That afternoon, Sue Ellen played with the kittens until they fell asleep in little balls of fur and bone. Then she said, ‘Now, let’s Stump Dad.’
‘No, thanks,’ Kelson said.
She grinned. ‘What’s it like—’
‘No, really.’
‘—to be you?’
Kelson fought it but there was no fighting it. ‘Dr P told me there’s something called autotopagnosia,’ he said. ‘People who’ve got it can’t recognize their own body parts. Like, they’ll look at their legs and freak out. They’ll think someone else’s legs are sticking out of their bodies. Then there’s something else, just plain agnosia, which is when you can’t recognize other people’s faces. With me, it’s like you put those things together. I forget what I look like, or I think I look like someone else. I stare in a mirror and the face that stares back surprises me.’
‘Weird,’ Sue Ellen said.
‘Yep.’
‘Do you ever think you look like an animal?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, you look like a monkey.’
‘Ha.’
‘But you don’t know for sure, right? Unless you look at a mirror?’
He touched his face with his hands. ‘The ears are wrong.’
‘Do you ever think you look like a girl?’
‘Nope.’
‘How about … someone who’s Chinese?’
‘It happened once.’
‘Did you think you could talk Chinese?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Must be confusing.’
‘That’s a good description. Now it’s time for you to do your homework.’
‘I want to play with the kittens some more.’
‘You’ve exhausted them. Let them sleep.’
‘Let’s name them.’
‘Fine. Anything you like.’
So Sue Ellen said, ‘Payday and Painter’s Lane.’
Kelson raised his eyebrows. ‘Those sound like names for—’
‘Horses,’ Sue Ellen said. ‘I work with what I’ve got.’
‘Smart girl,’ Kelson said. ‘Don’t let me catch you trying to ride them.’
An hour later, as Sue Ellen did her math at the kitchen table and Kelson started cooking dinner, the phone rang.
When Kelson answered, the caller hung up.
Five minutes later, the phone rang again.
This time a woman at the other end said only one word. ‘Run.’
One word was enough. Kelson recognized the voice of the woman who’d set him up to find Christian Felbanks’s body and lied about Dominick Stephens. ‘Did you also kill Raima Minhas?’ he asked, and Sue Ellen looked up from her homework.
‘Run,’ the woman said. ‘While you can.’
‘You got me twice. You won’t get me a third time.’
‘I never hurt anyone in my life,’ the woman said.
Kelson said, ‘I’m going to ask you nicely to leave me alone.’
‘I’m telling you – get out of your apartment now. He’s coming.’
‘“Mengele”? If he wanted to get me, he could’ve done it any—’
‘At least get Sue Ellen somewhere safe,’ she said, and her words felt like ice. ‘Don’t let her get hurt because of you.’
‘How do you know—’
The woman hung up.
Kelson yelled, ‘Shit.’
‘You shouldn’t swear,’ Sue Ellen said. ‘You’ll scare Payday and Painter’s Lane.’
‘Fuck Payday and Painter’s Lane,’ Kelson said – and now real alarm fell over his daughter’s face. ‘Get your books,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you home.’
She tried once more, weakly. ‘This is my home. My kittens are—’
‘Your mother’s home,’ he said. ‘Yours too.’
Sue Ellen’s eyes dampened, and only his fear kept him from tearing up too.
She put each book, each pencil, each sheet of paper in her bag separately, as if lagging would break the spell that seemed to have rushed into him from the phone. When she raised her eyes to his, he swore again and told her to hurry. If she’d asked about the call, he would’ve told her, and so he bullied her out the door, downstairs, and into his car.
She leaned sullenly against the passenger door as he drove to Nancy’s house. Then she got out, slammed the door, and disappeared up the path and into the house. As the front door closed, he said, ‘I love you.’
On his way back to his apartment, he called Dan Peters but got voicemail, and so he hung up. He dialed Greg Toselli, who picked up on the second ring.
When Kelson told him what happened, Toselli said, ‘She’s trying to scare you.’
‘Yeah, and it’s working,’ Kelson said. ‘She threatened Sue Ellen. How does she even know—’
‘Calm down,’ Toselli said. ‘You’ll blow a fuse. Seems to me like you’ve got two choices. Go home and take it easy or do like she says and get out of the way of whatever’s coming. If you go home, what’re the chances anyone’s really coming for you? She’s been messing with your head is all—’
‘No,’ Kelson said, ‘she’s killed two people. Or whoever she’s working with has.’
‘Mengele?’ His tone said enough. ‘Then run. Go into hiding. If someone comes after you, don’t let them find you.’
Kelson thought about that, mostly out loud, then asked, ‘Can I come over and hang out with you tonight?’
For the first time, Toselli hesitated, as if Kelson’s story scared him more than he let on. ‘I don’t know that’s such a good idea,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a date – and sometimes you say things you shouldn’t.’
‘I don’t mean to.’
‘Maybe you should just hole up tonight. Read. Watch a movie. I’ll call every couple of hours to make sure you’re OK. If you want, I’ll stop by later and have a beer with you.’
‘Yeah, the calls would be good,’ Kelson said. ‘Don’t worry about the beer.’
‘Another time?’ Toselli said with false cheer.
‘I hear pity,’ Kelson said. ‘I don’t do pity.’
‘Well, what do you expect?’ Toselli said. ‘You call, scared shitless, because a woman’s making prank phone calls in the middle of the afternoon—’
‘A woman connected to two killings,’ Kelson said.
‘OK, understood,’ Toselli said. ‘But you call, scared, and that makes me sorry. Once was a time when nothing scared you. You went as deep as anyone ever went in the department, and I admired that. And when a seventeen-year-old thug shot you in the head, what did you do? You killed him. That’s the stuff of heroes. So when I hear you scared, it makes me sorry.’
‘None of the guys I dealt with on the street threatened Sue Ellen. Not even Bicho. But I’ll tell you what, don’t bother checking in tonight. I wouldn’t want to lower myself in your eyes.’
‘That’s not what I was saying,’ Toselli said. ‘You’re—’
But Kelson hung up on him. ‘Asshole,’ he said. ‘Love him, but he doesn’t have a fucking clue.’
That evening, Toselli telephoned anyway, once every two hours, and Kelson thanked him for the calls.
Between the calls, Kelson cooked dinner, then stared from the window as if whatever attack the woman warned him about would come rolling down the street. He stretched out on the carpet and then on the bed where Raima Minhas lay dead twenty-four hours earlier, and then he got up and stared out of the window again. The kittens practiced their claws on the carpet, played a game of hide-and-seek under the bed, and scaled the bed cover as if it was a rock face, before falling asleep on his pillow. ‘So damn cute,’ Kelson said, and he watched a utility truck cruise down the street.
After Toselli’s midnight call, Kelson said to himself, ‘No sleep tonight.’ After the call at two a.m., he kicked the kittens off the bed and climbed in again. The sheets were new, the blanket fresh, but he thought he smelled Raima Minhas. Maybe something physical but beyond the range of the human senses remained of her in the room, like an odorless gas. ‘Or some sixth-sensory thing,’ he said. ‘Don’t think about it. The world is full of the dead. The dirt under our fingernails is composted bodies. The air we breathe has already passed through the lungs of dead men. Get used to it. She died here. Just the most recent of many. No reason for nightmares. No reason to let her into my dreams at all.’ He lay awake talking like that for a half hour and then swore at himself. He ripped the sheets and blanket from the bed, spread them on the carpet, and lay down again. ‘No reason to worry,’ he said, and he closed his eyes. ‘Only a fool worries about what he can’t see.’