I just sit there, still and silent.
He chuckles. “Sometimes things like this just come with the job. I have more merchandise coming in tomorrow. Pays double. I doubt you’ll have another day like this, but I can’t make any promises. Shit happens, you know?”
I look him in his eyes. All the fear he had when I first met him is now gone. He’s much more confident — almost cocky. Like he’s roped me into his net and knows I couldn’t get out if I wanted to.
He pats me on the knee and says, “See you tomorrow?”
I take a deep breath and whisper, “Sure thing, boss.”
Tolerance
by Tom Abrahams
Third Ward
There was something about the rain in Houston that seemed to leave a film on everything. The more it rained, the slimier it got. And when it rained a lot, like it had this week, a city built on a swamp tended to flood. That storm named Harvey had shown the world what Houstonians had long known: flooding made the slime break loose, made it impossible to ignore.
It was eleven thirty on a Thursday night.
The bitter aftertaste of Citalopram was caught in my teeth like a paste, so I sucked out the remnants with my tongue and licked my lips. I was up to forty milligrams a day. At least that’s what my hook-up told me it was. It didn’t seem to make a difference. Nothing did.
So I closed my eyes; the drum of thick, cold drops beating rhythmically on the roof of my ’95 Chrysler urged me to sleep. I hadn’t slept in a while.
A knock on the window drew me from the trance. A gray-haired man with a clean shave and a tan trench coat pressed a badge against the glass.
“Hey,” he said, “you the new guy?”
I cracked the window. “Yeah,” I said. “Unless there’s more than one new guy.”
He swiped the rain from the window and motioned past the Chrysler with his head. “The body’s down there. The sergeant’s waiting on us.”
He backed away from the car and I shouldered open the door. It creaked and hitched, but opened wide enough for me to climb out and onto the pavement. I slammed it shut with my hip but didn’t lock it. What was the point?
The detective offered his hand. “I’m Bill Waters. Homicide.”
“John Druitt.”
Waters smiled and led me from the parking lot across Allen Parkway to the aluminum statue of a kneeling figure called Tolerance that overlooked Buffalo Bayou. The milky light that glowed at its base cast an eerily judgmental form, so I looked away and trudged closer to the bayou’s muddy edge.
Waters slowed his pace, digging his heels into the mud for balance. “You were vice before?”
“Yeah. Five years. Handled sex trafficking. Takes its toll.”
Waters chuckled. “So you moved to dead people?”
My foot slid in the grassy mud and I skated a couple of feet down the embankment. “Dead people don’t feel anything,” I said.
Waters shot me a glance with a furrowed brow. His lips curled upward and his nose crinkled like he smelled something rotten. I’d seen that look before. It came from people who thought they had me figured out. He didn’t, even if he thought he did.
As we descended the slope toward the coffee-colored bayou that snaked through Downtown and Buffalo Bayou Park, I used the cuffs of my consignment-shop blazer to wipe the droplets from the swell under my eyes. The rain gave the wool blend a sooty odor that lingered in my nose.
“According the sergeant, she was weighed down,” said Waters, “but all this rain must have shook her loose. The bayou’s up a good couple of feet.”
I ran my fingers through my hair and shook free the water. “Who found her?”
“Jogger.”
“In this weather?”
“Marathon’s coming up in a week,” said Waters. “People are obsessed.”
The closer we got to the bank of the bayou, the louder the rush of water. Above us was a split bridge called Rosemont. The steel-and-concrete spans crossed the water in a V shape and resembled a train trestle more than a pedestrian bridge.
Under the bridge, within the confines of flapping yellow tape tied to a bridge piling and two young pine trees, was a hive of activity. A drenched rat of a man stood shivering off to one side. He had the narrow frame of a runner and the anxious disinterest of a man detained.
Past him, in the sloppy bank of the rising water, was a trio of wetsuit-clad divers. One was bent over, his back heaving as he worked for air. Another was on his knees next to the woman’s body. The third stood watch, as did half a dozen rubbernecking patrol officers. Dead bodies attracted flies.
I stood there for a moment, lost in the rush of the bayou. It was hard not to listen to the gurgle and wash of a swollen bayou and not wonder, in the muddy parts of my mind, if the water would ever stop rising. I’d heard others voice the same fears over bitter coffee and undercooked migas. They’d huddled close to each other, leaning on the chipped laminate of late-night greasy-spoon bar counters. They’d absently stirred their half-and-half and whispered about the rain as if it could hear them, while lightning had flashed and the feeder roads had filled with oily water.
“I called the dive team on the way here,” said Waters, shaking me from my thoughts. “Gets us a head start.”
The woman was on her back. Her dark hair covered her face. She was clothed in a torn pink dress that clung to her body in a way that would have been unflattering on a breathing woman.
Waters planted his hands on his hips and faced me. “So,” he said, “I don’t know if they told you this when you applied for the posting or when they interviewed you, but in homicide, we split the duties. One of us takes the scene, the other takes witnesses. What do you want?”
“Scene.”
Waters pursed his lips. “All right, I’ll talk to the jogger.”
He slopped over to the thin man. A uniformed sergeant wearing a wrinkled vinyl poncho waved me to the body. Angry raindrops slapped the bayou with a growing intensity. I stepped close to the sergeant.
“You the new guy?” he asked.
I knuckled water from the corners of my eyes and nodded. “New to homicide.”
“Crime scene folks are on their way,” he said.
I thanked him and moved past him to the body. Her stomach was bloated under the dress in a way that made her appear pregnant, almost. Her skin was grayish green, and something had nibbled at her bottom lip and hanging tongue.
The skin was loose at her fingers and on her feet. There was the beginning of a scar on her left shoulder — a small, partially healed burn in the shape of an X. There was a two-foot length of orange rope tied around her right ankle. The rope was knotted at one end, torn and frayed at the other.
Her neck was a different color than the rest of her mottled body: varying shades of purple, concentrated in a thick line that ran across her throat.
I pulled a wet notepad from my coat pocket, made some rudimentary notes, and pressed myself to my feet. Waters was standing behind me.
“Not much from the jogger,” he said. “We’ll have to canvas the apartments across the bayou for witnesses or surveillance cameras.”
I wiped my nose with the back of my hand and looked at the dim outline of multistory buildings through the curtain of rain. They stood watch over the bayou. A couple of the windows glowed yellow from the lights inside; rich people living above the muck, warm and comfortable in their castles. They never flooded. They never waded against the current of rising water, holding their lives above their heads in trash bags.