by Hannah Jayne
“You’re the new girl?” she asked.
“Well, no. Not yet. I just have an interview. Is Elizabeth here?” I looked at my watch. “I was supposed to meet her at—”
“You’re the new girl. I’m Avery. Here,” Avery leaned under the counter and tossed a blue smock at me. “This is yours.”
I glanced up and noticed that underneath the Dead Milkmen, Eat Your TV!, and A is for Anarchy buttons, Avery was wearing a similar smock over her black mesh shirt and just-past-her-butt-length plaid skirt. Her ensemble was completed with over-the-knee striped stockings and shoes with soles the size of loaves of bread. I estimated without them, she’d be about nose-height to me.
“So, I’m hired?” I asked.
Avery blew a bubble and snapped it, shrugged. “Guess so. Elizabeth had to study for a final. She told me to show you the ropes.”
“Oh, okay.”
Avery looked again at the smock in my hands.
“Right,” I said, dropping my briefcase and pulling the hideous thing over my head. Avery leaned forward and clipped a red plastic name tag to my smock. It read TRAINEE in big white letters.
“Excellent,” I muttered under my breath.
“Your breaks will be at ten and two, and you can take lunch from twelve to twelve-thirty. You need to vacate the break room between twelve-thirty and one o’clock because that’s my lunch and I have to meditate.”
Avery tried to pin me with a glare, the brown of her eyes picking up the faint sparkle of her heavy dark eyeliner. “Got it?”
“Sure.” I nodded, my eyes wandering to the hunk of quartz suspended from a leather tie around her neck. She fingered it, tapped it with her black-painted fingernails.
“Do you know about the healing power of crystals?” she asked me in her bored, nasally voice. “They are especially good for keeping away evil. There’s a lot of evil in this town, you know.”
You mean beyond the rows of size-twenty-four flower-printed rayon pants? I wanted to ask. Instead I said, “Evil, right. Noted.” And tried to keep a straight face.
Avery blinked at me. “You seem like someone who is closed to the occult. I can read your disbelief all around you; your aura is white, cloudy. You’re lacking a certain consciousness. You have mistrust. People like me”—she closed her bruised-looking eyelids—“are at one with all beings in all worlds.”
I thought of the hordes of centaurs, demons, vampires, zombies, dragons, and banshees I had processed in my time at the UDA. I thought of the blood bags in the office fridge, of my evenings spent chaining up Mr. Sampson before nightfall. I looked around the swarm of people’s pants, and wanted to cry.
Chapter Thirteen
I had managed to make it through my first day at People’s Pants unscathed. I was still mad at Nina and Alex and wavering between giving my grandmother a piece of my mind if she knew about my Satan-as-dad bloodline and breaking it to her gently if she didn’t. Either way I wussed out and hid in my bedroom after work, eyes wide open until I heard Nina come in and watch a few late-night episodes of The Nanny, murmuring to Vlad, who must have been with her. Eventually I fell asleep and the next morning I skipped out of the house (with my blue smock jammed in my purse) before Nina came out for breakfast.
My cell phone chirped as I navigated the stockroom, wrinkling my nose at the smell of dampness and unnatural fibers. I checked my phone’s readout, saw Nina’s name, and clicked the silence key, feeling a pang of anger tinged with sadness as I did so. I knew it wasn’t her fault that I was spending my afternoon knee deep in polyester rather than knee deep in hobgoblin slobber. I knew she was just doing what Dixon asked of her and she probably felt as miserable as I did, but I wasn’t ready to let go of my anger, especially when she went all goo-goo-eyed the second Dixon walked into the room. Nina called two more times and the phone buzzed once more. I was about to thumb the power-off button when I noticed that it was Alex calling. I palmed the phone for three rings before I decided to answer.
“Hello?”
“Are you feeling better?”
Any sense of love or calm I felt from Alex zipped out of the phone and fell flat on the floor. I felt my nostrils flare. “Did you call me just to check up on me? Because as a matter of fact, I’m feeling way better. I’m eating bonbons while reclining on the couch. I’m considering throwing a pot roast in the oven a little later. Does that suit you?”
