by Saul Black
She got to her feet. “Anyway, thanks for being straight with me. I appreciate it.” She headed toward the door. “I should just say good-bye to your mom…”
“The name of one of the guys is Tanner Riley,” Julia said. “I don’t know the others.”
37
It was too late in the day, Valerie decided, to track down Tanner Riley. And since she’d neglected to get the former housekeeper Isabella’s surname from Rachel Grant, that stone, too, would have to wait another day for its turning. Besides, she was tired and famished. She’d eaten nothing since the samosas that morning. Suddenly, having slid into the Taurus’s driver seat, she felt faint. The car was chilly after the day’s warmth. There were the remains of a sunset, a few blood-orange flakes of cloud dissolving up into the dark blue, where the first stars were out. She looked at her watch: 7:38 P.M. She’d been on the go for thirteen hours. Not unusual for her—in fact below her daily average—but right now it was an entitlement to go home.
She put the key in the ignition just as a text from Nick came through:
S&L ETA 8:30. Can you pick up cilantro?
For a moment she sat without a clue. Then remembered—and wilted. “S&L” were Serena and Lou, Nick’s sister and her husband. The dinner had been arranged two weeks ago. Nick had reminded her this morning. And of course she had forgotten.
Fuck.
She didn’t much mind her in-laws (though Serena let it be known in the subtlest ways that she hadn’t yet quite forgiven Valerie for breaking Nick’s heart first time around, while Lou was one of those people drawn to provocative abstract questions despite a near complete inability to think in abstract terms) but at the moment the thought of a sit-down dinner at home with company made Valerie want to curl up in a blanket on the backseat of the Taurus.
Too bad she hadn’t declared her condition, she thought, starting the engine. She imagined the chirpy text: Have to cancel. The Pregnant Woman is NOT WELL. So sorry! Pregnancy could get you out of all kinds of shit. Yet here she was squandering hers on secrecy.
Because we still haven’t made up our mind, have we?
Hadn’t she? Was it credible that she was still genuinely considering—plain speaking, Valerie—getting rid of it? Somewhere back there had been a figurative thought of tossing a precious gold coin down the nearest drain. That word, ““drain.” Not so figurative after all. A drain was what she’d imagined the remains of her miscarriage swirling down, though of course she realized afterward that it would have been incinerated. Pre–twenty weeks, clinical waste. Or biomedical waste. Whatever they called it. At any rate, waste. In the absence of a need for lab testing, that was what happened, unless you had the wits to say otherwise. She’d had neither the wits nor the desire.
And now?
She sat with the engine running, unable, yet, to put the car in Drive and move off. She was, she knew, resisting thinking of her condition as anything other than “it.” Loss had only one lesson to teach—namely, that anything could be lost—and she had learned it. The more you cared, the worse the loss. She knew what accepting it as anything more than “it” would mean, what it would sign her up for, how madly it would raise the stakes. She told herself she wasn’t thinking about it. Superficially she wasn’t. Superficially her consciousness was elsewhere. Superficially she’d settled on running down the clock until it was too late to do anything but go ahead and Have It. But beneath the surface—beneath thinking—she was engaged with virtually nothing else. Look at the investigation, for God’s sake. These mothers and daughters. What did it matter whether Elspeth felt responsible for her father’s death? Or that Rachel claimed she would be nothing without her daughter? So what if Elspeth had been slutting around because she felt guilty about something? What did it matter whether Dina Klein had raised a good girl, or whether Julia trusted her mother? Rhetorical: None of these things mattered to the investigation. But here she was, Valerie Hart, Homicide, preoccupied by them, contorting them into lines of inquiry, warping them into leads. She’d done the relevant investigative work, yes, but on autopilot. It was all this nonsense of mothers and daughters that was really running her motor.
She hadn’t told Nick she was pregnant for the simple reason that that would be the end of thinking of it as “it.” Once Nick was in on the deal, “it” would be “he” or “she,” or some other cutesy designation of personhood, and the only way out then would be via breaking his heart, again.
