Chapter Eight

The heavenly aroma of garlic, ginger, lime, cumin and pepper penetrated my apartment walls and wafted down the hallways enticing unsuspecting Bollywood fans into my den.

When I heard a knock on the door, I hollered, “Come in.”

Snow still blocked the outside entrances to the apartments. I’d propped the downstairs door open so Bernadette could enter. I assumed her eagerness for Bollywood movie night—it is her favorite—brought her to my door early. Personally, anything starring Colin Firth warms up my arctic-winter nights.

“My God.” I heard Joe’s voice. “It smells wonderful in here.”

I poked my head around the kitchen door. “Oh, hi. I thought you were the chief.” I stepped into the living room.

“I can tell living next to you is gonna be tough.”

“Why’s that?”

“In Brooklyn, the halls of my building smelled like stale urine and boiled cabbage. What were you cooking yesterday? My stomach tried to break free from my body and visit.”

I laughed. “You saved me a trip. I have something for you.” I ducked back into the kitchen and came back with a plate. “Here are the brownies as promised.”

He grinned, but Bernadette’s arrival interrupted his comment.

“Knock, knock.” Bernadette walked through the door carrying a dish wrapped in an insulated bag and covered with towels. “Hi, Joe, do you mind taking this?”

He balanced the brownies in one hand and held her dish in the other.

She stood on the mat and removed her arctic gear. She set her boots in the hallway and draped her parka over a chair. When she shook her head, her thick, raven hair fell back into perfectly fluffed layers. “God, it smells good in here. Joe, are you joining us?”

“The tantalizing aromas drew me in. Then, she gave me brownies.”

“Anne’s Indian food is some of the best this side of Agra. You should stay,” she suggested. “You’ll hate yourself in the morning if you miss out.”

“Bernadette, I think he already has plans for this evening.”

“No, I don’t.” He gave me a questioning look.

“I thought you were going out with Harriet.”

“Talk about hating yourself in the morning,” Bernadette said.

Joe’s jaw dropped, and I snorted in laughter.

“Uh, no,” he explained. “Those plans have changed.”

“Was it the DWI arrest last night or the fact that every officer on duty has dated her?” Bernadette asked.

Joe gave her a surprised look. Cattiness from the police chief probably wasn’t the norm in New York.

“Both elements played a part in my decision.” He grinned.

“Smart man. Now, prove to me you’re a genius and hang out for Indian food and Bollywood movies.”

“I moved thousands of miles away from my sisters to escape Hindi pop.” He looked at Bernadette, then at me. “You don’t dance along, do you?”

She extended her right arm and placed her left hand in front of her chest and raised her shoulders up and down several times. “Only to the good songs.”

We sat around the coffee table on huge silk pillows and dined on tandoori chicken and saffron rice. Joe even sacrificed some of his brownies for dessert. While Bernadette queued up the DVD player, Joe joined me in the kitchen.

“The plates are to the right of the sink, and the forks are in the drawer under them, do you mind?” My fingers were covered in chocolate crumbs. I wanted to lick them off, but instead rinsed my hands in the sink.

He placed the dessert plates on the counter and opened the drawer next to the sink.

“Wrong drawer,” I said and pointed to the one directly under the cabinet that held the plates.

He whistled and pointed to the Glock .40 caliber pistol resting amongst notepads, pens and miscellaneous junk. “I’d say the wrong drawer.” He cocked his eyebrow in silent question, but I ignored him. He paused for a second, but the brownies proved more interesting than the Glock, and he followed me into the living room.

Bernadette, the resident Bollywood aficionado, had paused the movie on the liveliest and craziest of dances. She knew most of the dance steps and encouraged Joe and me to try. My sense of rhythm, or lack thereof, resulted in me tripping over my feet.

Joe’s attempts made me look graceful and elegant. His shoulders shuddered, and his feet shuffled. His hands pointed in every direction but the correct one. It didn’t matter. His ability to laugh at his own awkwardness kept Bernadette and I encouraging him for more.

I couldn’t help but think of how Ray would’ve handled the situation. He would’ve cursed India and forbade me to watch any more Bollywood movies

Joe had to work in the morning, so he didn’t linger after the movies. After he left, I asked Bernadette, “Why’d you ask him to stay?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t want him here?”

“It’s not that, but you usually don’t hang out with the cops much.”

“That’s true, but you should.” She smiled. “He’s single and you have to admit he’s pretty easy on the eyes.”

“You’re trying to set me up?” I asked, shocked.

“One of us needs to get laid, and since you’re not interested in what I have to offer...”

“I do not need a man in my life.” I still hadn’t recovered from the last one, but I’d never explained my reason for wanting to remain man-free to her. And I never would.

****

We live in a nine-to-five world which makes working the midnight shift a challenge. On my days off, I tried to stay on my graveyard schedule otherwise I spent my first days back to work in a vat of coffee.

