Expired (14 page)

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Authors: Evie Rhodes

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense

BOOK: Expired
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30
T
racie Burlingame, Monica, Lonzo, and the medical examiner stood in the morgue in the same positions they had taken earlier, when Randi was murdered. Their joining together in this room was starting to feel like a regular occurrence. It was an uncomfortable occurrence, to say the least.
Both Dre and Michael were blessedly absent. The ME slowly unzipped the black body bag. The zipper scraped with a loud sound that grated on Tracie's nerves. It made her want to screech.
Lonzo viewed the damaged body with a silent inward sigh. He marveled at the sheer audacity of the killer's handiwork.
The medical examiner shook his head without even being aware of the gesture. He was a trained professional. It was an unconscious move on his part, but between the damage Tracie Burlingame was witnessing and the depth of her loss, which hung in the air like a blanket, well, it was enough to move even a hardened veteran like himself.
Monica closed her eyes, then glanced at Tracie, nodding her head. Tracie looked at the damaged, skeletal-thin remains of her son.
He looked small and vulnerable to her inside the clinical bag. He had the wispy air of somebody who had lived and died without anybody caring. She knew that wasn't true, but she couldn't shake the feeling that swamped her as she stared at the visual ruins of her son.
She had tried time and time again to get through to him, but he had moved further and further beyond her reach.
Though she hadn't really wanted to admit it to herself, Rashod had been the one blight on Tracie's false sense of happiness. Now he was dead.
Worst of all, she couldn't even feel his spirit in the room. There was simply nothing left of him. He was gone, like ashes blown away in the wind.
Recollections of the last time she had seen him barged into her memory banks. Guilt gripped her, making her wish it had been different. She couldn't believe that it was only yesterday morning she had seen him. It seemed like an eternity to her.
Unlike with Randi, she didn't even reach out to touch him. She couldn't touch him even if she wanted to. It just wasn't possible. Despite everything, this was not the end she had envisioned for Rashod.
A part of her had always held out hope that one day he would come around, that one day things would be different. Now that last glimmer of hope had been wrenched from her grasp, stolen from her by a maniac, and she intended to exact retribution.
“I've seen enough,” Tracie told Monica, and nodded in her direction.
Monica gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod of her head. The medical examiner zipped up the bag without hesitation.
“What time did—”
The ME didn't let her finish. By now he knew the question by heart. “Rashod expired at approximately seven p.m.”
“I see,” Tracie said.
Her long, polished nails cut into the flesh of her palm. She glanced over at Lonzo for a fraction of a second, giving him a small smile. She tilted her head a little higher, although it felt as though she were dragging a heavy object from the ground. She turned and walked slowly away.
When she reached the door, she turned back. Waves of hatred splashed from her. The target of her hatred was Monica Rhodes. “I guess you won't be arresting my son for the murder of his brother tonight. Will you, Miss Rhodes? How does his death play for you?” Tracie threw Monica's words back at her with a vengeance.
They didn't miss the mark. The words poured over Monica like acid. Before she could gather a response, Tracie raced full speed ahead. Insultingly, she shot verbal bullets at Monica: “You couldn't follow a clue if the killer taped it to your forehead with an arrow pointing you in the right direction.”
Tracie found herself mimicking the voice on the telephone. My God, she was repeating the words of a killer. Not only was she repeating the words, but also she had found herself taking on the same intonation, as though the killer were controlling her words by remote.
“Maybe I'll have to catch him myself, since you're obviously not up for the job. But if I do, you can rest assured there'll be nothing left in this room for you to view. You have my word on that.”
There was total silence. Monica had the decency to look properly embarrassed. Tracie turned again, to go out the door, determination set in her shoulders. Her heels clicking on the high shine of the morgue's waxed and sterile floor signaled her departure.
Monica looked at Lonzo. “If Rashod Burlingame didn't put Randi's Karl Kani boot in his room, and if he didn't kill him, then who did?”
Lonzo's eyes shifted to bore into Monica's.
The question simply hung in the air between them, unanswered. Their former theory, as well as their slim lead, had died tragically with Rashod Burlingame.
The pieces had fit so perfectly, yet they didn't fit perfectly at all.
All theories, as well as any illusions, had been completely shattered below another of Harlem's rooftops. Anything resembling a fact was a joke.
And the body count was tallying up.
31
T
he Ancient Book of Prophecies. There it had lain on the altar carved out of stone. It was just within his reach, the pages whispering, beckoning to him to come forth and partake of the gems, to partake of the threads of power that lay within its pages.
In the light of day Souljah Boy, or Daniel Thomas Caldwell, as he was rarely called, could hardly believe it, but he knew it had been so. For years he had studied to show himself approved before the Lord Jesus Christ.
When he had reached the ripe old age of twelve, he had set out on his own quest for the truth. He had diligently followed the path to it, although it had always set him apart. He'd never had the same interests as other young men, not even other kids when he was a child.
