First Avenue (3 page)

At the station
Sam
began the report. He tried to remember the baby’s name.
Alberta
had told him the name the day he held the baby. He was usually good with names, but it wouldn’t come to him. The detectives may have found the baby’s name written on some form, but he had not thought to get it from them. It didn’t matter anyway—not for his report. Still he sat for the longest time in front of the manual Royal typewriter and tried to remember. He called the victim “Baby Sanchez.”

The report was simple, hardly different in form from any of the hundreds of other reports that would be written that day—easier in some ways because the detectives had gathered and marked all the evidence. There were no suspects to list, although it took half a page to list all the witnesses, or non-witnesses, who saw nothing and heard nothing and knew nothing except for one drunken woman who could no longer stand the smell.

It took longer to write the officer’s statement. What he saw and what he did were the easy parts. What he thought was something altogether different. The officer’s statement was the place to say what he thought as long as it made sense. He believed the child had not been intentionally abandoned, that there was another reason for the mother’s disappearance even if she had not shown up yet as a name in the coroner’s files. Why? Because she washed her dishes? Because she had handed her baby once to a cop for a few minutes and had looked on with such pleasure and fondness that it was inconceivable she would voluntarily turn away from her child? But living in that room with a baby? He heard the doubts of those who would later read his statement and wondered if he should doubt, also.

“It is my opinion,” he hammered on the old sticking typewriter keys, “based upon my previous observations of the mother and victim, that the mother, Alberta Sanchez, did not voluntarily abandon her baby.”

He tore the page out of the typewriter and almost hit
Katherine
on the nose. She was bent over his shoulder and had been reading as he typed.

“Sorry. I didn’t know you were that close,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said.

He signed the statement and put it on top of the stack of papers he had assembled.
Katherine
didn’t move and looked down at the paper on the table. He slid his chair sideways so he could see her.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“It got to you, too, didn’t it?”

They were alone in the report room. She should have left by now.

“It gets to everybody.”

“How can something like this happen? We were in that tavern last night below the baby’s room, and I remember laughing about something as we walked out. We were down below talking and laughing and going to one nothing call after another, and that baby upstairs is crying and crying and crying. And we can’t hear it,” she said.

Her voice was unsteady, and he was afraid she might cry.

“The baby had been dead for a long time, Kat. It wasn’t crying last night. You couldn’t have heard anything.”

“I know that. That wasn’t what I meant.”

He knew what could happen if she started thinking about herself as part of the whole cycle. What could she do? What could any of them do? Walk into every hallway, every night, listening for babies crying? If you were going to survive, you had to shield yourself from it with leather gloves and a shiny badge and an impe
net
rable face. Most of the time, anyway.

“Well, look,” he said, deciding to keep his advice to himself. “We’ve had it for today. What do you say we go someplace and get a good stiff drink? It’s after
nine o’clock
,” he said, checking his wristwatch. “It’s okay to have a drink after nine. Wright’s law.”

“Sounds good to me,” she said, her face brightening a little. “Where shall we go?”

“How about my place? You can give me a ride home. I’m going to skip early.”

“What about your boat?”

“The kayak? I’ll leave it on the dock. I’m not in the mood for paddling. Why don’t you change while I get this stuff signed. By the way, Kat,” he said, knowing he didn’t want to say it, “you probably don’t want to leave your uniform in the locker.”

She looked down at her blue gabardine shirt as the brightness faded from her face, then nodded slowly in agreement. He should have kept his mouth shut.

“I wish I could take a shower,” she said.

“Go ahead. I don’t mind waiting.”

“No towel. I never thought I might need one.”

He unzipped his bag, pulled out a towel, and tossed it to her.

“I’ll wait for you here.”

“You sure you don’t want to use it?”

“I’ll wait until I get home. Go ahead. It’s all right.”

“Thanks. I’ll hurry,” she said, and she was hurrying already as she went out the door to the locker room.

His sergeant was in the patrol office waiting for the paperwork to be brought to him.
Sam
placed the slim stack in front of him and sat down in a chair beside the sergeant’s desk. The reading glasses that rested low on the sergeant’s nose made the old veteran look scholarly. When he wanted to look at
Sam
, he lowered his head a little more and peered over his glasses. He took them off and stuck one of the bows into his mouth.

“So, you’re sure we’ve got two homicides here?”

“I think that’s likely.”

“Likely.” The sergeant repeated
Sam
’s word, not as a question, and not as a statement either. “You knew this
Alberta
pretty well?”

“I knew her a little.”

“Don’t you think you could just walk upstairs and give the detectives the benefit of your opinion? You’re kind of telling them here what they should do. They don’t usually like that. What if you’re wrong about the mother?”

“Then I’m wrong. It’s no big deal.”

“Maybe. So why not let them find her first? They’ll be looking for her anyway.”

“They might not look in the right places. I think it should be written down. It seems like we owe her that much.”

The sergeant nodded his head, the contour of his mouth slowly revealing a decision. He signed the report and handed the papers to
Sam
.

“Drop them in the box, will you?”

“Thanks, Sarge. Mind if I take a few hours of comp time? It feels kind of late to hit the streets.”

