The next morning, Emma had a talk with Angela, who bravely reassured her that she could suffer through a few days of being indulged and spoiled rotten by her doting family. A phone call to Penny had satisfied Emma that she would be happy to take on the bulk of child care while Emma was gone for a few days. They very carefully did not bring up the question of Grant.
Emma packed a few changes of clothing, rolled up the red canvas that represented Paul and put it in her suitcase, tucked her brother’s address book into her purse and charged an airline ticket to Los Angeles.
She hadn’t told her grandparents — or anyone else, for that matter — exactly what she planned to do, although she thought it was probably obvious that she meant to travel to Los Angeles and learn what she could about her brother, his living and his dying, by talking to his friends, his boss, anyone who might have something to say.
But before doing any of that, she intended to talk to Grant. That was the part she was most careful not to say to anyone. She could say, I’m doing it because I think he can help me find out more about Paul’s death. But anyone would wonder if there was more to it than that. Wonder, and worry, and be right to do it. She had reasons for wanting to talk to Grant: He lived in LA and knew his way around. He worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He would have connections with the local police. Perhaps he would have answers or at least be able to tell her where to find them.
But counting the reasons off on her fingers still didn’t tell her if consulting Grant was a good idea or a bad one. Her motives and intentions were obscure, even to herself, and she supposed that was the most telling thing, and the most compelling reason to leave him alone until she could say why she wanted to see him.
You weren’t supposed to leave.
The city fell away beneath the plane, then mile after mile of fields and prairie. She could guess it probably wasn’t wise to go to him now, no matter how much she told herself it was about Paul. That was the reason she didn’t call him first. She’d rather take him by surprise. She didn’t fool herself into thinking he’d be pleased to hear from her, but it was harder to close the door in someone’s face than to hang up the phone. If she were standing on his doorstep, there would be a pause, and in that pause would be possibility.
Maybe, anyway.
She wouldn’t say, “I need your help to do this,” but he would know, he understood her all right. He would stand there and watch and remember. At first, she’d liked it that way; it was flattering. That was before she knew he was just being a detective, and watching her was just a habit. In the beginning. In the beginning when there had been the three of them. Other people started with two, but in their beginning there had been three, Grant and Emma and Angela. He’d taken the infant into his arms and said, “She looks like my mother,” and Emma said, “Let’s name her Angela then,” for Penny’s given name, and that was the beginning of their small peace. The following weekend they were married. Paul sent a sympathy card. Her grandparents were perplexed and baffled, but they kept their feelings to themselves.
That had been a long time ago, and everything was different now.
• • •
Almost before she knew it, Emma was stumbling out of the airport and into the afternoon sunlight. She set her watch back and more quickly than she would have expected, she was checking into her inexpensive hotel near the airport. Paul would have loved the Travelodge with its “Free Bear Bites Breakfast!” The lack of irony, the missing self-awareness — he could see those flaws in everything, including himself. How many times had she wished he wouldn’t turn that razor-sharp intellect against himself? Cutting his soul with self-loathing until it hung in tatters.
She changed her clothes, then shoved her suitcase into the tiny closet. She brushed her hair and washed her face, the mechanical actions staving off the inevitable. Then, before her nerve could fail, she left her room, summoned a taxi and recited the address that Grant had given her when he’d left for the coast, making her write it down, like she might send him letters sometimes. Or perhaps he had known all along she would turn up someday, needing him.
She gnawed on her lower lip the whole way there, an apartment complex in Glendale, the place where — a moment’s idle research a while back had revealed — the Bob’s Big Boy burger chain got its start. Another thing that would have amused Paul had she shared it with him. Grant’s moved to Glendale. Home of Bob’s Big Boy burger chain. But she hadn’t felt like laughing at anything at the time, not even herself.
The taxi pulled up in front of an unprepossessing building, and at first Emma didn’t want to get out despite this having been her brilliant idea in the first place. It wasn’t the building that was so off-putting, although it was something of an eyesore — it was who the building contained that gave her pause.
Finally, the taxi driver turned around to face her, said something in a language she didn’t understand, then added, “You getting out or not?”
She guessed she was getting out, so she paid him and did. When the taxi driver took off with an exasperated squeal of tires, she wished she’d stayed in the backseat. Abandoned again, left to her own devices. Her own fault, again. She hadn’t gotten here accidentally.
Grant closing the suitcase, shrugging into the suit jacket he always wore. It’s what you want, isn’t it, Emma? Staring at him, knowing it was impossible to say the truth: You’re not supposed to leave, you’re supposed to stay no matter what.
The entrance door thudded shut behind her. She found herself in a clean, well-kept lobby. The subdued lighting revealed groupings of freshly reupholstered chairs and dark wood side tables that clearly no one ever used, all tastefully arranged on the polished wood floor. Woven rugs were scattered here and there; they had been chosen with care by someone who had a nice eye for color. A low walnut desk squatted in the corner. Against one wall stood a row of mailboxes, incongruous considering the pseudo-living-room surroundings, the flat silver metal locked boxes contrasting with the creamy wallpaper and the plush upholstery and the polished paneling. Presumably a manager or security guard was supposed to be on duty behind the low walnut desk, or used to be before budget cuts affected everyone in the known universe. No one was there now. A camera in the corner of the ceiling made a poor substitute for a live body, and Emma was surprised the interior hadn’t been vandalized before now. The unlocked front door and expensive interior practically invited someone to spray-paint graffiti on the walls and throw empty Jäger bottles in the corner.
Emma inhaled deeply, like a surfeit of oxygen would bolster her flagging courage. A stiff vodka, that was the ticket. Too bad the Travelodge didn’t boast amenities like an in-room minibar. She walked to the elevator, a glass-and-chrome affair that looked like a well-kept relic of an earlier Art Deco period, but which was obviously a reproduction thereof. Someone had spent a lot of money on this place. She wondered how Grant could afford it on a government salary. But of course the economy sucked for everyone, including apartment building owners, and maybe the rent they could squeeze from Grant was better than nothing.
