Angels Burning (26 page)

“Relation to Camio?”

“Cousin.”

She puts the shoe down, folds her hands together, puts them against her lips as though she's kissing her knuckles, and stares at the framed copy of the signed verdict from a Supreme Court case she argued only three years out of law school hanging on the wall behind me; I have a scenic wonders of Pennsylvania wall calendar.

“I don't anticipate any trouble from him and his family,” I also provide. “What happened in that parking lot will be embarrassing to them. They won't want to call public attention to it.”

I know this doesn't mean they won't deal with it privately and if they do, it might result in something unpleasant happening to me or my property. It will most definitely lead to something unpleasant happening to Jared. I almost feel bad about this.

“But some concerned citizen might have a problem with what I did,” I finish.

“And this is why you're here?” she asks.

“I decided I should retain a lawyer. Just in case.”

She reaches for a yellow legal pad and pen.

“If asked, how would you defend your actions?”

“Let's blame it on menopause.”

She doesn't bat an eye.

“Although I haven't gone through it yet,” I add.

Perimenopause
she writes on her legal pad and looks back up at me, waiting for me to go on.

Our town council is composed of Ben, six other men, and two women who are twenty years apart in age but both are a prim personality type that would leave a room if the inner workings of their police chief 's withering reproductive organs and her raging hormones came up at a meeting. The men would leave the building.

“I've given it some thought, and if there's one thing that would make our town council want to wrap up an investigation into my conduct as quickly as possible, it would be the word ‘menopause.' ”

“It's brilliant,” Sandra confirms.

“Thank you.”

She stands and extends her hand to me.

“Ruined pink suede pumps. Perimenopausal mood swings,” she says while we shake. “I think that's all we'll need. I know where to find you if I have any more questions.”

“I'm going to talk to Tug tomorrow,” I think to add.

“As long as I'm present. Let me walk you out.”

She takes her suit jacket off a hook behind her door and slips it on over the cream silk shell she's wearing with her charcoal gray pinstripes even though she's only going to walk me to the elevator at the end of the hall. It must be automatic for her, the same way Grandma always reached for a bathrobe whenever she got out of bed to check on us even though she was already wearing a long, heavy nightgown even Superman's X-ray vision would've had a hard time penetrating.

“About your retainer?” I begin.

“Forget it. I don't think this is going to go anywhere, and besides,
your sister has agreed to pay all of Tug's legal fees. I think it's enough that one Carnahan sister is going to buy me a new Mercedes.”

We're about to pass Chet's office across the hall. The door is open. I'm pretty sure I hear a TV, some female shrieking, shouts and cries from a studio audience.

“I like the baby blue one you have now,” I tell her.

“It's six years old and I want one in champagne.”

Chet erupts into his distinctive snorting guffaw followed by a rousing cheer of affirmation for Jerry Springer's decision to let the catfight continue.

Sandra walks over and closes the door.

THE REST OF MY DAY
doesn't improve. Most of the headaches have nothing to do with Camio's murder. The regular responsibilities and duties of my department don't cease because of one girl's death. The paperwork isn't reduced. Our constant accountability isn't eased. The concerns and crises of our citizenry don't disappear.

I try to be my usual accommodating self, but my concentration is shot and my patience worn thin. My thoughts keep bouncing back and forth between all these boys, past and present, suddenly dominating my life; one clinging to life in a hospital bed, one pointing a gun at my head, one with a missing father, one running wild, one being molested right under my nose, one making an unwanted baby and driving his car into a tree.

Their needs have become my personal burden, even the ones of my long-dead father, although I'm not sure what his could be. I'm angry with all of them. They seem to be purposely taking my energy away from the dead girl.

Typical men
, Neely would tell me if I explained the phenomenon.
They always expect to come first
.

Typical woman
, Nolan would tell me.
Always blaming men for your own problems
.

Just thinking about Nolan and anything he'd have to say on any topic makes my blood boil.

I was on my way out of the station when a woman passed me on her way in to make a complaint. Everyone else was out on a call or sitting at a speed trap. I explained nicely to her that she could have saved herself a trip and phoned, then tried to direct her to Karla to fill out a form, but she insisted she needed to talk to someone in person.

I've been listening to her for twenty minutes and as far as I can tell she still hasn't arrived at her official complaint.

I don't like whiners. My philosophy regarding a problem is fix it, and if you can't fix it, find a way to live with it that is least destructive to yourself and others. Whatever you do, don't talk endlessly about it while you do nothing.

Small-town cops listen to a lot of whining.

I went through a phase about a year ago when we were investigating a string of small arsons and ended up interviewing what seemed like everyone in town, where I could often be heard espousing the wish that people would, “Shut up and deal with their shit.”

Apparently I said it so often, my men came up with the acronym SUDS for “Shut up and deal with your shit.” It was a quicker way for us to communicate our feelings about someone and also to do it secretly without offending anyone.

We could pass each other in the station with a potential witness or suspect sitting at a desk and say in front of him or her, “I know someone who could really use some SUDS right now.” For all anyone else knew, it merely meant we wanted beer.

Singer made us gold-trimmed laminated official membership cards to the SUDS Club and gave them to us for Christmas to put with our creds. We all laughed. It was something only Singer would do. I don't know if anyone else kept his card but I did.

I reach into my purse, take out my wallet, and open it while the woman continues to talk. She doesn't seem to notice. I find the SUDS card tucked behind some credit cards. My gold Visa makes me think of little Goldie Truly sucking on her dog toy, but then I immediately start to think about Derk and Tug buying it for her. Again, the males triumph.

