“Tell me about the person we’re going to meet,” Mia said. He glanced at her and saw she’d closed her eyes.
There wasn’t much he could tell. He was finished before they reached the station. The first parking spot he found was five blocks away, in front of a takeout pho shop. This was a quieter street, but when he came around the back of the car and joined Mia on the sidewalk, he turned in the direction she was facing and could hear the men hollering from outside a club on Columbus.
“I’m going to take your arm,” Mia said. “If I hold on tight, and lean on you, it’s because I’m closing my eyes.”
“You’re okay?”
She nodded fiercely but didn’t say anything. When she took hold of him, at first she was trembling. He moved her arm around his waist, then took her shoulder. He didn’t understand it, but she’d told him what she believed: There was nothing wrong with her. It was the world that was the problem. Frankly, it was hard to argue against that.
He led her to Vallejo, and then past Central Station. She never closed her eyes that he could tell, but when they passed lit-up storefronts, and back-lit advertisements at the bus stops, she looked away.
“We’re here,” Carver said.
They were across from Hideo’s. Mia looked up and must not have minded what she saw. She didn’t look away. The building’s façade was finished with untreated cedar. The sign was in kanji characters, carved into the wood and painted black. It wasn’t quite past eight. Up the street, he saw signs of the shift change at Central Station. Uniformed officers were coming and going from the building, and both sides of the street were clogged with parked squad cars.
“You think she’ll come?”
“She might test me first,” he said. “I’ve got an idea she’s careful. But she’ll come.”
They crossed the street. She let go of him and walked by his side, slipping on a cloak of confidence he hadn’t yet seen. For a moment, Carver was ashamed that he’d brought her. He’d told himself that he needed to keep an eye on her. With her at his side, he could see what she noticed, how she reacted. But there was another reason, too. She was like a lens that bent any light that touched her. People would see them both but would only remember her. He understood this would cost her something, though he still didn’t understand what. It would take her a while to come back to herself.
They reached the door. The hostess opened it for them before Carver could even take the handle.
“Irashaimase,” she said. “For two?”
“For three. One’s not here yet. I’ve got a reservation.”
“Your name, sir?”
“Ray Bodecker.”
The hostess went behind her podium, checked her list, and then gestured for them to follow her. She led them down a dimly lit hallway, lined on each side with sliding shōji doors. At the third door she stopped and motioned with her open palm to a bench and a shelf beside it. They took off their shoes and put them on the shelf. Carver looked along the hallway and saw that the room opposite them had shoes, but the rooms on either side were empty. Then the hostess opened the sliding door and showed them into their room. They settled onto cushions around the low table.
“The waitress will be back with your tea.”
“Thank you,” Mia said. When the hostess was gone, she looked at Carver. “Now what?”
“We wait,” he said. “Welcome to police work.”
Carver’s phone rang at 8:35, when they were into their second pot of tea. He lifted it from the table and answered.
“Yes?”
“I got your note.”
Houston’s voice was harder than he’d expected from the department photograph. But then he thought about what she’d been through in the last several days. She’d hidden it, had swallowed it like poison, and come back to work. Of course there’d be an edge.
“And I’ve got your thermal scope.”
“What scope?”
“Come on, Officer Houston, you know —”
“No. I don’t know anything.”
“We could help each other figure it out, maybe.”
“If I didn’t hope that, I wouldn’t have called,” she said. “But I’m not walking into that restaurant until I see you.”
“Tell me how you want to do it, then.”
“Come outside, onto the sidewalk. Go to the curb and turn all the way around, slowly. Don’t try to look for me. Keep your head down. Then go back inside.”
“All right.”
“And don’t hang up. Keep the phone next to your ear. Put your other hand on your shoulder.”
He nodded at Mia, then stepped out of the tatami room and closed the door behind him. He sat on the bench next to the shelf.
“I have to put you down a minute,” he said to Houston.
He didn’t wait for Houston to answer. He slipped on his shoes, tying them as quickly as he could.
“Sir?” The hostess was coming down the hall from her place behind the podium. “Is everything —”
“I just have to take a call,” he said, picking up his phone.
The woman bowed and turned away. He came down the hall and exited the front door. He walked to the curb, eyes on his feet. He wanted to look around for her, scan the stores on the other side of the street. Or maybe she was up the block, near the intersection. But she’d told him not to look, and he knew she could be anywhere. She might be on top of the police parking garage half a block up, with a clear view of him. When he finished the turn, he went back inside the restaurant.
“Did you see me?” he asked her.
The hostess looked up at him, and he shook his head and pointed to the phone.
“I saw a guy come, turn around, and go back in,” Houston said. “But that guy wasn’t Ray Bodecker. I looked him up, and you’re not him. So who the fuck are you?”