She got into the elevator, pressed the appropriate button, and listened as the elevator hummed its way to the third floor. Apartment 308, according to the address he’d made her write down. Her stomach was telling her that it had decided this was a bad idea, after all.
The elevator doors hissed open and she took a tentative step forward. Almost immediately, the doors hissed shut behind her, almost grabbing her elbow. She started, letting out a small sound of distress. Paul would have laughed at her nerves. It’s just Grant, he would have said. Grant, who used to slay dragons in the kingdom of their childhood. But he had outgrown the magic a long time ago, long before Emma ever had.
You were never supposed to leave. You were supposed to be loyal and true no matter what.
She had said to Paul, when the echo of the slamming door was still fresh in her mind, He wasn’t supposed to leave. To which Paul had snorted, What are you, Emma? Twelve?
He had outgrown the magic, too, and she’d wished someone had told her it was gone and then she wouldn’t have had to find it out the hard way.
The hall was carpeted in a subdued, understated silver plush. Not tan or white but silver. What, she wondered, did silver mean? Good or bad? Suddenly it was very important to know. She stopped in the middle of the hall, not able to go any further without knowing. A panic, familiar and unwelcome, caught at her, froze her in place. She forced herself to take a few calming breaths. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real, the way she perceived colors. It was just a story she told herself, to make sense of the world, to organize it around her.
Good or bad?
Arguing with herself had never made a damned bit of difference. She took a gulping breath and forced herself to think. Silver was a neutral color. It was useful; they made jewelry and flatware out of it. But it was in essence neutral. It didn’t skitter along her nerves. It was neutral; it was nothing. She was sure of it. Not a color like deep purple, the symbol of royalty and self-deception; not a color like blood-red, that you should steer clear of — supposing you could.
She walked slowly down the silver hall like a child bound for the principal’s office. At the far end, after she had walked the entire length of the hall, she found his apartment number. She stood in front of his apartment door. It was a Monday, late afternoon, but that didn’t mean he would be home. When he was in the department, the day shift had ended at 4 P.M., but the DEA wasn’t the police department, and there was no telling what shift he was on. She didn’t think he was undercover, but how did she know? Maybe he would be gone for weeks, in deep with some cartel, speaking Spanish like he was born to it and not the product of an immersion course.
No sounds issued from behind the door. Maybe he was out, at work, or grocery shopping or having a drink with a colleague and she could leave. She tugged at her self-control, reminded herself that she’d flown hundreds of miles for a reason and she needed Grant’s help in fulfilling it. She stood there, half-hoping she would leave, but she didn’t. There was always the danger that he would mistake her intention. Think she was here to say Come back home. But she would never say those words. If he wanted to come back home, there was no one stopping him. There never had been.
What are you, Emma? Twelve?
She lifted her hand and knocked on the door. Maybe she should have stopped off at a liquor store and fortified herself with that shot of vodka before coming here. The Irish had saying, better to be drunk than the way you are.
Her knock was met with silence. He wasn’t there. Fine. She didn’t need him anyway. She was pivoting away, relieved and annoyed, when she heard footsteps moving behind the closed door. He would recognize her if she went sprinting down the hall, and inevitably that would cause painful questions. Which meant she was trapped, so she turned back toward the door and faced it squarely, bravely.
The door swung open and Grant stood there. Her stomach gave a sick lurch and whatever she had intended to say fell out of her mind, gone, forever.
Grant was tall, taller than Paul. Paul had always been thin; he’d worked out as a teenager, trying to acquire some of the build Grant came by naturally. Paul’s face had always been mobile and sensitive; you could tell the mood he was in just by looking at his face. Grant had always been hard to read, something that all the years of police work had only reinforced. He didn’t know it, but when he grinned, his eyes crinkled up unexpectedly and it made you like him. But he wasn’t smiling now. He was looking at Emma with those gray eyes that saw too much and forgave very little of it.
He hadn’t always been that way. And she could hardly blame him for what he had become. He leaned a little into the door and said, “I’m sorry about your brother.” Remote, correct, not surprised to see her here.
There was a time when Paul’s death would have torn him to pieces. But a lot of years had passed between then and now.
Emma nodded, licking her dry lips. She still couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He must have been curious about why she’d simply shown up at his door, but he didn’t ask. He just said, “Come on in, Emma.”
You were supposed to come back home.
She went in to his apartment and he gestured toward the living room, vaguely, locking the door behind her before following her into the room. He was wearing a gray suit, nicely made, unobtrusive, the jacket folded over the back of a chair. She used to tell him he screamed, “Law Enforcement Personnel,” so he stopped wearing such narrow ties. He still looked exactly like a cop.
She glanced around the room. He should have asked the lobby designer to give him a hand. His living room looked like he’d opened a random page in an Ethan Allen catalog and ordered exactly what he saw, like a model house in a new housing development, open to the public, neat and clean, tasteful and sterile. You would think no one lived here. All it lacked was the plastic sheeting to protect the carpets from all the Parade of Homes voyeurs.
She took a seat in the light green wing chair by the window. Mint green: mostly harmless. The chair was more comfortable than it looked. It had been a mistake, coming here. She could tell that from the look on his face. He was hard to read but not impossible, not after all the years she’d known him.
He looked at her for a minute and said, “I could use a drink. How about you?”
The time for vodka for courage had passed. Now she wanted to keep her wits about her. She shook her head and he shrugged and went into the kitchen. Ice clinked in a glass, liquid splashed. She knew it was whisky; she knew what kind. Turning twenty-one and going into the liquor store legally to get the bottle for his birthday. Angela had been just a baby then and she’d slept all through the night while they celebrated.
Emma wished she’d said yes to the drink.
He came back into the room and sat on the leather sofa across from her, the glass in his hand. He took a sip. “So what brings you here?” he asked in what Emma supposed he thought was a genial tone of voice or at least a neutral one. “I wasn’t expecting a waif today.”
Starting on the offensive. Just in case she was in danger of mistaking him for the man she wanted him to be.
“Where’s Angela?”
As if she couldn’t be trusted to make appropriate arrangements.
