Interference

by Danielle Girard

When she looked up, the woman was gone. Keeping hold of the table, Mei turned back to the bar. Faces were fuzzy and out of focus. She had to close one eye to find Sophie and Sabrina, who were leaned across the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention. The distance was farther now. Something was wrong. The smart thing to do was to stay still. Wait. She pressed the back of her hand to her face. She was hot. It was loud and hot.

  She remembered the leftover shrimp Ayi had brought. She felt the firm texture of their pink bodies between her teeth, tasted the warm flavor. It had been so good then, but now it rose against the back of her mouth. She gasped and swallowed. She was going to be sick. She set her full beer on the table and aimed her gaze at the bathroom. She had been sick from alcohol only twice before. The last time was over a decade before. The memory of it made her shudder.

  She searched for Sabrina or Sophie in the crowd, but faces were smeared as though she were spinning too quickly in a circle. Or they were. She touched the comforting bulge of her cell phone in her back pocket and headed for the bathroom. She would text them from there. Tell them she was sick. Or not. Maybe it would pass. She took slow, shallow breaths. Don’t be sick. Don’t be sick. Jodi had laughed when Mei got sick the first time. On peach schnapps and gin. A terrible combination. She had never recovered a taste for gin, and the smell of peaches still gave her a twinge of nausea. The lights on the dance floor were hot and blinding, the bodies pushing against each other as she tried to move through them. Her feet were unsure. She swayed into a woman who turned and put her hands on Mei’s hips. She didn’t stop walking, felt the hands slip off, one trailing down her right thigh. A woman stood outside the bathroom door, something in her hands. A phone. She was staring at a phone.

  Mei stepped for the black bathroom door.

  The woman lowered the phone, said something. Mei shook her head. She took the knob and tried to twist it. Locked.

  “It’s occupied,” the woman repeated in the slow, enunciated speech of someone talking to a foreigner. Mei stopped and pressed her hand to the wall. With her eyes closed, the room stopped moving momentarily. She hung her head and tried to breathe through her nose. She felt the cool breeze of air and opened her eyes again. An exit. She just needed some fresh air; air would help. She started down the dark corridor, pressing both hands against the wall for support. As she reached the door, she felt an arm on hers. “I’m sick,” she whispered.

  There was no response. Mei turned her head to look, but suddenly she was falling forward. Her arms cartwheeled out in front of her. Where was the ground? And then her face smacked against the ground. Or maybe it wasn’t the ground. She fingered a hard flat surface with ridges. Something hit her again, vibrating like metal on metal. It rang loud in her ears and made her stomach roil. Still blind, she reached for her face just as her stomach let loose its contents. She vomited into her own hands. Behind her was a sharp sound like a cough or a laugh. Short and cruel. Another blow. This time her entire body struck the hard ground. The last sensation she felt was gravel tearing at the skin of her palms and a burning sensation on the right side of her face. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the blackness.

  Chapter 29

  They remained at a standoff. Ryaan knew the police would be putting people in place around them. She wanted to picture Cameron Cruz on a rooftop, cradling her rifle under her arm. Ryaan had seen Cameron in action, watched her crouched with her gun, waiting for an hour or more until the time was right for a kill shot. Cameron could be still much longer than most. She didn’t get impatient and she wouldn’t take an unnecessary risk in hopes of gaining information from Sawicki. When Cameron pulled the trigger, she shot to kill. Ryaan forced herself to believe Cameron was there, somewhere close by, getting ready to shoot.

  Likely, there were multiple officers moving in from behind. Although Ryaan hadn’t heard anything specific, she had been trying to make enough sound to cover any noises the police might make as they moved in. For close to an hour she had been doing that. How long did it take to get someone close enough to take a shot? She thought of the dozens of times she’d been at a takedown when something had gone wrong. Either they couldn’t get in touch with the right people or there were multiple calls out. People were occupied elsewhere.

