by Clara Nipper
“Okay, this concluded the interview with Mr. Rick Goodson on December twelfth, seven thirty p.m. Thank you for coming in, sir. We’ll be in touch.”
“What she means is, we are releasing you for now, but do not leave town,” I said.
Rick stared hate at us and left.
“Low five,” I said, holding my hand stretched down by my hip. Perryman tickled my palm with her fingers.
I grinned and returned to Sophie’s Volvo. The ice had stopped and the clouds were thinning. My phone rang. “Rogers.”
“I’ve got some info for you.” Silken voice caressing my ear.
“Ms. Marny Marlowe! Took you long enough! What you know good, girl?”
“I know that you better back off your prime suspect. He’s a friend of Jesus Jim’s. Charges will not be filed.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“And I have Penelope here. She wants to talk to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Marny, give me a break.” I parked at Sophie’s and let myself in. I went to the kitchen where Alistair was staring dreamily into the ice chest on the floor.
“Quite ironic,” he said, scooping a handful of ice into a highball tumbler. I laughed, picked up a Guinness, and returned to the living room where Sophie and Alistair were playing cards by battery lantern.
“Come on, just give it a chance,” Marny said.
“Fine, put her on.”
“Hello?” a bright pink baby voice greeted me.
“Hello, Penelope, sweet thing.” My voice was rough as asphalt. I saw Sophie glance at me, frowning.
“Hi! Marny has told me so much about you. And she showed me your photo from last year’s police calendar.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “not that!” I had been coerced into posing on a police horse for a good cause and I had almost shat myself in fear. “That was a bad picture.”
“You look real good to me.”
“Well, you seem fun too,” I said.
Penelope giggled. “I can be…with the proper person.”
“Is that right?” I slumped in the couch, swigging the Guinness, then nestling the bottle in my crotch, beginning to like this girl. Sophie was fumbling with the cards, dropping a few. Having trouble shuffling. “So you want to meet and see if we can get some fun started?”
More giggling. “Sure.”
“I’ll call you, okay, baby?”
Sophie flipped some cards and they whirled across the rug.
“Okay.” Penelope replied. Then a breathy giggle. “Bye bye.”
Sophie asked, “Who was that?”
“Just a friend of the family,” I said and winked, hating my smarmy assholiness but unable to stop.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I think she was a Miss Universe or something.”
“How dear,” Sophie said with a twist of lime.
“Yeah, so I’ll need some fresh sheets, okay?”
“The hell you will.” Sophie snapped.
“Sophie!” Alistair said. “What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” He gathered the cards and put them in the box.
“Nothing. I’m going to bed.” Sophie announced and caressed Alistair’s leg. “You coming?”
“Love to, old girl, but it’s only eight p.m.”
Sophie mimicked Alistair. “What the bloody hell does that have to do with anything?” She stood with her hands on her hips.
Alistair made a face and rolled his eyes to me. “We have a guest. It’s a bit rude, don’t you think?”
“Jill?” Sophie snorted. “Jill’s no guest. She’s—”
“That’s fine.” I cut Sophie off before she could get warmed up. “You two kids go on to bed. Please.”
“Sweet bits, you toddle on, get it warm, and I’ll be there presently, all right?” Alistair stood and kissed Sophie on the forehead.
Sophie threw her hands in the air. “I give up! I just can’t get laid no matter what I do!” She stalked off into the dark and slammed the bedroom door.
Alistair turned, sat on the couch, and said, “Right.” He held his Guinness in the air. “Women, eh?”
“Amen, brother.” We clicked bottles.
Two hours and many drinks later, I liked Alistair just fine. He was a barrister with the Crown Court in London and was on leave to teach a law class as TU. We were breathless with laughter over a story he was finishing.
“I thought he meant something else entirely when he said he killed over a little tail!” Alistair repeated, snorting with laughter.
I was prostrate on the couch, holding my belly. “Turns out,” my voice went falsetto; “he had a little tail! Oh, God, oh God!”
