I got up from the tuck-and-roll ’Vette bucket and went to look at the biggest blowup. Real fiery Indy crash, one driver spinning out and hitting a wall, another car sliding into the flames. Cool. But I couldn’t get my head into it. I kept flashing on Trisha and that goddamn baby, her going hag-crazy and me leaving her up there. Wasn’t right, man. No matter what Mateo said, I shouldn’t’ve done it.
Well, she’d got home okay. That was one thing I didn’t have to sweat about. No answer when I buzzed her homestead this morning, so I took the wheels over there. Wasn’t nobody home, but one of the neighbors says she seen Trisha walking off somewheres about a half hour before. So that was like a major relief, man. Didn’t want nothing to do with me or she’d’ve tried to get in touch. Then why’d it keep bugging me like this? I didn’t want a kid, and she wouldn’t either when she thought it over hard enough. Her old man sure as hell wouldn’t, not that dude. He’d tell her to lose it same as I did and she would and that’d be the end of it, right? She’d never have nothing more to do with me, but what the hell, I didn’t love her or anything, right?
“What’s the sad eye for?” Mateo was back with a couple of half quarts of Green Death. “Trisha?”
“Yeah.” I popped the tab on my can and sucked down half the ale before I came up for air. “Trisha, that Mrs. Carey, the lame stuff I scored in Southlake... everything, man. Nothing feels right today.”
“Most days, man.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s this town, bro. Town, lake, county, the whole fuckin’ sack.”
I didn’t say anything. I was thinking maybe I oughta go find Trisha, talk to her. Yeah. Talk some sense into her. I didn’t want a kid, didn’t love her, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have no feelings for her.
“Boneyard’s what it is,” Mateo says. “Keep on hangin’ here, you end up hung dead and worm food. You know what I’m sayin’?”
“Loud and clear, man.”
“So why don’t we get out, man?”
“Get out?”
“Split for a place that’s got life, action.”
“Like where?”
“Like L.A. You know that’s where I always wanted to be, man. I been thinkin’ about it a lot lately.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Plenty happening down there, man. Couple of young dudes like us, hot with engines and wheels, we grab us a piece of the good life in no time.” He winked. “Plenty of almeja down there, too, man.”
“You mean just pick up and split?”
“We got nothing keepin’ us here, right? Old man and old lady’d love it if you moved out, both of us outta their hair for good. And no more sweat about Trisha’s kid. I mean, suppose she tries to stick you for support? Can’t pry cash out of a dude if they can’t find him, right?”
“Yeah. But when would we go?”
“Sooner the better. Tomorrow.”
“Oh, man, that’s too fast...”
“Listen, Anthony, either we put this hole behind us, change our freakin’ lives, or we don’t.”
“I don’t know, man. I got to think about it...”
“Yeah, sure,” Mateo says. “Just don’t think too long. I made up my mind — I’m outta here. With or without you, little brother, real soon.”
Douglas Kent
They wouldn’t let me see her. I wasn’t a relative by blood or marriage, friends of the victim were not allowed viewing privileges, members of the media weren’t allowed viewing privileges, the autopsy had yet to be performed... a litany of official bullshit. The word “autopsy” funneled bile into my throat. Images of Storm with that beautiful head of hers shattered, lying cold and waxy and forever still on a metal table, was bad enough; images of her being drawn and quartered like a butchered heifer, her juices running in troughs or being sucked up through vacuum hoses, was intolerable.
I demanded an audience with the coroner, Johanssen. Pomo General’s head nurse didn’t want to let me see him, either. Head pounding, stomach churning, Kent pitched a small and voluble fit. When she saw I was perfectly willing to escalate into a large and disruptive fit, she went and fetched Johanssen.
Waste of time. Mine. He was harried and snippy and wouldn’t tell me much of anything. Had instructions not to release specific details gleaned from his preliminary examination of the deceased, he said. That was what he called her, “the deceased,” even though he’d known Storm well enough — they both belonged to the country club, attended the same charity fund-raisers.
No, Johanssen said, he couldn’t tell me whether or not she’d been raped. No, he couldn’t say if she had suffered any wounds or traumas other than the blows that had killed her. (But he insisted on providing me with a full medical description of the cause of death, as if he needed to prove his qualifications for the job of corpse handler. “Temporal skull fracture leading to subdural hematoma of mid brain. Death of brain due to necrosis or mass effect. Secondary edema causing herniation through foramen magnum, that is, the brain stem.” Jesus!) Had I spoken to Chief Novak or Mayor Seeley yet? No? Well, why didn’t I go and do that? Or perhaps I’d be better advised to go home and sleep it off.
“I’m not drunk,” I said. Yet.
“Your breath and your appearance contradict that statement.”
Kent stood in impotent rage as the pompous little prick walked off, his back straight and his bald pate gleaming in the hallway fluorescents.
A hand plucked at my sleeve. Dietrich, the overeager wanna-be; I’d forgotten he was there. “We’d better leave, Mr. Kent.”
“I wish it’d been that bald head of his.”
“... Mr. Kent?”
“The temporal skull fracture, the subdural hematoma of mid brain,” I said. “His head opened up like a melon, his glop that poured out. Him the corpse on the table instead of her.”
“Oh, wow,” Dietrich whispered.
“Yes. Exactly. All right, let’s get out of here.”
We went to the police station. Arrived just in time to catch Chief Novak exiting into the side parking lot, alone, hotfooting it for his cruiser as if he expected to be assailed by a mob of slavering Fourth Estaters at any second. The only Fourth Estaters in the vicinity, one slavering, the other wishing to Christ he had a drink, drew up alongside. He recognized us, but he went ahead and hopped into his cruiser anyway. No one wanted much to do with Kent today, it seemed. Including Dougie his own self.
I said, “Hold your horses, Chief. A few questions.”
“Not now. I don’t have time.”
“At least tell me about Faith. Found yet?”
“No.”
“Lakeshore still being searched?”
“Not the way I’d like it to be.”
“Explain that.”
“Talk to Sheriff Thayer. Or the mayor.”
“Dissension in the ranks, Chief?”
He didn’t answer that. His face, bruised, discolored, bandaged, resembled a Halloween fright mask; muscles wiggled under the skin surface like maggots on a chunk of spoiled meat. (Poor choice of simile, Kent. Summoned up fresh images of Storm on the autopsy table.) Novak’s eyes burned hot: pain, hate, determination. I knew exactly how he felt. My lust had been unrequited, his hadn’t; that was the only difference between us as torchbearers in the Storm Carey Olympics.
“Do you think he’s dead?” That from Dietrich, butting in.
“Faith?” The Chief’s mouth tightened; the muscle maggots seemed to scurry under his eyes and along his cheeks. “I can’t answer that.”
“Then there’s a chance he’s alive?”
“Without a body... yeah, there’s a chance.”