Was she capable of that?
Sadly, she knew she was capable of anything, if the circumstances were right. It was one of the differences between her and Nick. He had lines drawn to keep his idea of himself intact. (It was a good idea, worth keeping intact.) She, unfortunately, did not have lines. She did not have an idea of herself, except as something that might, depending on the variables, become something completely different. She had started out—as a child, a girl, a young woman—with a quiver full of absolutes, Rights and Wrongs and Onlys and Nevers, but time had done its thing and now the quiver was empty. Being Police had given her infinite protean potential.
Oddly, she imagined Rachel Grant feeling the same—except in Rachel’s case there was only one variable: Elspeth. The fact of Elspeth, Valerie thought, could allow Rachel Grant to become absolutely anything.
Her phone pinged a second time:
And white wine vinegar.
She sighed, allowed herself a mental fucking hell, put the car in Drive, and pulled away.
* * *
The dinner did not go well. Valerie and Nick’s “trying for a baby” was supposed to be just between them, but Valerie got the impression Nick had blabbed to his sister. There was a little triumphal glint in Serena’s eye, a sly satisfaction that Valerie had, at long last, capitulated to biology. Serena’s narrative of her own motherhood was one of ditzily making it up as she went along, flailing from one screwup to the next and somehow getting away with it. As with all such narratives, it was a failed attempt to disguise her real estimation of herself, which was that she was probably the best mother history had yet produced. Valerie simmered through the evening. Sobriety ought to have restrained her. In fact it made things worse. There was nothing to dull her perception. Every nuance of Serena’s self-congratulation landed on her like a spark. Eventually, without premeditation, she found herself at the end of her tolerance. A liberating moment. Like realizing you were flat broke.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it,” she said to Serena, “how all these mistakes you make turn out not to be mistakes at all.”
Bad timing. Nick and Lou had been chuckling about something, but it petered out just as Valerie said this. That the remark had center stage made its intent unequivocal.
“What?” Serena said.
As soon as she’d said it Valerie knew she shouldn’t have. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Serena’s and Lou’s life screamed domestic introversion; bright, middle-brow complacency; curtailed imagination; clan narcissism; and an indifference to anything that didn’t affirm it. Their life smelled small and cozy and dumb and smug—and Valerie was terrified hers and Nick’s might, via parenthood, end up just the same.
There was a moment of pure social horror. Fortunately, Lou was sufficiently drunk not to pick it up, and before Valerie could either try to climb out or dig herself deeper, he said: “Oh, yeah, Serena gives out like she doesn’t know what she’s doing—until you suggest doing it a different way. Then it’s like … It’s like she’s Stephen Hawking.”
“Stephen Hawking?” Nick said, happy to grab this thread since he could see how pissed his sister was, not to mention his wife.
“Like the Stephen Hawking of whatever the fuck it is. Cooking tomatoes.”
“There’s conflict over tomatoes?”
“She wants the skins off. Tomatoes don’t need their skins off. The skins are where all the nourishment is, for Christ’s sake.”
“We’re letting it go then, are we?” Serena said, to everyone. She’d had a few
drinks, too, and was ready to go either way.
“Tomatoes reduce your risk of testicular cancer,” Lou said to Nick, having missed the import of his wife’s remark. “In Italy they found that guys who ate raw tomatoes every day were sixty percent less likely to develop cancer.”
“With the skins or without?” Nick asked.
“What do they do for you if you don’t have testicles?” Valerie asked.
“Perhaps I dreamed it,” Serena said.
“They keep your boobs healthy, too,” Lou said.
And so they let it go, approximately, though very shortly afterward Serena said it was time to head home.
“Do you want to tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?” Nick asked Valerie, when the guests had left.
“Nothing. What?”
“I’m not just talking about tonight.”
“Your sister’s smug. Sometimes she needs reminding.”
“I repeat: I’m not just talking about tonight.”
