City of Saviors, page 8
Blood and brain mats his black hair. Pale skin hangs from his face and arms like molted snake skin. His eyes are as black as an abandoned coal mine.
My reflection shines there, in those coal-black eyes. My mouth opens, ready to scream.
The devil shrieks. His dank claws grab my left arm.
Pain rips through me like wildfire. I thrash against his bloody, shredded body, losing the battle as that fire consumes me. Give up. Let it happen. It’s okay.
Zach Fletcher crawls on top of me. His breath smells of a thousand corpses. Bloody foam drops from his lolling tongue and splatters on my face.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My heart hammers in the red. My end will soon come.
He shakes me, urges me to fight. “Open your eyes. Open your eyes and see.”
But I won’t fight. I refuse to see. Trapped like an animal in tar, I lie there, trembling, hands jammed into my armpits.
He licks my quivering cheek, then slips off the bed and creeps from the room. Beyond the door, waiting for him is my sister Victoria.
I’m alone. Again.
But in sixteen hours, we will see each other once more. The graveyard shift.
* * *
I opened my eyes, ready to fight daytime monsters, sweating, already tense, and trusting absolutely nothing.
Muted light glowed behind the closed window sheers. The red digital numbers on my bedside clock claimed it was seven thirty.
Didn’t trust that, either. Not with the heat waves and rolling blackouts. Not with the clock’s six-dollar price tag and its almost-Sony-Samsung-sounding name.
After my mind stowed my nightmare in its steam trunk for the day, I grabbed my iPhone from the nightstand. Barely trusted that, especially with the new, glitchy OS.
7:53, six text messages.
I stink-eyed the lying digital clock, then sat up in bed. Just as they had during my nightmare, my muscles burned and any area surrounding a pulse point ached—but not the good ache that came from physical therapy squats or Krav Maga hammer fists.
“You okay?” Lena stood in the doorway. Her eyes looked silvery—was she crying? “You were screaming and I didn’t know if I should’ve shaken you awake or . . .”
I scrutinized the twisted comforter and sheets on the hardwood floor. Back on the nightstand, the bottled water and Glock hadn’t moved since I’d sat both there last night. “I didn’t knock anything over this time, so that’s progress.”
“Yeah. . . .” Her gaze cartwheeled around the room—dark television screen, Ed Ruscha print, that gun. She refused to meet the eyes of the mess wearing the “On Wednesdays, we wear pink” tank top.
My new state had unnerved the baddest bitch in the world.
Indeed, the last days were upon us.
Lena rubbed her arms to ease the chill. “Do you really need the gun so . . . close? Cuz what if . . . ?”
My Glock sat on the nightstand like some women’s reading glasses and hand creams.
“Didn’t mean to scare you,” I whispered. “I told you I wasn’t ready for male company yet.” I chuckled because I’d just had male company. Not the living kind.
She closed a slightly open dresser drawer, then said, “You’re not ready. Glad I listened.”
“Lena, I—”
At the window, a flash of darkness moved beyond the curtains.
Him. Again.
My eyes widened and my breath caught in my chest.
Lena tiptoed over to me and touched my shoulder. “No one’s here, Lou.” She nodded at the window. “No one’s out there, either.”
Ice-cold panic still crackled across my skin. “I know. I just can’t . . . I know.”
But he was here. Lena just couldn’t see him.
I couldn’t tell her or anyone else that I saw Zach Fletcher every night. The three-month, short-term disability leave I’d taken had already made Captain Wyatt cock an eyebrow at Lieutenant Rodriguez. Which then made Lieutenant Rodriguez cock an eyebrow at me. Didn’t need either man reading in my file that post-traumatic stress disorder kept me seeing dead men anytime I closed my eyes for more than five minutes. Didn’t want Wyatt or Rodriguez to learn that, despite my protestations (no, I’m fine; no, I don’t need time off; no, that doesn’t hurt), I still felt more broken than a 1970 AMC Gremlin.
The secrets women keep.
Colin: he knew something was wrong. He had mentioned PTSD yesterday, but only because I’d slipped enough so that he could peep past my mask. Couldn’t do that again.
