What do people do?
28Oct
She had company. I could see through the second-floor window. I couldn’t tell who was there, but there were definitely two shadows, both female from the looks of it. I was across the street under a tree that was still clinging obstinately to the last of its leaves. It was raining, but not very hard—just enough to make everything damp, just enough to loosen you up to let the cold in. I pulled the flaps of my gray jacket around me tighter.
One car passed, then another. A men exited the building behind me and cursed the rain. He scurried off without an umbrella. It went from dusk to dark.
I turned back to the window and saw the shadows stand and move close to each other—a kiss or a hug—and then move away. I turned my eyes to the bedroom, which had a small balcony that faced the street, but the curtain stayed dark.
In the last few weeks, I’d called her twice, left one message, and sent a single text. I figured that was enough and let it go. Then earlier that day I got a cryptic email. I figured that was enough with the electronic communication and stopped by as soon as I could, only to find her entertaining.
I saw a petite brunette with dark, cropped hair and too much eyeliner walk into the small lobby. Kinney followed her down the stairs in a long, thin wrap. The couple said goodbye and the brunette walked down the sidewalk without noticing me.
Kinney stood in the doorway, holding it open. The bright light from the entryway cast her entirely in silhouette. But I could tell she was looking right at me.
“You may as well come in,” she called.
I walked across the street.
“I saw you had company. I didn’t want to bother you.”
She held the door open for me without ceremony. “You could’ve just left.”
“I just wanted to talk,” I said.
“Uh huh.” She started up the stairs.
I followed. “She’s cute.”
“She’s bi.”
“Seriously?”
“I think she prefers men,” she said from the top.
“Then why are you seeing her?” I immediately regretted asking. It was none of my business.
“That’s none of your business,” she said, holding her front door open.
Her place was exactly the same, minus a new framed print hanging between the two front windows. I didn’t recognize the artist, but it was colorful, like the rest of the place.
I took off my coat as she shut the door.
“You know where it goes,” she said, walking past me to the kitchen.
There was soft music playing, which she stopped.
“Your brother called me the other day.”
“Freddie?”
I pulled a hanger from the closet, which was stuffed with jackets and heavy coats of every color, including one of mine, which was wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic and hanging all the way against the wall on the right.
“I thought his name was Martin,” she called.
“That’s his middle name.”
I shut the closet and hung my wet coat from the door knob.
She waited for a moment. “You’re not gonna ask me why he called?”
“I know why he called.”
I sat on a stool at the bar that separated the kitchen from the living area. She opened a bottle of champagne. The cork popped.
“Always the detective.”
She never liked that about me.
Well, that wasn’t true. She thought it was sexy at first. What she didn’t like is that I couldn’t turn it off.
There were a lot of things I couldn’t turn off, like how I felt about her.
“You look good, Kinn.”
She did. Her hair had the same permanent frizz that parted oddly and always hung in front of her eyes. She had a narrow jaw and barely any chin, which framed her face exactly how her perfectly round glasses framed her eyes. She wore her long fashionable wrap over snug but casual clothes.
“Don’t.” She held up a finger. “You’re only in here because your brother said you were in trouble and you needed help.” She poured the rest of a bottle of red wine into her glass.
That explained the email.
“I’m not sure I believed it actually,” she admitted with a hint of regret. “Not until I saw you in the shadows. Like a stalker.”
“Sorry . . . I know I shouldn’t even be bothering you with this. I’m probably the last person you want to see.”
She looked at me blankly. “I’m not going to respond to that.”
I looked down at the counter.
Wow, that didn’t take long.
“Sorry.” I looked up again.
“That’s two sorries.” She handed me the bottle of champagne and stood by the counter at a formal distance.
“Okay, how about this? Thanks for letting me in. It’s really good to see you. And I don’t mean anything by that,” I added quickly. “It’s just, it’s nice to see a friendly face.”
“So what happened?”
“Suspended.”
She squinted in confusion.
“Technically, it’s temporary. But odds are it’ll be permanent before too long.”
She stepped closer. She paused, like she was worried about transgressing a boundary. Then she hugged me.
I hugged back.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. She sat on the stool next to mine. “You’re job is everything to you.” She said it like she spoke from personal experience. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can do.”
She pulled back and I rested my hand on the neck of the champagne bottle. I ran my thumb over the gold foil.
“I don’t suppose you’d be up for a few drinks where we talk about absolutely anything else?”
She reached over the counter for her glass and held it up. I touched the bottle to it with a clink and toasted her health.
“You do look very nice, by the way,” I said. “I’m not just saying that.”
She scrunched her nose. “You really think so?”
I took a swig. “For a middle aged dyke, totally.”
She smiled mid-sip. “Bitch,” she breathed into her glass.
And just like that, her eyes were warm again.
I could see myself flirting, almost as if watching through a two-way mirror. I knew I shouldn’t. But it felt like I was observer more than participant. It was always like that with Kinney. We had connected below the level of the brain, somewhere between the heart and the loins, and I never felt in control of myself around her. I never felt safe, like being with her was circling the edge of a hole, and if I fell in, I’d never get out.
