After Life

No Good Deed

DETECTIVE CALEB DOUGLAS

By the time I blinked, it was gone. That's why I'll chalk this most recent one up to restless nights and a flood of fast food over the past week. Gosh, my mother must be rolling in her grave. This is all a far cry from going to bed before the moon rises every night, and waking up to plates filled with fruits, oats and fresh orange juice most mornings.

A large puff of 'death vapor', as she used to call it, escapes my mouth and I panic, quickly flicking the half-way-burnt cigarette to the ground and crushing it beneath my steel-toed boot.

"Fuck." I'm even more of a mess today, aren't I? I just wasted the last of my pack of Craven A's because I somehow forgot I was wearing plain clothes. And it's not like people would have seen me either. The two things I depend on to give me an inkling of presence are all safely tucked away – the gun holstered on my hip and swallowed up by this two-sizes-too-large blue shirt, and the badge hangs discreetly around my neck. In any case, it's probably time for some police work, hallucinations be damned. God knows I've had it with Kate's week-long, rather slow off-key recital of the Lord's Prayer. Fortunately, this morning she said 'Amen'. If I endured that, I most certainly can tolerate a second-long glimpse of a strange, towering man in a hat and whatever shit he had in has hand. Like all the times before, I was the only one who saw it. No wonder mom carved me into a picky eater. It makes sense that food that kills you shows you the dead. The Douglas family secret they called it.

I should find Newman now though. For real this time. From where I've been standing, out of sight and away from the crowded auditorium, long enough to see him walk in, the kid probably fainted around 10 times already, sheesh. He's built like a truck. No way he gets outa those unscathed. That's a life nearly as rough as this one.

I should note the guy wearing the red handkerchief, the one who threw something at him before disappearing. Looks like I'm not the only one who did that. Good.

"Sir, aren't you gonna get out of the drizzling rain?"

Of course. A sliver of a smile, a slow, deliberate walk and a stiff-necked nod should get me out of this fairly easy. If that fails, flashing the ID card around my neck should do the trick.

"Are you with the media or are you a visiting relative here?" The woman asks. She looks familiar – the matron of the facility! That's who she is. That pretentious smile is temptingly disarming, but her feigned concern doesn't fool me. I was close enough to hear the expletives she fired off at Newman while they posed for photos.

"I'm a police officer, actually."

"Is that so? You look nothing like one. You know, we do have vacancies here at the infirmary. To accommodate new patients and all."

Granny is feisty. She projects overwhelming amounts of condescension and self-righteousness by merely peeking over her glasses at me. I shuffle to remember where my badge was in the absence of an equally insulting remark. You'd think the wrinkles on her face and the grey streaks in her hair would inspire humility in her. But not so. Not so at all.

"Yes, that is so," I say to her, admittedly a few seconds too late to count as a clapback. The mighty struggle to find my ID ends with a thud of a slap to my chest as I feel it rubbing against my skin. A small burp from that thump reminds me I've yet to finish that fourth bottle of Heineken still in the fridge at home. I better wrap up here soon, and I hit the fast-forward button that process by showing her my ID.

"Detective Caleb Douglas? Hm. Are you sure this is you?" Yes, I am unsightly when I drink, eat like a hog and smoke, but I am offended that she implies I look nothing like the guy on the ID. Granted, in the two other times before this in my life when I've been this intoxicated, I've heard similar comments. At no time did I accept any of them. I'm not gonna start now. Her ID-to-Face staring examination meets my unimpressed gaze.