Neverworld Wake(41)

“There’s a lot to sift through,” I said. “I’m close.”

The key, I’d found, was to sprint through the shelves as fast as I could, allowing them to fall after me as I kept running and running toward the row of Ms at the very back of the basement. I had just perfected the optimal path through the maze when, once, barreling too fast, I missed the correct row and was forced to backtrack. I was careful not to graze the shelf as I made the turn and slowed to a walk, panting. Usually there was the sound of havoc upstairs, banging and screaming. This time it was quiet.

Too quiet.


Machinsky, Tina D.

Mahmoodi, Wafaa

Malvo, Jed



I spotted Jim’s box on the top shelf at the very end. In a rush of disbelief, I sprinted to it, reached on my tiptoes, tried to jostle it down without sending the entire shelf clattering over.


Mason, Jim Livingston



“Gotcha, you little shit,” a woman hissed. “Put your hands up and turn real slow.”

Channing had stepped out from behind the shelves and was striding toward me, Glock aimed right at my head.

“Don’t shoot. Please.”

Her face was flushed. Her lips twitched. She pulled the trigger.

She never had before.

A giant match lit the wick of my brain. I hit the ground, rolling onto my back, accidentally throwing out my arms, which hit the shelf, sending it flying backward.

“What the…?” Channing screamed in shock.

As the shelves fell, I blinked up at the fluorescent lights, green filaments flickering in mysterious Morse code. There was so much pain it spilled everywhere, then drifted away.

Dying was not as cataclysmic as I’d thought it’d be. Because even though I was in the Neverworld, my body and mind still reacted as if it were the real thing.

There was no white light. There was no tunnel.

Instead, as the shelves tumbled around me, there was a warm feeling of awe, as if, with the tearing away of my life from its attachment to earth, fragile as the connection of a leaf to a twig, everything permanent, factual, real—everything I swore was true—became the opposite of what I’d always thought.

My last feeling wasn’t regret or pain. It was joy.

That was the most terrifying thing of all.

I get to see Jim now. That was all I was thinking before my life went out.

If I’m dead, I’ll get to see Jim.



* * *



—

“Really don’t feel like getting shot in the head today,” sang Kipling merrily as we filed into Wincroft at the start of the next wake. “How ’bout we take a page from Momma Greer’s Guide to the Good Life?”

“What’s that?” asked Cannon.

“Can’t beat your mortal enemy to a pulp?” He shrugged. “Throw him a party.”

That was how we came to arrive at the Warwick police station armed not with our usual guns, but with identical Barry the Clown costumes rented from Gobbledygook Halloween World.

“May I help you?” asked Frederica at the front desk.

“We’re from Big Apple Balloon-a-Gram,” I said, smiling. “Where would you like us to set up for the surprise party?”

“What surprise party?”

“Detective Art Calhoun’s surprise seventieth.”

Frederica was astonished. So were Officers Polk, McAndress, Cunningham, Leech, Ives, and Mapleton, as well as Art Calhoun himself, who emerged from his office with a distrustful scowl. But we had moved fast. The wireless speaker was already playing “Margaritaville.” Wit had already unveiled three dozen cupcakes, baskets of gummy worms, and party favors of gun Christmas tree ornaments. Cannon and Kip were standing on folding chairs, taping up the tinsel Happy Birthday sign. Martha tossed bottles of Harpoon IPA into a cooler.

“Hold up. Just wait one…” Calhoun fell silent, eyeing the beer.

“What’s happening here?” demanded Officer Polk.

I made an elaborate show of examining the phony invoice, which was really the receipt for our costume rentals.

“Elizabeth Calhoun hired us,” I said with a frown.

“Lizzy did this?” whispered Calhoun, wide-eyed.

Liz Calhoun was his estranged daughter who lived in San Diego. She hadn’t spoken to her father in three years, which meant there was little chance she’d take his call now, when he phoned to thank her for the unexpected party, even though his real seventieth birthday was over three weeks away.

That meant I had time to find Jim’s file.

“Nothing better than cupcakes,” said Officer Channing, grinning as she helped herself.

“And now, friends, let’s start the entertainment!” shouted Kipling with a bow so low his red clown nose fell off and rolled under a desk. “If you could all gather round and join hands? Don’t be shy.”

That was my cue.

I darted into the back stairwell. I raced down the steps to the basement, heaved open the wood doors, and sprinted into the shadowed rows of boxes.

I raced along the back wall, slipping past filing cabinets and a copy machine, and veered into the Gs, the Js, the Ls, zigzagging in and out, careful not to graze the shelves, my oversized clown shoes making loud quacking noises, my balloon pants making me trip.

Eighth row. Far left. At the very top. MASON, JIM LIVINGSTON.