“Actually, no. I know what happened the last time you tried to cook pot roast.”
I stamped my foot against the amusement in his voice.
“So you’re still mad at me.”
I made a sound halfway between a grunt and a growl.
“Well, fine. All I need you to do is listen, anyway. So, what I said about Ophelia. I really think she has something bad up her—”
“The cellular customer you are trying to reach currently hates you. Please try again later.” I slammed the phone shut and jammed it in my smock pocket the same time Avery came into the stockroom, lounging in the stairway, studying me.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
I started to restack the heap of pants I had knocked over. “Yeah, I just need to get these out to the floor.”
“No,” she said, gesturing to the smock pocket. “Everything okay with your boyfriend?”
I clamped my jaws shut. “He is not my boyfriend.”
Avery shrugged. “Whatever. It’s clock-out time.”
I followed her to the break room to clock out and gather my belongings, but before I could leave Avery stopped me at the front door, the keys to People’s Pants dangling from a fluorescent pink, squishy cord wound around her wrist. Her purple eyes flashed over my purse.
“What?” I asked.
“We need to do a check before any employee leaves,” she said. “It’s company policy.”
I looked incredulously at our stock. “You think I would steal pants?”
Avery shrugged again—seemingly her standard answer to most questions. I blew out a sigh and handed over my purse. She poked around with a dutiful sense of disinterest and then handed it back to me.
“Who checks yours?” I asked.
She held up a tiny wristlet, big enough for a bus pass (if you folded it long-wise) and a tube of mascara.
“I don’t like people pawing through my stuff.”
By the time I got to my car I was fuming again and the parking ticket flopping jauntily on my windshield did little to lighten my mood. I looked around my gritty surroundings. Though much of China Basin had been rehabbed with the development of the ballpark and a clutch of waterfront lofts, People’s Pants and its industrial neighbors seemed to have been forgotten in the effort. The funky charm of the city was choked out here by aluminum door frames and plate-glass windows pinned with aging iron bars. The nearby waterfront was dotted with palm trees and streetlights, but back here, the ocean fog hung heavy and dark. Even the employee parking lot—a slab of gravel underneath the 101 Freeway—looked grey and sad, cast in shadows from the highway.
I drove home with the radio cranked up, but even the jaunty beat of the pop star du jour did little to soften my bad mood. I was cursing under my breath and had given way to obscene hand gestures by the time I pulled into underground parking.
Hmm. Maybe I did have a little devil in me.
I stepped into the apartment vestibule and Will was there, holding an enormous white Styrofoam Jamba Juice cup to his lips, his other arm lost up to his elbow in the apartment 3C mailbox. The edges of his wide grin poked out on either side of his cup.
“Hey there,” he said kindly.
I yanked open my own little silver mailbox and sifted through the handful of weekly mailers and twenty-percent-off coupons. “Hey,” I said without meeting his eyes.
“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
I looked over Will’s left shoulder at the grey sky outside and then back at Will, one eyebrow raised. He looked slightly sheepish. “Okay, so I’m not great at making small talk.”
�
�And I’m still not entirely sure you’re not a stalker.”
He retrieved a handful of mail—I noticed a few air bills and the red-and-white border of par avion envelopes—and slammed the mailbox door. He raised his Jamba Juice to me and spun on his heel. “Nice talking to you.”
I stood grumpily in the hallway, tearing my junk mail into violent shreds, then dumped the whole handful into recycling and climbed into the elevator.
I pushed open my apartment door and dropped my things in the hall, crouching down to scoop up ChaCha and let her lick my face and wag her little puppy tail spastically. I started to feel better after I showered off the People’s Pants stench, tossed my cell phone into my sock drawer, and ordered a pizza from Mr. Pizza Man. I was dressed in an oversized pair of Giants flannel pants—little orange and black hats scattered all over my legs—and a floppy, thigh-length T-shirt when the doorbell rang and ChaCha went barreling toward it. She jumped up and down at the door, pressing her nose against the frame to get a good pizza-whiff. I grabbed a twenty out of my purse and met the pizza man at the door.
