by Aimee Hix
“Damian. I didn’t get a last name from her.”
“I’ll need to talk with her.”
I felt a flare of mistrust that I buried. “If you were any other cop, Jan … ”
She nodded under her own umbrella. “You’d tell me to go pound sand. I know. And you know I’d have to talk to her anyway.”
Last fall had left me with big trust issues for the police—an organization I’d once belonged to, an organization I’d once sworn an oath to. Having a civilian police employee looking through my records, giving my address to his neo-Nazi cousin, letting his aunt, the neo-Nazi’s mother, have my hospital room number … I understood people made choices, but that didn’t mean I trusted the organization anymore if they chose those kinds of people.
Jan was different, but the information she got went straight into the same computer system that everyone accessed regardless of their intentions.
She nodded. “I’ll do right by her, Willa.”
I stared at the pond and then looked around at the trees surrounding the area. I’d turned off the main road a mile before the high school but as the crow flies, walking through the woods, the pond couldn’t have been too far from Aja’s house.
I pulled out my own phone and tried to juggle my umbrella, tiny and ineffective as it was, and the phone with my chilled hands. Jan sighed with impatience and yanked the flimsy travel umbrella from me, covering us both with her giant, police-issue one. Detectives rated a little better than unis that way.
I pulled up the GPS and inputted Aja’s address, indicating I wanted walking directions from my current location. Siri started trying to route me. I punched voice commands off and scrolled back up to the map. Sure enough, it was less than a half mile to Aja’s house through the wooded area. I held the screen up for Jan to see.
The height on the driver’s license made Damian too tall to be the guy I’d encountered.
“I’d bet you money that your vic was on his way back from Aja’s house when this happened. I might have even met the guy who killed him.”
She peered at the small screen, her face grim. “Met? Please back up the narrative to when you might have met the killer.”
“I was at Aja’s house when you texted. I had just given chase to a guy wearing a Guy Fawkes mask and lurking.”
“Your friend—”
“She’s safe. I took her to my parents’ house yesterday.”
I jammed the phone back in my pocket and grabbed my gloves, dragging them slowly onto my hands, trying to make the point that we could be doing this in a nice warm car, or coffee shop, or anywhere but where we and other people were currently freezing our asses off.
“Okay, so you gave chase and lost him, I’m guessing based on your near-immediate arrival and ripped jeans. And we know it wasn’t Damian because he was already dead when I texted you.”
“Got it in one, boss.”
“Description.” She’d pulled out her notebook and was ready to take notes.
“Can we get a witness statement done someplace warmer and drier?”
“We’ll do a full statement later but for now, a description, please? So uniforms can start a door-to-door.”
I thought back. I knew he wasn’t tall, but how short was he exactly? “About my height, maybe an inch shorter or taller. Jeans, dark hoodie—navy, green, black, one of them—Guy Fawkes mask. Heavily muscled, straining the fabric heavily, slow runner, hard kicker.”
“Hmmm, that DMV photo of Murphy is a year old but he doesn’t look like that anymore. He was a big guy. Muscled, I mean. Like your lurker. Do you think the guy you saw would be capable of beating someone to death?”
“Anyone’s capable of anything, Jan. I could beat someone to death given the right weapon.”
She nodded. Then dismissed the uniform. She stared at the pond for a minute, marking the scene in her memory to compare to the crime scene photos later.
“Let’s go meet your friend. The vic might not be her boyfriend. Business cards travel.”
But I had a better idea and I drove to Aja’s house with Jan following in her unmarked. We were barely out of the vehicles when the nosy neighbor popped out of his house.
“Young lady, you are responsible for all the commotion around here and I simply will not have it.”
My scalp tingled with anger. “You don’t get much of a choice, buddy. And if you’d been a halfway decent busybody you’d have noticed the guy bothering your neighbor. Frankly, you’re responsible for all the commotion around here since you didn’t pay any attention to the little girl living alone next door and help keep her safe. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”
I stared him down until he broke eye contact and went back inside his house.
I stomped up to the front door with Jan trailing behind me chuckling. “Stick that in your pipe and smoke it? Where do you get all these old-timey phrases?”
“My grandpa’s big on them. I used to spend summers with them and my aunt while my mom was doing summer shows and I wasn’t with my dad.”
She put her hand on my arm stopping me. “School was out and there was no one else. My parents weren’t always getting along … legally. And they weren’t ever married so … .”
She nodded but the reality was she either got it or she didn’t. The words could make sense to her, but unless she’d been torn between parents she wouldn’t know what it felt like.
“It’s kind of hard to trust or depend on people if you’re not sure when you’re going to see them again,” she said.
Too close. And too sharp. Jan’s job was to dig for information and I knew in her own clumsy way she was expressing support, but I wasn’t in the mood for revisiting my own childhood dysfunction.
“Aja’s been left alone by her parents for weeks now. I promised I wouldn’t get the cops or Social Services involved if I didn’t have to but … I don’t know what I’m doing with her, Jan.”
“Err on the side of keeping your promise. Then she knows she can trust you.” She smiled and continued. “She’ll be fine, Willa.”
