Excerpt from Achilles Forjan

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great book by Kelli Jae Baeli!, January 31, 2010
By Tanya Gotcher
This review is from: Achilles Forjan (Paperback)

"This is the third of Ms. Baeli's books I've read and I plan to read more of them. She is an absolute MASTER of characterization! After I read her books, I catch myself wondering about the characters as if they were real people. And, no, this is not a sign I need to be in a mental ward somewhere; rather, it is a testament to how authentic her characters are. This authenticity extends to her plots as well. I can especially speak to the authenticity of the plot and characters in this particular book because I work in the emergency services field myself. This book in it's entirety, down to the smallest of details, is real enough to be based on people whom I know and work with daily.

One final big plus!... more often than not, I can guess "who done it" before the ending of a murder mystery and that just ruins the whole book for me. I also view it as a weakness in the writer's talent. However, not so in this gem of a psycho-thriller/murder mystery! I was totally and happily surprised! Reading this one was time well spent!"

Ashleigh knew it was him. His gruff, slurring baritone voice. His fat fist against the door. He'd be waking the neighbors, and they'd be calling the cops. She was still too weak from her trip to the emergency room three days ago, and didn't have the strength to deal with this. She stayed with Jeremy because it was easier than staying with Leonard Huff. Safer.

Jeremy had offered Ashleigh a ride home from work seven months ago, and she had told him she didn't want to go back to her father's house. He suggested they go to his apartment and get high instead, and she agreed. It wasn't long before Ashleigh was spending the night at Jeremy's Southside apartment. The choice between a sweet guy who provided a good high, and a raving, nasty, controlling drunk, was an easy one.

She didn't even call him 'Dad' anymore, but 'Leonard.' His all-nighters and recently, his affiliation with a group of bikers, was a pain in the ass; and although she had vivid memories of his hands on her when she was a little girl, he had stopped pursuing her for his need to touch innocence.

This didn't stop his biker-buddies from crossing the line, though. At a nubile eighteen, she was now a young woman, and considered ripe for the picking. When one of the leather-clad animals came by the house and put his hands on her tits, she packed her stuff and went to Jeremy's. That's when she decided that Jeremy had his flaws, but at least he wasn't violent. He'd never hit her, even when she'd smoked the last of their weed. If she kept him smoking, she could pretty much do what she wanted. He didn't make much money as a night shift stocker at Handy's Grocery, but she didn't make much as a cashier there, either. She didn't really do without anything, and the rent was only $350 a month. A few days ago, Jeremy got extra pot from his dealer so they could make a little cash, because Ashleigh needed time off to recuperate from her fall down the stairs.

With the pounding outside growing louder, she snatched the door open and Leonard Huff barreled in, headed straight for Jeremy, who was finishing the removal of marijuana seeds from the marred glass coffee table, sweeping them onto a metal serving tray and shoving it under the ratty Goodwill sofa.

She put herself between the two men, hoping to prevent anything that might have cops snooping around. The last thing she needed was to go to jail for possession.

Leonard Huff pushed her out of the way, and she fell into the glass top of the coffee table.

2

Roy peered in the window, and saw the boy hovering near the kitchen, saw the girl sitting on the chair with blood on her arm. With one last glance at the street, hoping to see the police cruiser, he knocked on the door. "EMS!" he called.

Jeremy opened the door, and Roy stepped in first, carrying his jump bag fully stocked with an intubation roll, already assessing the damage to Jeremy's face. Amy came along behind him, trying not to look at Jeremy; all she could see now was him beating off to kiddie porn.

Ashleigh was sitting on the chair across from Huff, still in a robe and on medication from her recent trip to the hospital. Now, she had one hand pressed to her bleeding elbow. Amy knew the girl would need sutures. Ashleigh looked up at her with a mixture of embarrassment and relief. Embarrassment, that the nice female paramedic she had poured her heart out to was coming to the rescue again; and relief, that somehow everything would be taken care of and some semblance of normalcy would return.

Even before the staircase fall at the apartment a few days ago, Amy and Roy had been to the Huff house to patch up Mrs. Huff when Leonard directed his anger at her. Police had escorted her to the Battered Women's Shelter that night, and it was unclear whether or not she was still residing there.

Perhaps it was why Leonard Huff was at the apartment now. His anger needed a target, and he couldn't get to his wife. He had pounded his beefy fist into the young man's face and made a real mess of the living room of their tiny apartment. He was at the end of a nasty binge, having burned up the fuel of whiskey, and was sitting on the sofa nearing a nap. Amy stepped over the fallen ashtray and remnants of potato chips dotting the floor, and sent up a prayer that he would not find any reserve tank in his body before they got the job done, or at least not until the cops arrived to stand sentry.

The ashtray, along with two smoldering cigarettes, lay on the dirt-colored carpet, amid shards of glass. Amy picked them up and tossed them in the tray to be safe.

Roy saw that Jeremy was lucky not to have a broken nose. He might get away with some butterfly bandages on the cut above his eye, but the rest of his injuries were the usual contusions when a fist contacts the skin. He had the young man sit at the kitchen table while he set to work on him.

