Chapter 14

At this moment...

At this precise moment, Henry Morgan is staring at the bones of Abigail Morgan in horror. There is a difference between knowing something and seeing it and that has never been more apparent than now.

At this precise moment, Lucas Wahl is uncertainly offering assistance to his mentor, correcting mistakes with a mixture of shock that Henry had even made any, and concern. Because this body meant something.

At this precise moment, Emerson Cod is stress-knitting. Today has been a trying day. For all of them. He was not alone in his irritation.

At this precise moment…

Adam is having a lovely chat with Variable N about the reasoning behind killing Henry Morgan. And you know what chats with Adam are like.

A lot of things are happening right now. Before Adam catches the murderer and does as he pleases with them, there are some ends that need to be untangled. There are some 'At this moments' left to be dealt with.

Let us begin.

(Note from the Narrator - some of these 'At that moments' take place at different times. But time is subjective and can be weird. I don't make the rules. You decide when these events happen. Stories don't necessarily have to take place in the right order, events unfold backwards, forwards, diagonally, wherever there is scope to move. As a narrator, I hope you can understand my creative choices in relaying this tale to you.

P.S. Bonus marks to anyone who can figure out the identity of the Variable from these shorts. You can have a free haiku, say, next chapter? It's not nearly so simple as it seems. But then again, what is?)

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At that moment, Lucas Wahl had finished his solitaire game and decided to check his phone. You know what young people are like. Solitaire was a depressing game because Lucas Wahl wasn't very good at it, though he tried. There were many things that Lucas tried. His attempted scarf collection stood as testimony to this.

But no, Lucas Wahl, as first on the list, couldn't possibly be the murderer, could he? Because as someone once said, as any connoisseur of mysteries knows - the secrets are at the bottom

Lucas Wahl resumed his game of solitaire, gradually cheating as he went along, checking his phone every few minutes. Waiting for a call? He received one. The body of Abraham's mother had been found and he needed to assist Henry with handling the bones. Got it. That was when he got back to work and deleted his history so NO HE HAD NEVER BEEN PLAYING ONLINE SOLITAIRE NOPE DIDN'T HAPPEN.

At that moment, Lieutenant Reece was going over case files, critically examining those associated with the alleged murder of Henry Morgan, which she was referring to as the Mystery of the Vanishing Dead Guy. Putting them to one side, she sent them off to be shredded.

Because if you kill a man and he returns unscathed, did you or did you not commit murder, and how should you, should the case ever come to court, hypothetically, be charged?

Think on that.

‡

At that moment, Aunts Lily and Vivian Charles were asleep. Or at least, Aunt Vivian was.

(Aunt Lily of course, was not Charlotte's aunt at all but her mother, after something one might have referred to as a twist of fate, take it up with Mr Bryan Fuller if you are unhappy)

Aunt Lily was awake, and pouring herself a drink. Thanks to poor co-ordination caused by the loss of one eye, and stresses faced over the past day or so, her hand slipped and the glass fell to the floor shattering into a million pieces of hyperbole and coincidence.

This is the definition of coincidence. Coincidences are far more than contrived plot devices pulled together to create a sense of symmetry and parallelism. They're that instant freefall, as the clear glass falls towards the ground to break in perfect harmony, synchronicity.

Synchronicity…

‡

At that moment, Randy Mann, whose name in the UK essentially was the same as being called Horny Guy, a fact somebody out there must have been keenly aware of (looking at you, Bryan Fuller), was waiting for Olive to get home, practising his art on some small butterflies he was pinning to the wall. Butterflies were difficult, the intricacy making them tricky. Conversely, larger animals were easier to develop taxidermy-exhaustion with, and it was harder to rectify/erase all evidence of a mistake made while preserving, say a vast African bush elephant, Loxodonta africana.

That and the legalities of acquiring dead elephants, they being a preserved species.

He was glancing at his watch nervously. He was worried about her.

There are consequences for every action, no matter how small. A butterfly flaps its wings.

(Not that butterfly. It's nailed down. A different one)

But there are still consequences.

Somewhere, a storm starts.

‡

At this moment, Detective Michael 'Mike' Hanson was trying to sleep in a ski lodge, and failing disastrously thanks to a little thing called small children. He rolled over and put a pillow over his face, groaning. His phone rang. From the bathroom his wife yelled at him to keep it down, hypocritical as ever! Goddammit it.

Ah, the dilemmas of middle-class America. Aren't they a delight?

Obviously, it wasn't Hanson. But the seeds of doubt are sown and now essentially, you're feeling directionless paranoia with no idea who the Variable is. Mike Hanson is as good a guess as any. You never know. This could be reverse psychology or reverse-reverse psychology.

Anyway, he had to go make a few calls.

At that moment, Abigail Morgan was dead. Her body was about to be found.

Obviously, being dead, she is not a suspect. That would be ridiculous. This is so obviously a red herring she doesn't even get a potentially incriminating quote from the rest of the story.

