by Rick Wayne
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.
A man exited the building behind me and cursed. He stopped for a moment, like he was contemplating whether or not to go back up for an umbrella but then scurried off without. One car passed, then another. It went from dusk to dark. In the window, I saw the shadows stand and move close to each other—a kiss or a hug—and then move away. I swallowed hard. I turned my eyes to the bedroom, which had a small balcony that faced the street, expecting the light to come on. 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 received a cryptic email. I figured we’d messed around enough with electronic communication and decided I’d stop by as soon as I could. Only apparently she was entertaining. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a blow.
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 by the tree across the street.
Kinney stood in the doorway, holding it open. The bright light from the entryway cast her head in silhouette. But I could tell she was looking right at me.
“You may as well come in,” she called.
I walked across.
“I saw you had company,” I said. “I didn’t want to bother you.”
She held the door open for me without ceremony. “So you thought you’d wait outside in the rain? Like a stalker?”
“I just wanted to talk,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” She started up the stairs.
I followed. “She’s cute.”
“I think she prefers men,” she said from the landing.
“Really? Then why are you seeing her?” I immediately regretted asking. It was none of my business.
“That’s none of your business,” she scolded, 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 everything else. Like her.
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. It was quiet. Stiff.
“Your brother called.”
“Freddie?”
I pulled a hanger from a closet stuffed with jackets and heavy coats of every color, including one of mine, which was wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic.
“I thought his name was Martin,” she called from the other room.
“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.
“You look good, Kinn.”
And she did, too. 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. Her long, colorful wrap covered snug but casual clothes. I could see her figure.
“Don’t.” She held up a finger. “You’re only in here because your brother said you were in trouble and you needed help, and because Craig confirmed it.” 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 skulking in the shadows. Since when does the mighty Harriet Chase skulk?”
“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?” I asked. “Thanks for letting me in. It’s really good to see you. And I don’t mean anything by that.” I added the last part quickly. “It’s just, it’s nice to see a friendly face.”
“So what happened?”
“Suspended.”
She squinted in confusion.
“Technically, it’s temporary,” I explained. “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. “Your 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 like she was waiting for the punchline.
I took a swig. “For a middle-aged dyke, I mean.”
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 either, 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 downed her glass and opened another bottle of red, leaving me to finish the champagne in my hand. We moved to the couch and talked long enough to finish both bottles and most of one more. It wasn’t long after that my lips were 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 off each other’s clothes 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 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 s
tarted 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, like a tunnel or gateway around which tribal bands turned.
I shut my eyes and felt my temple throb. It was out there somewhere. The wolf.
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 initially expected. I could never say that the outcome of my committee hearing would’ve 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 that’s how Kent Cormack must have felt in the days before the shooting, when his life was tumbling like pillars around him. 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 doe-eyed jury, who would only see him bandaged and in uniform.
The problem was always time. When heat comes, as it had now for me, you have to be swift. For his plan to work, Cormack needed the gang to sacrifice a few smaller fish so the bigger ones could get away. I’m sure he agreed to keep quiet. I’m also sure the gang agreed to plant evidence around the house, supplied by Cormack, that cast suspicion on a different officer—someone like me. Anything to create a reasonable doubt. But then, I suspect neither Cormack nor his accomplices intended to stick to the bargain. I expect they each tried to double-cross the other. Cormack was shot 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 at the hospital and IA was still watching his house—which was the real reason someone had called Lt. Miller. They didn’t want me mucking around and fucking up their investigation. I suspect fear of a reprisal by the gang, more than finances, was the motivation to get his family out of town in a hurry.
I wanted to believe the Salvadorans would leave the man’s teenage daughter alone. Brooke. That, more than any of the rest, was the reason I gave her my card. I knew Mrs. Cormack wouldn’t take it. And I don’t trust IA for shit. All I could do was hope Brooke would call if something happened. I owed her that much. 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 everything going wrong. And everything had gone wrong. The Salvadorans, it seemed, had hedged their bets, called in a favor from someone back home, put an old-school curse on Kent Cormack.
For their part, I don’t think the Cormacks expected the tape 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 both the skills and the free time to pursue a vendetta, not to mention enough gurgling anger to track down that tape. Whatever else he was, he was a decent detective.
Spells are like ocean currents. You can’t see them just for looking, and they can pass through each other without losing much of their potency. The columns of my life were tumbling, as they had for Kent Cormack. I had some kind of eco-terrorist wizard on my ass—or shamanic 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. Probably just days.
Days.
“You okay?”
I opened my eyes and looked down at the puddle of ripples. I hadn’t remember shutting them. I’d been in a trance again. The pattern in the puddle was gone, along with my headache.
I turned. “Yeah,” I said. “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 anyone. It’s just how you are. When it’s all over, you come back and you’re here. Mentally. Emotionally. For a while. 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, or whatever. That’s why I . . . 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 rest of 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 them to be. We can afford those kinds of 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. Part of her wanted to ask what was on my mind, but part of her wanted to set boundaries, to disentangle.
“I was thinking about this time when I was a patrolman,” I volunteered.
She was facing away from me, but I could see the corner of her mouth turn up into a rueful smile she tried hard to suppress.
“What?” I asked.
“Patrolman.” 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.
“What happened when you were a patrolwoman?” she asked.
We were quiet a moment.
“I stopped this guy in a blue Chevelle,” I said. “Had a pair of white racing stripes, like something you’d see on an athletic shoe. Nice car, though. 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 thought that was funny. 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. Hard to blame them with a sweet ride like that. So I did my bit for highway safety and I go to walk back to my squad car and I hear the Chevelle’s engine start and I lift my head to the little back window. I got the sense the girl was looking at me, watching me leave, so I was just gonna nod, but I remember thinking how the guys were always saying 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 just as she smiled back. It’s automatic, right? Whether you mean to or not, someone smiles at you and unles
s you’re pissed off or whatever, you smile out of habit or to be polite. I got to my car and I sat down and reported the outcome 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 or whatever.”
She lifted my lip then and looked at my missing tooth. She must have felt it when we kissed.
“Rugby,” I said.
She smiled and shook her head.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure it was a baby tooth, you know? She had a lot of make-up. And big hair.”
“Who wore big hair then?”
“Exactly. Like she didn’t know what she was doing. 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 moment, 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 couldn’t have been older than eleven or 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 you do your own safety, then you shouldn’t be on the job. Guys who do need to be sailing a desk somewhere.