EQMM, September-October 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Within seconds, the parking lot is full. Sleepy people, jolted back to life by the sound of the gunshot, rush out of their apartments, and the area around my cruiser is as packed as a bargain-basement mall. I get into my cruiser, lock the doors, and radio for backup. Mario, still in cuffs, kicks at the side window with his feet, the glass between us covered with his spit.

  A young guy in boxer shorts, a wrinkled T-shirt, and construction boots pulls the dead kid out of the car. The young guy's chest is now covered with the dead kid's blood, and he approaches the cruiser, the kid's gun in his hand. He jumps onto the hood of my car and presses his face against the windshield. “Take off your goddamn vest, cracker!” I don't look at his face, just train my eyes on that pistol, waiting for it to be pointed at my head. He could have ended it for me right there, just as I could have done for him. Having the gun in his hand, uttering threats—justifiable cause for use of deadly force. But my arms are far too heavy for me to lift my weapon and take aim. I hadn't wanted to shoot the first time. Twice in one night would be more than I could handle.

  Sirens scream from behind me and the lot swims in flashes of blue and red. Behind me, a cop yells for the young guy to drop the gun, and he does. Throws it, actually, just before one of his neighbors drags him off the hood by his waist, out of harm's way. “Be cool, be cool,” the neighbor says, his actions contradicting the look of hatred in his eyes.

  A cruiser pulls up right beside mine, and an officer—I don't remember who—opens its passenger door first before opening my door, creating a barrier between me and the crowd. “Get in,” he tells me over his right shoulder, both his hands on his gun, never letting his eyes off the crowd. “Move it!” he urges. I hustle out of my cruiser and into the one beside me. “Take him downtown,” he tells the officer, like he was giving instructions to a cabbie. My driver pulls forward slightly, and I see the dead kid, his head on the lap of a woman who is kneeling on a mound of pink snow. We don't go too far into the crowd, just far enough to manage a U-turn. I look up and see the old lady in the second-floor apartment, her curtains pulled open just a sliver, and her eyes burn into mine. No thumbs-up this time.

  * * * *

  It's 2:18 a.m. when I finally get home. The lights in my neighborhood are all off, and our house is just as quiet and still as everyone else's. I want to run inside the house and flick on every switch, turn on the radio and the TV at once, open up every faucet and run them until they're dry. Instead, I tiptoe so as not to wake up Lorraine.

  I walk up the stairs to our bedroom. There's a soft glow seeping from underneath the door. She's sitting up in bed, a box of Kleenex on top of the quilt, one tissue balled up in her hand. The white tissue stands out against her black skin. I don't say a word, which I realize now might have been a mistake. I once read somewhere that a conversation is harder to resume after there's been a silence established. In hindsight, I should have rushed into the house and let it all out, told her everything I could remember about it, but I didn't. Somehow, I felt that if I didn't give the story legs of its own, it might just slither away. She's obviously heard something, however, and so I know that she has at least some understanding of how my night has gone. That's enough for me at the moment. We'll have the rest of our lives to comb through the details.

  I sit on the edge of the bed, my back to Lorraine, remove my shoes, and then, still in my uniform, curl up beside her, my knees tight against my chest, and fall into an exhausted sleep.

  * * * *

  When I wake up, Lorraine is already gone. I turn on the television, and find people speaking for me. I am a man without a voice, a ventriloquist without a dummy. There's a picture of the young man, transformed by the bullet from a standard street thug into a model citizen. His face fills the screen. A young man with his father's arm around him, both smiling broadly. A young man on the basketball court, slam-dunking one for his high-school team. These are not the pictures I had seen back at headquarters. These are not mug shots. These are not the pictures of the man described by the victims he had beaten and robbed the day before I met him. The pictures being shown on the screen have been carefully selected by his family, images to show that this person was loved, this person was special, this person was destined for something far greater than what he got.

  I remain motionless in front of the television, and it is there that Lorraine finds me when she comes in.

