New River Blues (26 page)

Zack returned to his shop on East Broadway in mid-afternoon. He had not been hiding. He had not read the newspaper story about Felicity's arrest and had no idea he was being hunted. His army buddy's wife had taken a look at his scratches and persuaded him he'd heal faster if he let her help. Since then he had been lying on the couch in their condo, enjoying her cooling poultices and watching his scabs form.

Luckily, he had a couple of days with no parties scheduled. By Wednesday he was still stiff and sore all over, but a few tentative stretches and bends had convinced him he had no broken bones. Party Down was scheduled to do a big birthday party on Saturday, and he hadn't even staffed it yet, so as soon as he could move a little easier he went home.

He had no idea that a midtown patrolman, circling the block, would see the Party Down van parked by the front door and call for backup. When two officers in protective gear burst into his shop with guns drawn, they found him counting party hats. Recognizing overwhelming force when he saw it, he put up no resistance, which is not to say he went in willingly. He was prone to feelings of persecution at the best of times, and being marched out of his own shop in handcuffs, before the curious eyes of his neighbors in the antiques shop next door, blew the lid off his always simmering volcano of rage.

They put him on a hard little stool by a small gray table, took off his left handcuff, fed it and a few inches of chain through the rope lead on the table, and clamped it back on his wrist. Being tethered to the furniture added a demeaning aspect to his arrest that fueled his outrage further. Bad enough to have been treated like shit by the United States Army, now he was getting more of the same from civilians.

Despite all the hard things he had to say about the army, Zack's years as an enlisted man had left him accustomed to hold civilians in contempt. Civilians hid behind the military but didn't give it the respect it deserved because that would mean admitting they didn't have What It Took to join up. Now he was in a room with two civilians who thought their guns and badges gave them the right to chain him to the table like a dog. He wanted to smash their faces.

When he demanded an attorney, the woman detective gave him her card and told him to have his attorney call her when he was ready to talk. She had already told him every move they made in here was being recorded. Now she made it clear that nobody was going to argue, and the two detectives excused themselves.

Pleased to see how quickly his resistance had fended off the detectives, Zack sat quietly, his eyes glittering bitterly in his white face, waiting for them to come back and release him. He thought if you declared you wouldn't talk without a lawyer they said, ‘OK, then,' and turned you loose to go find one. Instead, this pair of dickheads came back and recited the charges against him, murder in the second degree plus a couple of other things about tampering with physical evidence and aiding in the commission of a felony. He didn't understand it all but what the hell, he was going to plead not guilty to whatever they said.

They detailed an agenda. He would be fingerprinted now, a sample of his blood would be drawn . . . they described his transport to adult detention, the phone and the list of bail-bondsmen that would be available to him there, the TV hook-up that would allow him to enter his plea before a judge in the morning. They were courteous and quiet and completely infuriating in their self-confidence.

By the time the two uniformed officers arrived to give him his ride, Zack knew that beating on the detectives would never be enough. To work off the venom that was churning his guts now, he would need to strangle them with his bare hands and then stomp and kick them, wearing heavy army boots that left the mark of treads on their faces. Like that houseful of ragheads in Baghdad.

Even when there was minimal conversation with the prisoner, Sarah fretted, it took all afternoon to observe the forms that finally got a prisoner locked up.

‘It can't be four o'clock already. Can it?' she asked when it was.

‘Nah. It's these damn digital watches, I knew they'd never work,' Tobin said. He derived endless free entertainment from Sarah's ongoing battles with the clock. ‘Ready or not, though, I'm going to have to leave this party now. I gotta meet the second victim's mama at the morgue. What's his name?' He consulted his notes. ‘Oh, yeah, Paul Eckhardt.' He made a sour face. ‘So much fun, the mamas.' Then he was gone, and Sarah went back to swimming against the tide.

