“I love that place.”
“Right? So good. So I made an appointment to meet with Leo Thursday at ten and left. But when I got to the restaurant, Kyle wasn’t there. I asked if he’d been there and the maître d’ handed me a to go bag and charged me thirty-seven dollars.”
Anne looked disappointed. “You had to ruin that myth for me?”
Dee laughed, “We can usually get free end of the day pastries from certain panaderias, if that makes you feel better. Costumed cops get better deals.”
Anne laughed uproariously. Dee felt good that she was able to make the woman a little happy.
“You mean of course, uniformed officers.”
“Yeah, them too. Some of them will park their squad cars blocking patrons in order to get speedier and complimentary service to go. I stole one of those cars once.” She smiled, remembering the hell she had to pay for that. “One of the best days of my life. I expected to move on to a new town after that. But that was the day I met Kyle. He saw me take the car and followed me to the impound lot. While I was trying to get the guard to open the gate and let me in, Kyle jogged up flashing his badge. I thought I was in real trouble. So did the lot guard. Kyle leaned in the passenger side window and suggested it would be better if we parked the car outside the Fireside restaurant and pub.”
“The firefighters’ hangout?”
“Got it in one. I followed him back North and he gave me a ride to my precinct, came in and requested that the captain assign us as partners.”
“It’s not that easy, is it?”
“No.” Dee remembered Kyle’s persistence. He was not to be denied when he wanted something. “But I didn’t leave town.”
“And now you can’t leave town because there’s a demon loose and you’re the only one who can stop her?”
“Actually, she’s been around for a very long time. And one person can’t stop a creature like that if they’re let loose. It takes a team.”
“And you and Kyle have been a team for fifteen years.”
“Plus he’s my second best friend.”
“Second best?”
“His wife, Jeannie has to be his best friend.“
“And do you have a best friend, Dee?”
“I don’t . . .” She looked out the window for a while thinking of those possibilities. “I don’t want to talk about that right now. We’re talking about Kyle. And his free lunch. I paid and called him to find out where he really was. He was a few blocks away on Hood. So I walked past an elote vendor I knew was on the way and got myself an ear of corn. The vendor had a light pallor so I tried to convince him to go home to his family but he scoffed at me. He says he’s got to make a living. Not anymore, I said.” Dee interrupted herself. “Do you have family in town, Anne? A best friend?”
Anne seemed to consider whether to answer the question. “My best friend is serving a tour of duty overseas. We don’t get to Skype very often. But she writes the most romantic letters. I work too much to have many other friends.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. We do important work though. I pity those fools who work too much at jobs like marketing and warehouse management. We all spend too much time on what needs to get done and leave ourselves too tired to really enjoy the moments that matter in life. Although, let’s be honest, the most important person in my life is the one I got to spend all of my time with. What’s that saying? ‘Hell is other people.’ And maybe that’s true for a doctor who has to sit in a tiny room with psychotic killers.” She giggled. “Like being trapped in a tiny room with any old everyday killers would be any better.”
“It is,” Anne said quietly.
Dee paused. Nodded. “My concept of hell is a stakeout with the wrong partner. But a stakeout with Kyle? Kyle is like my seventh brother. We once spent nine hours in a car together and then went to a bar after because we hadn’t finished our conversation. Our stakeout on Hood street wasn’t that long. Maybe two and half, three hours. We had an hour long conversation about clothing. He’s a man’s man and I’m no fashion model. I have no idea what prompted . . . wait. I remember. My brother Sean is a mortician. Kyle calls him a beautician for dead people. Anyway, Kyle was grilling me on why they bury people with shoes on and how they get the shoes on if the body has bloated. Then he tells me to make sure Jeannie buries him with his shoes. Anne, Kyle has been wearing the same shoes since I met him. Sandals. He wears sandals with socks. And he defends them. He tells anyone stupid enough to listen to him that they are Fox sandals. ‘You can skateboard in these sandals.’ Like that’s why they make total sense on a homicide detective. He loves those things so much you can’t get him down. He pulled them off to show me the ‘coolest thing he just discovered.’ He was walking on the lakeshore and took off his shoes so he could walk at the edge of the water and KJ, his little bitty girl, yelled ‘Daddy! It’s a goggy!’ Well, Kyle’s looking around for a dog but KJ’s pointing at his shoes. He actually took his shoes off in the car to show me. Each shoe has half a fox head on the insole. Y’know, the icon for Fox Clothing, right? Well, so you hold the shoes together and it makes the fox head. KJ isn’t so good with her animals yet.” Dee stopped talking again, thinking about her goddaughter.
