Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip Read online

  On the other side of the car, Jewel moaned and stood, trying to get her balance.

  In the faint light, she didn’t look hurt, but he quickly scrambled around the back of the car and grabbed her just as she was about to topple backwards down the slope.

  She felt wonderful in his arms and against him. But this wasn’t the way he had hoped would be the first time he would hold her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, moving them slowly away and along the slope from the car and gas smell.

  She slowly seemed to come around even more, and finally nodded. Then clearly her doctor gene kicked in and she turned her attention on him, stepping back out of his arms so she could look at him.

  “How about you?”

  He spread his arms for her to inspect him. “I think I’m fine.”

  After a moment, she released a breath into the cold, night air and nodded.

  “Something feels weird about all this,” she said. “We might be in some shock.”

  “I’ve got no doubt on that,” he said.

  “And that was some big damn deer we almost hit.”

  “That wasn’t any deer,” he said, glancing back up the steep hill toward the edge of the road far above them. The image of those huge eyes staring at him, daring him, would haunt him for a very long time. “That was Ghost Dancer.”

  She looked at him, clearly puzzled. “You name your deer around here? I thought everyone around here shot them and had them on the barbeque.”

  “No one, in as long as I have been alive and coming up here, has been able to take down Ghost Dancer.”

  “Deer live that long?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No one is sure Ghost Dancer is a real deer. Many believe he is some sort of Native American spirit.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said, shaking her head. “That spirit or big ass deer caused us to leave the road. What I want to know is how we escaped without injuries.”

  “Good question.” He turned to look back at the patrol car, but something was wrong with his vision. While the dark woods around him seemed perfectly fine and clear, more so than they should be on a dark night, the car was blurry.

  They moved back slowly toward the car, but it still seemed blurry for some reason.

  He rubbed his eyes, then tried to look again.

  Finally what he was seeing cleared and he said simply, “Oh, shit.”

  “What?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “I can’t seem to focus on the car. I must have hit my head or something.”

  He sat down on the side of the hill, the feeling of being tired overwhelming him. All he could do was stare at the car. “Just keep trying until you can see it, then come sit next to me.”

  Finally, she said softly, “That’s not possible.”

  She looked at him, a panic in her eyes, then back at the car.

  She needed his help and he wanted to give it.

  He pushed himself to his feet, feeling just about as tired as he had felt in a long time, and slid and walked the few steps down the steep hill to the driver’s side of the car, ignoring the strong gas smell filling the night air.

  The patrol car had compacted down to the size of a Mini-Cooper and pretty much wrapped itself like in a lover’s embrace around the big old pine. He figured they hit the tree going at least sixty or seventy by the time they left the road and picked up speed in the air and down the slope.

  He looked closer, in what was left of the shattered driver’s window, and than turned away.

  They had not been thrown out.

  In fact, their bodies were wedged in so tight, it was going to take the Jaws of Life to even start to get them out.

  “We’re dead,” she said from a few feet behind him.

  He could tell from the sounds of her voice that she was barely holding on. He didn’t blame her. He wasn’t far from losing it either.

  He looked back in the window at what was left of his body and face, then turned back to her.

  “You’re the doc, but I’d sure say so.”

  “I don’t feel dead,” she said, not coming any closer, but instead standing there behind the car on the steep slope. She took a deep breath and blew it out. In the cold air, he could see her breath, which considering they were dead, was damn weird.

  He moved back up to her and as he got close, she grabbed his arm hard, her strong hands biting into his flesh. “You don’t feel dead.”

  “And that hurt,” he said.

  She pinched herself and jerked. “That also hurt. How is that possible if our bodies are in there and we’re dead?”

  “Never gave much thought at what being dead felt like,” he said, trying to gather himself as much as he could.

  His energy was slowly coming back, which told him he was getting past the shock stage.

  Clearly for Jewel, her doctor training had got her right over that shock part.

  “Stay here and let me take a look at all this,” he said.

  He scrambled around the car for a moment to her side, looking at what he could see inside. None of it was pretty. Most of the entire front compartment of the patrol car had been crushed down and looked like it was full of blood.

  There was nothing in there that was recognizably Jewel.

  In his two short years being a patrol officer, he’d only seen one wreck this bad. If he hadn’t been so hardened by what he had seen in the war, he would have quit that first time.

  Finally, he moved back up and stood next to Jewel.

  “How bad?”

  “As bad as it gets. Worse than anything I’ve seen,” he said. “We’re dead. No doubt about it.”

  “So why are we still here?” she asked.

  She looked up through the tall pines into the soft rain at the same time he did, but there was no white light or tunnel coming for them. Just more rain.

  “Not a clue,” he said, “but let’s get back up on the road and wait for help to arrive. One way or another.”

  “No help is coming,” she said. “They’ll never see the wreck down here. And if we’re ghosts, they won’t see us either.”

