Combustion

by Martin J. Smith

At 475 degrees.

  The patrol officer later approached Starke at work. “I don’t think your dad’s OK,” he told him, and that turned out to be as accurate a diagnosis as any. By then Starke already knew his father’s occasional eccentricities had become something else, and his doctors made it official later that year: early-onset Alzheimer’s. The diagnosis ended a legendary Los Colmas law enforcement career, one that most assumed would have led Tommy Starke to the department’s top job, maybe beyond. In time his father would get a hero’s funeral, but until then Starke could only watch him slide deeper into dementia’s abyss.

  The move to this care facility was unavoidable, and difficult. Three years ago his father was still lucid most of the time, and as strong-willed as ever. In three years, he’d still never taken his toiletries out of the battered leather Dopp kit in his tiny bathroom, as though this was just a short motel stay. It was especially hard because he was still managing pretty well in the condo at the time, at least until the Arby’s incident. But Starke knew it was time to move him the night Dad wheeled his F-150 into a nearby fast-food place, strode to the counter, and ordered an Angus Steak sandwich and a chocolate shake. He was wearing only a pair of knee-high black socks.

  Starke pushed open the door to room 169. His father was dozing in a recliner positioned directly in front of the flatscreen TV. The angry voices of his favorite national news shouters echoed off the room’s bare white walls.

  “Just me, Dad,” he said. “Ronnie.”

  The old man’s head shot up. The front of his ball cap read “No Spin Zone.” He looked confused.

  “Your son,” Starke reminded.

  He stepped across the room and poked the mute button on the remote. Room 169 was suddenly, weirdly quiet while his father tried to ID the intruder.

  “You don’t live here,” the old man said at last.

  “No, but I came to see you. Make sure you’re doing OK.”

  Starke set a crumpled paper bag and a small Styrofoam cup on the rolling food tray and wheeled it across the room. He parked it between his father and the TV, and set up a folding chair directly across the table.

  “Bear claw,” Starke said, sitting down. “Maple. You like these.”

  “Says who?”

  “I bring you one every day.”

  “Oh.”

  “And a coffee. Black, two sugars. Careful, it’s hot.”

  His father reached for the bag, unrolled its top, and stuck his nose into the opening, sniffing like a sommelier. “Winchell’s,” he said.

  “Still the best.”

  Cops and doughnuts, Starke thought. So much more than a cliché.

  “Feeling OK today, Dad?”

  “Hell no.”

  Starke smiled. Same answer every time. “So normal then?”

  His father smiled back. “Wiseass. But who let you in here?”

  “It’s Ronnie, Dad. Your kid. The cop.”

  While his father seemed to consider this, Starke reached for one of the massive hands resting on the rolling table. His father offered it without hestitation. Starke pulled it toward him, and at the same time ran his other hand up the old man’s bare forearm. The skin was dry and scaly, as usual, but worse because of the Santa Anas.

  “Itching still a problem?”

  His father nodded. “I think there’s spiders on me. They need to spray.”

  Starke set the hand back where he’d found it, stood, and crossed the room in three strides. In the bathroom, next to the leather shaving kit, he found the pink, value-size squeeze bottle of baby lotion he’d brought three days before. He squirted a big dollop into his left palm, grabbed the comb, and returned to the folding chair. He set the comb down and slowly rubbed half of the lotion into one leg-of-lamb forearm, then the rest into the other. Tommy Starke’s eyes were fixed on the gentle movement of his only son’s hands. When Starke was done, he sat back.

  “Better?”

  “Better.”

  “The lotion’s from the pink plastic bottle in your bathroom. It’ll help with the itching. Use it. Or have the nurse use it. When you run out, I’ll bring more.”

  “OK.”

  Starke picked up the comb, leaned forward, and ran it through his father’s silver hair, parting it on the left in the same way it was parted in the black-and-white photo in the department’s Hall of Heroes shrine. When he finished, Tommy Starke pulled the bear claw from the bag and set it beside the bag on the rolling table. He took a bite of the maple-flavored sugar bomb, closed his eyes, and chewed. After he swallowed, he looked down at the coffee cup.

