This time when I come to my head feels okay. Maybe a bit of an ache, but nothing major. I open my eyes. Floating over me are the faces of Kathy and Hank Lee.
“Am I dreaming?” I ask.
Both of them smile but say nothing. As if that was the first line of something more I was going to go on about.
“Is this a dream?” I say. “I’m really asking you guys. Do you faces of two coroners speak? Or am I dead, on a slab in the morgue, having an out-of-body experience, right before you two cut into me?”
Hank says, “Yup, I’d say he’s back from the brink. Welcome back to the world, David.”
They both laugh.
“Thank God,” I say. “For a moment there I thought I’d bought it.”
“You almost did,” Kathy says. “Thank goodness for sure.”
I try to look past them to figure out the lay of the land. What I can see seems vaguely familiar but I can’t place it. That ceiling lamp –
“You’re at home, David,” Kathy says. “You kept insisting that we not take you to the hospital. With three doctors in the house, everyone decided to give in to your whining.”
“How long have I been here?”
Hank says, “You’ve been out for three days. You’ve been giving us an earful, but nothing you’ve gone on about makes much sense to us. We figured it was the intermittent fever.”
“Three days?” This throws me off. “What about Jasmine Komine and Harry Wong?”
The two faces look at each other, seeming puzzled. And then the third doctor’s head joins the other two. It’s Dave.
“Pop, you mentioned them a lot while you were mumbling. What is it about them that’s you all hyped up?”
I say, “Well, for a moment there I thought I was borderline psychic. I mean, in my dreams, I missed out on Harvey, but I got Jasmine Komine and the Wong name. Three out of four. Plus chaos and order. Pretty amazing, I’d say.”
“Oh boy,” says Hank Lee, “sounds like he’s back to raving.” He lays a hand on my forehead. “Nope, no fever. David, what the heck are you talking about.”
A fourth head pushes its way into the mix. It’s my partner.
“Boss,” says Kelso. “What you was doing over at Pier 13?”
Pier 13? This is a puzzle. “When?” I ask.
“When?” exclaims Kelso. “When we hauled your ass out of that burning warehouse. A few more minutes and you’d a been David Chan toast.”
“Say what?”
Kelso goes on. “We pulled you out of a burning warehouse on Pier 13. We wanted to take you to Queen’s, but you said no way. Das why you’re here.”
Silence on all fronts, including mine. To my knowledge, I’d passed out in the apartment occupied by Jasmine Komine and Harry Wong. I tell them that’s the last I remember. How I ended up on Pier 13 is beyond me.
More silence and odd looks.
Finally, Chin chimes in again. “Oh, and to try to answer some of all this stuff you was going on about over the past couple of days, first of all, after I called like every dentist and his grandmother on O’ahu, I found Jasmine Komine’s guy. Kathy checked the records against the wahine we found in the Pacific Insurance fire. She is Jasmine Komine.”
“Yes, David,” says Kathy. “That is the body of the psychologist.”
“It can’t be,” I say. “I talked to her in her apartment, just before I passed out three days ago. And she was with Harry Wong.”
“Oh, yeah, and that, too,” says Kelso. “I went to the place where Jason Li‘ikini works to ask if he’d been out. They told me, yeah, he’s on vacation. Visiting family in Cali. He’ll be back next week. So that body in the Kamukī fire, thas not him, boss. They said they know someone was sitting his house, taking care his pets.”
“Yes, David,” said Kathy, “it’s another John Doe.”
“He’ll tell us who the guy was, though” adds Kelso.
I go back to what is bothering me. “Guys, that Pacific Insurance body is not Jasmine Komine. I swear I was just talking to her, two days after the fire. All we have to do is go to her apartment and see her.”
The three give each other concerned looks. Like I am going off on a fever dream again.
“David,” says Kelso, “you know what’s more important right now?”
I would think that would be it, but I don’t say so. Instead, I just say, “What, Chin?”
“Looks like you don’t know anything about why we found you in a burning warehouse on Pier 13. Das what we gotta figure out. Someone wanted you fried, brah.”
I have to admit, that is a compelling puzzle, but so is my talking to a dead woman and her alive – I hope – boyfriend.
“Can you do me one favor, Chin?” I ask.
“Shoots, boss. Whatever you need.”
“Can you call the HU psychology department and check on whether Jasmine Komine has been there to teach her class? I’d ask you to call her, but if she’s not home – ” They give me those oh-boy-he’s-out-of-it sorry faces, but I plow on – “then confirming – or not – that she’s been teaching her class would help ease my mind considerably.”
Kelso shakes his head in what I call a pretty pessimistic way, but he says, “I tell you what, David, I’ll try both.”
“Thanks, partner, I appreciate it. Meanwhile, I have to figure out how I got from her apartment to Pier 13.”
All four of them nod. And just like that, the four faces are gone. I can’t lift my head for some reason. I feel around and notice they’ve used some kind of strap to immobilize my head. I look up. The ceiling certainly looks like mine, appears real.
But the way I feel, I don’t know, maybe it’s drugs they put me on. I am having one heck of a hard time figuring out if this whole thing is just a bad dream.
Lanning Lee 