“Ross Carver,” he said. “I’m an inspector, Homicide Detail. I couldn’t give the desk officer my name and badge number because Lieutenant Hernandez suspended me last night. My partner, too.”
“Why?”
“Why do you think?” Carver asked. “You think it’s not going to happen to you? How long can you cover it up? How long can you cover for Roper?”
“You said Carver? Ross Carver?”
“That’s right,” Carver said. “Look it up. I’m going back to my table. We’ll be waiting for you.”
“Wait—who’s we?”
“My friend,” Carver said. “I brought her so you’d know I don’t bite.”
“I don’t have to come.”
“And I didn’t have to tell you about your scope,” Carver answered. “But I did, and I kept it between us. Look me up, read my record. We’ll be waiting.”
Carver hung up. He knew she was going to find his SFPD bio, and then she would come. And she’d come in knowing he wasn’t alone. She wouldn’t be taken by surprise. Carver didn’t like surprising people with guns. He went back down the hall and took off his shoes, then let himself into the tatami room. Mia was kneeling behind the table and began to get up when the door opened.
“It’s just me.”
“Is she coming?”
“She’s coming.”
“Okay.”
Mia curled back into her cushion. Carver sat, then refilled their cups. Houston’s cup was still upside down on its wooden tray. He turned it upright and poured her some tea.
A moment later, he heard their footsteps coming down the hall, and the hostess slid the door back.
“Your third guest has arrived,” she said.
11
FOR A MOMENT, they just looked at each other. Houston stood with her back to the rice paper door, her hands behind her. She’d changed from her uniform into jeans and a UCSF sweatshirt, and her hair was down. She was probably over twenty-five, but she could have walked into a college classroom and wouldn’t have been out of place. Still, Carver knew she’d tucked her service weapon into the waistband of her jeans, and her hands were close to it now. He kept his hands on the table an
d didn’t take his eyes from hers.
Her eyes moved from Carver to Mia, and then back. If she made a decision that she was safe with them, he didn’t see her make it. She sat down and looked at the teacup.
“This one mine?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I could use it.”
She drank the tea and Carver refilled the little cup for her. Then he took the thermal scope from under the table and put it next to her.
“This is yours too.”
She didn’t touch it.
“Where’d you find it?”
“My car, Monday night. I woke up on Sunday but couldn’t get back to work until the next night.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was sick.”
She looked past him at Mia.
“Who are you?”
“His neighbor. I took care of him.”
“You’re not a cop?”
“No.”
“Take a look at me and think,” Carver said. “Have you ever seen me?”
“I haven’t.” She shook her head and looked at her tea. “There’s something, maybe. When you came out of the restaurant—when I first saw you—it was there. Like when you think of the way something smells, and you breathe in through your nose and almost catch it, even though you know it isn’t there. But it was just for a second, and I couldn’t hold on to it.”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Mia asked.
“Why should I tell you? You’re his neighbor, not mine. You took care of him. Not me, not Roper. I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s Mia,” she said. “I just want to know the last thing you remember.”
“Why?”
“Because I care about Ross. Because I want to know what happened,” Mia said. She might have been acting, playing the role that Carver had given her. But it didn’t sound like a role. Maybe she’d been rehearsing it a while now. “So what is it? The last thing?”
Houston poured herself another cup of the tea.
“Wednesday, sometime,” she said, after she put the empty cup down. “I was in court, waiting to testify. I should’ve been on patrol Thursday night—but if I was, I don’t remember it.”
“Did you check your body camera?” Carver asked. Every patrol officer had a shoulder-mounted camera that filmed everything they did.
“The memory’s cleared,” Houston said. “If someone files on me for anything from Thursday, I’m fucked.”
“And someone’s messed with your email, your patrol logs?” Carver asked. “Cleared your GPS history?”
She nodded.
“I found stuff I don’t remember sending—and wouldn’t have sent. I managed to see the roll logs. We both made roll call for Thursday’s night shift. Roper and I. But we didn’t check in at the end. I found emails, though.”
“Saying what?”
“Telling our sergeant we were at UCSF, in the emergency room. Waiting to talk to the complaining witness on a domestic.”
“What about dispatch?” Carver asked. “Did you report it there?”
“I don’t know,” Houston said. “I can’t think of a way to get in and see the dispatch logs.”
Carver shook his head.
“If there’s just the email, and no radio call, you know what that means.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“What are you talking about?” Mia asked.
“Houston’s on patrol,” Carver said. “So she’s tied to her radio like she’s married to it. If she’d been in a hospital waiting to talk to a witness, she wouldn’t have been emailing her sergeant on her cell phone. She might have done it, but that’s not all she’d have done. She’d have called dispatch on her radio, to report a ten-seven-I —”
“Out of service, investigating,” Houston said.
“She never goes anywhere without saying where she is. That’s the policy.”
Houston nodded.
