“Do you think I’m obstructing, Detective Johnson?”
“I’m not heading up this investigation, Calliope,” he replied, laying a soft emphasis on her first name.
“That’s a pretty cheap sidestep, Darryl.”
“I’m not even seconded onto it,” he protested. His voice was even, but contained more than a little disgust. “I’m not exactly welcome around Walker either, now.”
Realization came to Calliope, accompanied by widened eyes. “You went off on Walker?”
“If you need to reach me in the next few days,” Johnson replied, “use my office number—I’ll be at my desk.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not at all.” He cleared his throat. “As an upside, I can get home early and see my kids before bed this week.”
“Congratulations,” Calliope said.
“Thank you.” Another pause. “I was hoping you might have thought of a more productive angle than the files in your office to work on, anyway.”
It was Calliope’s turn to deadpan. “I did say I’d tell you if anything came up.”
“And I’d like to hold you to that,” Johnson said. Calliope heard his chair creak and imagined him leaning forward over his desk, shielding the phone from the rest of his office. “Though I have to warn you: given my new working arrangements, it may take quite some time before I’m able to share any new information with Walker.”
Calliope laughed; after her talk with Tom, it was a relief. “I’ll take that under consideration, Detective.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Johnson replied. There were a few moments of silence. Calliope could smell the coffee Tom had made, but couldn’t bring herself to have any. Yet. She knew she would, eventually, and that it would make her feel guilty, and that that would make her angry; first at herself, then (mostly) at Tom, even—
Detective Johnson cleared his throat. “Is there any new information?”
“Sorry.” Calliope shook the thoughts away. “I was just . . . planning my day, I guess.”
“You don’t make it sound like it’s going to be a very good day.”
“Eh.” She dropped onto her couch. “That’s how it goes sometimes. Let’s talk about the other thing.”
Again, she heard a chair creak on his end of the line, and her mental image showed him leaning back. “I’m going to take a stab and guess it has something to do with the fat man that Joshua mentioned in his message.”
Calliope blinked. “You know you’d make a pretty good detective, Detective.”
“Sometimes,” Johnson replied. “Not so much in this case.”
“How so?”
“Two reasons.” Johnson shifted in his chair again, though not so much as he had. Calliope didn’t get the impression that he was very used to sitting while he worked. “One, it was the only thing that even vaguely resembled a lead, unless you were withholding evidence, which I don’t think you were.”
“Thank you,” Calliope said, and meant it.
“You’re entirely welcome.”
She got up and wandered away from the couch. “You said there were two reasons.”
“I did.” Calliope could hear him lean forward over his desk again. “The second reason is—yeah?” The last word came to Calliope slightly muffled, in a different tone of voice; Johnson had been interrupted at his desk by another officer. Guessing from the tone of his voice, Calliope didn’t think it was a superior, but neither did she think it was anyone he particularly liked. Johnson’s end of the line became completely muffled; Calliope could only make out that there were two men talking. She rummaged around the kitchen while she waited; first a cupboard for a mug, then a drawer for a spoon—pulling items out by absentminded habit. She was just setting the sugar back where it belonged when she heard Johnson’s hand come away from his mouthpiece. “Sorry.”
“No worries,” she replied. “That’s the job.”
“That’s the job today, yes.” Johnson sounded annoyed. “But I can deal with that later—the second reason is something you should know about.”
“Yeah?” Calliope sipped from the mug in her hands.
“Our . . . mutual acquaintance?”
Calliope’s brow creased. “Walker?” she hazarded.
“Exactly. Our mutual friend has been very interested in the fat man reference as well.” Johnson’s voice lowered. “That’s mostly what he has his boys looking for in your agency’s files: some kind of record of him. Pretty obsessive.”
