me. “I explained all that in the very long phone message I left on your machine after the article came out,” she says.
“Phone message … yeah—”
“You deleted it without listening; Diane told me.”
“I was mad.”
“You were stupid.”
I’m speechless a moment, then my fingers reach out for the papers, and I pull them close, like a drowning man hugging a life preserver. “So who
did
write the article, if it wasn’t you?”
“My no-talent editor. She stole my notes and hijacked my story. I quit the next day.” She pushes back from the table and stands.
“Where are you going?”
“The ladies’ room to check my lipstick.” She smiles. “You don’t need me staring at you while you read, do you?” Without waiting for a reply, she spins and walks briskly down the aisle, dragging my captive eyes with her. I shake it off quickly and turn my attention to the worn pages of the article—and devour it. It’s good, really good, the whole piece, and nothing like the published version.
Guilt washes over me; I should have known. I’ve read much of Heather’s work, and the published piece lacked the luster and compelling prose, it lacked the picture-perfect detail and the heart, delivering instead the hurried, banal, and sophomoric sentences and paragraphs of a mediocre reporter on a deadline.
I’m a fool
.
Before we agreed to let Heather embed with the team, we’d done our research. Jimmy was impressed with her interview style and the way she could ferret out the truth—we didn’t find out until later that she could read body language like others read poetry.
For my part, I set out to read two or three of the articles from her blog—to get a feel for her writing ability—and ended up devouring everything I could find: hundreds of blog pages, articles from her college newspaper, even several short stories, one of which won the H. E. Francis Short Story Award.
She’s a natural; Jimmy and I both recognized it and agreed that if the STU was going to get some media attention, as the director intended, we wanted Heather to write it.
I look up just as Heather turns down the aisle toward me. She’s walking slowly, gracefully, and I have a hard time taking my eyes off her. I glance at the menus standing upright on the inside end of the table and wonder aloud if they offer crow as an entrée.
I may need a double serving.
More importantly, my excuse for not seeing Heather is gone, and my heart isn’t eager to find a replacement.
Why not just tell her?
I think as she approaches the table. What harm could come from four people knowing my secret instead of just three?
I give her a conquered smile when she takes her seat, and say, “I owe you an apology. I should have known.”
“You should have,” she jabs back playfully.
I hesitate. What harm could it do?
“I have something to tell you; a confession, I suppose.” My chair is suddenly uncomfortable and I fidget forward, then back again, but there’s no good position. “I have this…”
Secret. Just say it!
“I have this problem with commitment.”
Coward.
“It’s because of the job,” I add quickly.
Heather leans forward and just smiles. “Who would have guessed?” she says in the most serious of tones, giving her head a little shake of concern.
Tell her; it’s not too late.
TELL HER!
I ignore my screaming inner voice and push it back into the id where it belongs. Right now I don’t know if it’s a foolish decision or a wise one; only time will tell. Time is an impartial judge.
We sit and stare at each other in silence; not the uncomfortable silence of strangers but the silence of kindred spirits reunited. The world continues on and passes by outside the window, unnoticed and unmissed for the moment.
“What now?” I say at length.
Heather picks up her glass and swirls the ice. “I’d say you owe me a walk along the water,” she replies.
Her grin is contagious.
June 26, 9:37
A.M.
“I’ve told you this before.”
“I know, I just want to hear it again—it’s interesting,” Jimmy says.
I sigh, not impatiently, just in resignation. Betsy is at a cruising altitude of forty-one thousand feet, or “flight level four one zero,” as Les and Marty would say. Her nose is pointed toward Redding, where a serial killer awaits.
We still have an hour before we start our descent, so Jimmy and I kill time the way we always do; it’s routine … ritual. We call it Plane Talk; not
plain
, as in normal or usual, but
plane
, as in airplane. Plane Talk is reserved for Betsy, for those times when we’re just trying to get through the hours that occupy the space between airports, between home and the job. Plane Talk includes everything under the sun but usually tends toward the more bizarre or unusual.
