Color of Blood(52)

“Yes.” Her closest relationship with an adult male right now, besides her stepfather, was with a cranky, blue-eyed Yank twelve thousand miles away.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that guy Pearson from the Mining Bureau that we talked to. I think I’d like to talk to him again. I’m going to request a background check on him through your AFP. Just wanted to give you a heads up in case you saw it come through.”

“Unfortunately it’s a little late.”

“I thought you said it was noon out there?”

“No, I don’t mean it in that way. I mean Pearson. He passed away recently.”

“He what?”

“He passed away, Dennis. Last week, I think it was. I read his obituary in the newspaper: sudden heart attack—very tragic.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Judy felt her neck muscles tense; another man was telling her she’d done something wrong.

“Dennis, I thought we agreed that the Pearson interview was weak and unimportant. Didn’t you call it a complete waste of time?”

“Yes, but he’s related to the case.”

“Dennis, until just a few days ago, the case was closed, yes? Please don’t suggest that I failed to follow this up. That’s infuriating.”

Her neck flushed, and her breathing grew short and labored.

“Hey, wait, Judy, don’t get angry. I’m sorry. That was stupid of me. I don’t know why I said it that way. You are absolutely correct.”

She looked up briefly in the rear-view mirror and saw the tense, angry face of a sandy-blonde driver staring back. It scared her a little.

“No worries, Dennis,” she said.

“He was pretty young to die of a heart attack, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, actually that’s what the obit stated.” She pulled into the parking lot at work. “I think he was forty-two years old. Something like that.”

“Judy, is there any way that you could pull the autopsy report on Pearson? In your official capacity? Maybe?”

She slid into a parking space, put the transmission in park, and let the air conditioner cool her down. Judy took a deep breath and realized, for better or ill, she liked helping Dennis.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll try to pull it.”

“Judy,” he said, stumbling awkwardly, “if you can’t get it, that’s fine. Really. I can run it through official channels.”

“I’ll pull it,” she repeated.

“Are you angry at me?” Dennis said, startling her with his directness. He sounded hurt, like a little boy.

“No, Dennis,” she said. “I’m just having a bad day.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes,” she said. “Shoot my ex-husband.”

“Oh,” he said. “It’s him again.”

“Yes, it’s bloody him again, the bastard.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Try not to let him get under your skin, Judy.”

She sighed. “It’s hard to forget him, Dennis, but I shouldn’t let him get to me this way. You’re right. And I have to go now. Sorry.”

Judy rang off and stayed in the car another minute, calming down before exposing herself to the angry West Australian sun.





Chapter 22


Dennis sat in his living room with a book on his lap, his reading glasses tipped to the front of his nose; the light from the lamp shined harshly in the otherwise darkened living room.

He had attempted to read Wilfred Owen’s poems several times, and each attempt was met by a baffling combination of words and verse endings that he could not comprehend. If this poet was so good, he thought, why can’t I understand a damn thing he’s saying?

The last Owen poem in the anthology was titled “Strange Meeting,” and Dennis had attempted to read it twice before. Nevertheless he found himself tripping over it yet again, determined to unlock the peculiar code that hid its meaning.

The poem appeared to describe a soldier’s dream:



It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars have groined.



OK, Dennis thought. He’s in a tunnel or a bunker. He’s escaping the war above. He read on.



Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.



Dennis smiled as if he had solved a complicated mathematical formula: the poem told the story of two dead soldiers meeting in hell.

He stumbled through to the end of the poem, reading the last stanza several times before he grasped what one soldier tells the poem’s narrator:



I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now . . .



Dennis slowly closed the book in his lap. The poem was not about two random soldiers meeting in hell and commiserating on their short lives. In fact it was about two dead soldiers, one of which had killed the other just the day before.