“Oh,” I said when I pulled the door open. “Mr. Matsura. Sorry.” I patted my damp, unbrushed hair. “I thought you were the pizza man.”
Mr. Matsura smiled, his lips pressing his cheeks into round pink apples. “Nonsense,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You look lovely. And I’m sorry to bother you at your suppertime. It’s just that—would you mind helping me with something? I feel a little like an old coot asking you, but do you know how to tape-record a program on the new recorder?”
The local phone company had been around recently offering great deals and free DVRs if you were willing to switch companies. Nina and I weren’t until we learned we could tape four shows at once.
That was six days ago, and we had approximately fifty-seven hours of Project Runway and Criminal Minds between us.
“Of course I can help you, Mr. M. Let me just leave a note for the pizza man to knock on your door.”
I deposited ChaCha into her dog bed—after she got an appreciative head scratch from Mr. Matsura—and scrawled a note to the pizza man, sticking it to my front door with a bit of scotch tape.
“Okay, show me to your DVR.”
Mr. Matsura handed over the remote control tentatively. “Are you certain you know how to do this? Because I can call the fellow from AT&T. Or ask the super.”
I rolled my eyes good-naturedly. “Mr. Matsura! Your show will probably be off the air by the time you get the super up here. It’s easy; let me show you.”
* * *
I blinked, my eyes working hard to focus in the dim light. Each time my eyelids fluttered a sharp pain pierced my skull, shooting a dagger-like ache through my eyes. I groaned and pressed my palms flat against my temples; I was surprised to find my fingers sticky. The pounding in my head intensified and I started to make out the things in front of me—an expanse of white, thin blades, an awkward shadow. I was lying on my back, staring up at a ceiling fan, my shoulder blades grinding into the hard wood floor underneath me. I pressed myself to my feet and wobbled a bit, shuffling to get my balance, squinting against the pain in my head that continued to thunder, growing more intense with every breath. I heard a loud thump and I whirled around when the door behind me splintered and blew open. I stumbled backward, shocked, falling hard on my backside, elbows on the floor.
“Sophie Lawson, freeze!”
But I wasn’t about to move. I was bolted to the floor, my eyes fixed on what had tripped me. He lay there, his eyes fixed on mine. They were cold, hard, unblinking. He was dead.
Mr. Matsura’s head was lolled to the side, his mouth hanging slightly open, lips ashen.
“Oh my God,” I heard myself whisper. I wanted to reach out and touch him, to help him. He couldn’t be dead; we had just spoken this afternoon.
“Mr. Matsura?”
The officer who had kicked open the door made his way to me now and roughly shoved a meaty hand under my arm, yanking me up.
“Oh, thank God you’re here.” I looked back at Mr. Matsura, a sob choking in my throat. “Mr. Matsura—we need to call an ambulance.”
“The coroner is on his way.”
“The coroner? Are you sure?”
“What? You don’t trust your own handiwork?”
“What? What are you—”
The officer—whose name badge read Houston—pulled my arms behind me and snapped a pair of cold metal cuffs around my wrists.
“My—oh my God. You think that I did this?”
I glanced back at Mr. Matsura lying silently on his braided rug and felt the tears stinging my eyes. “I didn’t do this! I would never hurt anyone—especially not Mr. Matsura. He was my neighbor!”
Officer Houston’s radio squawked on his shoulder and he leaned his angled chin, muttering, “Yeah, come up for the body.”
The body.
Mr. Matsura was now the body.
My stomach heaved. “I didn’t do this,” I whispered.
Officer Houston looked me full in the face now and I noticed that though he seemed young, his eyes were sunken and dark and his mouth was heavily lined with lips that pulled down at the corners in a natural frown. He regarded me disdainfully.
“If you didn’t do this, someone went a long way to make it seem like you did.”
“That’s it! That’s it—I’ve been framed, I—” I stopped in midsentence, my cuffed wrists raised, my palms facing me. “Oh,” I said, my eyes focusing on the dark red streaked across my palms, the rivulets of color seeping over my fingers. “That’s blood. I have blood on my hands.” I stared down in disbelief, seeing the heavy streaks of color on my jeans, the splatter on the toes of my white sneakers.