Alistair was gasping. “A wee vestigial tail caused him to murder three people!”
“Oh…oh…” I wiped my eyes. “That’s prime. Dig this: there was a defendant in our court recently who we picked up in error. Mistaken identity. However, he confessed and was sent to prison. But the fuckup was discovered and he was released. His attorney asked him why he made a false admission, and the defendant said, I kid you not, ‘I know a good deal when I see one.’”
“Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo!” Alistair laughed. “Brilliant. One of the last cases I handled involved the very complex ‘Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire’ defense.”
I was doubled over and slapping the coffee table. “Aw, shit! Get this—these two douchebags I arrested for murder had rolled the victim in an Oriental rug and referred to her in code as ‘The Burrito.’”
“What was your first time like?” Alistair asked, suddenly sober.
“My first time…what?” My voice was small and dry and I was wondering how I would describe vag on vag action.
“Seeing one.”
“Seeing one what?”
“A body.”
I sighed loudly with relief and clicked my Zip open and closed. “Why?”
“I’ve never seen one and I doubt I ever will.” Alistair shrugged.
“Okay…it was ten years ago.” I lapsed into silent reflection. I had been a brand-new detective on the homicide team, a newborn arrogant asshole, ready to solve everything and save the world in one day. We walked into a stabbing scene, and I just made it outside before I threw up. When I got home eighteen hours later, I packed up my girlfriend’s shit and kicked her out. I swore to myself that the two incidents were not related. But I had to choose one: murder or love, and the choice was clear. Murder was easy. Fuck God in the eyeball. “It was no biggie.” I kicked off my boots. “It was a homeless guy, frozen to death under a bridge. We just had to investigate to ensure no foul play. Other than him not having adequate shelter, there wasn’t any.”
Alistair nodded. “Were you in shock?”
I laughed derisively. “No way. I’m no pussy.” I had curled into a fetal ball on the stripped bed and rocked to sleep after crying myself empty and wondering if I could make a living selling shoes. But the sunrise woke me up. I had nowhere else to go. And a desk waiting with my name on it. So I stood up and went back into the office without eating or showering. Chief grinned and slapped me on the back and said it was all normal. “One of the first things I learned was how to collect the dots before connecting the dots. My chief told me that cops are like creditors. Someone has to pay and we always get paid.”
Alistair yawned. “Good theory.”
“And this ice bugs the shit out of me because everything is so fucking quiet. Just like a massive homicide scene. Murder scenes are always silent. Eerie. Just like this town right now.”
“Is that so?”
“Also, in case you’re looking to kill someone, a small caliber gun is almost always fatal. Forget those cannons; get something small.”
“I’m English. I have no idea what that means.”
“Just as well.”
“One time—” Alistair broke off and stared into the darkness. “Many apologies, love, are we disturbing you?”
I squinted through the waning candlelight and saw that irresistible silhouette. The silhouette that contained an infinit
e universe of joy within its curves. The curve of her arched foot like a bridge between the past and the future, cradling the whole of her on its back. The curve of her calf like all the explosive potential stored in the plump battery of her leg. The curve of her sighing thigh like the sacred engine that women have borne for all eternity. The wonder and nourishing meat of that thigh. The curve of her skull, like a dish of stars in the void, the curve of her eyes—seeing and seen in one complete sweetness, the curve of her nose like life itself. Breath embodied. The curve of her cheeks like plums, the curve of her mouth like eternal laughter. The curve of her chin like a cool, clean cliff. The curve of her throat encircling her voice, the curve of her shoulders like polished marble, the curve of her arms like Saturn’s rings, dangerous but breathtakingly beautiful, the curve of her hands like the curve of water over a stream bed, the curve of her breasts heavy with smothering abundance that as children of God, we all crave in our cells, the curve of her waist like the speed of light bent around an hourglass, the curve of her belly like a happy puppy, the curve of her buttock like a curl of creamy butter, the curve of her cunt, ah, the event horizon trembling around the ultimate euphoric death. And all her tiny curves—the rind of her heels, the grins of her fingernails….
