by Saul Black
Paulie didn’t answer. His face was hot.
‘You know you’re scared of them, don’t you? How do you live with that? Being scared of them. What do you think they’re going to do to you?’
Paulie didn’t answer. Looked everywhere but at Xander. It was as if Xander had him in an invisible net.
‘It’s like carrying you on my goddamned back,’ Xander said, unbuckling his own seat belt.
Paulie bowed his head. His smell wafted to Xander. Damp canvas and sour socks and stale sweat. Paulie, Xander thought, not for the first time, didn’t wash often enough.
‘I’m just saying,’ Paulie said, staring hard at the dashboard. ‘We need water. I’m fucking starving, too. There was a McDonald’s back there on 17.’
‘Like carrying you on my goddamned back,’ Xander repeated. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Fine,’ Paulie said.
‘Do you hear me?’
Paulie made a quick movement with his head, as if suddenly realising his neck muscles were seizing up. ‘I said fine,’ he said.
Xander kept the invisible net tight for a few seconds, watching Paulie breathing hard through his long, narrow nostrils. Then he opened the driver’s door and jumped down out of the RV.
THIRTY
It took Claudia half a dozen more paces to start thinking it would be a good idea to be talking to someone on her cell phone as she passed this guy. Not because she thought he was dangerous, but because there was enough in his aura – and enough on her radar – for her to feel sure he was going to try to engage her in an exchange she didn’t want to have. (It wasn’t strictly true that she didn’t think he was dangerous – she was a woman, alone, approaching a man on a stretch of road screened by trees from residential view – but it was strictly true that she was suppressing the thought that he might be dangerous. She was thinking, too, of all the times she’d had the maddening argument in the wake of some woman’s assault or rape or murder in a lonely spot, the argument made – with insidious, shoulder-shrugging reasonableness – that surely it wasn’t very smart of the woman to be walking alone in such a place? Surely the woman was making herself fair game? Surely the woman was, when you got right down to it, asking for it? Half the time it was women who made this argument. Women who didn’t seem to understand that what they were defending wasn’t a woman’s right to move through the world as freely as a man, but rapists’ and murderers’ right to do their thing as long as there weren’t likely to be witnesses.) She’d started scrolling through her contacts for Ryan’s number (Hi, it’s me. I’m two minutes away. Mix me a gin and tonic!) when the RV guy – less than fifteen paces now – yanked the wheel brace from the final tightened nut, straightened up, stretched, arching his back, and said: ‘Miss, you wouldn’t happen to know if I’m going the right way for Paradise Park, would you?’
Adrenalin, in spite of herself. Her knees sent the delirious message that they were ready to sprint. But the stubborn social protocols kicked in, too: You don’t just turn and run away from a guy because he asks you directions. To which another inner voice responded: How many women have ended up dead because they didn’t? She had an image of Alison watching all this on a screen on the other side of the world. Thought how much, in spite of all the wounds they’d inflicted on each other, she loved her sister. The habit Alison had of blowing her fringe out of her eyes.
How far back down the hill was the nearest house? Another three paces. She speeded up. Walk with a purpose. Show no fear. Show brisk entitlement. Show consequences if you try to fuck with me, dickhead.
‘I really don’t,’ she said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’
Keep walking. Cheery, yes, but with undeflectable purpose. Paradise Park was, she knew, just slightly north-west of where they were. But that would mean stopping to give him directions. That would mean him saying: You got a map on your phone? Do you mind if I take a look?
‘I know it’s around here somewhere,’ he said, opening the RV’s driver door and slinging the wheel brace inside. ‘I’ve got a map in here, too, but I’m damned if I can find it.’
In five paces she’d be level with him. It was all right. He’d turned his back on her. He was searching for his map. And he’d ditched the tool. It wasn’t that situation after all. Forgivable paranoia. But keep walking. The clothes don’t match what that camper would’ve cost. Rental. Stop fretting.
But he turned back to face her too quickly. Exactly as she drew level.
And he was holding a tyre iron in his right hand.
THIRTY-ONE
Time cracked.