  I don't know how to respond. I'm never home when she comes in. We've been married for two years, and this situation—all of it—is brand-new to us both. I feel like I've broken into her house, a thief caught in his pajamas and bathrobe.

  She doesn't know where to begin either, so she engages in the ordinary. She knocks the grey slush off her salt-stained boots onto a plastic mat we keep just inside the door. She brushes the thick white snowflakes out of her dark curly hair before they melt. She puts her mittens on a stand near the floor vent, so that in the morning, they'll be warm when she puts them on. She walks towards me, cautiously, like I'm a stray dog who may respond badly.

  She stops beside the couch and rests the long, polished fingernails of her left hand on my shoulder. She stares forward at the television screen and watches with me.

  A commercial break, and the noise level in the room seems to jump twelve decibels. I hit the mute button, and silence takes hold. Lorraine pours herself a glass of wine from the fridge.

  "Is this what you normally do when you come home?” I ask. I am studying the culture and customs of my wife. I see my wife differently today, intrigued by the way she moves.

  "Today isn't normal,” she says. No argument from me. I look for the nonverbal clues, hoping to find a hint of what has happened to her in the world outside our home. I watch her in profile as she sips from the glass, her lips barely touching the rim of the goblet.

  "Did they ask you anything about it?” I nudge forth the question softly.

  "They? Who do you mean by they'?” she asks.

  "They. The people you work with.” The question had seemed clear to me.

  "With, or for?"

  I now see the distinction she's trying to make as clearly as if she'd drawn it for me. There's a color difference between the people she works with and the people she works for. Lorraine is a social worker. She connects homeless people with access to services they need: food, shelter, employment. Lorraine works a block away from the station, and I used to see her out on the street every day with her clients. I watched her for months before I found the courage to get out of my cruiser and say hello. She was suspicious of me at first, not just because I am a cop, but more specifically because I am a white cop, and her spine stiffened when I first approached her. It took awhile for her to accept me.

  "Any of them. I don't care, just any of them,” I say.

  She takes a larger sip of her drink and tucks her feet up underneath her thighs. Her skirt strains around her knees.

  "Yeah, sure. Everyone has questions,” she says.

  "What did you tell them?"

  "Nothing,” she says. “I don't know anything more than they do."

  I absorb her response, and make two false starts to my sentence before I finally manage to say, “Is there anything you want to ask me?"

  She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the arm of the couch. “It all seems pretty self-explanatory, doesn't it?"

  I reach underneath her and hold one of her feet, her big toe poking out of her pantyhose, a run now snaking toward her knee, and I stretch her legs across my lap. Her toes are damp and cold, and images of my past twenty-four hours continue to flash on the screen, the volume still on mute.

  * * * *

  Hard white pellets blast against the window, fingers of ice forced by the wind. Eskimos don't have hundreds of names for snow. That's an urban myth. They have only about twelve. Loosely translated, their name for this type of snow is “Shit, that stings!” I can tell by the crunch of the tires on the road that it's at least thirty below. The rubber sticks and freezes almost instantly. The ne
ighbors’ cars don't move forward easily as they drive past our house. She shouldn't have to go outside in this, but she is dressed.

  She is standing by the window, both hands curled around a coffee mug. I watch her from the far end of the hallway. The business suit she has on, teal with black roses on the edge of the skirt, looks much sexier on her than it does hanging in the closet, the only place I've seen any of her work clothes for the past two years. “Good morning,” I offer, and my words set her in motion. She moves differently in a suit, more staccato than I'm accustomed to seeing.

  "Hey,” she replies, and in between shoving two slices of bread in the toaster and putting the butter in the microwave just long enough to make it spreadable, I sneak a kiss onto her cheek. I can't blame her for not turning her head so I can kiss her on the mouth. The dry winter air always makes my lips cracked and chapped.