“No,” Sophie answered, “I just came to…to…check my hearing.”
The curves of her ears like bells. “Your hearing is fine,” I assured her. “Go back to sleep.” I enjoyed ordering her to bed as if we were a couple and it was my place to do so. Sophie nodded and returned to her bedroom without another word. She was so ripe for me! So ready to be mine, mine! And here sat the reason she’s not. Not Alistair, me. Fool.
The atmosphere between Alistair and me had cooled and become awkward. We looked at each other and then back at the fire.
“You think you have enough blankets?” Alistair said.
“Sure.”
“We kill the fire, so sleep as you are or you’ll get cold fast.”
“Right on.”
“I forgot to ask, how do you know Sophie?”
Suddenly, I was so tired. I began gathering and straightening blankets.
“Friend of your mum’s?” Alistair asked.
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
Alistair nodded silently, just like Sophie. A nod full of thought and truth. “Good night. We’ll knock you up about six, all right?”
“Great. Thanks for letting me bunk here.”
Late in the night, I woke with a start from a light, busy sleep. My mind was cranking and insomnia was a way of life for me. I just needed to think, and I did my best thinking in the bathroom. I got my cigarettes, flashlight, and lighter and headed quietly to the shitter.
I took my pants off and perched the flashlight next to me, pointing toward the ceiling. I got comfortable and started my first smoke. I let my mind go. I could trust it. It led me to countless good hunches and lucky breaks. I dropped my roach into the water and I flushed the toilet and lit my second cigarette. I was getting cold, but it wasn’t time to go back to bed yet. I wished I had thought to drag a blanket in here with me. I kept my knees wide and flicked ashes into the bowl.
The door opened and Sophie clapped her hands to her face. “My eyes!” she cried, “oh, my God, my eyes!”
“Shut up and get out!” I threw one of my boots at her.
Sophie backed out, closing the door. “Stay in there as long as you need. I’ll just pee the bed.”
I didn’t stand up until dawn. I was chilled, my legs stiff, but my mind was clear.
Chapter Twelve
“There!” Perryman whispered, holding the binoculars out to me. Rick Goodson, carrying trash bags, emerged from the shadows at the side of his home and placed the trash on the curb. He looked up and down the street warily and then returned to the house. “What time do you make it, Detective?”
“Four a.m.”
“And why would you ever put your garbage at the curb at such an hour unless you were hiding something? Why not set it out yesterday evening like everyone else?”
The neighborhood had optimistically lined the street with trash carts and bags, hoping life to be normal.
“And the trucks will be running later because of the ice,” Perryman added.
“If they’re even working, I haven’t heard.”
“Exactly.” Perryman let the unmarked patrol car creep up to the trash bags. “Now go to the trunk,” Perryman pulled the lever to pop the trunk lid, “and put the sacks of garbage I have in there on the curb and take his trash and put it in the trunk.”
“Trash switching,” I said. “Okay, you got it.” I stepped out, and the ice crunching under my boots as I made the switch seemed as loud as gunshots. My heart was trip-hammering. I could feel the pulse in my throat and temples. Finally, I returned to the car, and snapped the door closed quietly.
Perryman slid the car on down the street like a ghost. “Whose trash was it that I left there?” I asked.
“Mine.”
“How did you know what kind of trash bags he used?”
“They’re probably not an exact match, but they’re black.”
“Black enough,” I said.
“Now, we go through it,” Perryman said.
“I know the drill.”
“Yep. We need to examine everything.”
“In your office?”
“I still have that generator, and it’s powerful enough for a couple of rooms and we’ll have our head lamps.”
“This job sure isn’t what I thought,” I said.
“Tell me about it.” The darkness must’ve made Perryman feel comfortably intimate because she said, “What got you into this work?”
“What got you into it?”
I saw Perryman’s smile in the dash lights. “I asked you first.”
