A Hard Light

by Wendy Hornsby

  His eyes were narrow. “What’s this ‘next career’ shit?”

  “The closest you’re going to get to living in the woods for a long time is hanging out in a tree nursery.”

  He said, “Whatever you say,” but his focus had shifted away from me to what at first looked like a street fair up ahead, complete with a light show and streamers. A crowd packed the sidewalk, shopkeepers clustered in their doorways, talking. The general low murmur of voices said this was not a happy carnival.

  “Maybe that was no firecracker we heard,” I said.

  “Doesn’t look like it.” Mike reined Bowser in close beside him. Black-and-white police cars with lights flashing blocked Fremont Avenue where it intersected with Mission. Yellow crime scene tape marked off a patch of sidewalk and festooned an empty city bus standing with its doors hanging open.

  I said, “I only heard one siren.”

  “Once the guy’s dead, there’s no emergency.” Mike tried not to let on, but he was plenty curious, as I was.

  Through gaps in the mass of dark blue uniforms and gray suits inside the taped perimeter, I saw a small, covered mound lying on the sidewalk. Too tiny to be Casey; an automatic reaction.

  A couple of days a week, Casey caught the bus at that corner. But Casey had gone to school with her grandfather that morning. The message Max delivered to me from Khanh said nothing about her taking the bus. That’s why the size of the body rang no alarms once I decided that it could not be my daughter; something like having no available disk space.

  I pulled on Mike’s hand. “Let’s walk around the block the other way.” But Mike had begun moving in closer. “Busman’s holiday,” I said, keeping up with effort, grousing all the way because I did not want to go down there. “You can’t stay away, can you, Mike? You have to tell the South Pasadena Police Department how it should be done?”

  “Not hardly.” His attention was on the crowd, not the crime scene. He studied the ever-shifting throng of curious neighbors with method, section by section. I leaned in to him, trying to define his field of vision.

  Our next-door neighbor, Steve Lesick, emerged from the cluster of people watching from the sidewalk patio of a cappuccino bar. Steve was somewhere in his seventies, a big, barrel-chested man, a retired schoolteacher, an old navy man. The bamboo cane he needed to walk uphill in no way diminished his air of command.

  “Mike, Maggie,” Steve said, extending his hand to Mike. “Hell of a note, isn’t it?”

  “What happened?” Mike asked, his eye drawn to the coroner’s van coming from the direction of the freeway.

  “Random shooting, it looks like. Fred at the dry cleaners says he thinks it’s a little girl. He saw it happen out of the corner of his eye. Says the gal was just stepping off the bus when he heard the gunshot, and then he saw her go down.”

  Steve snapped his fingers. “Just like that, Fred said. Boom, and she fell. Never had a chance. Didn’t even have time to scream. Fred was the one who called 911. He’s over there talking to the detectives now.”

  “It sounded like a firecracker,” I said. “We heard it.”

  “I heard it, too,” he said. “This time of year, we hear all sorts of racket, don’t we? I was out front waiting for my ride; Friday is my day to tutor English as a Second Language up at Para los Ninos. All the years I’ve lived in this neighborhood, I never thought I’d see anything like this. Never. This is right up your line, Flint. What’s your opinion?”

  “You said, little girl?”

  “That’s how Fred saw it.”

  Mike still had me by the hand and he tugged it gently as a signal that he was ready to go. “I think we should stay out of the way and let these people do their work.”

  I said, without putting much thought into it, “Steve, bring Phyllis by for a drink one evening next week.”

  “A drink?” Steve gave my shoulder a paternal pat. “A drink of milk, maybe. Phyllis tells me congratulations are in order, dear.”

  I felt Mike’s reaction, an almost painful squeeze on my hand like sharing a bolt of lightning.

  “I’ll call Phyllis,” I said, and, huddled closer to Mike, walked on down the street.

  Mike put his arm around me, dropped his head close to mine. “Who all did you tell?”

  “No one. Just family. Amazing how news travels. I hope the grapevine sends out an update, because I don’t like bearing bad news and I hate fielding sympathy.”

