by Saul Black
The wooden blinds were down and two table lamps were on. They gave a gentle buttery light. The room had a friendliness to it, from the corduroy couches to the scattered kids’ DVDs and the thick hearthrug with its pattern of squares and rectangles in different shades of brown. The woman was lying on the floor on her back where Xander had dragged her. Her pale blue panties lay nearby, stained with blood. She was still alive. Her mouth was moving but there was no sound. The thought of what would become of him if Xander left him reared up in Paulie, a feeling like the one he got in the dream of the tidal wave he used to have as a kid, where he was standing on a bright boardwalk eating an ice cream with his back to the ocean, and the sky darkened, and when he turned there was a thousand-foot wall of black water coming towards him, flecked with sharks and shipwrecks. At the same time the fact of the woman’s helplessness, the look of ebbed strength in her bare limbs, filled him with a kind of nourishment, as if fabulous proteins had been rushed into him.
‘I thought I saw someone out there,’ he said. ‘But it was a deer. Hurt my goddamned leg. Need to strap it up or something.’
‘A deer?’
Paulie had actually seen a deer on his stumble back through the trees.
‘You shouldn’t have left her,’ Xander said.
‘She wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘You don’t know that. This is your problem: you don’t think. Not going anywhere? Women lift fucking trucks when their kids are trapped underneath. You don’t think. I’ve told you.’
‘OK, OK. Fuck, man, how’d it be if there had been someone? You’d be thanking me.’ Paulie had to turn away as he said this. Xander looked at you and your lies crumbled. His hands were wet. The pain in his knee was a blessing, since it kept short-circuiting everything else.
‘Go and strap your leg,’ Xander said. ‘Don’t come back in here till I tell you. And for Christ’s sake shut the back door, will you?’
When Paulie had hobbled out Xander moved to stand over the woman on the floor. The feeling of wrongness, of not having what he needed to do this properly, was still with him, but it was made negligible by the pounding richness of his body and the bristling aliveness of the world. Every detail of the room, whether it liked it or not, said that whatever this woman’s life had been up until now, he had all of it in his hands. His controlled impatience was a delight to him. It was like holding back a horse he knew would win every time, no matter the competition. There was a sort of hilarity to it, the certainty of power, the certainty of victory. There was a moment of balance, between holding it back and letting it go. You had to wait for that moment and make it last as long as possible, because the surrender to it was the sweetest thing of all, a sweetness that went through your every cell so that all your movements were perfect, every bit of you was perfect, from your fingerprints to your eyelashes, and so much of the exhaustion simply fell away like a rotten harness and you were free.
‘What?’ he said to the woman, getting down on his knees and putting his ear next to her mouth. ‘What are you saying?’
NINE
Rowena Cooper had been in and out of consciousness. She remembered waking at the bottom of the stairs to find herself soaked and heavy. A terrible delayed understanding that she was soaked and heavy with her own blood. The gun’s butt had hit her like a meteor. Those last fragments of thought: that they’d find Josh; that if only Nell heard and ran; that Nell wouldn’t run, that she’d come in, see, scream – and they’d have her, too.
Then blackness.
She hadn’t heard the gunshot. She didn’t know.
But when she’d surfaced again there was a frank silence upstairs. A dead intelligence had replaced her son.
Then Nell, close, smelling of snow and the forest, the little face that was like a brand on Rowena’s heart. The appalling energy it had cost her to get Nell to run. Run. Saying she’d be angry if she didn’t and seeing in her daughter’s eyes that the child knew the anger was a sham to hide something much worse. It was an understanding between them. Her daughter’s strength in that moment had fractured Rowena with love and pride.
The last image, after the red-haired guy had picked himself up off the floor, was of him going after her, towards the dark line of the forest. Go on, baby, keep going. Hide, hide in the good trees.
