Nobody Lives Forever

by Edna Buchanan

  Red-eyed from lack of sleep, his suit rumpled, but stepping lightly for a man of his size and state of weariness, Jim slipped quietly into his usual rear pew. Sunday morning services had always been a soothing contrast, a little R and R for the spirit after the chaos of Saturday night life and death in Miami. The serenity and beauty, the traditional words and music and the good and decent people around him, they salved his soul.

  He and Molly had been married in this church, almost thirty years ago. Happy memories still dwelt there, even though the place was no longer a sanctuary. Over the years the city and its inhabitants had changed. The church had been invaded repeatedly by thieves who stole everything from Baby Jesus, snatched from his crèche at Christmas time, to the baptismal font and the vestments.

  As bad, if not worse, were the street people and mental cases whose faithful attendance might have been admirable, had they been lucid. Their only contribution was chaos. You never know, he thought, watching an elderly, shabbily dressed woman. He had been to many scenes where survivors of the depression had died alone, often malnourished, under circumstance of abject poverty, with a small fortune, their hoarded life savings, stuffed in a shoebox or a mattress. They had refused to trust banks, or spend their nest eggs, no matter what.

  The usual crazies were present in full force today, including the one who always spent the moments of silent meditation rummaging noisily through her crinkly shopping bags. A bearded young man, the picture of health, always coughed continually through the sermon—nonstop. During the fellowship hour in the adjacent social hall later, he would never cough. Not once. He did talk, at length and eagerly. He did know his scripture. That’s the hell of it, Jim thought. They always know their scripture.

  A painfully thin woman, wrinkled and snaggletoothed, always insisted on sitting way up front, then swiveled in her pew, scowling, grimacing and occasionally giving the finger to innocent worshipers seated behind her. A raspy-voiced man, dirty, agitated and unable to sit still, bobbed up and down, shuffled in and out, mumbling all the while, genuflecting constantly. Sometimes he simply dropped to his knees in the center aisle.

  The church was under siege and struggling to survive, yet the ushers were forced to hold on to the collection plates, rather than pass them, to prevent some of these characters from helping themselves. Had they been well-heeled contributors, Jim reasoned, they could be tolerated as eccentrics. But as thing stood, the church definitely needed a bouncer.

  He had volunteered. He would have relished the job. The patient and good-natured pastor had politely declined his offer without an explanation. Board members agreed that a problem existed but rejected his second suggestion, that the ushers, all men of retirement age, be equipped with mace.

  He realized that his impatience and anger at these people was probably not by-the-book Christian. Still another example, he thought, of how going by the book no longer works.

  The deranged chorus was in rare form this morning. In the good old days, he reflected, he had put people in jail for less. More evidence that America’s misfits and criminals now own more rights than the law-abiding, long-suffering taxpayers. Go by the book, turn the other cheek, and they overwhelm you.

  He was uncertain anymore if there was a damn God or not. He could not help but doubt it much of the time, on the job. But something always brought him back to this place, with its old and worn wooden pews. Perhaps it was habit, or the memories. He used to consider the church his only lifeline to sanity in a world gone mad. Now he was not so sure. But without this, he had nothing left to believe in.

  So he still came, and sometimes lingered in the walled courtyard. The coral rock enclosed a garden with trees, flowering shrubs and a carillon that sometimes played “Amazing Grace,” his favorite hymn. Maybe this place reminded him of Pennsylvania and the Sunday school he had attended as a child.

  He was seventeen when he learned that nobody lives forever. He had lied about his age to land the job. He told them he was eighteen. Fresh out of high school, young, strong and eager. His second week there the world exploded in his face.

  They were working on experimental airplane fuel at the Apex Gunpowder Plant, an eight-mile-square building barricaded inside a horseshoe-shaped mountain. Explosions were not unusual. The plant had been built with the blasts in mind. The constant concussions would pop out the wooden frames of windows that were plastic-coated screens, instead of glass. Both doors and windows were linked to steep chutes, safety slides for the employees. They were taught to land on their feet, running for the metal rings that hung about forty feet from each exit. When a man grabbed the ring, high-pressure jets of water would tear the clothes off his body. He would be left naked, but not burned.

