Flashpoint

by Lynn Hightower

  Aretha Daniels made a choking noise. “That horrible little girl that came yesterday? It was her?”

  The irritable mom-voice was gone. Aretha Daniels sounded cowed and old. Sonora turned her chair sideways and leaned toward her. Keaton moved close to her on the bed, and she put her hand over his.

  Sonora’s voice was gentle. “Tell me everything you remember.”

  Aretha Daniels rubbed the top of Keaton’s hand and took a breath. “She was Keaton’s friend. That’s what she said.”

  Keaton’s look was intense, guarded.

  “She talked about Mark. No, that’s not exactly right. She wanted to know how I felt about Mark’s death. She actually asked me that. At the time I thought she was simply … awkward. Socially. But she kept at it, kept questioning me.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “Well, like, wasn’t it awful, how he died? Did I think he was in a lot of pain?” Aretha Daniels swallowed and clutched Keaton’s arm. “Did I think about it, imagine it? Did I think he … think he …” The tears came suddenly, and Aretha Daniels sobbed.

  Keaton pulled his mother close and slipped a wad of Puffs tissues out from under the Gameboy cartridges.

  She blew her nose. “She wanted to know if I thought he had cried. If I thought he had called for me.”

  Sonora felt the heat rise in her cheeks, felt the ulcer acknowledge the call to arms, her jaw clench as the anger flooded her senses with an intensity that seemed dangerous, at the very least to her stomach.

  “And the whole time she was watching me. It’s hard to explain. It was like she was hungry for what I had to say, but her eyes were … odd, somehow, the expression. And she never smiled. Not even at first when I said hello.”

  Sonora knew that Aretha Daniels had been afraid and that the fear had shaken her, and hurt her, and that she would never admit it.

  “Then what happened?”

  “I told her to leave.”

  Keaton’s jaw was clenched. “I want you to come and stay with me awhile, Mom.”

  “Keaton, no, I won’t. I will never be a burden on you.”

  “You aren’t a burden and I want you to come.”

  But he didn’t, and all three of them knew it.

  “Did she say anything else?”

  Aretha Daniels shrugged, lifted a hand, let it fall.

  “Did she ask you about Keaton?”

  “At first, Keaton was all she talked about. I thought maybe she …” She turned to her son. “I thought she was some kind of a girlfriend. That maybe she was the reason you and Ashley—”

  “No, Mother.” Repressively.

  Aretha Daniels looked across the room at Sonora, her gaze an accusation of a sort. “You have children.”

  “Two,” Sonora said.

  “Ages?”

  “Six, my daughter. A son thirteen.”

  “Thirteen? No wonder you look tired. Up late worrying, I suppose. Keep him in hand, it will pass.”

  Sonora smiled but felt oddly comforted. “I hope so. There seems to be a problem with algebra.”

  “At that age, it will be a lack of organization and study. Likely as not he hasn’t been turning in homework. Be firm with him, Detective.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Aretha Daniels looked at her sharply, as if sniffing for sarcasm. She patted Keaton’s cheek, then pushed him away gently.

  “You should go, it’s a long drive home for you.”

  “Mom, come on. Come home with me awhile.”

  Aretha Daniels picked up the Gameboy and stared at the tiny screen. She patted Keaton’s knee. “Be careful, son.”

  18

  Sonora went from the porch steps into the muddy yard and took a deep breath. Keaton Daniels walked beside her, steps quick, hands deep in his pockets.

  “Is there any place to eat around here?” Sonora asked.

  “Probably something in town. Dairy Queen at the next exit.”

  “I’ve got to feed my ulcer. Meet me at the Dairy Queen, we need to talk.”

  He nodded, started to say something. Sonora waved him on. She wanted out and away. She did not like leaving Aretha Daniels behind in this farm-hell. She got her engine started first, gravel sputtering beneath the wheels of the Taurus. Keaton wasn’t behind her when she turned onto the narrow two-lane road, and she looked back over her shoulder. Daniels was hunched forward over the steering wheel of his car, head bowed. Sonora grimaced and hit the accelerator, heading down the winding road toward the blessed interstate. She kept an eye on the rearview mirror until Keaton’s blue LeBaron showed up behind.

