The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  “Do you have a regular pickup and drop for the drugs?” This from a young female detective, probably trying to make a good impression on her senior partner.

  Truthfully, Dana didn’t know how the weed got to her hands. She’d told Elaine and Gloria and Matt the truth about that. She assumed it was grown somewhere in South America and was passed through a network in every city that was near a port. Oakland was in an ideal position for that, being an international hub for cargo transportation and distribution.

  Kyle, an EMT at another ambulance company, was her current contact. Dana knew Kyle was far from the big-distributor end of things. She’d met him at a training class just in time to fill in the gap when her own college contacts had gone away Kyle was apt to bring the weed to Dana as small branches, which she didn’t like. She’d have to clean off the branches and get rid of the seeds and stalk before she could roll the grass. She kept meaning to investigate further contacts at parties and raves in the neighborhood. Now it was just as well she hadn’t. They might be able to torture the information out of her.

  Finally, after what seemed like a month sitting in that gray metal chair, the polyester suit came back.

  “You can go,” he said. The smell of garlic reeked from his pores. “Just not too far, okay?”

  Dana had a lot of questions about what the cops had been doing since they left her, but she had no intention of hanging around to ask them.

  She nearly flipped the chair over backward leaving the room.

  At the last minute Dana decided not to call Matt to pick her up with her Jeep. She also refused the cops’ offer of a ride home. Instead she called a cab.

  “Pull over here,” she told the cabbie when they got within a block of Elaine’s house. She paid him and walked to her Jeep, thankful it was at the back end of the driveway.

  She was glad she’d given Matt just her spare car key and still had her own set. She needed to take care of some business, and she didn’t want to have to explain herself. First, she wanted to visit Marne and Rachel and do whatever it took to assure Marne she had nothing to do with incriminating Tanisha in anything. Tomorrow she’d confront Julia at Valley Med and find out what the fake invoices were all about and why Dana’s and Tanisha’s names were on them.

  At the back of her brain always was her dad. She flipped between hating him for being so uncommunicative and worrying that he was dead, like Tanisha and Patel.

  Dana felt bad about sneaking into Elaine’s driveway, but she couldn’t see any other way. She’d had enough of being around Elaine and her friends. Elaine was too depressed and, worse, trying to hide it for Dana’s sake, she could tell. Gloria was entirely too reasonable about everything, and Matt … well, she was becoming way too dependent on Matt, who’d be gone in a week and she’d never hear from him again. Might as well break it off now. Dana had to smile at how much it felt like Matt had been her prom date and would soon be going off to college.

  Lights were on in the kitchen and dining room, and she figured they were holding dinner for her. It looked so inviting, but … some other time, she thought. She knew if she went inside, they’d all try to talk her into resting, eating, staying overnight again, and she didn’t have the energy to resist.

  She rolled back into the street without headlights and pulled away as quietly as possible.

  Dana had never been so happy to climb the stairs to her own house. Her plan was to go straight to the shower and then out again to Marne’s house across town. On the way she’d pick up some blueberry marble ice cream, Rachel’s favorite flavor.

  She unlocked the door of her house and entered the foyer off the living room. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see her things turned every which way, left a mess by cops with a search warrant.

  What she hadn’t counted on was seeing her boss, Julia Strega, one room away, in her dining room.

  Julia and Robin were bent over pages strewn across the dining room table. When Dana walked in, Robin jumped, as if a firecracker had gone off. She came into the living room to greet Dana with a hug—when had that ever happened?—while Julia pushed the papers together.

  “Hey,” Robin said, all cheery. “How are you doing, Dana?”

  “Hey,” Julia said, with a guilty grin. She made a mess of the papers while trying to act casual about shoving them into a shiny gray-and-silver duffel bag.

  Dana couldn’t think of any business Julia and Robin would have together. As far as she knew, Robin hadn’t worked at Valley Med for more than a year, certainly not since Dana had started there.

