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“How?” Mason asked.
“Looks like he stopped breathing.”
“Due to…?”
The sheriff and Jenn had turned to look at the nurse, which meant looking straight at Paul Quaid, who was standing in front of her. He was translucent, and dressed in filmy echoes of his clothes, all burnt, torn, and sooty. His face was sooty, too.
“He just inhaled too much smoke,” the nurse said, and Paul’s head moved left, then right, then left, then right, leaving a ripple of itself behind with every motion.
I clasped Mason’s hand and felt his attention shift my way.
“Sometimes, the heat damages the lungs, and they just can’t recover,” the nurse went on. “I’m so sorry.”
Paul shook his head again, and then he raised a hand and touched the back of his head.
“Were there any… other injuries?” I asked. I was shifting focus between the nurse and the apparition. I did not often see them this way. I usually became them, saw things from their perspective, like doing a ride-along inside their head.
As soon as I thought it, I was looking out through someone else’s eyes as they— we— left a diner with a paper-wrapped mushroom and kale breakfast sandwich. It smelled delicious. My stomach growled. Not my stomach, the stomach of the person whose memory I’d entered. He was thinking that he didn’t get take-out often. This was a ritual, though. Once a year, the weekend of the big art show, he had this sandwich.
We headed to the car, unwrapping the sandwich on the way.
Then there was a blinding explosion of white light. The sensation of crushing pressure on my head came a half-second later, and with it the most intense pain I’d ever experienced. I felt as if my head was imploding.
Because it was.
When I looked out through my own eyes again, Mason had moved me bodily. We were in padded, vinyl waiting-room chairs and his was pulled out at an angle that blocked me from seeing the others. Oh, right, and them from seeing me.
“I said we needed a private moment.”
“Was it obvious?” I could still see Paul Quaid. He’d followed us in there.
Mason shrugged. “It was obvious to me. You okay?”
“Somebody bashed him in the head from behind. He didn’t see their face. It happened at a diner less than an hour from here.” I rubbed the back of my head. “He never got to eat his goddamn sandwich.”
“Anything from his hospital bed?”
“Nothing.” I looked across the waiting room at him. He was hanging out by the door. “He’s in his street clothes, not a hospital gown. I don’t think he knows what happened in there, or at least, that’s not what he’s wanting to tell me. Oh. He’s gone.” He’d faded like a rainbow when the sun moves away, leaving a kind of blush where he’d been, and then that was gone too. The nurse was herding everyone else into the waiting room. Looked like our moment alone was over.
“Let’s go, babe,” Mason said. “We need to catch a couple hours sleep before we meet the kids.”
“Kids. Oh, is Misty back, then?” Jen asked.
“No,” I said, maybe too quickly. “Jeremy and Christy are the kids. Misty too, when she gets back, and Josh, Jere’s younger brother.” I was explaining too much. I clamped my jaw to keep from saying anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Jen. She was one of those rare people I liked, but I wasn’t going to admit to the local law that my niece had been at the scene of what had just become a homicide.
“You okay, Rachel?” Jen asked, coming closer.
“Yeah, I just… I almost feel for the guy. Maybe it’s true that an unhappy life can’t have a happy ending.”
“Whoa, that’s too deep for my oars,” the Sheriff said. “There’ll be an autopsy.”
“About that,” Mason said, and glanced at me. I nodded with my eyes. I’m okay, go be a cop. So he met the sheriff on the far end of the room, and said, “Let’s get a coffee.”
The two moved out of the waiting area back toward the lobby where we’d passed a coffee shop on the way in. I got up and started to follow, but my pace was slower.
Jen Scott fell into step alongside.
“What did you think about that head injury?” I asked Jen. I kept my eyes on my feet as we walked, closing off visual stimulation so I could try to feel her.