She’d sunk into nothingness again, and when she returned was being dragged by her ankles down the hallway and through the living room doorway. The liverish stink of her blood mixed with the Christmas tree’s smell and the waxy odour of gift wrap. She was cold and thirsty. (She thought what a long time it had been since she’d lain on the floor. When you were a kid the floor was part of your perspective. You forgot the view from down here, the skirting boards and secret spaces under the couch with their lost items and fluff.) She could see the fireplace Josh had set ready for lighting earlier that day. Only ever lit at Christmas. It was one of the rituals he’d taken over a few years back, with shy masculinity. The first time he’d done it without asking, Rowena had walked into the empty room and seen it and stood there swallowing back tears. Her husband, Peter, had died in a car accident when Nell was only four years old, Josh seven. All the ways in which she’d worried she wasn’t enough for her children. And then her son’s quiet act of compensation. She’d felt such an access of tenderness and loss.
The reality of death came to her through the cold and the thirst. The immense sadness of the fact. Her time going like the last grains of sand sucked through the hourglass’s cinched middle. Going. Going. Images from her past detonated: childhood in Denver; the little house’s parquet flooring and weedy yard; her father reading The Hobbit to her when she was ill; the heady first weeks at college in Austin; the certainty when she’d met Peter, the happy sensual pigs they’d made of themselves that first year, love and pleasure like a ridiculous fortune they’d inherited; the thrill of telling him she was pregnant and the astonishing casual knowledge that he wanted it as much as she did, that this was really their life, shaping itself; Josh being born, Nell, the messy, ordinary, unappreciated gifts of having a family. Then the accident, the shredded life, the incremental acceptance. The dull practicality of the insurance payout and the move back to Colorado. Last house on the road. A peaceful corner to raise the kids and heal your wounds.
She felt the sprawling idea of the future – Josh and Nell growing up, college and love affairs and houses and children, phone calls and the ache of their absence and the peace of putting her arms around them when they came home, the things she still wanted (maybe a man again; her body had been telling her, lately, saying enough was enough, she was still only forty-one) and through all of that the imagined relationship with the taken-for-granted physical world, of sunlight and red leaves on a forest floor and the breathtaking first whiff of the ocean – she felt all of this dissolving into blankness, pointlessness, a bereavement she couldn’t accommodate. She had an odd, flimsy image of Nell’s half-painted bedroom. Nell had been sleeping with her these last nights while the redecoration inched forward. It would never be finished now. It had been sweet being close to her daughter through the nights. She wanted to say goodbye to her children. Above everything else she wanted to see and smell and hear and hold them one last time. And all the while the darkness came and went, and very vaguely a confusion of wondering if there was anything on the other side and would she, after all the horror of grief, see Peter again?
‘What?’ the man said, his face close to hers. ‘What are you saying?’
But a blood bubble formed and burst between her lips. She saw the ceiling’s central light, the gold tinsel sparkling, felt the cold turning to warmth as the image formed of Nell running through the shadows in the snow.
TEN
Thirty-eight-year-old San Francisco homicide detective Valerie Hart knew she’d made a mistake. The latest in a sequence of mistakes that had started with her smiling at the guy – Callum – in the softly lit cocktail bar less than two hours earlier. He’d smiled back, but with a look of self-congratulatory
entitlement she’d known wouldn’t go anywhere good.
Things hadn’t improved during their brief conversation. He worked ‘in banking, but let’s not talk about that, it’s a turn-off’, nor in the cab, when he’d ignored a call from what they both knew was another woman, nor when he’d closed the apartment door behind them, watched her take a few paces into the room, then said: ‘Jesus, your ass is an argument-winner.’ Valerie knew he’d said it countless times before. And in her case didn’t mean it. She knew exactly what she was in his eyes: a one-night downgrade. An older woman who wouldn’t object to whatever he wanted to do in the sack because she was just grateful to be in the sack.
The apartment only confirmed the mistake. It was in the Ashton complex by Candlestick Park with a floor-to-ceiling view of the Bay. Valerie knew the place. Two bedrooms would cost you the better part of four million dollars. Unsurprisingly, the decor – some hired designer’s idea of minimalism (glass and steel) plus fun (cowhide rug) – said: rich asshole lives here.
