Is it possible to kill God? Even to a psychic like me, the thought hadnât crossed my mind until the day I went searching for Elliot Spinoza. He was my friend and a mathematician, and he went missing. The FBI wanted him, but so did a couple of billionaires. It had something to do with one of his equations and its secrets. The FBI told me the world was at risk. Now, it was up to me to find my friend and keep the equation safe. In the end, what I found was far more devastating. And I was going to kill anyone to do so, including God.
Is it possible to kill God? Even to a psychic like me, the thought hadnât crossed my mind until the day I went searching for Elliot Spinoza. He was my friend and a mathematician, and he went missing. The FBI wanted him, but so did a couple of billionaires. It had something to do with one of his equations and its secrets. The FBI told me the world was at risk. Now, it was up to me to find my friend and keep the equation safe. In the end, what I found was far more devastating. And I was going to kill anyone to do so, including God.
1
The dead girl smiled at me.
I had found her at the far end of a field abutting a grove of eucalypti, before the land turned up into a rocky hill. The killer had chosen the place because it was far enough from the road, but he couldnât go any farther. He had stood there, trying to think with his psychotic mind whether he should carry her body over the rocky hill. He had remained in one place too long and had left the deep impression of his shoes on the ground. At last, he dug a hole. And the soil had yielded to the shovel. But a foot down, the eucalyptiâs roots had stopped him, and the hole had been patchy at best. Then he had stuffed her body in and covered it with dirt.
From the moment I had paced around her room, picking up her personal things, her diary with a pink cover in which she had written âI love you Dustinâ the night before she disappeared; her jeans and T-shirts with the faces of her favorite pop stars; her Harry Potters books, I developed a sense, like a hound dog, not a sense of smell but visual disturbance emanating from her presence. And I saw it strongly when I ran my hands over her pillows. Then, it was as if a part of the sky had turned dark, and toward that direction I would find her. I had rushed out the doors past her crying mother and drove fast toward the east, leaving Los Angeles behind. After two hours, I drove into the back country over gravel roads. I had to double back several times, and there I saw it, where the air was almost black at the foot of the hill, among the eucalyptiâthe place where he had dropped her corpse.
âAre you sure this time?â Ed Callow said to me as soon as he got there. He had always been the first to come when I called in a case. Ed was the LAPD homicide detective who had been my point man ever since I started doing these cases five years ago. He had a large Roman nose, eyes that always squinted, brown hair cropped short, and a slouching figure with powerful arms.
âSheâs there.â I pointed to the mound of dirt under which her body lay.
âYou didnât contaminate it, did you?â
âNo.â
âAnything else you care to tell me?â
âNothing yet.â
Ed shook his head. After five years working together, he still didnât feel comfortable with my sixth sense. âYou give me the creeps. Remind me. You knew where to find her, how?â
âI just do.â I shrugged. He wasnât really asking.
âThey donât call you The Psychic for nothing.â
I shrugged again. Psychic wasnât the word for what I did, but I couldnât share that with Ed. Then the rest of the police and forensics team came and cordoned off the area. They filmed the entire scene, must have taken a thousand photos, collected samples, and made impressions of all the footprints.
Afterwards, we were allowed to approach the site as they dug her out. She had been dead for about three weeks, so she had gone through the stagesârigor mortis, bloating with gas, and finally having her teeth, nails, and hair fall out. She was beginning to liquefy, and so her face had decomposed beyond recognition. Strangely, a butterfly with iridescent wings descended from a eucalyptus and landed on her cheek, and then it took off, circled around me a couple of times, and flew off. When it landed on her cheek, I could see that she smiled at me. It was not a hallucination; I actually saw her cheek moving and forming a deep dimple.
And, in a flash, I had a vision of the killer carrying her limp body. The picture was pixelated and fuzzy, like a low-res image on a computer screen, as if the air molecules held a memory of what had happened. He was tall, over six feet, bald, wearing square glasses, and had a beer belly. He had stood there, thinking, and he had stood too long. He had dug the hole and stuffed her body in. Then, the vision was gone; the fuzziness became clear as the air, and all I could see now was the field of weeds, sprinkled with poppy flowers. Between the earth, sky, and flowers, the place was beautiful enough to lie in forever.
Of course, I didnât tell anyone about how I saw her smile, or how I saw the sky turn dark, or how I saw the killer standing there thinking. They wouldnât believe me anyway. If Ed Callow were to press me, I would say that it was a psychic hunch as much as the science of deduction, that I was like a modern Sherlock Holmes, using my psychic powers together with the power of modern technology. But Ed had stopped pestering me years ago; he was always a practical man, taking what he could use and going on with his life in this life, never caring for whatever could be in the next.
The truth, however, was much more difficult for people to believe. In the end, the fabric of space would be torn apart; the earth itself would be in danger; and human existence would be questioned.
Starting with hints of police procedural and gravitating toward hard science-fiction, mental illness, and conspiracy, with solid writing, editing, and good art, I was instantly hooked by "The Day I Killed God". Then, introductions finished, it transitions to a more easy-going exposition, which also works. The beginning of the novel is well conceived and interesting.
Though I enjoyed the novel, the middle acts reveal what were, in my opinion, its two weakest aspects: an occasional lack of clarity and the absence of science-fiction elements for long stretches.
As the protagonist changes and the cast increases, it at times feels rushed and confusing. Several scenes could use some small clarification, but this doesn't harm the flow or general understanding of the plot. That said, explaining these things more thoroughly in a fun way might have earned the novel another star.
I was also disappointed by the lack of science-fiction themes and elements. Sure, there are some major SF details, but chapter-to-chapter, the novel is more thriller than SF. This isn't bad, but I was expecting something slightly different.
Back to the good! I felt the author wrote good investigative and information-gathering scenes. Without spoiling anything, there are quite a few good noir elements in an otherwise fast-paced story.
And the really good: the conversation with "God" is clearly both the climax and highlight of this novel; my only wish is that the author had focused more on science-fiction throughout the entire story rather than only in this lone scene. Yes, tendrils of science-fiction reach to you throughout the whole story, but I was expecting a more heavy-handed approach.
"The Day I Killed God" is an interesting novel that has been written with thought and skill which fans of thrillers, chases, and science-fiction will be satisfied with. I'll be gladly reading Nick Totem's next offering, and you should read this one.