by Baxter Clare
Still, she found it amusingly human that people persisted in believing in soft and warm and fuzzy. It was so much easier than admitting there was nothing out there, nothing waiting when your ticket finally got punched but oblivion. Frank didn’t really think oblivion would be all that bad. Some days she felt it would be her reward for the hell she walked through now. So if Gail wanted to believe in trees and stars, and Mother Love Jones wanted to believe in chickens and hexes, then who was Frank to judge? It was still a free country.
“Look,” Frank said, trying to put an end to the interrogation. “My dad was Catholic and he went to church once a year. My mom tried on religions like they were shoes. I had an aunt who was a devout Catholic and I’ve never seen a more pious, more bitter woman. My uncle hated the church and slammed it every chance he got, usually in front of my aunt just to drive her crazy. I didn’t have any good role models for organized religion. Or unorganized religion for that matter. I learned that at the end of the day, all I could count on was me. And I haven’t seen anything in forty years to change that.”
“How do you explain miracles?”
Frank frowned. “Random circumstance.”
“I don’t believe this,” Gail marveled, “I’m in love with a raving atheist.”
“Ah, ah,” Frank corrected, shaking one finger. “Agnostic, I don’t believe in a god but I don’t care if you believe in one. For all I know there might even be one and then won’t I be in trouble. Now, can we drop this and go to bed?”
Gail followed Frank into the bedroom, grumbling, “A drunken agnostic. How can I ever take you home to meet my mother?”
“You’ll just have to play up my other attributes.”
“Remind me what they are.”
“Brilliant detective, superior commander. Exquisite lover. Gourmet chef and chief bottle-washer.”
“Not to mention smooth talker.”
“Not to mention,” Frank agreed, pulling Gail to her and hugging her oh-so-tightly. Tight enough that if there was a god, he couldn’t take this woman too.
16
All Frank could see was the mouth gaping wide, with rows and rows of teeth. Sharp, glistening teeth. And laughter. The Mothers laughter, pealing like bells. And behind the laughter, bells did ring. The war was over. But Frank knew that couldn’t be right. This war would never be over. Not between these two. Not now. Not ever.
The Mother was still laughing, but farther away. She stood against a red sunset, trailing black and red and white gauze. The wind flapped her wrappings, unraveling her like a mummy. The Mother held a bloody sword above her head and a hand stretched to Frank. Blood dripped from the sword into pools at the Mothers feet. She laughed, beckoning Frank.
Behind her, a soldier stood amid the rubble of a ruined city. Around him, singly and in heaps, dead men stretched to the horizon, their artifacts strewn carelessly by the eternal desert wind.
Lip-smudged photographs and letters torn at their folds blew restlessly from corpse to corpse.
Vultures flapped indifferently among the abandoned relics, feasting easily from gaping wounds.
Ragged beggars and women in chadors scurried to collect gold fillings and wedding rings.
An ancient crone knelt at a body. She stared at the soldier, her eyes milky blue, like Aegean shoals after a storm. She wrenched the dead man s neck, then dangled a crucifix, cackling.
The soldier turned away, his helmet under his arm. Sand filled his hair and blew over his boots. Still he stood. He had been here before. He had never been gone. He had always been a soldier. He scanned the desolate horizon. It was silent, empty but for the rising moon.
He listened to the steady snick and crunch of jackals feeding. They ate without snarling. No need of that tonight. There was plenty for all.
The moon cleared the earth. It lit the dead sleeping in their shadows. The dogs slipped stealthily between them.
She woke slowly, floating up from the dream into the solidity of her bed. Canceling the alarm, Frank rolled into Gail. She kissed her shoulder, pressing into the doc’s flank, wanting to wake her and get lost in the sweet, ephemeral refuge of desire. But Gail didn’t stir.
Frank resigned herself to a scalding shower, then dressed in the clothes she’d laid out the night before. When she flipped the light on in the kitchen, the coffee was hot in the pot. She poured it into her travel mug while the twin gods of Routine and Order maintained harmony in her world.
