by Susan Dunlap
“But?”
“The real reason? He says I’m too close to Ott.”
“Too close.” His mouth barely moved. His voice was so low I wasn’t sure I’d heard the words.
I hadn’t let myself register the import of those words, not till I saw it drawn on Howard’s taut face. Too close to him, too far from us. Someone we can’t trust—officially. Anyone who heard about my removal, who heard “too close” would know better than to trust me.
“Did he say it in private?” Howard grasped at the hope.
“In a meeting with Eggs and Jackson.”
“Oh.” He reached over to wrap his arm around my shoulders. It hung suspended awkwardly because of the distance.
It felt like a stranger’s arm, on a stranger’s shoulder. On the shoulder of a woman who would never again sit downstairs in a room filled with cops, eating six different kinds of take-out, griping about the old patrol cars with the seat backs that ride at forty-five-degree angles, about drug dealers who slither out of town to their mansions to the south, about the city council, and the protesters. About Ott.
Later, when I remembered this moment, I was surprised the air didn’t feel cold or hot. But the truth is it just felt thick, stiff, unmoving, like the eye of a hurricane, the still point before the fury takes the opposite direction.
Then the air moved again. I leaped forward over thoughts and mournings I’d come back to later. “It’s okay. The police ‘family’ doesn’t matter to me like it does to you.”
“Jill, it’ll blow over.” His fingers dug into my shoulder. “You’ve got friends who’ll go to the wall for you.”
“I can’t ask them to do that.”
“They won’t wait to—”
“No, Howard. Listen. The truth is the idea of police family doesn’t comfort me; it binds me.”
His eyes glistened.
Why had I come home? Why hadn’t I just taken myself somewhere where I wouldn’t hurt him? I might as well have said he didn’t matter. I scrunched over next to him and pressed my head against his shoulder for a moment. When I started to speak, I wasn’t looking at him but straight ahead, at the green walls and white trim he had painted in this house he loved filling with the “family” he’d made for himself. Desperately I tried to explain. “Howard, lots of people go to a job, have work friends, and come home. We’ve got other friends.”
“Just friends,” he murmured. “Not family.” He swallowed and swallowed again before he went on. “This house, it’s the only place I’ve ever been home. This is my city; it matters to me to take care of it. The force, it is family. Family”—the word squeaked out—“where they can’t just walk away.”
They could walk away, of course. Just as I could. Suddenly the old urge burned within me; I yearned to jump up, run to the car, make a right on Ashby and another right on Route 80. To drive into the dark and unknown. To leap onto the magic carpet just as Howard’s mother had time and again.
I looked over at Howard, his face now pale. We were using the same words but speaking different languages.
“Why don’t you just find her—your mother?” The words were out of my mouth before I realized it. “Finding people is our business. Why don’t you initiate a search?”
“Based on what?” He pulled back as if attacked. “I know nothing about her. No Social Security number—”
“Surely, she must have one by now.”
“Surely? With Selena there was no ‘surely,’ not about anything.”
“But—”
He rammed his fists into the bed and shoved himself away. I tossed the pizza box to the floor.
“Let me tell you about Selena, Jill, and then you’ll know surely. When I was eight or so, she took me to sign up for summer camp. The camp woman insisted she needed Selena’s Social Security number on the application form. Selena laughed. ‘Oh, that. I forgot that years ago,’ she said. The woman wasn’t amused. And she wasn’t going to let me go to camp. So Selena said she’d ‘search her files in her home office’—this from a woman who used her cardboard moving boxes for tables. When we got outside, she took me for an ice cream and assured me I’d get to camp. Then she went back and filled in the blank with a Social Security number.”
“Maybe you could—”
“No, Jill. She made up the number. She’d had to ask the kid at the ice cream counter how many digits were in a Social Security number.”
“Still, we could notify other departments. They could keep an eye out for—”
“For who? I don’t know what name she goes by. Selena Bly is only one of the names she used when I was a kid. Selena Howard was another. Who knows how many she’s created since? I can’t swear to her birth date. Jill, it’s like—it’s like I made her up.” His voice was as raw as the wound he’d reopened.
