Wonder lifted his head again and briefly pulled his lips back, showing his teeth, telling her she was hurting him. The peroxide bubbled. She imagined Stone hitting him, cutting him. Wonder looked at her with narrowed eyes. She finished his leg and lifted her hand to his head. He jerked his snout back and snapped. Salt stopped with a sharp intake of breath and slowly pulled back her hand. But in a faint voice, she continued with the last verse.
And tried what she could,
As a shepherdess should . . .
* * *
• • •
By morning Wonder seemed mostly back to his usual dogginess, staring at her until his breakfast bowl was filled, barking to work the sheep, and quarreling with her when she pointed him to the car for the trip to the vet. Dr. Withers assured her that Wonder had sustained no life-threatening injuries, and after the doctor gave him some stitches and preventive inoculations she gathered her dog and drove directly to Mr. Gooden’s.
The old man was in his neat garden when she arrived. He waved as soon as he saw her car in his drive and propped the hoe he was carrying on a small, rusting tractor. “Let that dog out,” he said as she parked. “He can’t hurt anything. The cows are way in the back.”
Salt got out while Wonder stood in the backseat with his nose pressed to the window, eyes darting.
“Sorry to come by without calling first,” Salt said.
“Nonsense. We’re neighbors.”
She took a quick deep breath, getting ready to ask for his help, but he was squinting at her, looking with his keen old eyes.
“How have you been? How’s your head? Your hair looks good short. You can’t hardly see any scar, just looks like a part.”
Salt knew that with his old-fashioned manners her hair could look like, well, like Wonder’s fur, and he’d still find something nice to say.
“I’m fine, thank you. But I could use your help with Wonder.”
“What’s he been up to? Getting on top of the house again?” He laughed.
Wonder liked high places and one day she had come home and found that he had slipped out of the upstairs window onto the back porch roof and had made his way to a perch beside a chimney on the very highest point atop the house. Mr. Gooden had been in on the rescue, proud that at his age he could climb a ladder to the gable. He’d find other things to help her with. And then would go on for days about how the “next time” she needed her dog off the roof, or the sheep doctored, or the weeds mowed, she should call sooner.
“No, I’m keeping those upstairs windows closed now but—” Salt hesitated and looked toward her house.
Mr. Gooden stood patient, still smiling.
“I don’t know how to ask you without just coming right out with it. I need to ask you to keep Wonder at your house for a couple of weeks, I’m not sure, while I’m at work.”
“Of course, Sarah.”
She opened the car door. Wonder jumped out and she told the dog, “Stand.”
“My Lord,” Mr. Gooden said. Wonder’s fur was all matted around the wounds.
The old man slowly came over to the black dog, bent over, and scratched his good ear while he examined his damaged head. When he looked up at Salt there was a purple tinge beneath his sun-weathered face.
“How did this happen?”
“I’m afraid I’ve brought my job home. Someone came to the house last night while I was at gone.”
“Son of a—”
“I was hoping that he could stay here, only while I’m at work, until I take care of the problem.”
“You put your mind at ease. Who wouldn’t love this dog and I enjoy his visits, even if he does rile the cows sometime. He’s company. We’ll take an evening walk. It will give me good reason to check your house before I go to bed and I’ll leave him on my screen porch so you can walk over to get him when you get home.”
“That’s very generous but no need to check the house. I don’t want to chance putting you in harm’s way. When I come by to pick him up we’ll be quiet.”
“Goodness, Sarah.” He hardened the lines in his face to a fierce frown. “I get to feel like Dirty Harry. I got my .357. I’ll have a good time. I can look forward to maybe getting to shoot a bad guy.” Mr. Gooden gave her a Clint Eastwood ready-to-tangle grin.
“I don’t think they’ll be back. But if you insist. Do you have a mobile phone so you can call the sheriff at the first sign of anything wrong?” She would not insult him because of his age and besides he was fit and no fool.
