“I don’t know,” she whispered to him, although he hadn’t said a word.
Walking back into the house, Jack finally asked a question, although it wasn’t the one she had been expecting: “Did Gramps say anything…odd…to you? Anything that…didn’t make any sense at all, but yet made perfect sense?”
“Actually, he did. He came over and sat down next to me, and said I didn’t have to hide the truth. He told me you love quick and hard, and that the mean one was trouble, and that I should make my move soon or I wouldn’t be able to.” She turned and caught Jack’s arm, searching his eyes. “You didn’t say anything to him?”
Jack sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Of course not. Gramps…sometimes he just knows stuff. He calls it ‘the Second Sight’ and don’t ask me what that means. Some old Irish legend, I think. But he really does know things that he shouldn’t be able to know. He had the look on his face that he gets when he’s had the Second Sight. Did you know what he was talking about?”
“Well, yeah. He was talking about Ben.”
“However he knew it,” Jack said, “he was right. You need to do something soon, or it’ll just get worse.”
Miriam knew it too, but she wasn’t sure what she could do. Thinking about it only made her feel even more fully how trapped she was, and how much she was risking just by being at this party with Jack. He must have felt it from her, because he introduced her briefly to his parents and the rest of his family, and then took her home.
He was as good as his word, dropping her off at her apartment and giving her an awkward goodbye hug, brushing her face with his hand.
Chapter 7: Now
Carson was floundering. There was just no evidence to go on. No witnesses, no weapon, no clear motive. A girl getting knocked around didn’t mean she’d murder him. Maybe it should, but that was a different story. Carson blew out a long breath, stretching his back, sore from sitting at his desk for too long.
He closed the file, shut down his computer and left the precinct, intending to go home. His thoughts wandered over the case as he drove, however, and he found himself pulling into the parking lot of his favorite watering hole, The Old Shillelagh. He hesitated in the car, knowing he should just go home. But he was here, and he might as well have a drink. Just one or two, to loosen up his thoughts. He sat down at the bar, scrolling through his email on his phone, and ordered a gin and tonic without looking up. The bartender mixed it, set it in front of Carson, but didn’t leave.
“Thanks,” he muttered. He wasn’t in the mood for a chatty bartender. He wanted to be left alone to drink and think.
“No problem,” the bartender’s voice was smooth and feminine and sultry; something about her voice piqued Carson’s curiosity. He glanced up into a pair of smoky black eyes, friendly and expressive.
“You must be new here,” Carson remarked. He’d remember a bartender as beautiful as this one.
“Yeah, just started yesterday, actually,” she said. “I just moved here from Chicago.”
“Chicago, huh? I’ve got friends on the force down there. What prompted the move?”
The bartender glanced away, hesitating before answering, just a beat of silence, but enough for Carson to notice. There was a long story hidden in that brief pause. “I needed a fresh start, I guess. I grew up in Chicago, and just…needed a change. I have a cousin up here, and she’s letting me live with her for awhile.” She chewed on a nail, took a ticket from the printer and mixed the order for the service bar. “So the force, huh? You’re a cop?”
Carson nodded, set his badge on the counter. “Yep. Nine years tomorrow, actually.” He offered his hand, and she shook it gently. Her hand was trembling slightly, he noticed, and she seemed uncomfortable, somehow. “I’m Carson, by the way.”
“Leila. Nice to meet you.” She turned away, another service ticket in her hands.
Carson watched her mix the drinks, wondering what her story was. You don’t just up and leave the city you grew up in for no reason. There was a depth to her eyes when she looked at him, a tiredness, the heaviness of old memories buried beneath the skin. Carson recognized that look: he saw it every time he looked in the mirror.
He finished his gin and tonic, ordered another, and he found himself bantering inanities with Leila, light, meaningless bar talk. The rest of his mind, the critical part, was running through the case, a constant process for him. The detective in him never rested, was always turning the case over in his head, seeking cracks in the smooth facade of the wall between himself and the truth. He’d pick away at the wall, circle it, examining it endlessly, over and over again, until the surface of it was as familiar as the wrinkles in his palm, until he could recite every piece of information by memory. It was then, when the facts were automatic, that he began to make progress, to catch the irregularities, the inconsistencies, the slight breaks in the mortar.