  All the workers wore fire-resistant work suits. The day it happened, Jim saw some burned down to their belt loops.

  The blast erupted in a solvent recovery building that was always wet and considered safe. Twenty-five two-story tanks were each surrounded by thick red-brick walls. Each tank held ten thousand pounds of smokeless powder.

  The explosion pulverized the bricks into red dust. Men tried to escape by fleeing up the sides of the mountains, but fire and heat overtook them.

  Sixty people were killed and hundreds hurt. Jim was coated with red dust but not seriously injured. He ran back to help other survivors. None of the late-model cars parked near the blast site would start. Pressure from the blast had collapsed the hollow copper floats inside their carburetors. Older cars with cork floats were unaffected. Jim loaded injured men into his Ford jalopy and careened to the nearest hospital, back and forth several times. He lost his eldest brother, his father and his best friend. Dozens of young men he had gone to school with were among the dead. He believed later that all he saw that day helped prepare him for police work and for investigating murder in Miami. Nothing he saw now ever bothered him, he said, nothing ever happened that he had not already seen as a teenager or later as a Marine at Panmunjon.

  He was stoic, even on the day Molly announced she was leaving.

  He was certain she would change her mind, but she did not. So he simply decided that when he retired he would return home to Pennsylvania, where she had resettled, and reclaim her. He had no doubt that it would happen until their married daughter in Orlando telephoned with the news that Molly had remarried.

  Rick was the closest thing Jim had to family life now. He had trained Rick as a rookie, seen him promoted to sergeant and was content to work for him. For years Jim had avoided promotional exams because promotion always meant a transfer and he liked nothing better than being a homicide detective. His plan was to wait until retirement loomed and then push for promotion. Rank, even a sergeant’s stripes, would bring a bigger pension. But he had delayed too long. Who could have foreseen that South Florida, the city and the department, would change so much? Few Anglo males would ever again win promotion no matter how high they scored on exams.

  No matter. He and Rick were a good team. Despite widely diverse backgrounds, they had clicked from day one. Rick was accustomed to being a star, a stranger to hard times. A native son, born in Miami, an only child, all-state quarterback at Beach High, football scholarship to the University of Florida, he was always spoiled—by his mother, his teachers and eager cheerleaders of all ages. He reverted to beach bum after college, spent a year as a sun-bronzed lifeguard, then joined the department, disappointing his father, who had hoped to hand him the family business, a small chain of appliance stores. Women loved him. Men liked him. He was a hell of a detective. Rick and Jim worked well together, achieving a nearly 90 percent clearance rate on their cases, a major accomplishment in an era of difficult-to-solve drug murders.

  Jim felt vaguely uneasy about Dusty rejoining their team. She was good, probably the best female detective he had ever seen, and he more than liked her, but he still yearned for the good old days before affirmative action and the women’s movement. Female cops are fine in their place, he always said, as long as that place is the juve
nile bureau or the shoplifting detail. Who wants a woman to back you up in a brawl or a riot? And in homicide, detectives spend most of their waking hours with their team partners—how can you relax when one of those partners is a woman? Sex is always present, especially with a woman as good-looking as Dusty. He was always uncomfortably conscious of a woman’s presence, although he noticed that it was not that way for most of the new generation of young cops. He knew Dusty had had the hots for Rick. She probably still did, and the heat had once generated both ways. Jim had actually felt more comfortable when Rick was screwing Dusty. At least everybody knew where he, or she, stood.

  When that romance was in full flower, Jim and Rick still went fishing a few times a month, still hit their favorite spot for a couple of cool ones at least twice a week, still followed the fortunes of the Miami Dolphins and still talked incessantly about their cases. On duty, off duty, city time, their time, it all blurred together. They lived the job, solved a lot of cases and enjoyed themselves. Then along came Laurel. At first Jim was convinced that it was just the transient attraction of a new face and a firm young body. He never really believed it was serious until the day Rick borrowed his pickup to move Laurel’s belongings into his house. Rick seemed happy—so far. Love is what counts, until it ends, and end it will, Jim thought. That’s what loves does. Nobody lives forever, nobody loves forever.