  After all, it was Saturday night. How many other crises were going on at that same moment? Was she a priority? Over a drug dealer, probably, but what if someone had kidnapped a room full of children? They would come first. She would want them to come first. A theater hold up like the one in Colorado. How many officers would something like that pull away from her? She struggled to be still, to remain standing.

  A cold sweat burned in her eyes. The radio had gone silent. She’d heard the warning, the slow beep in her ear. Low battery. She’d had this problem before on stakeouts. The rechargeable batteries in the old radios no longer held their charge. She could have planned better, but they so rarely used the radios for longer than thirty or forty minutes. Equipment failure. Budget cuts.

  Would the report on her shooting include that detail? Would someone high up in the department determine that she was partially culpable? It was so much easier for them if she were to blame. Especially if she died.

  The concept of her death was becoming more imminent. Sawicki seemed to realize he was trapped and was growing impatient. He had stopped asking for Karl Penn and started to talk to himself. Or, rather, he was responding to himself with short bursts. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “She never called back.” And most recently, “Why set me up like that and just leave me?”

  She had tried to reason with him. “Let me go and we can get you the help you need. I can help you.” She made dozens of platitudes, but Sawicki didn’t respond to a single word. The only time he reacted to her at all was when she moved and then only to tell her he would shoot her if she wasn’t still.

  Her muscles burned. Not just the quads that ached when she ran through the park or her calves when she did the stairs or her upper back when she made it to the gym to lift. Every muscle was on fire. The small ones in the back of her neck and her jaw, the big ones in her glutes and across her back. Her abdomen ached. Adrenaline tightened the musculoskeletal system, but that was an hour ago. The muscles were tired, weak. Adrenaline didn’t last.

  “I have to sit,” she whispered.

  “Do it and I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  Sawicki didn’t seem to struggle. His body was tense, aware, alert. He seemed not to have fatigued at all. She worried her phone would ring and he might shoot her accidentally. Her mother would be home from pinochle and it wouldn’t be long before Ryaan’s absence caused her to panic. The end of summer was a hard time for Ryaan’s mother. In three weeks, it would be the twenty-first anniversary of Antoine’s death. Eleven weeks later, the sixteenth for Darryl. Her mother would invite Deacon Carson to the house often in those weeks. The two would sit in the living room with the furniture that had been brought from their tiny home in New Orleans, set in exactly the same arrangement with her mother’s chair facing the front door though the living room was now on the opposite side of the house.

  That room was frozen in time but had simultaneously deteriorated like the furniture that filled it. The weathered floral pattern, the cotton shiny and flat from years of wear. The white had yellowed, and the arms were covered with small lace doilies in the spots where years of worrying fingers had frayed the fabric.

  Ryaan rarely stopped in the living room. As kids, they had never been allowed in there. It was the adult room. When her aunts came to visit, her mother entertained them in the living room. But mostly, the person Ryaan remembered in that room was Deacon Warren from the small Baptist church they attended. Warren sat with her mom with each of her brother’s deaths and on the anniversaries of their deaths and their birthdays and holidays for years afterward. After a while, it seemed like he was always there.

  His presence in that room had stayed wit
h the furniture. The old yellowed couch, the scratched, faded coffee table, even the tattered rug flattened in spots where the same pieces of furniture had sat for too many years—they all felt like death to her. That room had always been about her brothers.

  Sometimes, after a sting, Ryaan stood on the periphery of the room and peered in. She could see Deacon Warren with his shiny bald head and his dark goatee, still looking like a young man, sitting with her mother who looked like a woman twice her age. Her mother would talk about how good they were, her brothers. Maybe they were, maybe not. They’d made mischief and lied the way kids did. In most neighborhoods, boys would knock down cans with slingshots or BB guns, play baseball, ride bikes, steal a piece of gum, maybe break a window.

  In her neighborhood, there were no bikes, no grass for baseball. In her neighborhood, kids played with sticks and dirt, and watched the older ones buy things they never dreamed of owning. When the chance came for the younger to make money too, very few could walk away. Her brothers had been no different. Maybe she was no different either. Maybe her mother was meant to bury all her children.