  “When we went over the side,” he said, “I flicked the emergency beacon. All patrol cars have them in these mountains. They’re pretty darned near indestructible. The sheriff will be here in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

  “You want to call a couple white lights while you’re at it,” she said.

  “Out of my jurisdiction,” he said.

  He reached out and took her hand, which felt wonderful in his hand, somehow. He was a ghost and he was still attracted to her.

  That didn’t seem right.

  Together, they slowly worked their way back up the steep hill toward the road above them.

  It took them almost ten minutes of climbing, sometimes on hands and knees.

  And by the time they reached the edge of the road, they were both panting, which also didn’t seem very ghost-like.

  FIVE

  JEWEL FLAT COULD not believe she was dead. The rain had soaked her white blouse making it almost see-through, and she was cold, as cold as she could remember being.

  They had found a place to sit under a tree on the far side of the road on the hill, and she had snuggled in against Tommy. She liked how he felt, and could feel his warmth helping her.

  She had no doubt that in the war in the desert, he had seen his share of death. But he seemed to be as confused about all this as she was.

  “This feels nice,” he said, putting his arm around her and pulling her tight.

  “It would be a lot nicer if I wasn’t so damned cold and already dead.”

  He said simply, “Someone will be here soon.”

  She wasn’t sure how that was going to help. She had a ski parka and gloves down in that mangled wreck of a car with her body, but no way was she going back down that hill to try to get them.

  Something very strange had happened, she had no doubt about that, but being dead seemed to be not part of the equation. She knew death as a doctor. In her residency, she
had seen more death than she had ever wanted to see.

  And every time, with every patient, she had fought against it. And now, with her body down there, she was fighting against the idea of it now.

  This was like no death she had ever imagined.

  Finally, through the silence of the dark forest around them, they heard a car coming from the direction of Buffalo Jump.

  The bright lights lit up the night before it came around the corner and Tommy stood and stepped down on the edge of the road, flagging down the car.

  The car didn’t stop, but it wasn’t going very fast.

  As it passed she could tell it was the sheriff’s car, clearly looking for the signal Tommy had triggered. The sheriff was behind the wheel and he had another man beside him.

  Tommy shook his head and came back to sit down, again putting his arm around her and pulling her close, which felt damned nice, even under the circumstances.

  “The sheriff has Ben with him,” he said.

  She had met Ben, a young kid with the brain of a gnat, but Ben did as the sheriff told him and that was good enough it seemed.

  The Sheriff’s car went on around the corner of the road and vanished, leaving the dark night, the gentle rain, and the silence.

  “They’ll be back once they realize they have passed the signal,” Tommy said.

  She nodded and snuggled in closer to him, trying to get some of his ghost heat from his hot body.

  Three minutes later Tommy was right. This time the sheriff’s car was moving very slowly, and it finally pulled over on the side of the road right about where they had come up the hill.

  Neither of them moved, but just watched.

  Both the sheriff and Ben climbed out of the car, leaving it running. Both were wearing rain slickers and had on hats with wide brims.

  She would give just damn near anything for one of those rain slickers right about now.

  When Jewel had met the sheriff the first time, she figured him to be about sixty. He also had a solid round ball for a stomach, which meant he was a candidate for a heart attack at any moment. No way was he going down and back up that hill.

  Deputy Ben, on the other hand, was as skinny as they came. And young. She guessed Ben to be around twenty-five, more than likely a local who had never left the area.

  She watched as they both went over to the edge and looked down.

  Then the sheriff said something she couldn’t hear and Ben went back to the car and got a huge flashlight from the trunk.

  Ben handed it to the sheriff, who clicked it on and shined it down the hill toward the wreck. The powerful yellow beam was clear through the misty rain.

  After a moment the sheriff let out some cusswords that made her guess he wasn’t a regular at the church with the big white steeple.

  Tommy had been right. Help had arrived.

  Now what?

  SIX

  TOMMY LOOKED AT Jewel sitting beside him next to the road under the slight shelter of a tree. Her hair was wet and her soaked white blouse was showing a wonderful body very clearly. She had not put on a bra.

  He was cold, but she was shaking she was so cold.

  There was no doubt in his mind they were dead, that they were ghosts of some sort. But if that was the case, why were they so cold and why were they still getting wet?

  “Let’s go see if the sheriff and Ben can hear us,” Tommy said, starting across the narrow pavement.

  “I’ll just stay here under the tree and shiver,” she said.

  He nodded and headed toward the man he had worked for the past two years. Tommy really respected the sheriff for his knowledge, his clear thinking, and his ability to handle the people of this county.

  Ben had gone back to the car for a pair of walkie-talkies and a second flashlight.

  Clearly he was going to scramble down the slope to the wreck. When Ben came back over to the sheriff and handed him the walkie-talkie, turned on and set, the sheriff said, “Be careful.”

  Ben nodded.

  “Don’t bother,” Tommy said. “We’re dead down there. Call tow trucks and the morgue van.”