I didn’t mean anything by it. How often had he told her that?
Then stop asking me questions like you don’t trust my judgment.
It’s just a question, Emma. Tired, turning away.
But there was no such thing as just a question when people had this much history between them.
It took her a moment to say, “I left her sitting in the lobby.” If the words had been chocolate bunnies, she would have bitten their heads off. Then, because it was possible Grant would believe a thing like that, she added, “She’s with Penny and my grandparents.”
“I haven’t seen her in a long time,” Grant said.
Which meant what?
She shifted impatiently and leaned forward. “You can see her anytime you want, you know that. You’re the one who moved to LA.” We’re the ones who screwed up. I’m the one who screwed up. Why do we have to take it out on her? That was an old argument and a tired one and she hadn’t come all this way just to have it again. “Look, Grant, I’m not here about that. I’m here because of my brother.”
“I know.”
Then why ask? She shook her head. He wanted her to say it, to tell him: I need your help, Grant. The kind of thing she despised saying and he knew it. I want you. Isn’t that better than needing you?
The evening light slanted in through the blinds, throwing narrow shadows onto the carpet, the blinds bathed in kind of a milky glow. The kind of play of light that was practically impossible to capture in a painting. She glanced at Grant. The hand cupping his glass shook slightly. His knuckles were white, the only sign that he wasn’t perfectly at ease.
“He was your best friend,” Emma said, supposing that was the cause of his tension. The ice in his glass was melting and the little drops of condensation against the outside of the glass seemed real in a way that the fact of her sitting here in Grant’s living room did not.
“I miss him,” he admitted quietly.
She didn’t know what he wanted from her. What did he expect her to say? I do, too? She didn’t have to say it for him to know it. Grant hadn’t come to the funeral, owing to the fact that he’d been extraditing some criminal from Mexico City at the time. He hadn’t even called, just sent a text from his phone. She was just as glad he hadn’t come, because the years had been so destructive, and they could never turn over the memories in the same way anymore, Do you remember when? Laughing and crying, giving Paul the wake he deserved instead of the one he got, the old people patting each other’s hands and saying, Such a shame and thinking, At least now he can’t cause them any more pain.
Grant’s cell phone rang from the pocket of the jacket he’d tossed across the chair. She started, then laughed at her nerves, but her voice shook. It wasn’t that amusing to be this tense over a situation she’d made herself. Grant glanced at her, fished the phone out of the jacket pocket and left the room to talk. She couldn’t hear the conversation, and she reminded herself that however it might appeal to her, eavesdropping would only irritate and alienate him further.
After a few minutes, during which time she patiently congratulated herself on her hard-won virtues, he returned.
“I have to leave,” he said abruptly, giving no other explanation. He took his glass into the kitchen where she could hear him dumping it down the sink.
“I have to talk to you — ” she said, getting to her feet as he came back from the kitchen.
He shrugged into his suit jacket. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, turning away from her. She stopped where she was, dropping her appeal. There was no arguing with him, not once he’d gone cop on her. She sighed and told him where she was staying. His only reaction was to raise a brow. She had to look at the paper folder the room keycard had come in to tell him the room number and this made him smile for the first time.
“Some things never change,” he said, and for a moment, she almost believed that could really be true.
• • •
Emma ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, a Denny’s, not ready to tackle the city any more than she already had. Paul’s city, and she was alone. Denny’s was easy and comforting: they had them at home and Grandmother and Grandfather counted the local one among their favorite restaurants.
Though she didn’t like to admit it, seeing Grant had demoralized her and somehow drained her energy. She’d envisioned any number of possible scenes with him, none of which had taken place. It was somewhat disappointing to prepare yourself for any eventuality when none of them actually happened.
She wrestled with her entrée, which purported to be grilled tilapia, though she had her doubts. What was tilapia supposed to taste like, anyway? She gave up on the dish halfway through and put her knife down. She ate the herbed rice and all the bread on the table, then hiccupped behind her napkin and swallowed a glass of water.
The thin gray waiter wafted over again and suggested desolately that she might care for dessert. She agreed, which made him flick a wan smile in her direction. Angela would have held out for chocolate cake, but Emma had a tendency to roundness when she wasn’t watching what she ate, so she settled for raspberry sorbet instead, and missed Angela.
She finished her dessert and paid the check and tipped the gray waiter more than he deserved, knowing perfectly well even as she did so that he carried on desolately for the express purpose of getting bigger tips.
It was still early when she finished and returned to her room. If her brother had been alive, he would have taken her all over LA and its environs, showing off his city, bringing her to meet his friends at underground clubs, heedless of time, but carefully conserving money. There would have been a sense of general hilarity, but also of connection and meaning. Everything had meaning once Paul got hold of it. He saw things through to their essence, saw their absurdity and their profundity.
Emma knew she could have ventured out herself. She wasn’t afraid, but she didn’t know where to go or what to do and she didn’t have anyone to do it with. She didn’t have Paul to do it with.
She switched on the bedside lamp and opened one of the magazines she’d bought at the airport gift shop. She’d expected to feel a lot of things on her arrival in LA. Loss, certainly. Anger, probably. Frustration, yes. Anxiety, of course. She just hadn’t expected to feel so lonely.
• • •
Grant knocked on her hotel room door early the next morning. When she growled at him, he told her in a brusque voice through the closed door that it was already a quarter to seven. She gave a sleepy blink and groped for the clock on the nightstand. He was right. Another of their many differences: she wasn’t a morning person even when she did get a good night’s sleep.
“Give me a minute,” she grumbled, then dragged herself out of bed. She showered and dressed as quickly as she could, knowing Grant’s patience would only extend so far, especially if he had to stand out in a hallway. She had just finished buttoning her shirt when he knocked on the door again.
“I brought coffee,” he called, which explained why he’d remained suspiciously quiet while she was digging for underwear in her suitcase. She peeped through the door viewer and saw the Starbucks cups in his hands. She unchained the door and eased it open. He handed her one of the cups without a word. She took a grateful sip and set the cup on the dresser, then reached for her brush. Grant shut the door behind him and locked it. Safety first. Then he went over to the window and opened the curtains, the sunlight flooding the room. The morning ritual was familiar, normal, like he had never left, like she had never started out alone.