He and Dre had always been tight. Once he had tried to indoctrinate him with some of his learning, but it hadn't worked. Dre just wasn't in that particular plane of thought.
Harlem was famous for its churches, and as a kid, his grandmother dutifully made sure he was in his pew during the week and on Sundays.
Only, as he listened to sermon after sermon, he had begun to feel there was more. Much more. There was always this haunting, hungering feeling inside him, reaching, trying to embrace that which he could not see.
He had begun to observe the people in the church, and he couldn't help feeling that somehow the people were not totally connected to this deity. It was as if they praised, shouted, and Bible-studied, but they weren't connected on the ethereal level.
Finally he had hit on the truth. There was no power in their worship. There was no power, because there was no real faith. There was no real belief, not at the gut-wrenching levels or the deep emotional crevices they would need to tap into.
If the sweeping, healing power of Christ had ever entered the church, a great majority of the people who were in regular attendance would have questioned the source.
How could you receive a miracle if you didn't believe in its existence?
As a result, most churches he had been in were devoid of real spiritual gifts. The gifts of prophesying, faith that moved mountains, healing, and teaching were simply not in existence in the hallowed souls of a lot of people who attended church.
It was obvious in the lack of evidence of power in their everyday lives. It wasn't there, because they were not audacious enough to activate it.
The shock of this revelation had spiraled Souljah Boy on a course in life that had birthed great knowledge, and with that knowledge had come great pain.
He'd dedicated himself in the coming years to constant and meditative prayer for mercy and an increase in faith, so he could be a living participant in a higher learning—a participant who could connect to that power.
The power that Jesus had both demonstrated and promised during the time he had spent on earth. Jesus Christ was the most legendary man ever to have lived. And Souljah Boy wanted to be part of his legend.
He hungered to connect spiritually to the Maker, the Creator of mankind. It occupied his thoughts most nights and most days.
He desired to be at one with the spirit who had blown the breath of life, his own spirit, into man. And then, to top it off, had allowed his son to be slaughtered for the sins of the world. In short, Souljah Boy had dreamed of climbing the highest pinnacles to be obtained in the flesh and on earth, in the spirit. On this night he was not to be disappointed.
The discipline, enlightenment, and teaching he had received were not learned of men. For that, he was truly humbled. The gift of his salvation was a daily source of joy for him.
Souljah Boy was a researcher at heart, a spiritual researcher and a black ghetto scribe. He had spent many a year between the dusty, yellowed pages of books that most people didn't know existed.
He had been researching, seeking, studying, and yearning for a long time, and he had known that the Ancient Book of Prophecies existed. It contained the secrets, codes, and prophecies of things yet to be for the black people, ancient prophesies that were shrouded in the spirit and guarded by it as well.
Never in his wildest imaginations did he fathom his ever seeing or touching this book. Its rumored existence among prophets, scribes, spiritualists, African-American theologians, and religious scholars was pure legend and myth entwined into one.
Church leaders, ministers, bishops, archbishops, missionaries, priests, and laypersons alike were never blessed enough for the myth to reach their ears, nor would they have believed.
No, you had to be a very special person to hear the whisperings of its being. You had to be one who denied the flesh, the simple yearnings of man; one who was humble and honored the spirit, not the glory of men. You had to be one who was chosen.
That single book lent credence to many things to come and many things past concerning the spiritual roots of blacks the world over. In it were both good and evil.
The night Rashod Burlingame was murdered, Souljah Boy had been summoned as he slumbered, into a recess of the spirit that was one step away from death. He had been summoned because there were things he needed to see.
He received the same vision as Anita Lily Mae Young and Tracie Burlingame, only the wisdom of this was opened to him like petals on a flower blooming.
This vision was tied to the reason he had received the prophecy of Rashod's death.
He saw the big bald-headed man and all that was in him. Souljah Boy bowed his head in horror.
Finally, the pages of the book had beckoned him:
Come.
He had done so. When he reached out a hand to touch the parched, sandpapery pages, he had been sucked into a void. That void was the
Unspoken,
and now he beheld many things, just as they had beheld him.
Once he had felt, he had been dispatched back to his own bed, back to his own consciousness, back to the consciousness of men. And that was why he had sat in the light of day, illuminated from the inside out.
He had been given a mission, and only through the levels from whence he had come would he have ever believed it about Tracie Burlingame. Only the truth of where he had journeyed in the spirit kept him firmly anchored.
Suddenly, looming up before his very eyes, there emerged a spirit that announced itself, saying, “I am Reverence.”
Souljah Boy rebuked the evil, and the spirit immediately vanished. His spirit had been touched by the
Unspoken.
He was now one of the elect. As such he could not be deceived.
 