I wanted to reach out to him, but I knew I couldn’t comfort him now. I was too suspect. “Why—”
“Why do I care? Damn good question. She doesn’t— No, don’t tell me she does. You don’t know; neither do I. Maybe…This is how I remember her. From one day, a summer Thursday. She was wearing a light blue dress with big blowzy red flowers. I’d spotted it in a secondhand store window because the flowers and the vine reminded me of a horror movie we’d just seen. It was big on her, but we both loved the horror dress. Her arms were freckled—”
“Like yours.”
He started, then looked down at his arms and nodded vacantly as if the connection hadn’t occurred to him. “But in that dress they looked tan and strong, like Jane in an old Tarzan movie. Like she was so strong she could grab me and swing off on a vine into a magic land only she could see.” He was still looking down. “Then she would open it up so I could see it too, and I’d be…”
Safe?
“…home.” He swallowed. “With her a trip to the grocery was an adventure, looking for peas was a game, the people in the checkout line concealed nefarious secrets we made up on the way home.”
“It must have been like living with a fairy on a magic carpet—”
“When I was a little kid, yeah. By the time I was ten it was living with someone who thought she was a fairy, and I had to watch out so no one pulled her magic carpet out from under her and left her to crash onto the road in front of a truck.”
“Oh, Howard.” I clambered up and pulled him against me, wishing I were big enough to wrap around all of him. He shuddered, and I pressed harder against his body. His breaths came fast and shaky, and I tried to calm them with my own. I ached for the little boy he was. I wanted to squeeze out the years of dread and loneliness, to give him a base so secure and strong nothing could hoist or push or drag it away.
But that base was the police family, and I was the one yanking it away.
It seemed like an eon before I could force myself to speak. “Howard, do what you have to, but make it clear to the department that you have no connection to my case; I’m in this on my own. Let everyone know you have no part of Herman Ott. You warned me to be a team player—”
“You don’t need to buy the team ethic. You just need to win the game for them.” His fingers wound through mine. “It’s hard to complain about a guy who’s holding the ball in the end zone.”
Forestalling comment, Howard insisted, “Brede Mortuary. You were figuring Griffon was taking the Kaldane there.” There was a false buoyancy to his voice. “What about Bryant’s trips to Mexico? Now you’re saying he was not smuggling the Kaldane to Mexico?”
“It was a reasonable possibility.” My own voice sounded distant, as if I were listening to a stranger playing a role. But, at least, I was still in the play with Howard. “You can make a bundle selling pesticides down there. Even ones that are banned here can go for a bunch of pesos on their black market. Running outlawed pesticides to the San Joaquin Valley is not the same gold mine, but it’s a damned sight easier. No border searches to worry about, no one wondering why you’ve come and gone so often.”
“If you spend every weekend in Modesto, people may wonder
about you, but they’re not suspecting illicit or illegal pleasures.” Howard summoned up a grin. “Griffon’s hardly too honorable to run toxins, but why should he take the chance?”
“So he can finance his upscale tattoo parlor on Union Square.”
“San Francisco’s Union Square?” Howard whistled. “Now that’s taking a giant step up.”
“Indeed. It would be a risky and expensive move, but it could catapult him into next year’s ‘in’ thing. He could turn out to be one rich needle man.” I let my hand rest on Howard’s thigh as it had a thousand times, felt the familiar warmth of his arm against mine. In a minute I’d think about how I’d be getting to Modesto tomorrow, how I’d handle the Brede Mortuary, but not yet. I’d always been a planner with my eye half a mile ahead, weeks into the future. Now, suddenly, I wanted to remember this moment, to feel not only Howard’s warmth, but the bedspread beneath us, the air cold against my untouched side—
Howard glanced at his watch. “And you saw Griffon, what, two hours ago? Before you went back and met with Doyle?”
“No, after.”
“What do you mean after?” The life was gone from his voice.
