Happy Thursday. To help keep my own feet to the fire, I'm using Thursday as my public accountability day. That means, posting a bit of coherently creative output for you to read and feedback on every week. If I perform according to my own intent, what I put here will be available as a whole elsewhere at the same time or shortly after appearing here.
In Warm Blood is currently available as a part of The Official Private Eye Handbook, first book in the CITY OF MAGICK series. Please, feel free to take a look here, though, and at subsequent chapters. Let me know how you feel about it. For those of you finding your way here relatively late, no problem. The start of the story is just a click away.
IN WARM BLOOD
Chapter 8
I was almost starting to enjoy having been saddled with an entourage, probably because my escorts had become distinctively useful. Without them I would’ve had to bribe my way into the morgue or wait till Monday to check on Heather Morgan’s body. On top of that, I wouldn’t have to jump through hoops to get access to the medical examiner’s report and, if that ended up being inconclusive, any of the findings of the supplemental examinations that were determined to be warranted. How hard it would be to get the supplemental reports could depend on a lot of factors, from the weather to the time of the month or what kind of mood any of the examiners (psychic, alchemist, wizard) happened to be in that day. I probably wouldn’t even have to bribe the night morgue attendant, who I was pretty sure was one of the undead vampire minions of the medical examiner. It was almost refreshing to have the kiddie cops removing obstacles rather than being obstacles.
“Well, Heaven?” Overknight probed of the very pale, vaguely Asian woman. “Anything to report?”
“Please, we’ve just met,” the morgue attendant said, coldness in her voice and her dark eyes.
I didn’t usually find the pretense of such formality lurking under pink-striped hair. People in clerical positions using customer needs to squeeze extra respect out of a situation, though, that I found a lot. She wasn’t picking up a bribe for doing her job, so I figured it was no big deal to give in on the formality thing.
“Our apologies, Miss Lee,” I said. “We’re really trying to put some pieces of a case together.”
“I understand,” the morgue attendant said from behind her clipboard. “It’s really a simple concept: you have your job and I have mine. At this point, mine is to say that I can‘t help you.”
“We really need to view that body,” Overknight insisted.
“And I can’t help you with that,” Lee firmly told us again.
“What’s the problem?” I asked her. ’Is there some form we need to fill out or--?”
“I can’t show you the body because it’s not here,” she explained. “It never was. I have a Jack Morgan, but no Heather. I’m even out of Jane Does.”
“You’re sure she’s dead?” Lee asked. “Lotsa folks in this town aren’t as dead as some folks think they are.”
“True,” I conceded, “the body counts do get a little tricky from time to time, but I put this one down myself. She wasn’t moving again under her own power.”
“Anyone else you might want to see that you think could help?” Lee asked.
“You got a weasel-looking guy named Grayson?” I asked Miss Lee.
“Yeah, he’s full of holes,” Lee said.
“That’s the one,” I confirmed. “We don’t need to see him. Glad he’s here, though.”
“But not as glad as if we could see the other,” Overknight said.
“Well, they should’ve all come in together,” I explained.
“So you’re maintaining that her absence means either someone carried her off or magicked her off?” Overknight asked.
“Pretty much, yeah.,” I replied. “I do know how to put holes in people.”
“Great,” morgue girl said, “are we done playing cher chez la femme here?”
“Here, yes,” I answered. “Thanks for your time, Miss Lee.”
“You may call me ‘Heaven’,” she said, sliding a business card into my shirt pocket. “I saw you in the newspapers. It looked like you’re into some wild stuff. You should call me.”
I sighed. It was like being haunted by myself.
“I might have a lead,” Homer said, coming into the morgue’s examining room.
“Do tell,” Overknight said.
“I just got off the phone with a friend over at Central Records,” Homer said. “We were having an informative chat about…the other lead…your sniper.”
“Stark White. Great,” I said. “We should talk about that in the car.”
A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh is a very wise bear. I say this with complete security in my adultness. Pooh or Edward Bear to those in the know, is one of my favorite children's book and cartoon characters.
Despite Pooh's natural simplicity and subtley brilliant insights, he is not alone in bringing enlightenment to the Hundred Acre Wood and the world beyond. He has a different approach to Life than friendly Pooh, but Eeyore brings to us a level of directness and honesty that one seldom finds in any book for children.