  She seems to forget I'm here, and goes about her choreographed patterns despite me. I am not part of her morning routine. We used to dream about how wonderful it would be if I could be put on day shift, how much better everything would be if we could wake up together, come home together, go to bed together. But I'm low on the totem pole. There are plenty of cops with more seniority who have the same dreams for their families. The first two days of administrative leave haven't given us the ideal world we'd imagined.

  I lift the coffeepot from the machine, expecting it to be heavier than it really is. The lid flies up into the filter basket. The carafe slips from my hand and shatters on the tile: dark grounds spray across the counter, dark brown coffee flowing on the cold floor.

  She bends to wipe it up with a plaid tea towel.

  "It's okay, Lorraine,” I say. “I'll get it.” There's a large brown stain on her skirt. “God, I'm sorry, honey.” I reach for a roll of paper towels.

  She stands up to wring out the tea towel into the sink. “Shit.” I can't think of the last time I heard her swear. She usually substitutes something cute for her cuss words: “Cheez Whiz crust” or “Cock-a-doodle-doo.” She kneels to the floor again.

  "Lorraine, I made the mess. I'll clean it up.” I touch her on the arm. “Go upstairs, change your clothes. You'll be late otherwise.” The toast pops and she jumps. She takes the warm toast and reaches in the cupboard for a plate.

  "There are footprints in the snow,” she says. “Just outside the living-room window."

  "I was out there yesterday.” Surprised at how quickly the lie comes to me. “There were some icicles hanging from the gutter. I knocked them down."

  "It snowed last night,” she says. “The footprints are fresher than that.” Being a cop's wife has sharpened her powers of observation.

  I mop up the last of the coffee from the floor and find a brown paper bag in the cupboard. The coffeepot is in shards.

  "Nobody knows where I live, honey. A cop's address isn't easy to find."

  "You're not the only one who lives here,” she snaps, and downs the rest of her coffee. “People know I'm your wife. And if they want to find out where you live, they will learn what they need to know. They're black, not stupid.” She pours jam onto her toast.

  "I never said the kid was stupid, Lorraine. He just did a stupid thing.” I put two daggers of glass in the bag.

  "Most people don't think there's much difference between the two,” she says. She takes a huge bite, and a blob of strawberry jam falls onto her sleeve.

  "What should I have done, Lorraine? The kid reached for a gun. I had two seconds to do what I needed to do."

  Lorraine takes two more hurried bites of her toast, and throws the uneaten remains in the garbage can under the sink. “I've replayed the scene a thousand times, Lorraine, and no matter what mistakes I may have made in going up to that car, I don't know what I could have done to have it end any differently. He forced my hand, and only one of us was going to make it home that night."

  She hugs me, a brief tight squeeze, then goes upstairs. Moments later, in a different suit, she's at the coat closet. She wraps a long scarf twice around her neck, grabs her down-filled jacket, and heads for the car. She warms it up for five minutes, and I watch her through the frosty window until she drives out of sight.

  I return to the living room and look at the ground outside the window. No use going outside to investigate now. Snow isn't a cop's friend, and too much of the white stuff has already filled in the footprints. Nothing to do but pull all the curtains closed and go back upstairs to bed.

  * * * *

  Christmas Day. No tree this year, so the gifts are piled on the kitchen table. They're just boxes in bright paper to me. I can't for the life of me remember what is inside the ones I wrapped. I try not to be surprised when Lorraine opens them, and she tries hard not to be disappointed. She's smaller than I think she is, clearly, and she drowns in the sweater that she gamely tries on.

  The next day, she braves the cold to take back what I'd gotten her. “You don't mind, do you?” I just hand her a thick envelope of the gift receipts, and she drives off, happy for a reason to get out of the house.

  At about one in the afternoon, he's there, in our backyard, a black man knee-deep in snow. Even looking down from our bedroom window, I can see he's tall. I've never seen him before, don't recognize him as one of my arrests. He seems to know me, recognizes my face and is happy to see it, but not in a good way.