As the two medics donned surgical gloves to cleanse wounds and apply compresses, Huff muttered expletives and warned Jeremy that he was not even close to being finished with him. "She'll never be clean again," he said. "You made her dirty."

"You're not worried about me, Leonard," Ashleigh hissed. "Look what you did to my arm!" She held up the lacerated elbow, causing Amy to drop the gauze roll and forcing her to gather it and start winding it around again.

Huff lit a cigarette awkwardly and let it dangle precariously from his inebriated lips. "You brought that on yourself, little girl," he said around the cigarette. "You need to learn when to stay the hell outa the way."

Jeremy leaned away from Roy's cotton swab and snarled at Huff, "You're fuckin' going to jail."

"Oh yeah? What for?"

"Assault and battery. You're a sorry-ass excuse for a father. It's a good thing Ashleigh met me."

"Wors' thing ever happened to her." The glowing ash fell off Huff's cigarette and landed on his blue shirt, stained with sweat and booze. A wet spot doused the cherry, making a sizzing sound. Amy was afraid he would burst into flames.

"You're goin' to jail, you sorry piece a shit!"

"Be still—" Roy reprimanded, pressing the last butterfly bandage on the boy's head, anxious for he and Amy to get out of there.

"You're goin' to jail," Jeremy repeated.

Amy wanted to scream, You belong in jail, too, you sick pedophile! She knew she'd have to bite her tongue until they finished the call. This situation had become too personalized to her, now that Ashleigh had spilled her guts. She didn't want that kind of investment in her patients. It was hard enough without that.

Huff tried to push himself up, but rocked back, and had to scoot to the edge of the sofa before he could manage to stand. "I ain't goin' to jail if I ain't here when the cops get here—"

"Sit down," Roy ordered him in his best authoritative tone.

Huff paused, considering him, then staggered over. Roy got up to prepare for evasive action, when Huff took the cigarette from his mouth and threw it at Roy.

Roy held up a warning finger. "Now you just behave yourself. You've caused enough trouble."

"You ain't seen trouble yet, boy." Huff lurched forward and pushed Roy aside, reaching for Jeremy, who bear-crawled away, scattering the top-most contents of Roy's jump bag. Angry that the young man had scampered out of reach, Huff grabbed Roy again.

Amy tapped on the big man's shoulder, and he turned around unsteadily. "Could you do me a favor, sir?"

Frowning, he swayed slightly. "What?"

"Your hand looks terrible. Could you go over to the sofa and sit down so I can take a look at it? It looks like it hurts."

Still holding Roy's shirt at the shoulder, he looked at his free right hand. His knuckles were red. "Yeah. My hand needs some nursin'." He released Roy and went to the sofa, sitting and holding his hand out to her.

Roy blinked rapidly like some cartoon character, and Amy tried not to smile. There was little she could do for the sore knuckles, but she made a production of wrapping gauze around them, hoping to stall long enough for their cop friends to arrive.

Roy kept a close eye on Huff as he gathered the items that had been knocked out of his bag.

Finally, the police arrived. Sergeant Kenneth Branch and his Rookie, Jimmy Tackett assessed the situation quickly. They were also familiar with this family and their various degrees of in-fighting.

A glint of morning sunlight reflected off Branch's bald head. Before taking a razor to his hair after losing a bet, Kenneth Branch never fully appreciated the creative genius of eyebrows. They were crucial to keeping sweat out of the eyes, and in his line of work, vision was sometimes the only thing between you and a bullet. He even fancied the idea of God as a bald entity. A tall, muscular man with thick arms and legs, Branch was intimidating; a comfort to have around if you needed help, and a frightening presence if you were in trouble with the law.

Tackett was short and boyish-looking, and ripe for a bullet from some street thug. Tackett's best chance for survival was to be partnered with Branch. The contrast of the two was almost comical. Like Batman and Robin. Not much older than Jeremy, Tackett was the mirror image of the young man cowering in the kitchen, with slight alterations based on the application of free will. Two young men who took different paths. It only takes one wrong turn to create that kind of polarity.

"What can we do to help out, here, folks?" Branch asked.

Huff was suddenly aware of where the new voice came from, and got up, knocking Amy back to her rump on the floor. He gestured angrily, the end of the gauze around his knuckles dangling in the air. "Don't nobody touch me, goddammit." He gestured at Ashleigh. "Come on over here, girl. I'm taking you home."

"Now hang on—don't I know you? What's your name, sir?"

The big man turned around, his comb-over flailing upright. "Name's Huff. I come to take my little girl home!"

"I'm not goin' anywhere with you!" Ashleigh shouted.

Jeremy moved over to Ashleigh in a show of support, and she moved away, almost imperceptibly.

Branch met Ashleigh's eyes. "Is he here with your permission?"

"Well I didn't know he was gonna try to kill Jeremy!"

To Jeremy: "Do you intend to press charges?"

"Hell yes."

Tackett asked Ashleigh for her ID. He turned to Branch. "She's eighteen."

