by Jodi Compton
Even before Nelson jerked his forehead in the woman’s direction, I went after her. The woman was pretty quick; she had jerked the sash window up and gotten her head and shoulders out by the time I reached her. When I did, she hung on to the windowsill so hard that its edge sliced her palm. She shrieked.
“Look what you did, bitch!” she yelled, seeing her own blood, spreading her hand so I could see it.
“Please put your hands behind your back,” I instructed her.
“Get your hands off me! Look what you fucking did! Get your hands off me, you fucking bitch!”
“Trace,” Nelson’s suspect said, tiredly. He knew a lost cause when he saw one. Trace-or Tracy, more likely-didn’t seem to hear him. She wasn’t listening to anyone. She kept yelling at me while I tried to read her the Miranda rights. It was making me nervous. If she couldn’t hear herself being Mirandized, I wondered, did she have a possible loophole in court?
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Hadley and Shiloh coming back downstairs with a third suspect. I had successfully gotten Tracy handcuffed but wished she’d shut up. I was starting to feel self-conscious about being the only one who couldn’t keep my suspect under control.
Just then something very strange happened. The staircase had a traditional open railing, supported by carved wooden posts. A bronze blur, like part of the wood framework come to life, dropped from between two of the posts, landing almost directly in front of Nelson. Nelson made a remarkably controlled jump but didn’t go anywhere, his pale blue eyes showing white at the edges.
I didn’t even have to look down to know what it was. The percussive sound of a rattlesnake’s warning was familiar from my childhood out West.
For a split second everybody was frozen, even the snake coiled to strike.
I stepped forward, caught the snake behind its triangular head, and broke its neck.
Its rattle, persisting after death, filled the house. Hadley and Nelson were looking at me like I’d just split the atom. Tracy had stopped in mid-scream to stare at me with her mouth open. Only Shiloh seemed unsurprised, though he was looking at me with a glimmer of some unreadable thought in his eyes.
“Maybe we should move everyone outside,” he suggested.
We did, but someone had to go back in and make sure the house was safe. Nelson and Hadley showed no interest whatsoever. Their eyes went to me.
“You’re the dragon slayer,” Hadley said, only half joking.
“Sure,” I said. “I’m game.”
“I’ll go with you,” Shiloh said.
There were no more loose snakes. Upstairs, we found the terrarium.
At one end, a heat lamp shone down on a broad basking rock. At the other end was a cool retreat box. Two adult snakes seemed to sleep on the sand, coiled against each other.
“God save me from drug dealers and their goddamn affectations,” Shiloh said wearily.
“Are we going to have to call Animal Control?” I was sitting on my heels, looking into a little half-size refrigerator, which held not only dead mice but little bottles of antivenin.
“The pound, are you kidding? They won’t touch this,” Shiloh said. “I think we’re going to have to get Fish and Wildlife out here, or someone from the zoo, which means one of us is going to have to stay here.”
“I could do that,” I told him.
“No, Nelson and I need to get everything into evidence. Go on back, process the suspects in, write up your paperwork. Hadley will enjoy riding back with you. I think he’s in love.”
It was a joke, but I saw him realize what he’d said. He’d accidentally evoked what we were both trying hard to forget. We’d been walking on a thin layer of ice, and he’d broken through with an innocent remark. We both felt the cold water it splashed on our newfound rapport.
Shiloh was right about one thing, though. Hadley called me. We dated for six companionable weeks, something we kept a secret from other officers.
One night I was on patrol alone. Crossing the Hennepin Bridge, I’d seen a cardboard box sitting on the pedestrian walkway, by itself, no one around. That struck me as mildly strange and I wanted to see what was in it.
I approached the cardboard box with caution that turned out to be unnecessary. The box was open at the top. Two kittens slept inside on pages of newspaper.
Someone had felt a spasm of compassion at the last minute and couldn’t throw them over the railing into the river. Now they and their box would go to the squad room until Animal Control was open in the morning.
I was in no hurry to go back to my car, looking out over the Mississippi and the riverbank instead. There was still no traffic on the bridge, no cars moving below in my line of sight. It was like being on an empty movie set. Downtown, windows in the high-rise buildings glowed with light, and in the distance I could hear the rushing sound of the 35W, like blood heard through a stethoscope. Those were the only signs of life. It wasn’t normal, even for two-thirty on a weekday morning. But it wasn’t disturbing. It was mystic.
Motion below caught my eye, a lone figure in the distance.
It was a runner, making long strides like a cross-country athlete close to the finish, down the middle of an empty street whose wet black surface gleamed in the night.
Just by watching I knew several things about him: that he’d been at this pace for a little while and was capable of keeping it up for a good time. That he was feeling the energy of running down the center of a street that was almost never empty. That he was the kind of runner I wished I could be, the kind who could let his mind go and just run, without keeping track of distance and thinking about when he could stop.
When he drew nearer I realized I knew him. It was Shiloh.
He passed right under me, and as he did there was engine noise behind me all of a sudden, two cars going eastbound, and the moment of stillness was over.