“Okay,” Mia said. “Maybe you broke the radio protocols. And you probably never sent the emails. But what’s the next thing you do remember?”
“Sometime on Friday, I woke up,” Houston said. “I do four days on, three off. Friday was the start of my off days. I was in my apartment, in El Cerrito. But that’s not where I usually spend the night. It’s just the address I use, until I can break the lease.”
“So if someone took you home but didn’t know anything about you except what he found in your wallet, you’d end up there,” Mia said, and Houston nodded before she was finished.
“Where do you stay?” Carver asked.
Houston’s eyes dipped down toward her teacup, and Carver understood.
“You’re living with Roper,” he said.
“Maybe it’s good you’re on suspension,” Houston said. “You can’t bust me.”
“After you woke up, you went to him.”
“I was so sick, it took me an hour to get to Winton . . . to Roper. But at least I could move. When I first found him, I thought he was dead.”
“Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?” Carver asked.
“Why didn’t she take you?” she asked, looking at Mia.
“He told me not to,” Mia said. “He begged me—when he was awake.”
Houston nodded. “I’m not crazy, Carver,” she said. “But I look at all this, and I don’t know what to think.”
She picked up the scope and brought it to her nose. She sniffed it and grimaced.
“And there it is,” she said. “That smell’s on everything.”
The door slid open and the waitress came in.
“Something to drink?”
“A beer,” Houston said. “Kirin, or whatever.”
“Hai,” the girl said. She turned to Carver and Mia. “And for you?”
“I’ll stick with tea,” Carver said.
“Same,” Mia said.
When the waitress was gone, he looked back to Houston.
“Roper’s still out?”
She nodded.
“But he’s better than before,” she said. “Not so touch and go. He can’t walk without getting dizzy. He’s sleeping fifteen, twenty hours a day.”
“He’s okay on his own, while you’re working?”
“Yeah,” she said. She didn’t sound as if she liked it, the necessity of leaving him.
“You’re checking in with him, though?” Mia asked. “By cell phone?”
Houston nodded.
“Good,” Mia said. “Keep doing that. Did he have a fever?”
“It’s been hovering around ninety-nine. Highest I saw it was a hundred and one, but that didn’t last long. I crushed up some aspirin. Gave it to him with water.”
“How’s his speech? Slurred? Slow?”
“Both. When he can even talk.”
“Do his eyes track yours? Or is he looking off at something else?”
“Somewhere else—Listen, are you a doctor?” Houston asked. “Who are you?”
Carver watched Mia. He knew her reactions well enough by now. He knew the downward glance and the inward tuck of her shoulders as she thought of how to respond to a hard question. He knew if he unwound the scarf from her neck and tilted her chin up with his fingers, he’d find that her blush extended past her throat.
“I took care of Ross,” Mia said. “I saw what it looked like. So I’m trying to find out what Roper’s got.”
It was a good response, Carver thought. But Mia hadn’t answered either of Houston’s questions. It occurred to him for the first time that Mia might have done more than simply watch over him; perhaps she felt comfortable not sending him to a hospital because she’d known all along what she was doing.
The waitress came in then with Houston’s beer. She set down the bottle, put a small glass next to it, and poured the glass half full. Then, using tongs, she passed each of them a warm hand towel.
“Are we eating?” Houston asked.
“If you want,” Carver answered. “It’s coming either way.”
> He saw how tired she was. It was hard, on a rookie’s salary. To live at all, she had to stay in El Cerrito, in the East Bay, which meant she spent a good part of each day either on the road or on a train. And then, because she really lived with Roper, she had the added expense of keeping an apartment she didn’t even need, except for the cover it gave her from the department. There wouldn’t be anything left over, unless she worked side jobs, like the cops they’d seen managing crowds outside the leatherwork store.
“What are we supposed to do?” Houston said. “I can’t keep this up forever. If he misses another shift, they’ll want a doctor’s note. My sergeant thinks I’m holding out, not telling him something about Thursday night. He was looking for me after roll call, and I dodged him. But I won’t always be able to do that.”
“You’ve got to stay ahead of him as long as you can,” Carver said. “We’ll have a better time of it if you’re not suspended.”
“More access, you mean.”
“Access, resources. Official cover.”
“What about your partner?” Houston asked. “He’s part of this?”
“Whatever it was, he was there.”
“But he’s suspended too.”
Carver waited for her to go on. He liked Houston just fine, thought he could work with her. But he didn’t plan on explaining himself to her.
“Wint’s hardly walking,” she said. She looked at Mia. “You’re not a cop. So what are you guys going to be doing?”
“How long have you been on patrol, Officer Houston?” Carver asked.
“A year.”
“Before that, you were in the Marine Corps.”
She nodded, and moved the sleeve of her sweatshirt up to hide the small tattoo on her forearm.
“How many homicide scenes have you gone to in the past year?”
The Night Market Page 11
