Time Expired

by Susan Dunlap

  “I’d have to have my snout pressed against the glass to see down in the canyon.”

  From anyone else I would have taken that as a slap of dismissal. But Madeleine Riordan’s dismissals didn’t veer in from the side like that. I took a chance. “And have you?”

  A hint of a smile flashed and was gone. “It can be very boring here. You don’t sleep much when you’re in pain, unless you’re drugged up, and I’m not about to spend my last weeks that way. Oh, friends come, but it’s so goddamned awkward for them that I’d rather they sent cards. They stumble for words. Some of them say they know how I feel, which was bullshit even before I was dying. They couldn’t know what this is like unless they spent the hours I have learning about the rules of dying.”

  “Rules?”

  She was looking out the window at the dark canyon, not at me. “Rules, the lawyer’s life. We think that the law is the rule for all society. We know that there are plenty of people who break the rules, even among those who swear to uphold them,” she said with a small snort—of disgust, admission, what? Now she did look at me, her blue eyes large, demanding, shining against the pale dryness of her skin.

  “They tell us if we stay in our lane we’ll be safe. So we do. You follow all the rules society insists on, you lock your doors, you cover your ankles, you don’t sleep around, you protect your sacred hymen, and what happens? You end up here wearing a piece of cloth slit up the back with your ass bare to whoever comes in. …”

  She glanced at me and stopped. I hadn’t been monitoring my reaction like I do interviewing witnesses. I’d been thinking what an odd old-fashioned slant that was for Madeleine Riordan—not sleeping around. “But they haven’t made you wear a hospital gown.”

  “They don’t dare. My body may be weak but I’ve still got my tongue. I’ve heard tell I can raise welts with it.” She flashed a suggestion of a smile.

  “I’ve seen some.”

  She motioned me to sit on the bed. Another time I would have pondered the unprecedented acceptance that her offer indicated, but now I sat and said, “So what have you seen out the window?”

  She raised her hand as if to run it through her hair. I remembered that movement from the hearing, when she’d been considering whether to speak. Now she stopped the hand halfway up and let it fall back to the covers. “I haven’t observed much. You can’t see down under the trees. There are kids down there during the day, they tell me, but I never see them. Coco barked a bit the first time I was here. But he was just put out to find potential sources of attention who were ignoring him.” She gave his head a rub.

  I nodded. The live oaks and the bays made a carpet twenty feet above the canyon floor. Even for someone with spyglasses it’d be a trick to see movement beneath them. Of course she hadn’t observed anything down there. I braced my hands to push myself back up and leave.

  “I used to sit outside when I was here before.” Her voice was higher, more anxious. “Down there on the walk. In the summer the sun would get that far in the afternoons. I could walk down there by myself then. We didn’t have many sunny days this summer. Maybe one every three or four. I’d go out, but each time it was a little harder. You see, the body becomes the enemy. When you’re healthy, you don’t realize. It inconveniences you, it hurts you, it waits to kill you. By the time you understand it’s an object that you can’t control and they can do whatever they want with, well …” She looked up, suddenly flushing. “You watch your control growing narrower and narrower, like water circling down the drain.”

  I didn’t know what to say; the chasm between us was so great, much wider than at the police review commission when we were merely defending police officer and prosecuting attorney. Now we were the living and the dispossessed. Despite the bed large enough to accommodate Coco, the woodsy prints on the wall, the deep red clearly authentic Persian rug, I was struck by her absolute poverty. When you have no future, you have no power. And if you have no control, you have nothing.

  Equally, I could feel my own fear of contagion, that somehow if her hand touched mine she would grip it in a death vise and yank me with her across the Styx. It was all I could do not to pull back.

  And yet I couldn’t possibly have moved.

  She rubbed Coco’s head. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I’m fortunate to have a place like this, not like the awful nursing home my mother died in. Here I can have Coco with me, and have Mike to take care of him. And”—she forced a laugh,—“even Claire.”

  She was trying to keep me from leaving: me, a cop. Anything to keep out the dark that echoed pain and let fear race unchecked? Or was there something she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell me, tell the police? I swallowed hard. “Claire?”