  “Mizzes MacGowen?” A uniformed officer, excruciatingly young, stopped us before we had gone far. Beside him was a plainclothes man. “Remember me? Clayton Terrell. I walked Casey home from the bus a couple of times.”

  “Oh sure, Clayton,” I lied. I thought he was too young for a uniform until he said he knew Casey. If he was in uniform, he was way too old for her. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thank you.”

  My God, he was solicitous. I’d had no idea there were so many people who were familiar with Casey’s daily routines. Maybe it was time for Casey to start driving herself to school.

  “I’m assigned to the neighborhood, routine street patrol,” Clayton said. “Homicide asked me to give them a hand this morning because this is my ‘hood, so to speak. Detective Mareno here wants a word with you. Detective, this is the Maggie I told you about.”

  I said, “Hello,” shaking the hand Mareno extended. He was a tall, dark, bald man with a beak nose and a protruding Adam’s apple: the Scarecrow in a cheap gray suit. I began to feel queasy, stole another look at the bundle on the sidewalk, but it was still just too small to be Casey.

  Clayton dropped back a pace to direct sidewalk traffic away from us.

  “Mrs. MacGowen,” Mareno repeated formally. “People call you Maggie?”

  “Everyone but my mother,” I said, queasiness giving way to something stronger, more like borderline panic.

  Mareno made a note on a form clamped on his clipboard. He glanced up and pointed the end of his pen Mike’s way. “You Mr. MacGowen?”

  “Only the dog here qualifies for that honor,” Mike said, the flash of a wry smile creasing his cheek briefly. “Neighbor says a little girl was hit.”

  “A female, yes,” Mareno said. “We have tentative identification on the victim; now we’re trying to determine what her business at this location might have been.” Mareno talked while he secured the edge of a plastic evidence bag to his clipboard. There was a slip of paper inside the bag. “Officer Terrell suggested the possibility that you might be able to help us understand the significance of this list.”

  A list of errands with eight stops. The first item was Maggie, the second was a bakery in Chinatown. The last was Los Angeles airport to meet a 2:15 flight. As soon as I saw the scribbled note, I knew, and so did Mike.

  “Jesus,” he said.

  “Khanh Nguyen,” I said, though I could hardly get the name out of my mouth. My relief that Casey had been spared curdled instantly into guilt. “Khanh was coming to see me.”

  “What was the purpose of her visit?” he asked.

  “We’re friends. I thought that she was probably dropping off something. Holiday goodies of some kind.”

  “Presents?” Mareno asked.

  “Tokens of affection,” I said.

  Mareno had a second plastic bag to show me, this one containing an untidy tissue-wrapped lump about the size of my thumb, with Maggie written in pencil on one side. If this were meant to be a present, Khanh hadn’t gone to her usual trouble with fancy wrappings. I reached out and squeezed the lump. Hard as a rock.

  “Recognize it?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Any ideas?”

  “None.”

  Mike edged forward. “Any reason you can’t give Maggie a look inside? Might move this line of questions forward.”

  Mareno studied Mike before he gave a little shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Can’t see why not.”

  It was awkward business, juggling the clipboard while trying to unwrap the little package without tearing any of i
ts tissue paper. When he was finished, Mareno said, “Hold out your hand.”

  Into my open palm, Mareno placed a cold piece of translucent white jade that was carved into the shape of a dancing woman. She was a tease. Bare-breasted, smiling wickedly, she had one leg raised as if poised for flight.

  “Ring any bells?” Mareno asked.

  “In a way, yes,” I said. “I saw similar figures in a museum catalogue yesterday. Looks to me like a Vietnamese temple dancer. An apsaras, it’s called.”

  Mike cupped my hand and raised it so that he could get a better look. “Cute,” was all he said.

  Mareno eyed Mike. He said, “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Flint. Mike Flint.”

  “Your relationship to the deceased?”

  “She poured me tea once.” Mike looked up from the little figure to Mareno’s angular face. “How do you see this shooting going down?”

  “On first look, it could be a drive-by or a stray bullet,” Mareno said. “Maybe, maybe not. A lot of people have guns, too many people use them, especially this time of year. Any ideas what the victim might have been involved in?”