And here she was. With only herself to blame.
‘Stop,’ she said, when he took his tongue out of her mouth for a breath.
They were on the bed and he was lying on top of her. Her blouse was open, and he’d pulled her bra cups down awkwardly below her breasts. He lowered his head, took her left nipple in his mouth, flicked his tongue over it. Nipped it.
‘Stop,’ Valerie said.
He ignored her.
And this is one of the ways this happens, Valerie thought. One of the countless ways.
‘Stop,’ she said a third time, louder.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘What? What is it?’ No disguising the impatience. Which would become annoyance. Which would become anger.
His left hand was behind her head, gripping her neck. His right was in the open V of her unzipped pants, fingers exploring her through her panties. Jesus Christ, your Honour, she was wet. I mean, come on.
She was wet. Residually. There had been enough of her that had wanted this when they’d started. Not because she’d had any illusions about him. In fact precisely because she hadn’t had any illusions about him. These days – since Blasko – if she went to bed with a man it had to be one in whom she had no interest beyond physical desire. These days – since she’d killed love – it had to be someone she didn’t like.
But there wasn’t enough of her that wanted it now. Now the bulk of her just felt sad. Although she knew very well that sadness wasn’t going to be any use here.
She put her hand on his chest and pushed, not hard, just a civilised statement. ‘You need to get off me,’ she said.
‘Well you’re half right,’ he said. ‘I need to get off.’ His hand pressed harder between her legs. ‘It’s OK if you want to play,’ he said, tightening his hold on the back of her neck. ‘Just don’t draw blood.’
‘That’s not what this is,’ she said, pushing a second time. ‘Get off me.’
‘That’s not what your pussy’s telling me,’ he said.
Guile or force. Those were her options. Certainly not argument. He weighed, she guessed, around 170, and vanity sent him to the gym three or four times a week. It was a long, long time since Academy training, and she’d been slack on the workouts for months, but the thought of trying to trick her way out from under him exhausted her. Hey, I’ve got some coke in my purse. Let’s do a couple of lines. He wouldn’t believe her. He was alert to her change of heart. In the Academy, every session of ‘Practical Police Skills’ was conducted to the sound of the instructor’s mantra: You will survive. You will survive. You will survive.
Leah’s eye out fork balloon the mess between Shyla’s legs Yun-seo’s body flecks of soil he started alone but shallow grave river stop—
Stop. Stop.
Her purse was fifteen feet away, where she’d left it on the arm of the bedroom’s cream leather couch.
Third option: guile and force.
She softened underneath him. She’d had a cold for two weeks. She was aware of her sinuses, throbbing.
‘That’s better,’ he said, pushing himself up on his left hand to get a look at her, while his right hand snuck into the top of her panties. ‘That’s a good girl.’
She eased her right knee under his, got a purchase with her heel (she still had her shoes on) – then punched him as hard as she could in the side of his throat.
He was so shocked by the pain she barely needed the full force of her right leg to flip him, but she was past such calculations. She was off the bed and at her purse in three seconds.
Be careful, the drill instructor had told them all. A punch to the throat can kill a scumbag.
This scumbag wasn’t dead. He was on his knees on the bed, swallowing, swallowing, swallowing, holding his throat.
‘What the fuck?’ he gasped, looking at the Glock in her hand. ‘What the fuck?’
Valerie was a mix of adrenalin and emptiness. She zipped up her pants and resettled her bra.
‘Christ are you…’ swallow, ‘are you a cop?’
Valerie buttoned her blouse. Her coat was on the floor next to the couch. ‘Just shut up and stay there,’ she said, quietly. Her face was hot. She could feel the days’ and weeks’ and months’ exhaustion pressing hard on the adrenalin, waiting for it to give, when it would come crashing in like the ocean through a plate glass window.
