SAM SAT IN HIS usual mom and pop on East Colfax waiting for his usual lunch. When the waitress arrived with the bowl of green chile stew he’d accidentally caught a glimpse of the TV screen on the wall to his right, his remaining eye side, showing the start of a horse race at Arapahoe Park. He knew which horse would win. He always did. Whatever it was that gave him that knowledge was nothing he wanted anything to do with. So he didn’t gamble. He drank. Well, continued to drink since he’d started that up when Gracie died.
The prescience thing began in the violent end of his last case as a Denver PD detective lieutenant, the murder of Ozman Gulenkov, an immigrant from Ukraine known to the local psychic community as The Oracle. Knows All, Sees All. Though apparently not his own coming murder.
Just as Sam hadn’t foreseen losing his own left eye in the shootout with the Oracle’s killer. In the cemetery where his ten year old daughter was buried. A standoff had erupted in gunfire and the killer’s crystal ball – which she was intent on burying in sacred ground – was hit. A shard flew into his left eye and lodged itself in his optic nerve.
Unlike Odin, Sam didn’t believe he’d gained wisdom in return for his eye. Ferocious headaches, yes. Writing was hardest because it strained his eye so much. He also had to find a way to live without the only career he’d ever wanted, because anything was better than giving in to self-pity. He’d slid down that chute before, landed in a vat of cheap mezcal and almost drowned in it.
And the local psychic community anointed him the next Oracle. As if he believed in their foolishness. Though he did use it to track down Sister Minerva, the fake medium who’d drained his and his ex’s bank account after little Gracie died. He was still embarrassed by the video he made posing as The Oracle and posted online to trap Sister Minerva. It only reinforced the gullible crowd’s belief that he was in fact the next human vessel of The Oracle.
Successfully hunting down Sister Minerva helped pull him out of his drunken wallowing. Now a piece in the Denver Post reported that she was talking to the police about other crimes that she ‘had knowledge of’ in hopes of getting her sentence reduced. Some of them reportedly went far beyond fleecing old ladies out of their investments or grieving mothers who’d lost children out of their life savings.
Turning away from the TV on the wall Sam bent his head and focused on spooning the rich stew into his mouth and cooling the heat with beer. Mere minutes later, though, he looked at the TV. He couldn’t help it. As he knew it would, number six won the fourth race going away. He could have won $50 on a $2 bet.
He sighed, pushed his empty bowl to one side and pulled a textbook out of his backpack, opened it to the chapter on police investigative procedures that he was teaching that week, underlined a word here and a word there, scribbled notes in the margins to remind himself of examples from his experiences in the field. At forty-two Sam had become a member of the gig economy, teaching investigative procedures at a community college in Littleton to augment his disability pension. His daily routine was reassuring, real life as opposed to the unreal world of The Oracle.
From his blind side a middle-aged woman hurrying between tables banged into Sam, almost knocking him off his chair and kicking his backpack over, spilling books onto the linoleum floor.
“Hey!” Sam shouted.
She ignored him, barged through the shop’s door and was gone. Sam gathered up his books and notes and supplies, muttering. Clearly, he’d be safer at home.
His apartment was only a few blocks away down Logan. In fact, most of what he needed was within a half mile walking distance of his apartment: Capitol Hill Liquors on Eleventh and the launderette next door to it, a small market he could walk to even in a snowstorm. He valued this because driving with one eye was problematic, especially at night. He could do it but gauging distances without binocular vision was often a guessing game and he always breathed a sigh of relief when he got to his destination without rear-ending someone. His girlfriend Alice drove on those evenings and weekends they spent together.
Sam crossed Colfax to the east side of Logan so he could keep traffic on his eye side, crossed 14th and 13th shaded by tall trees, past garden apartments, old houses, the local bar-and-grill that stocked his brand of mezcal, and a pocket parking lot. Below 12th fewer cars were parked along the curb and the street began to feel more residential.
He knew that Gulenkov, who also had lost his left eye, became a recluse on this block and wound up never leaving his apartment until he was carried out in a body bag. Sam’s relationship with Alice kept him from Gulenkov’s fate but he was aware of its pull. He could see his life contracting into those same few streets on Capitol Hill and he didn’t want to end up like that, a fat lump who spent his days sitting in a second-hand office chair staring out the rear window onto a garbage-filled alley until a neighbor smashed his skull in with a crystal ball, replaying history.