A few days later I met Hadley for lunch and we discussed our relationship. We agreed that it wasn’t ultimately going to work out. I don’t know who actually used the phrase the long run, but I suspect it was me.
I did not call Mike Shiloh or contrive to cross his path downtown.
Neither was I asked to help the narcotics task force again, although Radich stopped by to thank me for my help. The rattlesnake incident had made me briefly famous in the department, but now that had mercifully died down. I was an unassuming patrol officer again, working my midwatch and dogwatch shifts, which were uneventful.
An early warm spell settled over the Cities. Genevieve took a week off during Kamareia’s spring break, and without a workout partner for the weight room, I took to running in the afternoons along the river. I told myself that I wasn’t avoiding the pickup basketball games in which the Narcotics guys sometimes played; I was simply cross-training, and besides, the warm weather was too pleasant to waste by exercising indoors.
I always walked my last quarter mile to cool down. That’s what I was doing one evening a little after five, walking and enjoying the scent of a pizza restaurant nearby, when I turned onto my own street and saw a pair of long legs on my front steps. The rest of my visitor was out of sight, sitting on the top step within the entry alcove, but the scuffed boots were vaguely familiar, as was, I suddenly realized, the green Catalina parked on the street.
I was glad to have recognized who it was in advance; it allowed me to not look surprised when I came face-to-face with Mike Shiloh for the first time in two months.
It had been about that long since our cluster of encounters, and seeing him gave me that little shock, the one of both recognition and of realization that your memory hasn’t painted someone quite true. I registered everything anew: the slightly Eurasian features, the longish, curling hair, which clearly hadn’t been cut in the interim, and most of all, the direct, unapologetic gaze. Given his place on the highest of the steps, he was almost on a level with me, even seated.
“I figured if you were working midwatch you’d be there by now,” he said by way of greeting. “Have you eaten?”
/> “Did you think of calling first?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Is Hadley here right now?”
He kept a completely straight face, but I sensed amusement. He was pleased at having guessed something Hadley and I had worked hard to keep off the grapevine.
“I am no longer seeing Detective Hadley socially,” I said, using the most formal phrasing I could think of, and the coolest tone.
“I’m glad to hear that,” Shiloh said. “Last Friday evening I saw Detective Hadley in the Lynlake district with a young woman. She was dressed like she might be ‘seeing him socially.’ ”
“Good for him.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Are you hungry?” He tilted his head slightly, interrogatively. “I was thinking of a Korean place in St. Paul, but that’s negotiable,” he said. “It all depends on what you want.”
I realized that for a while now I’d been trying to decide who this man was, and if I liked him, and still I couldn’t come to a conclusion.
“Before I go anywhere,” I said stiffly, “I want to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Why drink in an airport bar?”
If nothing else, I’d surprised him; I saw that in his face. He rubbed the back of his neck a minute, then looked up at me and said, “Airports have their own police. I wanted to go somewhere that I wouldn’t run into any cops I knew.”
I heard the truth in his words. Truth, and none of the easy cynicism that would have allowed me to send this man away and stop thinking about him once and for all.
“Come in for a minute,” I said. “I need to change.”
chapter 14
Naomi Wilson, formerly Naomi Shiloh, hadn’t exaggerated about her size. She wore a loose yellow dress and a coral-colored sweater that was left open to accommodate her huge belly. She was standing at the edge of the well-tended play yard of the day-care center, watching the children.
When she saw me coming, I saw her take my measure: my height, the black leather jacket I’d thought would be best against autumn out West.
“You must be Sarah,” she said. “Call me Naomi.”
Her hair was darker than Shiloh’s, and I didn’t see much of his features in her open, sweet face. But demeanor, of course, is part of appearance. The older we get, the more our faces reflect our lives and our thoughts. And already it was clear that Naomi and Shiloh were worlds apart on that count.
“Do you mind talking out here?” Naomi gestured at a picnic table nearby. Obviously she was comfortable in her sweater, used to being outside with the kids. “I can have Marie come out, if you’d rather go inside.”
“Outside is all right,” I said.
“Can I get you something first? Some tea or water? Apple juice? Graham crackers?” She smiled at her joke.
“Coffee would be good,” I said.
“We don’t actually have any,” she said apologetically.
Too late I remembered Shiloh telling me that in Utah, where 75 percent of the population is Mormon, even the soda fountains served caffeine-free cola.
“Right,” I said. “I’m okay, really.”
At the table, it took a moment for her to comfortably adjust herself.
“Is this your ninth month?” I asked.
“Seventh.”
“Twins?”
She nodded. “It runs in the family.”
“Where does your twin sister live?”
“She’s still in school,” Naomi said. “Bethany didn’t go straight through college in four years like I did.”
I was about to get to the point at hand, but Naomi focused thoughtfully on me as though I’d suddenly materialized. “So Mike is married,” she said. “I don’t know why, but that surprises me.”
“Yeah?”
“He was always kind of a loner,” she said.
“He still is, in a way. Before he went missing, he was supposed to be going to the FBI Academy in Virginia. That would have kept him away from home for four months, but I understood.”