And if you believe that, you'll believe anything…

‡

At that moment, similarly dead Charles Charles, albeit alive again-ed by Ned the Piemaker who had been tricked into leaving him alive, was actually in New York, considering perhaps a reconnecting with his daughter. Considering. By considering, perhaps it is more accurate to say loitering in Grand Central, an Invisible Man-esque bandaged figure claiming to have a skin condition. He did have a skin condition. It was called being dead.

The thing about death is, the dead do not care about intention. They can't afford to, being dead.

And the price of intention is high for a man with no real future, who should by rights be in the ground.

A man closely acquainted with Abraham (not the Biblical figure, but the adopted son of Doctor Henry Morgan).

Can he afford intention? More importantly, why would he be interested in one Doctor Henry Morgan, Medical Examiner for the NYPD?

‡

At that moment, the Piemaker was examining a pocket watch belonging to Henry Morgan he had picked up off the street, way back in chapter 1, if you can even remember that far back. He probably needed to give that back. As soon as Henry was done with his call to Adam, he'd give it to him.

He waited. Maybe, he wondered, he ought to follow his grandfather's advice and talk to Chuck. Leaving the pocket-watch on Henry's desk, he went after his girlfriend to talk to her. And so the future begins.

‡

At that moment Charlotte Charles, known also as Chuck, was curled up on the sofa underneath a blanket. She heard the sound of someone coming in and looked up to see Ned, and she smiled sleepily at him. It had been a very, very long day. Life was over-complicated, she decided.

She had seen nothing yet.

‡

At that moment, Olive Snook was still humming off the buzz of her musical number. It was probably an addiction at this stage, bursting into song whenever required. She'd just finished a fantastic jam session with Ned's dad and decided she liked the Super-secret Undead Murder Committee and even after the case was solved, she wanted to spend more time together as a group, no matter what Emerson said (she was sure as hell making him godfather, he'd be ecstatic but have to pretend not to be secretly living it up. It would be fabulous).

But now she was sat on the sofa, doing nothing. Except, of course, checking her phone.

Coincidence?

I think not.

‡

At that moment, Emerson Cod was stress-knitting. More accurately, he was eating noodles with chopsticks and a nervous reaction had caused him to automatically knit, causing the entire combined populations of China, Japan and other chopstick-using countries like Korea to cry out 'that's not what chopsticks are for, fuckass!' (admittedly, a loose translation)

He was tired. He was bored. But the thing about Emerson Cod was he always saw a case through to the end. He was going to solve the Mystery of the Vanishing Dead Guy. It would be nice for something to finally go their way for once.

Poor Emerson. He couldn't have been more wrong if he'd tried.

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At that moment, Detective Jocelynn (right?) Martinez was seriously concerned Henry Morgan had some sort of death wish, and wondered just exactly how he'd take the news they couldn't investigate into yet another 30-year old murder, especially since Abe's mother was very important to him. What the hell was going on?

Jolinda (definitely not)'s mind cycled back to the beginning of the day. This all starts with an alleged murder. And a body that supposedly, what, vanished? Josefina Conception Immaculada (warm? Cold? Nah) couldn't make any sense of it.

The notable adverb being - yet.

Aren't adverbs such funny things?

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At almost this moment, Abraham Morgan was waiting for his father to come home. Ned had returned from the cottage first, and Henry was busy with police stuff - apparently they had caught the murderer of Belinda Smoot.

He picked up the phone to hear Abigail was dead. He'd known it all along, but...to have the facts presented to him, his heart skipped a beat, figuratively of course, he wasn't going into cardiac arrest…he had his answer, but there still remained innumerable other hidden truths left to uncover.

Like who killed Henry Morgan.

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At this moment, Doctor Henry Morgan, the Vanishing Dead Guy himself was staring at the skeleton of his beloved Abigail. He couldn't think. Accident, accident, please be an accident he prayed. He interpreted the information through those biased filters, accident, accident, please be an accident.

Only when Lucas objected, telling him he was wrong and explaining why did everything stop feeling ephemeral, unreal. He knew who had killed Abigail. And he knew how to deal with him.

He was, after all, a doctor.

‡

At this moment, fellow immortal Adam, whose peculiar manner of friendship really leaves a lot to be desired is for once behaving like a good friend and is about to torture an assassin to death, all in the name of 'killing Henry himself'. Now that's dedication for you. Loyalty.

Or something like that.

At this moment, the nth Variable is here. Who?

Tune in tomorrow to find out.

‡

This concludes today's series of excerpts from the innermost depths of people's souls, gathered illegally using intrusive psychic powers. I hope you are not too disappointed by their brief nature, however it is hard to listen to multiple persons' every thoughts and cram them down onto paper. It is considerably easier with only one person to eavesdrop on, however, I felt you needed to know all the facts. For context.

Before, as Emerson Cod might say, 'shit gets real'.

Have a nice day, and I'll be with you again shortly when, well, when dearest Adam bites off a little more than he can chew for the first time since becoming immortal. Won't that be fun?

Don't let me detain you.