Final Disposition (18 page)

      “I’m probably going to be moving around a lot -– on and off base — for the next couple of weeks.  How about if I just stop by and pick it up?”

      “That should work fine, sir,” the attendant said as he finally finished writing and handed the clipboard to Cellars for his signature.

      “I don’t have any idea when they’ll schedule the post,” the attendant went on as he accepted the clipboard back, separated the copies of the form, and handed Cellars the bottom yellow copy, “but I’m sure that Dr. Sutta will be able to tell you if you call back in later this morning.”

      “Do you have one of Dr. Sutta’s business cards handy?”

      “Yes, sir, just a second.”

      The attendant disappeared into a nearby office, and came back out with a business card that he handed to Cellars.

      “Dr. Sutta is usually in by seven-thirty, but I wouldn’t suggest you try to get hold of him until at least eight,” the attendant advised with a now-very-serious look on his face.  “He’s pretty grumpy in the morning until he gets at least a couple cups of coffee into his system.”

      “I’ll keep that in mind,” Cellars said, smiling, and then walked back out to the receiving port.

      The young attendant followed silently.

      “Boy, that really is some ambulance,” he said, continuing to examine the bulbous vehicle from the receiving doorway as Cellars opened the door and pulled himself back into the driver’s seat.  “Looks like one of those early mobile homes they used to bolt onto the back of pick-up trucks.  My uncle has one … uses it to go camping out in the desert.  Only this looks a lot more practical.  A lot more room inside for a bed and kitchen, and I’ll bet you could go just about anywhere with those tires.”

      
Bed … that sounds good.  We could use one right about now.

      Cellars waited until the young attendant went back inside the Morgue and locked the outer receiving doors.  Then he pulled the Humvee ambulance around to the visitor’s parking lot.  He found a spot around the side of the single-story concrete building that was hidden from the access road.

      
Yeah, this will do just fine
, he thought as he parked the heavy vehicle, shut off the windshield wipers and the motor, and then sat back and watched the delicate clumps of snowflakes begin to accumulate on the sloped expanse of armored glass for a few seconds as he finally allowed himself to relax.

*     *     *

      His initial plan had been to set the j-Connector’s alarm clock for two hours and then simply sack out on the Humvee’s reasonably-well-padded gurney, but his limbic system had other ideas.

      
Hey, we didn’t get to hear the whole album, and two hours is exactly what we need.  Set the control system to shuffle, so we can’t predict what’s coming next, and everything will be just perfect.

      “Okay, guys,” Cellars muttered sleepily as he settled himself down on the gurney with the un-holstered 9mm Beretta pistol lying on the Humvee’s cabin floor within arm’s reach, “fine by me.”

      Moments later, he found himself drifting away to the harmonic melody of The Verve’s ‘
Bittersweet Symphony
’ as the snowstorm outside continued to rage.

*     *     *

      Cellars awoke to the j-Connector’s alarm, and the last notes of Procol Harum’s ‘
A Lighter Shade of Pale
’, feeling amazingly relaxed and rested.

      
Wow, that was really cool.  Let’s do it again!

      “Sorry, guys, maybe later,” he muttered as he sat up, looked around to realign himself to the Humvee’s dark interior, re-holstered the 9mm Baretta, stood up in the high-ceilinged ambulance, strapped the gun belt back around his waist, and then began to unlatch the back panel doors, “we’ve got work to do.”

*     *     *

      The first job was to clean the six inches of accumulated snow off the front of the wide-bodied military vehicle.  The combined heavy-duty brush and scraper proved more than adequate to the task, enabling Cellars to get the Humvee’s windshield cleared and its engine warmed up in a matter of minutes.

      Mercifully, the snowstorm seemed to have stopped … at least for the time being.

      Humming a Moody Blues melody that seemed to be playing in stereo in the back of his mind, Cellars drove the Humvee out of the Jasper County Morgue compound, and then paused at the intersection.

      According to his j-Connector’s clock, it was precisely six-twenty in the morning — still too early to meet with Dr. Sutta … or to find and hopefully meet with the enticing woman that Cellars very much wanted to talk with — which meant he had a least an hour or so to kill.