  Neither man seemed to hear him. Ben turned and scouted along the edge of the road looking for a good way to head down.

  Tommy stood beside the sheriff, watching, as if he was actually still alive and investigating the wreck.

  Finally Ben eased down over the side and started down, using one hand against the steep slope for balance while hold the light in the other.

  “He’s not going to like what he finds,” Tommy said.

  The sheriff just ignored Tommy, or more likely didn’t hear him.

  So Tommy reached out his hand and tried to touch the sheriff on the shoulder of his rain slicker.

  His hand went right through.

  As it did, Tommy had a sense of the worry and fear and anger the sheriff was feeling, but nothing else.

  The sheriff didn’t seem to notice at all.

  So Tommy stood there and watched as Ben got closer to the wreck. The poor kid slowly came up on the driver’s side of the smashed patrol car, then directed his light into the window.

  The kid would live with that image the rest of his life, Tommy was sure, because Tommy knew his neck was twisted around and bones were jutting out and blood was everywhere and his nose was gone.

  Poor Ben, it was as if someone had punched him.

  He staggered a few steps back into the hillside, swung around, and threw up his dinner.

  “Told you he wasn’t going to like what he found,” Tommy said.

  “Damn it all to hell,” the sheriff muttered and swung around and headed for the patrol car, walking right through Tommy before Tommy had a chance to move.

  Tommy shuddered, and again he got a sense of the sheriff’s thoughts.

  Once again the sheriff didn’t seem to notice.

  “Was that as weird feeling as it looked?” Jewel asked from across the road.

  Tommy stood there shivering, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the cold and rain, or the contact with the sheriff. He really didn’t want to try that again anytime soon.

  But it gave him an idea of what he and Jewel might do to warm up.

  He motioned for her to join him and she reluctantly moved toward him, her arms clasped so hard around herself, he thought she might hurt herself, if that was possible for a ghost to do.

  Tommy went over to the patrol car, which was still running. The sheriff had just put in a call for a couple of tow trucks, a lot more help, and the morgue van.

  Then the sheriff shut the front door of his car and went back over to the edge of the road to check in on Ben.

  “What are you thinking?”

  Tommy tried to grab the handle on the back door, but his hand passed right through it. Then he stuck his entire hand through the door and could feel the warmth of the inside of the car on it.

  He pulled it out and nodded.

  Then he took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and just pretended the back door was open and sat down in the back seat.

  The wonderful warmth of the car felt great.

  And he actually seemed to be seated on the back seat. He wasn’t falling through it, and the back seat floor felt solid under his feet.

  He had no idea how that worked. Or why it worked that way. But he was just happy it did.

  Jewel was standing outside, shaking her head, her mouth open staring at him.

  He reached his arm back through the glass of the window as if it wasn’t there, indicating that she should take his hand.

  It took her a moment, but then she took his hand.

  Her skin felt cold and wet against his wet hand, so he made sure he had a good grip, and before she had time to fight, he yanked her into the car with him.

  She sprawled across his lap on the seat and it took them a moment, a wonderful moment he had to admit, to get untangled and her sitting beside him on the passenger side of the back seat.

  She was breathing hard and her eyes were huge.

  �
��Was that as much fun for you as it was for me?” he asked, smiling at her.

  She brushed her wet hair back off her face, took a deep breath while looking around, and then said, “Kinky. You take all your dates to such a high-class place?”

  She patted the seat, clearly wondering the same thing he had wondered about how they could be sitting and not falling through, yet able to come in through the door.

  He laughed as she once again started shivering from the cold.

  “Thank you,” she said between shivers.

  “My pleasure,” he said. “And it was.”

  SEVEN

  JEWEL WAS SO cold, she could hardly think. Even the warm air in the sheriff’s car wasn’t helping cut that. She took a deep breath and noticed that Tommy was also shivering. He was even more soaked than she was, if that was possible.

  She made herself stop and think for a moment, then realize that if she were facing someone in this condition, this wet and this cold, she would get them into a warm place and out of their wet clothes.

  They were in a warm place.

  So they were going to need to do that second part as well.

  “How long are we going to be here?” she asked.

  Tommy shrugged, pretending he wasn’t shivering either. “It’s going to take an hour for everyone to arrive, then a couple more hours at least to get that car up the bank and our bodies, or what’s left of them, out of it. Four or five hours, at least, before the sheriff leaves and takes us back into town.”

  She was afraid of that.

  “We need to get out of these wet clothes,” she said, “wring them out, let them dry, and let our bodies get warm.”

  “You think ghosts can die of hypothermia?” he asked, looking at her, puzzled.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said, “but I’m damn tired of being so cold I can hardly think.”

  She started working with her numb fingers on the button on her jeans and zipper.

  He watched her for a moment, then nodded and slipped off his wet sheriff’s shirt, wringing it out onto the floor and then opening it and draping it over the back of the sheriff’s driver’s seat. Then he pulled off the Berkley t-shirt and wrung it out as well.