Frank sipped her coffee at the sink. Bobby was probably going to be in court all day, and Darcy would be on his own. They were next up on rotation so if a call came in she’d send Darcy out with Diego. Noah and Lewis would—
Frank whirled, her eye catching a flash of white. She instinctively dropped her mug, reaching for the Beretta she hadn’t strapped on yet.
“Jesus fucking Christ!”
Gail stood wide-eyed and startled in a long T-shirt. Frank swore again, ripping off a handful of paper towels and swabbing the spilled coffee.
“‘Jesus. Give me some warning next time you sneak up on me.”
“I wasn’t sneaking up. I just woke up to pee and figured I’d say goodbye. Fuck you too.”
Frank threw the soggy paper into the trash can, snatching Gail’s elbow before she could leave the kitchen. She apologized.
“I’m just a little edgy.”
“A little? Christ, I’d hate to see a lot.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to be up traipsing around. You were sleeping like one of your customers a minute ago.”
“Well, I think I’ll just traipse on back to bed.”
“Come on,” Frank said, shifting Gail toward her. “You just surprised me. Guess I’m still jumpy. Had a weird dream.”
“What about?” Gail asked.
“Can’t tell you ‘til I get a kiss.”
Gail gave her a sulky one.
“I was a soldier, and there were dead bodies all around me. It must have been World War II because there were letters and black and white pictures blowing around. And the uniforms looked like they were from then. And the helmet under my arm, too. It all looked like World War II, but it felt like it could have been any time. It was weird. I was dressed like a GI, and so were the corpses, but I felt like I’d been there before. Like I could have just as easily been a Roman soldier standing there with a leather helmet instead of a metal one. And beggars were looting the corpses. Women in robes … veiled, like in the middle east. They were scurrying from body to body like cockroaches. It all felt like it could have been centuries ago or yesterday. It was … eerie, but real familiar too. And the wind was blowing, getting sand all over everything. Covering the dead men’s faces. And it smelled like blood. Fresh blood. Lots of it. It was sad, but at the same time it felt. …”
Frank searched for the exact word.
“Like I was supposed to be there. Like it was my destiny or something. Like I couldn’t have been—like I’d never been anywhere else. I didn’t want to be there—I was sick and tired of the whole thing—but it was where I belonged. It didn’t feel like I had a choice. And it felt like it was just one more battle in a long campaign.”
“Sounds creepy,” Gail mumbled into Frank’s neck.
“Yeah,” Frank agreed, but it hadn’t been creepy. Just … inevitable.
Frank kissed Gail and said, “Go on back to bed.”
“When do I get to see you again?”
“Tonight? Dinner?”
“Med-line meeting,” Gail said, crinkling her nose.
“Tomorrow then.”
Swinging in a locked embrace against Frank, she pouted. “You going out with your children first?”
“Of course,” Frank smiled.
“Will you be too drunk to make love to me?”
“Have I ever been?”
Gail considered.
“No-o. But let’s not have a first, okay?”
“Deal. I gotta go,” Frank said, disentangling herself. “I’m gonna be late.”
“Ohh!” Gail gasped in mo
ck horror. “The trains will stop running and the wind will stop blowing!”
“You,” Frank said, leaving her with a quick kiss, “who can’t even conceive of being anywhere on time, have a lot of nerve. You’re gonna be leaving Saint Peter or the Devil waiting twenty minutes for you someday.”
“Hey!” Gail cried as Frank grabbed her briefcase and crossed the living room, “I thought you didn’t believe in those guys.”
“I don’t,” Frank called back, “but you do.”
17
Frank was just about to grab a torta for lunch when a call came in from one of the HUD scattered housing sites. Folks in the Projects didn’t much care for the police, so Frank headed out with Darcy, Diego, and two backup units.