“I had the meeting with Doyle. He agreed I should go to the storage locker with Jackson, and sign off the case after.”
“Before you went to Griffon’s? You were officially taken off the case and you went ahead to Griffon’s anyway?” He grabbed my arms and stared me in the face. “Jesus Christ, Jill, what’s the matter with you? You’re not just tossing your career away: you’re throwing it in Doyle’s face. I can’t believe you.” He stared at me for another long moment, picked up his wallet, and walked out the door.
I heard his truck start up, a low, distant rumble. It was only then that I realized how truly alone I was.
CHAPTER 34
FIGHTS WITH HOWARD WERE AWFUL. Some people righteously insist you have to “get it all out,” be good at battle, glory in topping your lover, stripping him bare of defenses. For them that must be like racing first across the finish line. For me, there aren’t winners, just losers walled in separately by animosity too volatile to touch.
Fights were bad, but the worst was having Howard stalk out. And being left here. I wanted to stalk out, to slam door, to burn rubber.…
But you feel like a jerk stalking alone. Instead I called Laura Goldman. It was eight o’clock. Eleven in Pittsburgh. I tried the station. She’d been gone for hours.
If she’d come up with something on Ott, she’d have notified me. All I would get for disturbing her at this hour was grief.
She might be in bed.
If so, she wouldn’t have far to reach. I dialed.
“You’ve reached eight-nine-two—”
“Goldman! Answer the phone!”
The recording ended.
“Goldman, Jill Smith here. It’s important. Look, if you’re just not answering…I’ll call back, even later. Or the fire department, I’ll ring them up and say I’m your neighbor and there’s smoke coming from your kitchen again and I know that you’re a rotten cook and maybe there’s nothing the matter but—”
“Okay, okay, Smith. God, why didn’t I ask for a single room at that convention? How could I know they would pair me with a nocturnal lunatic?”
“Sorry. But it really is important.”
“And nothing in my life is of consequence?”
“Goldman, I roomed with you. I know how much time you spend snoring away. I could keep you up for a month and you’d still be ahead of the game.”
“Ah, the authority on healthful living. Next thing you’ll be reorganizing my diet. ‘I know how many vegetables you eat, Goldman. You could eat just chocolate for days and still be ahead.’ Well, Smith, did it ever occur to you I might not be sleeping? I could be entertaining. The drought in my sex life that rivaled my grandmother’s buddy Sister Joseph Martha might have been coming to an end. And just at the moment fireworks were to explode and I was reminded I was the hottest stuff west of the Susquehanna, what do I hear? ‘Goldman! Answer the phone.’ ”
“If he loves you, he’ll get it up again.” “So crass, Smith. And may you have a romantic night too.”
“Small chance. Howard’s…out. So, Goldman—”
“Okay. I was going to call you in the morning.” She yawned theatrically. “Now I’m sitting up. So, you remember I told you there was a huge fight between Alexander—your Herman Ott—and his father that ended with Alexander stomping out—”
“To the Iberia Airlines gate at Kennedy Airport. Do you know what caused the crisis?”
“Hang on.” Goldman was never one to condense a good story. “You’ll recall your Ott came from the union of Herman Steel and Ott Mining. His father was Ott Mining. I checked the papers for mine disasters, but there was nothing about the Ott mines. So I went on to other things. Leads petered out like veins in a mine.”
“Goldman!”
“Here’s my mistake.” Goldman’s voice was tight, her tone suddenly somber. I realized she hadn’t been so much playing with me as stalling. “I’d forgotten that earlier Otts had bought up mines from outsiders. So they owned small mines as far away as Kentucky. Far enough away that cave-ins wouldn’t make the local papers. Mines small enough that disasters wouldn’t be reported beyond their local papers. The cave-in in question occurred outside Wheeling, West Virginia. The shaft that collapsed was reinforced with beams made of a steel alloy instead of wood. It was an experiment that could have revolutionized mining. Could have saved some of the steel mills that were going under, including Herman Steel. Instead it killed thirteen men.”
