In this week’s Odd Prompts challenge, I charged ‘Nother Mike with “No one escapes the Wild Hunt.”
Mine was from Misha Burnett. ” A forensic necromancer interviews a murder victim. Unfortunately, the testimony of the deceased is inadmissible in court. What information could the victim provide that would give the police a lead on finding evidence that could be used to convict the killer?”
Before we get to that, Thesis Cat continues to do her job in guilt-tripping me to get back to work.
Onto the story!
I stared down at my body and blew out a frustrated sigh of non-existent air. Guess I didn’t need oxygen anymore, but automatic habits die hard.
It still annoyed me further. Counting to ten didn’t help. It was all I could do not to stamp my foot like a toddler in the midst of being denied a cookie.
Yeah, realizing I’d never have a cookie again didn’t help the urge.
I tried again. “Hey. HEY. Heeeeeyyyyy.” I waved my hand in front of the cop’s nose. “Look, dude, I know you can see me. Ever since that asteroid hit, everyone can see ghosts until they cross over.”
He’d blinked at the word “dude.” Good. I’d been trying for a reaction. Maybe offending him wouldn’t help my case, but I’d been pleading and begging for help for twenty minutes, ever since the cops showed up.
Let me tell you, it’s really weird to walk into your neighbor’s house, uninvited, through the wall, and ask them to call the cops because you’ve just been murdered.
Walked right through a whole cabinet of creepy china figurines, too. The memory made me shudder. I guess ghosts can do that, still.
“C’mon, man. I can give you a name, a description, even the reason why and where he works. I thought I was getting out of the guy’s way. He wanted to back into the parking space.”
I kicked my own ribcage, but my foot just passed through. The cop put up his hand like he was trying to block me. I hoped it made him feel freezing cold. Serves him right for ignoring me.
“I was meeting a friend for lunch and told him about what happened. I figured at worst parking lot guy would have spit in my food. Gave me a look and a shake of the head every time he walked past the table.”
The uniform studiously continued to study my dead body, placing evidence markers by blood splatter. He looked everywhere but at me.
“Nametag said Devon, from Mika’s Diner. Over on Greene street.”
A throat cleared behind me. Tall, stubble, greying brown hair, sharp blue eyes that missed nothing but looked exhausted. He wore a rumpled suit and a faded black trench, with a badge slung around his neck on a cheap chain. He jerked his head at me, and I heard the officer first on scene breathe his own sigh of relief.
Lucky bastard, his exhalation had real air in it.
I followed what had to be the homicide detective into what until an hour ago had been my living room. He sat on the couch and waved at hand at my favorite chair like he owned the place.
I raised an eyebrow.
“You want someone to talk to you or not?” His voice reminded me of rusty barbed wire, quick with a comeback and ready to give you tetanus if you were too much of an idiot.
I sat.
“No one will listen,” I started. “I know exactly who did it.”
“Yeah, but don’t you watch the news, kid?” He slumped back against the cushions, leaning on the armrest and studying me as he settled in.
I blinked. “What?”
“I’m saying Fiddler v. Tennessee,” he said. “I’m Joe, by the way. Joe Brighton. Homicide detective. Fourth Precinct.”
“What the hell is Fiddler v. Tennessee?” I asked, frowning. I didn’t like where this conversation was going.
“Supreme Court case. We’ve been watching it for the past couple years. Right after the asteroid hit a decade ago and everything changed, right? This guy says ghosts are no longer humans, therefore they’re no longer sentient.”
I snorted.
He nodded. “Yeah, I agree. But it’s got an impact. Means ghost testimony doesn’t hold up in court.”
“We’re not in court,” I pointed out. “We’re in my living room. Next to my dead body.”
“Yeah, but that uniform in there? Steve’s a good guy. He’s wearing a body cam that records everything, all right? Means he can’t talk to you without it getting caught on camera. That’s a problem.”
“How come you can talk to me?” I asked, stiffening with belligerence.
He crossed his legs in a figure four. “To answer your question, what conversation?” he asked, looking around.
“I’m just getting a sense of what you were like as a person. Talk to myself all the time, you know. Part of my detecting process.”
“I’m no longer a forensic necromancer, after all. No specializing in talking to dead people and getting their testimony, not anymore. I’m just a homicide detective now.”
He tapped slender fingers together, then pressed two fingers to his mouth like he wished they were holding a cigarette.
