Stumbling on the Sand

by Jenna Rae

  Fleeing home, Del skirted the realtor’s sign. Lola had put her house up for sale. She’d never said a word about it. She’d never given Del a chance to ask her to stay. Had her remaining emails included a warning that she wasn’t coming back? Del couldn’t force herself to open them and find out.

  * * *

  Uncertainty made Del’s stomach hurt. She was faithfully taking the medicine, but it was taking its time working. She absently rubbed her aching forehead. Her body was falling apart without Lola. Everything was falling apart without Lola. She pushed the thought away. What if Lola never came back from her travels? What if she came back but didn’t want Del?

  “Focus on work,” she told herself. “Just forget about everything but work.”

  Despite the abundance of FBI resources in San Francisco, including a huge building on nearby Golden Gate Avenue, the Fed contingent had commandeered SFPD’s Mission station’s largest conference room and two interrogation rooms, and the Feds swaggered around with unmistakable arrogance.

  Fine, Del thought, watching a young agent shoulder his way past a group of seasoned SFPD patrol officers, be the biggest assholes in the world. Just catch the bad guy. But hours and days slid by, and the Fed party shrank as no new victims came forward.

  Captain Bradley quietly broke up what was left of the task force, and the department was focused on new and more pressing cases. Violent crime was down, the budget was cut and the station seemed almost somnolent. Del was certain she and Phan were the only ones who remembered the murder of Mikey Ocampo, who’d been dead for over two weeks and whose case was sliding precipitously, inexorably into the cold case category.

  “And just like that, it’s no big deal.”

  “Sucks,” Phan agreed. “But it’s natural, isn’t it? Bigger things come along, the Feds take over, what do you expect?”

  “I expect you to tell me about Ronald Jeremy Teager.”

  Phan rolled his eyes. “I emailed you all about him, remember?”

  Del nodded and recited from memory. “Teager’s a web developer, works from home. He’s never been arrested or charged. Never even been booked. But he’s been questioned about seven different incidents over the last ten years. He’s hinky. Guy’s nobody, he’s invisible. Like Sofia Gonzalez said. Like Donette Williams said. She talked about him being like Boo Radley, did I tell you? You don’t even know he’s there.”

  Phan made a face. “Okay. Is he some predatory super genius? I mean, if he was really a peeper, wouldn’t there be some actionable evidence? Does he have a Harry Potter cloak?”

  Del rolled her eyes, knowing Phan was trying to make her laugh. “Ronald Teager, invisible peeper. Thirty-two. Five-eight, one-seventy, White, brown and brown. Only reason he pings is that there were two clusters of incidents and because of the persistence of the lead investigator on those first ones. John Garibaldi, do you know him?”

  “Never met him.”

  “Garibaldi retired eight years ago, but for a while he kept tabs on Teager, thought there was something there but couldn’t get anything on him.”

  “You talked to Garibaldi?” Phan made a face. “Let me guess, he was full of insights.”

  “Listen, I know what you’re thinking.”

  Phan wouldn’t be derailed. “These guys, you know how it is, they retire and they wanna keep a hand in. You call about anything, they think there was something there. The guy’s sitting home, the wife’s driving him crazy, nobody wants to listen to his stories. Somebody calls him, treats him like one of the boys in blue again, he perks right up.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Phan. Garibaldi’s a security consultant for some big company in Cupertino, he’s not sitting around twiddling his thumbs.”

  Phan shrugged.

  “Anyway, I poked around a little, and Teager really is pretty hinky. He never married, lived with his mother until her death a couple months ago from a heart attack. Just before our peeper problem started.”

  “What makes you—do we have anything on this guy, Mason?”

  “Not really.” She sighed, frustrated. “Teager inherited a house on Capp Street. Mom’s death could be the trigger, maybe. Guy’s squirrelly, Phan. And smart. Could be smart enough to employ forensic countermeasures.”

  “Yeah.” Phan rolled his eyes. “I’m convinced. Let’s round him up right now. Who needs evidence? Not me.”

