I think that’s enough for now, he said.
Are we ever going to get that phone call, Fire asked.
I’ll call a nurse and I will come by later this evening to check on you.
Twenty-seven
Salazar pulled across the wood, the sharp wood plane shaving a slight curl that fluttered to the ground. He ran his finger over the grain and, satisfied, put the wood plane down. Light balsa wood showed through, contrasted by the walnut stain around it. Salazar had been building boats for almost twenty years, and this one, a replica of a seventeenth-century Spanish war galleon, for about two years.
He’d built them since his first kill on the job: Jim, a junkie kid.
Jim had been something of an institution in the Fremont section of town, and cops were always called out to handle him. He was basically harmless, Sergeant Vines, Salazar’s partner and ten-year veteran of the force, always told him. But then they’d been called out because Jim was wielding a knife and threatening a homeless woman.
Following procedure, Salazar trained his gun on the kid, while Vines, a Vietnam vet who loved to chew on cheroots and was plainspoken, tried to talk Jim down.
Now, son, put down the knife.
Stay back! Jim shouted. I’m warning you.
What’s happening, son? You know you don’t want to hurt anyone, Vines said.
Stay back!
See that man over there with a gun, Vines said. That’s my partner, fresh out of the academy. I don’t want him to shoot you, but right now he’s more scared than you are.
Jim lowered the weapon, then suddenly lurched forward. It was unclear if he meant to lunge or if he had merely felt his legs giving way, but Salazar panicked and squeezed off a shot. The 9mm slug slammed Jim against the wall behind him before he dropped. People seldom die in real life the way they do on TV, and Salazar watched Jim writhe for a long time, bleeding out. When the paramedics arrived, it was too late.
Hell of a fighter, Vines said. As messed up as he was you’d think he would’ve died sooner.
Yeah, Salazar mumbled.
Sorry, rookie, hell of a first week. Listen, there’ll be a board of inquiry to determine if it was a good shooting. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, just don’t say anything without a union rep present.
Okay.
Good. They’ll also want you to see the department shrink, who’ll try and get you to talk about your feelings.
A shrink?
Don’t worry. It’s procedure. Just do it.
Okay.
That won’t help you much, you know?
How do you know?
Stop asking questions, rookie, and listen.
Sure, yeah.
More than likely, you’ll start drinking a lot to calm yourself, and then you’ll get the shakes every time you draw your weapon, so you’ll drink some more to control those shakes, and then your hands will shake some more and you’ll either kill someone else or you’ll get killed. Either way, it’s no good.
Jesus, Salazar said. Internal Affairs hadn’t even arrived on the scene yet to determine if it was a clean shoot. Everything was moving too fast.
Vines said: The thing that will save you is finding something that you used to love as a kid, something that involves your hands and labor and time. You understand? And I don’t mean masturbation. Find the thing. I don’t care what some newfangled shrink theory says; building things has saved generations of American male souls.
A few months after the shooting, waking up drunk, Salazar decided to take Vines’s advice. He dug deep for the redemption Vines promised would be there and a memory of sailing toy ships in the park with his dad, Elian, came to him. Elian Salazar had been a fisherman in Cuba, but in Miami he worked twelve-hour days stacking boxes. When he could, he would escape to the park with young Joey Salazar, sail toy boats, and regale him with stories about storms off the coast of Cuba that washed up sea serpents and mermaids. His father drank too, and when he did, he was liberal with his fists. Those moments by the small pond in the park, their boats competing with the ducks, were some of the happiest for Salazar.
His first attempt was a lucky accident. As he felt the sharp edge of the wood plane catch and shave the first sliver off, he surrendered to his rage and shaved and shaved, feeling all the fear and self-loathing fall away in soft wooden curls that littered the floor of the garage like the locks of a blond Pinocchio. What he was left with was barely big enough to make a two-inch rowboat out of. But he worked hard and finished it with an exactness that slowly brought peace. A few days later he presented it to Sergeant Vines, who looked at it with something approaching awe as he moved the one-inch oar about.
I see you found your therapy, he said.
Salazar followed that first dinghy with a fleet of craft — slopes, canoes, sailboats, and yachts. Most of them were arranged in display cases around the garage. A few he gave away to friends and to kids at the local hospital at Christmas. Only rarely did he ever put any of his boats or ships into actual water.
The first time had been to honor the junkie he’d shot: a kind of warrior’s send-off. For that, Salazar had driven out to Lake Henderson, where he’d placed the second boat he built on the water, drenched it in lighter fluid, and set it on fire. He watched it sail away until it burned to nothing twenty feet from the shore. Since then he’d built only five craft that had touched water, five for the five people he’d shot over his twenty-year career. It was an unusually high number, but over time Salazar had come to wear his kills with an odd kind of honor.
This new ship, the Spanish galleon, had been ongoing for two years, the longest it had taken him to build a ship. Destined for the water — not in honor of any of his victims, but rather for the girl whose murder he’d been unable to solve — it was growing more ornate. It measured four feet from stern to bow and it had eight sails, twelve cannons, three decks, and real stained glass for the windows of the captain’s quarters. It was essentially finished, but since he hadn’t solved the case, he couldn’t let it go. Then yesterday he began what he realized was the final touch, a masthead, nearly a foot long: a siren with the face of the dead girl. It was a cool evening and Salazar was sanding down the siren, wondering what colors he would paint her.
Vines had dropped by earlier. Long retired, he spent his days playing golf and his nights gambling in the casinos off the Strip where the locals went.
Vines took in the muddy black shoes in the corner. Been fishing, he asked.
Salazar followed Vines’s gaze and shook his head. I’ve been out by Lake Mead searching for shallow graves. Fucking muddy and shitty work.
Still fucking around with that case?
The killings started again, Salazar said, catching Vines up, telling him about the twins, Sunil, and his frustration.
Aha, well, at least you’ve got the divers, Vines said. They find anything yet?
No, and they left this afternoon.
Shit, so you have no help?
Not even a partner, Salazar said.
No partner? That’s just what the department does as you get close to retiring.
It’s not that, Salazar said.
Shit, I was just trying to be nice. You know, maybe no one can put up with you since I left.
Fuck you, Salazar said, laughing. I do have some help though.
The shrink.
Yeah, the shrink.
That’s all well and good, but don’t get lost in all that profiling shit, Vines said. Good police work is about following the small details diligently. Don’t forget who taught you that.
In your fucking dreams.
Any good leads?
No.
Vines walked around the workbench in the middle of the garage. Ever notice how a ship kind of looks like a coffin, he asked. Square at one end, tapered at the other. This one’s about the size of a child’s coffin, he said.