Time Clock Hero (4 page)

The cell phone on the nightstand buzzed early and inconveniently, walking itself to the edge of the wooden table before Phoenix grabbed it.   When he got it right side up, he held it close to his face.  He tried to read the caller ID, squinting through the predawn fog in his eyes like a man needing glasses.  No number.  A name instead: Alaia Jenkins.

“I told you never to bother me at home … what? … one more time? … Where? … gunshot wound to the chest?  I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and landed on the floor.  Phoenix, wearing nothing but his plaid boxer shorts, stood up.  He stayed in place for a few seconds, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and shaking his head like a punch-drunk sailor.  He looked at the time on his phone, blinding himself in the process.  Four-Thirty a.m.  Not even the dead were awake yet and, if they were, they were not to be messed with.

The dull roar of traffic, a forever-permanent part of the Nashville soundscape, seemed to come straight through the walls of his apartment overlooking I-24.  He could sleep through it without a hitch, maybe because he’d been forced to listen to it for so long.  How he heard his phone vibrating and sizzling on the table was a mystery.

Phoenix walked to the bathroom, hating once again the same morning routine, only with renewed fury.  Twelve and half minutes it would take him, no more and no less, to undress, shave, bathe, dry himself, put on deodorant, get dressed, slip his wallet into his pants, then the keys, and finally strap on his thirty-eight – only he’d left it at the office.  He wondered if anyone had designed a time-released Oblivium.  Then maybe he’d be able to wake and be numb to the morning routine.

If his wife Tracy had been here, she would have been up with him.  He could almost hear her in the kitchen, starting the coffee, putting together a couple of eggs and two slices of toast, calling him and telling him it was ready.  And nobody did breakfast like Tracy – eggs, over easy without broken yolks, toast buttered all the way to the edge like a painter doing canvas.  OJ mixed with tea.  She’d leave quickly though, with a “Bye! Bye! Bye!” and a bone-crunching hug.

He grabbed a chocolate Kellogg’s breakfast bar.  He’d get coffee later.

I-24 and Harding place never looked so peaceful during the day.  It would be a rolling roadblock in half an hour.  He took the airport exit east and drove onto Harding Place without a hitch.  The air was cold, and the glare of the street lights seemed garish, as they always did in the morning darkness.  He arrived at the precinct at five on the nose, parked, and noticed a parked ambulance.  He fobbed his way in through the rear door and took the elevator to the second floor.

Chief Cobb and Alaia were waiting.

“And so the plot thickens,” Alaia said, with her eyes on Phoenix.

“No press, yet,” Chief Cobb said, yawning.  “But by now, one of the paramedics is probably on the phone selling the story.  Let’s go.”

When the elevator doors opened onto the third floor, Phoenix stepped off the elevator.  His shoes clicked smartly against the hard, white-tiled floor, and the smell of the lab, always pungent with chemicals, but maybe too strong this morning, hit him hard enough to make his head hurt.  Maybe it was alcohol – maybe something else.  But the air was so thick with it a fly wouldn’t have had a chance.

Phoenix saw five police officers standing in the hall with coffee cups in their hands. Two paramedics loitered with them.  They all leaned forward, looking through the double glass doors, speaking softly among themselves.  One of them had his finger on the glass, probably pointing out something in the room.

Phoenix hurried down the hall and, coming to the glass door to the lab, was nearly knocked down by a photographer coming out of the room.

Chief Cobb removed his phone from his pocket and stared at the screen.  He looked up at Phoenix, then nodded towards the crime scene.  “Get to it – tell me what you see.  I gotta take this.”

Not far into the room, leaning with his back up against a set of white, baked-enamel cabinets, and his head slumped down on his chest, was the body of Dr. Albin Demachi, the senior lab technician with NPD.  Both of his hands, both equally bloodied, were on the floor, steadying his torso in a grotesquely upright position, holding him in place so that he wouldn’t fall over.  Dark red blood nearly obscured the whiteness of his lab coat.  It covered the chest area completely and pooled down into his lap creating a small ocean.

