I Speak for the Dead

Part Seven

Weeks passed without either a clue or a date. After fifteen days without either, I'm ready to turn in my hat for a new line of work. Terry showed up at the office everyday with a smile and a shrug of his broad shoulders. I could feel his dark eyes on me as I pulled through musty old court records, looking for something that everybody else missed at the time, something that would leap off the page after a hundred years of hiding. A needle in a haystack was nothing compared to the feat I had set for myself.

It was three-thirteen, on a deary Thursday afternoon. If I drew a paycheck, it would have been payday. As it was, I paid myself, and the boss was out of money. The pages in the court docket book were old, and they were sucking more moisture from my fingers than my lotion could replenish. Terry cleared his throat.

I struck first. “Go ahead.” I didn't turn to look. I didn't have to, and I didn't want to.

“Excuse me?”

“Go ahead. Say it.”

“Say what, Columbo? I told you so? Well, I'm not.”

I pushed the book away from me, like a restaurant entree covered with cat hair. “Maybe you should, Terry. Maybe someone should.” I rubbed my eyes, hard, until I could almost feel my fingers pressing through to the back of my head. “There is nothing here that I can see. Nothing. They followed up on every lead. They knocked on every door. They asked everyone in the city, it seems like, where they were and what they were doing.”

Terry reached around me, placing a mug of hot tea beside my right elbow. “Maybe you need to take a break.”

“You mean give up.”

He sat on the edge of my desk and sipped his own tea. I've told him a hundred times not to sit on the furniture, but he's like a dog. Someone did a lousy job of training him, starting with his mother and ending with me.

Terry crossed his legs. “Maybe you should.” 

I shook my head, and shook Terry's proffered hand as he reached out to brush my hair back. It may be blond and a little stringy, but it's mine, and nobody touches it without my say so.  "Maybe I should.  And maybe a lot of things.  Maybe doesn't pay the bills, Terry." 

"Neither does this gig, Rachel."  He pulled a crumpled check from his pants pocket and smoothed it out on his thigh.  I kept my eyes on it, despite feeling them tug at the back of my brain.  "This isn't going to bounce, is it?" 

I shrugged.  "Not today.  Tomorrow, I can't guarantee it.  Maybe you're the one who should give up, Terry.  Why do you stick around?  I pay you dirt, and treat you like it." 

Terry shrugged, stood up and walked toward the door.  "Maybe I like the view," he said. 

*** 

After he closed the door behind him, I sat and rubbed my eyes.  There are days my eyes feel like they could use a quick bath, probably in a short glass of scotch, but I couldn't figure out a way to get them out and then back in.  I slid my bottom drawer open.  Keeping a bottle there would have proven a real shortcut, but it was empty.  In that respect, it was a lot like my bank account.   

I pushed my chair away from the desk and spun around, staring around my office like I was seeing it for the first time.  Everything, aside from my computer and the electronic nerves that kept it going, was old, and dark.  I liked it that way.  Maybe I was born in the wrong time.  Maybe I'm a time jumper who forgot where I came from and was trying subconciously to get back.  Maybe I'm a sucker for Art Deco.  Maybe I'm just cheap. 

My desk is old and battered.  I'd picked up it up a sale for a school that was closing, and it made me feel like a principal when I sat behind it and ordered Terry around.  I paused.  Terry was everything the desk wasn't.  He was young and good-looking, and for some reason, he seemed interested in me.  I knew I could keep up the tough act and keep pushing him away, but what kept pulling him back like a yo-yo?   

"I'm thinking this thing to death," I said out loud.  I reached up and pulled the light chain.  It was time to go home.  Time to push Emma Gold, and Terry, both from my mind, and lose myself for a little while.  Maybe things would look brighter on the other side of the dark, dark woods.