  “The woman in the other room. She really doesn’t like dogs, but she’d never say that to my face. She’s one of those traditional ladies, trained to be polite, remain pure, and never create unpleasantness. A product of the days when purity was all.” The scorn was clear in her voice. I wouldn’t have expected otherwise from a woman who had spent years representing those who marched and demonstrated, who slept in doorways on Telegraph Avenue, those who wouldn’t or couldn’t conform.

  “If Claire doesn’t like dogs, why did she choose to share this cottage with you and Coco?”

  “I promised to keep him out of her room.” Madeleine half smiled. “That lasted almost a day. I was sure once she knew him she’d see what a sweetheart he is.” She rubbed his head, her forefinger running down the ridge between his eyes.

  “And did she?”

  “She asked Mike to keep the door shut. Said she was worried about fleas. And germs, when Coco licked her hand. You know how those clean, clean ladies are.”

  I smiled, recalling the horrified reaction an aunt by marriage had had to our family Great Pyrenees. At eleven months and well over a hundred pounds he’d jumped on her lap. And we, less than perfect hosts, had laughed. “What happened with Claire?”

  “Coco took the door as a challenge. I went in after him one day and found Claire huddled in the far corner of her bed and Coco stretching his neck as far across the bed as it would go. It was clear it wasn’t the first time they’d come to this standoff.” She smiled, just as my family had.

  “And Claire never complained?”

  “She isn’t that type of woman. Besides, everyone on the staff here loves Coco. No one would take her complaints very seriously. I knew she’d come around. I sat in there with Coco every afternoon until she could pat his head without shrinking back.”

  “And now she’s comfortable with him?” I asked, ready to disbelieve the answer. We pet lovers have raised self-deception to an art.

  “Now she’s not in enough control to …” Her hand moved down to wrap around the big dog’s chest. She turned toward the window, but it showed nothing of the dark fog-filled canyon beyond. The glass reflected her bald head and the bony hollows of her face, and in it, I suspected, she could see herself in a few weeks no different from Claire.

  I said, “About our suspect in the canyon—”

  “Even when I sat outside I didn’t see anyone escaping from there.”

  I stood up. Coco stretched his head toward me for a final scratch. Careful to avoid Madeleine’s hand still on his neck, I scratched behind his ears. Having satisfied himself of my place in the herd, he looked away.

  “Let me think overnight,” Madeleine said slowly. “Maybe there’s something I’ll recall that will help you.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “You can come back tomorrow, can’t you?”

  “Yes.” My voice was barely audible.

  “About this time, eight-thirty.” Desperation didn’t come through in her voice; she still had that under control.

  I nodded. I wanted to reach out to her. But the moment had passed; she would have looked at me as if I were crazy. I held out my business card to her. “If you do think of anything beforehand, give me a call.”

  “Do you need anything, Madeleine? Mike and I are right
here.” A woman with a spray of red frizzy hair stood in the doorway.

  “The detective’s just about to leave. If you can wait a minute, I’ll go to the bathroom.”

  “Sure, I’ll be right here.” She moved out of the doorway, leaving only her elbow to indicate she was waiting outside.

  Madeleine reached for my card. Glancing at it she nodded. “Sometimes I think I’d be better off if I let them dope me up. Maybe keeping your mind clear enough to be appalled every time you can’t maneuver in the bathroom without help isn’t such a boon.” She emitted a noise somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “But nothing’s forever.”

  Now I did reach toward her hand. Automatically she lifted it as if to shake. Our hands came together at the wrong angles, intentions unclear on both sides, and ended in an awkward touch that was neither a squeeze nor a handshake.

  “Till tomorrow,” she said so softly I wouldn’t have recognized the words had I not understood. But, in fact, I heard in them the request that I come back, that there was something she wanted me to know but couldn’t bring herself to say now. I could feel how much it cost her, a woman who never let herself ask an indulgence from a police officer, particularly one she’d viewed with the scorn she’d shown in the Arnero trial. I let go of her hand and left, making my way up the hillside path, wondering with each step what was so important that it had moved Madeleine Riordan to breach her own wall of reserve.