“Sarah?” he asked, stepping closer to her. “Have you reported this, told anyone? And yes I have my pocket phone.”
“They would reassign me and I wouldn’t be able to do what I need to do. I know this situation better than maybe I should but I think I’ve been given this for a reason.” She put her hand on his shoulder, his muscles somehow both hard and soft. She dropped to one knee beside Wonder, lifted each of his ears, planted a little kiss on the soft inside pink tips, and swiped a drop of one tear that escaped from her right eye.
Mr. Gooden held on to Wonder’s collar while she got in the car. “Sarah . . .”
“Thank you, neighbor.” She gave Wonder the hand signal to stay and drove back to her house, alternately fantasizing about laying her head on Mr. Gooden’s shoulder and Mr. Gooden and his .357 facing down Stone.
21.
WILLS
The terrain of the city seemed to slump under the weight of the huge building that housed its police headquarters. There was no view that provided an accurate perspective on the size of the massive structure. Once the warehouse for a catalog and retail company, it had later been a hub for rail transport all over the Southeast. The building belonged to the 1930s and ’40s. Twenty-first-century technology didn’t function properly between the nicotine-stained walls. Computers glitched, high-tech communication wizardry failed. The behemoth wanted swing music and a cigarette. The ghosts of girl clerks in ankle-strap heels and managers with pencil-thin mustaches walked the floors while night workers sorted police reports, stored evidence, answered the 911 calls, and dispatched cops to crime scenes.
Salt parked near the patrol car graveyard, where mutilated vehicles sat on wheel-less rims, engines and doors missing from some, wrecks waiting to be cannibalized by motor pool mechanics, slumping on tires rotting in oily puddles of water. She hummed the first notes to “As Time Goes By” as she entered the code on the electronically controlled “Restricted” door. She accessed a short hall, stacked with discarded monitors and keyboards, that led to a large, elaborate freight elevator, another relic from the ’30s. The more modern elevators at the building’s main entrance were unpredictable and when they failed employees had to walk up seven or more flights of stairs. Salt ran her hand over the tarnished brass filigree of the cage as the outer doors rolled shut and the floors scrolled past the smoky window of the slow-moving lift.
Conjuring Humphrey Bogart in trench coat and fedora, she got out on an empty floor with columns that took the eye up to a ceiling twenty feet high. The elevator door clanged and the echo spread in the cavernous space. Yellow lines on the floor specified the layout for the ghosts of old shipping pallets. She wound her way through to the stairwell, where the floors were designated, inexplicably, with conflicting numbers. She walked up one flight to the fourth floor, marked as both the fourth, in red, and the fifth, in black. At the double doors to the Homicide Unit a receptionist with long fuchsia nails buzzed her in the outer door and gave her the code for the inner door.
The whole look of the office betrayed the work that went on there. There was something incongruous about Wills, spokesman for the dead, sacred work, Bogey’s heir, working from an open, 1980s-era, shoulder-high cubicle, his space delineated by cheap, flimsy materials. She found Wills at his cubicle, surrounded by brown paper evidence bags, guns with red tags, and murder books. She’d never seen him without the fedora, never seen his hair,
which was light brown, thinning, and looked accidentally cut. Across the aisle, Gardner was asleep with a violet file covering his face. Both their cubicles were stacked with files of various colors, the colors denoting the years of the murders. They worked scenes as partners, but each investigation had only one lead detective, one to hold responsible.
When he saw her Wills smiled and put his finger to his lips, motioning for silence, pointed at the sleeping Gardner, and led her to the coffee room. His tie was loosened and there were smudges of what was probably print powder on his left shirtsleeve. “Gardner’s been working twenty-four hours straight on that triple in the West End. What brings the legendary Salt to our humble office?” His smile widened, as he looked her in the eye. “Are you just getting off shift?” He pulled out an orange plastic chair for her.