  “What’s this?”

  “Your coffee. Like you like it.”

  The old man pried the plastic lid from the coffee cup and took a delicate sip.

  “I was a cop,” he said at last.

  Starke nodded. “One of the best.”

  “And you’re a cop?”

  “Detective, Dad. I made detective.”

  “No shit?” Big grin. “Detective?”

  For a moment, Starke sensed a connection, maybe even a hint of pride in his father’s voice. But he knew it was probably an illusion. He watched him take another bite of bear claw, chew, swallow, and sip. By the time their eyes reengaged, the moment had passed.

  Tommy Starke picked up the remote and aimed it at the TV. His unraveling mind had moved on, and Starke long ago stopped taking it personally. The room filled again with outraged voices, and after a quick kiss to the top of his father’s head, Starke slipped quickly and quietly out of the room. With a quick wave to Glenda, he stepped back through the automatic doors, back into the heat.

  By the time he reached his unmarked Crown Vic, sweat was beading on his forehead, and he was thinking again about Shelby Dwyer. He had a delivery to make, and aimed the car toward her big house on the hill.

  8

  Shelby curled her bare toes over the edge of the pool at the center of the backyard. The reflection staring up at her was the same slim blonde she’d been three weeks ago, the same woman who’d danced through life with looks she knew could get her most anything she wanted, but one who suddenly felt like she was standing in quicksand.

  How did it get this crazy?

  I did not kill my husband, she reminded herself. Mistakes in judgment were made. An intimate trust betrayed. A terrible thing happened. But murder? Never. Paul’s killer was… somewhere. Probably somewhere close. She knew that much, and would give anything to be able to tell what she knew. Except her family’s reputation. Except her daughter. Except their lives. Those were the stakes, and since there was nothing she could do for Paul, silence seemed less of a sin. It was the only thing keeping them safe.

  Goddamned Ron Starke had no idea.

  A hot breeze rippled the water, and Shelby looked up. Not even midmorning, and already it felt like a furnace. A wind like this, in this area, carried a familiar and unmistakable threat that she felt in the hot prickle at the back of her neck, in the dryness of her eyes. After thirty-nine years in Los Colmas, her entire lifetime, she’d stopped counting the number of wildfires, the frenzied evacuations, the scarred ridges and canyons, the endless waits to see if firefighters were able to stop it, turn it, drown it. A Santa Ana wind after a long, dry summer was a fuse. There was menace in its dry crackle.

  Shelby tried to remember: Were the Santa Anas blowing the summer night a year ago when Paul, drunk again, tried to kill her and Chloe, when he’d held a gun to her head on their kitchen floor and pulled the trigger? She’d seldom challenged him about the drinking, about the women. The night she reached her limit and threatened to leave him, Chloe heard her screams and came running. Paul looked up, drew a bead on their daughter, and squeezed the trigger again.

  They were alive only because Shelby had emptied the gun before she confronted him. His intentions that night were clear. In that rare moment of defiance, though, standing terrified with her screaming daughter, she knew things would never be the same between them and Paul. It was just her and Chloe from then on.

 
Now Paul was dead. Shelby had to admit an ambivalence about it. She felt as much relief as pain; scar tissue is always less sensitive.

  “Mom?”

  Chloe’s voice was husky from sleep, but there was more to it, an edge of concern.

  “Morning.” Shelby wiped her eyes and spoke without turning around.

  “What’s wrong?”

  When she did turn, Shelby saw her only child standing in the kitchen doorway, her long blond hair pulled into a lazy knot behind her head. Ramones sweatshirt. Paul Frank sock-monkey pajama bottoms. Hello Kitty bedroom slippers. A walking billboard of conflicted adolescence. Their fourteen-year-old Golden retriever, Boz, stood faithfully at her side.