  “How’s it going, Dana?” Julia asked, as if she hadn’t seen her in years, instead of at work that very morning. Then, “I’m just about to leave,” she said, without waiting for Dana’s answer.

  Here was Dana’s chance to face both Julia and Robin with her questions: Robin, where did you get those new clothes (okay, not that important), and why was Patel’s ID in your closet (very important), and why did you change my incident report (most important)? Julia, what’s up with those phony invoices and listing me as a driver on calls to fake facilities?

  Matt was a cop; he had to worry about breaking rules of interrogation or whatever, but Dana could just ask anything she wanted.

  Julia had already swung the duffel bag over her shoulder and brushed past Dana, heading for the door. Dana needed to act fast. But another image came to her—Tanisha swinging the duffel bag that belonged to Patel. The same bag? Dana shook her head. There must be millions of duffel bags in Oakland, and half of them gray, but what a coincidence that this one, with its distinctive wide white zipper, looked exactly like the bag Tanisha had been carrying when she was shot, the one with Patel’s tennis balls.

  Dana swallowed hard and pushed away the image of her partner sprawled on the trauma center driveway.

  The whole scene in her house was very curious. And starting to get very scary. Julia kept going toward the front door. Dana heard her clump away in her clogs, down the outside steps. Robin faced Dana, her look threatening, as if to say, Go ahead and say something.

  Dana went to her room and sat on her bed. She wanted to curl up under the chenille throw, but she knew she was too edgy to relax. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stay close to Matt for a while.

  She listened for movement in the rooms outside and heard none.

  She wished she had a lock on her door.

  Dana showered quickly and left her house, slipping out her bedroom door, around to the foyer, and out. She didn’t know whether Robin was still home until she noticed her old blue Ford a half block down on their street. She’d wanted to pack some things and camp out at Elaine’s but decided to come back later with reinforcements, like a certain Massachusetts cop. Amazingly, she’d remembered to check her jewelry box for the stash. It was gone.

  She pictured some uniform taking a toke at her expense.

  Dana pulled the Jeep up in front of Marne’s house at about eight-thirty. She knew Marne was a late-night person and hoped she might be more mellow the later it got.

  Up a flight of stairs from the street, ringing Marne’s doorbell, Dana didn’t feel any braver than she had when she’d seen Julia and Robin together. She couldn’t figure why the scene had freaked her out so much, except it was one more creepy thing among too many lately. Maybe Robin was applying to return to Valley Med, but she hadn’t mentioned it, and Dana hadn’t been aware that the two women had even kept in touch.

  Dana couldn’t believe what a coward she’d been, not only abandoning her legitimate questions but cutting and running—a gutless wonder. And she was feeling more spineless by the minute on Marne’s front porch. She hoped Marne wouldn’t yell at her; she didn’t think she could handle it again.

  No answer on the first ring. Dana thought she heard footsteps on the other side of the door and figured Marne saw her through the peephole. She pictured her friend’s mother scowling, hands on her narrow hips, as she was at Hutton’s Funeral Home.

  She nearly cut and ran again, but instead she gave th
e bell a firmer push.

  “Come on, Marne,” Dana said. “I just want to talk to you for a sec.” Her plea had been loud enough to penetrate the door, she hoped.

  Maybe too loud. On the street below, several kids in baggy pants and sweatshirts stopped under the streetlight and looked up at her. Marne’s neighborhood—she used to think of it as Tanisha’s neighborhood—was an array of small, neat houses and mostly well kept front yards. The kids hooted and whistled. Though their gestures and taunts were obscene, Dana took them as harmless. Maybe this was the most interesting drama going on in their young lives. A white girl begging to be let into their neighbor’s house. In any case, they were certainly less scary than Robin had been earlier, in Dana’s own living room.

  She rang a third time.

  “Please, Marne. I have blueberry marble.” She glanced down at the kids, who’d already moved on.

  The door opened, and Marne’s smile lit up the night. “Careful what you say, Miss Dana. People around here get mugged for less than a quart of ice cream.”