Branch held up both his hands to Huff. "Now, Mr. Huff, your daughter is at the age of consent, so you can't force her to—"

"I don' care what consent she is, she's comin' home!"

The sergeant swiveled his right hip so that his firearm was out of the man's reach, and planted his feet as if he was about to perform a Jackie Chan movement. "Mr. Huff, let's do this the easy way, okay? Please turn around and put your hands behind your back."

He shook his head. "Nope. I ain't goin'."

"Sir, I'm not asking you. I'm telling you. Turn around and—"

Huff swung an arm at Branch, but he leaned back and the blow missed. Branch snatched the wrist and twisted it behind Huff's back as he spun him, pushing him toward the sofa. Tackett was beside his partner and in a few swift seconds, they had his face in the cushions, and were handcuffing him.

Officer Branch had just celebrated 10 years on the force; nine of them in New York, and had transferred to the Burlington P.D. to hedge his bets. He considered himself lucky: lucky to have lived. That luck was now bolstered by the low rate of violent crime in Vermont. Still, Branch was looking forward to his training as a Detective. He intended to spend the last ten years on the force wearing his own clothes, and sitting at a desk rather than in a squad car.

"Am I under arrest?" Huff bellowed into the smelly foam.

"Yes you are, sir. Drunk and disorderly, assault and battery, attempted assault of a police officer, for now. You have the right to remain silent—"

"I ain't gonna be silent!" he shouted.

Branch continued to Mirandize him as he and Tackett half-dragged, half-led him to the door, the drunk man's flailings managing to knock Amy off balance and onto her rump again.

As Tackett returned with the forms for Jeremy and Ashleigh to fill out, Roy pulled off his surgical gloves and tossed them in a Ziploc bag for later disposal. Moving over to Amy, he looked down at his partner, who was still seated on the floor. He plucked a jerky strip from a pen protector in his breast pocket and popped the end in his mouth. "No sitting down on the job, Spenser," he cracked.

=================

Achilles Forjan can be had at a discount over the Amazon price, directly from my site.

Excerpt from Achilles Forjan

Excerpt from Somewhere Else

(book in progress)

~The Color of Confusion ~

Cornelius paused with vermilion loaded up on his brush, about to make a bold swath across the canvas, when he noticed Daelah. Placing the laden brush in his teeth, he reached down and readjusted the position of his wheelchair so he could see her better.
      At the end of the long corridor leading to the kitchen, she stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the ceiling, and down at her hands, and touching her own face.
      Cornelius frowned, a drop of vermilion free falling from the end of his brush onto a dried spot of cobalt blue on his sweats.
      A tapping grew louder and he twisted toward the back hallway leading out of the living room as Jubal made his way toward Cornelius, seated at his easel. Jubal moved the white-tipped cane back and forth in front of him. Tap. Tap. Tap, Tap.
     Cornelius took the brush from his mouth and caught his attention. "Psst!"
      Jubal paused, one hand on the saxophone dangling from a cord around his chalky neck, the other on the cane. His lifting of eyebrows at the sound made his wraparound sunglasses bob upward on his nose. "What?" he whispered back.
      Keeping his voice in a whisper, still, he said, "Have you noticed anything strange about Daelah today?"
"How would I notice anything about Daelah?" The blind man smirked.
      He swiped a hand down his face, to smooth his Van Dyke style goatee. "You know what I mean."
      "Well, yes. . ." He took a few steps forward, sliding the tip of the cane along the wood floor in front of him. "She smells different."
      "Smells different?"
      "Yeah."
      "New perfume?"
      "Nope. Individual, natural scent is different."
      "Okay, weirdness." Cornelius turned back to watch Daelah who was now reaching toward the ceiling, stretching like a cat, and moaning with pleasure.
      Jubal cocked his head toward her sounds. "What the hell is she doing? Playing with herself?"
      "Just stretching. . .but weird, like she's never stretched before. She seems to be enjoying it too much."
      Jubal took measured steps forward, made a left face, and then moved quietly down the hall, holding his cane against his chest. He paused not three feet behind her, and put the saxophone to his lips, blowing a rude honk at her.
      She jumped, stumbled against the wall and stared at him
      Feigning ignorance, he said, "Oh, is someone there?" He lifted his cane and swept it side to side, comically searching for her.
      In the living room threshold, Cornelius let out a humorous huff. His friend Jubal enjoyed playing the sightless eccentric all the way to the bone. He had embraced his disability with unusual flair.Daelah looked at the tall, angular blind man. Almost-flawless skin, paled from a lack of sunshine. She knew better than to say, who are you? She was aware of several things she suspected she should know at this point, but precisely who this blind man was, she wasn't sure about. "You scared me," she offered instead.
      "Oh. Sorry." He lowered the cane.
      "How can you sneak up like that when—"
      He knew she meant to add, when you're blind. "I have sonar like a dolphin. I can sense the walls and obstacles. . .I can feel the ions in the air, parting for my passage."
      "Right," came the snide remark a short distance behind Jubal.
      Cornelius rolled down the hall toward them and watched  Daelah lean out to see past Jubal toward the approaching wheelchair.
      Jubal cocked his head. "Are you okay, Daelah? You smell funny."
      "What?"
      "Huh?" he responded, just as confused about her misunderstanding as she was about his statement. She knew he had a keen sense of smell. The subject had come up many times before. She knew he noticed the minutiae most people missed.
      Daelah frowned again as the man in the wheelchair stopped beside the blind man. Jubal released his hold on the saxophone to sweep his hand at waist level, toward Cornelius, catching him in the face. "Oh, there you are," Jubal said.
      "Stop it!" Cornelius reprimanded him, slapping his hand away. His antics could be so aggravating.
      Addressing the still-baffled looking woman in front of him, Cornelius said, "You seem weird today, Daelah."
      "I do?"
      "Yes."
      "I. . ." She glanced to her right, up the staircase. "I think I'll go up and lie down for awhile." She turned and climbed the steps, showing interest in the photos on the stairway wall, and glancing back at them as if they were friendly house-spiders, but spiders, just the same.
      As she disappeared around the landing, the two men waited in silence for a moment, then Cornelius spun his chair and rolled back down the hallway toward the living room, the vermilion-loaded brush in his teeth again.
      Jubal followed him, and took a seat in a chair to play his sax.


