The Night Market

by Jonathan Moore

  He paused the recording again when Glenn called, and went out to pick up his meal. There was a light from beneath Mia’s door, and on an impulse he knocked. He didn’t hear her coming down the hall, didn’t hear anything from her apartment at all. If she’d come out, then she must have done it very quietly, because he’d never heard her front door open. He took the elevator down to the lobby, and paid the deliveryman. The couches were empty and so was the mailroom. There was no one behind the potted palm. Glenn looked up when he came to the security desk.

  “She go out a little while ago?”

  “She?”

  “Come on.”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Glenn said. “You came in together, and went up. And that’s the last I saw. Everything okay?”

  “It’s fine.”

  Back in his apartment, he restarted the playback and sat at his kitchen counter to eat. Everything he’d eaten since his dinner with Mia had tasted like cardboard. The uniform white cubes in his tagliatelle had the flavor of chicken, but lacked the texture of real meat. The top of the takeout box was quietly flashing with an LED boast that everything inside was organic and free range. That was an obvious lie; everything in the box had been hatched in a test tube and grown in a vat. On the plus side, at least no chicken had died to become this. He tossed the container into the trash and washed his hands.

  He didn’t know what to make of Mia. He’d knocked hard enough that she’d have woken, if she ever actually slept. Usually she was on her way to the door before he’d even had a chance to knock. Maybe she’d been in the bath. Or maybe she had some way of leaving her apartment without opening the front door, without walking past Glenn.

  He laid his hands on the table when he heard the next call.

  “Adam-Five-David, what’s your twenty?”

  “California Street, across from Grace.”

  “Proceed to four fifty-seven Filbert for a nine-eighteen. Complaining witness is in the house across the street, at four fifty-six A.”

  “Ten-four,” Houston said, and Carver heard the siren kick on before she finished transmitting.

  He stood up and went to his study, thinking of the radio code the dispatcher had just used: 918. Someone had heard a person screaming for help. He sat at his desk and pulled up a map of the city on his computer, zooming in to 457 Filbert Street. It was about a mile from Grace Cathedral, but Houston was driving with her sirens and flashers on. She must have hit air on some of the hills, because her next call was barely a minute later.

  “Adam-Five-David, we are ten-ninety-seven and will be ten-seven-I.”

  “Ten-four.”

  They had arrived at the scene and were exiting the vehicle to investigate. Carver stood up and began to pace in the study. It would probably be several minutes before their next call. Meanwhile, the dispatcher was busy with a dozen units from the Tenderloin to the Golden Gate Bridge. Outside the Fairmont Hotel, the crowd was still growing. There were reports of men in hooded black cloaks, women carrying lanterns and wearing masks. But the dispatcher couldn’t keep any units in the area. The night was too busy for it.

  “Adam-five-David,” Houston said. “There was no answer at the door at four fifty-seven Filbert. We are proceeding across the street. We’ll talk with the caller at four fifty-six A.”

  “Ten-four.”

  For the next five minutes, Carver stood behind his chair, gripping its back tightly while he waited. He stared at the computer screen, watching the seconds tick past. Five minutes turned to ten. He started to pace again, and then sat in his chair. The radio calls proceeded at the same relentless pace, the dispatcher refusing to tire and never getting confused. But Houston and Roper were off the air and out of the game.

  “Adam-Five-David ​—”

  Carver snapped back to attention.

  “—​we have an eight-oh-two at four fifty-seven Filbert,” Houston said. “We have spoken directly to the lieutenant at Homicide, and inspectors are ten-ninety-eight to our location.”

  “Adam-Five-David, ten-four. Do you require an ambulance?”

  “Can you call me on my cell?” Houston asked.

  “Give me the number.”

