Swift Horses Racing

by Victoria Kazarian

  Flores wondered if Ruiz was thinking the same thing. The neighborhoods on either side of the expressway were a combination of seniors, the original owners, along with young families who’d bought from owners who’d retired and moved away. This looked like a gang hit.

  This was not a neighborhood where that kind of thing happened.

  “They targeted the Camry. Pulled out and headed straight for it.” Ruiz voice grew progressively louder, his anger surfacing again. A scruffy cat making its way across the top of the concrete fence took one look at Ruiz and scuttled away. “The SUV was waiting. If it was random, he could have gone after us.”

  “You get a plate number?”

  Ruiz slowly shook his head, his face reflecting his disappointment. “It happened fast. California plate. As it passed, my wife saw it started with 9—then the shots happened. It headed into the mist. She saw everything, too. It was pretty far ahead of us. She says she got a picture on her phone.”

  “Make? Color?”

  “Ford Explorer. Early 2000s. Black.”

  “Show me where the SUV was on the shoulder.”

  Ruiz pointed at spot on the shoulder, a hundred feet beyond his truck. They both walked toward in that direction, passing Ruiz’s truck. The face in the passenger seat of the F-150 looked up suddenly. A smooth, oval face. Pretty.

  “We called it in. I pulled over and ran up the road to get to the driver in the Camry. I opened the door to get to him. It was hanging.” Ruiz’s voice was hoarse.

  Flores stopped and looked both ways at the expressway, picturing the events Ruiz described. He looked at the twisted white car.

  “Must have been dead before he hit the tree.”

  “He wasn’t.” Ruiz croaked the words out, startling Flores. “He said something before he died.”

  “What?”

  “It was hard to hear but it sounded to me like he said, “Saloon.”

  Flores studied Ruiz’s eyes for nystagmus, involuntary eye movements caused by intoxication. Could he have been drinking more than he’d admitted to? Only a partial on the plate. And saloon as the guy’s last words. His eyes looked just fine.

  The two detectives stood on the shoulder staring down at fresh tire tracks. Flores saw the skid marks in the lane. The nearest streetlight was a good hundred yards down and wasn’t helping much. He took out his phone and turned on his flashlight. Then he took a few photos.

  Ruiz looked down the expressway at the big houses, now going for a million plus, visible over the fence on the side streets.

  “It’s New Year’s, but it’s still a weird thing to happen here.”

  “No kidding, James.”

  “Call me Jimmy.”

  “I’d like to get your wife’s account now, Jimmy.”

  They walked back toward the truck, then Ruiz gave a curt nod. “Her name’s Reyna.” He said it in a way that made Flores look up at him. Like he’d shown the trace of something he shouldn’t. Softness. He watched as the Ruiz turned and continued down the shoulder back toward the Camry and the patrol officers.

  Flores tapped on the passenger side window of the truck. The woman opened the door. She was wearing a huge gold and red Niners jacket, which had to be Ruiz’s and a red scarf wrapped around her hands. She was shivering. It was 34 degrees out, which was as cold as California was going to get this time of year. And she’d just witnessed a murder.

  “Mrs. Ruiz. I’m Detective Flores of San Jose PD. I need to ask you a few questions about what you and your husband saw.”

  Reyna Ruiz wrapped the jacket around herself and turned to step down from the high truck, putting out a shapely little leg in black stockings and high heel. She was a fine-boned woman, cut like a gem, a contrast to the bear-like Ruiz.

  “Mrs. Ruiz. Stay inside.” He held his hand up. “It’s cold out here. Can you tell me what you saw?”

  Reyna Ruiz closed her eyes. “We were coming back from my friend Corrine’s party off of Coleman in South San Jose. We were both tired. It was strange to see the SUV was on the side of the road. At first Jimmy thought they were having car trouble. Then the SUV pulls out and speeds past us.”

  She pulled her hands out of the red scarf to gesture as she talked. She had an easy, physical way about her; she involved her hands, her eyes and her body in the telling of her story. She filled the physical space around her in a way that was out of proportion to her small body.

