For Your Eyes Only

by Sandra Antonelli

  He rolled his eyes and shrugged. “She’s too everything but what I want.”

  “You know, your Anthony Hopkins isn’t as crappy as your Jimmy Stewart. What is this thing you have for that guy, anyway?” she said.

  “He made some very fine films. And I see what you’re doing. Don’t change the subject. Back to quid pro quo. What gifts did your parents bestow upon you? There’s something about you I can’t quite figure out, a mystery I can’t put my finger on, some sort of top secret you’re hiding about yourself.”

  He watched as she took a breath and held it for a moment, cautiously. When Willa exhaled she said, “I look like my mother, but think like my father.”

  “And that means what? You have an innate gift for driving sixteen wheelers? You know all the words to ‘Convoy’?”

  Willa shook a cookie at him. “The best way to explain it is to say my dad, sister and I share a condition called synesthesia. It’s when one sense is simultaneously perceived by another sense. My perceptions join together. Letters, words and numbers have colors. Some music has a taste, but only when played on reed instruments. My dad swears letters have personalities. My sister says numbers do. For him S is blue and crotchety. To me S is just blue, azure blue, 3 is green and sounds like a cross between Mozart and Brahms. It can be an amazing memory tool that isn’t exactly what you’d call photographic. I remember dates and formulas and words and the periodic table of elements like it’s in stereo, and living color. It’s patterns. I’m good with finding patterns.”

  “That’s fascinating.”

  “Mr Spock-fascinating or weird-fascinating?”

  “Both.” John grinned and took two cookies for himself. “You’re really smart then?”

  Willa pffted and looked at the remaining Nutter Butter crumbs on the floor. “I don’t know about that. I just remember things a little differently. I guess you could say the combined perception has probably given me an edge in learning math and physics, but synesthesia is an inherited trait like hair color.”

  It was amazing—one of those wholly masculine things: John polished off both cookies in one bite. He brushed his chin clean with his fingers.

  Willa wanted to tend to his crumbs too, only with her mouth.

  He swept cookie dust from his shirt. “My sister is nothing like either one of my parents or me,” he said. “She’s got black hair and light brown eyes. The rest of us are green-eyed blonds or blue-eyed redheads. I used to tell Kathleen she was adopted, which always bugged the crap out of her and still does. You’ll meet her one day and, when you do, do me a favor and ask her if we have the same birth parents.” His grin was a little devilish.

  “So your niece Sofia, I gather she looks like her father then?”

  John shook his head, “Thor, Sofia’s father, is Danish. Her brother is a mini-replica of Thor—yeah, I know, Thor—anyhow, Harrison’s him, right down to the gravelly voice, which is pretty weird on a kid. Do you like children, Queenie?”

  “I think I’m beyond the point of having them now.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting you have a kid. I just wanted to know if you like ‘em.”

  “I don’t exactly fit the bill for mother material or even step—”

  A noise, one very much like the red alert warning from the Starship Enterprise, whoop-whooped from John’s phone. He unclipped it from his belt to check the number and scrunched up his nose. “Sorry. Colleague is being pesky. I’ve got to meet him at the station and get out to Deer Trap Mesa.” He grinned and clipped his cell back to his belt as she pushed the shopping cart a little farther along the aisle.

  Opposite the shelves of cookies were rows of ready-to-use frosting and cake mixes. On the lower shelf, the one beneath Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines, was the cut-price Lily brand corn muffin mix. Willa caught sight of the art deco rendition of the white flower that emblazoned the grassy green box. Something unsettling stood out on the box, besides the ugly blossom: muffins—muffins as in the ‘basket of’ that Farley sent and Adams polished off this morning. Multi-hued print on a little card popped into Willa’s mind.

  Thinking of you and your lovely hair…

  Willa stopped rolling the trolley. The tulips, the basket and Farley … freakin’ Farley had sent her the pot of stinky flowers. “Oh, lily muffins,” she mumbled.

  “If you want corn muffin mix, Jiffy is better than Lily. The secret is, Jiffy has extra lard, which makes for a moister muffin,” John said.

  Willa peered up at him, one eye squinting. “Lard?”

  “Yes, lard.” He scratched his head and squinted back.