  Dana nearly fell over the doorstep into Marne’s arms. Marne patted her back, as if Dana were the one who’d lost her only child.

  “You’re not … mad?” Dana asked when she caught her breath. “I thought you weren’t going to open up.”

  “I was in the back, putting Rachel down, but I’m thinking I’ll get her up for the treat.” She took the bag from Dana. “And, oh, I was angry.” Marne led Dana into the house. “Truly angry. But now I believe you’d never do anything like that. I should have known.”

  “How—”

  “That cop came by,” Marne said. “The one with the Down East accent.”

  Dana felt her shoulders relax. At least there were some things she could still count on.

  Rachel sat on Dana’s lap and ate her blueberry marble ice cream, careful to keep spills away from her soft purple nightshirt.

  “Are we friends again?” the little girl asked. Her deep brown eyes seemed to be pleading for more picnics and trips to the planetarium.

  Dana kissed the top of Rachel’s head. She breathed in a sweet lavender scent. Evidently baby shampoo products had branched out from the smells Dana remembered as a child.

  “Of course we’re friends,” Dana said, relieved Rachel wasn’t interested in what had caused the nasty interlude at the funeral parlor.

  “Tell me the airport story,” Rachel said. She put her bowl and spoon carefully on the table and turned sideways so she could see Dana’s face.

  Dana swallowed hard and tried to psych herself up for Rachel’s favorite ambulance tale.

  “It was a spooky, rainy night,” Dana began, her voice low and scary

  “And what happened?” Rachel asked.

  “And a great big plane slipped on the wet runway and banged into a truck and some people were hurt.”

  “So they called Mommy.”

  “That’s right. And Mommy got in the ambulance and put on the sirens.” Dana made high-pitched noises, and Rachel joined her. “And the lights.” Dana fluttered her fingers in a flashing motion, tickling Rachel. “And Mommy drove that ambulance down the runway as if she were flying a plane.” Another elaborate flying gesture. “Vroooom!”

  Rachel clapped and squealed. “And she saved everybody.”

  “She did,” Dana said, holding back tears. She dared not look at Marne.

  “Knock, knock,” Rachel said, kicking her feet enthusiastically.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Lemon.”

  “Lemon who?”

  “Lemon me give you a kiss,” Rachel said, with a wide smile and a giggle that was too close to her mother’s for Dana’s comfort.

  Marne’s house was spotless. The kitchen counters were free of clutter, the bright yellow curtains freshly laundered. Every inch of the swirl-patterned beige linoleum looked washed and waxed, unlike the floor covering Dana and her roommates had inherited. Dana knew Marne used to clean other people’s houses until Tanisha had put in enough overtime to afford Marne’s staying home full-time with Rachel. She imagined Marne now putting all her housekeeping skills to daily use in her own home, even though it was a rental.

  Once Rachel was put to bed for the second time that evening, Marne’s tears flowed. Dana didn’t know whether to cry with her or to tell more knock-knock jokes.

  When Marne got around to talking about the police search, her tone turned harsh.

  “Pigs.” Marne spat out the word. “Some of them brothers, too. They come in here and upset Rachel and her friend. Scared them half to death.” Marne poured blood-red Rooibos tea into thick multicolored mugs. Her deep coral lipstick looked fresh, and Dana wondered if she’d applied it just before opening the door. “Flipping over pillows, lookin’ into cereal boxes, liftin’ up the cover on the toilet tank. And finally they find this laundry bag in Tanisha’s closet, full of meds, you know, all kinds of pills. I tell you, they was planted.”

  “What made you think I sent the cops?” Dana kept her voice low, hoping soft sounds plus the tea might calm Marne. In the background she could hear a singsong bedtime tune from the tiny boom box Tanisha had bought for Rachel only a few days ago, when her raise came through.

  “One of them dumb white cops … I ask him, ‘Why you here?’ ‘A tip,’ he says, ‘from your sweet girl’s partner.’”

