On my way over to Mona’s place, I stopped at La Llorona for tortilla-chicken soup, which I ate at traffic lights. Between my bulky clothes and my sore hand, I spilled a lot of it and got to Mona’s building looking like a toddler who’d just been introduced to solid food. I dabbed at the spots with a tissue but gave up when I realized I was covering my coat with white pilling. I definitely should join the slow-food movement—this eating on the run is as hard on the wardrobe as it is on the digestion.
Parking on the North Side is always a challenge, and with the improvised territorial markers, as well as the ridges of ice blocking access to curbs, it was impossible. I finally left the car in front of a hydrant and hoped the police had too much else on their minds to bother with ticketing side streets.
Up on the fourth floor, Mona’s apartment looked much the same as it had on my first visit. As I worked my picks into the padlock, cumbrously because of my sore hand, a door opened at the far end of the corridor. I glanced down the hall and saw that it was the same unit where someone had peered out when I first came here with Chad’s parents. In the dim light I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Hello!” I called. “Can you come here and hold a flashlight on the lock for me?”
The figure scuttled back into its own apartment. I laughed softly, but hoped they wouldn’t feel compelled to call the cops. The lock finally clicked loose, and I went into Mona’s vestibule.
I turned on all the lights. A week had added a film of dust to the room, making the destruction look more wanton and more permanent. No wonder Mona was staying with her ex-husband. The room was so cold, so dreary, that I found myself tiptoeing through it to the bedroom.
Chad’s duffel bag was still on the floor, with clothes spilling out of the top like beer foam over the brim of a glass. When I’d been here before, I’d given the bag only a cursory look. Now I pulled everything out, laying each piece on the bed, but I didn’t see anything that resembled a vest. I looked in Mona’s closets and behind all the doors, where people sometimes drape coats or bathrobes. I found Mona’s pink flannel bathrobe, with a fuzzy rabbit stitched to one pocket, and Chad’s parka. I searched the parka but discovered only chewing gum, a business card from a tattoo parlor, and half a bagel, rock-hard by now.
I went back into the bedroom to return Chad’s clothes to his bag. I ran my hand around the bottom to make sure I hadn’t overlooked anything and felt sand. I wondered if Chad had brought back part of the Iraqi desert as a souvenir.
I probably wouldn’t have looked at it, except I was frustrated by all the dead ends I’d run into recently. I hunted around the apartment for a newspaper that I could empty it onto, and finally found a roll of butcher paper in the kitchen. I laid a sheet of it on the bed and carefully emptied the bag onto it. The stuff looked like gray sand, or maybe crushed gravel. I stared at it for a long minute, then folded the butcher paper into a tidy oblong. I tucked the ends inside each other to keep the gravelly sand from spilling out, and stuck the little bundle into my red leather bag.
I took the duffel into the bathroom to shake the last grains in the tub. A black pocket fell out, too. Perhaps it had been caught in the duffel bag’s seams—I hadn’t felt it when I ran my hand through the interior.
The pocket was made of a thick black cloth, about the size of an oven mitt. There were a number of holes in the heavy fabric, which went all the way through both sides. I guess that was how the sand had leaked out. I stuck my fingers inside the mitt and felt more sand inside. THIS SIDE FACES OUT had been embossed on the outside, although the holes partially obliterated the words.
A black oblong. This was what Chad had been holding out to Nadia in the parking lot the night before she was murdered. Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is, he’d said. But what was it?
I went back to Mona’s kitchen for a clean plastic bag. It was when I was putting the black mitt in the bag that I felt the image stamped into the fabric just below one of the holes. I held the mitt under the light. The design, a kind of trefoil, looked familiar, and I frowned trying to remember where I’d seen it. As I turned the mitt sideways to fit into the resealable bag, I suddenly recognized the design—the pink-and-gray scrolls Nadia had painted on the Body Artist looked just like this.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. This was what connected Nadia to Chad. But what was it? When Chad saw the scrolls, he was sure that Nadia was making fun of him. I stared at the mitt in the plastic bag, then pulled the butcher paper from my purse and put it in the bag with the mitt.