“Did you tell her?”
“As a matter of fact no, I didn’t. But you’re the sort of person who, if she stops drinking, people notice.”
“Wow.”
“Don’t make this into a fight. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing.”
“Incredible. You’re actually going with that. Okay. Before abandoning this altogether I’ll just point out that you’ve been acting fucking weird for days. Weeks, in fact. I don’t know what it is and apparently you’ve decided I don’t need to know. Fine. But, shocking though this might be, I am, actually, here. You know, experiencing the effects of your actions.”
“Stop talking like a prick.”
“Then tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing’s going on. It’s just work. I’m sorry.”
“Only that you’ve been rumbled. And it’s not work.”
She didn’t contradict him. Didn’t say anything. Just closed herself off.
“Okay,” Nick said, starting to clear the dining table. “Forget it. Although there’s only a certain number of times saying ‘okay, forget it’ works.”
There was no limit to the perverse universe’s appetite. Perhaps it was the repetition of the word “forget.” Perhaps her guilt for taking a shot at Serena sang out in her psyche to other guilts lurking there. Either way Valerie remembered, suddenly, that she hadn’t yet told Kyle Cornell his half brother was dead.
She checked the time. Thanks to the abortive dinner, it was only just past 11:30 P.M. Early enough for a man of Kyle’s hours. He was probably at the bar. Obviously there was no reason she had to break the news to him now. It would keep until tomorrow. Doubly obviously the thing to do was get into bed with Nick and very quietly and sanely and tenderly tell him she was sorry for being such a pain in the ass, but she was pregnant and scared that she wasn’t going to be up to the job. What? Yes, you heard right. I’m pregnant. Are you happy about it?
She was very clear that this was the thing to do.
But the universe would have its perversions.
“What the fuck?” Nick said, emerging from the kitchen to see her putting her jacket on.
“I know,” she said. “Sorry. I have to. I just remembered something. It won’t wait.”
He didn’t say anything. Just stood there, watching her put her boots on. She knew she was doing the wrong thing. She could feel herself doing it. It was fascinating.
“I’ll be an hour, tops,” she said.
She got all the way to the door before Nick spoke.
“Take your fucking time,” he said.
38
And is there some reason you couldn’t just call him on the phone?
Well, yes, actually. You don’t break the news of a next-of-kin death over the phone.
But there’s more to it than that.
The fascination gave her a gentle momentum, and it was a relief to be out of the apartment. Without calling ahead, she drove to Flamingo. Kyle wasn’t working. The beautiful black-eyed Japanese girl gave her an ambiguous smile along with this information. Possibly: I know you’re hot for him. Possibly: I don’t blame you. Possibly: But you’d be better off with me, hon.
The momentum continued. Valerie was happy to get back into the Taurus. There was comfort in driving, which let her lose herself in it, gave her an immunity to thinking.
But too soon she was at his apartment—and had already pressed the buzzer before the dream state dissolved and left her confronted, suddenly, by reality. It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought what she was going to say. It further occurred to her that the princessy girlfriend might be here with him. She hoped for that, now. It would shut down the potentialities. A little coldness came up from the stone stoop. It made her catch up with herself, completely. She felt hot-faced, foolish. Sad, too, that she was still so susceptible to her least reliable self.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Detective Hart. I need to speak with you.”
Short pause. Valerie pictured him lifting the princess off himself, bending, pulling on his pants.
But in less time than that would have taken the entry buzzer sounded. She pushed the heavy door and went into the lobby. Kyle was standing in his apartment doorway, fully dressed. Shit-kickers, black jeans, white T-shirt, Levi’s jacket. The jacket—along with some vibe of wide-awakeness or still-lingering scent of the streets—suggested he’d only just got in. Alone.
“Hey,” he said quietly. No smile this time. It wrong-footed her. She’d been readying herself to cut him off before he got started flirting. No need, apparently.
“It’s not good news,” she said.
“Come in,” he said, turning back into the apartment.
