There could only be one reason for the sudden lack of urgency. "Damn," Amberson's fist hit the dash. "They lost him."

Still, Russell followed. From Fayette Street the wagon turned on to Penn Street and from there, down the ramp that led to the Medical Examiner's Office.

Russell parked along side the ambulance. The detectives caught up to the paramedics just as they were wheeling Eddie into the receiving area.

"He say anything?" Amberson shouted as soon as he got into the room.

"Like?" asked the medic. He was on the twelfth hour of a sixteen-hour day. He'd had two "breaks." Once he stopped for a coffee and doughnut at a convenience store, both of which he gulped down rushing to yet another overdose call. An hour later at Hopkins he stopped briefly to call his wife and use the bathroom. Somehow he couldn't bring himself to get as excited about this dead junkie as the detective was.

"Like did he say who shot him?"

The medic shrugged. "Maybe. I wasn't listening." In fact, the medic had stopped listening a year ago. He'd heard a dying declaration from a gunshot victim, reported it to the police. That lead to his going to court several times, spending hours waiting in a cold, dark hallway only to be told the case was once again postponed. When he finally did get to testify, he was on the stand three hours, as a team of defense attorneys challenged his competency, questioned his hearing and subtly suggested that he'd let the victim die so that declaration could be used in court. When a "not guilty" verdict came back the medic decided that from then on, he'd be deaf to anything not directly related to treating his patient.

~

Like a baby, Eddie felt himself being cradled in someone's arms. There was a gentle, rocking motion. Gradually, the arms became a hand, with Eddie cupped in its palm as if being weighed. He became aware of all the decisions, good or bad, he'd ever made in his life. He saw too all the decisions he'd failed to make. Every path his life could have taken was revealed to him. Some were worse than the one he had lived. Most were better.

From somewhere there was a voice. "A life mostly wasted. An effort at redemption towards the end." A light appeared----a golden light. Eddie was drawn toward it. But he knew without the voice telling him that despite his yearning, he'd get no closer to the light than where he was now.

~

"Can you make the ID?" the attending examiner asked Amberson and Russell.

The detectives looked down at the body. There wasn't much to see: a body ravaged by drugs, thin and dirty from too many months on the street.

"Yeah," Russell answered. "For your records, I identify this body as one Wallace Cromwell, a.k.a. Fast Eddie."

"And do you agree, sir?" the examiner asked Amberson. There was a slight lilt of the Caribbean in his voice.

Amberson nodded. "Well, Eddie," he said to the corpse, "I guess you won't be needing that treatment now. I just wish you'd held on long enough to give us Santos."

Now would be a good time, the examiner thought. In his six months in this country, five months doing this job, he'd seen too much of this tragedy, too many wasted lives. It was time to do something about it, if these men were willing.

"He still could."

Both detectives looked at the examiner, who had finished weighing the body and was now filling out a toe tag.

"Excuse me, Mr.----?" Amberson asked.

"Jones, Dominic Jones. I said that maybe he still could."

"And how, Mr. Amberson, could he do that?"

"I am from the Dominican Republic. My country, as you may or may not know, shares its island with Haiti. When I was in medical school, it was close enough to Haiti that, occasionally, myself and other students would slip across the border to study, shall we say, comparative medicine and religion."

"Voodoo," Amberson said softly.

"Vodou," Jones corrected, giving the word a slightly different pronunciation.

"Wait a minute," Russell said, almost shouting, "you're saying you can bring this guy back from the dead?"

Jones smiled. "Not exactly. Rather, it may be possible to awaken a soul, as if from sleep, before it passes on. If so, one can ask what questions one needs to, before the soul is called away forever."

Russell gave a derisive laugh. Amberson, on the other hand, asked, "And you can do this?"

"I have seen it done. An old man, called back to tell where he had hidden his wealth. A woman, dead after childbirth, summoned from the dark to say which man in the village fathered her child. In each case, the priest performed the ritual. In each case, an answer came from the corpse."

Russell interrupted. "And there are guys in Vegas who stick their hands up dummies's butts who can do the same thing."

"Ventriloquism, Detective? Maybe. But the money was found where the old man's ghost said it would be. And the child grew up in the image of his announced father."

"Do you know the ceremony?" Amberson asked suddenly.

"This is crazy!"

At his partner's exclamation Amberson said, "And we haven't seen crazy before? Besides, it's not like we got anything to lose. Unless you've got a better idea?"

"I can do it, Detective. I have watched the priests and studied with them. One thing about this place: it's got everything I need, except... do you know where we can get a live chicken?"

~

Eddie drifted. Try as he might, he couldn't move closer to the glow. Then he felt himself being pulled away. He thought he heard someone call his name. And then----something else. There was something else he had to do. The golden light got fainter, smaller. Like the dot on an old TV, it faded away.

~

"Eddie, Eddie, can you hear me?" Amberson shouted, shaking the corpse. "Come back, Eddie! Give us Santos!"

"It's no good, partner." Russell drew Amberson away. "It was dumb idea to begin with."

"It should have worked," a despondent Jones said. He looked at the bodies of the dead pigeons in the biohazard waste bin. "We should have used chickens."

"Yeah," Russell turned on him, "and I should maybe run us all up to Mercy for an emergency commitment. Me searching the parking garage for those birds, catching them yet. I have to be crazy."

"The only other choice was regular or extra crispy," Amberson said. "Come on, we've already wasted two hours. Let's get some papers signed and get back to work. Mr. Jones, thanks for your effort, but let's not mention this to anyone."

"Agreed, detective. Now if you two will step into my office, we can get the paperwork out of the way."

It took Jones about ten minutes to find and fill out the forms. Amberson signed them and gave them back. Jones was just putting them into a folder when an alarm sounded.

"What's that?" Russell asked.

"The door to our vehicle bay," Jones explained. "Someone's coming in."

They went out into the receiving area to see who it was. Russell was the first to notice the empty gurney where Eddie's body had lain. "Or someone left."

Beside him, Amberson swore quietly.

"You know," Jones said, staring at the empty place where Fast Eddie had been, "when you use a chicken they don't get up and leave."