  “I could tell it was heading for the white car. There was a sound—pop pop. Like fireworks, only then we saw the car swerve toward the trees. Oh, my God, it was horrible. That crunch.” Flores noticed her hands were shaking under the scarf.

  “Jimmy wouldn’t say.” She searched his face. He wasn’t sure if she was looking for news of the old man or checking him out. “The driver couldn’t have lived through that. It wouldn’t be possible, right?”

  She looked so hopeful, he was sorry to disappoint her.

  “He didn’t.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. She leaned back in the seat and blotted her eyes with a tissue.

  Flores gave her a minute, while he took a look at her face unobserved. Hispanic or Asian? Maybe Filipina.

  “Were you able to see the license plate number?”

  “By the time we figured out what had happened, it was far ahead of us. I took a picture on my phone. It’s not very clear though.”

  She pulled out her phone and swiped through screens with manicured fingers till she came to the picture.

  Flores took the phone and zoomed in on the photo. All he could see was the back of a dark vehicle. The plate was a tiny, reflective rectangle, even enlarged. It didn’t look helpful, but there was a possibility the tech team could do something with it.

  “Can you send this to me, please?” He gave her his phone number.

  In a minute, he felt his phone buzz that it had been received.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Ruiz. Now you guys stay safe on your way home tonight.”

  She looked up and smiled faintly. After he turned away, she was still imprinted on his retina, a flash of light from the emergency vehicles highlighting her face.

  4

  Duke Sorenson stayed up just past midnight watching old movies on the set in the bedroom.

  He turned the volume up until it drowned out the sound of the neighbors’ illegal fireworks. The nice thing about living alone in a house was that you could turn the volume up as loud as you damn well pleased without anyone complaining.

  He was watching The Thin Man with Myrna Loy and Robert Powell. Robert Powell was a kick, always a drink in his hand, ready with a smart comeback to his wife or to anyone around him. Duke loved the banter between Nick and Nora Charles. In the days before they had children, Joanne had that feistiness. It had been one of the things he’d been attracted to. It had disappeared with the dementia.

  When Joanne had stopped recognizing him, it felt like the ultimate snub. At first he thought she’d done it on purpose, payback for his ditching her with the kids while he worked late all those years. When she turned a blank face to him, it looked like the silent treatment she’d given him for a good part of their marriage. Maybe he deserved it.

  While he’d stayed till midnight working on government contracts, she’d managed the house, the kids, the finances. He knew she’d felt stranded by herself and longed for adult company. He’d heard her say she was lonely, but at the time he didn’t get it. You talk to your friends on the phone, you have them over for coffee every week. You’re always at parent meetings at school. Don’t tell me you’re lonely.

  He wanted to say it but never did: Do you know what it’s like to be the only one left in the building at night, saying goodnight to the janitor?

  He pulled his dinner out of the microwave and set the tray on a plate on the table. He poured a glass of milk and set it at the top of the tray, then lined up a fork and spoon—spoon on the right, fork on the left with a folded napkin under it, as Joanne had instructed the kids how to set the table. When you have little left in your
life, rituals are important.

  He felt bad thinking it, but retirement had been as big a blow as Joanne’s illness. He’d worked in aeronautics for forty-five years. He’d gotten up every morning excited to go to work. He had a purpose. The longer he stayed, the more he was able to get done. The more he got done, the more he was given. He was the one to receive special clearance. The trusted one. He was gliding on the wings of a great machine. When he saw the final form of the planes he’d worked on—on the news, on the cover of a trade magazine or in the skies—he felt he was part god. He created this sleek thing that inspired awe. That raced through the skies, breaking the bonds of earth.

  Of all people, Karl understood. They met at the donut shop with a small group of retirees on Friday mornings, all but one were in aerospace or aeronautics. There had been seven members of the donut gang at one point, but after illness and moves out of the valley to more affordable areas in the Central Valley or Arizona, they were down to four. It reminded him of a group of native American elders sitting around a fire, telling stories—pictures that drifted up in the smoke of a great fire as they talked. They hung in the air between them, vivid and pure—all traces of sadness, of lost dreams, of estranged children and angry wives burned off.