I gusted a sigh and my hands twitched for my Zippo. “To tell you the truth, I’ll need to smoke.” I already had a Camel clamped between my lips.
Perryman shrugged and waited.
I rolled the window down, and the budding dreamy atmosphere was immediately swept away with the frigid wind that clutched at my throat.
“Well?” Perryman said angrily, glaring at the open window.
“It all started when Jesus was born.”
“Give me a break.”
“Okay, It started by being orphaned early on and deciding to dedicate my life to Christ.”
Perryman took her eyes off the road to stare at me incredulously. She snorted.
“Watch it!” I jerked the wheel and we only clipped a trash cart but didn’t knock it over. My sudden pull made the car swerve into a donut skid and Perryman panicked, stomping the brakes repeatedly and fighting the swerve by hauling the wheel to the left and cursing.
“We’re stuck!” Perryman said. “Get out; fix it.”
“You did this, you fix it. I’m fine right here. I saved you from having to pick up trash in the street like a convict.”
“I’m driving, asshole. Push!”
I opened the door, stood up, threw my cigarette in the snow, and went to the hood and began pushing. The tires spun.
“Push! Keep pushing!”
“I’m not having a baby! You get out and push and I’ll steer.”
Perryman stood and slammed the door.
I smiled. “Just put your little delicate hands right here and I’ll have us free in no time.”
Perryman did as I told her, and I sat in the driver’s seat and eased the car back and forth inch by inch, gaining traction millimeter by millimeter. Finally, we were out of the ruts and ready to go. I saw Perryman glance fearfully up the street as if Goodson might be watching; then she opened the driver’s door and stood, tapping her boot until I got out.
Once we were back on the ice, slipping and sliding, she said, “So what happened?”
“You drive like a scared amateur and you freaked out. What do you think?”
“No,” Perryman said, “what you were saying before.”
I pointedly rolled d
own the window she had closed when I had been pushing and started a new cigarette. “Well, I saw that God was like the Wizard of Oz. Just a shit stain behind a curtain.”
Perryman sucked her breath.
“And I decided to dedicate my life to doing something concretely good.”
“No wonder,” Perryman said softly.
“No wonder what?”
“You have this…tenderness. Under the surface, of course.” Perryman glanced at me. “Way under,” she added at my look.
“Bullshit.”
“No, I’ve heard about it. Your chief told me. He’s noticed that you can get suspects and wits to trust and confide in you. It’s uncanny, he said, because you’re as dumb as mud and a total mess, but you solve cases.”
“Chief said that?” My face burned.
“That’s why I requested we work together. I wanted to see for myself.”
“And have you?” I said through my teeth.
“A little with that kid you brought with you the other day.”
“Oh, fuckle, everyone likes kids. That’s nothing, so don’t think you’re gathering evidence, Perryman.”
“No, it’s something else. Something more. You were connected. He was hooked into you and would’ve done anything you asked.”
I flipped my Zip maniacally. I repeated the phrase I always said to deflect probing. “I’m just lucky.”
Perryman laughed. We hit a speed bump of ice, and my head would’ve slammed against the window if it had been closed.
“That ain’t luck,” she said.
I lit another cigarette. “Suit yourself.”
“So you skipped over a bunch.”
“What?”
“You’re not a cheerleader for Jesus one day and a homicide detective the next. What happened?”
“Sheriff, please.”
“Look, we’ve got a long drive out of these suburbs and we’re working together. Lie to me.”
I grinned. “That I can do.” I threw my butt out the window and closed it. “I had this girlfriend at college and her father was an old timer homicide cop. He had seen it all, man. And he was tough as leather and twice as hard as steel. She brought me home one holiday and he didn’t care for us dating. Like I said, he was real old school. He had married his high school sweetheart and she was a housewife with heels and pearls and the whole nine. But he wasn’t a jerk about his daughter and me being a couple either, which made me respect him. Because where we were going to school claimed to put Jesus and His principles first, but hated and abused gays with a ferocity that still upsets me.”