The sergeant looked at the round wall clock above the door.

“Don’t worry about the comp time. Give it back to me later.”

Sam waited for
Katherine
in the report room. He propped his worn tennis shoes on top of the table and shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights overhead. The dark green chair on which he sat and the table beneath his shoes had not changed in the fifteen years he had assembled reports here, and the walls were the same lime color they had always been. Somebody had been fond of green. The typewriters had not changed either, and it was difficult to find one that had both a ribbon that printed legibly and keys that didn’t stick. This morning it was a particularly dreary place. He had heard that there were plans to remodel the whole building, to bring it up with the times and make it more efficient. It was said they were going to use soothing colors in the holding rooms to make the prisoners easier to handle. He thought they should use the same colors in the report room.

Fifteen years ago he had not thought about colors in the police department. He had not thought about much of anything. The police job was only to be a temporary fill-in until he decided what he was really going to do. When he was twenty-one, nobody could have told him how quickly thirty-six comes, how time would stumble forward, day by day, paycheck by paycheck, until one day he would find himself wondering why he was still around.

It was more interesting, he remembered—those first years back in the early seventies when he took literature classes at the university during the day and stood against his fellow students on the streets at night. He remembered the riot gear, the plastic shield of his helmet, and the long ironwood riot stick. With that stick he could block a blow aimed at him or strike one if necessary—maybe even if not so necessary. Cracking books by day and heads by night, he was quite certain then he could travel in both circles and not be touched by either. During that strange time, it did not seem strange that in neither circle could he admit he was in the other.

The divisions were not as clear anymore. There were no lines of men in blue—there were only men then—and angry crowds in paisley. And it was a good thing. None of them, neither side, could have stood it much longer. Still he realized that he missed the feeling that came with it—a feeling that he was somehow special. “Special?” he asked aloud. He looked around to make sure there was no one to answer, then snorted and leaned back in the green swivel chair and stared up at the seasick green ceiling.

When
Katherine
returned, her wet hair was shiny and flat against her scalp, and her face had regained some of its color. She was pretty out of uniform, he thought. She was pretty enough in it.

“I’ll wash this and bring it back to you,” she said, meaning the towel under her arm.

“That’s not necessary.”

“I want to. I think you saved my life. I can’t believe how much better I feel.”

“You look like a million.”

“I look like a drowned rat.”

“Hardly. What do you say we get out of here?”

They walked through the garage to
Cherry Street
and then up the steep hill toward the freeway that separated the downtown from the neighboring hill above it. There was free parking beyond the freeway underpass, and the cops working headquarters laid claim to it with one shift slipping in when the previous one left. Their steps became slow and exaggerated as they climbed the hill, and each began to reach deeper for breath. The sunshine was in their faces.

It was September weather, and he especially liked Septembers. There was something left of summer, but the air was sharper in the mornings and gave notice to prepare for winter. He had nothing to prepare. Still the warm afternoons of September seemed like a time of grace.

He lived a few miles northwest of downtown. The street to his house dropped precipitously from the arterial road and passed new big homes carved into the hillside. Each of the new houses stretched for a glimpse of
Elliott
Bay
that began at the end of the road. His house was on the beach, one of a dozen or so built as summer houses in a protected cove back in a time when the three-mile trip to Magnolia Bluff was an excursion out of the city.

“What a great place!” she said when she turned into his driveway off the remaining single lane.

“I bought it ten years ago. It was a bad time for real estate. Good for me, though. I couldn’t touch it now.”

“I believe it,” she said.

“The real estate guy said I should tear the house down and build something suitable for the location. He didn’t know it took every penny I had just to make the down payment.”

“Why would you want to tear it down?”

“You should have seen it. There isn’t much left of the original house, but the view hasn’t changed.”

“It’s fantastic,” she said.

“Come on, I’ll show you around.”

He opened the front door and escorted her through the house to the deck in back. They stood at the railing and looked out to the water, which was now smooth in the quiet lazy weather.

“So this is where you bring that kayak,” she said.

“In good weather. When it’s too rough, I go down a little ways where there’s more beach. Those rocks can make a rough landing.”

He pointed to the rocky beach below that reached out to a sliver of sand.

“The water is so calm.”

“There’s no wind. Believe me, it can change. When the tide comes in, there’s hardly any beach here. You can’t get here from anywhere else.” He pointed to a solid rock bluff that rose out of the water to the west. “That rock is our
Gibraltar
.”

“You can see the buildings downtown, but it seems so far away.”

“That’s why I like it. Sit down,” he said, pointing to the deck chairs. “What can I bring you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whatever you have.”

“Whiskey or vodka?”

“Whiskey would be fine.”

“I have beer, too.”

“Whiskey,” she repeated.

In the kitchen, where he kept his liquor, he poured an ample shot over ice for both of them, and then, as an afterthought, added a little more. He carried the glasses out to the deck and handed one to her.

“This will take the hair off your chest.”

He sat down in the chair beside her and took a healthy sip. She took a smaller one and then a deep breath.

“What a night,” she said, her voice nearly flat. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m cut out for this.”