Snarling, I leapt up. “You mean you can just ignore me and that’s somehow okay?”
Joe didn’t bother making eye contact. “Exactly. And Steve and the other uniforms have to, or they get in trouble.”
Pacing, I struggled with my options. “This is so unfair. I should fight this in court.”
“Good luck finding a lawyer who’ll take that on,” Joe said. “Non-person, remember? Did you add a provision in your will for hiring a lawyer to represent your ghost’s interests posthumously?”
I choked, then remembered I didn’t have to care about that. “Did I what?!”
He leaned back against the couch even further, like the weight on his shoulders was real and tangible. “I see you were a reader. Mysteries.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked, starting to feel the fight drain from me. “You can’t use anything I tell you.”
“Unless you find a way to get me something I can use that’s not your direct testimony.” Joe made eye contact at last. “Don’t suppose you’ve got anything that would help with that, do you?”
I stood firm, feet planted, and whistled high and loud. Joe winced, but I didn’t care. I knew Wilbur would come to our whistle, no matter how afraid he was of the strange man on the couch, or how traumatized he’d been after seeing me stabbed.
I glared at Joe. “I do this, you take care of my dog. You take him in or find him a nice warm home. Not some shelter that’ll put him down, not some terrible owner that’ll make him fight.”
He nodded, once, short and sharp. “Everybody’s got a bargain.”
Studying him with new eyes, I realized his relaxed posture was studied tension, held to contain a tightly wound spring. “You’ve done this before.”
A shoulder shrugged inside the trench.
I turned away at the sound of slow feet and a slight whimper. There he was, my 155-pound bundle of oversized bloodhound joy. Covered in my blood splatter, and maybe some attacker DNA.
“Wilbur, sit.” I gave his head a caress, trying not to notice that I couldn’t feel his fur, that I had to hold my hand just above his ears to keep from sticking my hand through his brain. Poor guy’d been through enough tonight.
I looked at Joe. “He’ll sit for you if you swab his teeth. And fur, I guess.”
He nodded, and waved over a tech I hadn’t noticed in the door.
“Bloodhound got a nose on him?” He gave Wilbur the pet I couldn’t, scratching gently around the ears. Joe looked at me briefly over the tech’s head, but there was compassion in the look. He knew what I wanted, but could never have again.
“He does,” I said sadly. “He trained for it before I got him, but his temperament was never quite right. The nose is there. But he’s a bit of a scaredy-cat.”
The tech stood up, avoiding looking at me as she packed away her samples from my dog.
“Wilbur,” I said. “Time to get to work.”
Joe nodded in approval, and got up to follow my bloodhound.
It was three hours later when they came back. I’d apologized to Steve the uniform by then, who made a few random nods and commented out loud to his partner what a shame it was that I’d ended like this.
I was sitting on the front porch when Joe arrived, Wilbur bounding up behind him. He sat down on the stoop next to me, stroking the dog’s head.
“He was a very good boy,” Joe said softly, mumbling a little. I guess outside, he tried to keep up appearances more.
“He always is,” I said sadly, holding out a hand for Wilbur to sniff. He didn’t seem to mind that I wasn’t corporeal.
“Led us straight to one Devon Nelson, who works at Mika’s Diner. Idiot still had the knife in his hand, smeared with your blood. He’d tried to wipe it off on his own shirt, thinking it would blend in since it was a dark color.”
I leaned back and kicked my legs down the steps. “All over a parking spot?”
“Yeah. Confessed and everything.” Joe kept his head bent over Wilbur.
I sighed. “Feels pretty dumb. Now what?”
Joe grimaced, his face contorting on the side I could see. “Now you either move on, or hang out and do whatever you didn’t get a chance to do in this life.”
“I thought I’d know what to do,” I said. My voice must have been sad, because he looked up finally.
“Nobody really does,” he said.
He stood up, and Wilbur looked at me, tongue lolling and ready to give me a good lick.
I reached out and cupped my hand around his long, droopy ear, wishing I could feel the warmth.
He turned to walk away and paused halfway down the cracked concrete walk. “Come visit Wilbur anytime.”
Couldn’t argue. It wasn’t like I could feed the dog, or walk him through the wall when he needed to go out. I watched as Joe rolled the dark sedan’s window down for Wilbur, who loved to let his ears flop in the wind.
I wondered what it took for someone to talk to the dead each day, and what more it cost to have to hide it.