  “Ha, ha.” Del sat back, pursing her lips. She noticed how automatically Phan mirrored her expression and posture. “I know it’s thin. Practically transparent. But there isn’t anybody else who stands out as a repeat as often as he does, other than Ernie White. Teager is a guy I’d look at and think, invisible. He’s one of those guys, you look at him and there’s something really off about him. Probably always has been. We need something on him, or on somebody, and he’s the only one I’ve noticed. The one who seems least likely to have a normal relationship with other humans.”

  Phan shrugged. “We can’t get anywhere with anybody else. Might as well poke around, see if we find anything.”

  That was the best she’d get, Del knew, and she was lucky to get that much cooperation on so little good data. She asked Angela Carter from sex crimes to look at her file on Teager and got only a short email in reply saying that nothing about the guy jumped out at her.

  “Great, thanks,” Del snapped at the screen. “Sorry to fucking bother you.”

  She did a photo array with Sofia Gonzalez, who couldn’t place Teager or any of the distractors as the peeper. She did the same with Donette Williams.

  “Maybe him,” Donette said, pointing at Teager. But then she pointed at a photo of one of the distractors, a sergeant who looked rather like Teager. “Or maybe him.”

  Del did photo arrays with each of the other complainants. None of the other witnesses were sure either. But Del was. And she couldn’t explain it. The guy pinged for her. It was the Boo Radley reference she couldn’t let go of. Not the innocence or sweetness, but the oddness.

  She talked Phan into helping her tail Teager, and she smiled at him that afternoon while they cruised Teager’s neighborhood.

  “Thanks for doing this.”

  “Yeah, well, at this point, I’ll follow any suspect just to feel like I’m doing something, you know?” It was her turn to drive, and Phan slouched next to her. “Maybe we’ll catch somebody doing something.”

  They were seven houses down from Teager’s. Capp Street was experiencing another upswing in prostitution and its related crimes, but it was still a mostly residential street that during the day sported more strollers with sippy cups than johns holding dime bags.

  A group of high school girls sashayed past Teager’s house and he came outside. Del forced herself to stay still. Teager stepped onto the sidewalk maybe ten feet behind the girls and they didn’t seem to notice him. A mother with three kids and a baby in a stroller passed going the opposite way and returned his nod of greeting.

  “He fits right in,” Del noted. “No mom radar goes off when they see him.”

  “The girls aren’t nervous either.”

  The teens veered into a house a block down from Teager’s. He continued on without pausing and turned at the next corner. Del started the car and glided slowly down the street. Following a pedestrian in a car was less than ideal, but they had to consider the possibility that he would get in his personal vehicle or take the bus. Trailing Teager, they made a slow, rambling tour of Capp Street, 21st Street, Mission Street, cruising in a parade of impatient, distracted drivers and a swirling stream of cyclists and pedestrians.

  He went to a bodega and bought a soda, browsed in a hardware store, rented a video from a vending machine, went to a bakery, spent some time nursing a hot chocolate and bought a cookie on his way out. He looked for all the world like a relaxed, casual nobody, wandering the streets of his beleaguered neighborhood aimlessly and harmlessly. There were many colorful characters on the streets—a homeless veteran pushing a wheelchair crowded with small dogs, several couples strolling hand in ha
nd, two sets of gangster kids jostling each other, a few working girls getting an early start—and unremarkable Teager faded into the background.

  “Either he’s made us,” Phan asserted as the afternoon turned to evening and the evening turned darker and colder, “or this guy is on some good meds.”

  “Yeah.” Del rolled her stiff shoulder at a stoplight. “If I wanted to watch girls, maybe grab them, I’d want to be such a familiar face that no one even sees me anymore. Teager goes from street to street, store to store, wastes all this time. Why? Maybe it’s so the moms walking the kids home, the teenagers, the prostitutes—all the women think of him as part of the scenery. I don’t think he’s made us. I think we should stick with him. Maybe he gets off on just walking around and watching everyone. I think it’s foreplay. The hookers are starting to outnumber the citizens, and I wonder how he’ll respond to them. How they’ll respond to him. Let’s stay on him for a little while, okay?”

