A World the Color of Salt (12 page)

“By the way,” she said, “I scraped the egg off with a pancake turner.”

I laughed and complimented her on her ingenuity.

Something happened to Sunday; I don't know where it went. In the evening, when I was coming back from dawdling at a
CD store, I slowed near Dwyer's Kwik Stop and pulled up into the driveway.

The store was still closed. I expected any moment to see Jerry stepping up to the door with keys to open it, or the lights to go on and Jerry and Mr. Dwyer in a kind of yellow tableau at the back of the store, ringing up purchases, answering questions.

There was instead an early moon casting shadows from the eucalyptus trees onto the shingled roof, pasting the lot in front in a wide rectangle. The wind pulled at the leafy shadows, and the whole dark cutout of Dwyer's Kwik Stop rippled like a painted blanket. I put my head back and closed my eyes.

A moment later I felt as though someone were behind me, though my window was open an inch and I would've heard someone walking or driving up. I glanced in my rearview mirror, then looked left, out onto the street, and saw a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a man in it, no lights. When I'd pulled in, was it there? The man brought his hand up and drank from a can, but the misty sulfur-glare of the streetlights only furthered the shadowed gloom inside the car so that I couldn't see his features. The can glinted momentarily as he flipped it, empty, into the backseat.

I kept my face turned to him so that if he were aware of me he'd know I was aware of him. Soon the engine started, the lights pulled on, and he eased out into the lane and moved on. I looked for a bucking bronco on the spare tire barnacled to the back, but couldn't see it.

Monday I learned that the T-wrench Joe had found in the restroom had indeed been dusted, with no results. That is, they got finger creases, but not finger
tips
, the only measure worthwhile. I asked if they printed the underside of the tape, at the closure end; a new process allows us to grab those sometimes. Yea and nay—yes they did, and no, they didn't grab anything.

My supervisor, Stu Hollings, was new to the post and a hands-off kind of guy, which could also be read that he didn't much want to get involved. He called me into his office to assign me to the paperwork on a gang-related shooting, with Bud Peterson as team leader. Wouldn't Bud love bossing me around. I was to check for proper completion of forms, coordinate the sketch and photo work, review ballistics reports, and write a summary; in general, make sure things moved along. Reporters were all over this one because the victims belonged to a brave family whose house had been a target several times after the father stood his ground against the shooters. This time a boy in the bed of a truck parked alongside the house was capped by a volley from a full automatic, and the mother was shot in the leg as she was bringing in groceries.

When I went across the street to the sheriff's station, specifically to the photo lab, Billy Katchaturian was with a deputy, looking over glossies from another crime scene. I did not want to coordinate anything with Billy, but I knew I had to get over that hurdle. When I walked in, he made no acknowledgment of me at all. I wondered if that was bad or good; decided it
was good. He propped a photo up on the counter, of a woman in what used to be a white dress. She looked like she was pregnant. With her head at the angle it was and the amount of blood on her clothes I knew she was nearly decapitated. Probably by a husband. Oh, what people keep doing to each other. I looked at the rise of her belly and felt a heaviness in my chest.

Billy said to the deputy, “The hands.” I looked too and saw that both were red, like curled roses on white stems. He put that picture down and pulled another one up taken from the opposite angle. The third was a blowup of the back of her right hand, on a white background. I knew this one had been taken in the morgue, after the rigor mortis had relaxed, because of the piece of butcher paper for background. The hand was spread out, as if demonstrating how to do a handprint for mama. Black blood was etched in rims around the nails, sunken into the cuticles. The nails themselves were long, perfectly shaped, fluorescent pink. “Look at the nails,” Billy said. “This one's gone,” he said, pointing to a bare middle finger. “You find a pink neon job laying around?”

The deputy didn't say anything for a while, writing in his small tablet. “I'll find out,” he said. They could find the fake nail in a suspect's collar or a shirt pocket. They could find it in a shoe, or on top of the refrigerator.

I waved a hand and said to Billy, “I'll come back later.” Down the hall, I grabbed a cup of coffee. When I returned he was alone. I'd rehearsed what I was going to say. I had with me the file folder on the gang shooting, containing Trudy's sketches of the house and the truck parked next to it. She wanted Billy's shots so she could verify angles from the street to the truck.

Billy kept smiling at me this time, dragging his eyes over me as he told me how pretty I looked. I had on a black tailored rayon dress with black opaque stockings and a lime green jacket, dressier than usual. Maybe I needed to do that to face him. He was wearing a crisp pair of navy blue pants and a burgundy shirt with a burgundy tie, something I hadn't seen him in before either. His belt buckle was a raised silver spider with a red hourglass on the back made of two rosy
pieces of coral. I said, “Billy, if that's supposed to be a black widow spider, the hourglass goes on the belly.”

He gave a quiet laugh and said, “You have to criticize my genuine hundred-dollar buckle? I got that off an Indian in San Francisco.”

“It's gross,” I said. “It reminds me of that truck with a big black spider on it, that exterminator company? Like, sure, I'm going to call a guy with a big ugly spider half the size of me on his truck.”

Billy was purring. “Mmmmm,” is what he said.

“Hey. I don't want it to be difficult. We have to work together. We don't have to make it difficult.”

“Who's difficult? I'm giving you a compliment.” He settled an arm on the counter and crossed one ankle over the other while continuing to look me up and down.

“We have to work together,” I said, “but I want to keep it professional.”

“No problem. No problem at all. But so what
are
we doing tonight, hmm?” He put two fingers on my forearm, which I hadn't realized until that moment was resting on the counter too.