“I’m fine, Lena.” I forced myself to smile as I scrolled through the texts on my phone. “Hey! What’s his face already sent me a message.”
Lena settled beside me in bed. “You gonna text him back?”
I smirked. “Uh, no.”
Dominic Campbell had been a beautiful man with teeth as white and straight as piano keys. His muscles had muscles. Over drinks (Pellegrino and lime for me), he chatted about his battalion chief, his trip to 9/11, and his Rottweiler, Ace. He asked how long I’d been divorced and how many children I had. He loved kids. He had six kids, and they each lived with their mothers.
“What about you?” I asked Lena while reading Colin’s text: See you at LACCO! “Ethan’s no Israeli arms dealer or Russian oligarch, but he seems nice enough. Like a cocker spaniel.”
She wiggled her nose. “I’d never get my private island on a civil servant’s salary.”
Lena, already sour from dinner with Chauncey, had ended the date once firefighter Ethan said, “If you wanna go halves, we can—”
“But I could tell that you didn’t like him before that,” I said now. “Reluctant hugs and great-aunt kisses from the woman who brought us fellatio in a Ferrari on the 405.”
She shrugged. “I was a little distracted. Chauncey and his . . . proposal. And he really expected me to let him sleep in the house after asking me that? What was your excuse? Dominic too hot for you?”
I smirked. “I checked out the moment he said that we’d make pretty babies.”
“Too soon?”
“That man’s penis has more miles on it than Halley’s Comet.” I stood and winced as I shuffled to the bathroom.
“Want breakfast?” Lena asked.
“Yes, please.” Like a tonic, the cold from the marble floor oozed from the soles of my feet up my legs and to my neck. I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror: scar over my left eyebrow, scar above my hairline, shoulders tense and slightly misaligned. My satin scarf had fallen off my head, and now my hair shot this way and that. I needed more sun—my skin was not as bronze as it should’ve been.
I pulled open the vanity’s drawer. Squirreled-away vials of Percocet and Vicodin rolled forward. Only ten Vicodin and three Percocet remained with no refills on either prescription. I hadn’t taken Percocet since May—but winter was coming.
Or was it already here? Could my current 7 on the pain scale, with its jagged aches and scratchy colors, be negotiated down to a 4 with prayer and caffeine?
I sighed, then closed the drawer—it had to. I whispered a quick prayer-mantra mash-up. Dear Lord, make the pain into nothing, into the wind, just the wind. I needed to think today since the easiest tasks—pointing at crap to take, pointing at the dead body I couldn’t take—had already been done yesterday.
Eugene Washington deserved all of me.
I roller-balled Icy Hot in key spots, then checked my blood pressure: 135/80. Crappy but better than yesterday—guess that came after twenty-four hours without wine. I flat-ironed my hair and successfully avoided my scalp wound. After eyeliner and bronzer, I pulled on dress jeans and a pink Oxford shirt, throw-away-ables if I needed to return to the Hoard on Victoria.
Twenty minutes later, I strolled into the kitchen like the chill California girl I was born to be.
“Penny’s friend has stomach mumps,” Lena reported. She was staring at Good Times now, playing on the small television bolted to the cabinet.
I cocked my head and placed my hands on my hips. “Girl, look around. This isn’t a finishing school—”
Lena spread her arms. “It’s the ghetto!”
I settled at the breakfast bar and stared at the strawberry Pop-Tart sitting on a saucer. “This is breakfast?”
She poured fresh-brewed coffee into our mugs. “You ran out of the brown sugar ones. But I toasted it to make it even more special. Bon appétit.”
I reached for the dimmer to the kitchen lights and lowered the switch. I loved the white and pearl mosaic tiles and platinum-colored cabinets, but on mornings like this? Too much. “Any plans for the day?” I asked my friend.
She pointed in the direction of my bedroom. “First, I’m climbing into your bed to sleep for a few hours. Then, Chauncey wants to talk again before he flies back home.”
“You decide what you’re gonna do?”
She tucked her head between her wrists, then groaned. “Am I evil if I tell him no?”
“Evil for not wanting to become his womb for rent?”
She said, “Ha,” and then broke apart my Pop-Tart and nibbled on the half. “There are pros.”