  Houston said it and the dispatcher read it back. Carver paused the recording and started to pace again. Whatever the dispatcher and Houston talked about on the phone, it wouldn’t be on the recording. Houston had either wanted to convey something too sensitive to go out over the air, or too complicated to explain without tying up the airwaves for the entire force. But she’d found a dead body, and was so sure it was dead that she’d called Homicide and hadn’t asked on the air for an ambulance. That wasn’t standard procedure, but Houston was a rookie. She must have spoken to Hernandez. He and Jenner were on their way now, maybe edging past the crowd surrounding the Fairmont, the Black Aria Ball imprinting itself on their memories.

  Whatever had happened to him that night was going to happen soon, but it probably wouldn’t go out on the radio.

  He restarted the audio, and then pulled up a street-view image of 457 Filbert. It was a beautifully kept house, set in a row that climbed the steepest block in San Francisco. It was striking, if for no other reason than what it must have cost. Carver could count on one hand the number of times he’d investigated murders in homes like this. But looking at it didn’t stir anything.

  “Adam-Five-David,” Houston said.

  She followed up with something else, but it was too garbled to catch. The dispatcher didn’t get it either.

  “Adam-Five-David, I am ten-two,” the dispatcher said. “Can you repeat?”

  Carver leaned closer to the speakers. The next transmission was scratchy, and there was wind. She was standing outside, talking on a handheld unit. She spoke slowly, carefully enunciating each word.

  “Homicide inspectors have arrived. They are on scene. We are at the front and back doors.”

  “Do you require assistance?”

  “Negative. Thank you.”

  After that, Houston and Roper disappeared again, and the dispatcher handled other calls. She sent three units to Pier 38 to respond to a sexual assault in progress. There was a drug overdose in a bar restroom in Chinatown. A 647b was in a loud fight with a man in an alley behind the Coburn Arms Hotel.

  Carver hadn’t carried a patrol radio and listened to these dispatches in years. It sounded as if the city and its people were sinking into an eternal night. But still the sun rose every morning, and they swept the glass off the streets and sprayed the blood off the sidewalks, so that by dusk the cycle of darkness could begin again.

  He went back to the kitchen, then remembered that he’d tossed his meal into the garbage. He made more coffee instead.

  Twenty-two minutes later, Adam-5-David made its final transmission of the night.

  “Dispatch, this is Adam-Five-David—do you copy?”

  “Go ahead, Adam-Five-David.”

  “Inspectors are in the house. They say they can take it from here. The eight-oh-two was a false alarm. Roper and I are no longer required at this location. Do you copy?”

  “Thank you, Adam-Five-David. Proceed to your original twenty at the Fairmont Hotel and give me a ten-thirteen on that crowd.”

  “Will do.”

  Carver stopped the recording and backed it up, then played this exchange twice more. He thought about Houston’s confident radio manner compared to the unsure voice in this last transmission. The woman talking now wasn’t used to using a police radio. The signal was weak and the recording was distorted, but Carver was sure of one thing. The woman who made the last call wasn’t Houston.

  Carver listened to the rest of the recording, but Houston and Roper had disappeared into the night’s static. They never checked in with dispatch to state their arrival at the new location. They never reported on the crowd outside the Fairmont Hotel. After thirty minutes, the dispatcher made the first of four requests for Adam-5-David’s status. They went unanswered. Finally, after an hour had passed, Houston’s patrol sergeant came on the ai
r and asked dispatch to call his cell. He must have gotten the first email from Houston, telling him that she was at a hospital waiting to speak with a witness. He’d want to let dispatch know the unit wasn’t lost or in trouble, but would also want to keep it off the air so that his officers’ odd behavior wouldn’t be broadcast to the entire force.

  It was a good move on the sergeant’s part, handling it quietly like that. But Carver saw the jam Houston was in. If she and Roper were lucky, they could convince their sergeant to chalk it up as a rookie mistake. Once Houston listened to the dispatch audio, she’d know everything the sergeant had heard, and she could make up a story that fit. She and Roper might get a dressing-down, or screwed on their shifts, maybe assigned to new partners. But they might not get suspended. A patrol sergeant was so busy trying to hold a lid on the nightly chaos that a mistake like this might never get dealt with at all.

