“I should have known this was a ploy for sex. What happened to Rodney?”
Cat shrugged. “Eh.”
“Cat—”
“Look, you just give a basic description, they’ll run a search. If nothing turns up, we’ll scoot.”
“I’m not sure the Lafayette Police possess the most reliable criminal database.”
“Don’t say that in front of Bill.” Cat’s eyes grew earnest. “He’s new on the force and very idealistic. He wants to make the world a better place.”
“By hitting on a seventeen-year-old girl?”
“We’re friends.” Cat grinned. “Besides, you know my birthday’s next month. Oh, look—there he is.” She jumped to her feet and started waving, laying on the flirt like mayonnaise on a po’boy.
Bill was a tall, lanky young black man with a shaved head, a thin goatee, and a baby face. He was cute, minus the pistol strapped to his waist. He winked at Cat and beckoned the girls to his desk in a front corner of the room. He didn’t have his own cubicle yet. Eureka sighed and followed Cat.
“So what’s the story, ladies?” He sat down in a dark green swivel chair. There was an empty Cup Noodles container on his desk; three more were in the trash can behind him. “Somebody botherin’ you?”
“Not really.” Eureka shifted her weight, avoiding the commitment of sitting down on one of the two folding chairs. She didn’t like being here. She was getting nauseated from the stench of stale coffee. The cops who’d been around in the days after Diana’s accident had worn uniforms that smelled like this. She wanted to leave.
Bill’s name tag said MONTROSE. Eureka knew Montroses from New Iberia, but Bill’s accent was more Baton Rouge than bayou. Eureka also knew without a doubt that Cat was mentally practicing her Catherine L. Montrose signature, like she did with all of them. Eureka didn’t even know Ander’s last name.
Cat scooted one of the chairs close to Bill’s desk and sat down, planting an elbow near his electric pencil sharpener, sliding a pencil seductively in and out. Bill cleared his throat.
“She’s being modest,” Cat said over the pulse of the machine. “She has a stalker.”
Bill shot cop eyes at Eureka. “Cat says a friend of yours has admitted to following you.”
Eureka looked at Cat. She didn’t want to do this. Cat was nodding encouragement. What if she was right? What if Eureka described him and something terrible flashed on a screen? But if nothing showed up, would she feel any better?
“His name is Ander.”
Bill pulled a spiral notepad from a drawer. She watched him scrawl the name in thin blue ink. “Last name?”
“I don’t know.”
“This a boy from school?”
Eureka blushed despite herself.
The bell attached to the door of the police station chimed. An older couple entered the lobby. They sat down in the seats Eureka and Cat had just been sitting in. The man wore gray slacks and a gray sweater; the woman wore a long gray slip dress with a heavy silver chain. They resembled each other, both slender and pale; they could have been siblings, possibly twins. They folded their hands on their laps in unison and looked straight ahead. Eureka got the sense they could hear her, which made her more self-conscious.
“We don’t know his last name.” Cat cozied closer to Bill, her bare arms splayed across the desk. “But he’s blond, kinda wavy.” She mimed Ander’s mop of hair with her hand. “Right, Reka?”
Bill said “kinda wavy” and wrote it down, which embarrassed Eureka further. She’d never been more conscious of wasting time.
“He drives an old white pickup truck,” Cat added.
Half the parish drove old white pickup trucks.
“Ford or Chevy?” Bill asked.
Eureka remembered the first thing Ander had ever said to her, which she’d relayed to Cat.
“It’s a Chevy,” Cat said. “And there’s one of those air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror. Silver. Right, Reka?”
Eureka glanced at the people waiting in the lobby. The black woman had her eyes closed, her swollen, sandaled feet up on the coffee table, a can of Fanta in her hand. The woman in gray glanced Eureka’s way. Her eyes were pale blue, the rare extreme eye color you could see from a distance. They reminded Eureka of Ander’s eyes.
“A white Chevy is a start.” Bill smiled fondly at Cat. “Any other details you can remember?”
“He’s a genius at skipping stones,” Cat said. “Maybe he lives down by the bayou, where he can practice all the time?”
Bill laughed under his breath. “I’m getting jealous of this guy. I kind of hope I never find him.”
That makes three of us, Eureka thought.
When Cat said “He has pale skin, blue eyes,” Eureka had had enough.
“We’re done,” she said to Cat. “Let’s go.”
Bill closed his notepad. “I doubt there’s enough information here for me to run a search. Next time you see this kid, give me a call. Take a picture of him on your phone, ask him for his last name.”
“Did we waste your time?” Cat folded down her lip in a mini pout.
“Never. I’m here to serve and protect,” Bill said, as if he’d just collared the entire Taliban.
“We’re going to get banana freezes.” Cat stood up, stretching so that her shirt drifted above her skirt, showing off a band of smooth dark skin. “Want to come?”
“Thanks, but I’m on duty. I’m on duty for a good while longer.” Bill smiled and Eureka took the hint that was meant for Cat.
They waved goodbye and headed for the door, for Eureka’s car, for home, where there waited something known as Rhoda. As they passed, the elderly couple rose from their seats. Eureka suppressed her instinct to jump backward. Relax. They were just moving toward Bill’s desk.
“Can I help you two?” Eureka heard Bill ask behind her. She stole one last glance at the couple, but saw only the gray backs of their heads.
Cat reached for Eureka’s arm. “Bill …,” she sang out wistfully as she pressed the metal bar on the front door.
The air was cold and smelled like a trash can fire. Eureka wished she were curled up in her bed with the door closed.
“Bill’s nice,” Cat said as they crossed the parking lot. “Isn’t he nice?”
Eureka unlocked Magda. “He’s nice.”
Nice enough to humor them—and why should he have taken them seriously? They shouldn’t have gone to the police. Ander wasn’t an open-and-shut stalking case. She didn’t know what he was.
He was standing across the street, watching her.
Eureka froze mid-slide onto the driver’s seat and watched him through the window. He leaned against the trunk of a chinaberry tree, arms crossed over his chest. Cat didn’t notice. She was teasing her bangs in the sun visor mirror.
From thirty feet away, Ander looked furious. His posture was rigid. His eyes were as cold as they’d been when he grabbed Brooks by the collar. Should she turn around and run back into the station to tell Bill? No, Ander would be gone by the time she stepped through the door. Besides, she was too afraid to move. He knew she’d gone to the cops. What would he do about it?
He stared at her for a moment, then flung his arms down at his sides. He stormed through the brush that edged the Roi de Donuts parking lot across the street.
“Feel like starting the car anytime this year?” Cat asked, smacking glossed lips together.
In the instant Eureka glanced at Cat, Ander vanished. When she looked back at the lot, it was empty except for two cops walking out of the donut shop with to-go bags. Eureka exhaled; started Magda; blasted the heat to fend off the cold, damp air that had settled like a cloud inside her car. She didn’t want a banana freeze anymore.
“I’ve got to get home,” she told Cat. “It’s Rhoda’s night to cook.”