He spent a year beta testing in the field and discovering his new passion. To him at least, the leap made sense.
He was at the dinner table with his mother, father, and younger sister when he announced his decision to change careers. He stood and revealed it proudly, as if he were coming out of the closet…which his parents (both mathematicians) probably would have preferred. His father made a solitary comment and never brought it up again.
“Full scholarship to Drexel. Could be worse…you could have gone Ivy League. Then you’d have wasted my money instead of the school’s.”
Gomez was from the asshole of North Philly and spent most of his young life working his way out. Along the way, he’d developed a deft gift of gab along with a keen understanding of human nature. Like his partner, his choice to go to the police academy was an easy one.
Their relationship on the job was simple, elegant, and followed suit with their personalities. Lynch usually led things in the field while Gomez conducted the station interviews. In the interims, they found ways to keep each other, and those who happened to be in their proximity, amused. It had been suggested more than once that they start either some sort of self-help discussion-based webcast, or a Vaudeville act.
If you were a perp in the back seat of Lynch’s car, the only consolation you had after having your nose broken was getting to listen to your captors’ banter.
They were finishing up a conversation they’d started at the station, when the Marriott came into view.
Lynch drove; Gomez talked.
“It’s like this. I saw a dead bird in the station parking lot the other day. It was flat…you know...run-over. The thing is, it affected me, hombre. I started thinking about what a miserable waste of life it was. I wanted to undo it somehow, like obsessively…”
He laughed to himself.
“…seriously a freakin’ bird! Then it got worse. I started thinking about sitting in a traffic jam and all the anonymous faces I see in other cars slowly passing me on the right and left and how each of those faces is attached to a life just as important as mine. And then I started thinking about all the mosquitoes I swatted and ants I’ve stepped on and how I can’t begin to understand their sense of self-importance.”
“And you say this is new?”
“No, the bird just woke it up. It’s happened before…bunch o’ times.”
“Really? Do you remember the first?”
Gomez answered with neither apology nor melancholy.
“Yes, I do, and that’s the whole thing, Jaime. It started when my mom died last year.”
Lynch had no response. He offered a front-facing, sympathetic smile that he knew Gomez didn’t want or need. Gomez reached in his collar with his left index finger and pulled out a few inches of a thin, gold chain. He didn’t expose the simple crucifix at the end of it. His partner knew it was there.
“You know where my head’s at. I believe mi madre esta con Dios…”
He crossed himself and kissed his own right thumb as he tucked the chain back into his collar.
“…but, just as a brain exercise, what if body and soul have some sort of symbiotic relationship? What if the soul needs a body the same way a parasite needs a host? Like when a body dies, the soul leaves it and attaches itself to the closest healthy body it can find?”
Lynch took a moment of surprised silence before responding. Ernie’s topics of conversation were rarely so elevated.
“What’s got you thinking this?”
“Like I said, I didn’t used to be this way. I never cared about things like dead birds and the consciousness of insects…but my mother did. I told you I was the only one in the room with her when she died, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. So, you think your mother’s soul…attached…to you somehow?”
“Attached? I wouldn’t use the word ‘attached,’ but check this out. All the time, you hear people talk about sensing the dead, being spoken to by the dead, being influenced by the dead. What if our loved ones literally become a part of us when they die?”
They were stopped at a traffic light. The crime scene was two blocks away.
“But you said they just attach themselves to the nearest healthy body. Does that mean surgeons and EMTs are walking around with dozens of souls? I don’t even know what the word would be…‘inside’ them?”
Gomez took a moment.
“Good point. Maybe it’s not enough for the body to be healthy. Maybe the host needs to be suitable. That would make sense. It follows that loved ones would make the best hosts. It would also explain hauntings.”
“Hauntings?”
“Yeah, like a haunted house. A ghost could be…you know…a soul that hasn’t found a suitable body, so it’s floating around until it does.”
“Nah, I don’t buy it.”
Gomez shrugged and looked out the window at the person in the car next to them. The light turned green, and both cars eased forward.
“Suit yourself Jaime. Like I said, it’s just a brain exercise.”
“But…what you’re saying could also explain schizophrenia.”
Gomez grinned.
“Como es que?”
“Let’s say I give your brain exercise some hypothetical merit. Maybe souls mess up sometimes. Like they enter unsuitable hosts and get rejected. That might explain dual personalities. When it’s really bad, it turns violent and gets mistaken for…”
“Demonic possession?”
Lynch smiled forward again.
“I dunno, maybe.”
Gomez held up his fist for Lynch to bump.
“That’s what I’m talking about, hombre.”
Lynch looked down at his partner’s fist, then back at the road.
“You know I’m not bumping that, right?”
“Pendejo! Anyway, I digress.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
“What was I talking about before I got on this topic?”
Lynch pulled into the Marriott parking lot.
“Neckties, I think.”
A single shot was heard by several guests at the Marriott. The security guard, who had been flirting with the desk clerk instead of monitoring surveillance, waddled out to the parking lot to investigate. After emptying his stomach onto the concrete,