“That,” Calliope observed, “is something I am absolutely sure he’s not going to find.” She took another sip. “And not because I hid any files. It just doesn’t exist.” She reconsidered telling Johnson about her whole weird evening, but decided against it. It felt too personal, like describing a vivid dream to a stranger. “I . . . know who it is now, but I can absolutely guarantee we never did any kind of work with the guy in the past.”
“But you’ve spoken with him.”
“Yeah.”
“And he told you . . .”
“Nothing.”
Silence on the other end of the line. “That doesn’t sound like much of a lead.”
“He was—”
Forbidden from conducting business on Halloween.
“—busy. Told me to come back later today.”
“Doesn’t sound very helpful,” Johnson said. “Or safe.”
“Helpful? No, he isn’t. But safe? He’s a downtown suit.”
Kinda.
“He’s not a threat,” she said, trying to sound sure. She turned the mug in her hands. “And if he were, I could outrun him.”
“Ahh,” Johnson said. “The nickname’s accurate, then?”
“You have no idea.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t.” Johnson’s voice shifted to Serious Cop. “This isn’t my case, Calliope, and I told you to let me know if you found anything out, which you did. I have no reason to suspect you, and I don’t . . .” He sighed. “With that said, this isn’t my case, and you need to understand how your involvement would look to anyone else, and that none of it would break in your favor right now.”
“I do.” She considered what she’d told Tom. “I think it might mean I have to go out there.”
“There?” Johnson turned that over in silence. Calliope let him work it out. “Iowa.”
“Yeah.” She tried to keep the tone of her voice neutral, but to her ears, it didn’t seem as though it worked. “Maybe.”
“You said your contact hadn’t told you anything yet,” Johnson countered. “What makes you think you need to go out to where your partner—” He caught himself. “Out there,” he finished.
“I—” She paused, brought up short. Now that she thought about it, she’d had no reason to tell Tom that this morning. Somehow, her half-awake brain had munged all the stuff going on in the last few days into a half-sorted pile, and extracted—
“ . . . you can’t take her with you.” The vagabond in the doorway stepped into the room. “You can’t. She’s not part of this. You can’t—”
“It’s just a hunch,” she said.
Detective Johnson didn’t say anything for a few moments—long enough for Calliope to wonder if he was actually going to say anything, or simply wait for her to offer up something more compelling, less crazy. Finally: “Last year, I got put on a missing persons case.”
Calliope frowned. “Oh-kay.” She thought for a moment. “You’re homicide.”
“I am,” he agreed. “It looked pretty bad.” He paused. “It was a kid. A little girl.”
“I’m sorry,” Calliope said, still frowning. “I’m not sure—”
“The parents were very scared,” Detective Johnson continued. “And a lot of us working on the case were parents. A lot of dads and moms trying to figure out what happened and how we could find the kid.” He took a deep breath. “We had a lot of hunches. Hundreds.”
Calliope bent her head. “But it turned out to be a homicide case all along.”
“It did.” Detective Johnson said.
“I’m not saying anything about your partner—honestly, there’s too much weird in this case to rule anything out—but make sure you know where your hunches are coming from. Make sure you know your reasons.” Another voice spoke in the background on Johnson’s end of the line. He muffled the phone again, said a few words, and then came back to her. “I need to go.”
“Absolutely.”
“Please contact me if you get any more information.”
“I will,” she said, her voice soft. “Promise.”
“Good.”
He hung up. Calliope stood, facing the counter for a few more seconds. Then she shook herself, set the phone down, and picked up the mug.
The mug filled with coffee.
Which she’d fixed without consciously realizing what she was doing.
It smelled really good.
She let out an explosive, wordless sound of annoyance, dumped the mug in the sink, and stalked out of the kitchen.
Calliope stood in front of her mirror, wringing water out of her hair with a towel, her eyes tracking the dark water spots across the shoulders of the clean T-shirt she’d pulled on after her shower. Behind her, in the mirror, the bed was rumpled, the sheets twisted—proof enough of a bad night’s sleep, even if she couldn’t also feel it in her neck and back.