In the microwave window on the counter, Salt caught a glimpse of her after-the-shift, still-growing-back-in hair. She looked down at her scuffed boots. “Yeah, it wasn’t too hectic tonight so I thought I’d try and catch you before you got off.”
He had a happy, expectant look, his eyes wide, bright, smiling.
“Are you making any progress?” she asked.
He laughed, still smiling. “I don’t know. Am I?”
“I was wondering if I could see the crime scene photos from Marcy Street? And I wondered if you could get the ATF trace on Mitchell’s guns, the perp I shot?” she said.
His smile wilted. He shrugged and turned to get coffee from a stained pot on the counter. He turned back to her with a wrinkled brow and handed her the cup. “No wonder you’re the Legendary Salt. Do you bleed blue?”
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Salt sensed his mood change.
“Oh, no.” He shrugged again and looked down into his coffee.
“’Cause you can just call me at the precinct if this is a bad time for you.”
He interrupted her. “Salt, do you ever think or talk about anything but what goes on in The Homes?”
“This is a bad time. I can see you are busy.” She stood to leave.
Wills put his hand out. “I’m sorry. I just get tired of talking and thinking murder all the time. When you walked in, my mind left death for a minute and I was reminded of some trees.”
“Trees?” She suddenly recalled her dream of making chairs in the woods.
He shook his head. “There are some sweet gum trees in a place I go to in the mountains. You know those trees that drop those prickly balls? Why are they called sweet gum anyway? You just brought those trees to my mind.”
Doing her best Scarlett O’Hara imitation, Salt said, “Why, Rhett, you do say the sweetest things, ‘trees.’” She tilted her head, smiled coyly, and batted her lashes.
Wills laughed. “Well, the Old Salt has a funny bone.”
“My bones can be as funny as the next guy’s,” she said, still smiling. “In fact, my dog finds me quite humorous.” She was struck with a sense that this might be going in a direction other than what she’d intended. She worried that she was being disingenuous.
“And how is the Wonder dog?”
“You remember his name.”
“How about letting me meet that fine canine?” He raised an eyebrow.
Her breath wouldn’t sync with the words she was saying. She bit her lower lip, concentrating.
“What does the pause mean? Does he bite?”
“Not unless I tell him to,” she said.
Wills leaned closer but not too close. “I don’t.”
Slowly, Salt said, “Okay,” and noticed that his eyes were dog brown.
“Okay what? Can I meet your dog or okay that I don’t bite?”
“Okay, you are welcome to meet my dog and okay, I don’t think you bite.”
“Well, that’s settled. When?”
“When what?”
Wills threw up his hands in playful exasperation. “God! When can I come meet your dog?” He laughed.
They both turned as Gardner poked his murder-file-marked face in the break-room door. He covered his eyes and abruptly turned back out, playing like he had caught them in an intimate moment.
“My suave partner,” Wills muttered, and she saw her chance to get back to her mission. “Can I see the photos?” she asked, searching for safer ground.
“What are you doing Saturday?” Wills asked.
“Saturday is okay but can’t I see them now?”
“Perfect. Saturday it is, but I meant to meet your dog. Yes, you can see the photos now. I’ll also try to light a fire under the crime lab so ATF can do the trace.” He put his hand on the underside of her arm and steered her back to his cubicle.
Salt wasn’t sure what she had agreed to, but was relieved when he retrieved Shannell’s murder file from the bottom of a violet pile. He handed her the large photo envelope and watched as she slid the photos out. They were color eight-and-a-half-by-elevens, taken in sequence from the outside moving in: Shannell’s run-down building, her apartment door with the hanging boards, the kitchen entrance, ratty living room, dark hall, sad bedroom, closet, and last, Shannell’s bloody body. The photo began to blur in 3-D, her fingers seemed to go beneath the blood on Shannell’s forehead, a smear between her brows, like the ashes of penance. Salt’s hand lifted to her own head, finding the tender spot in her scalp.
“I hadn’t noticed the scar,” she heard Wills say.
