Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(84)

D.D. nodded, still studying him.

“I never knew what that meant, but now I do. There’s something terrible out there. Or maybe, now it’s in here.” Suddenly, Lightfoot reached out, touched her cheek.

In spite of herself, D.D. gasped. Lightfoot’s fingers felt like dry ice against her skin. So cold they nearly burned. She took an instinctive step back.

The healer nodded. “Negative energy feels like a deep chill. However, I’m an advanced and powerful healer. Meaning I should be able to fight that cold. I should be able to warm my hands. But since entering the unit, I can’t do it. Something terrible holds sway here. It’s rooted in Lucy’s room, but is already expanding to the entire floor. A cold, malevolent force. A darkness deeper than night. Lucy couldn’t survive it. And neither, I think, can we. It’s why I asked you to leave that room and join me here in the sun.”

“Because some celestial Big Bad hurt Lucy?” asked D.D.

“I’m tired,” Lightfoot said, as if it were important for her to understand that. “I’ve been expending vast amounts of energy on the interplanes each night. Then I’ve had healing exercises to tend to during the day. And now I’m trying to cleanse the taint that has corrupted this ward. I’m drained. Not at my best today. I’m sorry I can’t do more to protect you.”

“What?” D.D. said, looking around.

“You’re angry,” Lightfoot continued. “You’re hurt. Under better circumstances, I would help you center more, bolster your own defenses. But not this afternoon.”

“Okay.” D.D hesitated, trying to get the healer back on track. “Tell me about Danielle Burton. You said her pain calls to you.”

“There’s an old saying that doctors make the worst patients. Same with psych nurses. I have known Danielle since starting to work at the unit. I would like to help her. Unfortunately, her skepticism mirrors your own.”

“She won’t work with you?”

He shrugged. “It’s why I am willing to speak with you. She’s not a client and, in her own mind, not even a friend. But I worry about her.”

“Why?”

“She’s an old soul,” Lightfoot said immediately, his expression more distant now, seeing something only he could see. “For centuries she has returned to this plane, always seeking, never finding. She has honed her hatred, when only love can set her free.”

“Sounds like a song I once heard,” D.D. said. She couldn’t help herself. “Are you talking reincarnation?”

“I’m talking experiential lessons. Her soul is drawn to this plane to learn what it needs to learn. But she hasn’t mastered the lesson. Until she does, she’s doomed to repeat. Unfortunately, there are other souls also involved. Their experiences are intertwined with her own, her inability to move forward sentencing them all to a spin cycle of ever-repeating violence. I’ve tried to explain this to her, but …”

“Her father?” D.D. filled in.

“That would make sense,” Lightfoot said.

D.D. narrowed her eyes. Interesting answer, she thought, and she was beginning to realize that for all his woo-woo, Lightfoot was very careful with his replies.

She got it, suddenly: “You mean Gym Coach Greg. You’re worried about his and Danielle’s relationship.”

“He asks. She refuses. He needs. She rejects. He still searches for love. She still chooses hate. And they spin and they spin and they spin.”

“Greg seems like a nice guy,” D.D. countered mildly.

“They spin and they spin and they spin,” Lightfoot repeated, sounding both tired and sorrowful.

D.D. regarded him for a bit. The healer made no attempt to break the silence, and after several minutes, she declared defeat.

“You ever miss it?” she asked finally.

“What?”

“The money, the fast car, the trappings of your former life?”

“Never.”

“Had to have been an adrenaline rush, picking up pretty women, making fistfuls of cash, screwing over your rivals. From all that, to this?”

“Wall Street is nothing but a playground. There are no meaningful rewards, there are no significant consequences. Whereas in there …” Lightfoot pointed toward Lucy’s open doorway. “In there is where I fight to win.”

As if to prove his point, the healer marched back down the hall.

He paused outside Lucy’s room. D.D. saw the man shiver before he headed in.



With Lightfoot back to the business of spiritual cleansing, D.D. wandered the unit until she found the nurse manager, Karen Rober, sitting in the common area with a little boy who was resiliently mashing fruit in a bowl. The boy looked up when D.D. approached and she recognized him from the first day. One of the three amigos into Matchbox cars and running laps. D.D. searched her mental files for a name but came up blank; she’d never been great with kids.

“Do you want a fruit smoothie?” the boy asked her, feet swinging, shoulders rocking. He stated in one breathless rush: “I can do banana strawberry raspberry blueberry maybe grape but not oranges they’re too hard to mash.”

He went back to pounding fruit with his plastic spoon, rocking, rocking, rocking. D.D. started to cue in on a few things. First, while the boy remained seated at the table, he was agitated. Very agitated. A hand grenade, just waiting for someone to pull the pin.