  By the time Sonora pulled into the crumbling asphalt parking lot of the Dairy Queen, she was queasy and tired of the car smell. She parked next to the inevitable pickup, and Keaton pulled up beside her. She dug her cellular phone put of her purse.

  Yes, the kids were home. Yes, the kids were safe. Yes, their grandmother, Baba, was coming to pick them up. Heather asked when she was coming home, sounding wistful. Tim asked if she had her gun and if it was loaded, and told her to be careful.

  Sonora tucked the phone into her purse next to the gun and went into the Dairy Queen. Keaton was inside, studying the menu. He moved close to the cash register. Ordered fries, a barbecue, a Sprite.

  “For here,” Sonora told the girl behind the counter. “Chili dog, onion rings, and a Coke. Yeah, I want chili on it. That’s usually implied with a chili dog, right?”

  Keaton looked at her. “Be nice, Detective, this is a small town.”

  The food came on red plastic trays. It was late afternoon, well past the lunchtime crush, and they had their pick of sticky tables.

  “Over here.” Keaton took a wad of napkins and wiped a frosting of salt from a corner table.

  A fern in a basket over Sonora’s head dropped a leaf on the seat beside her.

  Keaton Daniels stabbed a french fry into a white paper cup full of catsup. “Nice place to leave your mother, isn’t it?”

  “Why is she there?”

  “Her choice. Kaylene is supposedly a cousin of some cousin two hundred times removed. And my mother … my mother is nuts.”

  “I take it you weren’t consulted?”

  “My mother made the decision so she wouldn’t be a burden. Pays her own way, except Kaylene calls me on the sly every month or so needing money for what she calls ‘Mama’s extras.’”

  “Do you pay?”

  Keaton looked at her.

  “I’m a cop, I’m nosy.”

  “Sometimes.” He took a large bite of barbecue. “My mother didn’t used to be like this. The woman who limited my television when I was a kid now has carpal tunnel from playing video games.”

  Sonora looked at the chili dog, wondered how the ulcer would handle it, toyed with an onion ring.

  “What was your mother like? When you were a kid?”

  Keaton stacked three french fries and ate them in a wedge, sans catsup. “She was a teacher. Where I lived, most of the mothers were stay-at-homes. Not like now.”

  “What grade did she teach?”

  “Elementary school mostly. Middle school for a while, then she was a principal.”

  “Not surprised.”

  “She was good at it. Good with the kids, but no nonsense. She would come home every day, pick me up at my grandmother’s, or whoever I was staying with, and she’d be all full of energy and the things that happened during the day. Always had funny stories to tell me and Mark. She always seemed more interesting than the other moms. I work with teachers, older women, and they remind me of what she was like back then. The ideal mom time. I miss her. It’s almost like—”

  Sonora had the feeling he was going to say “like she’s dead.” He stacked up three more french fries, then leaned back, chewing.

  “So. You married?”

  Sonora laughed. “No. My husband’s dead.”

  Keaton tilted his head to one side. “You’re the first woman I’ve ever met who laughed when she said her husband was dead.”

&n
bsp; “Cop humor.”

  “Whatever. You’re easy to talk to. Is that because you’re a woman? Do you think women cops are easier to talk to?”

  Sonora shrugged, ventured one bite of chili dog.

  “I’m not being sexist. I know from my own work, men and women are different, have different strengths. Is it better for a cop to be male, do men get more respect?”

  Sonora thought about it. “Once in a while when I worked patrol, I’d answer a call, say a prowler call, and people would ask why they sent a little thing like me.”

  “Is it weird being the only woman in male territory?”

  “There are other women. I’m one of the boys at work. After work, no, I get left out a lot. But I see these guys all day, I have two kids, it doesn’t break my heart. I don’t like it when people think I get a promotion just because I’m female.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.”

  “Yeah? How’s that?”