He’d almost reached his apartment when he tripped over something. He stumbled, fell forward onto his hands and knees and felt more than heard the rapid flat slaps of gunshots. A bullet hissed past his ear like an angry wasp, then he was spun around and slammed to the ground as if he’d been tackled. Sam lay half on the sidewalk, half on the grass verge, dirt in his nose, his head against the base of an oak, facing the street. He might have seen a tan Corolla racing away south through the intersection with 11th out of the corner of his eye.
Someone in that Corolla tried to kill him. He was overcome with anger so violent it shook him.
A Samaritan who rushed to his aid mistook his shaking for something else. Laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder he said, “Where are you hurt?”
Sam rolled away and tried unsuccessfully to get to his feet, which is when the searing pain under his right armpit erupted, followed by a nauseating deep bone ache. He grabbed his side and his hand came away sticky with his own blood. He’d taken a bullet. He stared at his bloody palm.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, “Not again,” and collapsed into darkness.
#
Sam became aware of a light shining into his eye and someone talking to him. Fire in his left side roused him. He was lying on a gurney in the street. Uniformed officers were all around. He raised his head and saw an ambulance a few feet away, like the open gates of hell waiting to receive him. A firm hand pushed him back down. An EMT pushed an IV needle into a vein on the top of his hand and opioid slammed his pain receptors shut, taking Sam’s muscle tone with it. He sagged back.
The woman holding the IV bag over him said, “That’s better. You’re lucky. Another inch or two and you’d be dead.”
As EMTs lifted his gurney and slid him into the ambulance Sam turned his head and looked back at the sidewalk that tripped him. There was nothing he could see that would have caught toe or heel, no raised edge, nothing. It was all smooth. He looked down at his shoes but there were no loose laces hanging off his trainers. But something had caught his foot and tripped him at exactly the right moment to save him.
“Lucky, yeah,” he said, rolling the sounds out slowly and carefully as though they were marbles he had to be careful not to swallow. “I feel lucky.”
“Actually, you are, Sam.”
“Wilson?” He thought he recognized the voice, a former colleague at the Sixth. Low man on the depth chart.
“That’s me. What’s this all about Sam?”
Slowly, word by word, Sam said, “Damned if I know.”
“Could be another random drive-by shooting. Wrong place, wrong time.”
Even doped up Sam knew at least one better possibility: Sister Minerva’s crew. He could have reminded Wilson of the obvious alternative but speech was exhausting, the muted but insistent pain in his side was distracting and he couldn’t keep his eyes open. And then there was the problem of what tripped him.
He waved a feeble hand at Wilson. “Later.”
#
At the hospital, after a long wait for x-rays and a longer wait for suturing and bandaging, Sam sat on the edge of a bed in the emergency room surrounded by a taupe gauze curtain, one thigh hiked up on the mattress, leg dangling over the aluminum rail. Thick gauze and tape wrapped his ribs from armpit to belly, a thicker patch covered the sewn-up wound beneath. The wrapping was there to stabilize a cracked rib, number four, that protected his aorta and upper lung. The wrapping also made it hard for him to breathe. Sam’s backpack was beside him on the mattress.
The hospital had thoughtfully provided him with a starched white shirt with the hospital’s logo embroidered in blue over the left side pocket that was likely to show up on the list of charges his insurance wouldn’t cover.
“Work with your diaphragmatic breathing, the nurse told me,” Sam said.
“Sounds like something from a yoga class,” Captain Martinez said, “Breathe through your third eye.”
Sam coughed. “Don’t make me laugh.”
The Captain, a small, solid man with thick gray hair, sat on an aluminum chair beside the bed. In his hand he held a paper bag that contained Sam’s dirt-smeared eyepatch, his torn and blood-smeared shirt and his cellphone. “Sorry, sorry,” he said.
“And then she reminded me that I was lucky to be alive,” Sam said, “As if complaining was disrespectful to God or something. I am fucking tired of being told I’m lucky to be alive. It hurts, a lot. And I am fucking tired of being shot. Not shot at. Shot.”
“We don’t like it, neither, Sam.”
“We? Do you include Wilson in that? I mean, really, Cap, Wilson?”
“He wanted it. So yes, Wilson doesn’t like it and he wanted the case.”
“Humph. Well, um.”
“Him and the new sergeant are already checking the alibis of the Minerva gang. Oh, you don’t know her, the new sergeant. Selena Alvarez. Came from the Arvada PD. Ex military. Seems pretty sharp.”
Sam was about to say it was good that at least one of them had brains but he stopped himself. Whatever his motive, Wilson cared that he’d taken a bullet.
A doctor stuck her head in and handed Sam an iPad and stylus. An orderly with a wheelchair accompanied her. “Sign this and you can go,” she said.
As soon as Sam signed she pulled the curtain away and handed him a small plastic bottle containing a few white pills and a prescription for more.