One half – Claudia’s past – gathered on one side of a line of white light. The other half – her future – rushed up in a mass of blackness. She was caught, while all her reason devoted itself to the simple imperative – RUN! – in a neural snarl-up, because despite the imperative the tyre iron was already coming and the reflex to shield her head was jamming the one in her legs.
The world pitched and swung its details: the glittering asphalt; the cedars’ deep green; his smell of rubber and burnt oil and sweat; the tyre iron’s flecks of rust; the surprised, greasy face of a second guy who appeared, leaning out of the driver’s door, long reddish hair swinging bright sickles around his bearded jaw.
Then her arms were up to protect her head and the iron hit her in her gut and the air flew out of her lungs and all she knew was that she was never going to breathe again. Something hard hit her knees and she realised she’d collapsed and his hands were on her. A second of intense pressure on her throat. Her weight lifting and her sandalled feet touch-typing the air. Impact. Her back slammed against the RV’s white flank and a voice saying Jesus fucking Christ, Xander, Jesus fucking Christ, with the soundtrack of suburban birdsong still audible around it. She had an image of Alison’s face distended in horror. She realised as if for the first time that this had happened to women from the beginning, got a glimpse of the billions, living and dead, the scorched sorority who could only watch, who could offer her nothing except that this would be her unique instance of the historical constant, her rape, her death. All her childhood and adolescence and womanhood, everything she’d done, so many conversations and kisses and laughs and thoughts, so many things taken for granted because they were part of a world she never imagined would be changed like this. Like this. By something coming into it and blasting a divide between what she had once been and what she would be forced to become hereafter. If she lived.
If she lived.
In the blur of him lifting her and her left elbow hitting the door and her heels cracking against something and the overwhelming sickening reality of strong hands and the smell of a cramped space of vinyl and gasoline and stale sweat and the panic that swelled her every cell Claudia thought: I want to live. I want to live. I want to live. All her life’s schemes and nuances reduced in these seconds to a singularity: Survive. Whatever happens, you must survive. You must survive.
She couldn’t see properly. The struggle to breathe kept dumping darkness on her, blacking her out. She was aware of the uselessness of her limbs. The windscreen loomed up, the dash choked with litter, styrofoam cups and crushed doughnut boxes. The dark-haired guy’s voice saying: Get the ties, get the fucking ties. Her immediate understanding that ‘ties’ meant tying her up. Which released fresh screaming urgent weakness in her wrists and elbows and ankles and knees. She still, it seemed, hadn’t breathed since he’d hit her. She still, it seemed, hadn’t made a sound. Her arms and legs were light and adrift, though she was vaguely aware they were trying to fight him. Him. The reality sickened her, that he was a person, with a voice and a face and a smell and a history and a will that had brought him here, that had closed the distance between him and her, that had introduced them to each other. The little girl having her breakfast in the bright kitchen in Bournemouth, her bare legs swinging – and him, here, now. All those moments leading to this one. All those moments leading to her death.
A motorcycle went past.
Please see this. Please see this.<
br />
But it was gone. No change in the receding engine sound. No sign. No hope. And what could its rider have seen anyway? The driver’s door was closed. Nothing to see but a parked RV. Nothing to see.
‘Fuck,’ the red-haired guy said. ‘It’s her.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the girl from the café.’
‘What?’
‘From the goddamned café. This afternoon. Jesus.’
‘What the fuck are you talking about?’
His hand around her throat tightened.
‘When I got the coffee. This afternoon. Jesus, Xander, when we stopped to get coffee. Fucking Whole Food whatever. She’s one of the waitresses.’
Claudia had got barely a glimpse of the second guy. Hadn’t recognised him. If he’d been in the Feast, she hadn’t noticed him.
But the world was full of women not noticing the men who were noticing them.
The dark-haired guy had her pressed across the two front seats with the bulk of his weight on her. The gearstick’s knob was digging into her spine. Her left wrist was wedged under the handbrake. Consciousness was dark-edged. There would be full darkness, an eclipse, if she didn’t get oxygen soon. He still had his hand around her throat. His other hand pinned her right wrist under her bottom.