  He drove from the church to a Beach deli for a rare roast beef on rye and a side order of coleslaw to go. In the small kitchen of his condo apartment, he dumped the cardboard dish of slaw over the roast beef, slapped the lid back on the sandwich, popped a cold beer from the refrigerator, sat down at the table and opened his Sunday newspaper. Rob Thorne smiled at him from a photograph on the local page, under a headline that read PROWLER SLAYS COLLEGE BASEBALL PLAYER.

  The story quoted a police spokesman, who said the usual: “An arrest is imminent.”

  “That asshole must know something we don’t,” Jim said, swallowing another swig of beer. “I wish it was that easy.”

  He sighed, took off his shoes, peeled off his socks, dropped them in the clothes hamper and yawned. Then he padded barefoot to the window, drew the blackout drapes to shut out the sun as it climbed a brilliant sky, turned the control on the air conditioner up to high, took off his clothes and went to bed.

  Eight

  Laurel impatiently checked the time. The kitchen wall clock was shaped like a coffeepot, a percolator with a little light bubbling at the top. It said ten o’clock. Rick was not home yet. Where is he, she thought, biting her lip. She hated the stress of constantly being left alone, she could not endure it, she thought, staring out the window. She was afraid that strange things would take place, that frightening forces would engulf her again, that it was already happening. Her posture changed subtly, her spine straightened, her chin lifted. Her eyes faded to a paler shade, more gray now than green, and her mouth settled into a no-nonsense, matter-of-fact expression.

  Harriet emerged, took a deep breath, glanced around the room, tied an apron around her waist and went briskly to work. She scalded half a dozen plump ripe tomatoes, removed the skins and began to mince parsley for the sauce.

  A gray kitten the color of blue smoke skittered across her kitchen floor in madcap pursuit of sunbeams and shadows. The creature belonged to Benjie, the three-year-old son of the Singers next door. How annoying. Harriet continued her tasks. The spoiled brat is far too young to own a kitten. They always say, she thought, that no one really owns a cat. Sure enough, this one would not stay at home. How did the animal escape Benjie’s grubby paws and get into her house anyway? Most likely through Chuckle’s kitty door in the garage. It was burden enough putting up with Chuckles, the Siamese. He was crouched under a chair, watching the kitten intently, his tail twitching.

  She diced the tomatoes. Fascinated by the sound and her movements, the kitten scrambled quick as lightning to the top of a stepstool used to reach the high shelves in the pantry. From that vantage point the leap to the cutting board was merely kitten’s play.

  “I’m warning you,” she said pleasantly, as she sliced fresh mushrooms. “Don’t do it, kitty.”

  She raised her head to listen as Rick’s car crunched into the driveway. The mischievous kitten batted the countertop with a tentative blue-gray paw. Harriet paused for a moment to watch as the kitten plunked itself down prettily on the stool’s top step, gazing up at her, golden eyes unblinking, expecting to be admired. When she moved the knife it pounced, all four feet landing like fathers on the immaculate white countertop.

  Sighing, Harriet lay down her knife as the kitten scampered closer to inspect the cutting board. The pink nose quivered. Harriet selected the thin-bladed filet knife, sliding it from the solid maple storage block slowly, as though unsheathing a sword. Holding it delicately, she admired its balance and the way it fit so well into her hand. Top-grade cutlery with surgically sharp stainless-steel blades and triple-riveted solid maple handles. Outside, a car door slammed, and in her mind’s eye she saw Rick walk across the lawn and stoop to pick up the morning newspaper.

  “Kitty,” she whispered, hissing softly through her teeth. Intrigued, the animal abandoned its fascination with the cutting board and turned its attention to her. The knife pierced its chest easily. Harriet was a bit surprised that it took so little force to slide it in cleanly, nearly to the hilt, impaling the creature like an ice cream on a stick. The breastbone must be just soft cartilage in a kitten that young, she thought. And of course the knife was scalpel-sharp. All of her tools and equipment were well maintained. “I warned you,” she whispered cheerfully, withdrawing the knife. “This is my kitchen.”