A third gin and tonic, and Carson’s thoughts wandered to his own childhood, to a small ranch-style house in Ferndale, the yard out front uncut and scraggled with crabgrass and rioting dandelions, a cracked sidewalk out front where Carson had spent most of his time as a boy. Outside was a refuge, away from the constant tension in the house, away from the raised voices, from his cursing, quick-fisted father and his shrill, nagging mother. She never defended herself, and that’s what had always bothered Carson. She didn’t just take it, she seemed to invite it, to bring it on herself, somehow.
This brought him back around to Miriam. Carson wondered what kind of victim she was. Did she suffer in silence, applying foundation to cover bruises and offering thin excuses? Or did she strike back and curse and scream and invite it on herself because she knew it was coming? Had she pent up years of pain into a ball of rage and finally snapped? He had no sense of her, and that blinded him to the reality of the case. She was an enigma, this Miriam. A burned body, and battered girlfriend with little presence. No family, no known friends or relatives, very few people who’d even heard of her. Almost a non-entity, it seemed. The only picture he had was a driver’s license from when she was sixteen.
Carson stumbled from the bar after more gin and tonics than he could remember. The bartender with the black eyes….Leila, that was her name…she had called him a cab. He rode to his apartment a few blocks away, dizzy memories of his father’s belt and fists coalescing with thoughts of a Miriam cloaked in shadows, and then there was Leila’s face with her deep, dark eyes that seemed to whisper familiar secrets to him.
* * *
The next day, nursing a considerable hangover, Carson decided to dig into Miriam’s past. State records showed that she was born in St. Joseph Mercy Medical Hospital in Ann Arbor in 1983. Parents were Aziz and Khadeeja al-Mansur, Iraqi immigrants who moved to Dearborn in 1982. Her father died in 1994, cardiac arrest. Dearborn home repossessed in 1999. No records after that of any kind, just a blank. Only known relative was Fatima Afridi, still living in Dearborn.
Fatima was a stout woman with sharp brown eyes, wearing a black hijab. She let Carson and Jenn into her house, and refused to shake Carson’s hand but did shake Jenn’s.
“What is this about, please, detectives?” Fatima’s voice matched her eyes: sharp and piercing.
Carson let Jenn do the talking. “We’re looking for information on Miriam al-Mansur. She’s your niece, correct?” Jenn sat on the edge of the tan microfiber couch, a yellow legal pad balanced on one slim knee, red curly hair drifting across her angular, attractive face.
“Yes, she is my niece. I haven’t seen her in many years. At least ten years, I think. Why do you want to know about Miriam? Did she commit a crime? It wouldn’t surprise me. She doesn’t wear the hijab, associates with men all night long. Serves her right.”
“At this time we’re merely pursuing all possible avenues, Mrs. Afridi.” Jenn scrawled something on her pad. “Miriam’s father passed away in…1994, is that correct?”
“Oh yes. That sounds about right. Awful time for my sister. She was devastated. More than anyone knew. Su
ch a kind man, Aziz. Too kind. Doted on his daughter, gave her everything. Never disciplined her. Didn’t hold her to the faith. I always said no good would come of that girl.”
“What happened after Mr. al-Mansur passed away? Their house was repossessed, wasn’t it?”
Fatima shifted uncomfortably, plucked at the trailing edge of her hijab. “Yes, it was. Very sad. My sister couldn’t control her daughter. The girl was too wild, out of control. Staying out till all hours, worrying her poor mother. They had a falling out, I think. Khadeeja…she met a man, a good man. He would take care of her, she said. Aziz spent all his time in his store, ignored his poor lonely wife.”
Carson heard something hidden in the way she said that. He opened his mouth to speak, but Jenn beat him to it. “So she remarried, then? Can we speak to them?”