      He was driving down Jasper Spring’s Main Street, still trying to decide how to do that, when he saw the glowing sign that read: 

      THE GOOD EGG EXPRESS

      OPEN 6:30 AM EVERY DAY 

      
Cup of hot coffee, some breakfast, and a local paper … that’ll do just fine
, Cellars decided as he pulled into the parking lot and parked — in what was becoming a habit, he realized — next to a big green dumpster.  He started to take the 9mm Baretta out of its holster and slip it behind the small of his back again, but then hesitated.

      
Christ, I’m in downtown Jasper Springs.  What do I need a gun here for?

      So he put the holstered pistol in the storage compartment behind the passenger seat, and then hesitated again when he realized he had no way of locking the compartment … or the Humvee.

      
What the hell
, he thought, as he got out of the ambulance and shut the door,
who’s going to be nuts enough to try to steal anything from an official US Army vehicle?

      The Good Egg Express obviously wasn’t an ‘open-twenty-four-hours-every-day’ kind of restaurant; but the woman who unlocked the outer doors of the wood-shingled establishment at precisely six-thirty AM reminded Cellars a lot of the Sheri’s waitress in Medford.

      This waitress was also a short, heavy-set, professionally friendly woman in — he guessed — her late fifties, whose demeanor with customers immediately came across as: ‘I’ve met an awful lot of people in my career, and I’ve liked most of them, so let’s try to keep it that way.’

      
Fine by me
, Cellars thought, finding it easy to be appropriately amiable.

      He quickly discovered that he liked listening to the distinctively melodic accent in her voice as she chattered on casually about the lousy weather, the corresponding lack of customers, and what was probably a safe bet for breakfast because she was still breaking in the new cook.

      Cellars had eaten a reasonably solid breakfast only a few hours earlier, and he didn’t expect to be hungry.  But the night’s exercise, and the smell of a waffle cooking somewhere in the back kitchen seemed to re-kindled his appetite.

      He ordered one of the waffles, took the waitress’s advice and added the ‘fresh’ peach topping — that she assured him was really made from canned Freestones, but tasted just as good as the fresh version, if not better — and was starting in on his first cup of coffee when the front door of the restaurant swung open and a uniformed patrol officer walked in.

      Cellars glanced up, noted that the officer took off his heavy field jacket, hung it up on the otherwise empty coat rack — Cellars had placed his own heavy field jacket on the bench seat next to his right leg — walked right over to the waitress, and began talking with her.  Seeing nothing about the situation that had anything to do with him, he went back to contemplatively sipping his coffee, thinking:

      
I’m probably running on borrowed time right about now.  Got to make a decision pretty soon, one way or the other, before —

      Lost in his thoughts, Cellars was caught completely off guard when the uniformed officer walked over to his booth, pulled a chair away from an nearby table, spun it around, sat down in it with his thick arms crossed over the back, and stared at him silently.

      Not sure what else to do, Cellars cocked his head curiously and stared back.

      For five long seconds, the two men continued to stare at each other, as if neither of them knew quite what to say to the other.

      The patrol officer was the first to break the silence.

      “I’ll be damned, so it really is you … or is it?”  More a statement than a question, but Cellars could hear both tones interwoven through the patrol officer’s voice … along with what was clearly an edge of fear.

      
Why the hell would this guy be afraid of me?
Cellars wondered uneasily.

      “I’m sorry?”

      “You’re Colin Cellars.”  A matter-of-fact statement now, but Cellars could still detect a sense of doubt.

      “And you’re —” Cellars quickly dropped his gaze down to the name plate on the officer’s shirt and then looked back up, “— Officer Bauer.”

      The patrol officer blinked in surprise, and then continued to stare at Cellars from his somewhat fortified position about six feet away — his gaze now focused mostly on the visibly-fresh scars on Cellars’ face and neck — for a few more seconds, and then said:

      “No, I’m not officer Bauer, I’m Sergeant Bauer.  Sergeant
Tom
Bauer.”