      Upstairs, Daelah sank down on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her eyes and considered her own confusion.
      For the last few minutes, she had been trying to assimilate the volumes of information that had seemingly been downloaded into her brain. Everything from how to tie her shoes, to the relative merits of clean underwear.
      She was Daelah Murdock. She felt like herself. But something had changed. That much was clear, if only by the reaction of these two housemates. The blind man and the cripple. They seemed familiar, but she didn't know them, as odd as that contradiction was.
      Then, she recalled the dream that had played out in her mind just before she emerged from nocturnal bliss that morning.
      A glowing white essence, shaped somewhat like an elongated teardrop, had told her, telepathically, "Thank you." Daelah had no way of knowing what she, herself, looked like in the dream, but sensed she was also a glowing essence.  She had reached out to grasp the wrist that emerged from the glowing essence—a human wrist, that clenched her own in farewell.
      When the Teardrop Essence vanished, her dreamself noticed a tattoo on her inner forearm of a strange  symbol. Then she woke, and the tattoo was not on her skin, and she sat up to draw the symbol on the pad of paper on the nightstand. Then she had found the bathroom and hurried to look in the mirror, and was stunned by the sensation that the face looking back at her in the glass was not her own. Then she had not recognized the room, and had gone downstairs to look around.
      Now, frowning down at the paper, she sensed that the symbol was important, but wasn't quite sure why. The shape resembled an ankh, the universal symbol of eternal life, but it was like a blending of two ankhs, one upright, the other upside down, and joined at the stems.
      Daelah spent the next few hours roaming around the bedroom, seeking clues to her befuddlement. The bedspread was an aggravating shade of pink, and there was a pink dust ruffle made of lace around the bed. She hated it. Likewise, the matching horridly pink lampshade on the nightstand, had engendered more repulsion. Though the walls were a standard eggshell color, they were festooned with all things pink.
      This could not possibly be her own room, though she had awakened here. Peering down at herself, she  noticed she was wearing a hideous pink nightgown with lace around the collar. She pulled it off her like it was on fire, and hurried to the closet.
      Inside the wardrobe nook, her efforts to find more agreeable attire had met with a nightmarish array of pink, salmon, lavender, and fuchsia. The singular exception was a black T-Shirt, banished to the far end of the clothes rod. She turned it toward her to look at it. A depiction of a bread-like ring bejeweled with fruit and nuts graced the front, and below it in white letters was the word Fruitcake. No doubt this was a gift from someone with a sense of humor who was making a veiled suggestion about the pink-woman's mental status.
The Pink Woman. She had framed it as though the pink woman was not her. But it wasn't her. Yet here she was, being her.
      As she pulled the black fruitcake T-Shirt over her head, snatched a pair of jeans and pulled them on, and added some atrocious pink sneakers to her–no surprise—pink socks, she felt a little more like herself. Whoever that was.
      Emerging from the closet, she stood in the middle of the room and thought about it all. She wasn't herself. Couldn't be. What did that mean?
      Her trip downstairs a few minutes ago, did not garner her much information. The house was like a familiar place from long ago, yet almost erased from her memory. When the blind man and the cripple appeared,  things became even more confusing.
      Sitting back down on the bed, she listened for a moment to the blind man playing saxophone downstairs. She recognized the tune as Patsy Cline's "Crazy." It was a little crazy that she recognized the song, but not the guy who played it—a guy who obviously lived in her house. . .or she in his.
      She picked up the wretched pink purse, and pulled out the aggravating pink wallet. The driver's license read,

Daelah Murdock

72 North Tapioca

Cedar City, Utah.

Tapioca? Who the hell would live on a street called Tapioca? Was Pudding Circle all full-up? Daelah perused the license again. She was apparently female, and 36 years old.