“You got a regular physician? No?” She handed him a business card. “Call me in two weeks and we’ll see about those stitches.”
“As if I can get this filled even with a scrip,” he said, looking at the bottle of oxycodone. He slid off the bed onto his feet and grunted as his body took his weight.
“Remember. Call me.” She turned and left.
Captain Martinez handed him the paper bag. Sam dropped the pill bottle into the bag He pulled out his eyepatch, examined it, decided it was too dirty to put on and returned it to the bag then stuffed the bag into his backpack..
“Might as well look like Popeye for now,” he said. Sam maneuvered himself into the wheelchair and dropped the backpack onto his lap.
The orderly wheeled him towards the hospital exit. Walking beside him, the Captain said, “Got a ride?”
“Alice is picking me up. I’ll stay with her for a while.”
By the time the hospital doors slid open for Sam’s wheelchair, the sun had sunk beneath the Front Range. Headlights on, Alice’s Mini was waiting for him. He pushed himself out of the chair as soon as it stopped so she wouldn’t think he was hurt more than he was. Her Mini was a UK import with right hand drive. Being a passenger in her car always disoriented him at first because without a left eye he had no peripheral vision and it was like there was no left side of her car.
She hurried around to open the passenger door for him. Alice was a year or two older than Sam, about his same height and at what he claimed was perfect fighting weight – a poor joke of his that had become a private endearment. Unruly brown hair framed a strong face featuring observant gray-blue eyes and a sharp nose. A professor at Regis University on the west side of town with a joint appointment in the psych and religious studies departments, she was also a professional magician during summer breaks. Sam was pretty sure he was in love with her but it had become difficult for him to sort out his emotions the past few years.
He hugged her with his good right side. She laid her head on his good shoulder for a moment, then took his backpack.
“Thank God you’re okay,” she said, “A quote from Father Manny, who sends his prayers.”
“If Manny’s praying for me I must be in the news again.” Sam folded himself gingerly into the Mini’s left front seat.
“What girl can resist a celebrity?”
Sam snorted.
The day was getting to him. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open but when he closed them his head started spinning and bile rose in his throat. The pain in his side was constant pressure and he had to breathe in shallow pants. She had to strap him into his seat because he couldn’t twist his torso to do it.
“Could we stop at the University chapel before we get to your place?” he said. “I want to light a candle for myself and one for Gracie. It’s not that I believe. It’s just.”
“I know,” she said. “It’s what one does.”
He dozed while she drove west across town and parked in a faculty space behind the school’s chapel, a modern building masquerading as an Alpine ski chalet: A-frame-like triangles, high ceilings, exposed beams and panels of light wood that recalled the forested mountains along Interstate 70, walls of tall windows letting in light and space and presumably the benevolent gaze of God Himself.
She woke him with a tap on his thigh. When he’d pried his eyes open she said, “Sure you’re going to be okay? You’re full of oxy. I can come with you.”
“Fine, I’m fine. Really.”
“Okay. I’ll wait for you here in the car,” she said. “Call if you need me.”
He did need her to release the seatbelt catch but he was able to get out and walk around the building by himself. He had to press the handicap pad to open the chapel’s doors, though, because he couldn’t pull them open.
Sam plucked two candles from the stand just outside the sanctuary, lit them and placed them together, Graciela and himself. Turning off his phone he entered and sat in a folding chair near the back. The empty altar’s polished brass accessories lay beside a closed Bible on purple velvet awaiting the next Mass. A large metal-framed crucifix hung on steel cables from the ceiling over it.
The silence was a blessing. The image of his young daughter’s body in her hospital bed forced itself into his mind: her little shape shrouded under a sheet printed with happy teddy bears wearing tiny stethoscopes. Tears filled his eyes. He missed Gracie’s voice ringing down the stairwell of their townhouse, the feel of her in his arms, the coconut scent of shampoo in the shiny black hair she’d inherited from her mother.
Even in the happy days with Alice he was aware of an emptiness, of something missing, and what was missing was Gracie. Her loss hurt so much he rarely allowed memories of her into his day and then only when he let them, as he did now.
Since her relentless descent into death his life had been filled with violence and more loss: Maura leaving him alone and nearly bankrupt; the murder of the so-called Oracle; the shootout in the cemetery, the loss of his left eye and his career. And now this attempt on his life. It all paraded across his drugged mind in the sanctuary, a rebuke to God. As if to punish him, banked desire for mezcal rose to assault him. Sam hung his head and waited for it to pass.