Anne changed the subject, turning Dee away from the pain for a breath. “Why were you staking out the leader of the 2E?”
“Kyle had this idea that if we followed King around long enough, I’d see a pallor on one of his lieutenants or whatever. Then we’d approach the guy, get a ‘deathbed confession’ and solve the whole ring of murders, end the war. I was trying to explain what a stupid idea that was when I got cold. I looked up and saw King coming out of the building Kyle had seen him go in. King had two people with him. A girl in a dark green hoodie and a guy we’d seen before. His name was Shig. Some joke about him having a thing for sweets and knives; sugar and shiv. Shig.” She shook her head. “That’s not important. But it is the details of people’s lives that matter. Names really matter. And I have to care. It’s part of my thing.”
“You don’t have to apologize to me for caring about anyone.”
Dee looked up at Anne. “Thanks.” She went on, “Shig had a pallor. He was gonna die before midnight. He’s a . . . he was a kid, y’know? Has a little sister I still have to find. Anyway we approached the three politely. Kyle told Shig straight out that he was gonna die. That made things a little tense. King thought we were threatening his man. Kyle suggested they were all gonna die if they didn’t help us clear up the war. The girl laughed. We couldn’t see her face, but she seemed familiar to me. She was short but standing tall, good posture, y’know. You almost never see that in the gangs. I asked her who she was. King answered. He called her Posa. I didn’t think that was her real name though cuz she looked at him sharply. Kyle started questioning them about who was giving the orders. King pointed out that the number one thing most likely to get him killed was talking to cops. They started to walk away. I stepped in front of Shig and whispered, ‘you think your sister is gonna survive without you?’ that stopped him long enough for King and Posa to get out of reasonable earshot.” Dee scoffed. “And they didn’t even pause to let him catch up. They didn’t wait for him. They kept walking, down the street, around the corner. Gone. Kyle started to tell him we’d protect his sister if he gave us any useful information. But I don’t like that kind of blackmail. I was gonna help her either way. So I interrupted and told him what I am. I told him that I would help his soul cross but there’s only so much I can do. He’d have a much easier time, I proposed, if he helped stop the killing as his last act in the world. I think I was getting through to him. But Kyle disagreed. He made me show him . . . the thing.”
“The thing. The thing where you raise a storm inside my office and grow your hair out white?” Anne cocked her head at Dee.
“Yeah. That thing.”
“I’d think you’d have named it.”
“Don’t need words for things you never talk about.”
“I get that.”
“Anyway I did the thing and that seemed to scare the crap out of Shig. He spilled out everything he could think of that might help us. We knew most of it. But he said one interesting thing. He said that ‘Posa’ and yes, we could hear the air quotes around her name, ‘Posa’ was paying Caviedes. Danny Caviedes is a Prez. Turns out he’s known as El Jefe to the DVs. He was playing both sides, sharing info that was getting lots of people killed. When he stopped talking, I told Shig to go tell his sister he loved her. I tried to reassure him that if he didn’t make it there, I’d find her and tell her. Apparently that scared him more and the second I let go of his arm, Shig high-tailed it away from us.
“Kyle and I walked back to the car. Kyle was feeling good. He said, hey, he’s not dead yet, maybe you’re wrong.” Dee looked up at Anne who could almost see her true age in the sadness on the detective’s face. “I’m never wrong. I felt him die before we got to the car and keened a little. Kyle was awkward. He doesn’t know what to say at those times. He said he forgot how scary my thing is. But he was right. Nothing else would have convinced the kid. He tried to apologize for making me do it. But I was mean to him. I told him to leave me alone while I was busy being sad.”
“Can you really mourn for a gangbanger like that?”