I said, “As far as I'm concerned, nothing happened the other night.”

“Wow. That's downright mean. I didn't know you could be so mean, Smokes. Right to the heart.” He straightened up, a hurt look on his face. In my gut I knew that he expected this, and that his reaction was all part of the play.

“Know it. We are definitely, definitely not continuing any sort of relationship. So focus your attention on someone else, huh? Like that new one in Tox. Okay?”

“What new one?” His eyes lit up.

I couldn't help but laugh. I didn't hate him, after all. I recalled how good the man felt, dancing. Humane, you might say. Sensitive. Sensitive? Well. “I don't have time for this, Billy.”

“I'm not your type is what you're saying.”

“I guess that's about it. Nothing personal. I don't mean to hurt your feelings.”

“You know what you'd say if the tables were turned—if I were the one dumping you after a one-night roll in the hay?
You'd say, ‘Oh, those men. They only want one thing.'”

“Knock it off, Billy. I was drunk and you know it.”

“You weren't drunk when we started. You were talking a blue streak in the car. You don't remember begging to see my place?”

“That is total bullshit, Billy, and you better not go repeating that to anyone else. Get this straight—” The tops of my ears were turning fiery hot. I started trembling a little I think, because I hated losing my temper, because I hardly ever do, and when I do I lose all sense; I say and do things that shake me for hours. “Don't fuck with me, Billy. You really don't want to do that.”

His expression fell back into something like real human being–ness. I took a breath. “Look, I have no right to ask you to keep this to yourself. I played, I pay. I know that. But I would, of course,
prefer
you don't go announcing what happened over the speaker system like some
M*A*S*H
replay, okay?”

“Hon, would I do that to you?”

I shook my head, confused.

He said, “God, how you can kiss.” He moved closer to me, until I felt there was no place to go.

And then, lamely, I said, “Leave me alone, Billy. Jesus Christ, I've got my own problems. I've got somebody
following
me, maybe, some sicko—”

“I don't blame him.”

“I'm telling you, I can work with you, I can say, Okay, we had a moment there. But that's it. Let's have mutual respect. Let's do our jobs. And move on. Okay? Okay, Billy?”

“Somebody giving you a bad time besides li'l ol' me?”

“No.”

He was grinning a stupid grin and looking my face over as if he never heard a word I said.

“Because if you can't handle that, we're going to have to have a serious, serious talk, you and me, and I'll guarantee you, you won't win.”

I expected him to say, “Ooo, you're so cute when you're mad,” or anything else to keep up the game, the palaver. I stepped back, shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket, and just looked at him.

He said, “You know something, Smokey? You have no sense of humor.”

“You could be right,” I said, and moved to the counter to open the folder he handed me. I removed the two photos Trudy'd wanted, put them in my folder, and started to go.

As I headed down the hall, I could feel his eyes on me. It nearly killed me when I remembered, but I had to stop before I reached the door. I squeezed my eyes closed, then turned around and asked the question: “By the way, did you use any protection?”

Maybe good dancers have these small flotation pockets of civilization that come bobbing up when you're in a cold ocean and there's no raft in sight. He answered, “Of course, dear.”

There was a fire drill in our building. Just like in the old days, just like at school. Half an hour before quitting time. So I grabbed my purse before I exited, slipped around to my spot in the parking lot, and booked out of there.

I also took a one-to-one sketch Trudy made me of two pieces of Case No. 90-3284 HW's physical evidence: the T-wrench and the collet. She said when she gave them to me, “What are you going to do with that,” and I said, “Oh, just show them to my dad.” Maybe I
didn't
have enough to do, like my new supe Stu Hollings intimated. Maybe I was bored with the other cases that came across my desk, even the gang shooting. I don't know. It's not like the idea formed itself clearly in my mind right away, or even when I had Trudy do the sketches. It wasn't, in fact, until I got another phone call from Patricia that night.

“Smokey, something completely weird is going on,” she said, calling me Smokey, as if she always had. “I
know
I locked my door this morning. It was open when I got home tonight.”

“Are you sure? I do stuff like that all the time. Especially when I've been putting in long hours. Yep, even me, with my skewed eye on the world. You putting in long hours? You extra tired, Christmas shopping, or something?”

“No, not really. It's just not like me is what I'm telling you. You think, sometimes, Smokey, I'm dippy. But I'm not.”

“I don't think you're dippy!”

“That's okay. I'm not mad.”

“Wow, Patricia . . . you're really upset about this, aren't you? Let's talk about this. Is your landlord peculiar or anything, like maybe he's a snooper? I had one like that once.”

“No,” she said. “And, it's a she.”

“Could—” I started to ask the obvious: if she'd given a key to anyone else. She interrupted to tell me there was something that frightened her more than the fact that her front door was unlocked. She did a lot of hesitating as she told me the rest. She went, she said, to use the bathroom, and when she lifted the lid, there was an unflushed bowel movement in it. I pondered this, afraid for her but not wanting her to know it. It was just creepy enough, there could be something to it. Burglars often leave calling cards. Sometimes in the middle of your bed; in your kitchen sink; in your rolled-up panties. Who can measure the amount of hostility there is in this world? “Maybe you got a plumbing problem,” I offered.

“You don't get it,” she said. “The color . . . the . . . no, this was not, this was not . . .”

I said, “Maybe it's the drought. Maybe we have a water-supply problem, a reservoir dried up or something.”

“I don't think that's it.”

“You think it's that guy you were dating? The one who was harassing you for a while?”