Samantha Moon: First Eight Novels, Plus One Novella (116 page)

Welcome to my life.

The spirit merely stood there and stared, wavering in and out of existence. Meaning one moment he was a fairly full-formed human-shape; the next, he was nothing more than static electricity. Upon closer inspection, I saw other spirits in the lab, too. In fact, dozens of them. But most were nothing more than faint balls of light.

“
Ah, here we go,” said Dr. Sculler, who was busy clicking away on his computer. “Caesar Marquez, boxer, age twenty-five, head injury.”

“
You examined him personally?” I asked.

Sculler nodded gravely. Cutting dead people open was, after all, serious business. “Yes, performed it myself.”

“How long have you been a medical examiner, Dr. Sculler?”

“
Twenty-two years.”

“
How many fatally injured boxers?”

“
Just the one, although I’ve seen my share of brain injuries. Particularly football injuries.”

“
Was Caesar Marquez’s brain similarly injured?”

“
I’m scanning the autopsy images now, if you would like to look.”

“
I would.”

“
Then come around here.”

I hadn’t worked for the federal government long, but I had seen my share of medical examining rooms and corpses. And these days, death was something to analyze, not to fear. No, never again to fear.

There were dozens of images of a dead man in various stages of examination. The young man, from all appearances, was the same Caesar Marquez I had seen fighting in the YouTube clip.

As I leaned in behind Sculler, he clicked over to a cluster of photographs that focused on the man’s head. A few clicks later and the top half of the skull had been removed. The skin itself had been peeled down over the face. The next image showed, from all appearances, a very healthy brain. Finally, the brain had been removed and was now sitting in a small metal tray.

Dr. Sculler zoomed in on the freshly-removed brain that had been housed in a perfectly functioning young adult male just a few hours earlier. Sculler pointed to the screen, in particular to a red discoloration along the left temporal lobe.

“
Bleeding,” he said. “The brain is susceptible to bleeding, especially after trauma. Unlike other body parts, however, when the brain bleeds, it’s a major problem. Bleeding in the brain causes pressure. Pressure can shut down various functions of the brain...and can lead to death. Often quickly.”

I said, “The official cause of death is epidural hematoma.”

“Yes.” He pointed to the screen. “Bleeding between the dura mater and the skull.”

“
A brain hemorrhage.”

“
Yes, but in this case the damage is technically classified as an extra-axial hemorrhage, or an intracranial hemorrhage.”

I nodded, taking this in. More and more it was looking like Russell Baker didn’t have much of a case. “Did you actually see the fight, doctor?”

“I did, yes. Later.”

“
And did you see enough to warrant a brain hemorrhage?”

The good doctor removed his glasses. As he did so, a spirit of an elderly woman materialized behind him in the far corner of the office. The skin on the doctor’s forearms immediately cropped into goose bumps. He shivered slightly, oblivious to the sudden source of cold air. The old woman only partially manifested, hovering on legs that didn’t exist. If the good doctor could see what I was seeing, he would undoubtedly run for the hills.

For now, he only shivered, blissfully unaware of the spirit energy around him. The woman faded just as quickly as she appeared. The hollow look in her eyes would have been haunting, if not so familiar. At least, familiar to me.

After shivering some more, he said, “Quite frankly, no.”

I perked up. I just hate taking money from a client and then giving them nothing in return.

“
No?”

“
No. But that doesn’t mean that any punch at any point in the fight couldn’t have caused the injury. Very little is understood about brain injuries.”

“
I understand, but is it your professional opinion that you think nothing in the fight warranted death?”

“
Not professional. Personal. Unofficial.” He paused. “Officially, he died from a blunt force received during the fight.”

“
Officially, but not likely.”

He stared at me, and then started nodding. “Not likely.”

“How old was the wound?” I asked.

“
It was within the correct time frame. I have no doubt that it happened in and around the time of the fight.”

“
Or possibly before?” I suggested.

The good doctor shrugged and rubbed his arms. After all, the old lady had reappeared in the far corner of the room.

“Possibly,” he said.

Chapter Nine

It took a few calls, a little waiting, a few more calls, and maybe a little begging to finally meet my next interview.

I met Ricardo Cortez at the Hard Rock Hotel’s massive, central bar, where we sat across from each other and nursed our drinks. Mine was white wine. His was a beer. Both of our glasses were small. Around us were the sounds of money being won and lost. Mostly lost.

“
You were the referee for the Baker/Marquez fight,” I said.

He looked down into his beer. I suspected he often looked down into his beer for answers. That I quickly ascertained he was an alcoholic no longer surprised me. That I felt his overwhelming need and addiction to the stuff did surprise me.

It was almost as if I could reach inside his thoughts.

Almost.

Weeks ago, Hanner had told me that I could expect to start reading other minds—and not just those closest to me. And not just read.

Manipulate.

Jesus.

For now, I didn’t want to think about manipulating another’s mind—hell, it was all I could do to exist comfortably in my own.

Finally, Ricardo looked up from his beer. He said, “Yes.”