“What’s on your mind?” He glanced at his watch as if to remind her that he had other things to do.
She fiddled with the hairbrush. It was hard to start, to say what was wrong. Everything was wrong, but why wouldn’t it be? Paul was dead. Grant had that gray impatient look on his face, so she started abruptly, setting the hairbrush down on the dresser with a clatter.
“When Paul died, it wasn’t — people have accidents. I know that. So it was hard and I didn’t want to believe it, but — it is what it is, you know? A bad thing that happened. The way bad things do.”
She stopped to collect a breath. This was the hard part, the part that he might not understand, and if he didn’t then the rest of it didn’t matter. “He’d been staying at this woman’s place, this friend’s apartment, instead of his own. I don’t know if he had his own place. I haven’t found it, if he did.” She realized that she was getting away from the point, talking around it instead of directly saying it. She took another breath. “This friend brought his belongings to us. To Grandmother.” She tried not to think of the paucity of Paul’s possessions, how a man his age could have so little, a life that could be lived out of the trunk of a car.
“He had a gun, Grant,” she said. “Like the one you used to carry.”
A pause. “I still do.”
Impatience made Emma grit her teeth. What did it matter if Grant still carried? Then she realized with a shock what he had noticed: that she thought of him in the past tense, like he was the one who was dead. In the past tense, in a way she couldn’t think of her brother yet.
She tried to tell him what it meant. “It scared me.” More than that, it was so different from what she knew about her brother, who wasn’t — and had never been — a violent man. Even if he was scared. She picked up the coffee cup but her stomach was already churning and coffee wouldn’t help soothe her agitation. She set it back down.
“He lived in a bad part of town,” Grant said mildly.
Dammit. She wished it were the kind of thing that would be susceptible to logic and rational thinking. But it wasn’t. How could she explain? Of course she couldn’t. There was no way she was going to be able to tell him. She was going to have to show him.
She walked over to the tiny closet and took out the suitcase she’d jammed inside the day before. Without giving herself time to think, she set it on the bed, snapped open the clasps and took out the red canvas painting of her brother. It hadn’t been clear to her, at the time, why she’d packed it, why she’d brought it with her all this way, but it was clear now. It was her proof. She unrolled the canvas and turned it toward him.
“I finally painted Paul.”
Grant looked at the painting. He didn’t make any comment. Then he turned those gray eyes to her, having seen all he needed to see. He didn’t ask a question, not with his voice, not in words.
“It’s ugly,” she said. “I haven’t finished most of what I’ve started this summer because they’re all so ugly. But this is the ugliest. It bothers me, Grant. That I could make something that ugly about my brother.”
Grant, his eyes still averted from the red canvas, said only, “Promise me you’ll never paint my portrait.”
Of all the possible responses available to him, of course he would pick that one. She didn’t bother reassuring him that she had no intention of making him the subject of any of her work, just put the painting back in the suitcase, set it in the corner of the closet, then carefully shut the door, making sure the latch caught as it clicked closed. Like she didn’t want it getting out on its own. She turned to Grant, her back to the closet door, her spine tingling until she moved away and sat down on the bed.
“It obviously disturbs you,” Grant said. Apparently it went without saying that it obviously disturbed him, too. “Why don’t you get rid of it?”
If only. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
As if everything would be okay if she just put the painting in the nearest dumpster. She looked up at him, the fatigue on his face, the way his body said, I don’t want to be here and yet here he was.
“I don’t know why not,” she said.
He blew out a puff of air, then sat down on the chair near the window. He fixed his tie. He didn’t challenge her statement; he never did when he knew she believed something. “What now?” he asked.
“What now?” She blinked and leaned back on the heels of her hands. She hadn’t thought about what happened next, after she consulted with Grant. She had gotten as far as Step 1: Talk to Grant. Somehow it had eluded her that she might need a Step 2. She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t understand about the gun.”
Grant shifted. He looked as if he were going to say something, but then he didn’t.
She arched a brow in his direction. “Do you understand?”
“Understand? No. I can make guesses.”
She gave a nod. She could make guesses, too. But none of that explained the thing in the closet, that she had made. “I don’t know what to do,” she said, and this time she made it a question.
He must have known what she was asking, because he said, “Do you want me to talk to his friend? The one who brought you his things?”
“I’ve already talked to her.”
Grant said patiently, “But I haven’t,” as if that made all the difference. Maybe it did.
Emma thought it over. She had come to him for his help, after all, and he was willing to give it, at least a limited amount. She didn’t even know the right questions to ask or who to ask them of. Grant talking to one of Paul’s friends didn’t have to be a big thing. It didn’t mean she would owe him when it was done, that there would be some sort of obligation afterward. So that was good. She had better get clear of him before she started owing him anything. The way she thought of it, he still owed her a little, not much, but a little, and she didn’t want the bar tilting the other way.
She sighed. There was a time in her life when she hadn’t had to weigh the consequences of every little thing. When she just took them, whatever they were, and held off complaining. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’d appreciate it.”
“What’s her number?”
Ah. No time like the present. Grant was always a now person, never one for deferring anything. He had plans and goals, she supposed, but he was always focused on the thing he had to do now to reach that goal, and he hardly ever looked up to see how close he was getting. Different from Paul, so full of dreams but never any way of seeing them come true.
“It’s in the red binder,” she said, pointing to the table at his elbow. She retrieved her coffee cup from the top of the dresser. It was lukewarm now, verging on cool. She took a gulp anyway. Dealing with Grant when she was half asleep put her at a disadvantage.
“A binder?” he demanded. “This is his? What’s in it?”
“It’s just an address book,” she told him. “There’s nothing in it except the phone numbers and addresses of his friends.” She would have liked it to be more, to contain a final message from him, as if he would somehow have known he was going. If he’d left her a message, he would have written it in code, like he had done the winter she was nine. Of course, Paul had made her be the Russian spy. Had Grant played that game with them? Sometimes, looking at him, it was hard to remember he had ever played at all.