Fatima wouldn’t look at Jenn, obviously not wanting to answer. “I–no, I don’t actually know where they are. She calls me sometimes, but I don’t know where she lives.”
“Then where is Miriam? You’re her aunt; wouldn’t she come to you, if she was in trouble?” Jenn let a little edge slip into her voice.
“Well, as I said, she was a very headstrong girl, I couldn’t do anything for her. Khadeeja left so suddenly, and I have children of my own, four mouths to feed and clothe…another would have been too much. I just couldn’t. I gave her what I could, truly, but…”
“Wait, go back, Mrs. Afridi. Your sister left? What does that mean, she left?”
“Oh, well…I mean–” Fatima chewed her lip, hesitating, and then the words tumbled out in a rush. “I had no idea she was planning to leave, you know. She didn’t tell me her plans, she just vanished with that Peter character, and Miriam showed up so upset, poor girl, but I just couldn’t take her in, my husband barely brings in enough for six of us. I wanted to help, and I gave her some money.”
“So your sister vanished, but didn’t take Miriam with her? When was this?” Jenn was scribbling furiously, her brows furrowed.
“Miriam was…sixteen? Seventeen? So maybe…nineteen-ninety-nine? Yes, that sounds about right.”
“And you haven’t seen or spoken to Miriam since?”
“Well I’ve thought about sending her a card, or something, but I wouldn’t know where to begin looking–”
“I see.” Jenn freighted those two words with disapproval.
“So she wouldn’t know where to look for her niece to send her a card,” Carson said as they drove away. “But she knows she doesn’t wear a hijab?”
“Yeah, I caught that.” Jenn shook her head, curls bouncing. “Can you imagine being abandoned by your mom at sixteen? Poor girl.”
Carson just nodded. Poor girl, indeed.
Chapter 8: Then
Jack showed up at her door a few days after the party, a little before noon on Saturday.
“Do you work tonight?” he asked, looking her up and down with an admiring grin. She had just woken up, having closed the night before, so she was wearing an extra-large Red Wings T-shirt and little else.
“Jack! What–what are doing here?” She pulled the edge of the shirt down, but no matter how she tugged it, the shirt still barely covered her thighs.
He held up two tickets. “I’ve got a pair of tickets to tonight’s Tigers game. Thought maybe you’d like to go with me.”
“Tigers?”
“Yeah, like, baseball?”
Miriam slapped his arm. “I know what the Tigers are, stupid.”
“Have you ever been to a game? It’s a lot of fun.”
“I haven’t, actually. When is it?”
“The game starts at four. I thought we could grab some lunch in Greektown before the game.” Jack hopped up on the counter, peeling his jacket off and setting it beside him. Miriam fought the urge to run her hands over his chest, his toned physique visible through his thin gray skin-tight Led Zepplin shirt.
“That sounds fun. You’ll have to wait while I get ready though.”
“Okay.” He hopped down and plopped himself on her couch, grabbing the remote for her little TV.
Miriam showered quickly, trying not to think about Jack sitting just a few feet away, trying not to hope that he’d let himself into the bathroom. He didn’t, and she slipped from the bathroom to the bedroom, a towel wrapped loosely around her torso. She felt Jack’s eyes on her for the split second she was visible in between the two, and wondered if he’d been waiting for that one glimpse.
He had his Jeep again, this time with the top off, and the radio blaring. They didn’t talk much on the way down, with the wind blowing between them, tangling Miriam’s hair. She didn’t mind the silence. Jack’s hand rested on the gear shifter, paint-splattered, grease permanently caked into the creases, a couple of knuckles still split from his fight with his brother. Miriam slipped her hand in his, and twined their fingers together, feeling the electric brush of excitement thrill through her, even at so innocent a touch.
He took her to the New Parthenon, where they had saganaki and gyros and shared a pitcher of Killian’s.
“Do you drink a lot, Jack?” The question just popped out. Miriam hadn’t even been aware she was thinking it, but once it was out, she was glad she’d asked.