“He was going to be an FBI agent?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” she said. “That’s amazing.” Naomi even laughed. “Mike, an agent of the FBI.”
“Why does that surprise you? You knew he was a cop.”
“True,” she said. “I know, it’s just…”
“Was he wild as a kid?”
“You know…” She glanced upward slightly, the way people do when accessing memories. “I don’t really know. That was kind of the impression I got, growing up.”
“From your folks?”
“Yeah, and from Adam and Bill. But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember anything specific that they said. Maybe I just assumed anyone who left home so young was a rule-breaker.”
“An outlaw,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “How did you two meet?”
Naomi seemed more interested in Shiloh’s life in Minnesota than in his disappearance. Maybe that was only natural. To her and her family, Shiloh had already disappeared, in a sense.
“Through work,” I said. “I’m a cop.”
“I should have guessed,” she said. “You look kind of like a police officer, I mean, you’re-”
“Tall, I know,” I said, smiling at her. “When was the last time you spoke to Mike?” I asked. It was time to get down to business. If I knew what my business in Utah was at all.
“I don’t talk to him at all,” Naomi said, mildly surprised. “I get Christmas cards from him.”
“But you were the one in your family who tracked him down,” I said. “The two of you seem to have the closest relationship.”
“I wouldn’t say close,” she said. “He left home when I was only eight years old.”
“Why’d you start looking for him?” I asked.
She considered. “In our family, I was kind of the record-keeper. Family’s important to me. Well, it was to all of us. But I’ve always been the one who took pictures at family gatherings and put the albums together. I guess that’s why, when I was a senior in high school, I started to think about Mike and whether it might be possible to find him.”
“Did you use one of those Internet people-finder services?”
Naomi shook her head. “That was too expensive, with the money I had then. I just did what I could. I had a lot of friends, and whenever they’d go out of town, I’d ask them to look in city phone books. It’s not a common name, Shiloh. Eventually, my friend Diana called from Minneapolis and said she’d seen a Michael Shiloh in the white pages, just a number, no address.
“I was too shy to call the phone number, so I called directory assistance. I said, ‘I know you can’t give me an address, but is this the M. Shiloh on Fifth Street?’ I picked that street name at random. And the operator said, ‘No, I’m showing an address on 28th Avenue.’ So I was really excited then. It was like a project. I had Diana ask her cousin back there to look through voter-registration records, and his whole address was there.”
“I wish everyone I worked with on the job had your initiative,” I told her. I wasn’t just flattering her; her dedication was impressive.
Naomi looked pleased. “I was a freshman in college by then. I wrote him a letter, although I was trying not to get my hopes up. Then, three weeks later, I got a letter.
“It wasn’t a long letter, but I must have reread it four times. I just couldn’t believe I’d found him. He hadn’t been a real person to me up until that moment. He had this funny writing, all caps, kind of spiky.”
“I know,” I said. “What did he say?”
“He mostly answered the questions I’d written to him. He said that yes, it was him, and he wrote a little about his ‘lost years.’ The time he’d spent working around Montana and Illinois and Indiana and, what? Wisconsin, I think.
“He said that he’d gotten a GED instead of finishing high school, and that now he was on the police force. He told me he liked Minneapolis but wasn’t sure he was going to settle the
re permanently. And ‘I’m not, nor have I ever been married.’ I thought that was a funny way to put it, like he was up in front of a Senate panel.” Naomi paused, thinking. “He said that I shouldn’t rush into marriage and motherhood. He thought I should take some time off from school and see the world, or at least America. Get some perspective on things. And then he told me to ‘study hard.’ ” Her eyes narrowed, looking at something over my shoulder. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”
I turned and put one leg back over the bench, watching as Naomi went to referee a dispute over a piece of playground equipment. It took a few minutes for her to sort things out and soothe the hurt feelings, and then she walked back to me.
“Where was I?” she said.
“You’d just gotten your first letter from him.”
“Right,” she said. “Well, it seemed like a promising start to me. So I wrote him back, and he wrote me. And back and forth, a couple of times. I wrote him almost immediately after I’d get one of his letters, but usually there was a wait for his answers to my letters.
“Finally I wrote to ask him if, since he wasn’t sure he was going to put down roots in Minnesota, did he think he might ever come home to Utah? I asked him why he’d stayed away so long and said that everyone would probably be happy if he came back, at least for a visit. He never answered that letter. Six weeks later, I decided to call him.” She smiled, but with a slightly wry look. “So I did. He picked up, and I said, Hi, this is Naomi.
“He said something like ‘Yes, Naomi?’ and I thought he didn’t know who I was. I said, Your sister Naomi, and he said, ‘I know.’
“I was starting to feel uncomfortable. He was totally different on the phone than in his letters. I said something to the effect that I’d just called to talk and he said, ‘About what?’ ”
I felt embarrassed on her behalf, because I could so easily hear Shiloh’s cool voice saying it.
“I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was really embarrassed. I managed to get off the phone without hanging up on him outright, but it wasn’t smooth. I never did that again.” Naomi laughed a little, as if still embarrassed.