  About the book:
A non-physical soul makes an agreement with another incarnated soul to take over her body. The Walk-in, perhaps too fearless, and too hungry for the pleasures of the flesh, discovers she has inherited the life of Daelah Murdock, a Mormon goody-two -shoes with a pathological attachment to the color pink. As a live-in caregiver for two men--one blind, the other wheelchair bound--Daelah's life seems bland and puerile. Yet someone is trying to kill her.
_____________________________________
Somewhere Else,  (c)Kelli Jae Baeli

Excerpt from Somewhere Else

Excerpt from Armchair Detective

Excerpt from Armchair Detective, by yours truly
available on Amazon.

I had the prepaid cell phone on the seat beside me. Huxley had provided that so he could keep in touch with me, and in case I had some emergency and needed to call him. It was a source of embarrassment for me that I didn’t have something as fundamental as a cell phone, but Huxley seemed to understand, and displayed no judgment on it. Until now, I saw little reason to have one. Who would I call? I kept to myself and didn’t have any real friends here. 
     Next to the cell phone, lay the .45 caliber Ruger SP-101. The gun was not for shooting anyone, necessarily, but for self-defense, or leverage to get out of any sticky situation that might arise. I wasn’t afraid of guns; I was quite good at handling them and hitting targets. I used to have a bumper sticker that read, Guns don’t kill people, People kill people. I hoped that no people would kill other people tonight. 
     Yawning and stretching for the umpteenth time, I frowned down into the too-expensive cardboard cup with the well-known logo. The too-expensive coffee that had been in it was now cold. I grunted into the dark liquid, rolling down the window to catch some air. Though balmy, as if August wasn’t sure it wanted to be September, a cool breeze periodically felt like Freon on my skin; something I was not used to in the pre-air conditioning era of the Falcon. I sucked on my eCig, and watched the wind catch a wayward cheeseburger wrapper and propel it through the parking garage as I worked at the knot in my neck. 
     What was taking so long? Were we being stood-up? Stacey’s goons might be toying with us. So this could all be for nothing. Or something could already be going awry, and that hundred bucks would seem less and less equitable.
     I could see that surveillance work was tedious. Anyone who would sit in a parked car for hours and drink expensive coffee, waiting for something that might never happen, was not in it for the excitement. That wasn’t the reason I wanted to take up the investigative vocation; though inexperienced, I did understand there was little glamor to be had, here. Hopefully not just the coffee. But the events of my near-past segued naturally into the job. I needed a source of income, and couldn’t risk doing anything I’d done before. Presumably, I was on my way to something that might release me from the tethers of the past. Still, it was my first case, and I felt a little naked. 
     I checked the layout in my head against the one in front of me. Second level, row C. I could see row A, near the elevator, about 50 yards in front of me and to my left. So where the hell is— 
     Just then, Huxley’s black Mercury Sable pulled into Row A and parked. Somewhere in the parking deck, I heard an engine start, and faint music playing, and soon, a silver Toyota 4Runner was moving toward Huxley’s car. Ah, the delivery boy. The SUV backed into the space beside the Sable. Its driver probably wanted to be able to make a quick exit if things got dicey.
     I dropped my eCig in the seat, and slid down, peeking over the dash at the blond man who leaned over to open the passenger door. Huxley got out, carrying the bank bag of cash, and got in, closing the door. I heard the music get louder when the door was open, and knew the guy must have kept his radio on in case Huxley intended to record anything.
     Using my binoculars, I got a good look at him. He wiped at his upper lip, his attention scampering around the garage, and I ducked when his gaze came my direction.
     It was too dark for him to see me, as I’d been careful to stay away from the lights that were mounted at infrequent intervals on concrete pillars and crossbeams. And I had taken a moment to stand on the roof of the Falcon and unscrew the light above the crossbeam over me. Still, I didn’t want to take any chances on this case for the same reason I parked my butt and read reference manuals for hours on end. The pain was worth the gain. Maybe.
     While I waited, I had an idea. Truly inspired. I removed the overhead bulb inside the Falcon and then my hand darted for the handle. I bumped my coffee in its holder on the door. The brown liquid splashed onto the top of my left Doc Marten, and ran into my sock. “Shit,” I growled, kneeing the door open quietly, and stepping out. Pushing the door closed firmly, I headed for the 4Runner in a crouch, periodically shaking my sodden foot in an effort to drain the spill. The glow from the lamps moved over me, bright, then dim, as I traveled between the cars, my attention momentarily snagged by the `66 Galaxie, waiting in all its antiquity for my adoring eyes as I passed by. I toyed with the image of the car with a new paint-job and some bodywork. The general population didn’t appreciate the value of these sturdy old behemoths; probably because they’ve never realized the true potential of a large back seat.
     I ducked lower to travel the expanse of the concrete wall behind the Toyota 4Runner, until I reached a spot directly behind it. Careful to time it so that I couldn’t be seen in the rearview, I hurdled the concrete wall and crept over to the passenger side tire, taking out the tire gauge. Placing the pin on the valve stem, I liberating the tire of its air. I knew he wouldn’t hear it closed up in that SUV with the radio on.
     Then I hurried back down to the bottom of the ramp and crossed over, and up the other side, hiding behind a concrete pillar, watching, and waiting.
     Momentarily, Huxley got out, carrying a manila envelope, got in his Sable, and drove out of the garage.
The blond man began to pull away too, but paused as he felt the flat tire. He put the 4Runner in park and got out, looking at the tires on his side, and then headed for the other side. Finding the flat, he cursed loudly, and retrieved the keys to open the hatch. As he moved to the rear of the vehicle, I got out and shuffled toward the SUV, my head down below the cars. Thankfully, he had left the driver’s door open. When he opened the hatch and peered in, I dashed over, leaned inside the cab and snatched the green zippered bank bag. Pretty easy so far.
     And it would have been the perfect ruse. But I have always had a strange intolerance for certain colognes, and I could smell the pungent odor of his, in the cab of the Toyota. In the inexplicable way that luck has a way of turning, I sensed a tickle in my nose, and before I could think about it, I sneezed.
     The blond man’s head popped out from behind the hatch, and our eyes met, his darting to the bank bag I held, and back up to my, no doubt, stunned expression.
     I launched into full-throttle retreat, first heading for the Falcon, but the last thing I needed was for him to be able to identify the car I was driving, and besides, I wouldn’t have had time to get in and drive away before he caught me. He was tall with long legs. Instead, I headed for the lower ramp, but he had jumped the wall and was running parallel to me, attempting to cut me off at the pass.
     Turning to check his location, I didn’t see the car fender until I rammed my knee into it. Cursing, I jerked away at the popping sound, freezing for a nanosecond, then scanning to my right and behind me at the hole in the side of the Oldsmobile. “Holy shit!”
     Looking back at him running up the incline, I saw that he held a pistol in front of him, and was firing as he ran. Several more shots whizzed past me.
     Recognizing the need to put something between me and that flying lead, I vaulted to the hood of the Olds’ in true Rockfordesque style, and rolled over, falling off the other side, landing hard upon the pavement near the front tire, the smell of oil assaulting my nose. A searing pain shot through my side, and with great chagrin I felt the re-injury of my ribs; they had finally healed, and now I might be back in walking-wounded status. I raised myself painfully and squinted into the early morning darkness at the Falcon: my only hope for escape.
     His advancing foot steps told me I was a clay pigeon, not yet airborne, but loaded in the trap machine, with a stranger’s finger on the release mechanism. I took as much breath as I could into my lungs in order to force myself to stand—the adrenaline dulling the pain in my side. I came up off the pavement and sprinted across the lot, my shoulder blades pulling together in anticipation of the bullets that would soon riddle me like the Delta 88. I was pretty sure the guy was using the type of pistol usually found on any given gang member. No one would think anything about a random shooting in this neighborhood. Gang initiations were common. Poor girl. She didn’t have a chance.
     I tried not to look at the Falcon as I ran past it. Instead I headed up the opposite ramp, on the far side of the matching concrete wall.
     Crouching there for a moment, I surveyed the area. An exit ramp was nearby, but I knew I wouldn’t make it with condition of my knee and ribs. My eyes darted to the large trash receptacle by the wall, in front of a big buttress. Please, God. I limped over, pried the lid off, and found just enough room in the garbage sack to nestle myself inside, and pull the lid back over me.
     This is a mistake. This won’t work. He’ll know I’m in here. Fuck! What was I thinking? Trying to breathe through my mouth as quietly as possible, I waited, my heart pounding so hard, I was sure it was vibrating the trash can.
     His foot steps got louder for a few seconds, and then stopped. I could hear him breathing. Cursing. He was so close. After an almost unbearable silence, I was jostled by the impact of his foot on the side of the receptacle. Oh shit. I’m dead. He knows.