“What’s the friend’s name?” he asked, opening the bright red cover and leafing through the binder.
“Grant,” she said, pointing to the clock on the nightstand, “it’s seven-fifteen.” He didn’t seriously think a friend of Paul’s would be awake this early in the morning, did he?
He looked at her as if she were just stating facts for no apparent reason: the Nile is 4,145 miles long, James Madison was the fourth American president.
“I’ll call her,” she gave in. “She doesn’t know who you are. Maybe if I explain — ” Although what was she going to say about Grant? I have no idea why I think he can help, but I do? Feel free to spill any secrets I should know but that you kept from me.
She held out her hand for the binder and he surrendered it. She found Linda’s number, then set the binder on the bed beside her. Linda was probably still asleep, her red shoes in a heap by her bed. If she was anything like Paul, she’d unplugged her phone before going to sleep. But she unexpectedly answered on the first ring, her voice awake and alert. Tense.
“Linda,” Emma said. “It’s me, Paul’s sister.”
“Emma,” the tension in Linda’s voice sharpened. “Where are you?”
The quick, agitated demand made Emma freeze.
“Emma? Is there any way you can come out here? Or I can — ”
“I’m in LA,” Emma interjected. “Do you need me?”
“Yes,” Linda said, her voice high-pitched, strained. “Please come — as soon as you can. I’m at my place — ”
“I have your address,” Emma said. The pit of her stomach hurt. Linda was in distress, maybe even in despair. Maybe she couldn’t stand waiting for him to come home anymore, knowing he never would. Distress, possibly despair — but why did Emma think it sounded like fear?
“I would have called — I tried your grandparents,” Linda said, her voice even thinner and more high-pitched. “They didn’t answer. I didn’t know your number — I need to see you.”
“I can be there right away,” Emma said, trying to soothe her. She wasn’t surprised Linda hadn’t reached her grandparents; they hadn’t been answering the phone much at all since Paul’s death, letting voicemail deal with the deluge of well-meaning callers. But surely she wasn’t this upset just because they hadn’t answered the phone. Something else was going on. What? Was her urgency just her way of grieving, the way she dealt with sorrow? Or did she feel suicidal?
“Will you be okay until I get there?” Emma asked, meaning, Is the razor blade in your hand yet?
“I’ll be waiting,” Linda said. “I’ll call in sick to work.”
She didn’t sound suicidal. She sounded bone-deep afraid. “I’ll be there,” Emma said and hung up. She swept the binder into her shoulder bag, then turned to Grant and said, “I’m going to go over there. She’s pretty upset, says she needs to see me.”
Grant was on his feet. “Why?”
Emma shook her head. “I don’t know, but I told her I’d come.” She found her shoes under the table and slipped them on. “She sounds like she’s afraid, Grant.”
Grant gave her a measuring look. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “We can take my car.”
There’d never been any percentage in arguing with him. Plus, he was offering transportation, which she’d otherwise have to arrange. That was classic Grant: telling you what was going to happen, whether you liked it or not, then offering something good to sweeten the deal. Maybe some day he’d learn to offer the carrot first.
When they got to the motel parking lot, Grant pointed out his car, a gray Buick sedan, a couple years old. Someday the DEA was going to figure out that sending agents undercover in GM cars was like advertising “undercover cop.” But the federal government was probably a lot like Grant: hard to change.
Then he handed her his keys and climbed into the passenger side without saying another word to her. Symbolically turning things over to her? Or too tired to drive? When he scrunched up in the corner and closed his eyes for a little nap, her question was answered. How late had he been up? What had he been doing? Law enforcement things, whatever they were. What his work consisted of had never been a topic of conversation between them before and she wasn’t going to make it one now. If she’d ever wanted to know, what he did, what drove him, that time was in the past.
She missed her exit the first time, so she took the next one, then circled back around. Grant woke up and stretched, then asked, “Need any help navigating?”
Snoring when she needed him, wide awake when she didn’t. Still, she wasn’t familiar with the city, so she told him the street address and he nodded, took a moment to get his bearings, and said, “You’ll want to take a right at the next light.”
She did, watching the rows of houses fall away, an unfamiliar city in late spring. It might as well have been Iceland. Did she really think she would find her brother here? Or any answers to her questions? Why did he have to die? was an existential question. The only practical answer was everyone dies. There would be no satisfaction, no easing of her bewilderment and pain to be found here. Although maybe she’d had to come to find that out.
“What is it?” Grant asked.
“Nothing.” She made the denial automatically. There was no comfort Grant could give her. Not anymore.
You can’t keep everyone safe from the truth.
The long gray beginning of the end. She hadn’t noticed at the time, or understood what was happening. But he had wanted her to spill the truth out like carving open her flesh, he wanted her to flay herself alive and she knew she couldn’t tell him the truth anymore, either, because he used it like a weapon.
If you don’t tell them, I will.
A long time ago, now. But the truth was pitiless, and when you were just human and not an abstraction, the embodiment of virtue, you didn’t want to cause suffering, you didn’t want to cause pain.
I thought you’d grown up, Emma. Grant, not so long ago. Apparently I was wrong.
Emma sighed. She had never learned if you could tell the truth with kindness in it.
“What is it?” Grant asked again.
If you don’t tell them, I will.
But was that long-ago confrontation a reason not to speak now? She had come here for his help, after all.
“There is something,” she said. She took a breath. “The week before he died, Paul called me and asked me to come and see him.” Her voice rose a little on the last words. She broke off and tamped down the tears that wanted to start. Then, with a shrug: “So here I am. A little late.”
Grant didn’t say anything, which was more comforting than anything he could have said. After a moment, he asked, “Did he tell you why he wanted you to come?”
Emma shook her head, staring straight ahead. “No. He didn’t say. He never asked me to come visit him before. I knew that meant it was important, but I — oh, dammit, Grant. It would have overloaded my Visa, what was I going to do with Angela, what did he need me for these days?” She smacked the heel of her hand against the steering wheel, wanting to put her fist through something; a wall, the guilt.
