Fiction: EPITAPH

Part one of the JANE DOE trilogy

When he opened his eyes, a figure was sitting bedside, watching the IV bag drip through the tubes feeding into his veins.

“I’ve been waiting for some time,” the man said. A Southern accent. A quiet voice. “They told me you sleep most of the day, but I’m a patient man. And lo and behold. You’ve come to join me on this beautiful morning.”

Since the incident, his vision was like Vaseline smeared across a camera lens, but it looked like the speaker wore a suit and had long hair below a wide-brimmed black hat.

“Who are you?” he croaked from the hospice bed, his voice a far-away sound in his own head.

“Yes, it’s a beautiful morning, but quite too hot, wouldn’t you agree? Very hot and dry. Would you like some water? Oh, of course not. You can’t drink.”

“I said--”

“You don’t need to know my name, but I am a friend of a friend. Here in an official capacity. I am a detective of sorts, like you used to be. I have a few questions. First, I would be much obliged if you looked at this photograph.”

The Southern man held a photograph in front of his face, close enough for him to make out every gruesome detail of the crime scene.

“We cannot be precise with the cause of death. There are so many competing candidates. The likely theories are either the slash to the throat or the gunshot to the temple. The coroner has officially listed her as Jane Doe, but I understand that you and the victim are well-acquainted.”

With the state his body was in, every nerve ending screamed with pain as he sobbed, but he could not stop himself. He was racked with it. She was gone. It had all been for nothing.

“Please calm yourself, that looks terribly painful.”

“I suppose you're looking for a confession,” he managed to say. He felt bottomed out, eviscerated and drained of all blood. “But I would never harm her.”

“I’m not here seeking a confession, friend. I don't like the word anyway. Much too Catholic for my taste. My view is that there's no guilt in this world beyond the one you choose to carry. And I prefer to travel light.”

The Southern man removed his hat and stroked his head, which through his smudged vision looked bald despite the long hair that flowed to his shoulders.

“As I said, I understand you were acquainted with the victim. Were in fact the last known person to see her alive. Besides her murderer. So I come to you, poor invalid in bed, in hopes you will help me to piece together this intriguing puzzle. I know the rough shape of events. The dispute with her benefactors. The theft of a certain prized possession. Your aid in her flight from justice. The… accident that led you here. But how’s it all fit together? I need to know more.”

What could he say? From the moment she arrived in his life, he was besotted. He wanted to know her life from the inside outward, but she spoke a language of half-truths and outright lies. Despite everything he gave up for her, she was like a woman in a photo from a hundred years ago, anything familiar there supplied by your own desire.

“I promised I wouldn’t say a word.”

“It doesn't matter now does it?”

“But what is there to tell? It was love.”

“Love?” He let the question hang in the air, with the blips and beeps from the machines he was hooked up to. “If this is love, then you have been impaled upon its gates. You were shot in the back—literally. Your legs are missing from the thighs down. One arm has been amputated and the other useless. The remainder of your life can be counted in moments. You are a rotting man. All aftermath. And this… this is love?”

“What can I say? I’m a romantic.”

“Oh, I hear you were quite the dashing cowboy before all this happened. I need to know what happened. Don’t do it for her. You’ve done enough for that woman. Do it for yourself. You were police once. Serve the light again.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start. I wasn’t there at the beginning. I only got all the angles later.”

The Southern man leaned forward, the brim of his hat nearly touching him. “Let the spirit guide you.”

“What's wrong with your face?” There was something misshapen and molded about the features of the man leaning close to him, as if he wore prosthetics over his face.

“Nothing wrong with my face, friend.”

“Let me look at that picture again.”

“I don’t know what that would accomplish.”

“It’s not her, is it?”

“Of course it is. Death makes one look strange is all.”

“It’s not her. You’re a liar.”

The Southern man stood. Then yanked the pillow out from under his head.

“Well, I guess that’s that.”

“Where’s the nurse?”

“Don’t worry about that. You’re right, I haven't been entirely forthcoming. Where is she?”

“You’ll never find her.”

“That remains to be seen. It’s a big world, but I have a one-track mind. Like a dog in heat, ready to go to substantial lengths to stick some bitch.”

“She might find you first. You’d never see her coming.”

“Wouldn’t that be something. I can see this is at a dead end.”

He held the pillow before him as if admiring it.

“Did you used to have any hobbies? I like to collect last words. The way some might like to collect butterflies. Do you know what Marie Antoinette’s last words were? Forgive me, sir. In French, of course. She stepped on the foot of her executioner, you see.”

The Southern stepped even closer, hovering over him, an eclipse blotting out the world.

“Do you know what Houdini’s were? I’m tired of fighting.”

“Just get it over with.”

“Are those your last words?”

“Fuck off.”

“Oh, that’s more like it.”

Originally published in Bristol Noir