Her hand responded to gravity and dropped to where the breastplate in the center of her bulletproof vest usually was. She shuffled the photos back to the living room and hall shots. “I thought I remembered flowers on the floor,” she said both to herself and Wills, and pointed to the floor in the kitchen shot.
“Flowers? Yep, those look like flowers,” he confirmed.
“Do you know what kind?”
“What kind?”
“I think they’re wisteria,” she said mostly to herself. She thought she could make out the little lavender blossoms, some still clinging to small cuts of vine, scattered on the floor. Rolled against the hall wall was a jar that might have held them, although it was hard to discern recent clutter from what appeared to be the normal chaos. Flowers—she pressed her hand to her chest again, unconsciously, feeling the rise of her breath.
“Salt?”
She took one last look at Shannell and put the photos in the envelope. As she handed the pictures back, Wills was telling her, “The gun traces, I’ll have them by Saturday when I come to your place.”
“I’ll be working on the sheep. I guess I could use some help, so you’d be best to wear something you won’t mind ruining,” she said, making up her mind.
“Sheep?”
“Take I-85 south to the Tree Haven exit, turn right, and go about five miles. My place is an old house with ‘Alt’ on the mailbox on the right. I’ll be in back by eight a.m.”
“Can I bring my dogs?”
“Maybe I’ll meet them some other time. Saturday is sheep business and Wonder won’t have time to socialize.”
“Will you?”
“Let’s see how it goes.” She was walking backward toward the Homicide entrance.
“You’re a bit of a mystery yourself, Salt.” Wills followed her, talking.
“I thought you were getting tired of mysteries.”
“Only the ones I can’t solve”—he laughed—“and when the stack on my desk falls over. I’ll see you Saturday.”
He walked her out to the stairwell, marked four and five, held the door for her, and as she started down, leaned over the stair rail above. “Saturday, eight a.m.,” his voice echoed down.
Salt looked up. “Saturday,” she said, and headed down to the third/fourth floor and Humphrey Bogart waiting in the shadows.
22.
MARY MARIE McCLOUD
There was a small chain across the narrow opening of the door, a chain that looked old and c
orroded, the plating coming off. Through the two-inch opening Mary Marie McCloud, Shannell’s daughter, blinked one eye. The light behind her showed briefly as she changed to the other eye.
“I’m Officer Salt. I was at your mother’s apartment the day you found her.”
“Mother’s Day,” said the girl through the opening.
“I’d like to talk to you. Can I come in?” Salt said gently.
The chain tightened, then drooped. “My grandmother says not to let anybody, not anybody, in this house. She don’t want dirt tracked in. That’s what she says.” Mary changed eyes again.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean not to let the police in. What if there was an emergency?”
“Is this a emergency?” Her eye looked bright.
“It’s kind of an emergency,” Salt told the girl behind the door. “You can at least take the chain off. I’d like to see how you’re doing. All I can see like this is one eye at a time.”
Mary closed the door with a bump. The chain slid out of the keeper, a rusty scraping sound, then a small clack when it fell against the jamb. Then nothing. Silence.
“Mary?”
The door slowly opened. Mary stood facing her in a plaid school uniform jumper, white blouse, and white socks. She wasn’t wearing shoes. The hall floor behind her was one long gleam and there was an odor of pine cleaner.
“You can’t wear your shoes in this house,” the girl said, turning to walk toward the back of the house, pretending to skate on the shiny floor.
“I’m a cop. These are high-top lace-up work shoes. It will take time to get them off and longer to get them back on right. I might get an emergency call.”
Mary moved her feet to slip back down the hall, slipping for a slide, awkward though, like she had to practice being a kid. “You said this was kind of a emergency. Anyway my grandmother doesn’t care who you are. Nobody wears shoes in this house. And I don’t care if you are the poleese ’cause I’m not getting a whippin’ and having to polish these floors again because you lied about this is a emergency.” She was disappearing into the back of the house.
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