  His hands are in his pockets, either to keep them warm or to reach for something cold. I can't say if he's the same man who left footprints in my yard the day after the shooting, but I freeze. I look intently into his eyes and try to decipher what's there. I want to know more about this man than just his height and color. What did he do this morning? Who did he talk to? Who knows that his holiday plans include coming here?

  He pulls a cell phone from his left pocket. His right hand stays hidden. He punches the keys with his thumb, never taking his eyes off me. The phone by Lorraine's side of the bed rings. My head snaps instinctively at the sound. I turn back to the man and he smiles. He knows he's got the right number.

  The answering machine picks up. The threats that spit out behind me are a split second out of synch with his mouth, like a badly dubbed movie.

  He puts the phone back into his pocket. He looks unsure about what to do with his anger now. If he's intent on killing me, there's not much I can do about it now. He'd be long gone before the cops could ever get to my door. If he came for revenge, it's his to take, but I intend to make it as unsatisfying for him as possible. Not even a thug gets full props for shooting an unarmed man in the back. I turn in place, away from the window, and face into the bedroom.

  Five minutes drag by. Nothing. I turn to face the yard again in time to see him leave. He's retraced his steps precisely, putting his feet into the same holes they made coming in. He knows the path to my house well by now.

  I look out to the forest behind our yard. It's a mass of wood, one tree indistinguishable from the other. I actually prefer trees without their leaves. Elm, maple, and oak, they all look the same when you strip them down to nothing. Still, I long for spring, want nothing more than for the snow to disappear. At least then there won't be any footprints.

  Copyright © 2010 Audrey Webb

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  Fiction: OPEN AND SHUT CASE by Marilyn Todd

  "When I wrote the first Great Rivorsky story (EQMM 8/01),” says Marilyn Todd, “it was intended to be a one-off. The second story was simply inspired by the first . . . but this is what happens with magicians. The rabbit keeps on popping up in different places, and when I saw how the slicing-the-lady-in-three trick was done, I just knew that adding a contortionist would give it a twist (I know, I know).” Still Waters, the author's latest novel, was published in July 2010.

  Official paperwork or not, sir, I am the Great Rivorsky, and that is how I wish my name to be recorded. That's R-i-v—but I see you're already familiar with the spelling from the posters. How rewarding. Though perhaps you'd be kind enough to cross out the words no fixed abode in the addre
ss line. The phrase smacks of gypsies, tramps, and circus performers, whereas my show is a reputable spectacular that just happens to tour Europe on a con-tinual basis. An extravanganza of mystery, magic, and illusion that has performed in all the major cities, and in front of royalty on more occasions than I care to count.

  Indeed, our last such performance was before Archduke Ferdinand and his charming wife, Sophie, last year in Vienna, and take it from me, Inspector, His Grace's proposals to grant ethnic minorities independence will guarantee him a long and glittering future. Unlike your own King Edward. How is His Majesty's health, by the way? Still shaky? We played for him in Biarritz not long after his mother died, and he was chesty even then. Indeed, half the audience thought the smoke from his cigars was part of the act, and it certainly made Pepé disappear. Sick as a dog behind the stage door, he was, but then Pepé is a dwarf. Working the wires from the ceiling, he was subjected to the full force of the royal smoke as it rose. And though there is only half as much of him as the rest of us, he seems to be doubly absorbant when it comes to toxic pollution.

  So you see, no fixed abode gives quite the wrong impression, and while we're about it, I wish to make clear that it is not customary for us to sleep in caravans and operate out of a marquee. Dear me, no. The Great Rivorsky? Working out of a TENT? But after that unfortunate incident during rehearsals in Amsterdam—you did not hear?

  It all came about when the fire-eater coughed at an inopportune moment, causing the curtains of the backdrop to catch light. The props immediately fell victim to flames, and of course our boxes are wood and we can't have our contortionist squeezing herself into unseasoned timber, can we? To cut a long story short, Inspector, the theatre became an inferno before you could blink, and what else could an impresario do? With a troupe to pay and suddenly no income to cover the disbursement, my only option was to hop across the Channel and stage a series of impromptu shows.