They had to decide on charges quickly, communicate them to a man who didn't want to listen to them, then coordinate with all the other people involved. Long before Zachariah Christou was on his way to jail, Sarah realized that the time eroding from under her feet at the station was carrying her household closer to the dinner hour. She called her mother and explained why she was probably going to be late. ‘Tell you what, darlin',' Aggie said, ‘I'll just go ahead and dish up, and save you a plate.'

An hour later, realizing the end was not yet in sight, she called again. ‘Will's here, we're all keeping each other company, don't worry, we're fine,' her mother said. But Dietz took the phone and told her, ‘Aggie's tired, she needs to go home. Denny says it'll be OK if she takes a book to bed and I stay out here and guard the door. I'm not due at work till ten, will that give you enough time?'

‘Oh, plenty,' she said. It was, but not by a whole lot. Zack's ride was late, there was a wait for a cell, and getting an OK from a magistrate's clerk for a hearing before 4 p.m. tomorrow took three phone calls.

Driving home that night, gripping the wheel, Sarah pulled her stomach muscles hard against her backbone and breathed deliberately. Hours of walking on mental eggshells with a hostile prisoner who was looking for any excuse to cry foul had left her strung out and depleted. Besides that, she had been nagged all afternoon by a persistent feeling that she was forgetting something. Working systematically through the routine of putting a prisoner away, trying to make the memory surface, she had not even known how tired she was until she walked out and started her car. The dashboard light came on and she said aloud, to the quiet street, ‘God, it's almost eight o'clock.'

She parked under her carport vine in velvety darkness, thinking how comforting it was to come home to a lighted window.

Dietz kissed her quickly when she came in the door and said, ‘Aggie left you some good stew, I'll warm it up.' He put a glass of wine on the table by her place. ‘Denny would sure like to say good night before you settle down, though.'

She stood by the counter taking her gun and badge off, putting her keys away, so glad, suddenly, to be in this small orderly space with this decent capable man that she felt tears sting the back of her eyelids. To keep them from dropping she turned away quickly and walked across her bedroom and into Denny's bedroom niche, which still, alas, had a curtain but no door. Under the good reading light that Sarah had managed to squeak out of this month's grocery budget, Denny lay cradling a library book. Remembering the intense pleasure of childhood reading, Sarah felt a flash of envy. Then she noticed the handle of her one good French knife peeking out from under the pillow.
Looks like the onus isn't off Will Dietz quite yet. Oy vey, I better warn him not to make any sudden moves.

When Sarah tapped on the molding Denny looked up and said, ‘Hey, did you catch the bad guy, Aunt Sarah?'

‘Sure did.' She bent for a kiss.

‘My hero.' She gave Sarah a warm flannel hug. ‘Bet you're tired.'

‘Tired, hungry, glad to be home.' She stood up, holding the knife in her left hand, unobtrusively. ‘You don't need this any more, do you?' she said, and without waiting for an answer added, ‘Go to sleep soon, huh?'

‘I will.' She had put the bookmark in place and turned out the light before Sarah had dropped the curtain. Sarah thought, walking away, that Denny was certainly clever enough to know she could have stretched the rules about bedtime a little tonight, if she was really enjoying that book.
She was making herself stay awake till I got here.
She was still afraid to be in a house alone with Will Dietz, but she had agreed to let Aggie go home. Because Aggie was tired, and Aunt Sarah needed to work, so Denny would look out for herself, and not be a bother.

She walked over to where Dietz was dishing up at the stove, slid the knife back in the holder, put her arms around his waist, and kissed his ear. While she was close, she murmured, ‘Thanks for looking after Denny. I guess I better warn you she had that knife under her pillow.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘Don't worry. I can usually handle sixty-five-pound girls.' He kissed her and said, ‘Sit. Take your shoes off. Eat.'

She sat at her place and took a sip of wine, sighed happily, tried one taste of Aggie's stew as soon as he set the plate down, and uncorked an appetite so ravenous she cleaned the plate before she said another word.