  “Tell me something, John. Would you ever send me flowers?”

  He kept on squinting. Willa wondered if he was trying out a Clint Eastwood impression. “I’d considered it,” he said, sounding like John, not Clint, “but I couldn’t decide on what kind. I know tulips are out.”

  While it was repugnant to know the lilies had come from Farley, Willa was weirdly elated because the stinking blooms had nothing to do with John. She stopped squinting, took another cookie from the open package, and shoved it into her mouth to hide her jubilation. Full of glee and peanut butter cookie, she rolled the cart forward and ran into the bottom edge of the cake mix shelf.

  “You really have had too much caffeine, Queenie. You’re all over the place. Your mind is as erratic as your shopping buggy driving. Are you allergic to flowers or something?”

  Willa shrugged, smiling, mouth full of peanut butter and crumbs. “I don’t like lilies.”

  “No tulips or lilies. Noted and filed away—for later, when you have time for proper courting.”

  “You need a hat to tip or a brim to touch when you say stuff like that.”

  He commandeered the cart. “I’ve got a baseball cap out in my car. I can say it again when we take the groceries out. Okay, so, for the same file, where do you stand on chocolate?”

  “Dark, with or without nuts, except macadamias.”

  Nodding, he paused, then turned in the other direction and grabbed two boxes of devils’ food cake. “I know what I’m making for dessert tomorrow night—and you’ll never know it’s out of a box,” he said. “Is it all right if I come to dinner tomorrow, considering it’s at my house and all?”

  Willa crossed to the other shelf and pulled down another package of Nutter Butters. She put them in the basket. “Did you want to come for dinner at your house?”

  John shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’m trying not to be pushy, to give you time to make time, so you have time to come to dinner with Lesley and Dominic. You have the time to come to dinner, don’t you? Yeah, you will. He’s your buddy, so you’ll make time for him, even if you can’t make time for me, right?” As soon as they came out of his mouth, the words hit the linoleum-tiled floor with a thud that reverberated in John’s head. There was a burning in his stomach, as if he’d swallowed a lit wooden match

  Her brow wrinkled, her jaw shifted from side to side as if she were chewing words she didn’t want to say.

  John looked heavenward for a moment. He hadn’t realized his subconscious had struck against a surface that would burst into flame. “I did not mean for that to come out sounding the way it did, all jealous and such.” He said, trying like hell to hack up the flaming match in the pit of his stomach before it made its way out. Not that it did any good. The same thing happened to Mickey Mouse when he was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Mickey had tried to dispose of the Sorcerer’s broom. He’d chopped away at it with an axe, but the little bits came back to life. In John’s gut, hundreds of tiny burning matchsticks squiggled and danced like the broom in Fantasia.

  “You’re jealous of Dominic?”

  He exhaled what felt like hot air. “Maybe what I am is a wee bit … envious.”

  “Just a wee bit envious?” She nodded, pursed her lips and looked down into the shopping cart before she lifted her gaze to meet his again. She looked so somber, on the verge of disappointment. “Do you have a problem with me having a man as my best friend?�
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  More heated air traveled out his nostrils. “No, not at all. Why should I? My best friend is Lesley.” Hands out of his pockets, he took another peanut butter cookie from the open package, but resisted the urge to shove it into his stupid cake-hole. Instead, he raised it to his lips to hide an irrational and childish desire to pout. “It’s just … he knows you,” he said, behind the cover of cookie, “and I want to know you. I want to know everything about you, like he does. He’s had the time to get to know you, and it’s not fair, you know, it’s… Damn, what am I, five?” He crammed the whole cookie into his stupid mouth.

  She smiled. “You know, you’re really cute when you’re flustered.”

  “Cute. Great. I’m so lucky. I’m nice and cute. How very endearingly boyish of me. What’s next—sweet? Well, at the risk of burying myself in a big steaming pile of wholesome, I take my mother to mass on Sundays. Would you like to come to church with us? Do you think you’d have time for that?”

  Willa felt her eyebrows arch. “You want me to meet your mother?”

  “Yeah, meet the parent. Yes, but if you don’t want to, if you won’t come for me, come for the coffee and doughnuts afterwards.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I have a meeting with Tom Mitchell, the man you met last night.”