  Now he sliced his microwaved Salisbury steak into tiny pieces, scooping up rice from its compartment and mixing it into the gravy. He’d talk to Karl tomorrow. If his children weren’t visiting on the weekend, maybe they could go down to the museum at Moffett Air Force base and look at the planes.

  He tried to put something on the calendar every day. To have a reason to get out of bed.

  In the morning, he sat at his small, new dining table, drinking his coffee and eating a plate of scrambled eggs, which doctors now said were okay to eat, in moderation. He was watching a World War II documentary on the little TV he’d gotten after Joanne’s death. He needed noise. It was too quiet this morning.

  As if they’d read his state of mind, his daughters called, one after the other, to wish him happy New Year. Their condescending chatter made him feel more alone. He was an item on their to-do lists.

  After the calls, Duke scrolled to Karl’s contact on his phone. There was something refreshing in talking about things. Talking about who had cancer and whose spouse had passed wore on him after a while and his mind moved on to other thoughts.

  How will I fix that leak in the sink?

  Is that plane overhead an Airbus 320?

  Duke called Karl. He let it ring nine times, then replaced the handset. He was probably at Rose’s for the holiday. Karl was fifteen years older than he was and had told him his children Rose and Christoph were pressuring him to move in with one of them. Duke laughed at the thought. Karl was a stubborn cuss and would fight them off as long as he could. He saw no signs of the cognitive decline in Karl that he’d seen in Joanne. He worried about what would happen when he did. He could not handle another person slowly backing out of his life.

  As the day wore on, Duke kept himself busy, sweeping out the garage and cleaning Yeager’s cat box. Then he sat down at the computer his son Rick had built for him last spring. He used it for email and checking stocks. His daughter had set him up on Facebook, which he’d thought was a big waste of time. Why not just talk to people?

  Duke opened up the program and scrolled through the news feed. Theo, one of his grandkids, had been in Times Square when the ball dropped. He’d posted lots of badly lit, blurry photos of young people in the dark. Then Duke watched a short video of his daughter Kathleen banging a pot on her front porch wishing the neighbors happy new year.

  He kept scrolling through the news feed.

  Then he saw it.

  When he grasped what he was reading, it sucked the air out of his lungs. He felt like something immeasurably heavy had landed on his chest. His sight flickered, like lights right before a blackout.

  It was a news blurb from a local TV station someone had reposted with an orange angry emoji: OMG. Who would do this?

  He saw the photo. He recognized Karl’s white Camry, bent around a tree on Almaden Expressway, driver window pocked with bullet holes.

  92-Year-Old Aeronautics Pioneer Is First Murder of the New Year

  5

  By the time Flores got home, it was 7 a.m.

  Crime Scene Investigation had gone over the site, taking molds of the tracks on the shoulder and photographing the marks in the right lane, the damaged car, the old man in position in the car.

  The medical examiner from the coroner’s office had come to have a look at the body. He remarked that the wounds were “surprisingly precise.” Then the old man was taken away.

  In the interminable time it took for the flatbed tow truck to chain up the car, he’d verified the name: Karl Schuler. He’d lived a half a mile away, in the maze of streets that wound around in curlicues and cul de sacs and then emptied onto the expressway. He’d owned the house for forty-eight years. After googling him, Flores found out that he’d been a celebrity in the field of aeronautics. Before his retirement he’d worked in Silicon Valley since the late 1940s.

  Since the DMV’s 1980s-era database wouldn’t be fast or helpful with the partial plate number, he had Mandy Dirkson from his team run the partial – with make, model and color through Carfax. That gave him the VINs for the DMV search.

  CSI had found shell casings at the scene and was now processing them, but it would be a day or two before he got the results.