  Sawicki shifted his hold on her. Ryaan decided it was time. She squeezed her eyes closed and thought about Cameron. Someone have my back. There was no way to broadcast her intention to the police officers in front of her, so she could only hope that they were paying attention. She closed her eyes and thought of Deacon Warren and Deacon Carson, the men in her mother’s life. Then, she thought of Hal. Her mother would have liked him. She pictured them meeting at her funeral, Hal in her mother’s living room.

  With that, Ryaan drew a deep breath and let the muscles in her legs collapse. She sank free of Sawicki’s grasp. “No,” he shouted. His grip tightened on her shoulder. There was gunfire. A single shot. Heat flooded through her core and out into her extremities. Her ears rang then she could hear nothing at all. Feel nothing. Not even a numbness or the sensation of the ground. After, a tiny electrical hum began in her limbs. Not pain but awareness.

  She waited for the pain for several seconds. When she opened her eyes, Patrick and O’Shea and Kong hovered over a body. It must have been hers. They were shaking their heads and smiling. Why were they smiling?

  Patrick rolled the body onto its back. Blood ran down the face. A white man’s face. Justin Sawicki. Patrick handed his gun to Kong and turned to her. Then, he was talking to her, touching her face and she felt it, felt his freezing hands on her face. He wrapped them behind her head and tried to lift her.

  She didn’t help him. She didn’t move at all. Sensation returned to her back and hips and slowly spread upwards to her face and down into her fingers. The ground was cool beneath her, comforting, but also solid, fixed. She ached. Resting her body against it was like being a baby, bundled by a parent, and Ryaan was perfectly content not to move at all.

  Chapter 30

  Mei woke with something heavy pinning down her head. Like a rock. Or a car. She pressed her hands toward it, but she couldn’t find the weight. Instead, she touched a wiry knot in the back of her hair. Her fingers got tangled in the web. When she pulled them free, she took out a few pieces of hair. The pain in her head was unbearable. She needed to get up. She tried to press herself free, but her arms collapsed under her weight. She moaned.

  A voice was low in her ear. Someone speaking Cantonese. She heard her mother. More voices, a ringtone. People hovered above her, watching her struggle with the weight.

  “M̀h’hóu gáau ngóh.” Leave me alone.

  “She’s waking up.” Something was wrong. Ayi was speaking English.

  Mei forced her eyes open, saw the lavender of her bed sheets. Home. When she rolled over, it was as though a giant ship attached to her brain had capsized and gone under water as she turned. She put both hands on her head and held tight.

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Chiu. A nasty headache is a pretty common side-effect.”

  Mei opened her eyes to the familiar voice. “Hailey?”

  “Yep. I’m right here.”

  Without moving her head, Mei scanned the room. Her bedroom. Her jeans on the floor of her bedroom. She fingered the collar of her blouse. She was still dressed. Why was she dressed?

  “Can you sit up?” Ayi asked.

  Mei opened her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ve put Advil and water here on the table,” Ayi told her, speaking in Cantonese again. “I am going to call your mother before she gets on a plane. Then, I’ll make Hui’s migraine tea to help your head.” Mei looked around, eyes narrowed against the bright light. Hadn’t she heard her mother’s voice?

  A woman Mei didn’t know closed the door behind Ayi and stepped closer. Beside her stood Sophie, who raised a hand in greeting. Mei gave her what she could manage of a smile. Was she hurt? She touched her head, half expecting a bandage of some sort. Why were they all there?

  She had so many questions, but her brain hurt. It was all she could do to close her eyes against the searing pain. “What happened?”

  “Rohypnol,” Hailey said. “Roofies.”

  Roofies. “I was drugged?”

  “You were,” Hailey confirmed.

  “Is that why my head hurts so much?”

  “More than likely,” said the other woman.

  “We want to talk to you about that night,” Hailey explained.

  “What night?”

  “Saturday.”

  Mei motioned to Sophie. “She was there. We went to the wine bar. Then out dancing.”