Excerpt from Armchair Detective

Somewhere Else (excerpt)

1

The Color of Confusion

Cornelius paused with vermilion up on his brush, about to make a bold swath across the canvas, when he noticed Daelah. Placing the loaded brush in his teeth, he reached down and readjusted the position of his wheelchair so he could see her better.

At the end of the long corridor leading to the kitchen, she stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up at the ceiling, and down at her hands, and touching her own face.

Cornelius frowned, a drop of vermilion free falling from the end of his brush onto a dried spot of cobalt blue on his sweats. A tapping grew louder and he twisted toward the back hallway leading out of the living room as Jubal made his way toward Cornelius, seated at his easel. Jubal moved the white-tipped cane back and forth in front of him. Tap. Tap. Tap, Tap.

Cornelius took the brush from his mouth and caught his attention. "Psst!"

Jubal paused, one hand on the saxophone dangling from a cord around his pale neck, the other on the cane. His lifting of eyebrows at the sound made his wraparound sunglasses bob upward on his nose. "What?" he whispered back.

Keeping his voice in a whisper, still, Cornelius said, "Have you noticed anything strange about Daelah today?"

"How would I notice anything about Daelah?" The blind man smirked.

He swiped a hand down his face, to smooth his Van Dyke style goatee. "You know what I mean."

"Well, yes. . ." He took a few steps forward, sliding the tip of the cane along the wood floor in front of him. "She smells different."