Flanked by the uniforms, the nine-three detectives walked behind the apartment manager up bullet splintered, piss-stained stairs. Neighbors huddled outside a door. The one who’d called the station repeated what he’d told Darcy over the phone—the girl across the way had knocked on his door to tell him she’d suffocated her kids. She’d said it as calmly as if she were saying it was going to be a sunny day.
The cops knocked on her door and a small voice said, “Venga.”
She was sitting on a stained mattress, two boys and a girl neatly arranged behind her. They looked like they were sleeping. The detectives touched the little bodies. Each was cool and starting to rigor. Darcy knelt in front of the mother while she pulled at a hangnail.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice soothing.
“I kilt ‘em all,” she confessed, matching his solemnity.
Darcy nodded as if he understood.
“How come?”
“I didn’t want ‘em to suffer no more. They’s always hungry. The little one”—she indicated a baby that couldn’t have been more than six months old—“she’s crying all the time ‘cause I didn’t have no more milk.”
She assured Darcy, “It’s better this way. This way they can’t know no more pain. They’re happy now.”
Darcy studied the girl a long time. Frank wondered if he was going to pull a Sandman on her. The girl tugged at the hangnail while he stared. Ripping the offending flesh from her finger, she watched the long tear start to bleed. So low Frank could barely hear him, Darcy asked, “There’s another baby, isn’t there?”
The girl looked at him with big, trusting eyes. She nodded.
“Where?”
“The garbage. I wrapped him in a towel. It was too bloody. I couldn’t do it that way. I couldn’t see him like that no more.”
Diego and Darcy went downstairs to look for the boy. While they were gone, the woman confided, “He was my oldest. I kilt him first so he wouldn’t see what was happenin’ and be scared.”
“Very thoughtful,” Frank murmured. Behind the greasy, stringy hair, the teenager smiled at Frank’s praise. Jack Handley showed up from the coroner’s office. He shook his head and went to work on the tiny corpses. Frank went after her detectives. They were coming back into the tenement as she was going out.
“Find him?”
“Right where she said he’d be,” Darcy said, dusting his slacks off. Two uniforms were taping off a row of dumpsters. Not to protect evidence, but to keep the curious crowd back.
“Handley’s upstairs,” she said to Diego. Darcy started to follow, but Frank touched his sleeve. A scraping sound distracted her. She glanced around at the onlookers, sourcing the sound to a bent metal cane sweeping the ground in front of crusted, swollen feet.
“How’d you know there was another kid?” she asked.
The scraping grew louder and Frank jerked her chin, indicating they should back up toward the stairs. Before Darcy could answer, Frank was stunned to feel a hand clamp onto her wrist. She turned to stare into filmy, sightless eyes.
What in the fuck?
The leering pile of rags held her in a death grip. Frank tried to pull away as its mouth gaped wide. Frank almost gagged. She’d smelled the vilest putrefaction, but nothing compared to the stench reeking from this … thing. The mouth stretched wider, thick strands of spit connecting the top and bottom lips like jail bars. The cracked lips split. Blood welled from the rents. Behind, in the dark maw, crumbling stumps jutted from puffy gums.
Frank was sickeningly fascinated, but still thought to yank her arm free. The hand only tightened on her wrist. She wanted to punch the reeking mass but it wouldn’t do to hit a homeless person in a crowd of witnesses.
The thing cackled softly, staring straight into her eyes even though its own were cauled with cataracts.
“You don’t recognize me,” it accused in a rough whisper. Frank immediately noticed that the words had no accent, no inflection. It had to be someone she’d sent up, maybe when she was in uniform, coming back now to blame her for how miserable his life turned out. Or hers. Frank scanned the face for a clue to the thing’s gender, but it was like studying a strip of rawhide.
The thing laughed again, louder.
“Too long for you to remember. But I remember. I never forget. No,” it crooned. “I never forget.”
Spit flew into Frank’s face. She tumbled back, finally jerking her arm loose. The relic stumbled too. It almost fell against Frank, but she sidestepped the fetid breath and curving, yellow nails. Frank’s nemesis recovered itself, rapping its twisted cane on the concrete. The obscene head swiveled toward Frank, the eyes impossibly seeing her. It nodded, acknowledging the ludicrous. Then it turned, leaving as it came, metal rasping against the sidewalk.