Jack seemed unsurprised. “No, not really. When I’m out with friends, I’ll have a few beers, or maybe with Doyle after work sometimes.” He leaned forward and took her hand in his. “Listen, Miriam. I want you to understand how much I’m not him. Okay? If you want to ask me something, just ask. I won’t get offended.”
“It’s not like I’m comparing the two of you–”
“You should, though. Seriously. Compare me to him. I don’t want to be anything like him. At all. And if there’s ever the slightest similarity between me and him, you should drop me like a bad habit, okay?” He was exuding intensity, his eyes fixed on her.
“You’re nothing like him, Jack. I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re so different from him, from anyone I’ve ever dated…It’s kind of scary, honestly, how different you are.”
“Scary? What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know…it’s–I’m used to one kind of thing, you know?” Miriam said. “All the guys I’ve dated have been similar–”
“Assholes, you mean?” Jack interjected around a swig of beer.
“Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know why, but I just seem to attract the assholes.”
“Well I’m not an asshole, and you attracted me,” Jack said with a smirk. “But seriously, though, I don’t think it’s a matter of you attracting them so much as you choosing them. You don’t think you’re worth a real man, a good man.”
Miriam felt kind of insulted by that. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Jack raised his hands, palms out, in a pacifying gesture. “No, listen to me. I have this cousin, Kate. Her dad, my uncle, he’s an alcoholic. Used to beat her up pretty good. Called her all sortsa names, kicked her out when she was eighteen. She was always dating these guys that were just…god, assholes–” he said the word like it was the ultimate epithet, the worst thing he could think of calling them. “I mean, real douchebags. Treated her like I wouldn’t treat a dog. Hit her, called her names, just like Uncle Danny. One even pimped her out to his friend, and she just went along with it, god knows why. Stayed with these guys no matter how bad they treated her. I think she just didn’t understand that there was any other kind of guy. It’s what she’d grown up with, you know? All she knew. And if that’s all you know, you stick with it. If your dad didn’t love you, if he didn’t treat you right, then you keep trying to fill that hole where his love should’ve been. You fill it with men that are like him, and that will never work. I don’t know about your dad, if he was like that or not, but I think it’s something similar.”
Jack touched her chin with a finger, tipping her head up to look at him, but she wrenched her face away, staring at the table. She couldn’t look at him, not with the welter of emotions boiling inside her. She dug at the tabletop with a fingern
ail, and where her nail dragged across the surface there was an almost inaudible hissing noise and thin trickle of smoke, a line of burned black incised in the table. Jack noticed it, lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing.
There was silence between them, tense for once. “It’s not like that, Jack,” Miriam said, trying not to sound sullen and angry. She knew the anger was surfacing because he was right.
“Well, there is a reason, Miriam. You know there is, you just won’t admit it. I’m telling you the truth as I see, and I’m not gonna apologize for it, although I will say I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
Miriam didn’t know how to respond, just nodded. Jack brushed her hair out of her eyes, lowering his face so that he could see her eyes. He looked so worried that she had to laugh. Damn him and his puppy-dog eyes. “It really wasn’t like that, exactly,” she said eventually. “My dad did love me, just not…not for long enough. I don’t want to talk about it right now. I want to have fun.”
“Fair enough.” Jack poured the last of the pitcher into their glasses and drank, letting the subject go. He really did seem to respect her privacy, and that was hard to resist by itself. She wished he didn’t understand her so well. It made her feel vulnerable, and that set her walls to rising. She didn’t want walls between her and Jack, but it was so easy to just let them be, purely from habit. He just had a way of getting around them.
Miriam enjoyed the baseball game, even though she had expected not to. She had agreed to go just because it was Jack she was going with. The fans were energetic and excited, and their ebullience was infectious. She didn’t really know the finer details of the game, but it didn’t matter; the actual baseball wasn’t as important as the experience itself: swilling overpriced beer from clear plastic cups, eating too-buttery popcorn, standing to cheer whenever the crowds around them did. There was a camaraderie to the atmosphere, a kinship shared by everyone in the stadium, and that was a new feeling for Miriam.
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