“You followed procedure, I take it?” Phoenix asked Alaia.

“And for some reason, Chief Cobb wants you to go over everything,” she said.  “All we need is an autopsy and the bullet – not a thing more.  Yes, Phoenix, I’m finished here.”

“You should have waited – I should have been notified earlier.”

“Sure, I should have called you, but I didn’t because you needed the rest.  You would have been late anyway.”  She opened the glass door for one of the officers.  He and two others stepped into the room just behind Alaia, and the door quietly swung back and closed.

Phoenix turned around.  The officers stood there with their hands in their belts like they had nothing better to do than enjoy the gore.   He glanced at their faces for a moment and gave them a little smile and a nod.  He got nothing in return.  He faced forward again, towards the body of Albin Demachi.  He focused intensely on the body of his old friend; and from the very corner of his peripheral vision he saw Alaia eyeing him, and he timed it so that he turned away just as she started to speak.

“Let me guess,” Phoenix said.  He swung sharply around and so did the officers. “I did this – and you just know that one of my thirty-eights is sitting in Albin’s chest lodged right up against his spine.  Okay, I confess – I did it.  Now will you let me get to work here?”  His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Alaia pursed her lips, dour-faced and disapproving.

Phoenix, after a brief pause, smiled.  He stepped away from Albin and towards the other end of the room and he answered his phone: “Detective Malone.”

“Thirty-eight bullet, you’re right,” a smooth, calm voice breathed through the phone.  “Dead on – from a Smith and Wesson.  And, yes, you did it.  Well, that’s what Cobb’s going to say.”

“Who is this?”

“Eaten any Krystal’s lately?”

Chief Cobb came into the room.  The officers made a path, and he walked over to Alaia.  Cobb put his hand around her waist, which looked odd, and she turned her body around, moving as fluidly as fine champagne in a crystal glass.

Phoenix didn’t say a word.

“Your gun – you left it on your desk yesterday, making you the smartest man that ever lived,” the man on the phone said.  “It’s short one round.  And you can guess where that round is.”

Phoenix lowered his chin against his collar to hide the chaos in his face, and he turned away so that nobody would see or hear him.  “Who is this?”

“Look, I’m here to do you a favor,” the voice said.  “I owe you, big time, bigger than you will ever know – so listen closely.”

With Alaia and Chief Cobb taking an interest in his direction, Phoenix took a few steps further away and turned his back on them.

“I’m … I’m listening.”

“Whether you like it or not, Alaia Jenkins will probably get your job – there’s too much stacked against you.  Plus, you’re always late – and that’s caught up with you, only you don’t know it yet.”

Phoenix felt his guts somersault.  “Go on.”

“And that’s not going to matter anyway,” the man said.  “Oooh, did you see that?”

Phoenix turned around in time to see Chief Cobb and Alaia leave the lab.  The three officers in the room remained hovering near the glass doors; but they turned to ogle Alaia and, when the door closed, one of them grunted.  “See what?  What am I looking at?”

“Dr. Albin is starting to twitch.”

“He’s dead.”

“Obviously – but he’s about to pull a June Buckner, only from the other side of he grave.  I suggest you go and get your gun.  Oh, and you were right.  You are getting close on that missing person’s case, by the way.  But have you ever thought of listing the missing people alphabetically by profession?  Sounds strange, I know.  But look into it.  You might find something interesting.”

Phoenix stood there without moving, staring into the blackness of the moment.  He was thoroughly out of his league on this one, and he could only marvel at just how dark this whole business had suddenly become.  He scrunched up his eyebrows and shook his head.  “Is this a joke?”

“And find out who they were giving money to while you’re at it,” the man said.  “That’s it – that’s all I’m going to give you for now.  So---”

“I am being framed then, right?”

“You’re being taken into hand,” The voice replied.

“And---?”

“And what?” the voice asked impatiently.

“What about June Buckner?”

“Just go get your gun,” the voice said.  “And I’d hurry if I were you.  The guy who does the autopsies?  Don’t worry.  He’s going to find somebody else’s thirty-eight inside Dr. Demachi.  But if you can make some evidence disappear – like a certain syringe – and take it to your old pharmacy friend at St. David’s University, you’ll throw Cobb off and learn something.”