  “We talked to Sophie and the other women Saturday night,” Hailey explained. “We just need to hear what you remember.”

  “Do you remember someone buying you a drink?” the other woman asked.

  Mei looked at her then back to Hailey. “What I remember?” She pushed herself slowly up in bed. Like moving a boulder uphill. “What happened?”

  “Mei, do you know Jamie Vail?” Hailey asked.

  “No.” Hailey had just said the woman’s name and already Mei couldn’t remember it. “Drugged?”

  “With roofies,” the woman said.

  “Jamie’s an inspector in—”

  The two women glanced at each other.

  “Jamie has a lot of experience with roofies,” Hailey said.

  Mei reached for the water and Advil. Hailey shook out three of the orange pills, more than Mei would normally have taken. She ate all three and drank them down with water.

  At a glacial pace, she sank against the headboard. Jamie had a lot of experience with roofies. “You’re talking about rape.” Mei spoke above the thundering of her heart.

  “I work in sex crimes, yes,” Jamie said.

  Silence hung in the room for several seconds before Sophie moved closer. “I should get out of here so they can talk to you.”

  Mei licked her dry lips. “Okay.”

  “I just wanted to check on you.” Sophie came to the bed and patted Mei’s leg. “Sabrina called a couple of times. She had appointments this morning, but she wanted to make sure you were okay. I’ll come by after work.”

  “Thank you,” Mei breathed. It felt like so much effort. “You don’t need to.”

  “I want to,” Sophie said. “Text me if you want me to bring food or anything.”

  With that, Sophie left. The latch on the door was a thousand decibels. Ayi’s voice from the other room, ten thousand. Hailey pulled the chair across the carpet, which sounded like a chainsaw running.

  Mei glanced at Hailey and Jamie. They had to know that Sophie and Mei had been at a gay club last night, but her expression belied nothing and, for that, Mei was thankful. “My aunt doesn’t know where I was last night.”

  “The club, you mean?” Jamie confirmed.

  Mei nodded.

  “She doesn’t need to know it was a gay club if that’s what you mean.”

  “It is,” Mei said. “For now, she doesn’t know.”r />
  “Understood.” No judgment. The shame Mei felt wasn’t from Hailey or Jamie, but it was distinct all the same. She was at a gay bar before she’d told her husband she was gay. There was shame in that. She’d been drugged by a stranger in a bar. Maybe some would say there was no shame in that, but Mei felt it. Shame in being unaware, in being vulnerable. Weak.

  Mei tried to collect her thoughts. Last night. They’d been at the club last night, but Sophie said something about work. The silence stretched out as Mei struggled to put it together. “She was going to work?”

  Hailey sat in the chair and leaned toward Mei. The motion felt morose like she was delivering the news of a death. “It’s Monday.”

  Monday. Mei tried to sit up again.

  “Don’t,” Jamie warned. “You’ll make it worse. At least, wait until the Advil kicks in.” She came around the bed and handed Mei the glass of water. “Try to get this down.”

  Mei drank two long mouthfuls of water. Her phone lay on the bedside table. She lifted it up. The screen was filled with missed notifications. At the top it said 10:14 then just below that, Monday. “We went out Saturday. I slept through Sunday?”

  “Mostly,” Hailey said. “You woke a few times, but never fully.”

  Mei stared at Hailey. “You were here?”

  She nodded. “Part of the afternoon. Ryaan, too. And Jamie.”

  She was mortified. They’d been there, watching her sleep. No. Watching her passed out. “I should be at work,” Mei said without any conviction. She was going nowhere. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jamie said. “This isn’t your fault. Someone drugged you. I’m just glad you had friends with you.”

  Tears stung behind her eyelids.

  “Mei, listen to Jamie,” Hailey said. “She’s absolutely right. I made the hospital take blood on Saturday night for a tox screen. Sophie and Sabrina said there was no way you were that sick on alcohol. You’d had what—a glass of wine, one shot, and maybe two beers in five hours.”