Kopi Luwak is a good example.
It’s a type of coffee.
Jimmy calls it monkey-butt coffee. It’s a rare gourmet variety from Indonesia made from beans that have allegedly passed through the digestive system of a monkey. I say
allegedly
because, in truth, it’s not a monkey, but a catlike creature called the palm civet that digests the meat around the beans and then excretes the beans whole—minus dung.
They say it’s the best coffee in the world.
I’ve never tried it.
Then again, I’ve never licked the back of a Colorado River toad, either. The psychoactive toads and the associated rumors of people licking them to get high was another subject of our midflight conversations.
Regardless of the subject, Plane Talk is almost always stimulating.
Today’s subject, life after death, is a repeat … times ten or twenty, but what else are you going to do at flight level four one zero in a flying aluminum tube when the pilot and copilot have banned you from the cockpit?
I push myself back into the exceedingly comfortable overstuffed executive seat, which is slightly reclined, and resist the urge to close my eyes. “I remember my grandfather’s passing the best; Grandpa Samuelsen,” I begin. “It was a couple weeks after my tenth birthday, almost two years after … well, after my experience in the woods. Two years after I started seeing the shine.”
Jimmy knows not to push on this point.
“We were at the nursing home for a visit; I think we visited almost every day. Jens and I were playing with our Hot Wheels—Mom always brought along a bucketful to keep us busy—and I just remember a sudden commotion around Grandpa’s bed. The last couple visits he’d mostly slept, and the last time I heard him speak was probably the week before, so all this sudden noise and activity had my full attention.
“Nurses started coming into the room and alarms were going off and as I watched I saw Grandpa Samuelsen’s shine lift up out of his body and drift toward the ceiling, like a slightly inflated helium balloon floating slowly up. The colors and texture suddenly seemed more vibrant, and it pulsed with more energy than I’d ever seen. It was like the old shine—the body shine—had been coated in some hard grimy shell, which was now peeled away. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
Jimmy nods but doesn’t say anything.
“At the time, I didn’t know what was happening. His body still had the essence and texture I was used to, but it looked shabby by comparison … and somehow flat and empty without that energy pulsing from it.
“When I looked back at the ceiling, there were other shines, maybe a dozen, though it was hard to tell because they were moving about, weaving in, around, and through my grandpa’s shine, each just as vivid and distinct and full of energy. And the more excited they got, the brighter they glowed, until I couldn’t even look at them.
“Then they were gone; just that fast. And … there was something else.…” My voice trails off and I suddenly wish I could take back the last words.
“What?” Jimmy’s leaning forward in his chair, perching rather than sitting.
“It’s something I never told you before,” I say hesitantly. “I wasn’t … I wasn’t sure if you’d believe me.” My shoulders shrug involuntarily.
Jimmy smiles, then chuckles. “I solve murders following invisible clues that only my forest-hating, slightly neurotic, anal-retentive best friend can see. What’s to disbelieve?”
He has a point.
“Come on, spit it out,” Jimmy coaxes.
Turning my eyes to the window at my left, I watch the wing shudder and float as we skim through the atmosphere at more than five hundred miles an hour. The sky is robin-egg blue in every direction and the clouds make a cotton-ball floor beneath us, so fluffy and soft-looking you just want to stretch your arms out and fall backward into them.
It’s what I like best about flying: the view.
“It wasn’t just Grandpa Samuelsen’s shine that I recognized near the ceiling,” I say to the clouds below. “There was another.” Turning, I meet Jimmy’s eyes. “It was my Grandma Samuelsen.” His eyes go wide and I nod. “She died the year before.”
Jimmy lets out a long low whistle.
June 26, 5:40
P.M.
It’s been a long day.
Long and filled with many miles both in the air and on the ground. Now the day is almost done, and we are far from where it started; far from that nondescript hangar in Bellingham, Washington.
