An Unusual Occupation Read online

“He’s got some sort of death fetish,” Kyle answered.

  “I ever tell you it can get annoying that you can read my mind?”

  “I can’t read minds, but you’re not that hard to figure out,” Kyle said as they made their way to the garage to drive to the hospital.

  10

  Crush

  David Taylor searched his locker for some of the things he’d need for Mr. Drifter’s class. He didn’t take his algebra book; he figured he could borrow someone else’s. He did take the calculus book. Mr. Drifter had given him some extra work to practice, and he wanted to check his answers.

  He pushed his other books aside and picked up the latest issues of Rolling Stone, Blender, and Spin. He was glad he’d figured math out. It wasn’t very different from music in some ways, but if he had a choice, he’d still rather learn a new song than a new formula. Unfortunately, new songs don’t help you pass high school.

  That was the other cool thing about Mr. Drifter. He didn’t try to make anything more than what it was. He accepted David and all his hobbies for what they were and didn’t try to pressure him. He was still pretty weird. He always had a book with him, and every now and again, the sub would talk like it was 1806 instead of 2006. Still, if Mr. Drifter could accept him for who he was, David could do the same.

  David closed his locker and nearly jumped out of his Converse sneakers. Karen had managed to sneak up on him. Well, maybe she didn’t mean to sneak, but she could have coughed or something.

  “Hey,” she said. David meant to say something, but he found himself staring at her. He wondered if she wore contacts. No one’s eyes could naturally be that blue. Could they? It occurred to him that he was staring, so he tried to say something cool. Something that would make him seem calm and collected.

  “Hey,” he replied. Stupid! Stupid idiot!

  “Are you going to class?” she asked. She had this weird smile, as if she knew some secret of his that he didn’t even know he had, like he wasn’t wearing pants, and she thought it was the funniest secret to keep.

  “Yeah,” he said. Mr. Drifter would have sarcastically told him how eloquent that comment was. What the heck did eloquent mean, anyway?

  “Do you want to go with me?” she asked.

  “To class?”

  “Was there somewhere else you wanted to go?”

  David laughed a little too loud. He wouldn’t have minded if he’d fallen off the face of the earth at that moment. At least she was still talking to him. “No, I mean, yes. I mean, I guess Mr. Drifter’s class is OK, but not the best place.” He was rambling and knew he should stop talking. “But it’s not the coolest place to go or anything. I mean, we could go somewhere else. Not now, ‘cause, class.” He really should shut up now. “But, yeah, we’ll go to class.”

  “So that’s a yes?” Karen asked. She brushed a lock of her hair from her eyes. He watched it curve around her ear and fall on her neck. She had asked a question. He should answer.

  “Yes,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment and smiled. Why? Did he have something on his face? Did he have a zit? “So, should we go?” she asked.

  He managed to keep from slapping his forehead, barely. “Yeah, come on.” They walked quietly for a while. David grew a bit nervous. Had the hallway always been this long? No, it just felt that way whenever he had to walk with Karen. Did he have to? He wanted to, but it always felt frustrating. What was he supposed to say?

  “Did you learn to play ‘Moth’?” she asked. He had told her he liked the song and that he’d try to learn to play it.

  “Yeah, it’s not hard, once you get the chords,” he said. Music was easy to talk about. Music was simple because it just was.

  “The bass track on that is easy,” she said. That’s how they had met. She played bass. A girl who played bass! Lots of girls could sing, but Karen could actually play and even read music. She had learned the cello in band and picked up a bass after David gave her a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD. It was an older CD, but some classics never die.

  “You learned it too?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I figured we could jam later if you wanted,” she said.

  “Sure,” he said. He could feel his fingers working chord progressions on the palms of his hands. He did that sometimes. Some people had nervous twitches; David played songs. He’d play every song he knew or had ever written dozens of times in his head.

  “So, when?” Karen asked.

  David stopped. He wasn’t sure what she meant. “When what?” he asked. She laughed. Why? Did he say something funny? He wasn’t trying to be funny. Why was she always so calm?