There isn’t much to do in Barrow, Alaska, at one A.M. or noon for that matter, which gives a person prone to fretting way too much time to do just that. Mama’s e-mail kept flashing through my mind. I doubted she would find me or track down the money, but I was curious about how’d she go about…how was it she phrased it? “We’ll find her and we’ll find the money and I swear to God if it isn’t all there, I’ll find a way to make her earn it back.”

With a quick prayer to the hacker gods, I signed onto a proxy server in Finland, which rerouted my connection to Denmark, Thailand and finally Brazil, then I accessed Ray’s hard drive.

The silly man. His web searches were so predictable. He’d gone to several people-finder websites and looked for variations of my name in every state in the Union. Apparently, there was a woman about my age in Delaware named Maggie Shawe who Ray thoroughly investigated. As if I’d be stupid enough to think adding an “e” to my last name would equal an alias.

Judging from his computer’s internet history, he’d done a search once a month since my disappearance. I loved the fact that he even checked Facebook. I could see my profile page. Before and after pictures of me—one with a straight nose and chestnut hair, the other one showcasing my smashed nostrils, caved-in cheek bone and mousy brown hair. Status: In hiding from an abusive prick of a husband. Relationship: Single and would rather die than trust a man again.

What an idiot. How did I ever find the moron attractive to begin with? His mental prowess hadn’t wowed me. I honestly couldn’t think of a single reason why I let him in my life. Sure, he was pleasant enough in his pre-drug-lord phase. The sex was a few woohoos above average, and he was romantic in a big-burly-he-man cop sort of way. There’s nothing like receiving a Browning White Lightning 12-gauge shotgun for Valentine’s Day to warm a girl’s heart.

I had friends and co-workers to fill the need for intellectual stimulation. They were harder to leave than Ray. When I thought about our relationship, I could see the tell-tale signs of impending domestic abuse such as his attempts to isolate me from friends. But I was too smart and independent to fall victim to his violence. Abuse only happened to weak women, so I ignored the signs.

The first time he hit me, I smeared on tons of makeup to cover the bruises on my face and went to work. My co-workers questioned me and showed concern, but believed me when I gave the age-old, I-ran-into-a-door explanation. Maggie Shaw would never be in one of those relationships.

The third black eye prompted my assistant, Agnes, to slip a flyer for a women’s shelter into a stack of reports that required my signature. By then, I’d already planned my escape.

Following the investigation into my disappearance, I discovered that my friends and co-workers begged the police to change the status of my case from “missing person” to a “homicide.” From the many police reports I’d read during the first few months of the search for me, I discovered that only Ray and Mama failed to mention the bruises. But the police needed more. Even though my friends were convinced Ray had killed me there was no evidence of foul play.

Many, many times I’d wanted to reach out to some of my friends to let them know I wasn’t dead, to ease their pain of my loss, but I knew if I did, somehow, someway, Ray would know.

By the time Ray hit me for the fifth time, I’d figured things out. I realized that if I left every time he attacked me, he’d have all the power. Instead of establishing a hit-disappear pattern, I took matters into my own hands. Regardless of how he treated me, I’d leave. Sometimes I’d be gone for a couple of nights—sometimes it would be a week or two. He never knew when I would leave and never knew when I’d pop back into his life. It left him totally unbalanced.

This little trick resulted in big trouble for Ray when I made our separation permanent.

No matter how bruised or where I laid my head at night, I never missed a day of work. When I left for good, I purposefully departed on a Monday afternoon. When I didn’t show up to work on Tuesday, Agnes called the house. Clueless, Ray cited illness for my absence. Friday morning, when I still hadn’t returned to work, Agnes called the police.

The fact that Ray, a police officer, hadn’t reported his wife missing to his brothers in blue led to intense speculation and investigation.

By the following Monday afternoon, the cops landed on Mama’s porch...just about the time the garden shed exploded.

An hour later, Mama was in jail.

Never much of a cook, Mama made Ray brew all the batches of meth they sold. Several times, I overheard them discussing different recipes and how to tweak it for better profit. Being an undercover cop working narcotics resulted in Ray’s overconfidence in his abilities. Every time he arrested a new producer, he’d try their product. I’ll never forget the glee in his eyes the night he arrested the purveyor of the “best fucking moon juice” in the region. He and Mama sat at my kitchen table and pored over the recipe Ray had beaten out of the twenty-three-year-old grad student.

It never occurred to Ray that a kid getting his master’s degree in industrial engineering would be smarter than he was. That extra dash of phosphorus made the batch more volatile than usual. When he heard the police vehicles pull into the driveway, Ray stepped out of the garden shed. Unfortunately, he’d left Bulldog behind washing Sudafed with ether for the next batch to be made.

Ray stepped out of the shed seconds before it blew.

Ray’s presence at the scene could easily be explained. His wife was missing, and he was visiting his mother-in-law. He could identify Bulldog because he worked narcotics. The fact that his mother-in-law had a meth lab in her backyard and the undercover narcotics cop didn’t notice somehow slipped the attention of the investigating officers.