  “What makes you ask?” Shelby followed Chloe into the kitchen and watched her open the cupboard. Chloe grabbed a bowl, stopped by the silverware drawer for a spoon, pulled a gallon of non-fat milk from the fridge, and arranged it all on her side of the café table that was big enough for the whole family now. She poured a grotesque mound of Lucky Charms into the bowl before rooting into the box for more marshmallow stars. She evenly distributed the ones she found, then sloshed so much milk into it that much of the cereal tsunamied onto the tabletop. The sound of intense chewing quickly followed. Chloe closed her eyes as she ate.

  Shelby took the chair across from her daughter, she reached across the table and lightly touched Chloe’s forearm.

  Chloe opened her eyes. “What?”

  Shelby had rehearsed this moment a thousand times in the past three weeks, but now the words wouldn’t come. Chloe studied her face. Shelby tried to speak, but Chloe beat her to it.

  “It’s Dad, isn’t it?”

  Shelby looked away. She knew she shouldn’t. She couldn’t help herself. “They found a body. Yesterday.”

  Chloe returned a spoonful of cereal to the bowl and wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  “That’s all we know at this point,” Shelby said.

  “It’s him.”

  “They’re pretty sure, but they’re still doing tests.”

  “Where’d they find him?”

  “Not far from here.” Shelby’s own words chilled her. Because of what they implied. “Off Spadero Road, where Dad was building those new houses.”

  “Near Shepherdsen’s?”

  She nodded, surprised by her daughter’s instant familiarity with the place where for decades local kids her age got together to drink and swim and grope in the dark.

  Chloe said nothing, didn’t move a muscle until she picked up her bowl and walked it over to the sink. Running water. The roar of the DisposAll. She set the rinsed bowl in the draining rack.

  “What else?” she asked, turning.

  “We should know for sure pretty soon. But they did send someone over this morning to let us know. Maybe they know more than they’re saying. I just don’t think they’d send someone over here if—”

  “It’s him.” Chloe held up her arm. The soft blond hairs on it were standing on end. “I feel it.”

  Shelby felt it, too. She crossed the room and pulled her daughter into a hug. Chloe’s head dropped onto her shoulder.

  “You OK, kiddo?”

  “Fine.”

  Shelby stroked her daughter’s blond hair. “I’m not.”

  “Me either.”

  “Tell me what happened, Mom.”

  Shelby hated lying to her daughter. She’d never gotten used to it. But what choice did she have? She shook her head. Again. “No idea. Maybe the police will find something.”

  “I’d just like to know, even if it’s bad. Promise you’ll tell me everything.”

  Shelby pulled away far enough to look her daughter straight in the eyes.

  “Promise.”

  9

  Of all the precautions Shelby took in the days after, the one thing she wished she could do differently was the thing she least understood. She’d used computers for years, but what went on behind the tidy façade of her machine’s inscrutable brain remained to her a mystifying puzzle. She’d been told different things by different people, each who claimed expertise. Reformatting the hard drive destroys everything. Or it destroys nothing. Once wiped clean, everything is lost. Or anything is retrievable. She had never been sure.

  And so, the morning after Paul’s body turned up, she waited in her car just outside the Silicon Recycler, the only storefront computer discounter in Los Colmas. The place opened at ten, even on Sundays like this. She’d left Chloe at St. Lawrence, where her daughter volunteered to herd rowdy kids in the playroom every Sunday. Her dashboard clock read 9:56 as she parked across the street. She recognized the owner as he unlocked the front door, wondering if he’d recognize her, a one-time customer who three weeks before had traded in a high-end iMac for a refurbished PC. Even if he did, so what? She was just looking around. The questions she intended to ask were innocuous, meant only to put her mind at ease.

  At 10:02, the owner flipped the sign and propped open the front door with a brick. Still, Shelby waited another two minutes, just to seem casual.

  The place smelled of tobacco and cardboard. Cartons were stacked everywhere, representing the cramped store’s entire inventory of refurbished desktops and laptops. A dozen or so computers were set up and operating on shelves and folding tables around the perimeter.

  The owner grunted some sort of greeting, but otherwise paid Shelby little mind.

  “Just looking,” she said.

  The man glanced up from his magazine. “For?”

  Shelby shrugged. “Just looking.”