‘There's a little more,' Dietz said, ‘shall I—'

‘No. Just right.' While she finished her wine she told him about the day's delicate business, tiptoeing around a hostile witness whose hatred was plain. She was comfortable and easy now, talking to Dietz who had been so often in the same situation, and understood the stress of such a day without explanation.

Then in the middle of a comfortable silence, she put both hands up to her face in distress and said softly, ‘Omigod.'

‘What?'

‘I just remembered I never made one move today to do what I promised about Janine.'

‘Aggie told me what the two of you decided. What were you supposed to do about it today?'

‘Find her! She's back in town. Drifting around Tucson somewhere, having cannabis dreams about the great things she's going to do some day soon—'

Dietz stared at her for a few seconds. ‘You know, you and your mother get exactly the same look on your face when you talk about Janine.'

‘Oh? What look is that?'

‘Unhinged. What is it about her that drives you both so nuts?'

‘Well, she's out of control! You never know what she'll do next!'

‘But isn't that typical addict behavior? Why do you let it upset you so much?'

‘Because we always end up being responsible for something we can't control.'

‘Like what, for instance?'

‘Like Denny, for instance.'

‘Denny's not out of control.'

‘No, but her life is.' She told him about the scene at the bus after school, about Janine's crazy phone call to Aggie, and her own growing realization that she wasn't equipped to take proper care of Denny if she couldn't check her into urgent care, change her school, defend any decisions about care and feeding. ‘I need to get Janine to give me legal custody. But I'm afraid . . .' Her voice trailed off and when she spoke again she put words to the terrible truth that Aggie had been trying to express when she broke the pot. ‘I'm afraid if I persuade her to give up custody so Denny can have a life, Janine will have lost the only reason she has to sober up, and she'll be destroyed.'

She stared forlornly at Will Dietz, who shook his head in disbelief. ‘You've been a Tucson cop for what? Twelve years?'

‘Going on thirteen. So what?'

‘And you still haven't learned that you can't fix everything?'

‘Well, sure, in general, but this is my fam—'

‘Sarah, nothing you've ever told me about Janine has surprised me. Everything she does is textbook addictive behavior. But you keep beating yourself up for it. Why?'

‘Because she's my sister. Because I love the real Janine who's buried inside that nut case, and so does Denny.'

‘Oh. Well. Love.' He sat back and rubbed his face. ‘No known cure for that, is there? Listen, I have to go to work, but – I know a couple of guys in Vice detail. You want me to ask them to look around for Janine?'

‘Well . . . sure. If you . . . I mean . . . have you got time?'

‘Time to help you when you need it? Yes, Sarah, I have time for that.' He did his I-can't-believe-you-said-that business with the eyebrows, added the ghost of a one-sided smile, kissed her quickly, and left.

One of the things she was getting used to, with Will Dietz, was that he hated lingering farewells and as often as not skipped saying goodbye entirely – when it was time to go, he got up and left. At first, she had perceived this as an odd streak of rudeness in an otherwise considerate man. Now as she locked her door after him she thought gratefully that his sensible habits had given her an extra five minutes to sleep.

TEN

S
arah got out of her car in the station lot Thursday morning and almost fell over Ray Menendez kissing a beautiful girl. Embarrassed, she tried to dodge past him, but he lifted his head and said, ‘Hey, Sarah.' The girl in his arms smiled brightly, as if she thought making out in a police parking lot before eight in the morning was going to be the next big thing.

‘Want you to meet my fiancée,' Menendez said. ‘Her name is Maria. Isn't she beautiful?' They beamed at each other smugly, with the self-satisfied look young lovers get when they announce to a waiting world their new discovery: perfect love.

Sarah followed a still-glowing Menendez across the lobby and into an elevator. On the way up, she asked how long he'd been engaged.

‘Three months,' he said. ‘Since the day we decided to move in together and her father said if I didn't give her a ring first he'd shoot me.'

‘That will move the jewelry, won't it?' She went on to her cubicle, thinking contentedly,
I guess I can quit worrying about him and Patricia.