Constantine by John Shirley, Kevin Brodbin Read Free Book Online Page A

just how it was with twins.
    Sobbing without sound, she found herself looking at Isabel’s wrist. She was expecting something more than just a patient ID band. In the dream, there had been an insignia there, marked in a welt on her wrist. It wasn’t there now.
    She felt she might crumble, looking at her sister.
    Death was so absolute, so without mitigation. She would never be able to comfort her sister now. She’d put off a visit to the hospital that week…
    Angela felt Xavier standing at her elbow. She had to get control of her voice, swallowing a few times before she could manage, “She… fell from the roof?”
    Xavier hesitated. Then he admitted, “She jumped.”
    Jumped? No. Isabel wouldn’t do that. Not with her beliefs. No.
    “I know it’s hard to accept,” Xavier said gently.
    “But she was sick… “
    Isabel wouldn’t kill herself.
    “Angie…”
    “She wouldn’t. Period.”
    “Detective,” Xavier said. Reminding her, with his emphasis on that single word, to be objective. “There was surveillance…”
    She looked at Isabel’s face, and then signaled the coroner to cover it again.
    The job, she told herself. Hang on to that. You’re already under scrutiny for the shootings.
    Don’t fall apart now.
    “Surveillance? A security camera? Then… I want to see that tape.”
    Xavier sighed. “You sure you want to put yourself through that?”
    “Just arrange it. Please. Do that for me.”
    “All right. We can do that right away. Security’s on the first floor, behind the foyer.”
    Angela turned away and forced herself to leave her sister’s body behind.
    But she couldn’t abandon her sister. Alive or dead.
    --
    Ravenscar had a comprehensive “mental hygiene” facility, where Isabel had died. But the rest of the hospital was devoted to cardiology and to oncology; to cancer and chemo and little rooms where terminal patients withered away, like waiting rooms for that final physician, Death Constantine walked past one of those rooms.
    Through the open door he glimpsed a gaunt, bald woman propped up in bed, gazing sightlessly through a fog of heavy medication at the wall-mounted TV.
    Once it was terminal, why couldn’t it just take you? he wondered. Why does God have to drag these miseries out?
    He realized he’d unconsciously taken a cigarette from his coat. He was flicking it unlit from finger to finger in his right hand. It wouldn’t do for Dr. Archer to see that.
    He put it away and went into the examination room to wait.
    --
    In another part of the hospital, the Security Suite, Angela sat in a swivel chair staring at a video monitor. Wishing she were heavily medicated.
    She watched as the black-and-white tape from the security earn showed her twin sister stepping up on the rim of the roof. Looking around.
    Throwing the patient’s bracelet. Gazing out into the night. Shaking her head. Glancing over her shoulder. Stepping off the edge - quite deliberately. Pitching forward. Tumbling. Gone.
    The breath Angela had been holding forced itself out as she blurted, “Oh!”
    A shudder went through her as a hand, intended to be comforting, settled on Angela’s shoulder.
    Xavier said, “Hey, Angie? Talk to Foreman - he’ll tell you to take a few days off…Hell, a few weeks…”
    Angela shook her head and brushed the hand off.
    Then she turned - and saw that Xavier was on the other side of the room with two security guards. He’d spoken to her from there. So whose hand had been on her shoulder?
    --
    Constantine’s death was a black splotch in a glowing white box, like a spider waiting in its webby den.
    The light boxes illuminated his chest X-rays with a ghostly objectivity, and a dark mass spread in both lungs. Constantine stared at it, and thought it was in the shape of a rune he could almost remember.
    It occurred to him, not for the first time, that he might be the victim of a psychic attack. One of his old enemies might’ve cursed him with this sickness. It could be an even more direct