  “You’d pass up consecrated wine and crullers to meet with that guy?”

  When she started laughing, he moved towards her, pausing a few inches away. The shelf stocked with Nabisco and Pepperidge Farm goodies was behind her, the shopping cart to her right, while John flanked her from the left. His eyes locked on her and his hand reached out as his lips parted. A tremor of anticipation crept up Willa’s neck and her heart did a pirouette. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

  His fingers touched the sleeve of her jacket, passing her elbow to slip behind her back. She waited for the weight of his empty palm to press her into her spine. She waited for his mouth to alight on hers. She waited.

  And waited.

  “A nice guy would pay for half of these,” he said, biting into the peanut-shaped cookie he’d taken from the seat of the shopping cart, “but I’m not that nice.

  12

  Situated at the dead end of a residential area, Deer Trap Mesa got its name from the small game pit ancient man had carved out of soft tuff. John and Duncan Ishimaru were careful on the stone trail that was slippery with remaining patches of snow and ice. They made their way towards the narrow, prehistoric rock stairs on the west side of the cavity and climbed down to the flat, natural crossing where the animal trap lay. The old hole was easy to miss, especially if one was unfamiliar with the trail, or if, as now, it was half-hidden by a fallen tree and a snowdrift. Shaded from the spring afternoon sunshine, more snow and ice glazed sections of the plane that sloped gently into the canyons on either side of the mesa.

  Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, and into Barrancas Canyon, Ishimaru had to pee. Man, he was taking forever to get down to business. Some guys couldn’t piss with anyone watching. John figured Ishimaru was one of those dudes, so he left him amid the cottonwood trees, and made his way to a smooth boulder hugged by a bank of snow as white as Queenie’s hair.

  He’d been a ‘transition man’ before, and it was a role he played well. While he wasn’t into one-night stands, he excelled at the casual, no-strings-for-a-couple-of-weeks thing … but this was different. Queenie was different. He felt that right to the tips of his toes. This was all about time and place, but as right as the place had seemed last night, as perfect as it had felt, even with all the interruptions, it had not been the right time for what he really wanted. She’d pointed that out too. Then there was now. Thinking about a when and where situation with Queenie, while standing at the bottom of a canyon crime scene—possible crime scene—wasn’t the right time either. On top of that, as with any probable murder, he really should have been thinking motive and opportunity.

  Motive and opportunity.

  Brother, he’d had plenty of motive and opportunity last night, and that quiver he felt low in his gut? Yeah, that was a stir of longing, real longing he hadn’t experienced since he didn’t know when. He was on the job, re-scouting a ‘possible crime scene’, longing for a woman who could give him minuscule bits of time to explore the potential that was plainly evident.

  Get a grip, Tilbrook.

  He chastised himself and scanned the trail ahead. They were just outside the perimeter of where the body had been found. He knew this area well. Having been a local since the age of eleven, he knew the nooks and crannies, the places where the local kids went to drink beer and smoke dope. The ones with cars preferred driving up into the Jemez Mountains behind Los Alamos. The ones without cars liked places they could walk or bike to. Guaje Pines, the town’s cemetery, was popular, as were a number of the small canyons that surrounded Los Alamos. Deer Trap Mesa and Barrancas Canyon, where the body of the still-unidentified man had been found, were very easy to access. Walkers and hikers loved the location because the trailhead for Deer Trap Mesa sat at the tidy dead end of Barranca Road. Despite a heavy line of piñons, ponderosas, and scrub oaks, the homes that hugged the canyon rim and ran along Navajo Road were visible from the trail and the bottom of the canyon floor.

  John took an apple and a small pair of binoculars from the little daypack he carried. Apple between his teeth, he raised the binoculars and scanned the houses at the top of the canyon. When they finished down here, he and Ishimaru would go door-to-door, asking questions, handing out cards. A couple of homes sprouted from El Nido and a few more stretched out at the end of Totavi. There were the places that ran out along Los Pueblos, the street Lesley and Dominic lived on.

  He looked around at the pockmarked, rising walls of the canyon. The same kind of tuff, the soft volcanic stone found on the body, made up the trail and rock formations of Deer Trap Mesa itself. The victim had struck his head on that rock several times on the way down or he’d been hit by the same kind of rock before he’d been thrown into the canyon.

