Black Oil, Red Blood

Chapter 2



The local police station consisted of one plain red brick building surrounded by a host of mobile trailers. Rather than buy or build a new building as the department expanded, the city just kept dropping in trailers and setting up offices in those. I found Jensen Nash in his office in one of the trailers. His name appeared in neat white block letters on a black sign attached to his door. I opened the door and walked in without knocking.

He barely bothered to glance up at me. It was hard to tell by the look on his face what he thought of me or my skimpy ensemble. That was not encouraging.

“You’re off for the evening, I take it,” he said.

“Um, yes, actually, but—“

“Chloe Taylor, right?” he asked without looking up.

“Yes, but—“

“I thought I told your paralegal I was busy.”

Crap. So much for my “I’m not a lawyer” ruse. “You did, but—“

“You thought you’d come down here anyway and charm me with your feminine wiles.”

Wow. I hadn’t felt this out of control of a conversation since I was a zitty teenager trying to get up the courage to talk to my first crush. To make matters worse, Detective Nash was, in fact, the sexiest man I had seen in a 200 mile radius. He was even sexier than Dorian. He had Rob Lowe good looks. Even through his black suit jacket, I could see that he was incredibly fit. If he possessed even an ounce of personal charm, I might have fallen instantly in love. Instead, I found myself stammering and irritated.

“How do you know who I am?”

“I’m a detective,” he said. “I know things.”

“Would you care to share?”

“Nope,” he said.

I bent over his desk, resting my weight on my elbows, chin in my hands, desperately trying to think of a way to get him to engage.

“Your victim was my expert witness,” I said. “I knew him pretty well. We should talk.”

Nash steadily refused to look at me. “I don’t think so.”

“I can help you,” I said.

“I doubt it.”

“Then maybe you can help me,” I said.

“I doubt that, too.”

Okay. Now he was starting to piss me off. “Well if you won’t help yourself, and if you won’t help me, how about helping Gracie Miller? Or are you just a heartless sonofabitch who doesn’t care about old lady widows and their kittens?”

Nash looked up in surprise. “Kittens? What do old lady widows and kittens have to do with anything?”

I took advantage of the opening. “My client Gracie Miller used to be married to a guy named Derrick. He worked for PetroPlex in the benzene unit for forty years, starting right out of high school. When opposing counsel deposed him a year ago, his wife Gracie, who he married when he was nineteen, had to push him through the doors and into my office in a wheelchair. I had to wheel in his oxygen tank. He had no hair, not even eyebrows or eyelashes because of chemotherapy. He had radiation burns on his face and chest. He had to take off his oxygen mask and gasp for breath just to answer questions for the jackass PetroPlex attorney who spent the entire day trying to prove that even though Petroplex never warned Derrick that benzene causes cancer, that even though PetroPlex was too cheap to install the safety devices that would prevent benzene leaks, and even though PetroPlex never supplied respiratory masks or safety equipment, they were not to blame for my client’s cancer and subsequent death.”

I had finally succeeded in gaining Detective Nash’s attention. I still couldn’t quite read his face, though.

“Derrick,” I said, “slaved away for years to save up for a down payment on a tiny farm. He took Gracie out to dinner at Olive Garden once a year for their anniversary because that was the best he could afford. And on my birthday last year, Gracie baked me a cake. From scratch. With homemade chocolate icing and real butter. And incidentally, my birthday was the day before Derrick’s funeral, which was also the day after he died, at home, gasping for breath in his wheeled-in hospital bed. Gracie is thoughtful like that.”

Nash’s eye twitched almost imperceptibly. What did that mean? “And the kittens?”

“Gracie has a cat,” I said. “The cat had kittens, but they all drank water from a toxic pond near the refinery and died.”

He was silent for a few moments. I waited. Finally, he said, “All right. So your client’s sob-story notwithstanding, I have to know. Are you a particular fan of Ramen noodles?”

“What?” My eyes went wide. “What kind of a random question is that?”

“Do you buy Ramen noodles because you like the way they taste?”

“I love them,” I lied. I folded my arms and glared at him, nonverbally daring him to imply otherwise.

“I couldn’t help but notice the redhead in the grocery store last Sunday wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of designer clothes and buying fifteen or twenty packages of Ramen. Closer to twenty, I think, because you didn’t check out in the express lane.”

I’m not sure, but I think that if Nash had had a mirror on the wall in his office, I might have seen my face turn as red as my hair right about then.

“A woman like you buying food like that. I thought it was strange. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that I’m a detective, and I’m trained to notice things that seem. . . off. So I was wondering whether or not you have a genuine love for all things Ramen.”

“Well, I just, you know. . . the spice packets come in so many varieties.” My fingers tingled. My head felt like it was floating up off my neck. I could feel my body shrinking. I thought I might die of embarrassment at any minute.

“I asked the checkout clerk if he knew your name. He did.”

“I’m flattered,” I said sourly.

Nash smiled. “So did you come down here dressed like that because you’re looking for a dinner date?”

My jaw dropped open, but only for an instant. “You’ve got a lot of nerve accusing me of strolling around like a hooker in search of her next meal.” Okay, of course I was cruising for dinner, but I’d been hoping not to be totally obvious about it. “I went to law school. I passed the bar exam. I am a professional.”

“So is that a no?”

I stopped short. “A no to what?”

“A no to my dinner invitation.”

“You didn’t extend a dinner invitation,” I snapped. “And if you had, I wouldn’t be inclined to say yes.”

Nash laughed. “But you would go.”

Well, yes. But no way was I about to fall all over myself rushing to admit it. “Let me tell you something,” I said. “Every other girl in this town may be falling all over themselves trying to get a date with you, but I’m not that kind of girl. I don’t just keel over in the face of good looks. I am a strong, confident, individual, highly accomplished professional, and you would be lucky to get a date with me.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” he said, glancing at me sideways. “So you think I’m good looking, then?”

“I didn’t say that!” I said. “I was talking about other people. The ones who might think you’re good looking. Not me.”

Nash laughed again. I was really starting to feel like the village idiot, and that was saying a lot, considering that I lived in Kettle.

“Chloe Taylor,” he said, “may I buy you dinner?”

I groaned. “Yes. But only because I need to ask you some questions about Dr. Schaeffer, and I feel like you’d be more talkative over margaritas. Pick me up in an hour.”

I scrawled my address on a Post-It, flung it at him, and hurried out the door.