  “When did you want to get together to play that song?” She was serious? Well, of course she was serious, but she actually wanted to set a time and place?

  “Um?” he said. He meant to say, “Well, I’m not sure. I’ll have to see what I have to do this week, and I’ll call you.” He wasn’t quite sure how his brain shortened the phrase into two letters. Maybe that’s what eloquent meant. “Next week?” he asked. His voice chose a perfect time to crack.

  “Sure,” she said. She gave him that smile again, which caused him to check to make sure he was wearing pants. He was, so what was so funny? And when in God’s name did this freaking hallway get so long?

  They eventually reached Mr. Drifter’s class. They only had a minute to shove their desks together before the bell rang. Mr. Drifter gave David a smile, not a secret smile like Karen’s, just a pleasant smile that meant “hello.”

  The class went by pretty quickly. David had started to do his homework the day before class so he could have more time to talk with Karen, only he never actually did. He never knew what to say without sounding stupid.

  They were working on factoring. David knew how to factor from one of his first tutoring sessions with Mr. Drifter. Karen looked as if she wasn’t having a lot of success. “It’s easy,” David said. He did her first problem for her, talking it through.

  “Why is it plus and minus?” she asked.

  “It’s sort of like playing in different keys,” David answered. “You have two sets of equations, so you have two ways to make them equal zero.”

  “Like a D or a power D?” Karen asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, quickly setting up the formula. “But you don’t have to worry too much about that. Formulas are easy, especially for someone like you. You just plug in the right numbers.”

  “Someone like me?” Karen asked.

  “Yeah, someone smart,” David said. “If you can read music, this stuff is simple.” He looked up at Mr. Drifter. He was reading his book, but David could have sworn the teacher was staring at them.

  He showed Karen how to use the formula the same way Mr. Drifter showed him. He showed her all the same tricks he’d learned from his tutor. Then he let her do a problem, but he talked her through it. Once she’d figured it out, she worked quickly. They never found time to talk.

  “Five minutes until the bell rings,” Mr. Drifter said as he closed his book. The kids used to think they could try to get away with things while Mr. Drifter read. He had this weird knack for reading with one eye and looking at the class with the other. David had seen him walk to class once while reading a book! He could actually read and walk at the same time without even coming close to walking into someone.

  He collected his homework and tucked it into his personal folder. That was another idea Mr. Drifter had started. Each kid had a folder they turned in to Mr. Drifter, and he would hand them back the next morning with their graded papers.

  “I can turn yours in, too, if you want,” David told Karen as he grabbed her folder. She smiled at him again. He felt his face to see if he had something on his forehead, like a zit, but he didn’t. So what was so funny?

  “Thank you,” was all she said, but she said it in a way that he knew meant a lot more. Only he didn’t have a clue what that meant. A kid in their music class had said guitars are called “she’s” because they’re like women. He was an idiot. Guita
rs were so much easier to understand than girls. In fact, if girls came with instructions like guitars had sheets of music, David would still be clueless.

  He walked up to Mr. Drifter and handed in his homework. “You and young Beachwood seem to work well together,” the teacher said.

  “She’s cool,” David answered.

  “Are you two ... ?” he asked.

  “Are we what?” David asked back.

  Mr. Drifter chuckled. “I might be tutoring you in the wrong subject.”

  “What’s that mean?” David asked.

  “Nothing,” Mr. Drifter answered. “I only wondered if you two were just friends or something more.”

  David felt his face burn. “No!” he nearly shouted. “I mean,” he said more calmly. “She’s a friend. But we’re not dating or anything.”

  “I see,” Mr. Drifter said.

  “We’re gonna have a jam session next week,” David said quickly. He wasn’t sure why he felt like he was defending himself, or why that statement would help his case.

  “So you’re going to spend time together doing something you both enjoy?” Mr. Drifter asked.

  “Yeah,” David said.