  John crunched his apple. It was sweet, and juice ran down his chin. He sat on a big rock and tucked the binoculars back into his daypack. Leaning back on one elbow, he ate the rest of the fruit and waited for Ishimaru to finish peeing. “Hey, Duncan, you all right over there?”

  “Just a little zipper situation,” Ishimaru said in a sheepish tone.

  “You catch skin or cloth? Because there’s no way I’m helping you with skin.”

  “Very funny. I couldn’t get it down and now I can’t get it up.”

  “I’m sure your wife is very disappointed about that, you being newlyweds and all.”

  “You know what I mean. Sheesh.” Ishimaru shuffled over, holding on to his crotch. “The fly’s all bunched together with my boxers. You don’t happen to have a safety pin or something in your little pack there, do you, Detective?”

  “Nope.”

  Ishimaru jerked on the zipper. “Hey, would you mind?”

  “Yes I would. Take them off.”

  “What?”

  “Take them off. It’ll be easier to see where the zip’s getting caught. Maybe the teeth are misaligned.”

  “I’d take them off, but I can’t get them off. I have to get the zipper down to take off the freakin’ pants, and the freakin’ zipper’s freakin’ stuck on the fabric.”

  “No big deal. So we canvass door to door with your dick hanging out. It’s not like anyone will notice.”

  “Thanks. Karma will get you for making cheap jokes about the size of my cock.” Ishimaru redoubled his efforts, yanking and pulling in all directions, grunting, his face turning pink.

  Sniff-sniff-sniff. John tossed the apple core aside. He stood and had a glance over each shoulder. “Oh, all right. I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”

  A gloss of sweat dappled Ishimaru’s brow. He dropped his hands and exhaled. “Do it. Do it now.”

  “I really appreciate your choice of pronoun.” John crouched down in front of the officer. “Had you said ‘do me’, I would
not be down here on my knees and, oh, please tell me I’m not looking at Ishimapubes.”

  “It’s thread. Jesus, Tilbrook, do you have to make this so hard?”

  “Duncan, Freud would have a field day with the slips of your tongue. Come to think of it, he’d find my last sentence pretty interesting too.”

  “Hey, hey, hey, be careful down there!”

  ”You want closure?”

  “Yes, and I’d also like to keep my balls intact.”

  “I didn’t touch your balls. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Yes. Please. God, let’s talk about something else. Tell me what the coroner said about the peanut butter on our John Doe. Do we have a name for him yet?”

  John squinted at the zipper and dug at a second piece of fat thread. “No name. The CI lab’s running fingerprints through IAFIS to see if we get a hit. They’ll check state dental records too. It’s still preliminary stuff. If we’re lucky we’ll know something in six, eight weeks.” He grasped the topmost part of the zipper’s teeth and pulled out another thick strand, “Gee, you weren’t kidding. This is quite difficult. Notice I didn’t say hard?”

  “Yeah, you’re king of comedy. You still thinking he was pushed?”

  John dragged out another thread. “Pushed, or thrown, and dragged as well. And…” he pulled one last white filament from the brass teeth, “now you’re all ready to catch bad guys.” He rose and brushed soil and pine needles from his knees.

  Adjusting his uniform pants, Ishimaru’s not-quite-almond-shaped blue eyes ran along the row of homes at the edge of the canyon. “What if some sick pervert up there got this whole thing on video?”

  “Then we’ll be ridiculed and invited to appear on Dancing with the Stars. Can you jitterbug, Duncan?”

  “As I said, you’re king of comedy.” Ishimaru sighed and looked up at the top of the mesa. “All those houses? This is going to take us the rest of the day.”

  “Yes it is,” John said, heading down the trail, “and tomorrow too.”

  They spent half an hour surveying the scene before making their way back to the top of Deer Trap Mesa. The recent layer of snow had melted in the noon sun; rivulets of water ran off and over the rock. By the time they reached the top, John’s shoulder ached, and his boots were wet and coated with mud and bits of foliage from the canyon floor. It was sort of strange that dirty boots would conjure up thoughts of Queenie, but as John scaled rocks, he recalled kissing her the other morning—just before she’d sullied his faux suede size elevens.