“Friend of yours?”
Frank jumped. Darcy’s eyes were steady on her. She followed the shuffling bundle until it was well away. Frank wanted a long hot bath to wash the stink off. She shuddered, completely flustered.
“What?” she barked at Darcy, probing her with quiet eyes.
“Nothing.”
He retreated into the building and Frank pulled herself together. The usual onlookers, curious and unconcerned. Another kid in a dumpster. No big. Yellow tape. Coroner’s van. Black and whites. The peeling Mercury. Beretta snuggled into her ribs. Sun shining. Everything okay. All as it should be.
Frank followed Darcy. The stairway was invisible after the bright sun and Frank tripped on the steps. Darcy turned at the top. Behind him, a lone bulb burned in its wire basket. Frank couldn’t see Darcy’s face, only the soft glow around his head. She wondered how long it would be before she could get herself into a tub and open a bottle of Scotch.
Back at the office there was a message from Gail. She’d finished Danny Duncan’s autopsy and Frank could page her if she wanted. Frank did; it was a good excuse to hear Gail’s voice.
“Hey,” she answered when the doc called back. “Got your message.”
“Hi. Paul did your Colonel. I was busy counting how many times a man stabbed his wife because she served him cauliflower with dinner.”
“How many?”
“More than I could count,” she yawned. “At least ten on her head and neck, thirty to her chest. Not to mention defensive cuts. I’m bushed. Thank God he confessed and I can let it go at that. I’ve still got to type it up, though. Ick.”
“I thought you were gonna be chained to your desk all day.”
“We drew coffee stirrers for this guy. I lost.”
A thin smile eased the strain on Frank’s face; she liked a boss that shared in the grunt work.
“What’d you find out about the Colonel?”
“Probably nothing you don’t already know. He exsanguinated due to penetration of the carotids and jugulars.”
Frank heard her shuffling papers.
“I don’t have his report yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
“Who was at the post?”
“Lewis. She’s nice. I like her.”
“How’d she do?”
“Fine, I think. She seemed all right.”
It was common for new detectives to ghost on their first autopsies. The overly ripe, gamey smell of a freshly opened torso; the sound of skin being stretche
d from fascia; the first glimpse of an exposed brain hunkered like an obscenely large pearl in an oyster— those were only a few of a dozen sensations that could send them spinning from the morgue. If the cutter knew a rookie was watching, they could be excessively gruesome.
“Was Noah there?”
“No. Just Lewis.”
“Alive or dead when he was cut?”
“I’m sorry. I forgot to ask. Does it matter?”
“Probably not. Might give us a little more insight into his last couple minutes.”
“I’ll get Paul to finish his prelim first thing tomorrow. How’s your day going?”
Frank was determined to forget the incident at the projects.
“From a civilian’s perspective—tragic. From a homicide lieutenant’s—productive. Four closed cases. The captain’ll be a happy man. You should have gotten them by now. Three boys and a girl.”
“Oh, God,” Gail groaned.
“Yeah, Mommy pulled a euthanasia. Stabbed the oldest with a steak knife then decided that was too messy. Smothered the rest of diem with a pillow. Thought they’d be better off that way. Maybe she’s right.”
“Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed today, or what?”
Frank almost snapped something, bit it back.
“You headed out on rounds?”
“Pretty soon.”
“Why don’t you stop by on your way home? Let me kiss you goodnight.”
“How can someone so cynical and so embittered be so romantic?”
Frank rubbed her eyes.
“I’m not embittered. I’m world-weary.”
“That’s very poetic. I think I’m rubbing off on you.”
“Yeah? That’d be awful nice.”
When Frank hung up she was an hour closer to that bottle of Scotch.
18
Frank was leaving a note for Darcy when Noah and Lewis strolled in. Noah slid into a chair like he’d just lost all his bones.