“Omigod! Why? Surely steel is stronger than wood.”
“Maybe. But when the ceiling in a mine begins to collapse, the wood beams give way slowly, and, Smith, you can hear them creaking. When steel goes, it’s silent—no warning. Those miners were crushed where they stood.”
“Oh, God!” No wonder Herman Ott couldn’t stay home, in the family mansion built on corpses.
“Smith, that’s not the whole thing. The reason behind the cave-in never came out in the papers.”
“You got it through the Sister Joseph Martha connection?”
“Right. Distantly. I’ll spare you the trail. But the story is that Alexander’s father was hot to use the steel. The plan was within governmental safety standards at the time. The Otts of course were more familiar with the properties of their steel and their alloys than the government was. Alexander’s father wasn’t sure this alloy was right. He was going to test the beams in a played-out mine. You know, simulate the type of stress you’d get in a working mine. He was working on the plans, but apparently he got sidetracked by a new business venture. Or by a new mistress. Whichever, the steel beams were sent to a working mine, and Ott senior was too distracted to notice. Until the men were dead.”
It was a moment before I said, “And ostensibly nothing changed for the Otts of Pittsburgh?”
“It was just another mine disaster. A risk of the business.”
“Thanks, Goldman.”
“Sure. If I come up with anything else, I’ll let you know. Don’t call me, Smith, I’ll call you.”
“Right,” I said, almost too subdued to answer. “Sorry about the hour. Just one more thing. Was that mine case considered by the local Historical Review Society?”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Crack detective work. And because I found a printout of a newspaper article from the Internet on Ott’s floor the day of the murder.”
“And that means?”
“That you’re not the only one who discovered the mine tragedy. Someone brought it to Ott’s attention.”
“How?”
“That’s the jackpot question.” Slowly I put down the receiver. I was picturing the scene just as Inspector Doyle would. Bryant Hemming stalking into Ott’s office, newspaper in hand, threatening to expose Ott as the child of bloodsuckers. Ott would have remembered his father tossing aside the lives of his workers for the sake of his career or
his loins. Ott, who had investigated some facet of ACC, who had been to the storage unit, would have looked at Bryant Hemming with disgust. He’d have seen a man who’d just tossed aside ACC, endangered the small savings people had invested there, and was on the road to undermining the mediation project because of his connection with the Kaldane. Ott would have looked at Bryant Hemming and seen his father.
In that state even I could picture Ott shooting Hemming.
But if he didn’t shoot Bryant Hemming? How did he react when he saw the article that pulled the rug out from under his life?
Anyone else would have kicked in the door, slammed the phone into the wall, screamed till his throat closed. Herman Ott walked out of his office and left the dead bolt off.
If Bryant Hemming didn’t bring the article, who did? Who set out to unhinge Ott, drove him off, and used his office to kill Bryant Hemming?
I raced out of the house, slammed my VW into reverse, squealed the wheels, drove to Ashby Avenue, and turned right. For the first time this evening I felt free. It wasn’t as if I’d keep on and make another right onto Route 80, but it was movement. The pain and fury were still back in the bedroom, and I was doing something.
Going to the last place I had a legitimate reason to be.
CHAPTER 35
AT NIGHT SHOPS ARE closed on Telegraph Avenue, their gratings down over windows, that all too often have been smashed in riots. Cars find more inviting thoroughfares. Doorways are littered with guys who inhaled or injected away their brains in the sixties or seventies or eighties or the new homeless, “downsized” onto the street. In the entrance to Ott’s building one of them nested, head covered against the cold night wind.
Behind me an engine picked up speed. I reached for the building door, stopped, glanced warily behind me. For the first time in years I was relieved to find the vehicle coming was not a patrol car.
I turned back toward the building where I had no business being. Disobeying an order is grounds for suspension. If Kovach or one of the other guys discovered me when he swung by for a check on Ott’s office, Inspector Doyle could not ignore it. He’d have to suspend me.
