Unfinished Death

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Copyright Page

  1

  Jane wasn’t sure how long she’d been there, or how she got to this place. The last thing she remembered was finishing off a fifth of Jack Daniels with her younger brother, Mike. It was around 1:00 A.M. and they were still at her house after a three-day bender over the President’s Day holiday weekend. As she recalled, she’d sucked the last drag of nicotine from her cigarette, crushed the empty pack and attempted a bank shot into the wastebasket across the room. But that was her last memory before she awoke into this odd scene.

  There she was—sitting alone in a high-back wicker chair on a pristine, wraparound porch that extended out from what appeared to be one of those ancient Colorado sanitariums where people went to recuperate from TB or pneumonia. She looked down at her clothes, expecting to see a hospital gown to go along with the clinical setting. Instead, she wore her standard blue jeans, poplin shirt, leather jacket, and roughout cowboy boots. She could feel the butt of her Glock biting into her rib cage. She swore she’d been clad in her Denver Broncos sweatshirt and sweatpants just minutes before catapulting into this unsettling shift in scenery.

  Good God. In all her years of heavy drinking, Jane had never hallucinated. And now, here she was—right in the middle of one hell of a disturbing delusion that felt a little too real.

  She noted how heavy her hands felt against the wicker armrests. Her feet, in turn, hung like lead on the white-planked porch. As she gazed forward, she suddenly noticed the exquisite expanse of trimmed grass that seemed to roll for miles into the aqua sky. The air smelled sweet, like spring when life in Colorado comes alive after months of winter’s death and dormancy. The scent of blooming lilacs and sweet daffodils created an intoxicating perfume that calmed and caressed her senses.

  Not 40 feet in front of Jane, a lone East Indian in his mid-forties unexpectedly appeared in the middle of the grass. He stared at her for a minute before cocking his head to the side and waving. She told her body to stand up, but somehow the message didn’t reach the correct part of her brain because she stayed inexplicably frozen to the wicker chair. The man climbed the seven steps that led to the porch and rested his lean body against the railing in front of her. The persistent woody scent of sandalwood enveloped him, an outward signature that seemed to herald his appearance. His smile was warm and genuine, his demeanor gentle and kind.

  “Jane…Jane Perry?” he stated, almost as if he was reading her name on an invisible card that floated above her head.

  Jane nodded. For some reason, speaking was difficult. The heaviness grew more profound in her body. What in the hell is happening?

  He extended his hand. “Devinder Bashir.” Jane lifted her leaden hand off the armrest and shook his hand. He held onto it, his grasp reading her thoughts. “How very odd,” Devinder said in a faraway tone.

  Jane tensed. She struggled to force out two words. “What’s odd?”

  “You still have the weight of the world.” His eyebrows furrowed. “You’re not dead yet.”

  Jane slammed back into her thirty five-year-old, aching body. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed. “Holy Shit!” she sputtered, her heart racing. Her Denver Broncos shirt was soaked in acrid sweat. Pressing her palm to her forehead, she attempted to assuage the relentless throbbing that bore into her skull. Jane felt halfway outside of herself, as she rolled off her bed and stumbled down the hallway to the living room. She found her brother, Mike, on the couch. He was right where she had left him just five minutes before. But a quick glance of the clock showed that five hours had passed. This makes no damn sense. Jane steadied herself on the kitchen counter, while another wave of excruciating pain rippled across her temples. This was unlike any hangover she’d ever experienced.

  “You’re not dead yet,” the Indian man who called himself Devinder Bashir told her.

  “Yet,” Jane whispered, as an uneasy shock traversed her spine.

  Is this even real? she questioned herself. Or is this a freakish extension of the dream?

  She lunged toward her sleeping brother, impatiently tugging on his shirt. He stirred briefly before starting to turn away, but Jane pulled him back toward her. “Mike! Wake up! Goddamnit! Wake up!”