  He looked up at the window. Gray morning light was pushing at the edge of his wooden blinds. He made a new audio file, using his notes to grab the relevant exchanges from Fremont’s memory card. When he’d sent it to his phone, he went into the kitchen and knelt at the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a bourbon and took it to bed. He didn’t have as many bottles of Van Winkle as Fremont had of Kinclaith, but maybe he just drank it faster.

  14

  THIS TIME, MIA opened her door before he even knocked. She was dressed already, in black jeans and boots, and a cashmere shawl.

  “Can I come in a minute?”

  She stood back and held the door open for him.

  “Please,” she said. “I’ve put some things out already.”

  He could smell the scones in the oven as he walked in. On the kitchen counter, she’d laid out a pair of plates, and a pot of tea. There was a small dish of marmalade, and a bit of butter. He stood looking at it, and then turned to her.

  “Mia ​—”

  “It’s not much.”

  “I was going to tell you not to come tonight,” he said. “That’s what I knocked on your door to say.”

  She came around him, pulled out a stool and held the back for him while he sat. He looked down. Next to his plate was a manila file folder, and it was open.

  “And I was going to try to talk you out of it,” she said. “But maybe I don’t have to.”

  A thin stack of documents lay inside the folder. The top page was a glossy photograph, but it was nothing he could place. White and gray blurs evaporated like ghosts into a black background. It was an x-ray, maybe. Some kind of medical scan. She’d written notes on the open side of the folder’s cover.

  “I’ll get that out of your way.”

  She closed the folder and slid it to the other side of the counter. There was nothing furtive in her movement. Her face showed no guilt or dismay that he’d seen the papers. She was just making room for their breakfast. She reached across him and poured their tea, then went to the oven and brought out the scones.

  “What was that?” Carver asked.

  “The folder?”

  He watched her set the baking sheet on the stovetop. She took a scone with a pair of tongs and set it on his plate, then served another to herself.

  “That’s tomography, from Sloan Kettering,” she said. “It’s why I left New York and came here.”

  “Those are your scans?”

  “Mine,” she said. “Right in here.”

  She tapped her temple, then came around the counter and sat. She took a butter knife and cut her scone in half, shaking her fingers afterward.

  “Watch out,” she said. “I should’ve taken them out earlier, let them cool on a rack. They’re really hot.”

  “Mia—are you all right?”

  He put his hand on her shoulder and she turned to him, lowering her eyes. He thought, later, that if he had leaned toward her just a little more, if he had carried the momentum instead of holding back, she would have come all the way to him.

  “I’m all right, Ross,” she said. “I’ve got to come to terms with it—with several things. You probably knew that.”

  He moved a strand of hair from her face.

  “You can tell me, if you’re ready,” he said. “Maybe I could help.”

  “You already are,” she said. “But let me come tonight. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Tell me what you found on the recording,” she said. “I know you were up a long time, listening to it.”

  He cut his scone in half, and breathed the steam that rose from it. The last time he’d met someone who could bake, he’d been a patrol officer. As green as Houston. He took a dab of the butter onto his knife and spread it on the scone, and then topped it with marmalade. He wasn’t sure, but he guessed she’d made the marmalade herself, and maybe the butter, too.

  He put his knife down, took a sip of his tea, and told her everything.

  The Irish Bank was in the alley behind their apartment building. Before they stepped inside, Mia looked at the Gaelic street signs bolted to the white brick wall, at the outdoor tables warmed by gas heaters. There were white lights interwoven with the vines on the trellises. Then she turned to look up the alley at their building. Cast-iron fire escapes zigzagged down its brick walls. He could see her heavily curtained windows.

  “You didn’t know this was here?”

  “No idea,” she said.