“
How long have you been a referee?”

“
Eight years.”

“
Have you ever refereed a bout where a fighter was killed?”

Ricardo was a strong-looking Hispanic with what appeared to be the beginning of a tattoo under the right sleeve of his jacket. It looked like a snake tail. In fact, I was certain it was a rattle. We were mostly alone at the bar. Then again, the bar was so expansive that it was hard to tell where it ended and where it started. Nearby, a woman jumped up and down at the nickel slot machine. I think she’d just won a shitload of nickels.

Ricardo ignored the excited woman. Instead, he lifted his beer to his lips, and while he was guzzling he gestured for the waiter for another. Yeah, he was an alcoholic.

When he finally pulled away, he said, “That was my first death.”

“Hard on you?”

“
What do you think?”

“
I’m thinking it was a shitty day for everyone.”

“
Yup.”

The waitress set another beer before him, and Ricardo picked it up instantly.

I said, “Do you blame yourself for his death?”

“
No one else to blame.”

“
What about the guy doing the punching?”

Ricardo shook his head. “It was my job to stop the fight before it gets to that point.”

“Except it was a fluke punch. Everyone agrees. Most people think the fight was pretty even up to that point.”

“
No, it wasn’t.”

I blinked. This was new information. Investigators loved new information. New information meant that an investigator was onto something. I liked that.

“How so?” I asked.

Ricardo rubbed his face and I saw the scarring on his own knuckles. Ah, he had been a fighter himself. In fact, now I could see that his nose had undoubtedly been broken a few times. Probably not a very good fighter. Probably why he went into reffing fights instead of participating in them. Reffing was easier on the nose.

When he had collected his thoughts and had decided just how much to tell me—and how I knew this was beginning to trouble me—he said, “Caesar was not all there from the beginning.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
Caesar looked, at least to me, that he’d already gone a round or two. Or maybe even three or four.”

“
Anyone else notice this?”

“
Hard to say. I’m certain someone on his crew would have known.”

“
How could they miss it?”

“
Easy to miss, unless you know what to look for.”

“
And you know what to look for?” I said.

“
Of course. All good refs do. It’s how we keep these guys from beating in each others’ skulls.”

“
What do you look for?”

Ricardo was loosening up, forgiving himself, reminding himself that there might be more to this story than he knew. Again, how I knew this snippet of thought from him was seriously beginning to wig me out.

He said, “If you know a fighter, it’s easier. Then you know their mannerisms. You also know how much punishment they can take.”

“
You ever work a fight with Caesar?”

“
Yup. Two.”

“
And he was different from the get-go.”

“
Right. From the fucking get-go.”

“
What was he doing different?”

“
Dazed. Slower than normal.”

“
Even though most judges scored it even?”

“
I said slower than normal. Caesar Marquez was better than most. I even caught him staggering once or twice back to the corner. Not sure if anyone else had seen it.”

“
What did you think about that?”

“
I thought that something was wrong.”

“
Enough to stop the fight?”

He shook his head and remembered the beer. He said, “I should have stopped it if I’d had any balls. I should have at least called called one of the doctors over. But...”

“But you just weren’t sure.”

He looked at me funny, as I had read his thoughts. “Right, I wasn’t sure. There was no reason for his symptoms, after all. The fight had been fairly tame.”
             

“
But he was in trouble from the beginning.”

Ricardo nodded. “Almost as if...”

He couldn’t finish the sentence, and so I finished it for him. “Almost as if he’d been hurt before the fight.”

Ricardo looked at me again. “Bingo.”

“Hard to blame yourself for something like this.”

“
Hard not to, either. I should have stopped the fight.”

“
You did your best.”

He shook his head, and kept on shaking his head even as he finished his second beer and held up his hand for a third.

Chapter Ten

With Criss Angel in town, I figured something as mundane as a giant flying vampire bat would go unnoticed.

And so I stood on the ledge of my fifteen-floor balcony at the MGM Grand, one of the few hotels in Vegas with open balconies. It was perfect for viewing the Vegas skyline from...or leaping from.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

The hot desert wind buffeted my naked body. My longish hair snapped behind me horizontally. Standing naked on a balcony’s edge was liberating. Despite being perpetually cold and despite the hot desert wind, I shivered slightly.

After all, the wind was blowing where, as they say, the sun don’t shine.

I looked down at the city. An image of the young boxer collapsing in the ring came to me as I stood there. No surprise. This was the city where he’d died, where his autopsy had been conducted, and where I was beginning to suspect he had possibly been killed.

And not by Russell Baker.

Whether or not Caesar Marquez’s death was an accident—or something else—remained to be seen.

I didn’t need a psychic hit to know that something screwy was going on here. Something wasn’t right. What exactly, I didn’t know. Maybe I would never know.

I tilted my head back and spread my arms and deeply inhaled the heated desert air—air that was suffused with something that smelled suspiciously like all-you-can-eat $1.99 BBQ ribs.

I stood like that for some time, and the longer I did so, the more I was certain of one thing: I was becoming less and less human.