Cole grinned. Now what could he do. Oh, yes. There was that time at home when Hannah played with the remote. He punched DVD.
The screen went blank except for the message VID, replaced moments later by: “Unusable Signal”. And as he had after Hannah’s monkeying, Razor began trying every button on the remote to restore normal TV function. His disgust and frustration grew visibly with each failure. Even turning the TV off and on did not restore the picture. Finally Razor happened to punch WHO-Input. Cole was ready, poised over the power button. As the movie came back, he turned off the TV.
That did it. Swearing in a tone which suggested only supreme self control let him keep it under his breath, Razor hurled the remote away from him. Fortunately, into the easy chair, not through the TV screen. He set his glasses on the end table, switched off the lamp, and flung himself flat on the futon.
Cole watched in satisfaction. They should be in business any time now.
Razor took several deep breaths and let them out slowly. His whole body relaxed and Cole heard his heart rate drop. In less than a minute, Razor’s breathing stabilized.
Asleep, just like that. Razor had done it in their patrol unit, too. Cole shook his head. It still amazed him. Razor woke just as abruptly, too. When their call number came over the radio, he went from dead to the world to fully alert, snatching up the mike for a reply. Possibly making it harder to convince him he was still asleep.
Cole considered the possibilities. He could wade through the futon, or sit on an invisible chair. That should be freaky enough for a dream.
He gave the chair a try. It worked fine, except it seemed…blah. Maybe make it a lounger? He lifted both legs and leaned back with his hands behind his head. No. A lounger still lacked the craziness a dream ought to have.
Staring at the ceiling, he suddenly remembered coming home after one late shift to find some old movie playing on the TV and Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly dancing up the wall. He should be able to do that, too…and better.
Behind him, Razor sighed and rolled over. Cole turned. Tension cranked tight in him. Time to see if he could pull this off. “I hope to hell you’re not ghost blind, amigo.” He stepped between the futon and drapes, grabbed one of Razor’s ears to give him a shot of cold, and hissed, “Sergeant coming.”
Razor sat bolt upright, eyes snapping open.
He heard! Would he launch into one of his start-in-the-middle conversations that made it sound to a sergeant as if he had been awake all along? It had been worth crying wolf once in a while just to see what came out of Razor’s mouth.
“I don’t know if there’s any good answer,” Razor said. “The Quakers thought their concept for Eastern State Prison was…” About which time he registered where he was and fell back on the pillow. “Sheesh. You’re starting to lose it, Kev.”
Cole laughed. “I don’t know. Your reflexes look as fast as ever to me.”
Razor jerked back upright and reached for the lamp. “Cole? Where the hell have you been?”
“No, don’t turn the light on! You’ll wake yourself up.”
Razor twisted toward him…and blinked. “What the hell? What’s with the glow-in-the-dark getup?”
Cole looked down at himself. Glow? Well, maybe a faint one. The important thing was… Razor saw him. Maybe they could skip the dream scam and just talk. Except, he realized, what happened when he came to the revelation that he was dead? No, better stick to the plan. “You’re dreaming.”
“No.” Razor squinted at him. “You look like those moon and stars we put up on Holly and Kyle’s bedroom ceilings.”
“I mean this is a dream.” Time to prove it. Cole imagined a curved surface reaching to the ceiling and trotted up it while Razor’s jaw dropped. Weird. The room appeared to revolve while he walked in place. “And, shhh.” He doubted Holly would hear him but he lowered his voice to encourage Razor to do so. “Just in case you’re talking in your sleep, you don’t want to wake Holly.” It felt like a dream…standing here with the furniture hanging overhead and Razor gaping down at him.
Then Razor felt himself and the bed around him, and squeezing his eyes shut, shook his head.
Shit! “Razor, no…don’t wake yourself up!” Cole dashed back down to the floor, mind racing ahead of him. “You need to keep dreaming. There…there are issues for you to work out, and this is the way to do it.”
Razor opened his eyes. “Issues?”
“The blood in the car for one. It’s mine and I’m dead. In your heart of hearts, you suspect that. Which is why you’re dreaming of me as a ghost.” He waded into the futon and sat down. “You know that even if I killed Sara Benay and decided run for it, I’d have contacted you and Sherrie.”
Razor stared at Cole’s legs disappearing into the futon.
Cole punched his shoulder. “Pay attention. The other issue, the most important one, is Sara Benay.”
Razor expression went baffled. “Benay? Why is she an issue?”
“She’s in some kind of danger because of me.”
“Danger?” Razor sounded skeptical.
Cole leaned toward him. “I don’t know whether it’s from witnessing my murder and recognizing the killer, or being caught searching the Flaxx company books for evidence against Donald Flaxx, but there’s this cloud of terror in the 2EC garage that I think is hers. From her apartment it’s obvious she blew out of there in one hell of- ”
Razor blinked. “What? Wait. How did she happen to be searching the Flaxx books?”
Cole winced. But he had to tell Razor. “Sara works in Flaxx’s Bookkeeping department. She’s the informant I met Monday evening. On Wednesday she left me a phone message saying she’d found- ”
“Did you put her up to it?” Razor reached for his glasses and peered at Cole through them.
Cole cleared his throat. “Not exactly.”
Razor frowned. “Not exactly? What the hell does- ” He broke off, sighing. “What am I doing? You’d think I’m really talking to you.”
Cole heard rising disbelief in that tone. He tried to keep Razor involved. “It’s your subconscious trying to work things out. Checking the books was her idea.”
Razor eyed him skeptically. “Her idea.”
“Basically.” He told Razor about the surprise call from Sara on Monday. “And we arranged to meet at Bon Vivre, where- ”
“Wait.” Razor frowned. “If she called Wednesday to tell you she’d found something, then the meeting Monday was for what…other than sending you to the men’s room to call in the cavalry?”
“Which didn’t come,” Cole said. “I had to rescue myself.”
Razor grunted. “I got tied up. I’ve already apologized for that. What happened at Bon Vivre?”
Across the table in the back booth she chose, Sara had shed her shoes and rubbed her feet, then downed nearly half the brandy and soda he ordered for her. “Here’s to Earl Lamper’s health. Preserve me from ever having Mao Tse Gao as my boss full time.”
Some interviewees had to circle a while before coming to what they wanted to talk about. Cole sat back to wait on Sara. “Lamper’s sick?”
“He had an emergency appendectomy last night.” She took another slug of her drink. “He’s such a sweetie to work for. Carries a share of the load; doesn’t give someone grief if they can’t make it in because their sitter didn’t show up that morning; doesn’t care if we come in late or play games on our work stations…as long as the work’s done and accurate. He even brings us flowers on our birthdays. But General Gao…” She grimaced. “If she’d divided Earl’s accounts among all of us, there wouldn’t be that much extra work for anyone.”
Cole sat up. His ears pricked. Lamper’s accounts?
“But she split them just between Joy and me — you remember Joy from lunch that day.”
Joy Quon, yes. A plain face but keenly intelligent eyes. She referred to accounting as having “elegant symmetry”. Kenisha Hayes, the third member of the trio, had personal elegance…tall and regal as her Masai ancestors.
Sara swirled the ice in her glass. “So I ended up with half of Earl’s accounts on top of my own. Of course Genghis Gao wanted everything updated before Joy and I left today.”