  She heard the clang of the garbage can lid at the side of the house and scowled. What was Rick doing? Irritated, she hoped he was not placing anything that was not neatly wrapped into her heavy-duty, double-weight aluminum garbage can.

  The morning sky glowed as blue as any paradise. The neighborhood seemed safe and still once more. The heavy scent of summer flowers hung on the hushed air, and a small flotilla of bright sails bobbed on a turquoise bay. Weekend sailors were out in force. Rick picked up the newspaper, which was rolled inside a plastic bag, and stood, legs apart, in the middle of his velvet-green lawn. The grass grew so fast this time of year, you could almost hear its radiant energy, the faint humming of photosynthesis, busy breeding, germinating and sprouting, a never-ending life process accelerated by the heat and moisture of the season. The morning was so splendidly alive that it seemed death did not exist and the night of the murder had never happened. The only trace was a length of yellow crime-scene tape that hung limply from the slim trunk of a frangipani tree. Rick untied it, rolled the tape tightly and dropped it into the new heavy-duty aluminum garbage can Laurel had bought recently. As he did he thought he heard the grinding rumble of the garbage disposal in the kitchen. He did not disturb the Thornes, hoping they were still sleeping, though he doubted it. Had he something to tell them, he might have done it now, but there was nothing. Facing the bereaved parents would be easier after some food and a few hours’ sleep.

  The house was quiet when he opened the front door. Laurel appeared to be still asleep, facedown, hugging her lace-edged pillow. He unbuttoned his shirt and sat gently on the edge of the bed, making an effort not to wake her.

  “Good morning, Sergeant.” She rolled over, flinging the bedclothes aside with abandon. The slim, sensuous body was naked. He noticed her flowered cotton nightgown crumpled on the carpet. She must have heard his car. “I assume this is a raid,” she said.

  “Hot damn.” Rick grinned. She was in one of those wild and crazy seductive moods. He was delighted, despite his exhaustion. Nothing chases the ghost of a sad and frustrating case and soothes numb weariness into a relaxed warmth faster than good sex.

  “It’s inspection time, Sergeant. I want to see your weapon.” Her small hands, like darting birds, were busy with his zipper and the swelling behind it.

  “Jesus, I love it
when you’re like this,” he whispered. “You’re so crazy. You drive me nuts.” He fumbled with his shirt.

  “No, no, leave it on,” she murmured, her voice low and husky. “Just take off your pants. I like it this way.”

  Her fine, soft hair billowed over the pillow. Her body was stretched out, taut and lithe, nipples on the small, firm breasts hard and pointed, her arms reached out to him. Golden shafts of morning light found their way through the leafy bower outside the window and played shadow games across her smooth skin. She was chuckling softly, her lips ripe and swollen.

  “Get your handcuffs,” she demanded, her eyes apple green and brazen. “Let me show you how I handle a prisoner.”

  Clumsy in his eagerness, he stumbled to the dresser, one bare leg free, the other dragging his trousers and boxer shorts. He found the cuffs, kicked off his trousers, left them in the middle of the floor and returned to her.

  During their fun and games, she astonished him by easily slipping free of the cuffs. “How do you do that?” he murmured. “I’ve only seen a few escape artists who could pull that off. I had to chase them,” he recalled dolefully.

  “Muscle control.” Her eyes were bold. “It helps me do a lot of things extraordinarily well, don’t you agree?”

  He grinned lazily and yawned. “For sure.” His voice was drowsy. She grew very quiet, eyes shadowed in the filtered light. She did not move, nor did her eyes change when he gently kissed her. “Maybe I’m lucky you’re not always like this. I don’t know if an old man like me could hack it.”

  He asked her to wake him at five in the afternoon, then rolled over and drifted into sleep without seeing that his request caused her discomfort. Laurel sat up and stared hard at the clock, her brow furrowed. Rick was asleep. The entire day stretched before her.