Chris Redding - Corpse Whisperer

“Then you should go, Zach.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“Some part of you does.” She turned away from him. “Go.”

“No.”

His strong statement had her looking over his shoulder. “I’m seeing this through with you. I have a few cases to type up reports on and then I’ll be back after lunch. I’ll take a half day. We’ll see this through.”

She shook her head. “How do I know it isn’t you that’s going to kill her?”

“You don’t. You have to trust me. And deep in your heart, I think you know I shouldn’t be on your suspect list.”

“They way you trust me?”

The irony had her chuckling.

A frown creased his face. “Touche’.”

“Go, Zach and don’t worry about us.”

“Oh, cut the melodrama.”

“Look, I’ll be out of here when this is all done, anyway.”

She knew that for sure. She couldn’t stay in a town that thought her a freak. Would she ever settle somewhere? Unfortunately dead people were everywhere.

“Look, I’ll be back.” He turned towards his car. “You can count on that.”

She didn’t watch him drive off, but went in to check on Dolores.

Zach raced through his morning and was heading out the door when a call came in he had to take. A spouse he’d been hired to tail was going on a business trip, or so they said. He hoped she went to the airport then he could get to Dolores and Grace. His blood rushed with the urgency of the situation.

So, he went, but kept an eye on the clock. The woman met her lover at a hotel on the edge of town. Zach snapped the shots the husband wanted, but before he knew it Dolores was on her way to the hospital with a gunshot wound, her house on fire.

And when he arrived at the hospital, Grace was in the next room. She’d been in the fire, too. He dashed through the curtain separating her hospital bed from the hall.

“Zach,” she croaked out. His gaze raced up and down her. Grace was alive, though smudged and battered. His heart leapt with relief.

He took her hand, but looked for signs of distress from the action. She didn’t pull away.

Grace’s gaze took him in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t save her.”

He blinked. Didn’t save who? “Dolores is dead?”

She nodded, her face pale, her neck bruised.

His hands found her other then squeezed both of them. He sat on the edge of the bed. “What happened?”

“He came up behind me. I never heard him.”

“So she got shot anyway,” he said.

Her crestfallen face made him wish he hadn’t been so blunt. He took a deep breath and pushed what grief he had over Dolores to the back of his mind. He needed to concentrate on the living for once.

“I guess you couldn’t change what was supposed to happen. Maybe you weren’t supposed to change it.”

His words sounded odd to his ears, but he knew Grace believed in what she said. She had a gift in her own mind. Even if he didn’t understand, he wanted to.

“You don’t understand. She wasn’t supposed to die. That’s why she talked to me. I’ll go see her again.”

Coughs rocked her and Zach poured water into a glass. He handed the liquid to her. She drank, then handed it back to him.

“What are you doing?” he asked when she swung her legs to the side of the bed. She looked too pale to stand.

“Going to see Dolores before they take her away.”

“This is nuts, Grace. I don’t know how you know she was going to be killed, but seeing her isn’t going to change anything.”

“Zach, go home. You didn’t believe me then. Why would you believe me now?”

“Because this time I want to.”

She paused, her gaze searching and probing him. She stood, looking wobbly. “Go. She won’t talk to me when you’re there.”

“If you go back in time,” he started, not believing his question. “Will I remember you?”

“No.”

Desperation fueled his next move. For the first time since Dolores, he wanted to trust someone. So he strode around the bed to Grace, took a gentle hold of her head, and kissed her hard so she would understand that he felt something for her.

Then he left before she could say anything.

Zach’s kiss, and her body’s subsequent reaction to it, had Grace sitting back down on the bed.

If his touch had caused a kaleidoscope of colors, his kiss created a storm. Both inside and outside. Her body thrummed with the anticipation of love the kiss showed her and the future she’d have. She’d be thirty tomorrow and her gift would probably be gone. She just had to climb back in bed.

She’d have Zach and no dead people talking to her.

“Damn.”

“What are you doing out of bed?” A brisk efficient nurse whisked into her room. “You need to rest.”

Her resolve strengthened, she said, “I want to see her.”

The nurse cocked her head and her face took on a pinched expression. “Okay. Let me get a wheelchair, then.”

So Grace waited, thankful that she hadn’t had to convince anyone that she should see her landlord. Everyone understood.

The nurse came back then wheeled Grace to Dolores’ bedside, leaving her alone with the dead woman.

“Dolores?”

Her dead landlord opened her eyes. “Help me.”

Having rewound back in time again, Grace wondered what it meant that she met Zach earlier this time. He’d been at Dolores’ place when she went to rent the place. She sighed. At least she didn’t still have the effects of the fire on her. That part was normal.

She couldn’t spend the next few days scrutinizing every difference.

Unless the changes were the key to the puzzle.

“There shouldn’t be any differences,” she said as she pulled her red pony car into her soon to be old apartment complex.

To see her apartment complex on fire. “Oh, no.”

Fire trucks blocked her access. Where there weren’t trucks there were hoses to the various hydrants. Parking a block away, she then hiked back and searched out her work partner, Glen Gery. He was also a volunteer firefighter.

“Grace,” he said then embraced her in a Nomex hug. “You’re place is wrecked.”

“Nothing to save?”

She hadn’t brought much with her to Glen Hills, but she did have some photos that had meant something to her.

“No, sorry.”

“The cause?”

“Don’t know. I was inside and it looked set.”

She didn’t think her landlord would do it, but who knew what lurked in men’s hearts. With nowhere to go and no desire to watch the firefighters battle the fire that left her homeless, she returned to Dolores’ place.

Zach was just leaving. He paused before getting into his car as if memorizing her license plate. With no moving violations she didn’t care what he searched for. On the other hand if he read about the last place she’d lived and the murder he’d become suspicious again.

She frowned while pulling into her new home. Dolores agreed to let her move in early. Tonight.

So Grace went shopping for new clothes thankful that her uniform stayed at work. Fatigued from an activity she didn’t enjoy she stopped mid-afternoon for cup of coffee.

Settling into a plush seat by the window she realized someone was staring at her. Zach rose and moved to sit at her table.

“Hi,” she said trying to sound like she never met him.

“You’re Grace.”

She motioned for him to sit. Maybe this time she’d get to know him better. “Find anything out from my license plate.”

“You haven’t applied for your New Jersey license, yet,” he said, dropping into the seat and placing his coffee in front of him.

She smelled vanilla and cinnamon from his cup. Hers was a straight, unadulterated cup of coffee with a little artificial sweetener. Interesting that he was a former cop and went for the fancy stuff. “I have some time. I haven’t decided I’m staying.”