He became aware of someone else in the sanctuary with him: perhaps a sound so faint he didn’t consciously hear it, or the lightest wisp of moving air brushing the hairs on the back of his neck. He turned to see who was behind him and twisted awkwardly, falling and pulling the folding chair down with him.
He was only able to catch a glimpse of a woman sliding out through the double doors behind him – White, middle-aged, heavy-set; dressed in black pants and top; short dark hair. Had he seen her before? Where? Why did she run when he noticed her?
Sam pushed the chair away and pressed his right hand against the bandage covering the stitches on his side, hoping he hadn’t torn them open. He tried to stand but dizziness and nausea were too strong so he lay on the oak floor telling himself he’d try again as soon as the wave passed.
After what felt like an hour but he figured was probably more like ten minutes, Sam decided he’d waited long enough and despite the oxy and the stitches he’d damn well better get to his feet. So he did, in stages, first rolling to his hands and knees, then pushing himself up one leg at a time, then waiting for balance. As he stumbled out of the sanctuary he turned back and, out of habit, nodded to the crucifix hanging above the empty altar.
Slowly and carefully, he walked around to the parking lot out back to Alice. He leaned against the side of the car and rested for a moment before opening the door and falling into the passenger seat.
“You don’t look so good,” she said.
He told her about the woman who was watching him and about his fall.
Alice grimaced. “I should have come for you. Let’s get you into bed so I can take a look at your stitches.”
Sam sighed deeply. “No place I’d rather be.”
She snorted.
#
They pulled into Alice’s short driveway and parked in the carport that opened onto the kitchen. Wilson was waiting for them at the curb, leaning against the side of his pickup, vaping. Her house was a modest brick rambler on a side street a few blocks east of Federal Boulevard. Wilson followed them as Alice walked Sam into her bedroom and settled him on her bed.
“So tell me,” Wilson said. With that general instruction he pulled out a note pad and pencil.
Sam went through the shooting and followed with a report of the incident at the Regis chapel.
Wilson wasn’t interested. “So maybe someone was watching you and she ran away. Or maybe she was there like you, to pray, and you scared her off. Without that eyepatch your face can be pretty scary, no offense. And then you went crashing around. An old woman – all right, a middle-aged woman – could easily be scared.
“And I don’t believe the shooter was driving a Corolla, Sam. If it weren’t one of the Minervas, then – ‘course you wouldna know, but lately the drive-bys we’re seeing are all from a black Nissan. So you musta seen a black Nissan.”
Sam and Alice exchanged looks.
“So. Nothin’ else?”
“Nope.”
Wilson put his pad away. “Okay. We’ll see what we can do. But it’s probably a rando and ya know they don’t get solved much. So. Well. Glad it wasn’t worse.”
“Thanks,” Sam said, closing his eye.
Alice led Wilson to the kitchen door where they shook hands awkwardly.
Back in the bedroom she said to Sam, “Wow. He doesn’t inspire confidence, does he.”
“That’s Wilson.” Sam said. “I’ll have to solve this one myself.”
“We’ll have to.”
“Right,” he said. “We.”
After all, she was as much the image of The Oracle as he was.
#
Late the next morning Sam awoke, his mind chasing the wisp of a dissipating dream. He’d been in a hospital bed with Maura standing over him, her face contorted with hatred, and a keening heart monitor somewhere nearby.
In reality, she hadn’t visited him in hospital when he lost his left eye. She was already gone. The divorce he’d forced on her despite the Church’s admonition against it was his response.
Along with the remembered fragments, the faded dream bothered him with a nagging feeling that it meant something he needed to know. Though he knew all he needed to know in his lifetime about Sister Minerva and ex-wives and dead daughters.
Alice came in when she heard him moving around and sat beside him on the bed wearing her red silk pajamas. “How’s the side?”
The vitality of her presence blew Sam’s black thoughts away. He said, “Doesn’t hurt as much, I think. A few Advil ought to be enough, so long as I don’t try to raise my arm over my head.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Then why the troubled face?”
“A dream. Something about Maura and a heart monitor’s warning sound. I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much.”
“Ha. Maybe the Oracle is trying to communicate with you but you’re such a rational creature that the only way it can do it is in your dreams.”
“Please. Enough.”
Alice laughed. “Okay. But I do believe you’re trying to tell yourself something. Something you know but don’t know you know. It’ll come to you. In the meantime let’s get you up and moving.”
“I’ve got a class to teach tonight. Oh shit. Last night.”
“The school called while you were sleeping and I explained,” she said. “That woman – even taking a bullet wasn’t excuse enough for not letting her know you wouldn’t show up to teach.”
“I’ll call her and let her know I won’t be in for a while.”