  “Khanh Nguyen,” I said again because it offended me when he referred to her as the victim. She had a name. I told him about the raid on Khanh’s house and spelled Bao Ngo for him. I still had the picture of the white car’s license in my coat pocket from the day before. I gave that to him, too. I told him about the restaurant Khanh and Sam owned, and about their four children coming into the city for Tet. And about how I had met her through my former husband. Just about there, I started to lose it.

  Mareno gave me a minute to get control again before he asked, “Why did a restaurant owner need a high-power lawyer like Scott MacGowen?”

  “Because this world is a complicated place to navigate,” I said. I found an old tissue in my pocket. “Ask Sam.”

  Poor Sam. I felt hit hard. Khanh, dead? Mike was again patting my back.

  “When you think about what Khanh survived—she spent her whole lifetime in a war zone until she came here. And this is how she dies, stepping off a bus?”

  Both Mike and Mareno mumbled platitudes: Fate, you never know when your time will come, at least she didn’t suffer. What was there to say? What could I possibly say to Sam?

  Mareno gave me time to collect myself when I choked up, but he was still all business. Hawklike, he never took his little black eyes off either of us. A good detective, I thought, reserving my estimation of the man. After a few quiet moments, he zoomed his beady eye on me. “Are you with me?”

  “I’m all right,” I said.

  “Glad to hear it, because I’m going to ask you to do something that’s just damned hard for anyone, even us old vets.” He took a deep breath. “The toughest part of my job is notification of next of kin. It’s a visit I never have the heart to make. Before I do it, I want to make sure the message is an accurate one, because I don’t want to deliver grief, then have to take it back. I’d sure appreciate having a visual verification of the victim’s identity from you.”

  “You want me to look at Khanh?”

  “Think you can handle it?”

  I was never Khanh Nguyen’s best friend. It did not feel right for me to be the one to make a formal identification. I agreed to do it, though, because I needed to make sure for myself.

  Mareno looked at Mike, expecting, probably, some protest. He got none.

  Young Officer Terrell reached for the dog’s leash. “Let me walk Bowser home. He doesn’t need to be down there.”

  Bowser was confused at first when Mike handed over the leash, but he went with Terrell, with his tail between his legs. Maybe he remembered Terrell, who knew him by name.

  Mike and I walked up to Mission Street with Mareno parting the crowd in our path. The procession was uncomfortable for me. Every shopkeeper and neighbor that we passed tried to pump us. “What did the police say to you, Maggie? Mike, who was it? What is this world coming to?” Beyond morbid curiosity, they showed real anger that their peace and well-being had been violated, as well as relief that, this time, the victim was not them or theirs. I could only respond with a shake of the head or a passing touch of the hand. It was not enough. I knew there would be phone calls and visits all day long.

  Mareno squatted beside the covered body and raised the drape away from the face. I thought it was odd that he kept his eyes averted from the corpse. Just the same, proximity made him pale, made sweat glisten on his shiny dome. I was afraid the old vet, as he called himself, would pass out on us before the task was done. Mike, on the other hand, knelt right down close and leaned in.

  Khanh did not leave this life with peace in her heart. Her face was frozen in terror, her eyes bulged, her mouth drew back for a scream she never had time to deliver. Maybe she died before she felt the bullet. But she certainly had time to know what was going to happen.

  I stood behind Mareno, making him a buffer between me and my friend’s remains.

  “No question,” I said. “This is Khanh Nguyen.”

  “You’re certain?” Mareno asked.

  “I’m certain.”

  “Thank you.” He had to wait for Mike to get out of the way before he could recover her.

  Mareno stepped away, put his back to us and Khanh, and got busy writing a field report of our conversation.

  I whispered to Mike. “What did you see?”

  “Through and through head wound. Went in over her left eye, blew out the back. Like Steve said, she must have been standing just about the bottom step of the bus when she got hit.” Discreetly, he pointed. “The open door caught most of the spatter, but the bullet continued through into the side of the bus. I can see daylight through the hole. Whatever is left of the bullet is probably loose inside the bus.”