  Mike grimaced. He unhinged one eye to focus. “What the fuck time is it, Janie?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Fuck me. Wake me up at 11:00.”

  Jane grabbed his shoulders with urgency, shaking him. “Mike! Wake the fuck up!”

  Now, he was pissed. Well, as pissed as Mike Perry could be—which was more like what bothered looked like with most people. “What, Janie?”

  “Slap me.”

  “I don’t wanna slap you.”

  “Mike, I’m not kidding. I need you to slap me.” Mike made a weak attempt that resembled brushing a hair off his sister’s face rather than a smack. “Fuck,” Jane mumbled, still feeling outside of her body. “Mike, I mean it, if you don’t slap me hard, I’m cutting off your beer!”

  That got his attention. He landed a good cuff across his sister’s left cheek.

  Jane shook off the sting and let out a satisfied breath. “Okay. I’m not dead.”

  “You’re not dead?” Mike sat up. “Jesus, Janie. If you’re geeked up on meth, at least cut me in on some.”

  “I’m not doing meth, Mike! It interferes with my job description.”

  “Could’ve fooled me, Detective. What time is it again?”

  Jane sensed the unfinished seam of another reality that was still wide open. “Time for a drink.”

  2

  After an uneventful night of dreams, Tuesday morning arrived. Jane knocked back a breakfast of three cups of coffee, four cigarettes and a two-day old chocolate donut. As she drove to Denver Headquarters, she could remember every moment of the dream. It still shook her core with the same uneasy shudder. To her knowledge, she’d never had a dream where a complete stranger introduced himself by his full name. Devinder Bashir. How in the hell did her subconscious invent that foreign name? Must have read it on a homicide victim list, she reasoned. Then again, she hadn’t worked a homicide with an East Indian vic or family member in years. Logic, use logic, she urged herself, while she lit a new cigarette off the dying ember of another. It was the booze, she decided. Yeah, that made the whole thing easier to swallow. At 35, her weather-beaten body was getting too old for three-day binges where incoherency was the objective. Drowning out the voices was always the goal, achieving that place of numbness where she could stare into the void and feel nothing. It was taking longer to get to that empty space and, once there, the sweet peace lasted less and less time. All addicts eventually slammed against this wall. At this point, one either got help or dove deeper into the bottle. Jane figured that she could still swim pretty well, which made the latter option her preferred choice.

  Just past 8:45 A.M, she peeled her 1966 ice blue Mustang into the parking garage on 13th and Cherokee. She finished off her sixth cigarette of the morning, as she walked to the elevator. After a three-day holiday weekend, she wondered how many people who had a pulse last Friday had given up the ghost by Monday night at the hands of another; people who had every good intention of seeing another week of existence, never seeing their sudden demise on the horizon. No sooner did that thought cross her mind when she heard Devinder’s voice clearly. “You’re not dead, yet.”

  “Jane!”

  She spun around. Detective Bruce Miles was walking toward her. He’d worked vice and narcotics for more than 20 years and it show
ed on his grizzled face. Miles was less than a year from retirement and had started to slow down. Cops called guys like Miles “slugs” or “hairpieces,” insinuating that they were just going through the motion and had lost their investigative edge. Jane couldn’t figure out how anyone could handle dealing with prostitutes, child pornography, hardcore druggies and all of the gutter swine that accompanied the vice gig. Years before, before she scored a slot in homicide, she had had her fill working assault and dealing with battered kids and drugaddled women. After 20 years of working with filth, she understood why Miles wasn’t as connected to the job as he used to be. She also sensed that he bent his elbow to the breaking point at “choir practice” with the same passion and frequency as she did.

  “Nothin’ like a three-day weekend to fuck up your Tuesday mornin’,” Miles grumbled.

  “Catch a case this early?”

  “Yeah. Suicide on Saturday night. Guy swallowed an Ambien, Valium, Oxycodone and whiskey cocktail.”

  “Since when did suicide become a vice?”