“Wait.”

“What now?”

“June Buckner – and Albin Demachi – they’re all part of this?”

The man paused.  Then he sighed, maybe, like an adult wearying of a child’s questions.  “Let’s look at it this way.  June Buckner and Albin Demachi are missing right?  So add them to your missing persons’ files.  Or do you need another hint?”

Phoenix kept his eyes trained on the wreck that was Albin Demachi. Not looking away, not blinking, not understanding.

“And there’s something else,” the man said.  “I want to save you.  Goodbye, Phoenix Malone.”

He is being watched, and he knows this, but Phoenix just stands there, not once taking his eyes off the body crumbled up against the cabinet.  But Phoenix suddenly finds himself in motion, and he’s walking apprehensively towards the crime scene, knowing that he doesn’t look casual because he’s trying to look casual.  Chief Cobb and Alaia are coming back through the glass doors, followed by one of the captains and two paramedics steering a stretcher.  Phoenix stops near the body of Dr. Demachi and he feels himself kneeling down, and he’s paying special attention to Albin’s two bloody hands.  They’re still, those hands, and Dr. Demachi is dead, as dead as dead can be.  A gunshot wound to the chest?  That would do it every time. 

Phoenix rose to his feet.  Alaia had done the necessary work – he’d allow her that much.  Not because she might have done it correctly – that had nothing to do with the situation. 

Because he hated seeing one of his friends sitting dead in such a horrific pose, Phoenix decided to leave, to let Alaia Jenkins have her crime scene.  But just before he turned, he saw the left hand of Dr. Albin Demachi twitch.

Phoenix didn’t believe it, but neither did he call anyone’s attention to it for fear they’d think him mad.  He rubbed his eyes and tilted his head to one side, trying to get a better angle.  He knelt down again and reached out and touched Albin’s right hand, then he grabbed it.  The hand twitched, strongly this time, and Phoenix let go of it in horror, dropping it as if he’d accidentally picked up a toad.  “Did you actually check for a pulse, Detective Jenkins?” 

“Standard operating procedure,” she said.  “I checked his pulse when I arrived, and I guess he’s been dead since midnight.”

“So, would you guess that Dr. Demachi is actually dead, Detective Alaia Jenkins?” Phoenix said, specially pronouncing her name slowly and emphatically.

“What are you talking about?”

Phoenix shook his head.  “And what if I told you he wasn’t?”

“If you think he’s alive, then you’re probably out of your---”

Dr. Demachi’s hands, both of them, began to twitch.

Alaia’s eyes lit up.  And Chief Cobb, with alarm ringing all over his face, a face Phoenix had never seen him make before, stepped backwards, pulling Alaia along with him. 

Dr. Demachi began to twitch again, monstrously and hideously, first in his hands, then in his arms and legs, like a defective marionette being jerked loose from its strings by a rabid dog.  His eye lids flicked open. His pupils were dilated to the size of quarters and blood red.  His head began to shake in bouts, first in short bursts from side to side, and then more violently, like an animal trying to ward off flies.  His shoulders, first the left and then the right, began to shrug, almost as if choreographed to the movements of some macabre movie trailer music.

Dr. Albin Demachi stood up. 

The officers backed up into the glass door, struggling against each other to get out, sloshing their wimp-colored coffee on everything within three feet.  They got the door open and moved quickly into the hall, two of them colliding and tangling as they hurried, falling over each other onto the hard white floor.  The paramedics followed them out, one of them yelling for his mother, and the whole lot of them, unsure about what was happening or what they should do, backed up and away from the lab doors as Dr. Demachi stood there quivering on his feet.

Chief Cobb raised his hand to his chest as he stepped back, looking towards the door.  Alaia, her posture suddenly stiff, froze in place.  Phoenix reached into her jacket, pulled out her thirty-eight, and told her and Cobb to hurry out.  Dr. Demachi, looking like a plate full of quivering sushi, lunged.