“You always wake up so gracefully.”
She scowled and tossed the towel over the shower rack, then started for the door of the bedroom. But she lost momentum and stopped after only a few steps. The crease across her brow deepened.
“Make sure you know your reasons.”
Still facing the mirror, she turned her head, wincing at the pain in her neck, and checked the clock. Still morning. Early. Most of the day to kill, banned from the office.
“But those aren’t the only old files to check,” she murmured.
She finger-combed damp hair out of her face, blew out a long breath, and glared at the disheveled bed lurking behind her in the mirror.
Reaching behind her, she twisted her hair into a loose knot, turned, stepped up to the bed, and tugged the covers into an approximation of order. That done, she dropped into a crouch, reached underneath the bed and, after several half-voiced growls and curses, fished out two oversized, dust-coated shoe boxes, one labeled BAND STUFF; the other, NOT BAND STUFF.
She swiped at BAND STUFF with the edge of her hand and wiped the resulting film of dust on her jeans as she flipped the lid up.
Unlabeled demo CDs lay in a stack on top of several T-shirts folded with the rigid precision and sharp edges of an American flag presented to a soldier’s widow. The other end of the box was a collection of flyers from clubs throughout Silverlake and Echo Park, bar coasters, clippings of reviews, and a small jumble of junk masquerading as mementos. All told, the box was two-thirds full, arranged like a memorial shrine for a distant relative.
Calliope riffled the edges of the CD cases, rolled her eyes at the ridiculously overenthusiastic headlines, and flipped the lid shut before pushing the box to the side.
Sitting back on her heels, she pulled the second box to her and hooked her fingers under the rubber bands that held the bent, center-bulging lid of not band stuff in place. The smooth outward tug pulled both rubber bands off simultaneously with a muffled snap-pop, and the lid immediately eased upward a half inch. Calliope lifted it and set it aside, scanning a heaped stack of paper and photos that—as far as organization went—had more in common with a clothes hamper than the band box that sat nearby.
The topmost slip of paper—a barely legible handwritten note—slid off the stack and onto the floor. Calliope picked it up, thumbed it open, and tipped her head to read the words she already knew.
Hiya!
I think I found an APARTMENT!
I know we said we were going to wait to look at an APARTMENT.
But it’s a good APARTMENT.
You should see this APARTMENT.
It’s a good APARTMENT.
I love you, and will listen better next time.
—Josh
P.S. APARTMENT!
She refolded the note and set it back in place. Leaning forward, she picked up the overstuffed box, rose up, and dumped the contents onto the bed.
“I want a face to kiss.”
Calliope, curled up in an overstuffed chair widely considered the ugliest and most comfortable in the city, speaks (loudly) to an empty room. Earbud headphones dangle from her neck; she holds a book half closed in her lap, one finger marking her place, and listens.
Several seconds later, a door opens and footsteps move in her direction—a steadily increasing drum roll cadence. Josh slides into view, tipping his weight at the last moment to lean against the room’s door frame, his arms crossed. He raises his eyebrows, assuming the bored expression of a Bond villain, and says “Sorry?”
Calliope settles into the chair, a smirk poking dimples in her cheeks. “I . . . want a face to kiss.”
He tips his head, brow furrowed. “I see. Well . . .” He glances over his shoulder and down the hall. “I can check the take-out menus—see if the Thai place has ‘face’.”
Calliope raises an eyebrow, fighting to control her expression. “I do not think you understand.”
Joshua cocks his ear toward her. “I don’t—”
“I.” She points at her chest. “Face.” She points at Josh, then swings her finger in a lopsided oval. “Kiss.” Again, she points at herself; specifically, her mouth.
“Ohhhhh . . .” Josh exclaims. “Right.” He rushes straight at her, building momentum and dropping to his knees halfway across the room to slide the rest of the way to the chair.