‘Will you just get the motherfucking ties?’ the dark-haired guy said, looking up and through the windscreen. To check the motorcyclist wasn’t coming back, Claudia thought. To make sure absolutely no one was seeing this. And she knew absolutely no one was. No one and nothing. She was alone. The clean curve of road that at other times kids would be riding their bikes down. The stately cedars and plump pines. The birds singing and the soft golden Californian evening. None of it cared. None of it was any use. None of it was even aware. All her life she’d indulged a playful anthropomorphism. Gone. You were nothing to the world. The world was nothing to itself.
The hand on her throat opened. She still couldn’t inhale properly. Swallowed one lump of air like a hardboiled egg. It made her want to vomit.
Which she might have done, had he not yanked her up and slammed her head into the dashboard.
THIRTY-TWO
‘Wait up, Skirt,’ Blasko called to Valerie. She was on her way out of the station. It was just after eight in the evening. The sound of his voice behind her shifted her body’s gear. She’d been craving it. Expecting it. Dreading it. She had no right to anything from him, but here it all was. The wrecked but indestructible entitlement. It was hopeless. She waited for him. Excitement and sadness and fear.
‘Let’s not have the pointless conversation,’ he said.
‘Which one?’
‘The one that ignores the way this is.’
‘What way is this?’
He didn’t need to answer, since they were looking at each other. Valerie felt all the objections gathering. In a moment the objections would be a crowd with one voice and one demand: Leave him alone. Either tell him everything or leave him alone. And if she told him everything, what difference would it make?
‘Let’s get a drink,’ she said, and felt as soon as the words were out the deep thrill of releasing herself into doing the wrong thing. She hadn’t known what she was going to say until the words were out of her mouth. Then within seconds she was walking with him. She was going somewhere with him. She was with him.
They went in his car, left hers at the station. I’ll pick it up later, she said. Which alone was an admission of the night’s possibilities. He just nodded. Understood. There was no not understanding each other. That had always been their joy. And, naturally, their curse.
Their after-work spot, formerly, had been Juanita’s, a tequila bar on Divisadero, so they didn’t go there. Instead, to a new-looking place – Pelican Bar – on Folsom, with a dark interior and a red neon strip running the length of the black vinyl bar, which was tokenly decked with a strip of gold tinsel and sprinkled glitter. Less than a dozen patrons, small tables, subdued music courtesy of the bartender’s iPhone and Bose. Tom Waits, by the time they were sitting with their drinks, though Valerie recognised nothing that followed it. When she was a teenager life without music had been unthinkable. Now she never listened to it.
‘This thing’s taking its toll,’ Blasko said. The Case, obviously. It wasn’t a question. Their corner table had a little candle in a dark red shot glass. Valerie had an image of herself slumped at the desk alone in the incident room, the huge photos of the dead women above her and around her, like objects of worship.
‘It’s OK to just say I look like shit,’ Valerie said. ‘I know I do.’
He glanced at her. You never look like shit to me. Then he looked down into his drink. The damage had damaged him. He was sure he was doing the wrong thing, too. But sadness was this moment’s enemy. Whatever this moment was. Sadness or madness, Valerie thought. Take your pick.
‘It’s been going on a long time,’ she said.
‘What’d you get from Reno?’
‘It’s our guys. I’m sure of it. Coroner’s report’s a formality. Victim had an alarm clock wedged in her mouth.’ The ugliness of the words shut both of them up. Talking about The Case wasn’t an alternative to talking about them. It was talking about them. A Case had ruined them. A Case had left her with a miscarriage and him with his heart shredded. What had changed since then? Nothing. Except that thanks to it she was a better cop. A cop who didn’t believe in anything and had no trouble not seeing the victims as people. A cop empty of everything bar the fascinating mathematics of solving the flesh and blood riddles. Until now. Suddenly Valerie regretted the impulse that had brought her here. She almost – almost – got up and left.
‘Last time I was at my sister’s,’ Blasko said, sensing it, changing tack, pulling them – just – out of danger, ‘we were sitting at the dining table after lunch, and the kids were arguing in the next room. You know, Jenny’s nine now. Walt’s going on six.’