“And plenty of cons,” I said.
“Pro: I get a cute baby.”
“Con: it ain’t just your baby. And it just ain’t Chauncey’s baby, either. It’s the third guy’s, too.”
“Pro,” Lena said, “Chauncey will never be a deadbeat dad.”
“Con,” I said, “what sane man will wanna deal with two men, you, and a baby?”
Lena groaned. “This is some Bay Area nonsense. I’m from effin’ New York. What the hell am I doing?” She sighed. “If you were me, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t do it. I can’t commoditize my uterus like that. It’s not like a kidney or a piece of my liver. And to be a babymomma to a man who hurt me like Chauncey hurt you?”
“I may not get another chance,” Lena said.
“Bullshit,” I said. “There’s sperm all over this city. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re standing in a puddle of it right now. We’ll go to Target or log on to Amazon—it’s the everything store. You can buy uranium and sperm.”
Lena smiled. “And since I’m a Prime member, I’ll get it today before three.”
“Exactly. Again: what do you gain by doing this?”
“I’d get a baby.”
I folded my arms. “No—you’re the surrogate, not the parent. Unless you two draw up custody papers, the baby will belong to Chauncey and Brando. Again: what do you gain? You don’t need the money.”
She shrugged, then bit the inside of her cheek. “That was the only benefit, I guess.”
I sipped coffee, then said, “Dominic the fireman is cute, and he’s also anxious to make more pretty babies. You should call him.” I moved to the living room to grab my bag.
“If this were Greg—?”
“Hell no.”
“If this were Sam?”
I raised my eyebrows as words tumbled out of my mouth. “I’d have Sam’s baby.”
She ambled toward the hallway. “That requires sex, you know.”
“I’m gettin’ there. Don’t rush me. These things take time.”
“For a lame snail, ma chérie. Not for a healthy, sexy Homo sapiens.”
“Good night, Lena.”
“Good night, Elouise. Have a lovely day avenging the dead.”
11
AVENGING THE DEAD.
So many tasks to complete to accomplish that—the first would be attending Eugene Washington’s autopsy. I thought about those blue splotches on Eugene Washington’s face as I grabbed my car keys from the coffee table. Brooks had mentioned arsenic poisoning as a possible cause, but would arsenic cause all that swelling?
The morning air smelled of car exhaust, jasmine, and burning hillsides—the official scent of late-summer Los Angeles. And it was hot. But “hot” was nothing new in this town. What that white disk in the sky was now sending our way? More than heat, and whatever it was swirled throughout our bodies and cooked us like frogs that would never jump out of the pot.
The county coroner’s office was now in possession of hundreds of cooked frogs, most of them senior citizens. The rest of the dead represented the usual demographic: people who hadn’t moved quickly enough—out of a bullet’s path, away from a knife’s swing or a drunk driver’s front bumper. No meat wagons occupied their parking spaces—each van now trundled around the city, ferrying the deceased to the coolest spot in town.
Colin paced in the shade of the science building. He had already sweat through his tan dress shirt. Once he spotted me, he tapped at his wristwatch. “You know autopsies make me nervous.” On cue, the nerve over his right eyebrow jumped and twisted.
“I know. Apologies.”
He loosened his tie and unbuttoned the neck of his shirt. “You know that you being late only makes me crazier. Cuz I hate autopsies.”
“Wasn’t on purpose, Taggert. Calm down. I’m here now.”
“Company?” He winked, then bit his lower lip.
“Yes. Salma Hayek’s in my bed right now.”
He beamed at me. “Hot damn. You shoulda called me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Cuz real life is a Cinemax channel. I couldn’t pry myself out of her arms long enough to give you a ring.”
My phone vibrated as we headed to the entrance. Another text from Dominic Campbell. Really want 2 cU. 4your eyes only. He posed naked on a balcony that overlooked a pool flanked with swaying palm trees. He held the phone in one hand and his . . . hose in the other.
Well, damn.
Something trembled inside of me—the same trembling that resulted in too many wine coolers in the backseat, panties left in the ashtray, and nine months later a stroller in the back of your SUV. And if anyone could make baby furniture appear in my Porsche, it was the fireman with the six babymommas.