I also find a scrap of a bar napkin from ten years ago. I don't have to look at it to know what's written inside its folds. Nolan took me out for a drink to celebrate when I was hired as chief. We had a good time, one of those nights where I could almost believe we could have an actual relationship if it wasn't for the fact that he had a wife and kids and I had an aversion to actual relationships. I was looking forward to a little Nolan-rollin'-in-the-hay. I figured it should be part of the congratulatory package along with the free drinks and nachos, but he got called in on the job. I went to the ladies' room while he was still on his phone. When I came back he was gone but had written on the napkin,
You're the best man for the job.

My insides start to turn mushy, but another memory of Nolan pushes the first one aside and they harden back up again.

Not long after I left the state police and started working in Buchanan I went out on a call with another officer who is long gone now. A horse had fallen into an icy, half-empty in-ground pool and broken its leg. There was no way to get him out. In hindsight, we should've called animal control or a veterinarian, but the other officer, who had seniority and a penis that he was constantly assuring me was on the large size, insisted that we should shoot him and put him out of his misery.

The only times I had ever seen a horse being shot was in movies or on TV where a cowboy put a bullet in the animal's head because he'd gone lame. The horse would instantly fall down dead without any blood being shed.

This was not an accurate depiction.

Our horse's head shattered. Even standing several feet away we were both bathed in blood. I was picking out pieces of brain and splinters of bone from my hair for the rest of the day. But worse than this was the fact the horse wouldn't die.

The other officer was the shooter and he shot again, this time in the horse's chest. The animal stumbled to his feet. Now on top of being shot twice, he was going to drown.

I jumped in with him. It was irrational and pointless. I couldn't help
him, but I couldn't bear the thought of him dying without someone comforting him.

I stood in the freezing water cradling his big ruined head, whispering in his ear, until his one remaining eye stopped staring crazily and went blank. I don't know how long it took. Five minutes? Two hours? It wasn't until I knew he was finally dead and I crawled out of the pool that I realized holding him might have scared him even more than if I had left him alone. I might have made his terror worse.

Sometime during the midst of all this, Nolan had arrived. He'd been in the area, an occurrence that was soon to become an unwelcome habit. The Inevitable would inevitably show up whenever it was most inconvenient for me.

I was soaking wet and slick with blood, trembling from shock and the beginnings of hypothermia, my eyes red from crying.

“Oh, God,” I croaked, my voice raw from the cold. “That's the worst thing I've ever seen.”

He gave me a quick once-over. He was mad at me because I had recently banged his best friend and left his precious state police.

“Quit whining,” he said.

So far the woman across my desk from me has told me that her kitchen sink is backed up. Not completely clogged but it drains slowly. Her ex-husband's sister lives across the street from her and even though they've managed to stay on civil terms after the divorce—she accredits this to the fact that his own family realizes what a worthless pile of crap he is—she's always coming over, walking in without knocking, helping herself to food out of her refrigerator, drinking her booze, and borrowing her clothes without telling her when she's at work. The air pressure in one of her tires is really low. She keeps filling it with air and it goes flat again. She has a friend who told her if you pour water over the tire and there's a hole, the air coming out will make the water bubble. She tried this and didn't see any bubbles. She's been dating this guy she kind of likes but he talks too much and she's not really that attracted to him, but he has a good job, treats her well, spends money on her, and is nice to her kids.

I leave my SUDS card in my wallet and take out one of my business cards instead, flip it over, and write on the back:

Drano

Lock your doors

Pep Boys on Jenner Pike

Marry him

I stand up, hand it to her, and leave.

NEELY MAKES THE BULK
of her living through contracts with the state police and other agencies training service dogs, but she also has a thriving private business. She gives individual and group obedience classes and agility classes and also works with the ASPCA and PAWS when they have a problem dog that has special behavior issues that must be corrected before adoption.

From the amount of cars parked at her compound and the fact that her sentries are nowhere to be seen, I know she's conducting a class. She kennels her dogs except for Smoke, who assists her.

I'm late picking up Mason, but she won't notice. I wonder if she's even aware he's still here.

I walk around back to the practice ring and find Mason sitting on a bench with his binder on his knees. I don't see Derk, but he could be up a tree or he could've disappeared the same way he showed up.

Neely's working with twelve students: six human and six canine.

Mason hears my approach and looks up, smiling. I feel all the air go out of me.

“Hi, Aunt Dove,” he says. “How was your day?”

“Okay. How about yours?”

“Okay, I guess. Aunt Neely says you're trying to find a murderer. She says you're going to catch him because you're a good detective. Are you?”

“Pretty good.”

“Are you like Sherlock Holmes or Magnum, P.I.?”

“You watch
Magnum
,
P.I.
?”

“Dad likes the classics.”

I take a seat on the bench next to him.

The six dogs in Neely's class are all in the down position. Neely weaves in and out among them, stepping over them, leaning down and squeaking toys in front of their faces, trying to get them to break the command. They're all behaving admirably.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I'm trying to figure out who's going to quit.”

“Ah,” I say. “So you heard Aunt Neely's welcome speech?”

He cracks a big smile.

“I filmed her with my phone. I'm glad I did. This stuff is pure gold.”

He finds the video and holds up his iPhone for me to see.

Neely and Smoke stand in the middle of a circle of dogs and their owners. She makes Smoke lie down by barely glancing at him. A few of the dogs are bothered by him. They break their sits. One lets loose with a couple of high-pitched yips that make her owner cringe and yank harshly on her leash.

“All of you want to have a dog as well trained as mine,” Neely begins. “None of you will succeed.”

“ ‘None of you will succeed,' ” Mason repeats, chuckling. “That kills me.”

“Yes,” I chime in. “She's quite the motivational speaker.”