Grant touched her shoulder. “Stop the car, Emma. Here, just pull over at the curb. That’s fine.”
She did as he said, a strangled laugh escaping her as she put the car in park. She always did what he said, because he was so reasonable about it, because arguing with him was like trying to convince a mountain to shift a little to the left.
She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel. She’d spent her life being told what to do. She’d dreamed of escaping, like Paul, but she never got further than five miles away. It was never cruel or mean-spirited. It was anxious, old-fashioned. Stifling and suffocating, when she wanted to reach for the stars. Smothering her, enfolding her in their love, until she couldn’t breathe and she fought —
But how could you hurt people you loved? How could you not see they only did it because they wanted you to be safe? And how could you not be safe when it was the only thing that assuaged them, when it as the only thing that kept Grandfather from pacing down the hall a hundred times a night, glancing into the room to make sure you were safe, that you hadn’t been stolen away in the night like all their other children.
Then college, a scholarship, hope —
I’m pregnant, Grant.
Then we’ll get married.
She wiped the tears away with her fingers. She could have said no. She could have followed Paul. Only Paul was gone, now. How would they survive it?
“Tell me,” Grant said. He didn’t try to touch her or offer his shoulder to cry on, or promise that everything was going to be all right. He was the truth, hard and remote. A thing of beauty, for all she knew.
He hesitated, then pushed further. “That bothers you, his calling just before — ”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t know he was going to die.”
He didn’t know he was going to die. Of course that was how Grant thought of it; it was a bad thing that happened one night in the rain. He’d been a cop too long for there to be an existential question. For him, why would always be a pragmatic question, even though he didn’t work homicide and never had.
In this case, it was a question that had already been answered. Paul didn’t know he was going to die, he didn’t know there would be a slick spot on the road and the bridge looming up in front of him. Emma knew his moment of disbelief as the car spun out of control, the panic surging through him when he saw he would not stop in time, and heard the sounds of twisting, tearing metal, and then the utter silence after. She lived it over and over in her nightmares, blood-red nightmares.
Accidents happened. She knew that. She also knew the shadow of what he left behind stood in the corner by the pantry and hovered in the hallway, trying to tell her something. If only she could hear what it was. If she hoped to end the nightmares, she had something left to do.
She had buried her brother, but stood forever on the edge of the open earth, wet and gaping, looking down at the closed casket. There wasn’t even time for one last goodbye. It wasn’t goodbye when you had to say it through an inch of steel. So she asked Why?
And Grant thought he could answer her by saying, He didn’t know he was going to die.
“How do you know that?” she asked, out of anger, biting the words off. “Maybe he did know he was going to die. You have no idea what he was thinking at the end. You weren’t there for him, either.” The words hung in the air and she immediately regretted saying them. It wasn’t Grant’s fault that she couldn’t accept a bad thing that happened one night in the rain.
Grant looked at her for a long time, cars passing them in the road, people doing ordinary things. Going to work, to the grocery store. “You think Paul committed suicide?” he finally asked.
She could see he had already considered the possibility even as he said he didn’t know he was going to die.
“I don’t know,” Emma said. There was a time when her answer would have been I can’t imagine him killing himself, but she couldn’t say that with any assurance now. What did she really know about Paul and the life he lived in the weeks and months before his death? If he had lost a lover, as Linda had implied, it was possible he’d fallen into despair, as Grandfather would put it. Hopelessness was the kind of thing that made you slow to react when a bridge loomed up in front of you. It didn’t even have to be a thing you did, like firing a pistol or swallowing a handful of sleeping pills. It could be a thing you didn’t do, like not getting out of the way of an oncoming train.
She remembered that Linda had claimed that he’d seemed happier at the end. She wasn’t sure how reliable Linda’s reporting was, but suppose it was true. Maybe that even confirmed that Paul had killed himself. Maybe when you made a decision like that, it was a relief and you did seem happier in the end.
She looked at Grant, searching his face, as if she might see what he really thought written there. He was thirty now, having had a birthday since their divorce, but he seemed much older. He always had, though he was the same age as Paul. Solid and certain, the only one who could ever persuade Paul that a whim he had wasn’t a good idea. She’d begged him to talk to Paul. Tell him not to go. Tell him not to leave this way.
It’s his life, Emma.
But it wasn’t his life; no one’s life belonged to him alone. His life had belonged to all of them, just as Emma’s did, just as Angela’s did.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I didn’t get the sense that he was considering it the last time I talked to him.” She couldn’t even say the word suicide. “But for all I know that’s why he wanted me to come, to help him, to talk him out of it — ”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Emma.”
His rough kindness made it impossible for her to speak. She shook her head. He wouldn’t understand, couldn’t. Paul hadn’t called him; he didn’t have to live with knowing he’d said no and that his no was for asinine reasons — it would cost money, she didn’t want to take any more leave time — and not for a good one: I’m not going to enable your behavior anymore.
It didn’t matter, her guilt over what she had done, what she should have done. She hadn’t come to Grant for help because she thought Paul had killed himself and she hadn’t been there to stop him. She would need a priest and an expiation for that, not a DEA agent.
“Maybe he did commit suicide,” she said, making herself say the word. “Although I don’t think so. But that’s not what I meant about maybe he knew he was going to die.” She looked at Grant, and only just remembered in time not to put her hand on his arm.
“So what did you mean?”
Her lips tightened. He was going to make her say it, probably to prove a point, so she could hear how crazy it sounded.
“What I meant was maybe he was involved in something dangerous. And then this happened to him.”
Her cheeks flushed. She must sound like a woman who watched too much prime time television. Abstract theories and vague allusions to danger meant nothing. Nightmares meant nothing. Paintings in blood-red oil meant nothing. Grant had to have facts, concrete data. The Nile is 4,145 miles long. James Madison was the fourth president of the United States. If she could say to him something like, My brother told me. If she could give him a letter that Paul had written that outlined a threat against him, or a crime he was getting ready to commit, or had witnessed. If, in fact, she had anything more than a firearm he’d owned and a sense of dread.