  CHAPTER 5

  I CIRCLED BACK TO the top of the canyon. Traffic moved normally now. The mobile unit was gone, and all but one patrol car had coasted on to other things. The officers from that car would be interviewing people at the edge of the canyon. I hadn’t realized how long I’d spent with Madeleine Riordan. It was almost nine o’clock already. I checked in with Inspector Doyle, then headed back to the station for the Immediate Incident Debriefing. It would be a somber affair; no one wanted to spend his Sunday night reporting on his contribution to a failure. Doyle would announce I was taking paper—all the reports on the hostage operation. Maybe he’d authorize another call to witnesses and potential witnesses—every resident on the canyon rim—and an early-morning sweep through the canyon itself to see what daylight illuminated. Beyond that there wasn’t much he could do; you can’t put out an APB on an unknown perp.

  The meeting ended at ten forty-five. Still wired, I headed back to my office. If I was taking paper, it wouldn’t hurt to get my own report done. Grayson would be responsible for rounding up the reports from the Tac Team. I could assign Murakawa to prod patrol for theirs. Knowing him, he’d be first in with his own. The major hassle would be checking through all those reports before they went on to Chief Larkin, the city manager, and the mayor. And, no doubt, the police review commission. With thirty officers involved, chances were some citizen would file a complaint about something. I should just be glad none of those complaints would be handled by Madeleine Riordan.

  I shuddered at my thought, then reminded myself that had I said it aloud in her room, Riordan would have laughed. Maybe.

  I sat staring at my notes. In a minute, or maybe it was ten minutes, I realized that I wasn’t looking at the pad. I was running my fingers through my hair, absently tugging; at a level way below thought I was reassuring myself it wasn’t I who was dying.

  I closed my pad, got up, walked to the clerk’s desk, and left a request for background checks on Michael Wennerhaver and on Madeleine Riordan. Then I drove home. If the rest of the guys involved were having as much trouble getting down their reports as I was, it’d be a long time before the mayor saw anything on this operation.

  Down here in the flatlands, the fog had closed in. We don’t get many like this. Most of our fogs are Pacific fogs—thin gray roofs that block out the sun. But tonight’s was a land fog, the type they have back east, that separates each individual, encases him in an icy gray capsule, and creates a treacherous illusion of soft edges.

  Howard’s house was an elderly brown shingle on Hillegass Avenue a mile south of Peoples’ Park. In that mile Berkeley changes from the off-campus lair of students, sidewalk vendors, and street people begging for change that hasn’t been spare in over a decade to a neighborhood of comfortable Victorians shaded by tall oaks and magnolias. Many of the homes have been repainted or reshingled, the yards landscaped. Almost all of them are in better condition than Howard’s.

  Howard has to keep five tenants, including me, to pay the rent. He tries to fix up the house. But his manual dexterity just isn’t in the hammer-and-nail department. Since I moved in we’ve argued about the house, and what Howard terms his interest and I call his fixation with it. I felt so claustrophobic I almost moved back out. But fears don’t come from outside the skin. And I’m too much of an adrenaline junkie to care much about where I live; home is only a place to eat food from white bags and plastic containers, and wait for my pager to go off. And to snuggle into the familiar ridges and hollows of Howard’s long, sinewy body. A bond connects us, like the vibration of cello strings beneath all the other sounds of the orchestra. It’s not just knowing about unreliable hours, investigations that bulldoze plans, auto chases that rev you up like nothing else; it’s laughing at the same thing, in the same key, that shows me I’m not alone. Not like Madeleine Riordan. For that, for now, I can put up with an irritating violin or piccolo in the orchestra.