At breakfast they sat facing each other across the room table, she still in her pajamas and he in fresh boxers and the bathrobe she’d bought him last Christmas. Coffee mug in hand, Alice had Sam’s laptop open and was reading.
“Did I make the front page?” he said, pouring coffee.
She shook her head. “Page three.”
“Any photos?”
“There’s a good one of you on a stretcher on the ground and -,” her voice cracked, letting a half-cry escape. “You looked a bloody mess.”
Sam reached across the table and laid a hand on her forearm. “Hey. I’m right here. Looks a lot worse than it was.”
“Still.” She wiped a tear that had slid down her cheek.
“I know.”
“This has to stop,” she said.
“We’ll stop it,” he said.
She took a deep breath. “The psychics are all aflutter over the reports of your shooting,” she said.
Sam groaned. “I don’t want to know.”
“Who would be so mad at the Oracle that he’d want to kill you?”
“Or she. Likely she. Recent history suggests it’s not an unusual desire.”
“But seriously,” Alice said.
“Seriously?” he said. “One: Sister Minerva’s gang. Wilson and Alvarez are checking them out; two, someone who holds a serious grudge against The Oracle for a reason we need to discover. Maybe that woman in the chapel. I have the feeling I’ve seen her before.”
“Don’t forget three: something else,” she said.
“Right. Something else. But remember, I’m the Oracle. For some reason that woman wants me dead. Trust me.”
“Something to do with a hospital if your dream is to be believed,” she said. “What could The Oracle have done that would cause someone to hate you so much they would try to kill you? We only did the one video with you as The Oracle and that was aimed at Sister Minerva. Her crew is either in jail or on trial.”
“There’s gotta be something,” he said. Sam’s cell phone rang. “That must be them now.” He put the phone on speaker so they both could hear the call.
It was Sergeant. Alvarez. “We got him,” she said. “He’s in custody at the station.”
Alice said, “What? How?”
“He showed up late last night and confessed. A former student of yours from years ago, Professor. Took a job with the NSA in Kabul and then at Fort Meade when Trump sold out the Afghans. Eventually he returned to finish school. Carried a torch for you and then there you are with, as he called Sam, ‘a one-eyed phony psychic ex-cop’. No offense. Name’s Ernie Polchak.”
“What? It was about me?” Alice said.
“That’s what he said.”
“He forgot ‘drunk’,” Sam said. “One-eyed phony psychic ex-cop drunk.”
“Ernie Polchak? I have no recollection of him,” Alice said.
Sam said, “And he drives a tan Corolla?”
“Nope. An old Jeep. Anyway, you can resume your life now.”
“Wait. What about the Minervas?” he said.
“We got every one of ‘em on CCTV in the Federal Office Building downtown at the time of the shooting.”
Sam said, “Thanks for calling,” but she had already disconnected.
“They didn’t have to work very hard at it, did they?” Alice said.
“Sometimes it’s like that,” Sam said. “But one-eyed phony psychic ex-cop drunk? That’s the kind of man you were looking for?”
“Yup. One of a kind,” she said and kissed him.
#
Sitting up in bed the next morning Sam said, “It can’t be him. The woman watching me. The tan Corolla. It can’t be that guy.”
“But they said.”
He said, “False confessions happen all the time. Ernie got attention, your attention, this way. It’s John Lennon’s murder all over again, though I’m no celebrity.”
“Among the psychics you are. You’re The Oracle.”
He climbed out of bed and walked naked over to the window that looked east.
She stared at the stain of dried blood on the bandage where he’d taken the bullet.
“Something to do with a hospital if your dream is to be believed,” she said. Alice grabbed her iPad from the floor beside the bed and opened it up. “All right, let’s take a look,” she said. He came over and sat beside her.
It took her less than twenty minutes to find the answer in the video they’d posted online almost two years before. They watched the scene play:
Sam held the ball in one hand and removed his eyepatch with his other hand. The ball’s pulsing light went out. A heartbeat. Another. He laughed the harsh laugh they’d rehearsed as he put the ball back down. It began pulsing.
Alice’s voice, electronically altered, whispered, “I’m incredibly lucky the Oracle agreed to see me.”
Sam/Oracle turned to the camera, his face angry. His empty eye socket, dramatically enhanced with a paste of the same red dye mixed into the crystal ball’s glue seams, pulsed. Light from a street lamp faintly illuminated his forehead. “Ask your question,” he said.
In her altered voice Alice said, “Will my husband come through surgery safely?”
“Yes. But with complications.”
Oracle said, “But that wasn’t what you were expecting, was it.”
Faintly: “Uh, no.”