  He stepped into the narrow aisle. He seemed friendly, but wary.

  “A laptop,” Shelby said. “But I’m not ready to buy. Just trying to see what’s out there, what it might cost, that sort of thing.”

  The owner sat back down and smiled. “You need help, you ask, OK?” he said in a soft accent, probably Persian.

  Shelby made a show of perusing the laptops on display. She fingered the touchpads of a few, typed some gibberish on a few more to gauge the keyboard action, pretended to study the various screens for readability. Then she got down to business.

  “Your sign says you buy used computers?” she asked.

  The man couldn’t have looked more confused. “Still, yes, of course.”

  Still. So he remembered her. “Of course,” Shelby repeated.

  “You come here last month, no? The Apple trade-in, I think, right?”

  “Good memory,” Shelby said.

  “For some people.”

  The man blushed suddenly, convincing Shelby it was a reflexive comment and not a pick-up line. Either way, she wanted to push on.

  “So what happens to the computers you buy from people?” she asked. “Just curious.”

  The owner seemed to relax. “Flip them fast,” he said. “Today, hot; tomorrow, junk. That’s computer business. The longer it sits, the less I make. If I don’t sell here, I wholesale to a buyer who sells parts.”

  “The one you bought from me was still pretty new. So I’m assuming you sold it?”

  The man shrugged, clearly not interested in checking his records for her.

  “I reformatted the hard drive. I think that’s what you call it, right? But you told me you check all that, clean them up, before you sell them, right?”

  “Clean them?”

  “You know, make sure all the files and programs are gone, and all that?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And that’s pretty foolproof? You make sure the whole thing is empty before you sell it? I mean, people keep their whole lives on those things: finances, pictures, things they’ve written. I’m guessing most people are careful about that.”

  The store owner shifted on his stool, set his magazine down. If Shelby had to guess, he looked wary again.

  “I don’t check everything. Just stuff I’m selling here, see? I wipe the drives on those, like I told you. But if it’s going to another retailer or my parts guy, I don’t bother.”

  “No?”

  “Not my proble
m.”

  Shelby felt a disorienting ripple. He’d assured her he planned to sell her computer intact, and would purge its memory before doing so. Why hadn’t he mentioned the other possibility back then? If he’d sold it whole to another store or wholesaled it to the parts dealer, what truths might still be out there, embedded on its silicon chips?

  “No, not your problem,” she said.

  “Why? You need something on that computer?”

  “No, no, I just—”

  “Because I do remember now. We booted it up right here, to check it. The hard drive was clean. And you had CarbonCopy on the keyboard plug.”

  He’d mentioned it at the time, but Shelby had no idea what he meant. This time she probed. “CarbonCopy?”

  “Keylogger hardware.” He shifted on his stool and looked away. “You didn’t install it?”

  Shelby shook her head. “Maybe my computer guy did, or my husband. Why? What does it do?”

  The man looked seriously uncomfortable. “You should ask your husband.”

  When he said nothing else, Shelby asked him again.

  He leaned forward and dropped his voice a little. “Maybe a mom or dad wants to see what teenage boy or girl is doing on computer. Porn sites. Facebook. Like that. Or somebody wants to know what husband or wife is doing, maybe? CarbonCopy records keystrokes and stores it in a secret place. So you have a suspicious husband maybe? Maybe he wants to know what you’re up to?”

  “And that was on my computer?”

  The store owner nodded.

  “So it was still on there when you sold it?”

  He shrugged. “Not my problem.”

  Shelby felt dizzy, nauseous. She glanced at her watch, as though suddenly remembering an appointment. “Whoa. Late.” Her voice sounded hollow, like she was talking from the bottom of a well.

  “Wait. No laptop today?”

  “I’ll come back. It’s just—” Shelby tried her best to smile. To pursue her next question, to ask if it was possible to track that old computer, to find out what it remembered, would be to tip her hand. She managed, “Not today,” as she turned toward the door. She heard the owner’s, “You come back anytime,” but she already was lost in dark thoughts, trying to remember if she’d been smart enough to buy the new computer with cash.