  “Hey, I got hired because I’m a man. I get picked for committees because I’m a guy. See, if I advance, it’s because men always get preferential treatment. They all think I have the advantage because I’m a white male.”

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe I’m just a damn good teacher.”

  “How many men are there, teaching elementary school?”

  “I used to be the only guy at my school, my old school.”

  “You were the only man there?”

  “Only. Custodian, principal—all female.”

  “Is that good or bad?” Sonora started getting serious on the chili dog.

  “Both. I liked being different, being the unusual one.”

  “And bad?”

  “You know how women, when they work together, their periods synchronize? How’d you like to go to work in a building with forty-five women all having their period?”

  Sonora coughed violently. Keaton leaned over and patted her on the back.

  They were eating ice cream. Sonora had gotten to that point where the food had been in her stomach long enough to make the pain of the ulcer go away. She felt pretty good. No ulcer pain and a hot fudge sundae.

  She shook her head at Keaton. “My situation is tougher. Look, even the little things. One assignment I had, women had to hike three floors to get to the bathroom. Men never have to put up with that stuff.”

  He poked the bottom of a frozen lime push-up. “At my school there was no men’s room.”

  “They plant a tree in your name?”

  “No, they just declared the bathroom unisex.”

  “So?”

  “So? I go in, there’s a tampon dispenser on the wall. Three women combing their hair and pulling up their panty hose. You think I feel welcome? Like I’m comfortable in there with a magazine?”

  Sonora was eating french fries now, Keaton working on an order of onion rings. He pulled the streamers of onion out of the thick crunchy batter and ate them separately.

  “Anytime they need a piano moved—ask Mr. Keaton. One of the teachers wants help carrying in boxes—ask Mr. Keaton. I’m the school brute.”

  Sonora stuck a straw in the milk shake. “The men are way over-protective. Sam’s been my partner, more than five years. Even now, I know there are times he just wants me to stay in the car.”

  Keaton peeled a piece of chocolate topping off his ice cream cone. “Try this. The first teaching job I got offered I lost, because I wouldn’t coach the basketball team. I guarantee you the women don’t have to coach.”

  Sonora nodded. “The minute I get promoted, I get jokes about my love life. And guys that don’t have half my smarts, honestly they don’t, they get these great assignments.”

  “How’d you get homicide?”

  “A lot of reasons, one of which is I write a good report. The clincher was because of a creep named McCready.”

  “Why, he your superior officer?”

  “No. You really want to hear this?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Okay, let me back up to the beginning. I’m in uniform, and I get a call. A woman comes home and somebody has robbed the house. I’m first on the scene.

  “So I’m looking around. And this woman, she’s upset, you know, trying not to cry, because she’s got her little boy, he’s maybe two. And the house is a mess. Whoever has been in has ransacked the place, turned it upside down, pulled all the woman’s underwear out of the drawer. And the whole time I’m in there, I get this weird feeling, something’s not right. Just a feeling, my intuition, okay?”

  Keaton nodded, leaning forward.

  Sonora stared at a smudge of mustard, but she saw the house again, the woman, pale, biting her lips, holding her little boy, sleepy-eyed and slack in her arms. They had come home from the grocery store, and the trunk of their car was still open, still full of bags, when Sonora arrived alone in her patrol car. It was past the baby’s nap time. Sonora remembered that he kept rubbing his eyes, laying his flushed pink cheek against his mother’s shoulder. The mother had been young, blond hair tied in a ponytail, nose and cheeks pink with sunburn.

  It had struck Sonora that nothing was actually missing. The TV was there. Radio. Loose cash on the dresser.

  She had done it by the book. Asked the woman to wait outside, called for backup, gone through the house room by room. Endured the tolerant kindly look from the husky black patrol officer who had come at her call.

  Getting the details down for the report, it had dawned on her that her best friend in elementary school had a house just like this one and that there was an obscure, little-used attic entrance in the closet ceiling of one of the bedrooms.

  She’d gone to check. Sure enough, an attic entrance, but no smudgy handprints on the cover, which was wedged neatly in place. A child’s stool lay on its side next to the open closet.