  “When you’re layin’ butt naked amidst your child porn collection when you kick.”

  Jane tried to erase the disturbing image from her mind. “Fuck. You get all the choice cases, don’t you?”

  Miles lit a cigarette. “This one’s got one of those added complications to make it even more interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A cultural taint.”

  Jane was somewhat aware of the stigma that stained a family when suicide occurred and the various superstitions that proliferated, especially in the more upper crust Middle Eastern bloodlines. “Muslim?” she asked.

  “Nah,” Miles flipped open the file. “This guy is from the rice and curry crowd. Wealthy East Indian importer.”

  Jane’s throat tightened. “What…what’s his name?”

  Miles glanced at the page. “Devinder Bashir.”

  It isn’t possible. That’s what Jane kept saying to herself, as Miles walked away and got into his Buick. No, no, this is a dream now. But no matter how many times Jane pinched, slapped and poked herself, she didn’t wake up. Be rational, she counseled herself, as she tried to reconcile the distorted thoughts racing through her mind. But there was nothing rational about this.

  Nor was Jane’s next move. Instead of heading upstairs to her third floor homicide office, she ducked back into her Mustang and followed Miles out of the parking garage.

  It took three cigarettes to reach the upscale neighborhood in Cherry Creek, where the grieving widow Bashir resided. In some ways, Jane was surprised that Miles didn’t see her tailing him. Then again, he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the cop shed as of late. She parked the Mustang behind a large truck on the opposite side of the street and watched as Miles lumbered over to a thirty-something, blonde Caucasian woman watering her lawn. They shook hands before she led him into the sprawling two-story McMansion.

  Jane lit another cigarette and mused over Devinder Bashir choosing a blonde, white chick as his wife. Jesus, she ruminated, she must have been some catch for him to marry outside his culture. Maybe she’s one of those white women who likes to meditate and chant, burn incense, listen to zither music, use Ayurvedic herbs, and can’t get enough Bollywood film classics? Devinder’s mother must love this cross-cultural union. Then, once again, the memory of the dead man manifesting to her in a boozeinduced dream reared its ugly head. That distorted sensation of standing outside her body swelled around her and was about to rattle her cage when she saw a rough-looking, Caucasian male emerge from the house’s three-car garage. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, well built and physically fit. The guy wore a tool belt, which he appeared to be well acquainted with. While Jane observed him from afar, over the next 20 minutes, he went about changing sprinkler heads on the lawn, securing the rain gutter over the garage and doing a host of other sundry jobs. He continued to work when Miles re-emerged from the house, followed by Mrs. Bashir. She walked Miles down the brick lane that led to the street, shook his hand solemnly, and brushed her golden locks away from her grief-stricken face.

  Jane watched her turn away and motion to the fellow with the tool belt. In that same moment, Miles lowered his tired body into his Buick and surreptitiously removed a flask from the inside pocket of his jacket.

  “Oh, Jesus, Miles,” Jane whispered. It wasn’t a derision of judgment; it was more about a code of ethics. Even though Jane could drink Miles under the table, she’d always waited until 5:00 P.M. to do it. This guy needs to hang up his shield and soon.

  Miles drove away and Jane was just about to follow when she saw a flicker of body language between the mournful widow Bashir and the workman. It suggested a more familiar than professional relationship. The way she tilted her head, and the way he relaxed, leaning his taut body toward hers. But it didn’t take a body language expert to read between the lines when she threw her head back laughing, and he pulled her to his chest and passionately kissed her.

  Okay, Jane thought, the woman’s husband had just suicided three days earlier, butt naked and surrounded by his secret stash of kiddie porn. Shit, it just didn’t get more shameful and disturbing than that. But instead of showing a certain amount of appropriate emotion, the widow chose to play tonsil hockey with her blue-collar toy.