  “I swear, Marne—”

  Marne waved her hand. “I know, I know. Somebody had it in for you, too, I figure. You know, they come looking for one kind of drugs, and they find meds. I watch TV, and I think that’s not supposed to count. If it’s not on the paper and they find it, it’s rotten or something.”

  “Fruit of the poisonous tree,” Dana said.

  “That’s it. If I could afford a lawyer I’d sue them. But it don’t matter now. Tanisha is gone anyway.”

  Dana nodded, but her mind had wandered, thinking how this was something else she and Tanisha had in common—they’d both been objects of police attention lately, though Dana had no direct evidence that the cops had been to her house; she just assumed they were the ones who took her stash. She’d have to ask Matt if cops could search without informing the person, either before, during, or after executing a warrant.

  She thought back to her dates with the rookie, Derek. “Your senses cannot trespass,” he’d told her, as if he’d just come from passing a pop quiz with that question on it. “If you can see it, smell it, taste it, you know, the senses, then it’s fair game.”

  So unless the Berkeley PD had smelled the little stash in her jewelry box, they had no right to take it, unless they had a search warrant.

  What a lucky break that Tanisha was between stashes, she thought. But as Marne said, she was gone anyway.

  Dana slipped into Tanisha’s nightshirt, a long-sleeved tee with a decal of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, and about three sizes too big for her. She was so grateful to Marne for letting her stay in Tanisha’s old bedroom for the night, or for as many nights as Dana wanted, with no explanation. Which was good, because Dana would have had a hard time explaining why she was afraid to return to her own house. Even to herself.

  She looked around the small room, one she’d been in a few times during their friendship. Dana had been surprised the first time that the room was so feminine. Not your typical firefighter-in-training decor. She guessed the ballerina music box was pretty old, but the collection of elephants that lined the dresser and shelves was an ongoing “thang,” Tanisha called it.

  “I have a thang for elephants,” she’d say, laughing.

  Dana recognized a spongy gray elephant she’d given Tanisha for her last birthday, and a small malachite model Tanisha had found in a hospital gift shop.

  For Dana, her girlhood obsession had been shells. Real shells from walks along Monterey Bay, fake shells from souvenir shops on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, shell jewelry from who knows where. She wondered what Rachel collected, other than an enormous number of different colored beads to hold her braids and cornrows
together.

  Dana stretched out on Tanisha’s bedroom floor and started leg exercises. Flat on her back on the brown shag rug, she pedaled the air as fast as she could. Why did she bother paying health club dues, she wondered, when she carried out most of her fitness program on her bike or her living room floor? One twenty-dollar floor pad was all she really needed.

  Dana remembered Tanisha kept a floor pad under her bed and thought she’d indulge herself in a little comfort. She shuffled sideways, spreading her left arm to feel the floor under the twin bed. Nothing within reach. She twisted halfway to get a better look at the whole area. Maybe Tanisha had shoved the pad under the bed from the other side. She shifted her body farther in. Dust filled her nostrils and she sneezed. The bedsprings were few inches from her face.

  So was an envelope, stuck among the coils. Dana’s heart skipped. She jerked up and hit her head on the coils and part of the frame. She blinked her eyes and twisted around until she was flat on her back.

  Leave it alone.

  Not likely

  She took a deep breath. She tugged at the envelope, a regular business-size white envelope, the kind you might a pay a bill with, held closed with a thick rubber band.

  As soon as Dana removed the elastic band, the envelope fell open.

  She couldn’t believe the police wouldn’t have found this. It didn’t say much for their thoroughness.

  So, the cops had come looking for drugs, they’d found stolen medical supplies instead, and they’d missed this envelope full of cash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Someone stole Dana’s Jeep?” Elaine asked. More a sentence than a question, as if nothing could surprise her.

  “I don’t think it was stolen,” Matt said. “My guess is that Dana got a ride back here from the uniforms and drove off in her car.”