Rage Against the Dying

Twenty-nine





What with the shooting incident during my hike, confronting Max at Peasil’s autopsy, and my run-in with Morrison, it had been a lousy day. On top of that I was getting to feel like I was undercover in my own house, trying to show Carlo that nothing was troubling me. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and wandered down a few aisles, tossing random items into the basket so Carlo would know I went to the store.

“Fresh ginger?” he questioned as he helped me put the groceries away.

Is that what that was? “You never know,” I said and stared blinking at the rootish thing lying on the counter longer than I should have. He came up behind me and did that thing where his arms felt like a safety restraint in a carnival ride. I turned in his arms, gave him a kiss, and later snuck a box of baking soda into the pantry cupboard when he wasn’t looking. I don’t know what that’s used for, either.

After dinner (Shake’n Bake chicken, microwaved frozen peas) I wandered out to the back fence with my glass of pinot gris to contemplate the mountains and the morass of deception into which I was sinking deeper and deeper. As I looked, a brown rabbit scampered by, its white tail failing to blend in with the landscape the way the rest of it did. Cruel evolutionary joke, that tail. It looks like a target. Then motion farther to the right caught my eye, and I watched a coyote trot across the ridge of an arroyo. It paid no attention to the rabbit. Like a big beige dog, this one seemed to be carrying a stick. It was too far away to see if it was the walking stick that I had buried out there when I realized I couldn’t get the blood off it.

I ran back into the house, muttered, “roadrunner” to Carlo as he looked up from his book, grabbed the binoculars off the kitchen counter, and ran back out again. The coyote was gone.

I decided not to think about it. All in all, at that point I thought I was holding it together pretty good, notwithstanding the fear of an animal digging up my bloodstained murder weapon from where I had buried it and leaving it on the side of the road where someone might find it and report it to the police.

No, it wasn’t until the following day things really started to go bad.