Thing is, part of me really wanted to fall.
She finished her glass and opened another bottle. We moved to the couch and talked long enough to finish both. It wasn’t long before my lips here on hers. We hung like that for too long, waiting to see what the other would do.
I felt her breasts. She kissed me more. I slipped my hand between her thighs. We pulled each other’s clothes off and rubbed our bodies together and moved to the bed. I took my time. We hadn’t had breakup sex, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get the chance again. I made it count.
I woke up a few hours later when a car honked on the street outside. I pulled my slacks over my bare ass. I had no idea where I’d left my panties. I got my coat from the hanger and pulled it over my shirtless skin and sat on the balcony watching the rain, which had started falling in earnest sometime while I was asleep. I really wanted a cigar. But Kinney didn’t smoke and didn’t like me to. Just one more thing we’d argued about. So I sat with my back pressed to the brick while the splatter from the bouncing drops slowly drenched my cold feet and the cuffs of my slacks. As I stared at the ripples on the concrete, a pattern started to emerge, as if the balcony floor were vibrating to some imperceptible sound that could be revealed only by falling water. And it shifted, too, like a kaleidoscope. But there was a definite center, almost like a tunnel or gateway around which tribal bands turned.
I shut my eyes.
I could never say for sure that I’d been cursed. I could never say for sure that if I hadn’t been, the forensics guys would’ve found something else entirely on that VHS tape—something, say, related to the disappearance of Alexa Sacchi, as everyone had expected. I could never say that the outcome of my committee hearing would have been any different.
But that’s how it works.
Sitting there on that balcony with cold, wet feet, trying not to look at the kaleidoscopic pattern in the puddle, I realized how Kent Cormack must have felt in the days before the shooting, when he was feeling the heat. Hammond had said he needed more guys that night. He was right, and we both knew why. We’d all heard the same rumors: that Cormack had been covering up for the Salvadorans, that he knew he was approaching indictment and had orchestrated the raid on his accomplices as a means of casting doubt on himself, and that he had intended to get shot—albeit not in the head—to create a plausible defense. If he was guilty of collusion, his lawyers would argue, why would he have undertaken a dangerous raid to bring the murderers he was supposedly abetting to justice, thereby getting shot in the process? It wouldn’t have convinced anyone on the force. But then, it didn’t have to. It only had to convince a jury.
The problem was always time. When heat comes, as it had now for me, you have to move fast. For his plan to work, Cormack needed the gang to sacrifice a few small fish so the bigger ones could get away. I’m sure he agreed to keep quiet in return. I also wouldn’t have been surprised if the gang also agreed to plant evidence around the house, supplied by Cormack, that cast suspicion on a different officer—maybe even someone like me. Anything to create a reasonable doubt.
But then, I’m sure neither Cormack nor his accomplices intended to stick to the bargain. I expect they had both tried to double-cross the other. Cormack was shot all right, but with the intent to kill. He wore a vest that saved his life. The only reason no one had yet gone back to finish the job was because he’d been under guard in the hospital and IA was still watching his house. I suspect the danger of a reprisal by the gang, more than finances, was the motivation to get his family out of town in a hurry.
I just hoped they’d leave his daughter alone. Brooke. I gave her my card. All I could do was hope she’d call if something happened. She’d given me an absolutely vital piece of information about her dad. There was no doubt in my mind that he, or perhaps his wife, had sent the VHS tape. A little revenge on the woman they blamed for the accident. I don’t think they expected it would have the effect it did. I think it was just an attempt to cause me some discomfort, digging up the ghosts of my past. Every officer has them. Cormack would’ve known that. And he had plenty of time on his hands to pursue a vendetta.
But now I had a wizard on my ass—or sorcerer, I guess. And a powerful one at that. I didn’t know how much time I had, but it wasn’t more than weeks, and probably just days.
Days.
I heard her voice behind me.
“You okay?”
I opened my eyes and looked down at the puddle of ripples, but the pattern was gone.
I turned to face her. “Yeah. I’m good. I didn’t want to wake you.”
She leaned against the metal door frame. She rested her head against it and studied me for a long, cool moment.
“You can’t stay, can you?” she said, more to herself than to me.
“I can stay,” I countered.
“I don’t mean until morning.” She smiled bittersweetly. “And I don’t mean with me.”
I squinted. “I don’t understand.”
“This is how you get. When you’re on a hunt.”
“A hunt?”
She nodded. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Or anyone. It’s just how you are. When it’s all over, you come back and you’re here. Mentally. Emotionally. For awhile. But sooner or later, you pick up another scent and off you go. I thought it was me for the longest time. That you just didn’t like me enough to stay. But that’s not it. It’s just how you are.”
I looked at the rain.
What do people do?
Just let shit go, I guess. Go home to their families. Do what they can during business hours and let the world sort itself out.
Kinney saw my face. She smiled with pressed lips and went back to bed.
She wasn’t angry, I knew. She was disappointed. She was remembering how things were and realizing that she wouldn’t wake up tomorrow and find them any different, even though she wanted to.
We can afford those fantasies when we’re young. Kinn and I weren’t young anymore.