  “Why not?” Phan shrugged and offered a bitter smile. “I like to celebrate the week with a little creepstalking. Hey, it’s not like I have a life anyway, right?”

  “What’s up? Alana’s mad at you? Still?”

  “Same as the ex-wife. ‘You work too much, you’re never home,’ blah, blah, blah. What exactly am I supposed to do?”

  “Bitter much?”

  “Nice.” Phan snorted. “You make up with Lola yet?”

  Del raised her eyebrows in acknowledgment and was silent. It was dark now, and Teager was walking slowly down 21st Street. There were a few shops, most of them closing for the night, among the private residences. After dark, prostitution stained the neighborhood like sour wine.

  What are you looking for? Do you already have someone in mind?

  “How about a decoy?”

  Phan smirked in response to her question. “Feds are already doing it.”

  “Really? Where? And how do you know about it?”

  “Bathroom.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a boys’ club, darlin’. Or have you forgotten?”

  Del made a face.

  “Two of them came in yakking about decoy this, locals that. Like any good boy I eavesdropped. They’re putting her on Dolores tonight, Valencia after that.”

  “But our guy hasn’t been to Dolores yet. And why on Valencia? Nothing’s happened there. The station’s right there. Who would do something down the street from us?”

  “They’re Feds. Who knows how they think? Anyway, the night is young. And he’s skewing later now.”

  As if responding to their words, Teager headed past Mission Street toward Valencia Street. Del and Phan backed off, not wanting to take any chance on interfering in the Feds’ trap.

  “Weird,” Del noted. “All he does is walk around and drink soda and eat sweets. All he does is hang out. Who eats that kinda diet except teenage boys and serial killers?”

  “They do like their sugar, don’t they?”

  “Too much. One after another, nothing but candy and sodas and all that crap.” Del shook her head. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is it poor impulse control, as in, I’m having what I want regardless of the consequences, or was that old Dan White Twinkie defense a legit thing?”

  “What it really makes me wonder about is all the little kids who grow up eating nothing but crap. What kind of adults will they turn out to be?” Phan shook his head. “Okay, enough philosophy. We don’t have to save the world tonight. We have to catch one creepy, escalating asshole. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I don’t know,” Del responded. “I hope so.”

  “Maybe Teager is just a lonely, weird little dude. Mason, sorry, but I’m done for the night. We can’t just wander around. It’s been too long anyway. The guy’d have to be blind not to know we’re following him at this point.”

  At home finally a while later, Del tried not to think about Lola but couldn’t stop. Lola made herself invisible whenever she felt threatened. It was one of the first things Del had noticed about her. She thought of Mikey, who disappeared one day and became invisible. Teager was good at being invisible too.

  Pervs see what they want to see. Impose their fantasies on the victims. Is that sort of what I did to Lola, try to make her into someone else?

  She’d put it off as long as she could. Del went to face the next installment in Lola’s email series. Would there be a direct message? She skimmed the first paragraph—no, it was another story. She settled in to read.

  * * *

  “Too much thinking, too much drinking, sit down too hard, lose your card.” Lola heard a woman’s voice and realized it was her own.

  An arm pulled her up. Someone told her she was fine, she was almost there and just needed to put one foot in front of the other. She pointed at the floor and a hand came near with the hotel room key card and gave it to her. She peered up at a friendly looking face belonging to a woman in dark clothes. She tried to smile but felt her stomach do a wild, acrobatic flip. Suddenly, unable to stop herself, she vomited on her good Samaritan.

  “Oh,” Lola gasped between heaves. “Oh, no!” The world shimmied like an incandescent, amateur belly dancer. Then the black curtain went down.