My thumb moved toward the trashcan to delete Dominic’s picture, but it stopped. It really was an artful shot. Inspirational, even.
“A naked selfie from the hero?” Colin held open the door, and the aromas of formaldehyde and Pine-Sol swirled around us.
I squinted at him. “How did you know?”
He said, “Your face changed. Doesn’t he have chili to cook? Recliners to do nothing in?”
I showed him the picture. “But he has all this going for him.”
Colin shrugged. “Balconies are overrated.”
“I’ve seen your balcony. It’s small.”
“You saw it in March, during that freaky weather. It was cold, then. Everything’s smaller in the cold.”
“That’s what they all say.” I pointed to his face. “Your eyes look better.”
“I used the drops again. Really: your fireman needs to be putting out all the fucking fires around here instead of tryin’ to get you on your back.”
“True. The pictures?”
“I sent them to Brooks last night.”
“Not just of the scene but—”
“The casserole dish and gun, too. Yep. Sent ’em all over.”
At the locker rooms, we separated to change into scrubs. Minutes later, we reunited in the hallway. Colin rubbed his arms, welted now from his nervous scratching.
I poked a red slash. “You’re gonna bleed to death, you keep it up.”
He winked. “You’ll rub some Neosporin on it later?”
I winked back. “Yep, then I’ll hold a lit match to it.” We reached the autopsy suite. I peeked through the door’s window.
Brooks’s assistant, Big Reuben, with his earbuds in place, pulled out drawers. His large brown hands grabbed all things sharp and stainless steel. Dead bodies lay beneath sheets on the three exam tables. In the corner of the room, Brooks filled out paperwork. He examined one of our crime scene photos taped to the cabinet door, then wrote onto his pad.
During his residency as a surgeon, Brooks had been the pride and joy of Susan and Spencer Brooks II, M.D., Ph.D. To their profound disappointment, Brooks decided that the living had enough help but the dead needed brains. He had smiled at his zombie pun that afternoon at Duke’s restaurant in Malibu. Syeeda and I had also giggled, but the elder Dr. Brooks had snarled, “. . . throw away your life,” while Mrs. Brooks nursed her aching heart with a third glass of Chardonnay. After dinner, Syeeda and I had taken our depressed friend to the hood for the Cork’s too-strong Long Island Iced Teas and delicious Buffalo wings. Once Brooks and Syeeda began making out on the dance floor, I slipped out of the club and fell asleep in the backseat of Brooks’s Yukon.
And now, years later, the deputy medical examiner regarded me as though I’d placed fifteen items on the 12 Items or Less conveyor belt of life. His eyes brimmed with concern—it was the doctor in him. He asked, “How are you?” as he handed me a face shield.
“Been better,” I said, pulling on the mask.
Brooks grunted, then said to Colin, “Hello.”
And now, the three of us huddled over Eugene Washington.
Colin stood with his legs apart, arms crossed, and chin dipped to his chest. His lips were tight, his jaw clenched. Nothing in that blond head of his except, Don’t throw up, don’t throw up.
But there were so many noxious things before us. Splashes and splatters, gooey cherry-red objects that glistened beneath the overhead lights. Smells, stinks, and sounds that existed only because you no longer did.
Laying on the table, Eugene Washington didn’t look like he hoarded cats and trash. On Brooks’s table, he was a naked, grizzled seventy-three-year-old, freckled, scarred red, and splotched blue. Purplish lividity had spread across his buttocks, the backs of his thighs, and his feet. Since our time together, he had bloated, grown stiffer and colder. He heard nothing as Brooks described him into a microphone.
One hundred sixty pounds. One hundred eighty-five centimeters. Angioedema—the swelling around Washington’s eyes and lips.
“Petechial hemorrhaging in both pupils.” The tiny red spots were caused by ruptured capillaries brought on by asphyxia. Brook opened the man’s mouth and used a tiny flashlight to scour the darkness. “The patient’s tongue is swollen and . . . his throat is constricted. Pharyngeal and laryngeal edema. Mucous plugging present in the airway.” The old man hadn’t been able to breathe.
Brooks scraped Washington’s tongue and dropped the swab into a glass vial.