I showed Jan the jammed locks. “This is a pretty good example of some of the crap he pulled.”
I walked to the garage door and flipped the cover up on the electronic keypad and we both saw the gum he’d smooshed into the keys. I had never hated a dead guy more. He really had been an immature prick.
“Wow, this kid was a royal douche.”
For some reason hearing Jan say royal douche was hilarious. I bit my lip to keep from laughing but couldn’t stop myself.
“And that neighbor? You’re right that he’s probably a font of information about all the vandalism that’s happened over here. Too bad he’s insufferable.”
I stopped snickering and looked over at the house he’d squirreled himself away in—probably watching us out the window.
“Insufferable doesn’t mean he won’t give up the goods if you slap him in an interrogation room and sweat him.”
That made her laugh. “You want me to throw him in the hole while I’m at it and threaten his family?”
“He’s got one of those yappy dogs. Maybe you could call animal control.”
“How about I just go ask him some questions, politely.”
I shrugged. “You do what you think is best.”
“Why don’t you meet me at your place? I think you glaring at him will make him less cooperative.”
I was a little bummed. I loved playing good cop, mean apprentice PI and I really wanted to piss off the old fart a little more. Vent a little of the anger brewing inside me. Instead, I did as Jan asked and headed home. I passed a black-and-white on my way out of the cul-de-sac. Jan must have called them to do a vandalism report.
When I pulled up to the house, I could see Aja and my mom through the picture window. They were sitting at the kitchen table. I had a momentary flash of that table knocked ou
t of position and the room filled with EMTs and cops the night Mark Ingalls had broken in. I needed a moment before I went in and possibly devastated Aja.
I pulled up the photo album on my phone and looked at a few photos of Fargo when she’d been a puppy in the ATF program. Seeing her in the bulletproof vest she’d never get the chance to grow into made me happy. I knew the working dogs got loved plenty and truly enjoyed the work, but Fargo was mine now. I wasn’t even able to picture her sniffing out accelerant at a crime scene. And just like that my memory dragged me back to the hulking shell of the burnt-out garage, the buckled and crumbled cinder block walls looking like jagged, black dragon’s teeth, a beast that had tried to eat me and Seth.
I knew I was supposed to do something, anything other than the path I’d committed to take. Muscling through post-traumatic stress wasn’t even possible. You didn’t just grit your teeth and double down on stubborn. I knew that. I even mostly believed that. I just wasn’t capable of it. Not yet.
I got out of the truck, grabbing my keys and phone, jamming them both in various pockets. Ben was opening the door to take Fargo for their afternoon walk. She strained at her halter and leash for only a second before she plopped down on the wet cement stoop.
I heard Ben praise her after he turned back from locking the door behind him. The doors were always locked now. People home, people away from home, the doors were locked. It was a habit we were all in now.
I waited on the front walk for them, trying not to show any emotion. Ben felt that training Fargo to not be the center of attention was safer for her. I hated it, of course, but he was right.
I waited until she sat down again in front of me and Ben gave her the release command before I bent down to scritch her ears.
“Who’s a sweet girl? Who’s my sweet girl?” I cooed.
Ben wisely suppressed his normal response to me gushing at the dog. Either that or he’d become inured to it. He’d certainly heard it enough.
“We need to get her a raincoat if this weather’s going to continue through spring.”
It had been a cold, snowy winter which meant lots of time indoors and lots of family time that had chafed. I spent more time with my family and Seth than I really was comfortably built for. The spring was turning out to be rainy and gray. It felt like I hadn’t seen the sun since I’d been in New Mexico the previous summer. The bright sun there had felt like sharp little stabs to my grieving heart. Gray, cold rain would have been better suited.
“She’s a dog, Will,” Ben said.
“She’s a dog that takes forever to dry, sport. And I’m tired of washing muddy blankets.”
“How’s a raincoat going to prevent her paws from getting muddy?” He looked at me in horror. “You want to get her boots too, don’t you?”
I smiled at him, a mean little smile, knowing that it would torment him. “And one of those little hats with holes for her ears.”
He shook his head and walked the dog around me, down the stairs to the sidewalk. He was muttering just loud enough for me to hear that he was grumbling but not loud enough that he couldn’t deny it and call me crazy for hearing things. I knew he was going to get her extra muddy to pay me back. It was still worth it.
I stared up at the window again as I walked up the path and saw Aja waving at me, an actual smile on her face. Mom was healing the lonely little girl in her. Good. She needed it and my mother could spare the love. I couldn’t put it off any longer though. I got my keys out and undid the locks and punched in my alarm code as the keypad started its frantic beeping. I hated the damn thing but it made Mom feel safer. Tolerating it silently was the least I could do.
“Your mom … sorry, step-mom is super awesome,” Aja said, giggling, slipping in her sock feet on the hardwood floor of the entry.
Giggling? Had the kid developed Stockholm Syndrome?
“One, she’s totally my mom. Two, she’s better than super awesome. Three, you’re in a good mood.”
Damn. She was in a good mood and I got to ruin it. Good times.