Officer Houston pushed me down in a kitchen chair and I slumped, then backed away when I noticed the bloody trail on the clean wood surface of the table. The trail of blood led to a kitchen knife, its blade hanging over the edge of the table, blood drying on it. I gulped.
“Do you recognize that knife, Ms. Lawson?”
“It’s mine,” I whispered.
The next few hours passed by in a daze. I was shuffled down the stairs of my apartment building and slammed into the backseat of a squad car. I stared out the window, watching the rain-slicked city race by as I was carted to the police station. It was dark, but I didn’t know what time. I didn’t know what day it was. I looked down again at my white T-shirt, my blood-caked jeans—I didn’t even remember changing out of my Giants pajama bottoms and T-shirt.
I scooched forward on the car seat, leaned as close as I dared to the plastic-holed divider. “Do you know Alex Grace?” I asked Officer Houston as he drove, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on the butt of his shotgun. He didn’t answer me, just smoothly pulled around a slow-moving minivan and hit the gas.
“Sir? Excuse me?”
I saw Officer Houston’s chest go as he blew out a long sigh. “Yeah, I know Detective Grace. Why?”
An immense feeling of relief washed over me. “He’s my friend. He’ll tell you that I didn’t do this. There is someone after me. Her name is Ophelia. Ophelia—well, she doesn’t have a last name, at least I don’t think she does. Anyway, she did it; Alex—Detective Grace—he’ll corroborate my story. Can you just call him, please? Or, don’t I get a phone call?”
Officer Houston turned the wheel and maneuvered the squad car into an open space in the police department lot. He opened the back door and clamped his hand on my shoulder, sliding me out.
“You’re going to call him, right? Or we could just go see him. He’s probably in his office.”
Officer Houston pulled me close to him. We were nearly nose to nose and I could see the grit of his yellowed teeth, smell the faint odor of nicotine and sweat on his collar. “Look, girlie. The only thing I hate more than someone who would take advantage of an elderly individual is someone who thinks they have some sort of special privilege because they know someone on the force. I don’t care if your best friend is the Queen of fucking Sheb
a; this isn’t a parking ticket. You’re not getting out of this one.”
“I’m not trying to get out of this,” I wailed as Officer Houston shuffled me toward the door. “I want this person caught as much as you do. She’s evil. You don’t understand what’s at stake!”
Officer Houston rolled his eyes and kept walking, shoving me lightly in front of him. “Let me guess: I should set you free, and you’ll bring the real killer to justice.”
“Um, yes, actually.”
“You and OJ, sweetie pie.”
Officer Houston guided me into the police station vestibule and I looked longingly at the elevators that had so often shuttled me down to the safety and comfort of the Underworld. I clamped my eyes shut, imploring the elevator doors to open, to spit out Nina or Vlad or even Pierre—anyone who could help me.
“Can I call someone?” I asked, my voice sounding small.
Officer Houston just stared at me as he picked up the phone at the registry desk and punched a few numbers. He held the phone to my ear and I felt my lower lip quiver when I heard the recorded voice on the line.
“The customer you have tried to call”—a break, and then a gruff-sounding Alex inserting his name—“has left the calling area. Please try again later.” There was a click, then the drone of the dial tone as it wailed mournfully on the line.
“Looks like your detective buddy took the day off.”
“She planned that.”
Officer Houston’s smile was patronizing. “I’m sure she did.”
I considered calling Nina and then reminded myself that even if I weren’t mad at her, asking a vampire to bail me out of jail for murder was a flawed plan. Bringing Nina to the police station would draw unnecessary attention to the Underworld and plus, she was a vampire—which would also bring unnecessary attention.
But I was desperate.
“Can I call someone else?”
Officer Houston just shook his head, threaded his hand underneath my arm, and led me to booking.
My eyes were wide and moist and my throat was dry as I was strip-searched, fingerprinted, and subjected to three rather unflattering mug shots.