Rage Against the Dying

Eleven





I spent the drive back up to Catalina thinking about the day, about watching Zach hiding his grief, and standing over Jessica’s desiccated corpse, and how what I thought would be a nice unwinding at the bar threatened to reopen the wounds I thought could finally heal. My emotions had been jerked around considerably in the past several days.

Carlo must have seen that I was preoccupied and offered to take me to Bubb’s Grubb for ribs. I didn’t want to tell him I’d already had the taco salad with Coleman so I wrenched my mind into the kitchen, bent on being that trifecta of Betty Crocker, Donna Reed, and last year’s centerfold. I could do it; while during my career I was all fast food and TV dinners, cooking had gotten easier, once I’d had the epiphany that spaghetti isn’t made with ketchup.

I made another salad with shrimp, walnuts, dried cranberries, and crumbled blue cheese on it (mine a lot smaller than his) and we ate in front of TV, which turned out to be not such a good move. We watched part of a program on the History Channel about the Etruscans, which I never would have watched on my own but kind of enjoyed. Then Carlo toyed with the remote (Carlo may be a genius but he’s still a guy) and stopped at the local headline news: “A thirteen-year-old cold case solved in Tucson, Arizona. Serial killer confesses to bizarre string of murders.”

Shit. “Want some pineapple sherbet?” I asked.

“I’ll get it in a minute. Let me see this,” Carlo said.

There it was, including Morrison preening at a podium, fielding questions from the press, the answers to which I already knew. Abducted girls. Torture. Death. Mummies in trucks. Belinda Meloy, the local anchor who was as close to Robin Meade as you could get without cloning, came on.

“Have you noticed how female broadcasters are wearing skimpier clothes these days?” I asked, still trying to distract him. “That spangly thing looks like something I’d wear to a cocktail party.”

Belinda said, “Floyd Lynch was arrested by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department seventy-five miles north of Nogales on Route 19 after being stopped for a routine check by Border Security officials nearly three weeks ago. Since that time Lynch has confessed to eight murders, all young females.” She turned and the camera went wide. “Special Agent in Charge of the Tucson Bureau of Investigation Office, Roger Morrison.”

Morrison flashed a look that said he’d wanted to clear his throat but now there was no time for it. “Thank you, Belinda. The FBI Violent Crimes Task Force commends our agents operating in conjunction with county law enforcement under the highway serial murder initiative, which led to the arrest of Floyd Lynch without incident. The members of the FBI’s Violent Crime Task Force and Highway Serial Killer Initiative include the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the Tucson Police Department, and the FBI. This cold case, approximately twelve years old, is now officially closed.”

After Morrison’s carefully prepared statement a picture of me as the unsuccessful investigating agent all those years ago completed Belinda’s report. They didn’t have a problem with showing my face now that I wasn’t undercover anymore. It was the formal portrait taken upon the occasion of my retirement.

“Look, that’s you,” Carlo said.

“Was that thunder?” That was always a good distraction in a land where annual rainfall measures eleven inches.

Carlo looked sideways at me where I sat in Jane’s matching armchair. “Is this where you went yesterday?” he asked as a shot from a news helicopter showed the abandoned car.

“It’s nothing, Perfesser. Max just asked me to tie up some loose ends, you know, give my opinion on a cold case. I’m done now. You don’t want to talk about it.”

That got a raised eyebrow but no further questions. We watched an episode of Law & Order because Carlo enjoys my telling him where they make mistakes. Then, “Let’s walk the Pugs, O’Hari.” he said. He calls me O’Hari (short for Mata O’Hari) because of my being Irish and having a mysterious past. I don’t mind that as long as we keep it light.

We each took a Pug, leashed it, grabbed a poop bag, and walked around the block, the light barely dimmed in a long day. I introduced those nearly inconsequential topics that make up marriage. Whether to attend his grandniece’s baptism in Des Moines (no). How the back fence needed a coat of Rustoleum (yes). Whether the brief sprinkle that afternoon counted as rain (hell no). It was all really normal.

When we got back there was a text message on my phone from Coleman, asking if I’d watched the video yet. It said, U wch vid?

“Go away,” I laboriously texted back, not being comfortable yet with the common style.

Then while I had the phone in my hand I checked in with Zach. He was watching a movie, he said. No, he hadn’t decided yet when he was going home, he said.

I looked out the back window at Jane’s life-size statue of Saint Francis that sat on a bench next to a birdbath, and beyond that the now-darkening silhouette of Mount Lemmon, the sight that in the past had rested my soul. From our window you couldn’t see the road we had taken up the northern slope, but just the same the mountain made me imagine mummies in abandoned cars and from now on always would.

Shaking off that thought, I lured Carlo to bed early and thereby managed to stave off any return to questions. I wasn’t being manipulative. Truth is, even with the sadness, or maybe because of it, there’s something about criminal cases that makes me frisky. He still looked at me with unasked questions, but after a few moments got into the spirit.

Afterward, while I listened to Carlo sleep, I thought I should get up and look at that video. Then I heard Sister Marie Theresa’s voice from fourth grade religion class, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” When you’re ten years old that doesn’t make a lot of sense with or without the “unto” and “thereof.” But today I understood Sister Marie Theresa. Today there had been enough evil. The video could wait until the early morning, when I was strong enough to confront whatever awaited me in it. I got up, took a sleeping pill to dam up my brain, and went back to bed.