Ray Norman

From: Cannon, season 2, episode Hear No Evil

Portrayed by: Wesley Lau

Age: Forties

Alignment: Good

Bearing a striking resemblance to Lieutenant Anderson, ten years older, Ray Norman is an anomaly to the other characters in many ways.

Private detective Frank Cannon knew him only as a rather cold and cruel blackmailer. He also knew him as becoming very, very dead.

Killed while trying to collect a pay-off, Ray's troubles were only just beginning. The mad scientist Dr. Alice Portman saw to it that her henchmen broke into the county morgue that night and stole his body. Like Dr. Faustina nearly 140 years in the past, Portman's goal was to revive the dead. What she planned to do afterward, however, was very different.

With this subject, Portman wanted to know if she could completely break him despite his unrepentant and cold-hearted nature. And, after being successful in reviving him, she proceeded to do just that.

For two years Ray was subjected to Portman's emotional torture, until by the time Captain McVey of the Air Police raided her hideout and arrested her, Ray was a shattered shell of a man. McVey found him in a cell, rocking back and forth and sobbing.

He spent an undetermined amount of time in a sanitarium, as doctors and nurses tried to help him repair what was left of his life.

Eventually he recovered enough that he was released. The judge, reviewing Ray's entire case, decided that it would be an unnecessary cruelty to subject Ray to prison after what Portman did to him. Ray was placed on probation instead.

Ray is still shaken and emotionally scarred from his experience with Portman. He jumps at every little sound, terrified of the woman's possible escape from the mental institution and that she'll come after him again. And he insists he has lost all taste for crime. He won't touch blackmail or any other crimes again, after what happened to him.

He managed to get hold of the same golf club he ran before, either by buying it back from the new owners (or by them just deciding to give it to him) or by reopening it if it never was sold to anyone new. He has increased security measures and guards, all in case of attack from Portman. And even though he's really not supposed to have it due to his mental state and his past crimes, he has managed to get hold of a gun, also in the hopes of protection against Portman. This is the one exception to his rule about no more illegal activities. He is a desperate man, refusing to take any chances on Portman getting hold of him again.

As if he had not experienced enough strange things already, he discovered a wounded and burned man wandering on the grounds shortly after moving back in. Never having been absolutely heartless, and feeling all the more compassionate after the torture, he took the man in and cared for him.

He isn't sure himself why he first believed the bizarre tales the man told in his delirium, of being an escaped outlaw from the 1870s and having time-traveled to 2012. He has speculated that perhaps he simply wanted to believe, to not think the stranger was insane, because he wanted someone with him, someone who understood what it was to hurt.

He gradually bonded with the outlaw, Coley Rodman, as Coley recovered. They have become close friends, with Ray honestly not caring what Coley did in his time, only in the present.

He has begun to heal since Coley's arrival. Although he still fears Dr. Portman's return, he no longer jumps at every sound and is not as reclusive as he once was. He still possesses an illegal gun in his desk, which Coley has pledged to never reveal, in case of attack from Portman.