“This is a murder investigation, Havoc; maybe God knew we needed the information sooner rather than later.”
“The Big Guy can do anything He wants to do.”
The lieutenant sighed. “Then he sent the message to you personally, because he knew we needed to know sooner.”
“Perhaps, but in the twelve years I’ve been gone from the College I’ve never had a message given to me.”
“You’ve never had another angel speak to you since you left?”
I looked away then, not sure what my face would show. I chose my words carefully, because Charleston wasn’t just a good cop, he was a Voodoo Priest, and I knew he worked his own brand of magic to give him better insight into people when he needed information from them.
“I’ve worked my brand of magic with the angels since I left the College, but I’ve never had them seek me out to tell me some message as if I were still an Angel Speaker.”
“You’re an Angel Speaker and a detective on the case; it sounds like you’re the perfect person to receive a message about the crime.”
“I’m not an Angel Speaker.”
“Maybe not officially, but you can talk to them without ending up in a coma, or worse.”
I let out a long breath because I’d been trying hard not to think about worse. “If any part of the holy fire had touched Gimble he’d be dead.”
“Or insane,” Charleston said.
“If he wakes up, that’s still a possibility, sir.”
“How serious a possibility?” he asked.
“He could wake up with no memory of it happening, or wake up screaming, or violent, or blissed out.”
“Blissed out, what does that mean?”
A deep breath from the bed made us both look down. I put a hand on Gimble’s shoulder so that if he tried to get out of the bed and hurt himself, or us, I could keep him down until he could be restrained.
He blinked up at us. “Hey, Havoc.”
“Hey, George,” I said, and smiled because he looked normal.
“Hey, Lieutenant.”
“Hey, Detective, how are you feeling?”
“I saw an angel, did Havoc tell you, I saw an angel?”
“He told me.”
“It was beautiful, so beautiful, like looking at the sun just standing in a room, except it had wings, but they were made of fire. It was amazing, wasn’t it, Havoc? Tell the lieutenant how amazing the angel was.” He touched my hand, which was still on his shoulder. “Tell him, Havoc; I don’t have the words.” He held my hand and started to cry softly, but his face was full of wonderment and awe. I’d seen that look before on other Angel Speakers, and in the mirror. It was like being born again into God’s chosen faith.
I held Gimble’s hand and looked across at our boss. “This is blissed out.”
CHAPTER THREE
He stopped crying and just lay there glowing with happiness. If it had been because of true love, or a new baby, or any of a dozen things I’d have been happy for him, but I’d seen the same angel and I wasn’t glowing. It did feel good to stand near him, though, as if waves of happy contentment were flowing from him to the rest of the room. The nurse on duty came in to check his vitals and stayed talking to him, smiling down at him as he smiled up at her. Of course, Gimble was smiling at everyone; the whole world would be his friend while the afterglow lasted.
Lieutenant Charleston took me outside the room and spoke low while Gimble made friends with another nurse. “How long is this going to last?”
“Hours, days, months.” I shrugged.
“Are you telling me one of my detectives is going to be like some charismatic preacher for months?”
“Or it could fade in an hour,” I said.
Two other nurses came down the hallway and entered Gimble’s room. We stepped back to look in on him, but he was beaming at the four nurses and telling them about the angel. There didn’t seem to be any medical emergency that warranted that many nurses.
Dr. Paulson came down the hallway frowning. “Where the hell are my nurses?”
We both pointed at the room behind us. Paulson strode through the door. “We have other patients on this floor, ladies and gentleman.”
They made sounds of apology and seemed a little embarrassed or confused about why all four of the nurses on the floor were in one room when there didn’t seem to be much wrong with the patient.
Dr. Paulson shooed them out of the room like they were children being sent outside to play. He didn’t seem affected by the angelic bliss spilling off Gimble; neither were Charleston and I, but we had training in resisting metaphysical interference, and the doctor didn’t. So how was he unaffected?
He looked at both of us, the irritation in his eyes bordering on anger, but his voice was still controlled and even. “The religious mania is fine, I’ll have someone from psychiatric look at him, but why is it affecting the nursing staff?”
I answered, because as Charleston liked to remind me, I was the unit’s angel expert. “Sometimes people come away from angelic visitations trailing clouds of glory. Being that close to God can make them high, but it can also make them shine to other people. People are naturally attracted to things that bring them closer to God’s presence.”
“I know that seeing an angel in pure form can drive a person insane or give them amnesia, so they don’t remember the incident at all, or even this type of evangelical experience, but there’s nothing in the literature about it being contagious.”
“It’s a rare side effect,” I said.
“I’ve never heard of it either,” Charleston said. He joined the doctor in giving me unfriendly looks.
“It may be because Gimble is psychic in his own right, so that his powers are combining with the protective story his mind built for him.”
“What protective story?” Charleston asked.
I looked at him as if to say, did he really want me to give out this much detail in front of someone who wasn’t one of us? But he said, “Dr. Paulson is the doctor in charge of Gimble’s treatment, Havelock. He needs to know enough to make that treatment effective.”
“Point taken, Lieutenant,” I said, and turned to the doctor. “I saw the same angel and it wasn’t all light and choral singing. It was special and awe-inspiring, but it wasn’t the way Gimble is describing, at least not to me.”
“Are you saying that he saw something you didn’t?” Paulson asked.
“I’m saying that there is some debate on whether spiritual beings look different from person to person. The theory is that it’s the same reason that we can see spirit, but it doesn’t always show on film, so we may be seeing it with the parts of our minds that see dreams, or daydreams, rather than concrete reality.”
“So, you’re saying that what you saw and experienced may not be what the other detective saw.”
“Yes.”
“So why is that a protective story?”
“It could be that he saw exactly what I saw, but it’s too powerful for his mind to deal with, so in order not to go crazy his mind has given him a wonderful vision instead of the scarier truth.”
“You mean like a trauma victim remembering things differently,” Paulson said.