 
Curled up in a tight ball in the dark of his closet, he who called himself Me was deeply troubled.
Someone was treading very near his spirit.
Someone had been dispatched to follow his trail.
32
M
e was spiraling again, totally out of control. The wind was whipping with the fierceness of a hurricane. He was twirling, twirling, caught up in the spirit of the storm, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He knew from past experience that it would take him where it would. When the hurricane stopped twirling, he found himself standing on dry desert land under the scorching brightness of the sun.
There was literally nothing he could see on the vast horizon. The earth had shaken under his feet. The wind roared in his ears like the voice of loud thunder. Then the world around him went pitch-black. It was just as if someone had come into a brightly lit room and turned off the light switch.
Me ran his hands along his biceps, hoping to feel the comfort of his spirits, but his biceps were smooth; there was nary a ripple. He could not even feel the rims of Ms. Virginia's bifocals. He could not feel them, because they were not there.
She was someone he had come to rely on. Without her he felt coldness deep within him, not in his soul, for he didn't possess a soul in that sense, but in the inner parts of his being. Once he had possessed a soul, many eons ago. The price of having one, well, he couldn't allow himself to dwell on that right now. He knew the price. He knew it all too well.
Sometimes some of the spirits he collected writhed in anger and agony. But even that was better than not being there at all. Panic welled up inside him. He took deep breaths, psyching himself into controlling the wind flow of his body.
Then he heard it: a sound like a zillion scabs being picked at the same time. It rumbled from the pit of his stomach. It exploded inside him.
“Now!” came the rumble from inside him.
He was being pummeled, pummeled with spittle. It rained down on him, turning into baseball-size hail. As soon as the hail hit the ground, it turned into balls of fire that rose up, searing his feet, moving, moving and scorching his skin along the way, but he did not burn.
He was one livid motion of burning, searing pain. The Quest—that was it. He must move faster in order to claim the ultimate prize. There was a new spirit that had been added to the dimension. It was fast on his trail.
“Okay,” came the echo of his acquiescence. “Okay.” And the searing flames released him. The ground opened under his feet and bounced him through the realms, back into his own closet.
Once again he rubbed his biceps. Someone sneezed, and he burrowed his body into a tighter ball. The sound of the sneezing gave him great comfort. As he rubbed, he felt the rims of Ms. Virginia's bifocals. Things were back to normal for the time being.
But he could not lose that which he was.

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