This was a gift of his. To remind her of the absurd jewels still in the world, in spite of the horrors. She didn’t know what he was going to tell her. Only that with the shift in his voice her body relaxed. Love. Still love. Or the remains of it. Embers not out. Just a couple of tender breaths would be enough. (Until she told him everything. Then a different blaze. She shut the thought down.) Just a couple of tender breaths and she could go back to being a worse cop than she was now. Wouldn’t that be what love cost her? Wasn’t it the same transaction, in reverse?
‘So, the kids are going at it,’ Blasko said, ‘and we can hear things are getting pretty heated in there and Serena’s rolling her eyes, getting ready to deal with it – then Walt storms in looking outraged and wounded and says Jenny called him an ass-burger.’
Valerie smiled. Felt how alien the sensation had become. Walt had been still in diapers the last time she’d seen him. Jenny an imperious little thing, inseparable from her soft toy, a monkey named, inexplicably, Earl. (If we have a kid, Blasko had said one day from the shower, while Valerie was brushing her teeth, it’ll be a girl and we should name her Daisy. It was how they had talked about it. They’d known they had a little allowance of talking about it not-seriously before they’d have to have a real conversation. Until Nick, Valerie had never imagined herself having a child. Then love. And the shocking intuition that there was a whole other gear of herself she could shift into: motherhood. Make a baby with Nick. It had terrified and thrilled her.)
‘He’s followed by Jenny,’ Blasko said, ‘who’s looking guilty as hell, but sort of delighted with herself too.’
‘I don’t blame her,’ Valerie said. ‘“Ass-burger” is pretty good.’
‘It’s better than that,’ Blasko said. ‘Serena turns to Jen and says very seriously, “Did you call Walt an ass-burger?” Jenny cracks up. She’s really, genuinely laughing, in spite of obviously being in deep shit. Serena’s like: this isn’t funny, young lady, that’s not a very nice thing to say to your brother. But Jen can’t stop laughing. Even Walt by this time is sort of fascinated by her
reaction. Then Jen goes: “ Asperger’s. I told him he had Asperger’s. Jesus. Ass-burger! Walt is such a dummy!”’
Valerie was laughing, quietly. Blasko smiled, took a sip of his Scotch. ‘Poor Walt,’ he said. ‘He was the only one who wasn’t laughing. He’s standing there completely baffled. Eventually, though, seeing he was outnumbered, he joined in.’
It was too easy. Too good. I’ve missed you. I miss you. Present tense.
But the damage she’d done was there too, in all the spaces the laughter didn’t cover. And when she stopped laughing, here they were again. Sitting looking at each other, with the incontestable facts of their history like a grinning genie between them. Three years. And now, again, the certainty of not being alone in the world. It was lovely. It was awful. And it was missing the central fact. The untold tale.
‘Are you seeing anyone?’ he said.
Oh. OK. We’re going straight there. Valerie felt the bar open onto a void. Her view of the universe was that it was Godless and meaningless, but threaded with random forces whose accidental job it was to make you think there was a twisted plot to the whole thing.
She shook her head, no. ‘You?’
‘What do you think?’
She knew the answer. Otherwise what were they doing here?
‘What do you want?’ he said.
Ask me something easier, Valerie thought. She was remembering the way he’d looked at her when he’d walked in on her with Carter. Not anger. Capitulation. A complete understanding that she’d done the thing there would be no coming back from. In that instant she’d seen his whole life gather in his dark features, as if all its details had rushed together to receive this giant betrayal. A disinterested part of herself had been merely fascinated by the change in his face, the fracture. Now there was always a disinterested part of her fascinated by things: hearts she’d broken; murderers she’d caught; corpses mutilated beyond recognition; a fetus the size of a shrimp in a doctor’s rubber-gloved hand. Years ago, when she was just out of the Academy, a seasoned detective had said to her: You want to work Homicide? Get rid of your heart. Your heart won’t help you. Rip your heart out and put a big, lidless eyeball in its place. Feel nothing. See everything. Well, now she did.