“Of course not. Because you believed what a false psychic told you, that you would become rich.” Sam’s digitally distorted face filled the screen. “How much money have you given her?”
Whispered: “Half.”
“Half of what!” the Oracle shouted.
“Half of what his life insurance will pay out. To invest for me. He’s been in a coma for a week, in the place between the living and the dead. She spoke to him there and it’s what she said he wants me to do.”
Looking up from the screen Alice said, “This looks like it but there was no woman whose husband was in hospital for heart surgery and planning for a life insurance payout. We just made that up.”
Sam said, “But that has to be it. If you’re right my dream is pointing to something about a husband in a hospital bed with his life threatened by his wife. And it might explain why that woman was watching me at the chapel. Somehow or other she believes that The Oracle knew she was complicit in the death of her husband. My God, is that possible?”
Alice wasn’t convinced. “She’d have been another victim of Sister Minerva. She’d be happy you caught her.”
“Unless she made sure the husband didn’t survive. Then it’s murder,” he said.
“And just how are we going to find her?”
Sam said, “That might be a problem. We could find out which men were hospitalized with heart attacks, especially ones where a male patient died during the month or so around the time we posted the video. But we’d need access to the records of cardiac care units in the region and there’d likely be hundreds to sift through. And it would require a warrant.”
“Which means it would have to come from the police. And that means Wilson,” she said, “Who’s convinced he has the perp.”
“Exactly,” he said, picking up his phone. “So I’ll call the Captain instead.”
“Maybe we should put on clothes before you do,” she said.
#
Captain Martinez was interested. “Sister’s been spilling her guts to us about scams she’s run and a couple of them sound like what you’re describing – wife eager to get rid of sick husband and cash in. Not that she had anything to do with it other than the spiritualist scam, of course. According to her.”
“That sounds about right,” Sam said. “Any of them drive a tan Corolla?”
“That’s a good question.”
Alice said, “Captain, do we have to wait around until this woman - ,”
“- hypothetical woman -,” Captain Martinez said.
“- hypothetical woman takes another shot at Sam?”
“That’s not fair, Alice.” After a short silence he said, “Okay then. There’s a name that fits your scenario. I’ll text it and have Sergeant Alvarez meet up with you.”
“Thanks,” Alice said.
“Look after him, Alice,” Martinez said and hung up.
Sam looked up from his cell phone. “I’ve got the address.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s barely been 24 hours since you took a bullet. Maybe we should give you some time to recover. Let Alvarez investigate. Spend some more time in bed.”
Sam got up, pressing his left arm against his side. “I’m good,” he said, though they both knew he wasn’t. “I don’t want to give her – whoever she is – another chance to ambush me – us. Because she won’t hesitate to kill you, too, that’s for sure.”
Alice dropped her head. “Okay,” she said and pushed herself upright. “Let’s go then.”
#
Turning onto Lowell Boulevard Alice headed north towards the address the Captain had given them. Sam closed his eye and leaned his head back.
Suddenly Alice yelled, “Hey!”
A loud bang on the right side and the Mini was thrown sideways into oncoming traffic.
Their bodies hurtled forward.
Shoulder harnesses and seatbelts snapped tightly around them.
Air bags exploded into them.
The Mini slammed into a corner of a Chevy pickup in the opposite lane that almost was able to avoid hitting it. Glass shattered. The Mini was spun around so that it ended crumpled up on its right side.
Driver’s side. Alice’s side.
The next moment all sound stopped. Inside the wrecked Mini the seat belts and shoulder harnesses loosened. The bags deflated and hung like giant used condoms. Then came the sounds of squealing tires and car horns. The car that sideswiped them clattered away, some part of it scraping along the asphalt at speed.
The smell of dust and burnt rubber and gasoline.
The violence of the collision broke blood vessels in both of Alice’s forearms, broke her right clavicle and two of her ribs, knocked her senseless. Her head lolled forward. Blood dripped from her lip where she’d bitten it. Blood poured over her eyes and cheeks where the shattered plastic frames of her sunglasses had torn into her face and broken her nose.
The harness and the air bag had slammed into Sam’s chest and torn open the stitches. Blood soaked through his bandages and his shirt. He watched, incurious, as the red stain spread. He felt blood dripping down his chest and belly. He smelled rust but it was his blood.
The thought flitted through his mind: if he’d been sitting in the usual passenger seat on the right hand side, the force of the collision would have killed him outright. Then Sam’s world went gray and disappeared into a pinpoint of black.