She went in after him and closed the door behind her. Neither of them sat down. As always, the search for a good way of delivering the worst news turned up nothing. As always, there were only the facts. The one fact, rather.
“Dwight’s dead,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
He stared at her in blankness, not seeing her. It was as if his soul had left him. But after a moment it came back and his consciousness flowed again.
“What happened?” he said.
She exhaled, a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Five days ago a body was found buried in the desert in Nevada. We only got DNA identity confirmation today. It’s Dwight. I’m sorry.”
Not a politeness this time. She was sorry, for the man in front of her, who looked now as if he’d undertaken his half brother’s rehabilitation knowing all along it would end like this.
“Murdered,” Kyle said. Trying out the word. Understanding he’d have to get used to it.
“Yes,” Valerie said.
Silence formed between them. When their eyes met, Valerie knew they wouldn’t lie to each other now.
“You don’t seem surprised,” she said.
Kyle leaned against the back of the couch, loosened slightly. Looked up at her and smiled sadly. “I had a dream last night,” he said. “Dwight down on his hands and knees with gasoline coming out of his mouth. Obviously I don’t believe in these things.”
“Some dreams have a kind of authority,” she said.
Another silence. They kept looking at each other—then away.
Kyle straightened, went to the kitchen, came back with a half-full bottle of Lagavulin, two glasses, set them down on the dining table.
“I can’t,” Valerie said.
He poured anyway. Swallowed his in one gulp, refilled, then brought hers over to her. They were both still standing. There seemed no alternative. Sitting would have felt wrong.
“Tell me what you know,” Kyle said.
Valerie told him. All of it. Everything from the incontrovertible evidence that nailed Dwight for Adam Grant’s murder to the Lucifer sigil carved on his chest.
Kyle listened, drank, refilled once more, but with a look of knowing it would be the last, that drink didn’t have enough to offer him.
“There’s something else,” Valerie said.
“Dwight’s hands and feet were amputated.”
Kyle looked up at her as if this were the first piece of information that didn’t make sense.
“We don’t know why,” she said. “It doesn’t fit the original Lucifer MO, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s disgusting for you, I know. I’m sorry you have to hear it.”
“You mean they’re “missing? You didn’t…”
“They weren’t with the body.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Kyle stood with his head bowed, staring at the floor. This, the mutilation of his brother’s body, was a source of fury, Valerie saw, more, even, than the murder. The murder conformed to the doomed view Kyle had of Dwight’s life. The murder was, at the amoral level, unsurprising. But this additional violence was a gratuitous desecration.
It took him a few moments to subside.
“This serial killer shit. Lucifer. You don’t buy it?”
“I don’t know. Adam Grant worked for the prosecution on the trial that went nowhere. Can’t be just a coincidence.”
“And Sophia? You find her yet?”
“No. But she’s the key. APB’s been out for weeks. I have a feeling she’s gone back to L.A.”
“You say she was screwing Grant. Dwight was killed at Grant’s country place. She’s more than the key. She’s the suspect.”
“She’s a strong contender.”
“The right woman could lead Dwight like a bull with a ring through its nose.”
In spite of everything there was no missing the subtext: Unlike me. Valerie thought of the princess girlfriend. Kyle looked up as if she’d thought it out loud. The mutual visibility was pure and terrible. He smiled, with soft bitterness, shook his head.
“She doesn’t lead me anywhere,” he said.
And here they were, without innocence.
The detached part of Valerie looked on like a third person, noting, calmly, that life had an endless supply of these moments, in which certain of your little micro-thoughts and actions culminated in a conclusion to which you never knew you were being led. Or to which you never admitted you were letting yourself be led. The missing admission was your own blind cunning: You did always know, deep down. It depressed her that this was still the way she was, that there were still decisions she couldn’t make except when the two alternatives were put right in front of her like a pair of salivating dogs. What was the flirtation with Kyle Cornell if not an attempt to push herself into either keeping the life she had or wrecking it?