The first time I ever read "Bouncy or coffy, it's all the same at the botttom of the river", I knew with certainty that that grim, gray little quadriped with the unreliable tail was definitely not one who would sugar-coat anything. All I could say was "wow" because there was a voice that wasn't shy about the truth. How many people do any of us know who cuts to the heart of any matter with so sharp a knife. Eeyore is nothing short of a bracing slap in the face as a member of the rainbow of personalities found in Christopher Robin's menagerie.
I think Eeyore's unique perspective, while stark, definitely makes a special contribution. Granted, Eeyore would make a dazzling critic ("We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."), but his voice also provides a brilliantly balancing commentary for an audience that encompasses a wide age-range and knows the world isn't all sunshine. As the little donkey said, "Being fine today doesn't mean anything. It may hail a good deal tomorrow--blizzards and whatnot."
At first glance, perpetually depressed Eeyore may seem like a pessimist, but he's actually just terribly pragmatic and sometimes the only one around who's prepared for dealing with the worst. "They're funny things, accidents. You never have them till you're having them." When Life starts hitting the fan, Eeyore handles things better than FEMA. Still, you'll never find Eeyore caught up in "I told you sos" or any other such behavior so lacking in humility. No, he's strictly a "Thanks for noticing me" sort, utterly unassuming. In his quietness, Eeyore seems passive, yet he also possesses a gentle strength inherent to his donkey nature.
There's a great feeling of respect that accompanies the willingness to convey such total honesty. Conversely, I believe such Eeyore-ness is likewise deserving of an equal level of respect.
Based on reputation and writings that have come down to us over time, I've been well-trained to believe that George Washington was a decent man and a respectable president. Thinking more freely, I've never seen him as perfect and I'm quite vocal about my certainty that one of the qualities that made him a great president was that he didn't want the job. He did a job that he was convinced his people needed him to do and when it was time, he walked away. Despite his other flaws, at least he wasn't a politician.
For over a hundred years now, anyone still alive and who's been paying attention has been able to see the strings of politicians manipulated by titans of banking and industry. What does that benefit the people politicians are supposed to be serving? Still waiting to see an upside. That's probably because I'm biased by the fact that I don't trust a single one of them. 
When I think of politicians, there's not one flattering adjective that comes to mind. I think they're trying to wear us down to the point that we actually believe that if we just give them everything we work for and ask for nothing in return, they'll hand us a perfect society (even though they'd actually still be plotting against us). Fortunately, I don't think we're quite there yet.
Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck in a loop of complaining about our politicians and how our government works, re-electing the same politicians or more just like them and then complaining some more when things get worse. We're stuck in a downward spiral of corruption, but I do think there's a way out of it and it has nothing to do with amending the Constitution regarding marriage, abortion, flag-burning nor any other distracting irrelevancy that our Constitution doesn't need to be changed over.
Ben Franklin had doubts that we'd be able to maintain the republic that he and his conspirators implemented. If they could've seen how far afield we'd go from what they started, they'd probably have turned the whole thing over to the Algonquian Roundtable.
Rather than watching corrupt representatives spend millions upon millions of dollars to get voted into a position that doesn't pay nearly as much but does afford them the opportunity to steal from us and break laws while we watch our country wither and die, I say we get rid of the politicians. Personally, I'm tired of watching politicians fight among themselves like they're some mini-Middle East holding onto a centuries-old grudge.
Since politicians prove without fail that they're willing to weasel out of anything except office, I propose that the ranks of our representative government be filled in the same way that jury boxes are. Representatives will be selected from among We the People to engage in civil service. Pay can be lowered to make sure no one enjoys it too much and terms can be shortened to keep anyone from suffering too long. Every six months or so, we'll get a new batch of representatives in place (president included) and we can do away with all the nonsense of campaigning and lying and debating and pondering over which loser to vote for based on how screwed we think we'll be by our lack of decent choices. We could do away with representatives who sought the position because of overambitiousness and were willing to do anything they needed to do to win it.
Sure, we'd lose a lot of the circus, but some actual focus on administration and public service could happen. Imagine having representatives who acted in the interest of their constituencies and how quickly they could be replaced if they didn't. Imagine functioning without arguments mired in a tangle of political party lines. It would certainly keep us on our toes 
when the mail came around and if the system gets run like jury duty, we should have the blessing that most of our representatives won't really want the job.
You got a better idea? Help Thin the Herd!