"Smells different?"

"Yeah."

"New perfume?"

"Nope. Individual, natural scent is different."

"Okay, weirdness." Cornelius turned back to watch Daelah who was now reaching toward the ceiling, stretching like a cat, and moaning with pleasure.

Jubal cocked his head toward her sounds. "What the hell is she doing? Playing with herself?"

"Just stretching. . .but weird, like she's never stretched before. She seems to be enjoying it too much."

Jubal took measured steps forward, made a left face, and then moved quietly down the hall, holding his cane against his chest. He paused not three feet behind her, and put the saxophone to his lips, blowing a rude honk at her.

She jumped, stumbled against the wall and stared at him.

Feigning ignorance, he said, "Oh, is someone there?" He lifted his cane and swept it side to side, comically searching for her.

In the living room threshold, Cornelius let out a humorous huff. His friend Jubal enjoyed playing the blind man all the way to the bone. He had embraced his disability with unusual flair.

Daelah looked at the tall, angular blind man. Almost-flawless skin, paled from a lack of sunshine. She knew better than to say, who are you? She was aware of several things she suspected she shouldn't know at this point, but precisely who this blind man was, she wasn't sure about. "You scared me," she offered instead.

"Oh. Sorry." He lowered the cane.

"How can you sneak up like that when—"

He knew she meant to add, when you're blind. "I have sonar like a dolphin. I can sense the walls and obstacles. . .I can feel the ions in the air, parting for my passage."

"Right," came the snide remark a short distance behind Jubal.

Cornelius rolled down the hall toward them and watched Daelah lean out to see past Jubal toward the approaching wheelchair.

Jubal cocked his head. "Are you okay, Daelah? You smell funny."

"What?"

"Huh?" he responded, just as confused about her misunderstanding as she was about his statement. She knew he had a keen sense of smell. The subject had come up many times before. She knew he noticed the minutiae most people missed.

Daelah frowned again as the man in the wheelchair stopped beside the blind man. Jubal released his hold on the saxophone to sweep his hand at waist level, toward Cornelius, catching him in the face. "Oh, there you are," Jubal said.

"Stop it!" Cornelius reprimanded him, slapping his hand away. His antics could be so aggravating.

Addressing the still-baffled looking woman in front of him, Cornelius said, "You seem weird today, Daelah."

"I do?"

"Yes."

"I. . ." She glanced to her right, up the staircase. "I think I'll go up and lie down for awhile." She turned and climbed the steps, showing interest in the photos on the stairway wall, and glancing back at them as if they were friendly house-spiders, but spiders, just the same.

As she disappeared around the landing, the two men waited in silence for a moment, then Cornelius spun his chair and rolled back down the hallway toward the living room, the vermilion-loaded brush in his teeth again.

Jubal followed him, and took a seat in a chair to play his sax.

#

Upstairs, Daelah sank down on the edge of the bed. She rubbed her eyes and considered her own confusion.

For the last few minutes, she had been trying to assimilate the volumes of information that had seemingly been downloaded into her brain. Everything from how to tie her shoes, to the relative merits of clean underwear.

She was Daelah Murdock. She felt like herself. But something had changed. That much was clear, if only by the reaction of these two housemates. The blind man and the cripple. They seemed familiar, but she didn't know them, as odd as that contradiction was.

Then, she recalled the dream that had played out in her mind just before she emerged from nocturnal bliss that morning.

A glowing white essence, shaped somewhat like an elongated teardrop, had told her, telepathically, "Thank you." Daelah had no way of knowing what she, herself, looked like in the dream, but sensed she was also a glowing essence. She had reached out to grasp the wrist that emerged from the glowing essence—a human wrist, that clenched her own in farewell.

When the Teardrop Essence vanished, her dreamself noticed a tattoo of a strange symbol on her inner forearm. Then she woke, and the tattoo was not on her skin, and she sat up to draw the symbol on the pad of paper on the nightstand. Then she had found the bathroom and hurried to look in the mirror, stunned by the sensation that the face looking back at her in the glass was not her own. Then she had not recognized the room, and had gone downstairs to look around.

Now, frowning down at the paper, she sensed that the symbol was important, but wasn't quite sure why. The shape resembled an ankh, the universal symbol of eternal life, but it was like a blending of two ankhs, one upright, the other upside down, and joined at the stems.

Daelah spent the next few hours roaming around the bedroom, seeking clues to her befuddlement. The bedspread was an aggravating shade of pink, and there was a pink dust ruffle made of lace around the bed. She hated it. Likewise, the matching horridly pink lampshade on the nightstand, had engendered more repulsion. Though the walls were a standard eggshell color, they were festooned with all things pink.

This could not possibly be her own room, though she had awakened there. Peering down at herself, she noticed she was wearing a hideous pink nightgown with lace around the collar. She pulled it off her like it was on fire, and hurried to the closet.