  When she awoke, it was afternoon. Her head felt like it had been smashed open and glued together with kindergarten paste. Her mouth was crackling with dryness and her stomach felt torn. She smelled vomit and sweat and the sickly sweetness of champagne and groaned aloud. She was in her hotel room and couldn’t remember getting there. She crawled to the tub, turned on the taps and climbed in, adjusting the water so it dripped warmth over her. Finally, she could stand up, using the smooth, slippery marble of the shower wall as a nearly worthless ladder. She took a proper shower, stripping off the encrusted black dress and underwear that she decided would go into the trash bin. Her shoes, where were they? Oh, who cares, she thought, rinsing her mouth in the shower. Those things hurt, anyway. She stepped out to get her toothbrush and toothpaste and got back in, letting the water restore some of her body’s sense of normalcy.

  Lola ordered coffee and toast, unsure what else to brave in her treacherous stomach. She straightened up the room and found a business card on the nightstand. Her rescuer had apparently been an NYPD cop named Jude Meeker. Lola tried to conjure the woman’s face in her memory, but she mostly remembered trying to wipe frothy vomit off a jacket.

  When the knock on the door sounded, Lola assumed it was room service and opened the door. She saw a young woman holding a leather jacket and scowling at Lola. She had big, dark eyes, dark, smooth skin and perfect posture. A cop, not a civilian—she could see that, even with the nondescript sweater and jeans the woman wore. Her hair was very short, and her face seemed naked because of this. Lola could only gape at her beauty.

  “Miss Bannon, I’m Jude Meeker. Ma’am, this is New York City. Please check your peephole before you open your door.”

  “Oh. Right. Please, come in.”

  Her visitor gave a crisp nod, took a few steps in and surveyed the room as another knock hit the door. Lola self-consciously peered through the peephole and saw a waiter.

  After he’d left, she offered coffee and toast to her guest, who declined. “You need it more than I do, Miss Bannon.”

  “Please call me Lola.” She sweetened her coffee and hesitated. Was it rude to eat the toast? Her stomach rumbled and she decided to risk it.

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming by. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Of course not, Officer Meeker, I just left you a message to thank you and apologize and offer to pay for your dry cleaning. I’m so embarrassed and so sorry. I can’t believe I threw up on you like that, it was so gross.”

  “Yes, it was.” The cop laughed. Her big eyes sparkled with good humor in the late afternoon sunlight streaming in through the open blinds.

  “Sadly, you were the not the first person to hurl on me last night. Or the last.”

  “That’s terrible! I’m even more sorry. I don’t normally drink like th
at. I guess I just got caught up in the moment.”

  “Well, you were nursing a broken heart.”

  Lola stared at her. “How do you know?”

  “You were chatty.” The police officer slightly relaxed her upright posture.

  “I’m so embarrassed.”

  “You don’t seem like somebody who makes a habit of wandering around strange cities late at night drunk off your behind.”

  “No.” Lola smiled and shook her head, wincing at the pain. “And I don’t intend to do it again.” She sipped at her coffee, again offering a cup to the officer, who accepted this time and shook away offers of cream and sugar.

  The sun was already slipping behind tall buildings, and the sky began to blaze with the rich, rosy colors of evening. The light was different here. It had been a little different in each city, most noticeably at morning and evening, a thing Lola had come to appreciate. New York’s sky seemed overlaid with a soft filter of gold.

  “Well, I’m gonna take off. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Wait!” Lola followed her to the door. “Please. You’ve been very kind and I really appreciate it. You could have arrested me and you didn’t. You made sure I got back safe, and you didn’t even get mad at me for getting sick on you. Apparently while I talked your ear off the whole time. Thank you for being so nice to me.” She was again struck by how beautiful the officer was. “I’m sure you had better things to do on your day off than check up on a drunken lunatic.”

  “Sadly, no.”

  Lola realized Officer Meeker was attracted to her. She cleared her throat to speak up. “Uh, this might not be entirely appropriate, but I don’t know anyone here and I’d like to thank you, and if you’re not busy I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

  There. She’d done it. Whether the answer was yes or no, Lola had actually asked someone on a date. Sort of. What if the woman wasn’t really attracted to her? What if she didn’t think of it as a date? Well, it didn’t really matter. She asked someone on a date, whether it came across as such or not. She smiled proudly.