  The violin that grates on my nerves is Howard’s never-ending sanding, painting, dismantling sinks and showers. The piccolos are the array of tenants necessary for the rent. There’s almost always a tenant in the living room anxious to talk, or more like it, complain about the piccolos, the violin, or me. Or I come home to a fire in the fireplace and grunts and sucking sounds coming from the sofa. But tonight the whole house was dark. And, I noticed when I walked in, cold. The place never gets warm. It can be 80 degrees outside and it’s still sweater weather in here. And Berkeley sees 80 degrees maybe two days a year. Oboes.

  I made my way through the living room, up the stairs to the balcony, and around to Howard’s door. I could hear the ebb and flow of his breath. It comforted me, that reassurance of life, the communal rhythm I could slip into. I took off my clothes and left them on the floor. The cold air seared my skin. I needed a steaming bath. I’d never go to sleep shivering like this. My arms were shaking against my sides. I pressed my hands against my legs but I couldn’t stop the shaking. And somehow I couldn’t deal with the linear procedure of running the tub water, climbing in, washing …

  Howard and I don’t wake each other up when we come in late. We’d never get enough sleep if we did. But tonight I climbed into bed and pressed my icy body against his, feeling the warmth of his skin against mine. It didn’t cut the cold of my own flesh. I wrapped my arms around his back and pressed my face into the notch of his neck and felt him breathe, and felt myself breathing. And when he was awake enough to respond, he ran his lips across my cheek to my mouth. I opened my mouth and felt his tongue pushing in and I sucked hard, going with it till the passion blotted out my thoughts, blocked the awareness of his breathing, and mine, and ours, till I wasn’t even reminding myself that I was alive.

  “You’re still shivering,” Howard said afterward.

  “Don’t take it personally,” I said, laughing.

  “Wrong! Shows how little you know about men.”

  “Oh, no, not the California State Authority on Testostoral Behavior again. I—”

  “See, Jill, what you don’t realize is about St. Peter and fooling around.”

  “Howard, even I know enough about religion to be sure St. Peter didn’t, at all.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said dismissingly. Nothing so organized as religion had entered Howard’s childhood. “But all guys understand what the saint is talking about when he asks at the pearly gates, ‘How did you do?’ And you, Jill, could be responsible for damnation.”

  “At least you’ll be warm.” My tone of voice was off. I’d wanted to keep up the banter, to talk a little and let him go back to sleep. Six o’clock comes early,
a lot earlier than the sun in November.

  “Jeez, you’re really freezing.” He wrapped his arms tighter around me, but that only made my shivering more noticeable.

  “What happened?”

  I chose to answer that on the more superficial level. “We got down to the canyon floor and the asshole was gone.” Howard, of course, would have heard about the hostage operation; he’d want all the details. Normally I loved that. Getting into the meat of each other’s cases was almost as important as laughing in the same key. I could handle the details of the operation tonight. The deeper level I didn’t know that I could put into words. But I would talk to Howard for the same reason Madeleine Riordan kept me with her. I shivered again and desperately wished I could brace my cold feet against Madeleine’s desolation and push myself away. Instead I heard myself saying, “You know Madeleine Riordan?”

  Howard laughed. “No wonder you’re shivering if you’ve had a run-in with her.”

  “She’s dying,” I said before he could add something he’d feel awkward about later. “Her window overlooks the canyon. I was hunting for a witness. It happened she was it. Fortunately, she doesn’t seem to remember me from the Coco Arnero trial.”

  “Jill, that was nearly ten years ago. She’s punctured half the force since then.”

  I gave his hand a squeeze.

  Howard intertwined his fingers with mine. “I’ll bet you, Jill, there’s not one guy in the department who’s escaped her. They wouldn’t care if she weren’t so good at getting them.”

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be comforting me, not praising my erstwhile oppressor.”

  “Oops. Well, for what comfort it is, every guy I talked to, when they were willing to talk, said he came out of a hearing with her feeling like he’d been led down the garden path and knocked cold with a daisy. Never saw it coming; couldn’t believe it afterward. They’d say they were walking down from the stand shaking their heads and the judge and jury were still laughing. Make you feel better?” he asked, circling his arms around my ribs and pulling me back against his chest. “And the worse of it was they couldn’t say anything to a woman who was limping off with a cane.”