C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

“Jo.” Gary put his hands on my shoulders, standing just a few inches behind me. His hands were warm and big enough to make me feel small. “Different don’t mean better. I’m an old man, and this place has taken a lotta years of living to build. You gotta let the sunshine in, sweetheart. Nothing can grow in the fog.”

“I thought I was supposed to be here to help you.” My voice was tight, though I tried to put a smile in it. It must’ve worked: Gary chuckled and stepped a little closer, putting his arms around my waist. I held my breath until he poked me in the ribs and I let out a laugh that verged on tears.

“Maybe it’s all one and the same, darlin’. We got some time.”

I turned around in his arms to hug him, and maybe to hide the tendency for tears against his chest. “Plenty of time,” I promised in a hoarse voice. My tortoise passenger had already left me, making its own slow way through the mossy forest toward the river. “Lots of time,” I repeated, and Gary tightened his arms around my shoulders like a promise in return.

I left the hospital feeling a bit lighter of heart, Gary’s semi-outraged protest at being protected by a tortoise still ringing in my ears. I’d pointed out tortoises lived a hundred and fifty years, which had silenced him into a slow grin that reminded me of the garden Gary. It was almost as if I was a competent human being.

Of course, a competent human being would have already told Morrison that Cassandra Tucker had apparently died of a heart defect aggravated by the use of magic, but I hadn’t found it in myself to try. I didn’t know which was worse: him believing me, or not. Either way, I could put it off a little longer, because I still had an afternoon beat to walk.

The heat was making people either crabby or listless. I busted up more than one burgeoning fight on the Ave, glad I wasn’t working someplace more dangerous. My vision behaved itself all afternoon, and between that and Gary, I genuinely felt up to attending the coven event that evening. I went back to the precinct building to clock out and to shower, too disgusting with sweat to wait until I went home. My equipment bag had shorts and a tank top, far more suited to the weather than wool pants and a cotton shirt. I jogged out of the building with my duffel slung over my shoulder, thinking about running home to start laundry before I met up with the coven.

“Walker!”

I turned warily. Morrison shouting for me wasn’t usually a good sign. Especially since he should’ve gone home by now. Especially since I’d been avoiding him all day, and the sound of his voice was a sharp reminder I’d been expecting him to show up and rescue me from the desert.

He looked tired, not much like a desert-searching hero, and not much like he wanted to talk to me. Neither of those was unusual, but I was oddly disappointed. After all, if he was going to feature heavily in my subconscious fantasies, the least he could do was be pleased about seeing me. Not that I had the slightest intention of telling him he was apparently my own personal champion. And not that he’d arrived on the scene to rescue me, which sort of annoyed me when I thought about it.

I slung my duffel over my back, holding on to the strap with two fingers, as if the oversized action would force my internal nattering out of mind. Morrison really did look tired, or maybe angry, his mouth a thin line and blue eyes squinted against the sun. I should’ve been used to him looking irritated, but the underlying weariness sent a pang of compassion through me. “Everything okay, Captain?”

He cut off whatever he was about to say and eyed me suspiciously for a few seconds. I tried to keep my expression neutral: no, boss, I really mean it. Is everything okay ? He’d never believe it.

“Yeah,” he said after enough time that I wondered if he was going to answer at all. “Tomorrow—”

I got ready to blow up. Tomorrow was my day off. “—is Cassandra Tucker’s funeral,” he said. I choked on my own indignation and stared at him as he concluded, “I thought you might want to go.”

I wet my lips and looked around, anywhere but at my captain, so that I could work off being embarrassed over my near blowup. “Thank you,” I finally said, awkwardly. “I really appreciate that. Look, does that mean they know what happened to her? Because—”

“Congenital heart defect,” he said shortly. “No murder investigation. I assume you didn’t get anything from your…sources.”

For some reason, it didn’t make me at all happy to have Virissong’s explanation verified by a coroner. I stared at Morrison for a long time without really seeing him, then wet my lips. “Nothing substantially different.”

“Substantially?”

I should have known better than to put an adverb into my response. I wet my lips again and shook my head. “Someone thought it was brought on by an overload of…” I felt like Michael Keaton trying to tell Kim Basinger his secret. If Morrison would only turn around so I couldn’t see his face, I was sure I could finish saying, “Doing magic.” What I said instead was, “It doesn’t really matter, does it? The cops and the freaks are in agreement on this one.”

Morrison’s expression had gone sour as I approached the end of my first explanation, as if he knew perfectly well what I wasn’t saying. Then it changed from sour to genuinely disapproving, and I had to stop myself from backing up a step. “Don’t do that,” he said.

I hadn’t moved. “Don’t do what?”

“Belittle yourself. Or anyone else, for that matter.”

I gaped at him. “I’m sorry, Cap, but when did you get on the it’s-okay-for-Joanne-to-be-a-super-shamanic-weirdo bandwagon?”

“I didn’t,” he said very evenly. “I don’t like what you can do at all. But I like you setting yourself up for the sucker punch even less. It’s degrading, and you’re better than that. I won’t tolerate it.”

I felt like my world had taken a sharp swerve and dip to the left. “Morrison, you rag on me all the time.” He did. He said I was a pain in the ass, which was true, and to not darken his doorstep again, which I always did, and a variety of other blustery you bother me sorts of comments.

But I couldn’t think of one single time where he’d outright insulted me, or anyone else, for that matter. I stared at him some more, trying to fit that piece of information into the Morrison-shaped prejudices I carried around, and then looked at a wall and reached for safer ground. “Do you know when and where Cassandra’s funeral is?”

“I do,” he said, still very evenly, as if the last bit of conversation hadn’t happened. “I’m going. Should I pick you up?”

My gaze snapped back to him. “ You’re going?”

“We were the first two officers on the scene, Walker. I visited her mother.” Morrison’s voice was strained. I found myself staring at him again.

“Jesus, Cap. Shouldn’t the UW police have done that? I mean, not your juris—”

“I was the ranking officer,” he said. “It was my duty.”

My vision didn’t go all inverted again, but rather, for an instant, I saw with extreme clarity. The worst job anybody could have is telling a parent that her child is dead.

Morrison’d done it to spare somebody else having to.

Color burned along my jaw and up into my cheekbones and ears, a bewildering rush of pride to be working for this particular police captain. I swallowed and straightened my shoulders. “What time should I be ready?”

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought Morrison relaxed almost imperceptibly. “Nine-thirty. Funeral’s at ten.”

“I’ll be ready. Morrison?”