#
Taking the brunt of the collision, Alice, however, needed stitches to her face and surgery to repair the broken clavicle. Sam was put into a bed in the ER. He wouldn’t let them touch him until they told him she was being operated on and that he’d be able to see her later that day in post-op. Then he let them redo his sutures and drip a unit into him. Other than that he’d sustained nothing more than additional bruises to chest and legs.
Sergeant Alvarez came into the curtained area as soon as they’d removed the drip. She was holding a shopping bag with a set of fresh clothes. “Captain couldn’t make it so he sent me,” she said. “He said you’d need these.”
Sam nodded his thanks. Leaving the ER, he took the bag into a nearby bathroom and changed. He threw his bloody clothes into the trash can and washed up. He was frightened by the anger on the face staring at him from the mirror; it was a killer’s face. Someone was going to pay for hurting Alice.
When he came out he said, “I’ve got to see Alice.”
“How’s she doing?”
“Pretty banged up.”
They went to the information desk in the main lobby where the found out Alice was would be out of surgery in about an hour. Just enough time to walk across the parking lot to a bar. Sam had a Margarita and Sergeant Alvarez had a Diet Coke. They watched CNN on the bar’s big screen TV. Sam kept checking his wristwatch. Alvarez kept tabs on her official phone. When they’d been there almost an hour Sam led Alvarez back to the hospital and up an elevator to the post-op waiting room. It was a dismal room, lined with unmatched chairs and sofas with two video screens on the walls, one showing a sports channel and the other a list of patients, their doctors, status and location. When a row turned green visitors were allowed.
They had to wait another hour before Alice’s row turned green.
Post-op was a darkened and cooled area on an upper floor. Nurses watched over the room and it was only Alvarez’s police shield that got them access to Alice, but only for a few minutes. In a bed at the end of a row of six, she lay on her back, head slightly propped up on two pillows. Her eyes were closed. Her arms lay by her side over the tan blanket that covered her. Her breathing was shallow and regular. A drip was attached to the back of her hand. A monitor beeped reassuringly off to one side.
She was not a pretty sight. Her eyebrows had been shaved and the torn skin stitched up to form two black knotted seams above her eye sockets, which were black and blue. Crusty dried blood rimmed her nostrils. Her cheeks were grayish. A horizontal cut split her lower lip. Thick bandages covered the surgical repair done near her shoulder, visible above the smooth line of the blanket’s top edge.
Sam sat beside her. Sergeant Alvarez stood a few steps away.
He took her hand.
She opened her eyes and turned her head towards him.
“How’re you feeling?” he said.
“Ow,” she whispered. “You?”
Gently, he pushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Not too bad. They’re letting me out.”
She licked her lips slowly. “Hi, Sergeant Alvarez.”
“Hello Professor.”
Sam said, “What did the doctors say?”
“Be a few more days.”
“Okay. I’ll come back with some of your things.”
“Don’t hurry. I’ll be here a while,” she said, her voice fading.
#
On their way to the parking lot Sergeant Alvarez said, “You were right about the car. A torched Corolla was found early this morning out by the Golden landfill with collision damage consistent with the accident report. We’re running a check on the ownership but the fire burned away the VIN and of course there were no plates.”
“And Ernie?”
“Wilson charged him with impeding an investigation and released him.”
“Must have hurt to do that.”
“Must have,” Sergeant Alvarez said.
#
“You mean they still haven’t caught her?” Alice said.
Sam fussed unnecessarily with her pillow. “It’s only been a few days since they identified her. Evangeline Evans. Give it time.”
“It’s been a week. And I want to go home,” she said.
“What do they say?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Well then what? How can I take care of you? Or you me?”
She shook her head. “We are a pair, aren’t we.”
He laughed softly. “Together we can cobble together one whole body. Sort of androgynous, though.”
Alice cough-laughed. “And what about the other half?”
“Also androgynous.”
She snorted. He collapsed with laughter.
Alice let his laughter fade. Then she said, “She’s still out there intent on killing you. We won’t be safe until she’s caught.”
“I know. I know.”
“So what do we do about her?”
“Lot of people looking for her. They’ll find her. Eventually.”
“Not good enough. Bitch totaled my car.”
He took her hand and looked at the bandage on it where the IV had been removed. “When this is over we’ll go to England and buy you another one.”
“When will this be over, Sam?”
He had an idea. A bad idea. He knew he should give Wilson and Alvarez and whoever else the Captain had looking for the woman more time. But his evil angel had whispered something irresistible in his ear.
“I may not know,” he said. “But The Oracle does.”
Alice’s face broke in a sly smile. “Tell me.”
And he did.
