The car was full of an uneasy silence as we followed the directions Tolliver had been given. Before I had time to calm myself and prepare mentally, we were at the morgue. There were so many dead inside, and they were so fresh, that the vibrations gathered in intensity and strength. When I got out of the car, I was already feeling a little light on my feet. I know we went in, and I know we talked to a few people, but later I remembered nothing. By the time we walked down a corridor I was humming from my head to my toes. I could hardly note my physical surroundings as we followed the very heavy, very young woman leading us to the body we'd come to see. Her big rear swayed in front of me as she walked, and her lank dark hair switched from side to side. She hadn't bothered with makeup, and her clothes were strictly thrift shop. This must be a job that sucked the hope out of you.
The young woman knocked at a door that looked no different from any of the other doors. She must have heard a reply, because she held the door open and we went inside. A sandy-haired man in a lab coat said, 'Hi.' He was standing against the wall. There were two gurneys in the room. The lump on one of them was far bigger than the lump on the other. Tolliver gasped and coughed from the smell. Even through the heavy plastic covering the bodies, the odor was pervasive.
I said, 'Tolliver, you can go,' but I knew he wouldn't.
I introduced myself and Tolliver.
'Dr. Lyle Hatton,' the man said. He was very tall and gawky, and he had a way of looking down through his glasses that registered as contemptuous.
His dislike and scorn was something I could ignore in the face of the overwhelming thrumming.
I started to lift the plastic so I could touch Tabitha's body directly, but Lyle Hatton said, 'Gloves!'
He was annoying. I had a mission here, and the vibrations were resounding so loudly that I could hardly comprehend what he wanted. It seemed my choice was either touching her through the plastic sheet, or putting on plastic gloves. I wasn't aware I'd ever thought about the barriers between me and a corpse, and classified them. Cotton would have been better than plastic for my purpose, I knew instinctively.
But I wasn't being given that option. So I lay my hand on the plastic sheet, over the area where her heart should have been; of course, the shape under the sheet was not a full shape anymore, not after eighteen months in the ground. Immediately, I fell into Tabitha's last moments: woken from sleep, a nap. Seeing a blue cushion, descending. Feeling… betrayal, disbelief, horror, NO NO NO NO Mama save me save me save me.
'Save me,' I whispered. 'Save me.' I wasn't touching her anymore. Tolliver had his arms around me. Tears were streaming down my face.
I put my arms around Tolliver, too; a dangerous indulgence, but I needed him so much. I looked at the masked man in his medical scrubs. 'You collected evidence from the body?' I asked.
'I was there,' Dr. Hatton said guardedly.
'Did you find any threads in her nose and mouth? Blue, they would have been.'
'Yes,' he said, after a notable pause. 'Yes, we did.'
'Suffocated,' I said. 'But she fought all the way.'
Dr. Hatton made a sudden movement with his hand, as if he was going to show me something, but then he stopped in mid-motion.
'What are you?' he asked, as if he was talking to some interesting hybrid.
'I'm just a woman who got hit by lightning,' I said. 'I wasn't born the way I am.'
'Lightning either kills you or you get over it,' Dr. Hatton said impatiently.
'I can tell you've never dealt with a live person who's had the experience,' I said. 'You get hit with a few thousand volts, a few months later you come talk to me about what your life is like.'
'If that many volts hits you directly, you're dead,' he said simply. 'What people survive is the energy discharge from it hitting very nearby.'
I couldn't believe this guy, arguing with me about what had happened to me while Tabitha's body was right here between us.
'Whatever,' I said, and straightened up to show Tolliver I was ready to go. It was hard to pull my arms from around him, but I did it, and his arms loosened around me.
I went over to the second shape, the larger one. I closed my eyes and placed my hand over the body.
My eyes flew open and I glared at Dr. Hatton. 'This isn't Clyde Nunley,' I said. 'This is some young man who died of knife wounds.'
Dr. Hatton looked at me as though he were seeing a ghost. 'You're right,' he said, as if I weren't standing right there. 'You're right, my God. Okay,' he said, very carefully, as though I might pounce on him, 'let me take you to Dr. Nunley.'
Tolliver was furious with Lyle Hatton, and I wasn't far behind him in that. But I was determined to complete my errand. We followed the doctor down the hall to a larger room, a cold room, full of bodies. It was not orderly; the gurneys were not lined up in neat rows. Here and there a hand or foot protruded. The smell was unique, a bouquet de la mort. The vibrations in this place were overwhelming. All the dead waited for my attention, from an old woman who'd been murdered in her own home to a baby who'd died of SIDS. But I was only here to call on one corpse, and this time Lyle Hatton led me to him. I was dizzy from being surrounded with all the newly dead, and it took me a long minute to focus on Clyde; then I saw it all again: the surprise, the blow, the fall into the grave. I nodded sharply to Dr. Hatton when I was through, and I staggered as I turned away from my final contact with Dr. Clyde Nunley.
'You can walk?' Tolliver asked, very low.
'Yes,' I said.
'Wait,' Lyle Hatton said. I looked at him inquiringly. The overhead light winked on his gold-rimmed glasses. 'Since you're here, can I ask you to do one more thing? You were right about the blue threads. You knew when I showed you the wrong body. Maybe you can help me with one more thing.'
Everyone wants a freebie.