  “Have your parents told you what a date is?” Every now and again, Mr. Drifter could ask a question that felt just a little like teasing. It was like how his grandpa would joke with people. It wasn’t hurtful or mean, just teasing. Actually, Mr. Drifter had a lot in common with David’s grandpa.

  “Yes,” David answered sullenly. “But people do hang out without dating.”

  “I suppose,” Mr. Drifter said. “But hanging out is a start; unless, of course, you don’t like her that way.”

  “I didn’t say that!” David barked. “She’s great. I just don’t know if she—”

  “Young Beachwood,” Mr. Drifter said with a smile. David nearly jumped on the teacher’s desk. How long had she been there? What did she hear? What did I say? When did I lose my marbles?

  “Hi,” she said to Mr. Drifter.

  “We were just talking about hanging out,” Mr. Drifter said. It wasn’t a lie. David didn’t think his teacher ever lied, but the sub said “hanging out,” not “dating.”

  “Hanging out with who?” Karen asked. She looked at David and smiled. David checked to see if his shoes were tied. They were.

  “I’m afraid I don’t hang out very often,” Mr. Drifter said, as if that were an answer to her question. “I have far too much work to do.”

  “Oh,” Karen said. “David, did you want to walk to Band?”

  Mr. Drifter smiled. That’s it! David thought to himself. The next person to smile at me like that gets a punch in the nose. “Sure,” he said nervously.

  11

  Investigation

  A twenty-minute drive brought Richard and Kyle to Sun Health Boswell Hospital. The small hospital just off Highway 60 had one more vacancy among its 436 beds.

  Kyle took the lead. Hospitals had nurses, so Kyle became “lead detective.” Richard didn’t begrudge his partner the chance to smile at any of the women of the world. Only one matters to me.

  Kyle, the lead detective, decided the young nurse at the front desk, who saw absolutely nothing, must be questioned thoroughly. This meant Richard, the somehow older and more experienced junior detective, had to question the sixty-something-year-old Martha Thompson, who wasn’t very attractive but had seen something.

  “What do you mean, you didn’t see much?” Richard asked, a little perturbed. Maybe she didn’t see anything.

  “It’s just like I told the cute one,” Martha said. Guess I know which one that makes me. “I noticed Mr. Rojas’s machine wasn’t sending any information. I figured he’d pulled it off his finger again.”

  “Was the patient unruly?” the sergeant asked.

  “Mr. Rojas was in a lot of pain,” the nurse answered. Richard thought she looked like the sort of woman who watched everything. He wouldn’t be surprised if she knew every patient’s name and berated anyone who didn’t offer her patients any respect. “We tried to keep him as comfortable as possible, but he was dying and in pain. I imagined he pulled the plug just to get someone to notice him.”

  Well, he got his wish.

  “So I went to his room. Just as I got there, I saw a young man walk out. When I found Mr. Rojas, there were flowers on his bed, and his heart monitor was off.”

  “Is there a chance Mr. Rojas knew the man you saw?”

  “Mr. Rojas ... ” she paused. Richard’s instincts said she was looking for a way to put a nice thought on a bad comment. “He didn’t have many visitors.”

  “No family?”

  “He has family, but he ... ” Another pause for positive spin. “He preferred his family not see him suffer.”

  “So you’re certain that whoever this was didn’t know Mr. Rojas?”

  Martha planted a boney finger in Richard’s plump chest. “I know every single one of my patients, Sergeant Hertly,” she said, poking him with each word. “Mr. Rojas had a wife, two children, and one grandchild. His children and grandchildren live out of town. His wife, Maria, visits her husband while he sleeps on Wednesday. It may have escaped your notice, Sergeant ... ”

  “I know what day it is,” Richard muttered.

  “ ... but today is Friday,” the nurse barked, as if she didn’t hear him.

  “Can you describe the visitor?” Richard asked. To his pleasant surprise, the nurse looked disappointed. Her jaw wagged a few times and that overbearing attitude melted. Maybe a little respect for the healthy Mrs. Thompson.