  Later this morning, he’d interview Schuler’s daughter in South San Jose. Right now his limbs felt wiry and stretched out. His brain buzzed tiredly, to the point where it would begin misfiring soon. He needed sleep.

  He’d hoped Oksana was still in bed, but she sat upright at the kitchen table, eating a piece of toast, ear buds in, her abnormal psychology textbook in front of her. She leafed through pages then typed on her laptop. It wasn’t till he opened the fridge that she took the ear buds out and looked up at him with bored, impassive eyes.

  “Happy New Year,” she said with a trace of a Russian accent and gave him the side eye. The scent of her lotion reached him from the other end of the kitchen. Summer flowers in the winter. “What the hell took you so long?”

  Feeling happy he’d been missed, Flores poured a glass of water and shook some vitamins into his hand. He felt dehydrated. “An old guy, shot on the expressway. His car slammed into a tree. Bad crime scene, even for New Year’s.” He gulped down the vitamins.

  He wanted badly to head back to the bedroom with her, but she was already dressed in jeans and a sweater, her long blonde hair damp from the shower. Oksana kept to a schedule. Grad school was top priority, and she’d sacrifice him for her studies in a minute. Which made her a good match for him, as he often did the same to her, ditching plans at the last minute for a case.

  When she took her ear buds out and looked up at him, he bent down and gently pressed his lips to hers. She’d looked so resolute, her finger in her textbook, that he wasn’t expecting anything.

  But there it was. A little give in her lips.

  Soon his tongue was in her mouth, and her arm was around his neck. He lifted the hem of her sweater, sliding his hands up beneath it.

  “You’re awake enough for this?”

  “This is a make-up session for last night. Or a make out session.” He held her hand and pulled her up out of the chair and led her down the hall to the bedroom. “Both.”

  He saw she’d made his bed neatly, propping the throw pillows in a tidy row against the pillow shams. Her surveyed the bed with satisfaction.

  “Neatness in a woman.” He spoke in the voice of a Bond villain as he raised his eyebrows and lifted her sweater over her head. “I find it quite…arousing.”

  She picked up one of the pillows and threw it at him in response, hitting him square on the nose. She stepped up on the bed, slipped off her jeans and stood above him. He pulled her down onto the bed laughing, and she lay on top of him, her long legs stretched out even with his. He felt the pressure of her bo
dy on his, her skin bonded to his by a light sweat, and he wanted to rush into her, but he waited. It would be better if he waited.

  Her still damp hair swept across his face, tickling his lips and making him laugh.

  His phone rang in the kitchen. He’d be an idiot to take it. He ignored it and surrendered himself completely to this time. She sat up on him and rocked and he felt a surge of energy. Apparently, he wasn’t as tired as he felt. He held her hips and pressed into her. She arched her back and cried out, and he knew the neighbors were hearing all this but didn’t even care.

  Afterwards he lay there, his arm over hers.

  His mind felt empty and peaceful. Last night’s events on the expressway faded into a mist. He saw the old man, Ruiz and his wife in it, distant shadows, and he fell asleep.

  And in what only seemed like five minutes later, he opened his eyes to sun shining in his eyes. He was alone.

  The clock said 11:30 a.m.

  Holy shit.

  Calls to be made. Interviews with the Schuler family.

  He sat for a moment at the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. Then he pulled on his boxers and went into the kitchen. He checked his phone.

  Two voicemails from Mandy at the station.

  Mandy had run the SUV’s model and make and had three prospects that fit the partial.

  After a shower and some leftover Chinese takeout, Flores headed down the expressway again, toward Almaden Valley. At midday, the clouds had cleared and the sun was setting up shop in the sky. As he passed the tree that Schuler had hit the night before, the scene looked empty, all debris removed as if nothing had ever happened.

  Rose Schuler Mulvaney met him at the door of her neatly landscaped ranch-style home, her eyes red and puffy. She looked to be in her late sixties, but trim and wearing skinny jeans. She had a short, boyish haircut, and her sharp little features made him think of a bird.