Inside the wardrobe nook, her efforts to find more agreeable attire had met with a nightmarish array of pink, salmon, lavender, and fuchsia. The singular exception was a black T-Shirt, banished to the far end of the clothes rod. She turned it toward her to look at it. A depiction of a bread-like ring bejeweled with fruit and nuts graced the front, and below it in white letters was the word Fruitcake. No doubt this was a gift from someone with a sense of humor who was making a veiled suggestion about the pink-woman's mental status.

The Pink Woman. She had framed it as though the pink woman was not her. But it wasn't her. Yet here she was, being her.

As she pulled the black fruitcake T-Shirt over her head, snatched a pair of jeans and pulled them on, and added some atrocious pink sneakers to her–no surprise—pink socks, she felt a little more like herself. Whoever that was.

Emerging from the closet, she stood in the middle of the room and thought about it all. She wasn't herself. Couldn't be. What did that mean?

Her trip downstairs a few minutes ago, did not garner her much information. The house was like a familiar place from long ago, yet almost erased from her memory. When the blind man and the cripple appeared, things became even more confusing.

Sitting back down on the bed, she listened for a moment to the blind man playing saxophone downstairs. She recognized the tune as Patsy Cline's "Crazy." It was a little crazy that she recognized the song, but not the guy who played it—a guy who obviously lived in her house. . .or she in his.

She picked up the wretched pink purse, and pulled out the aggravating pink wallet. The driver's license read,

Daelah Murdock
72 North Tapioca
Cedar City, Utah.

Tapioca? Who the hell would live on a street called Tapioca? Was Pudding Circle all full-up?

Daelah perused the license again. She was apparently female, and 36 years old.

#

Downstairs, Jubal stopped playing the sax and tilted his head toward Cornelius' painting sounds. "Maybe we should encourage her to go back to the doctor."

"That's what I'm thinking."

"They told her she would be fine, but a knock on the head like that can sometimes do some damage that doesn't show up until later."

"Yeah, just like it did with you," Cornelius quipped.

"I only lost my sight, I didn't lose my mind."

"Jury's still out on that one," he said, wiping his brush on a paint smattered towel.

Jubal tossed his cane in the painter's direction, and it hit the arm of the wheelchair and clattered to the floor.

Cornelius looked down at it, lying next to the left wheel.

Jubal said, "I dropped my cane, could you hand it back to me?"

Cornelius rolled his eyes and leaned to pick it up, poking the blind man in the leg with it. Jubal grabbed it and placed it over his lap again.

#

Daelah dug through the pukey pink purse and in a side pocket, found a folded bulletin from the Church of Latter Day Saints. What was that, Saints that weren't quite here, but would be, tomorrow? The newsletter had a mailing label addressed to her, which meant she might actually be a card-carrying member of the Polygamy Pack.

Suddenly, she wondered if the two men downstairs were her husbands. Although why she would have chosen a blind man and a cripple for her spouses, was unclear. No. wait. . .it didn't work that way. . .it was the men who got to have numerous wives. . .that's certainly not fair. Unless this was another planet or an alternate reality where there was a matriarchy in place. That would be cool.

Glancing around at her obvious pink fetish, the answer to that was a little easier to guess. She had a screw loose, and they were the only two Mormon men left who would have her stupid pink ass.

Also in the handbag was a tube of lipstick the color of—again, no surprise—Passion Pink.

She thought she would hurl if she had to look at all this pink much longer. Her gut was queasy.

Moving into the bathroom, she fully expected to see the medicine cabinet lined with bottles of Pepto Bismol, if only by the fetish of its color. When she opened it, there was only one bottle of it, yet she was not encouraged by that paltry representation. She grabbed it, screwed off the lid and took a slug of it.

When she put it back, she saw a prescription. Alprazolam. A generic form of Xanax. This told her she had some sort of anxiety disorder, though the only anxiety she felt now stemmed from her confused, Swiss-cheese memory and the proliferation of pink in her bedroom. A plastic bottle of Tums resided next to the Pepto, its contents graced by periodic pink tablets as well. What was up with this woman? Why was she so obsessed with pink? This woman. Me. Not me. Hell's bells.

Closing the cabinet, she caught sight of her hair in the mirror. She looked like the Flying Freaking Nun, her crowning glory more a hat than a head of hair, if the amount of hairspray was any indication. She opened several drawers until she found a hairbrush, and stroked it through the glue-like texture on each side, yelping when the bristles hit a sore spot. Reaching up, she felt a huge lump at the back of her skull. Ahhh. . .that explains it. She'd bumped her head.

Swiftly, she felt a sense of panic. What if the Teardrop Essence dream and the downloaded brain matter was the result of a head injury? What if she had forgotten everything about herself and it never reappeared in her brain? Maybe not such a bad thing, she reassured herself, considering what she had discovered so far.

She looked back at her reflection and in lieu of an answer to the head injury question, resolved to let her hair grow out, and get some real body in it, to avoid the churchy look.

She reentered the bedroom and began searching through it for more clues.

In the nightstand, she found the obligatory pink diary. This time, she could ignore the color she had only today come to loathe, because the contents of the diary might provide all the answers she sought. There was no guilt in the action, as she reminded herself that she couldn't be blamed for invading her own privacy.

Somewhere Else (excerpt)