  “He was young,” she said with an annoyed wave of her hand. “A bit taller than your cute partner.”

  “Is he really that much cuter than I am?”

  “He had light-brown hair,” Martha continued, as if Richard hadn’t said anything, again.

  “Did you see his eyes or face?”

  “He was walking away,” Martha replied. She sounded like someone who felt responsible.

  “Nurse Thompson,” Richard said. “Your job is to worry about the sick and injured, and I can tell you take that job very seriously.”

  “For thirty years, Sergeant.”

  “Well, my job is to find the truth, and I take that very seriously. You did your part, and you’ve given me a lot to work with.” A lot more than I had before I got here. “You focus on your other patients now. They need you. I promise you, I’ll take care of Mr. Rojas from here.”

  Martha shot the short, overweight detective a critical stare. “You’re the good one, aren’t you?”

  “The ‘good one’?”

  “That one there gets all the phone numbers,” she said, pointing at Kyle, who had found his way into Rojas’s room with the lovely nurse. “But you’re the one who puts the fuel in the engine, aren’t you?”

  “Well, it doesn’t go in the muffler, does it?”

  “Take a compliment, Sergeant. No one likes a smart aleck.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “I usually have a good judge of character, Sergeant, but I was wrong about you.”

  “I look like a bad guy?” Richard asked, truly a bit insulted.

  “Not at all,” the nurse said. “Just looked like the sort who doesn’t care about much. I think now maybe you just care so much about everything else, you don’t have time left for you. That’s the weird thing.”

  “Weird?” Richard asked.

  “I can’t remember much about the guy, like I told you, but he looked hurt.”

  “Like he felt guilty?”

  “Sergeant, I said ‘hurt,’ so that’s what I meant.” So much for the compliments, he thought.

  “Thank you for your time, Nurse Thompson,” Richard said as he backed a safe distance away. She looked like she wanted to jab her finger at him again. “I have your number, and I’ll call if I have any other questions.” He continued to back away, half-afraid she’d chase him down if he turned his back.

  “Anytime, Sergeant,” she said.

  Richard moved down a c
olumn of single-bed rooms. Richard had always thought hospitals were terrible places. They were so sterile. When he died a long, long time from then, he wanted it to be in a place with color.

  Nurse Amanda brought Kyle into Mr. Rojas’s room. It took him all of an instant to catalog everything about it. It was a knack of his from childhood. He’d memorized where everything was in the kitchen so he wouldn’t stumble when he went downstairs to steal a snack. The habit had caught on, and before he knew it, Kyle could memorize an entire building in a glance. Some called it a photographic memory, which Kyle had to admit was accurate, but it was more than that.

  Kyle’s eye lingered on Amanda for a moment. He’d begun to charm her, and she seemed at least willing to let him continue to charm her. For all of what Richard said about him being no movie star, he never had a problem finding a woman. Holding onto her seemed to baffle him, but that didn’t bother him so much.

  He memorized Amanda’s features: her blue eyes and blonde hair, the way her body filled her uniform, and the smell of lily-scented perfume. She didn’t look like some hack actress trying to be a cute nurse. She was, in fact, a nurse who happened to be very cute, in her own slender way.

  She smiled as she noticed his staring. He smiled back. I should actually do some work; Richard doesn’t like it when I flirt before getting a look at a place. Reluctantly, he pulled his eyes off her. He scanned the room, and everything neatly placed itself into a map in his mind.

  The bed is flush against the west wall, exactly centered between the north window and south door. Three machines; one of them is a heart monitor. The bathroom is in the northeast corner of the room, eight feet by sixteen.

  He identified each shade of white. The walls were eggshell white; the sheets were the shade of a blank piece of printer paper. The blankets were just a shade darker, with a hint of blue.

  The body was gone from the bed, but Kyle noticed the shape of the covers. Miguel was lying on his left side, facing the door, when he died. A stool was an arm’s length from the bed. Our guy sat there, he noted.