  I felt my breakfast rise. Khanh’s blood, bits of shattered skull, her brain, sprayed the Plexiglas window in the open door and blew past its edges, leaving a long, stenciled frame of deep maroon around the bullet hole.

  “Gunman was probably right there at the corner.” Mike went on, defining the bullet’s path. “If it was my case, I wouldn’t let all these shop owners hang out here swapping lies with the locals. Their testimony will be polluted before they give it.”

  I heard irregular breathing behind me, sounded like impending hyperventilation, and turned. A big man wearing a Southern California Rapid Transit District bus driver’s blue uniform held on to a utility pole. He stared at Khanh’s covered body with eyes that did not seem to focus. If black men can turn white as a ghost, he had.

  “You okay?” I asked, walking over to him. The name embroidered over his shirt pocket said Leon.

  “I don’t know.” Leon hardly had breath to speak. “I just don’t know.”

  “Were you driving the bus?” I asked.

  When he nodded, his eyes began to stream. “I been held up seven times. I been hit in the face and stabbed in the back. I been vomited on more times than I want to count. But I never saw nothing like this before, not since I did my time in Vietnam.” He added a syllable, Vi-Et-Nay-Yam, turning one word into a whole paragraph of distress and anger.

  “Pretty rough.” Mike moved in closer. “How do you see it going down?”

  “I didn’t. The little lady, she ax me for a transfer, and I give her one. Then she goes to get off and I’m turned the other way, scoping out the traffic coming up on my left side, you know, seeing where my slot is going to be. I see it. I got my signal on. As soon as the passenger is away, I’m going to slide in. I hear the pop, I turn my head, and she is already down. I think at first she fell on the step, and I’m going to spend all the rest of the day filling out forms. Then I see all the blood.”

  Leon tweezed a bit of his trouser fabric between his thumb and index finger, showing us a spray of tiny brown flecks.

  “You know what this is?” He sucked in air, his pallor changed to a vivid flush beneath his dark skin. “This is the lady’s blood.”

  I was afraid he would faint. He was a bi
g man and I knew I couldn’t hold him if he went. But he wiped his face on his sleeve and composed himself. After he drew a long breath, he smiled at me.

  “I know you,” he said. “You’re Casey’s mom.”

  I said, alarmed, “How do you know Casey?”

  “She rides my bus all the time. How’s she doin’?”

  “She’s fine.” I was nonplussed. What happened to the Don’t talk to strangers drill?

  “She still dancin’, isn’t she?” he said.

  “Still dancing.”

  “She get that part she wanted in that show she auditioned for?”

  “I don’t know if she got the part she wanted, but she got a part.”

  “Well, good for her. I’m not much for ballet, but I’ve never seen a six-foot-tall ballerina before. Maybe I’ll have to go and see her.”

  “Please do. A dancer needs an audience.”

  “Your girl is real proud of you.” Leon smiled, began to look like a survivor. “Those movies you make? She always tells me when to be watching for them on the TV. I like that one about the old people best. Aged and Alone it was. I started calling my mother every single day after I saw that.”

  I think I probably blushed. I have long considered my years in front of the camera as a sort of purgatory I had to suffer through before I earned the right to hide behind the lens. I don’t like being recognized by strangers. It scares me.

  “Nice to meet you, Leon.” I offered my hand. “I’m Maggie. This is Mike.”

  We three were old friends in a big hurry. Leon was telling Mike how I sometimes followed Casey from a distance to make sure she got safely on her bus, when Mareno remembered us. He passed me his hand-written field report, asked me to check it for accuracy and then to sign it.

  Mike read over my shoulder and made some corrections—my name is not short for Margaret, for one thing—told me to initial the changes, and to leave no space between the last word Mareno had written and my signature.

  When I handed the clipboard back to Mareno, he listed Clayton Terrell, Leon Williams, and Mike Flint in the spaces labeled “others present.” After he crossed the T in Flint he paused with his pen over the page and thought something over. Absently, an aid to memory I suppose, he reached back and grabbed enough of the sparse hair that straggled over his collar to make a stub of a ponytail. Then, slowly, he turned his head and settled his dark hawk’s eye on Mike. He said, “Occupation?”