“There’s no evidence to suggest that it was anything other than a bad accident,” Grant said.
She made a negative gesture with her hand, to cut him off from saying more, but that didn’t stop him. He said, “Why don’t you want to believe that? Why can’t it be just an accident? Why do you have to make it something else? Why do you have to — it’s hurting you. You have to let it go.”
Let it go? She had to gulp a breath in. “You think I should be over it by now? He wasn’t a boyfriend who dumped me, for God’s sake. He wasn’t a gallery owner who turned me down. He was my brother and he died.”
Grant touched her hand with his, the first physical contact they’d had since he’d moved out of their house. She started, even though it felt impersonal, the thing a doctor would do when delivering bad news to a patient. He didn’t mean anything by it; he was just trying to soothe her agitation. It wasn’t affection that made him reach out. How could he have any left?
“I’m sorry.” She knew he meant his apology. “I just meant that maybe it’s time to accept that there isn’t a reason. That you’re not going to make sense of it. It’s like you’re doing this so you don’t have to see he’s gone.”
She looked at him, tall and broad and dressed like an undercover cop. Her ex-husband, sitting next to her in his car, on this expedition only because she’d needed him. Clearly, letting go wasn’t one of her strengths.
“How do I get there from here?” she asked, starting the car again. “Linda’s, I mean?” She was good at diversionary tactics; you had to be when you were married to a detective.
Grant accepted the change of subject without saying anything — he was good at picking his arguments, which was either the result of his law enforcement experience or their marriage, she didn’t know which — and gave her the directions.
Within a few minutes, she was pulling up in front of a small, squat brick building sandwiched between two older, taller brick buildings. It leaned precariously; without the building that abutted its south side, it would probably have tumbled down into a pile of broken pale red bricks and dingy masonry. Of the three windows she could see from the front, one was boarded up and a second needed to be. Weeds grew in crevices in the front step. The front door sagged from one hinge.
Evidently her brother’s friends were no more prosperous than he was. Well, she’d known Linda must be hard up; thirty-seven dollars doesn’t get you very far. She had taken the day off work; Emma doubted she had the kind of job where you accumulated vacation days and sick leave. She felt a little guilty at that, as if she were somehow responsible for Linda being what she was. Which was ridiculous. She’d never been able to save her brother. What did she think she could do for someone who was almost a complete stranger? Yet here she was, coming the moment Linda called —
Her stomach turned over as she remembered her brother’s call.
I can’t come, Paul.
I need you, Emma.
He hadn’t been afraid then. She was almost sure of it.
“She lives on the second floor,” Emma said, cutting the ignition. She opened her door and swung her legs out of the car, glancing over her shoulder to see if Grant was following. He wasn’t.
“Let me know if you need anything,” he said, leaning his seat back and closing his eyes. She’d thought he’d accompany her in, but there was no reason why he should. Linda had asked Emma to come, not Emma and the Light Brigade.
She got out of the car and stepped onto the cracked sidewalk. She wondered how many times Paul had come this way. When he had, was it with relief or pleasure, looking forward to relaxing with a friend? Or did his stomach twist, did he drag his feet?
She paused when she reached the door to the building, fighting the urge to weed the front step. Her ability to worry about the inconsequential when the important loomed never stopped surprising her.
Please come to LA.
With what money? Who’ll watch Angela? I can’t.
Not even thinking he had never asked her to come before. Not even thinking of how she could call her grandparents, or Penny, and ask for help, and they would have given it. Standing here now she thought she could even have asked Grant. She wouldn’t have liked to, but sometimes doing the right thing meant swallowing your pride, doing a thing you didn’t like to do, didn’t it? Doing the hard thing.
She gingerly pushed the battered entrance door open, afraid it would fall off its last hinge. It had once had a working lock, but you can only kick a door in so many times before it stops performing its basic functions very well.
She crossed the threshold, looked up at the cracked ceiling. The door hadn’t fallen off its hinge but that didn’t mean the roof wouldn’t collapse. Both disasters seemed imminent. She was in a tiny, dimly lit hall, just a small square bit of badly frayed indoor-outdoor carpeting on the floor, doors on each side. A twisting, rickety wooden stairway led up.
She doubted a building inspector had been here any time recently. She put a tentative foot on the first step. It creaked but didn’t splinter into pieces, which didn’t go very far in reassuring her of its ultimate durability. Maybe she could call Linda and have her come downstairs.
The place smelled of mold and strong incense, like someone had tried to mask the smell of the mold. The hint of an even more unpleasant odor underlay the others. She tried not to inhale too deeply.
She took another step, putting her hand on the rail for support. It shook ominously but held. The steps creaked beneath her weight, but nothing actually fell apart. She walked up carefully, skipping one step with an obviously rotten board. A single wall fixture failed to illuminate anything, instead casting dark shadows across the steps. A steady dripping sound indicated that the plumbing was leaking somewhere. Or maybe that was the roof. Had it rained here lately? A slight stirring of the humid, dank air made her shiver as if a cold wind had blown across her bare skin.
On the second floor landing, she studied the apartment numbers, then chose the door on the left and knocked on it. The door was flimsy, like someone had used an interior bedroom door for the front door of the apartment. She heard the sound of a stifled movement behind the door. Then nothing. She waited quietly for the sound to come again. What had made it?
She shifted from one foot to the other, uncertain. She could hear Paul: just do something, Emma, for chrissake. She knocked again, louder this time. “Linda, it’s me, Emma,” she called through the hollow door. Where was Linda? She’d known Emma was on her way over, so surely she hadn’t decided to run out for groceries? Emma didn’t hear any kind of movement in the apartment now.
A toilet flushed somewhere on the floor above. She flinched, thinking of the leaking plumbing, and hoped it wasn’t leaking just over her head.
Quiet descended again. There was still no sound behind Linda’s door. Emma’s spine prickled. She glanced over her shoulder, certain she was being watched. She had a pretty good idea who was doing the watching. He was probably wearing a plaid flannel shirt. But if he was standing there in the shadows just now, she couldn’t see him.