  Carver opened the door for her and they stepped into the pub. It wasn’t as crowded as it might have been. There were a dozen men and women at the bar, and twice that scattered at the tables and booths. Carver looked across to the confessional, which must have come directly from a Catholic church before its installation here. After some refurbishing, it held a small booth behind its purple curtain. A sign hung next to its door: RESERVED.

  Carver led Mia to the bar, and the woman behind it came over.

  “How you been?” he said. He tilted his head toward the confessional. “Jenner called?”

  She nodded. “All yours,” she said. She turned to Mia and examined her with some curiosity; he’d never come here with anyone but Jenner. “I know what he wants, but ​—”

  “Whatever he’s having.”

  “Go on,” the bartender said, to Carver. “Confess to each other. I’ll bring it.”

  “Thanks, Cathleen. Add one for Jenner and our other friend.”

  They went to the confessional. Carver held the curtain aside for Mia and watched as she slid in. He started to sit on the bench opposite her, but she motioned him around.

  “With me,” she said. “I’ve never met Jenner.”

  “All right.”

  He sat next to her on the narrow bench, her hip pressing against his. With the curtain closed, the light in the booth came only from the small window of yellow frosted glass. He could smell the cedar in her hair and the jasmine rising from the warmth of her throat. She took his hand and turned it over on the table so that his palm faced up. She spread out his fingers and traced the lines on his palm.

  “You were working the case of the singer—the girl who got murdered.”

  “That’s right.”

  The girl’s name was Hadley, but that was just a stage name. They’d never learned her real name, and she hadn’t been on any biometric database that Carver or the ME could access. As far as Carver could tell, she’d been living hand to mouth on cash from her singing gigs. No bank account, no family, no boyfriend. It was as if she’d swum ashore from some other country and had invented herself in San Francisco: Hadley Hardgrave, the nightclub singer. Her past was a mystery, and her future was gone. Her whole life might have taken place in the three months she wandered through the bars.

  “They’d cut her face,” Mia said. “While she was still alive. After she bled to death, they cut her in half.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He’d told her about the autopsy, and he could tell it bothered her. She wasn’t like Samantha, in the San Lung Lounge, who’d been as fascinated by the darkness as she had been afraid. For Mia, it was simple terror. But stil
l, she wanted to talk about it. She was interested in Hadley Hardgrave, and that interested him.

  “The same person might’ve killed the man Jenner thought he’d talked to?” she asked.

  “Yes. Patrick Wong.”

  “And his girlfriend, and the neighbor who might’ve witnessed it.”

  “Some of that wasn’t reported. The cutting, especially. That’s why we think it might be the same person who did it.”

  “And you think it’s Johnny Wong.”

  “I think Johnny killed Hadley. That puts him in my sights for Patrick and the other two.”

  “Does that have anything to do with what happened Thursday night?”

  Carver shook his head. “Whatever it was, by the time it happened, Patrick had been dead a month. And Hadley was dead maybe two weeks longer than that.”

  “Jenner remembered meeting Patrick in Chinatown,” Mia said. “But it was a dream, right? We’ll call it a dream. But we could also call it a hallucination ​—”

  “What Hernandez called it.”

  “Or we could call it a suggestion,” Mia said. “But for now we’ll just say it was a dream. We know he was dreaming because it couldn’t have happened. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So why would he have dreamed about that?” Mia asked. “Of all the things he might’ve dreamed about?”

  “Maybe it was on his mind,” Carver answered. “It’s not all that odd—you dream about the things that take up the space in your day.”

  “Maybe,” Mia said, though Carver could tell she wasn’t buying it. “If he hadn’t had that dream, would you have pushed so hard? Would you have found Joe and the girl, and then the liquor supply company, and then Patrick and the other bodies?”

  “We’d have found them sometime.”

  “But would you have gotten suspended?”

  The curtain drew back, letting the barroom’s light shine into the booth. He thought Mia would pull her hand away, but she didn’t. Then Cathleen was there, with a tray. She leaned in and put down coasters, then set four pints of Harp on the table.