I went inside and dropped my coat on the floor and laid down next to her under the covers. She shivered and recoiled.
“Jesus, your feet are like ice. Aren’t you cold?”
She was warm and I rubbed her hair and held on. She didn’t say anything. She wanted to ask what was on my mind, but she also didn’t. It was our last night together and we both knew it.
“I was thinking about this time when I was a patrolman,” I said.
She was facing away from me, but I could see the corner of her mouth turn up into a smile.
“What?” I asked.
She turned and propped her head up on the pillow with her hand. “You always use the masculine with me.”
“Really?” I laid back and looked up at the ceiling. I almost said sorry.
“So what happened?” she asked.
“I stopped this guy in a blue Chevelle with a pair of white racing stripes. Nice car. Must have spent a lot of time on it. Bout the same age as me at the time. Mid-20s maybe. He was driving a little erratically and I flagged him down. Had another guy with him and a girl in the back. Makeup. Real thin. Big hair.
“I approached the vehicle cautiously, like I’d been trained. I ran his license and insurance. I ran his tag. Everything checked out. He didn’t appear any more stiff than most folks when they get pulled over. He answered my questions straight up. Even called me ma’am. I let him and his friends go with a warning. I got the impression they were having fun. Goofing off a little too much, maybe. I’d done my bit for highway safety. Big fuckin’ deal.
“I go to walk back to my squad car and I heard the Chevelle’s engine start and I lifted my head to the little back window because I got the sense the girl was looking at me, watching me leave, and so I was just gonna nod, but I remember thinking how the guys always said I looked like such a bitch all the time. So I made it a point to smile. Like, ‘Have a nice day,’ you know?
“The car pulled away as she smiled back. It’s automatic, right? Whether you mean to or not, someone smiles at you and unless you’re just right pissed off, you smile out of habit or just to be polite or whatever. I got to my car and I sat down and strapped in and reported the stop to central and started filling out the last of the paperwork and I saw that smile in my head.
“‘Pretty girl,’ I thought. Teeth a little uneven. But then not everyone can afford braces.
“Then I realized, they weren’t just a little uneven. She was missing a tooth. And I don’t mean it got knocked out whatever.” I flashed mine.
She reached out and touched it.
“I think it was a baby tooth. She had a lot of make-up. And I guess maybe I didn’t look that hard. You know me. Some girls really care about that shit, but I was too busy watching the two guys in the front. I’d been told over and over at the academy that you can never be sure on a stop like that when someone is gonna pull a gun or whatever. One second it’s just another routine—one out of so many you couldn’t even keep track. Two seconds later, you’re bleeding on the ground. And the girl was all the way in the back. Skinny thing. ‘Not a threat.’ That’s all I remember thinking. ‘Not a threat.’
“But afterward, I’m sitting in my patrol car wondering how old she was. And I’m picturing her face and that reflexive flash of a smile. Like a kid. And I’m thinking she can’t be older than twelve.
“Now, she coulda been the guy’s sister. Or niece. Or cousin. Or the babysitter. Or whatever. I don’t know. But I shoulda asked. I shoulda looked at his reaction. I shoulda glanced at the friend. If I wasn’t sure about their response, I shoulda politely asked a couple follow-ups while I pretended to write the ticket. Coulda shoulda woulda, right?
“It’s shit like that that teaches you how to be a cop. A real one. That’s the day I learned that if you can’t worry more about the girl in the car than yourself, then you shouldn’t be on the job.
“Anyway, years go by. I made detective. I never thought about that day again. So many worse things had happened, I had no reason. Until I ran into him. The driver. At the courthouse. In the hall. As I’m walking out of a routine probation hearing, there he is. He was a little older. And thinner, actually. But it was him. No question. Turns out he’d had a hard stretch at Attica. Prison is hard on pedos. It’s probably the only time the sheer brutality of the place finds a positive outlet.
“And here he was getting out. Served a year. He claimed he never touched the girl—a different one. Not the one in the Chevelle. He claimed it was all the friend. And the D.A. couldn’t prove otherwise. Not from the physical evidence. Not from the girl’s statement. Not from her parents or anyone else. The friend got fifteen long. This dude got three years for felony child endangerment and was out after fourteen months.
“And in those fourteen months, he was raped. Repeatedly.”
Her lips pursed.
“Fuck . . .” I ran my hands through my hair. “I don’t know if he deserved that. I don’t know if anyone deserves that. All I know is, I shouldn’t have been so worried that day.” I looked at her. “I shouldn’t have been afraid.”
I sat up. Our fingers touched gently. The tip of mine traced the tip of hers.
“Is that what’s bothering you?” she asked. “Regret?”
I shook my head. “I thought somebody had asked for my help. Somebody like that. Somebody who couldn’t look out for herself. Someone I couldn’t help before. Someone I thought was dead.” I looked out the window. The lights of the city were blurred by the drops on the glass. “Turns out it was just some guy trying to fuck with me.”
“But?” she asked after a moment.
“But I have this terrible feeling. I have this terrible, terrible feeling like she really is out there somewhere. And she’s in trouble.”
I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”
You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.
You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.
The next chapter is: (not yet posted)
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