  3

  As Jane pulled back into the parking garage at Headquarters, she realized that the blonde widow had no clue that anyone had been watching her aroused antics once Detective Miles had beat feet. Up to that point, she’d played her role with the exact degree of tempered sadness. Did Devinder learn of this illicit affair and was that what drove him to OD? Did Devinder’s lust for child porn drive his widow into another man’s arms? Do these two questions sound like bad daytime drama schlock? Jane’s head swirled with the various scenarios, as she headed upstairs to homicide.

  She got off the elevator on the third floor and saw Detective Miles walking away from the vice division. Jane made a split-second decision and headed straight for Miles’ cubicle. Once there, she scanned his disheveled desk for any sign of plastic-covered evidence materials or photos of Devinder’s suicide. Under a stack of files, she found the color photos she was looking for. There he was, sprawled naked across his bed amidst a myriad of magazines and photographs, nude children posed in sexually compromising positions. Jane quickly looked at the establishing shot of the scene before turning her attention to the close up of his left hand holding the handwritten suicide note. Jane could clearly make out the short, three-sentence note:

  My secret haunts me.

  I can no longer hide from it.

  I have shamed my family name and now I must die for my mortal sins.

  Jane looked back at the establishing shot of the death scene. Something wasn’t right. The pornography was not as much scattered as it appeared. In fact, it looked almost like…

  “Jane?”

  She was so deep in thought, she didn’t hear Miles return, fresh coffee in hand.

  Miles looked perplexed. “Can I help you with something?” he asked, an undercurrent of irritation bleeding through.

  Jane put down the photo. “You know, uh…” She stalled. “I thought I knew this guy. Bashir? Uh, an old case from way back. A perp… ” Jane realized she was babbling. Miles regarded her with a suspicious eye. “But, it’s not the same guy.” She ducked out of his cubicle and turned down the hall toward homicide, wondering whether she looked as crazy as she felt right then.

  4

  Chris Crawley, Jane’s partner—both on and off the job—wanted to come over that night, but Jane told him that she was meeting her brother. Chris bought the lie, although he fumed like a peevish schoolboy for an hour because he couldn’t get what he really wanted. Jane wasn’t in the mood to deal with Chris, knowing that his main objective was to get laid and then pass out half drunk somewhere between her couch and the bed. Chris had always been a boor, but his behavior in and out of the bedroom had become gradually more aggressive. The sex had gone from moderately rough to excess
ively rough, depending on the amount of booze each of them had consumed. Right now, Jane wanted to be alone with her weary mind and notch another night with no anomalous dreams.

  After a dinner of microwave macaroni and cheese and a can of peas, Jane finished her sixth Corona and still felt on edge. She poured a shot of Jack Daniels and then another shot. She sought that sweet spot of numbness, and it took two more shots of Jack to travel there. She fell back onto her bed, free-floating in the comforting haze. Reaching the center point between all of the past pain and all of the trauma that was yet to unfold, she allowed the booze to dictate her descent into the stillness where she could forget who she was and all she would never become. It was so quiet and peaceful that she didn’t even feel herself slide under the thin veil that shielded this world from the next.

  She opened her eyes and found herself back on the same white-planked porch, sitting in the same wicker chair within the same scene as before. Devinder was leaning on the same railing. He looked within her. That familiar signature scent of sandalwood perfumed the air around him, causing Jane to feel a strange sense of calm and protection. The only difference between this scene and the last was the appearance of many more people in the general area, both on the porch and around the extensive grassy landscape that seemingly swept for miles. The heaviness of Jane’s body returned like an anchor weighting down her soul.

  “How did I get back here?” she asked Devinder, each word an effort.

  “When you drink, you detach from your physical body which leaves you open to any number of unwelcome journeys,” Devinder stated in his lilting eastern tongue. “Although I don’t like the fuel it took to get you here, I am glad you came back.” He smiled, warmly and genuinely. It was as if he knew how difficult it was for Jane to speak. “It’ll be easier if you just think what you wish to say. I’ll hear you much better.”