The heavy barred steel door slid open with a loud rumble as Harry left the reception area and entered the main body of the prison. He could feel sweat gathering in the palms of his hands and he wiped it away as discreetly as possible on the sides of his lightweight tan sports jacket. A correctional officer walked ahead of him and came to a stop before another solid steel door. The officer glanced back at Harry, pressed a buzzer set into the wall, and then lowered his mouth to an intercom and identified Harry and the name of the prisoner he was there to see. Above them the light on a closed-circuit security camera blinked on so other officers could see who was at the door. Moments later there was a solid click and the correctional officer pushed the door open.
“The prisoner you’re here to see should be brought in within a few minutes,” the officer said. “You can sit anywhere you want. This isn’t a normal visitation time so you have the place to yourself.” He gestured toward a row of cubicles each separated by a thick glass partition, with telephone receivers on both sides of the glass. “They told me you were a cop,” the officer added.
“That’s right,” Harry said.
“Then you know the routine. Just hit the buzzer by the door when you’re finished.”
“This won’t take long,” he said.
Harry’s hands trembled as the door on the other side of the glass opened.
He watched his mother enter the visitor’s room and wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him. What he saw was the same young woman who had stood in their kitchen all those years ago, a broad smile on her beautiful face as she listened to Jimmy do his comic imitation of the small boy who lived next door.
Lucy Santos slid into the chair opposite him, her hands going to the glass partition that separated them, stroking it as if the glass were his face. He stared at the hands. They were old hands, cracked and work worn, not the soft hands of his mother. He looked up at her face and saw lines and creases he had not seen when she entered the room. Then the creases slowly disappeared, the lines smoothed out, and the face was young again. He fought for control and grabbed the handle of the telephone receiver that would allow him to speak to her, jabbing with the index finger of his other hand at the receiver on her side of the glass, indicating that she should pick it up. She obeyed, bringing the phone to her lips.
“Harry, my darling Harry,” she said.
“Be quiet and listen to me,” he snapped.
She jerked her head back and her eyes widened in surprise. “Harry-”
“Just listen. Don’t speak.” He glared at her with unforgiving eyes. He saw her lips begin to tremble but felt nothing. Her face was soft and young and beautiful again and he fought the image off. “When I was eighteen you sent me a letter and asked me if the dead spoke to me, if Jimmy spoke to me. I never answered your letter, never answered that question because I didn’t want to; didn’t want any contact with you at all.” Harry leaned forward still glaring into the young/old woman’s face. “Now I want to answer you. Now I want you to know what Jimmy has told me, year after year after year; I want to tell you what other dead people have told me.”
“Oh, thank you, Harry. Thank you, thank you. You give me a beautiful gift. You give me the knowledge of the angels. Tell me, tell me what Jimmy says? Tell me, my son, what your brother says to you.”
Harry’s jaw tightened. “He says that Jesus is waiting for you…”
“Oh, yes, yes…”
“He says that Jesus has told him that when you get to heaven you will see Him in all His glory…”
“Oh, yes, thank God, in all his glory…”
“And when you see Him you will also see all that awaits the pure of heart; all the beauty that will be theirs for life everlasting. You will see everything that Jimmy has now. And Jimmy says that after you have seen it, after you see all the beauty and the glory that awaits those who have pleased the Lord, Jesus will raise his hand…”
“Oh, yes, yes…”
“… and He will cast you straight into hell.”
Lucy Santos’s back stiffened and the telephone receiver fell from her hand. Her eyes were wide and terrified and her face was lined with sharp fissures and sagging flesh. She was an old woman now.
Harry got up and walked to the door, pressed the buzzer, and waited for it to open. He did not look back.
William Heffernan
The Dead Detective