Which was just as well, considering how she was already running spooked. She knocked a third time on the flimsy door and waited another moment. Now what? She supposed she could go back downstairs and join the knight-errant, shrugging over the mystery of what had become of Linda. She dismissed that idea and instead reached out and turned the doorknob. It was unlocked. The door creaked slightly as she pushed it inward, holding her breath.
The living room was in shambles. Linda was flung over a battered sofa, and Emma could see from where she stood, even in the dim light, that Linda’s throat had been cut. Blood splashed everywhere. Emma took a ragged breath in and pushed down a scream. That was when she spotted a thin man, silhouetted against the window, its cheap cotton curtains slightly parted.
He turned and straightened. In the shaft of sunlight from the window, she could see the beads of sweat on his face. Or maybe she imagined that. He was breathing fast, too fast. She wasn’t imagining that. He looked up at her. His eyes didn’t seem to focus, didn’t seem to see her. Pale blue eyes in a thin strained face.
But he must have seen her, because he spoke. “She was scared,” he said in a whispery voice. Only then did Emma saw that he had a gun in his hand. He was looking in her direction, right at her, but she couldn’t feel that he was really seeing her.
“She was scared,” he said again. “She was scared.” He said it over and over, repeating it, a chorus, a litany. Timor mortis conturbat me.
Emma took a sharp breath in. The thin man lifted the gun and pointed it in her direction, as if the sound of her gasp made him aware of an unexpected threat.
“I asked her to tell me,” he said softly, “and she wouldn’t.”
Emma licked her dry lips; she couldn’t force a sound from her throat. She looked away from the body on the sofa. Everything in the room had been ruthlessly searched, torn, broken. Shards of glass lay in pieces on the floor near the sofa. The end table had been swept clean; an ashtray lay overturned on the carpet nearby. A short bookcase had been tumbled over on its side, contents scattered across the room.
There was great anger, hatred, here, not just a junkie in search of a quick score. The anger was red, dark clotted red, sullen red, very nearly black, but it didn’t seem to be coming from the thin man. Which didn’t mean he hadn’t done this. Maybe his anger was spent now and all that was left was his twitchy anxiety.
He moved toward Emma, sliding soundlessly across the floor like the wispy wraith he resembled. She could feel his uneven breath on her skin though he was too far away for this to be true. She took a step backward. The gun in his hand trembled.
“She was scared,” he said again. His voice barely stirred the silence. “I told her to tell me, but she wouldn’t.” He looked lovingly at the woman on the sofa and then his face changed and he said, “But she wouldn’t tell me,” and then, with what Emma thought was satisfaction, “She was scared.”
“Stop it!” Emma exclaimed, then pushed her hand against her mouth when she realized what she had done. She had never yelled at a murderer before. Her stomach swooped and the room tilted away from her. She had to take a deep steadying breath to stay on her feet. The thin man stared at her. This time he saw her, really saw her, his pale blue eyes focusing sharply on her face.
“No,” he said, and he looked at the gun in his hand. They stared at each other for a moment and then he lifted his gun. She stood perfectly still for the space of another heartbeat, unable to believe what was happening. Then he fired, the round slamming harmlessly into the wall behind her. She turned and ran, charged down the hallway, racing down the stairs. She heard another shot behind her and she skidded down the last few steps, landing with a thud that probably would have slowed her down for a few seconds if she hadn’t been so scared. The light overhead shattered, raining glass fragments down over her.
How many shots was that? And how many did the gun contain? She stumbled again, then lunged toward the front door, shoving it out of the way; it tilted ominously on its hinge but held. Something pinched her arm and then she was over the threshold.
She heard no sound of the thin man following behind her but she didn’t slow. She ran down the sidewalk and pulled open the car door as Grant jerked awake. He fired a question at her, but then held any follow-up when she jabbed the key into the ignition and roared away from the curb, not looking back.
The tires squealed on the road, the steering wheel jumping under her shaking hands.
“Watch the light,” he said mildly.
She slammed on the brakes as the signal turned red. That was when the shaking started, her whole body trembling from the adrenaline surge.
“Pull over,” he said.
“I’m going to faint or something,” Emma said. “I’ve never been shot at before.”
“Pull over,” Grant said again.
She slewed to the curb and stopped the car, put it in park, then leaned her head against the steering wheel. Grant climbed out, then came around and opened the driver’s side door. He hissed a breath in at the sight of her arm.
“You’ve been hit.”
She became aware of the throbbing pain. She touched her upper arm, pulled her hand away, and looked at the blood, her blood. Bright red. The pain hammered her then, full bore, like a freight train and she heard, as if from a distance, her own startled cry of hurt. Her stomach churned and she bit back her nausea.
Grant made a sound between his teeth and gave the wound a cursory examination. “Scoot over,” he said.
“It hurts like hell,” Emma said.
“Of course it does,” Grant said in a way that was probably supposed to cheer her up. Or possibly to welcome her to the brotherhood of people who’d been shot. Then he said, “There’s a medical center around here somewhere. We’ll get someone to take a look at you.”
She took a deep, gasping breath. “I’m not feeling too well,” she said, and suddenly wanted to cry.
Grant adjusted the seat and mirrors, competently pulled out into the light flow of traffic, then asked, “What happened?”
“What happened? I got shot.”
Without taking his eyes off the road, Grant reached over and touched her cheek. It was the sort of thing he did to quiet Angela, or to calm a puppy whose tail had been trodden. She hated how reassuring it was.
Then he lifted his hand away and reached into his pocket for his cell phone, undoubtedly to call 911.
“He cut her throat,” Emma said, able to say it now. “Grant, he cut her throat.”
“Who did?” Calm, professional.
“The guy who shot me. There was a man in Linda’s apartment. She was dead, Grant. There was blood everywhere.”
“Okay, Emma,” he said. She would have liked it if he’d reached over and touched her cheek again, but he didn’t.
“She was scared,” Emma said. “He kept saying so.”
But Grant was already speaking into the phone, his voice crisp, authoritative.
Timor mortis conturbat me. The only Latin she had ever learned. The fear of death disturbs me.