‘Listen,’ he said, one hand raised, palm outward, his whole body trying to reinvent itself as the personification of innocence, ‘we were just…’ gulp, ‘I mean I wasn’t…’
‘It’s better for you if you don’t speak,’ Valerie said, getting into her coat. The sound of her own voice disgusted her. Proof that this wasn’t a dream but a real situation she’d put herself in.
When she was ready, she moved a couple of paces nearer the bed, with the gun pointed directly at him.
‘Hey,’ he said, trembling. ‘Hey, Jesus, come on.’ Swallow. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t do anything crazy. I didn’t do anything to you. I didn’t do anything to you!’
‘Then what are you sorry for?’
He was shaking his head. Disbelief. How had this happened to him? How could this be happening to him?
There were a lot of things she could say. Laura Flynn, one of her colleagues, had said not long ago: Give every woman a gun and a badge and watch the rape stats fall. What Valerie most wanted to say to the man on the bed was: And this is how this happens.
But somehow everything died in her mouth. She just wanted to go home.
Keeping the gun trained on him, she backed out of the bedroom, then turned and walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind her.
ELEVEN
She woke at four thirty a.m., after an hour and thirty-five minutes’ dream-infested sleep, to the sound of poetry. By design: some time back she’d started setting the radio alarm to a digital station that read poetry through the night. Poetry didn’t make sense. But it gave you things. That was one of a small number of truths she’d discovered. A pitifully small number. Like a bum’s last nickels and dimes in a world that required a thousand dollars a day to make it bearable.
‘He must become the whole of boredom,’ the soft male voice on the radio said. ‘Subject to vulgar complaints, like love, among the Just be just, among the Filthy, filthy too. And in his own weak person, if he can, Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.’
Valerie switched it off. All the wrongs of Man. In his own weak person. Filthy. Among the Just. Be just. The words shuffled in her head, gave her a few precious seconds before The Case took over: Refrigeration RV candy apple stuffs objects guts cut out with fish knife what kind of fish knife limited number maybe fisherman too much traffic enforcement footage fork jammed in vagina he knew Katrina had to had to had to otherwise why’d she go with him them not one guy two guys but it started with one guy I don’t know how I know this Kansas the mid-point have to call Cartwright again they’re not taking it seriously have to have to…
Unlike the radio, this couldn’t be switched off. The Case was th
ere at her sleeping and there at her waking and there with her through the day. X-rated tinnitus. Tinnitus designed by the Devil. When she was a child her grandfather (the last practising Roman Catholic of the family) had said to her: First the Devil lets you know there are terrible things. Then he tells you which room they’re in. Then he invites you in to look. And before you know it you can’t find the door to get out. Before you know it you’re one of the terrible things.
She got up and went to the bathroom.
A positive result is indicated by a blue line. That morning three years ago was with her every morning. As if the bathroom’s humble features couldn’t forget it. She certainly couldn’t. That morning she’d sat on the floor wrapped in a soft white bath towel. Waiting.
A pregnancy test detects the presence of a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in your blood or in your urine. hCG is produced in the placenta shortly after the embryo attaches to the uterine lining and builds up rapidly in your body in the first few days of pregnancy.
The idiom of impersonal biology. Chorionic gonadotrophin. Placenta. Uterine lining. Embryo.
As opposed to the personal idiom: Baby. Child. Mother.
Father.
Blasko had said to her, once, in the heart of their life together, before the Suzie Fallon case had driven her to wreck it: The best and worst thing about being a cop is that it makes it easier to tell the truth. They’d been in bed at the time, subsiding in the warm wake of a small-hours fuck that had started half-asleep then woken them with dreamily escalating dirty-sweetness. They had these encounters, took them as an entitlement. Afterwards, Valerie liked to drift back into sleep to the sound of his voice. It makes it easier, he’d said, because every day you’re surrounded by the pointlessness of lying.
She’d remembered it that morning three years ago, sitting wrapped in the giant towel on her bathroom floor, waiting for the line on the test to turn blue.
