Body Swappers 3
Maya's hot take on what some people deserve.
Maya was not looking forward to calling Jennifer Raines for her second post-crisis checkup. During the first checkup, which was always done an hour or two after the crisis, Jennifer had sung Chris’s praises as being incredibly understanding, and for acting like a changed man. Maya knew the pattern, though. When called out in a big way, and threatened that the relationship might end, abusers beg forgiveness and promise to change. That didn’t mean they would. The behavior usually reverted to the routine a few weeks later, if not sooner.
It was now twenty-four hours after the incident, and so they were still probably in the honeymoon period. Maya would have to listen to Jennifer gushing about what a good man her husband was, knowing the woman was deluded.
But the phone rang and rang, and Jennifer didn’t answer. Maya’s shoulders tensed. Or maybe Chris had snapped back much sooner than most. Maybe Jennifer was dead.
At the tone, Maya said, “Jennifer, this is Maya from Parker and Associates. This is a follow-up call. It’s really important I hear from you. If I don’t hear back soon, I’ll–”
Her phone beeped, and Maya pulled it away from her ear so she could see why. “Oh, I see you’re calling me now.” Maya ended the previous call and accepted the new one. “You’ve reached Maya from Parker and Associates,” she said.
In a pained voice, Jennifer cried, “Maya.”
That got Maya’s hackles up. She waved at Ruth to get her attention. Ruth raised her eyebrows.
“What happened? Where are you?” Maya put a finger on her lips and put the call on speaker.
“I’m at home.” Ruth pulled out her phone, ready to call 911. “Chris is…he’s…he’s dead.”
What?
Ruth’s fingers paused over her screen.
“The police are here. It seemed like for a moment they thought I had done it! They asked where I was seven hours ago, and I told them I was at work. Now they’re asking if he had any enemies. Poor Chris. We had just turned a corner.” Jennifer broke down crying.
Maya grimaced. Yeah, right. “Wait. So they think it’s a murder?” She felt as though the gears in her head were grinding from having to switch so fast.
“It was,” Jennifer said. “I came home, and he…Oh, God. He was on the ground with my butcher’s knife sticking out of him.”
Ruth pointed at herself, raising an eyebrow at Maya. Offering to take over? Maya turned away, ignoring the flare of irritation in her chest and focusing on the conversation. “But you were at work all day? Did you take a lunch break?” If they were asking about seven hours ago, they must have figured out the time of death.
“I took my lunch break in the break room. Oh, God. He was lying there all this time?” She made the keening noise of a pained animal.
Maybe I should let Ruth take over. Maya’s shoulder tensed at the thought. “Take a breath, Jennifer,” she said, and took the opportunity to do so herself. “Okay. I know this is really hard. It sounds like you’re not a suspect anymore. You have a solid alibi. That’s something to be thankful for. If you have the means, it still makes sense to have an attorney present when being questioned by the police. It wouldn’t reflect poorly on you at all. But you have people who can say where you were when it happened, right? So getting a lawyer would be a precautionary measure, not a necessity.”
“I don’t think I can afford that.”
“Okay. I think you’ll be okay.”
Jennifer’s voice came out a broken squeal. “How could I ever be okay again?”
“Do you have something to write with?”
“Hold on.”
Once Jennifer said she was ready, Maya gave her the same name and number she’d given Chris yesterday, for a Shaper she knew and trusted. “Give them a call. They will help you. And pick up some amethyst, rose quartz, rhodonite, and apache tears. Wear them as pendants, close to your heart. Wear the amethyst to bed, and the others during the day. I promise, it may not seem like it now, but things will get better.”
Maybe better than they’d ever been, with your abuser out of your life for good.
Jennifer sniffled. “I should probably get back to the police.”
“Probably. Okay, keep in touch,” Maya said, and hung up. Only then did she turn back to Ruth, sliding her phone back in her pocket. “What the heck? This jerk gets murdered the day after an intervention.”
Ruth considered this, tilting her head to one side. “Maybe, in the absence of feeling able to victimize his wife, he tried to victimize someone else. And that person was violent.”
“Maybe.” Maya shrugged. “Well, good riddance. He deserved it.”
“Did he? I’m not sure I believe anyone deserves to be murdered.”
“Not even wife-beaters?”
Ruth took a breath, and arranged her expression into her let-me-explain-this-so-you-can-understand face. “It’s in human nature to be good. When people behave badly, it’s usually a reaction to unmet needs, or pain. He was probably abused, or had some other trauma, in childhood. It must be miserable, being that angry all the time. My hope for people like that is that they get help, and change. Not just for their victim’s sake, but for their own.”
Maya wasn’t sure exactly what the complex whirl of yellow, green, blue, purple, and pink radiating around Ruth indicated, but she had tilted her head and was raising one eyebrow, and Maya realized she wasn’t just talking about Chris Raines.
She’s talking about how angry I am all the time. But I’ve never hit anyone! Except in defense. Maya felt heat in her cheeks.
The door chimes clanged, but this time Ruth maintained the look she was giving Maya. Maya didn’t want to look away. Didn’t want to lower her eyes like a chastised child.
Then her phone chirped. She pulled it out of her pocket, feigning distraction as the cause of the loss of eye contact. What she read was hardly more comfortable than the staring contest she’d just left, though.
Maya, your dad gets home tomorrow. I’ll be cooking enough for the three of us. Do please come! I know you were hurt, but he’s your family. We both are. Love, Mom.
Maya stared. I know you were hurt. Understatement of the year. She’d had plastic surgery to fix what he’d broken. How could her mom accept that monster back into her house, as if no time had passed, as if he’d done nothing wrong? And she wondered why Maya didn’t call.
“Did something happen?” Jeff asked. Maya looked up. Ruth was gone, and Jeff was giving off curious purple vibes. Maya put her phone away.
“Oh, you know Ruth. Trying to play mother to anything that moves.” Maya got on her laptop and closed the Jennifer Raines case. She noted the details of the conversation, which felt like hours ago. When she finished, Jeff was still facing her, chewing his lip, pink and orange suffusing the purple. “What?” Maya asked.
“Have you thought about asking for a different shift? One where you don’t have to work with Ruth? The two of you are always butting heads.”
“I like my time slot,” Maya said, then took a breath and focused on clearing the whine out of her voice as she continued. “We only overlap by an hour. It would be fine if she just stopped judging me.”
Jeff nodded, but his aura didn’t signal agreement. “Do you think it’s within the realm of possibility that you could be reading more judgment into her behavior than is there?” Maya raised an eyebrow, and Jeff threw up his hands. “I’m not saying that’s definitely what’s happening. I haven’t lived your experience. But my experiences of Ruth don’t lead me to find her overly judgmental.”
Maya found her nose curling up at the corner. She grumbled, “Have you lived the experience of having a loafer up your ass?” Jeff gave that the eye roll it deserved and disengaged, leaving Maya to fume on her own.