She nodded. “I’m in a great mood. Ben just totally cleared up this issue I was having with calculus and now I’m going to ace my test.”
I had somehow managed to bring home another genius for my parents to fawn over. Speaking of parents … .
“Have you seen my dad?”
I began the process of unwrapping myself from the layers of sodden winter gear so I could disarm. Mom was scared of someone getting in the house but she wasn’t about to let us all wander around armed and looking for a shootout like it was the “gosh darn O.K. Corral.” Her words. Repeated many times. Sometimes very loudly. Directed at my father who was somehow after almost twenty years of marriage to the woman still under the impression he could ever, would ever win without her letting him.
“I think he’s downstairs.”
She danced back to the kitchen table presumably to do more calculus. I descended into the basement to seek guidance. He’d done more death notifications than I ever would. I needed to break this to Aja as gently as possible.
I found my dad arranging canned goods on the wire shelves in the pantry. “Do these look natural?”
What? How in the hell were cans supposed to look natural on metal shelves? “Yup, just like they grew there.”
“You’re not funny.” It was an old game.
“Yes, I am. I’m hilarious. But, seriously, what did you expect? It’s a crazy question.”
The question wasn’t the only thing that was crazy. My dad had gone full on prepper in the wake of the attack on me. He’d had the storage room walls and doors reinforced with metal plates in order to turn the long space into a makeshift safe room. A separate energy source, WiFi hotspot, bedding.
“I meant, are they arranged in a way that you’d naturally search for them if you were stuck in here for an extended period.”
“I’m never going to be stuck in here for an extended time, Dad. I would rather battle zombies than be trapped in here with my family for longer than twenty minutes.”
Even Seth had tried to talk them out of these crazy plans. They’d told him to get on board or get the hell out of their metaphorical way, that he didn’t have kids, and that one day he’d understand.
The therapist has explained to me that it helped them feel in control in a situation that was even scarier to them than it had been for me. She told me to let it go, and I had. Once I stopped trying to get them to see how silly it was, they had scaled back their plans considerably.
What had once been planned as a full-on panic room the envy of any celebrity looking to lay out some disposable income on the latest high-security bunker able of withstanding anything short of nuclear attack had become a much simpler hiding spot with its own separate hotspot for communication. I was relieved.
Their first plan had been to sell the whole place. A mostly hilarious time waiting at the airport (the double-takes were enormously entertaining when I began remarking “rough flight”) to pick them up from the cruise last fall had turned into a scene rivaling the most dramatic telenovela (watch one of those without the sound and try telling me it’s not every teenage fight you’ve ever had with your parents but with better-looking people) as my parents had gotten a full look at me.
Mom had alternately cried and grilled both me and Seth for details of my injuries. My father clenched his jaw the whole trip, and when we pulled into the driveway there was a realtor waiting for us. My quip that I was sure I’d be able to pack even with my arm in a sling saw the woman in the too-large blazer quickly shooed off. My recovery dragged on and the sell the place rhetoric turned to talk of renovations to accommodate a more robust security system. Then we’d “downscaled” to the basement shelter-in-place plan. I think if I’d managed to drag it out a little longer I could have gotten away with a flare gun and some mace. Or maybe a mace.
My injuries hadn’t put off my father from w
eaponry though, and as soon as I could hold a gun and squeeze a trigger we were at the range daily. Shooting practice was the last thing I needed, but that too was an emotional thing the therapist explained. Hell, I spent more time talking about other people’s feelings at some of my sessions than I did working out my own. Mine were pretty simple—I was scared and pissed that I was scared. I’m not the most complex individual. Nor am I great at managing other people’s feelings.
“I need some advice. I have to talk to Aja about this guy that’s been bothering her and—”
“If I ever get my hands on that punk, I’m going to teach him a lesson.”
“As you’ve said on more than one occasion ranging from a boy being late to pick me up for a dance to the kid who made fun of Ben for being a genius.”
“Those kids were—”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a scary dad. But back to my point, a body was found in a pond near Aja’s house. He had the card I gave her and we think it might be her stalker ex.”
He’d bent down to pick up more cans but stopped and stood back up. “Dead?”
“As they come. Initial reports are beaten to death. I checked her place this morning and the locks had all been damaged. He was likely parking somewhere near and hiking through the wooded areas so no one saw his car.”
I purposely did not mention the altercation I’d had with the masked British history fan. He didn’t even glance at my ripped jeans. Clothing damage had stopped being a topic of conversation the same year I’d moved in with him. I was an active kid without an ounce of Leila’s grace or poise.
“That’s probably what he did the other day when your windshield got the carnival game treatment.”
“Yeah, well, he won’t be doing it anymore. I want to warn her before Jan gets here.”
He started on the cans again. He was under the impression that he thought better if he was working. Mom had once told him that and he’d clung to it. Once upon a time, she’d wanted some yard work done and he had demurred because he was trying to puzzle out a particularly difficult case. She’d then told him of this study that showed you were able to make more headway with a problem by directing your mind to menial tasks. End result was the lawn got mowed and she got an end run around him that she could use forever. Ben got his brains from her.