“Oh god,” she says, lifting her book in front of her as a shield. The chair lurches and thuds against the wall. She lets out a small, much-delayed yelp and peeks from behind the book.
Josh waggles his eyebrows at her from a few inches away, still fighting for balance as he leans forward on one knee. “Hi.”
“Hello,” Calliope drawls, pulling her book slightly out of the way and tilting her face to the side. “Kees me.”
He tips his head toward her, his lips a bare inch from hers. She feels his weight shift, catch, and shift again. “Crap,” he comments, then crashes to the floor in front of the chair.
Her laughter rolls out of the open third-floor window, loud enough that several people on the street below look up at the sound.
“I want to go there.” Calliope sits on the futon with her feet tucked under her. It’s one of only three pieces of furniture in the apartment (not including the stool shared between the keyboards and drum set), and obviously the most used. She indicates the small television screen across the room with her spoon, then scoops up another bite of cereal. Outside the window, it’s dark.
Josh glances up at the screen from where he sits at their keyboard, scratching at a score sheet and testing out chords. The set is muted, but the camera pans slowly over lush foliage and stone pyramids. “Belize?”
“Is that where that is?” Josh gives her an amused look and she whirls her spoon above her head. “Yes! Belize! My one and only dream! The place I have wanted to visit since . . .”
“Today?”
“Since years ago.” She juts out her chin at him.
He grins. “Today?”
“Since before I could say the name.” She takes another bite of cereal.
“Which”—he sets his pencil aside and pushes the rolling stool toward her, easing off it and onto the couch next to her—“was today, since you didn’t know the name until about ten seconds ago.”
She pulls the spoon out of her mouth. “Details,” she enunciates, chewing.
“Mmm.” He props his feet up on the rolling stool, watching the footage of Bermuda-shorts-decked tourists sweating their way up the side of a steep stone structure. “It looks pretty cool.”
“I know, right?” She watches in silence, then returns to her bowl. “Someday,” she murmurs.
“Someday,” he repeats. They watch the images dissolve
one into the other, the only sound the crunch of Calliope’s cereal as she eats. Josh looks at her sidelong, then pushes himself into a sitting position, turned halfway toward her. “You know, we could get out of here for a while.”
Calliope looks at him, swallows, and says, “You mean go on the road again?”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
“Good.” She sips milk from the bowl. “Because the ‘on the road’ thing didn’t work so well last time.”
“Agreed.” He scratches at his cheek stubble. “I meant just us going somewhere.”
“The van’s toast,” she replies. “Twelve huunnnndred dollahs feex.”
“Maggie said we could borrow her car anytime. She never drives it.”
“True . . .” Calliope allows. “But we can’t really afford to go anywhere.”
“Unless we go somewhere we know people we can stay with.”
She eyes him, making a skeptical face. “What, like Penny?” She softens her expression. “I mean . . . no, I’m sorry, she would totally let us crash, but it’s been raining up in Portland for, like, forty-five days straight.”
“Sure. Good point.” He settles back into the futon and turns back to the screen. A few seconds later, he lifts his head and looks at her. “We could go somewhere it’s not raining.”
Bowl raised to her lips, she hesitates, then sets the bowl down, shakes her head, and starts to get up from the futon. “No.”
“It’s an easy drive.” He leans forward again. “You told me you’ve done it lots of times.”
She moves to the sink in the area just past the front door that had passed for a “kitchenette” in the rental ad. “Yeah, I did. I also said I didn’t ever want to do the drive again.” She sets the bowl in the sink, drops the spoon in, and runs water over the clatter. “Or go at all,” she mutters. Over the sound of the water, she says, “We have to finish the new demo.”
He pushes himself up and perches on the edge of the cushion. “We always have a demo to do,” he counters. “And we don’t have a job lined up until the nineteenth.” He spreads his hands. “We save all our money for gas, sleep in the car, and we could stay out there for a couple weeks, no problem.”
Hidden Things Page 7