  Sonora had stood on the stool, still barely able to reach, and had had to ask the cop, Reilly, to give her a boost. He had been good-natured but skeptical, offering to go up in her place. She knew from the glimmer of amusement in his eyes that this was going to be a “story” tomorrow at roll call.

  She dislodged the attic cover, sweat staining the back of her uniform, though it was cool in the house, air-conditioning going full blast. The attic was dark, tiny slivers of light coming in from a ventilation grill up under the eaves.

  The attic was hot, smelled of mildew. The air was thick and close, and her cheeks were flushed. She hesitated. If someone was there, she would be exposed. But Reilly was looking impatient. Any minute now he’d take over and send her off to the kitchen to finish taking the report.

  Sweat rolled down her temples as she stuck her head up into the attic, eyes adjusting slowly.

  No floor, just a bare-bones skeleton of wood supports and thick pads of pink fiberglass insulation. Something large in the corner, huddled to one side.

  Sonora took her gun from the holster, thumbed the safety off. With her left hand, she took the flashlight off her belt and flipped it on.

  The spread of light revealed a man with a gun aimed at her head. Their guns went off simultaneously. His misfired. Her bullet tore through the man’s windpipe; he was dead before the ambulance arrived. His blood had soaked the ceiling of the hallway outside the bedrooms.

  It was the only time she had fired her gun in the line of duty. She had killed one Aaron McCready, out on parole, a PFO with a history of rape, drug trafficking, and public disorderlines’s.

  At the time, she had felt lucky. Passed over. Then two weeks later Zack had his accident and was dead.

  “What’s that?”

  Sonora looked up.

  “What’s PFO,” Keaton asked.

  “Persistent felony offender.”

  He leaned back. “What if you hadn’t looked? Think what if you had left him in the house with that woman and her little boy.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think about it. I dream about it. But I don’t think about it.”

  “It’s hard to explain. The guys will be all together like a footb
all huddle, and they’ll have this kind of laugh. Then they’ll look at me funny, like they forgot I was there.”

  Keaton ate a spoonful of chili. “Listen, I know about those conversations that stop. Only mine are in the teacher’s lounge. Usually, it’s about M-E-N. Or childbirth. That’s all they talk about, the agony of labor. I mean, God, how bad can it be?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Why do you assume that?”

  “What?”

  “That I don’t want to know? They look at me and launch into this big discussion of basketball. Like, I’m a guy, so all I can talk about is sports?”

  “Let’s just say they don’t ask me to the poker games.”

  “Count your blessings. I’m the only man in America who has to go to baby showers. And they always think my gifts are funny, no matter what I buy.”

  “Parties? Do you know how many men want to see my handcuffs?”

  “At least you’re not some kind of male Madonna. Tell a woman at a party that you teach first grade and she gets all starry-eyed. Like you’re the Mother Teresa of elementary school. Puts a real damper on any kind of intelligent conversation.”

  Sonora picked up a chicken finger, then laid it back on the paper box.

  Keaton Daniels picked up a pork fritter and chewed halfheartedly. The glass doors of the Dairy Queen began to open and close, and people were lining up at the counters. Sonora glanced over her shoulder. Keaton looked at his watch.

  Sonora thought, with a certain urgency, about the women’s bathroom. And what it would be like if there were three men in there, checking their flies, jockstrap dispensers on the wall.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing. I think I have a junk-food hangover.”

  Keaton started stacking trash. “You know, at home and stuff, I eat salads. Fruit and cottage cheese.”

  “I hear denial.”

  Outside, the temperature had dropped. The sun was going down, the sky dark blue. They walked silently to their cars, pausing by Keaton’s LeBaron.

  He put a hand on the door handle. “Day after tomorrow I bury my brother. Maybe I should buy a suit.”

  “You don’t have one?”

  “Just my khakis. Teacher clothes. Most of the children I teach—suits mean divorce lawyers. Makes ’em big-eyed and quiet.” He cocked his head to one side. “You’ll be there?”