#
It took a lot of arguing with Captain Martinez and many last minute phone calls. It turned Alice’s hospital room into a theatrical backstage. But two days later, with Evangeline Evans and an inferred boyfriend still at large, The Oracle climbed into the back seat of a black Lincoln town car – Wilson was the driver – that would take him to Spirit Lotus Books on the northwest side of town where he’d arranged a personal appearance of The Oracle.
From her bed Alice had made sure the Internet was teeming with news of the event. Yes, it was a trap. Even Mrs. Evans must have known that. But they were counting on her being unable to resist making another attempt.
As The Oracle, Sam was dressed in a black suit, black shirt, blood red tie, black overcoat and fedora. His eyepatch had been augmented with dye so it would glow in UV light. His face had been subtly made up to emphasize the creases in his forehead and around his eye sockets. He carried a black walking stick with a glass top in the shape of a crystal ball, also augmented with the same dye.
“But what will you do when you’re asked to predict?” Alice had said.
He’d smiled. “I’ll say whatever pops into my mind. Or mouth. Magic-8 Ball answers. Innuendo and generalization. Worked for the oracle at Delphi.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” she said.
They went ahead anyway.
Spirit Lotus Books was a self-contained, mini strip mall six bays wide on a street facing Berkeley Lake in Northwest Denver. It was filled with shelf after shelf of oils, amulets, crystals, Tarot decks of various designs, powders, books, magazines, DVDs, faux shrunken heads, New Orleans Voodoo dolls, dried mushrooms and Amazonian roots. By six thirty the parking apron out front was filled with cars, as was the city parking lot across the street.
The shop was crowded with people. A coffee urn and the cash register were both busy. The meeting room in the rear had been arranged with maybe two dozen folding metal chairs facing a lectern and two more folding metal chairs.
Selena Alvarez circulated like an employee, in jeans and a blue chambray shirt with a name tag on the breast that read “Circe.” Her black hair was wrapped in a red and white bandana. Captain Martinez himself was in a van around the corner watching video feeds from the body cameras of officers in mufti. Two were standing by the cars parked in front of the shop, one was loitering at the rear door that opened onto the meeting room, one was in the alley leaning up against the west side of the building vaping. A lookout with binoculars lay on the flat tar and gravel roof. Reluctantly, the Captain had agreed to allow a heavily wrapped Alice to sit inside with him.
Promptly at 7 p.m. the limo carrying Sam pulled up to the bookstore. The Oracle stepped out. The store’s blue neon lights made his eyepatch and stick glow eerily. A small crowd standing around the door, mostly middle aged women, applauded.
A Jeep Wrangler with an Uber decal on the passenger window pulled in behind the Town Car and an older woman climbed out gingerly using an aluminum cane to steady herself. As she did she pulled an automatic from her coat pocket and aimed it at The Oracle’s back.
Screams erupted from the crowd. Before Sam could turn to see what was causing the alarm both officers pounced on her, yelling. One grabbed her gun arm and yanked it skyward. It went off, a sharp flat slap with a metallic edge.
The shot went into the air.
The officer ripped the automatic from her hand threw her to the ground. The Jeep roared away, its open side door slamming into the left rear of the Town Car, smashing it’s taillight, throwing plastic shards everywhere. It raced away, damaged side door flapping against the Jeep’s side.
Wilson, still behind the wheel of the Lincoln, roared off after it. The lookout on the roof reported its direction and a cruiser idling nearby joined the chase, siren wailing. Shortly thereafter other cruisers in the area joined in an unseen chorus of sirens. The driver’s capture was a foregone conclusion.
The Oracle stood over Mrs. Evans as she was handcuffed. “You,” he said, eyepatch glowing from the shop’s neon sign, “Will spend the next fifteen years in prison.”
Cheek against the asphalt, she spat at his shoe. Saliva stuck to her lip.
He said, “Agreed, it’s not much of a prediction. How about this, then: you will never walk free again in your lifetime.”
“Bullshit. Nobody serves a full sentence,” she said.
“Cancer,” he said, laughing cruelly.
“No!” she screamed. “No! No!”
Sam didn’t know why the word came out of his mouth but he was glad it had – retaliation for the pain she’d inflicted on Alice. But having said it he was sure it was true.
Officers pulled her to her feet and marched her away.
Then The Oracle proceeded into the shop and made his way to the crowded meeting room to dispense innuendos and generalizations, except when Alice entered the room. He predicted she’d be going on a trip to London.
— PETER ALTERMAN
Peter Alterman lives and works in the Metro Washington, DC area. He has published science fiction, literary fiction, commercial fiction, detective fiction and literary criticism. A complete bibliography is at www.peteralterman.com.