“Yeah.” Dee said it simply. “He was a light in the world and now that light is gone. And yeah, Kyle pointed out that he lived a dark life and he made it and made other people’s lives darker, worse. But you know, our lives aren’t ruled by fate. I don’t have to help people pass. I could ignore it. I did ignore it for a while. Tried to use it to stop people from dying for a while. That was a disaster. And ignoring it just made me feel sick and alone. Shig’s life was given to him and maybe the gift came with lousy perks but he lived it with good and bad like all of us. He made choices and he loved. He made someone happy. And I’m sad that his light is gone just as I’m sad that Sister Sue’s is gone. Kyle has an answer for everything though. To make me feel better, he offered to buy me a milkshake. We were getting in the car and I demanded fries instead because it was so cold. I never expected it.” She laughed a little, looking up at the ceiling, not seeing it. “I actually checked to see if he had the air on before it struck me that he was taking his jacket off as he got in the car. I was the only one feeling the cold.”
Anne let the silence hang for a moment before she prompted Dee. “The cold, like you felt when you saw the pallor on Shig?”
Dee nodded for a while before she trusted her voice. “Yeah. I get really cold. I was afraid to look at him. I think I sometimes feel like if I don’t look, it won’t be true. If I don’t see it . . . but I’m a grown woman.” She reached forward and took a tissue from the box but then just held it in her lap. “When I was a kid and even later, I had friends. Lots of friends. But so many people died around me that my friends started thinking I was bad luck.”
Anne filled Dee’s water glass and handed it to her. “Anyone considered you might be related to Jessica Fletcher?”
Dee laughed so hard, she snorted. She had to set the glass down until the giggles passed. Then she picked the glass up and drained it. “Kyle knows me so well. I didn’t even need to say anything. I just said ‘give me the keys’ and he saw it in my face, maybe heard it in my voice. He froze and whispered, begging me, ‘no.’ But I don’t decide your time. I just know when it is. I can’t stop it. But I can . . . I thought I could get him home so he could say goodbye. I slipped out my side and went around to take the keys from him. We were ten minutes from his place. Ten minutes tops. We could get there. Jeannie and KJ could say goodbye. He wouldn’t get out of the driver's seat. He started confessing to me. Like there was anything I didn’t know. He hated his brother. He thought about cheating on Jeannie once. I tried to move him. He was terrified, yelling ‘these are my debts. I don’t want to pass slowly like you say. I took bribes on my first beat.’ And on like that until he finally stopped talking and leaped out of the car. He fished in his pockets, trying them all until he pulled out this gorgeous key that looked like . . . like an oak leaf. It was hung on a silver chain with cloth wrapped around it. He pushed it at me even as I tried to wrestle him around to the passenger side. ‘Morioka!’ he yelled. ‘She cannot have this key, Dee.’ He bruised my arms holding me so tightly.” Dee rubbed her biceps which were still yellow and green under her shirt. “He was so insistent and scared. Fearless. My Kyle has always been fearless. But he was terrified. ‘Do not let Captain Morioka get this key.’ I promised. He held me at arm’s length, staring into my eyes. ‘She’s…’ He started but then the ‘pop pop’ sounded and as I looked toward the flash of light I’d seen out of the corner of my eye, he fell. I almost didn’t catch him. I was watching the short girl in a green hoodie turn and walk away. I laid Kyle on the ground and began searching for the bullet holes to do first aid. He stopped me. ‘You’re a banshee, silly girl. You know you can’t help me here. Go. Get. Her.’ And I did what he told me to. I left him lying there on the cold ground, bleeding, dying.
“Posa did not expect me to give chase. She was shocked to see me running at her and was slow off her mark. I would have caught her. I’m a runner and I have adrenaline. I wasn’t worried and I used some of my breath to call in to the precinct. ‘Officer down.’ I told them. ‘Officer down on Hood East of,’ I checked the name of the street the girl was taking a left onto, ‘Greenview. He’s in front of the . . . car.’ Before I finished my sentence, before I turned the corner, I felt Kyle’s light go out. I hung up and keened as I ran, determined to catch his killer.