      “I’m sorry, sergeant, I didn’t —”

      “— recognize me,” Bauer finished.

      
Oh, shit, now what?
Cellars thought frantically. 
Who the hell is this guy?

      He had a sense of having heard Bauer’s voice before … but it was a distant sense, as if it had only been lightly-recorded in some voice-recognition portion of his ‘how things work’ memories.  Nothing distinct.  Nothing that he could place.

      “No, I’m sorry … I, uh, really didn’t … really don’t,” he finally said.  “Guess I’m getting pretty bad at names and faces these days.”

      “I suppose that’s understandable,” Bauer said after a long thoughtful moment, “given the fact that you’re dead.”

      Cellars blinked in shock.

      “I am?”

      “Let me put it another way,” Bauer said slowly with a cold edge to his voice, leaning forward and staring intently into Cellars’ eyes now, giving the distinct impression that he was about to lunge across the table at him … or go for his gun.  “Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars is supposed to be dead.  Up until ten seconds ago, I truly believed that to be the case, because I have his badly-scarred-up and blood-splattered badge lying on my desk, right next to a signed death certificate that we received from the U.S. Army JAG office.  I don’t know about —” Bauer’s eyes quickly scanned across Cellars’ uniform shirt, “Army Major Colin Cellars.  Fact is, I don’t know anything about him at all.  You got a twin brother who used to be a cop, Cellars?”

      “Uh, not as far as I know, but —”

       “Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Bauer said, nodding his head in satisfaction.  “See, the thing is, Cellars, you and I know each other pretty well.  Or, at least, we did last week, when you were an OSP Detective-Sergeant working CSI for us … and you and I were involved in some pretty weird shit together before —”

      “You’re OSP, and you know who I am?”  Cellars blinked in surprise, feeling at the same time, an immense sense relief.

      
Jesus, finally —

      “What the hell?  Now you’re trying to tell me you don’t recognize the uniform either?” Bauer retorted, his eyes flashing dangerously as he motioned with his head at his shirt shelve where the OSP Patrol patch was clearly visible.

      “I —,” Cellars started to say, and then shook his head.  “Look, Sergeant — Sergeant Bauer, Tom — this is going to sound really nutso.”

      “Go ahead, I’m listening,” Bauer shrugged agreeably.  “Not like I haven’t heard nutso before … especially from you.”

      
Oh, man.

      “Look, Tom, here’s my situation as I understand it.  About twelve hours ago, I came to in some kind of Army clinic here in Jasper County.  Whatever happened to me — they say it was an explosion that occurred during a training exercise, and the scars I’ve got seem to verify at least part of that — my personal memories seem to have been fried.  I don’t know who the hell I am, or anything else about my past — specifically including any family, friends or co-workers.  Far as I know, none of those people even exist.”

      Bauer started to say something, but Cellars held up a hand.

      “Please, just so you understand, the only things I
think
I know about myself are that I have this uniform, which seems to fit just fine, and this ID card —”

      Cellars reached into his shirt pocket and placed the folded ID card on the far edge of the table.

      Bauer leaned forward in the chair, picked up the ID card, and then proceeded to examine it carefully … but never taking his eyes off Cellars for more than three or four seconds at a time.

      “I’m not going to move an inch, much less try to get up and go anywhere, Tom,” Cellars said in what he hoped sounded like a sincere and honest voice.  “Hell, right now, I’m trying not to even breathe too hard.”

      Bauer ignored the comment and continued to consider the ID card.

      “Okay, I guess it looks real,” he said finally as he tossed the card back to Cellars.

      “I think it
is
real, and so did at least one Army security guard a few hours ago,” Cellars said, his face now a mask of frustration.  “But if it is, how the hell can I be U.S. Army Major Colin Cellars … and OSP Detective-Sergeant Colin Cellars at the same time?”

      “You can’t, that much is certain,” Bauer said matter-of-factly.  “Stay right where you are, I need to call in and talk with somebody.”

      Cellars watched Bauer step outside into the lobby, start to make a call on his radio mike, and then hesitate … and finally pull a cell phone out of his jacket pocket.