“When I rounded the corner I could see her almost halfway down the block trying to avoid this guy. This weird guy, tall, emaciated, so pale he glowed in the twilight, he grabbed the girl and pulled her into a yard. She struggled for a moment and her hood fell off. As she let him pull her through a gate and into the backyard of a house I saw nice blond hair, styled so stiff it was still in place despite the hood. Something about her profile was familiar and older than I had expected. When I got to the yard, I followed them through the open basement door. Easily following their trail of open doors, I got to an interior bedroom just as a bony white hand was closing the closet door. I pulled my gun and wrenched the door open.
“It was empty. A few clothes, some shoes, and old exercise gear. But no people. I know what I saw; a hand closed that door. I felt the back wall for a secret door. I examined the floor for a hatch. I even checked above the shelf in case they were able to get through a passage up there. But there was nothing, no way out of this closet.”
“Metaphorically,” Anne put in, “there is always a way out of our closets.”
“And there must have been a way out of this one too. I searched the entire house. Never found them. So I walked back to the scene.” She stopped a moment. “Anne, do you have anything stronger than water in this office? Cuz you might want to grab it.”
“You’ve told me that you’re a banshee and that there’s a not necessarily evil demon roaming the city. Now, I should start drinking?”
“No body.” Dee saw Anne flick her eyes to the bottom shelf of the bookcase.
“Go on.”
“I walked back to the car. Two squad cars were already there. The uniforms were looking around for the officer down. I ignored them, their questions. I walked back to where I had left Kyle. I couldn’t see any body or any blood. Now it was dark at this point, but there were streetlights. I got pretty close to the spot where I’d left him lying. I stopped when I noticed the cement got kind of,” She considered how to describe it, “soft. Not the cement itself. I was walking on something that hadn’t been there before. I knelt down and I could see that I was standing in a pile of ash, a thick pile of light grey ash. Seeing a glint, I reached forward and brushed away some of the ash. My movements made the ash start swirling in the pool of blood it had been covering. I backed up a couple steps to get out of the ash and saw another small glint out of the corner of my eye over by the front right tire of the car. I went over to it. Not ignoring the uniforms no
w, just not hearing them. There was an speck of ash on the car, a handprint like someone had brushed a hand in the ash as I had and then leaned on the car. And down on the street, the glint I had seen was a footprint. I looked, I’m telling you, I looked all around the area. But there was only that one footprint. A footprint of blood and ash, about size 10 with a perfect half fox head in the tread.”
Dee got up from her comfy chair. She took the two steps over to the bookshelf by the door and crouched down, moving aside a copy of Oedipus Rex to find a tall bottle of Tap 357 maple rye whiskey. She took it back to the small table and knelt as she’d seen geisha do in the movies. She drained her water glass and waited for the doctor to do the same. Then she carefully poured several fingers of warmth into each glass and set the bottle on the table.
After they’d each taken a sip or two, Anne laid out the facts. “Kyle was dead. But while you were gone, he got up and walked away.”
Dee nodded and sipped. “Doc, we haven’t even gotten to the weirdest part of the night.”
Anne glanced at the clock on the wall behind Dee’s chair and then looked back at the detective. “Please go on.”
“Honestly I had no idea where to go from there. I was thinking I had bigger problems than the gang war. I didn’t really care right then why someone was paying Danny Caviedes to exacerbate the gang wars. Who was the blonde? Why did she shoot Kyle? Who was the raggedy guy who dragged her into a house and disappeared? How did my partner walk away from the scene of his murder? I was standing at the edge of the street looking off the way the footprint was pointing, thinking pretty intensely when one of the techs who had arrived touched my shoulder. I jumped. He apologized and then asked if what I was holding was evidence. I looked down. I was still holding the key necklace in my left hand. In fact my hand was hurting I had been squeezing it so hard. I shook my head and told him I had to go. Could he tell the detectives when they showed up that they could reach me by cell. Nice guy. He was worried about me. Didn’t want to let me go. But I had to find Captain Morioka and find out what the key was about. As I was getting into the car, I realized I couldn’t take the key with me. I almost gave it to the tech, told him it was evidence. But my phone rang.” Dee chuckled and sipped at her whiskey.
Dee: A Wyrdos Tale Page 2
