Out of the Blues (16 page)

The band began a slow blues. Bailey gargled some lyrics and barked out words wrapped in cotton.

Dan pulled Salt onto the dance floor where at first they swayed to the blues until the people pushed them together into a kind of dance. Her hand was slender in his long guitar-playing paw.

Bailey sang.

This old night life, this old sportin' life

Is killing me.

“I had a dream about your dog,” Salt told Dan. He smelled like a nice combination of smoke and clean fur.

“Ranger,” said Dan, inhaling her green fragrance.

“The dog's name is Ranger?”

Most of my friends are dead and gone.

Salt pulled back to look eye to eye with Dan. “Ranger?”

“Yes,” Dan pulled her close as Mustafa hit the kick drum. On the front end of two pistol blasts, somebody yelled, “Gun.”

Dan thumped into Salt like he'd been kicked in the back. His blue eyes opened in surprise, then folded as he dropped against Salt, heavy, his arms losing hold of her shoulders, sliding down her sides as he crumpled to the floor. Salt reached for the weapon at her waist, scanning the room, kneeling over Dan. She was bumped by people running, pushing toward the door. She didn't see anyone with a gun. Then Bailey was there, on the floor, shielding them. She holstered and turned Dan onto his back. Mustafa, kneeling, punched at his mobile phone. Dan shuddered, made a small yelping sound, and stopped breathing. Salt tipped his head. Blood was pooling on the floor under Dan's back. She covered his mouth with hers, breathed twice, then checked his pulse with two fingers to his wrist and couldn't find one. She pushed back a howl coming up in her throat.

Mustafa was saying into the phone, “He's shot. Somebody shot him. I didn't see.”

Salt pressed the heel of her hand in the middle of Dan's chest and started compressions, lost count, then estimated and went back to Dan's mouth. His breath tasted metallic. Back to his chest. “Tell 911 to start Fire Rescue and Homicide and that a detective needs assistance.” Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Two more breaths. “Does anyone else know CPR?” she asked, starting back on the compressions. “Three, four, five, six.” Bailey was down on his knees beside her. Pops, Goldie, and Bird stood over them. Mustafa was still on the phone. “A detective, Alt. She's not injured, she's doing CPR.”

“Twenty-one, twenty-two,” she counted again to thirty. “Breathe, breathe, breathe.” Her arms were getting tired, and her ears longed
for the sound of sirens. They came, faintly, then louder. Bird ran for the door. “A fire truck is here.”

Salt breathed twice again into Dan's mouth as a firefighter medic came in, knelt down beside her, and took over the chest compressions while other fire rescue guys broke open medical gear: oxygen, breathing bags, defibrillators. Salt moved back and pushed away, still on her knees, shaky, covered with Dan's blood. The door filled with uniforms. She stood up, found one of the white plastic chairs, and sat down, her body buzzing like electricity was running through her veins. Her hand smeared blood on one of the armrests as the Blue Room evaporated, replaced by a dream-like image of the upstairs bedroom at home, her father's head in her lap, so heavy, his blood thickening. “Breathe on me, breath of God,” she repeated the right words to the old hymn. “Breathe.”

Then Sergeant Huff and two of her new colleagues were there. Dan was shifted from the floor to a gurney and wheeled out. Focusing, she asked Huff, “What do they say?”

“He's low,” he answered.

—

D
AN
'
S
CHEST
rose and fell with the rhythm of the air as it was forced into his lungs—
whoosh, whomp, whoosh, whomp
. He tried to open his eyes, to move his hands but couldn't. Then he was sitting at a table on which there was a green bowl with oatmeal and a silver spoon. A whirlwind began to blow the room from around him, board by board. Log drums beaten with sticks echoed through his body—
whomp, whoosh, whomp, whoosh
. He opened his eyes to a vast plain on which a dog appeared, then unfolded, falling from its own mouth, a paw, leg, flank, disappearing. The view was as if through a blue lens overlaid with dust whipped by the wind. He felt the sticks beating the drum of his own body.

The detective, naked, her breasts iconic, conical, grew up out of the earth, her hair in black twists. She was covered with dried red mud and white tribal markings. Beside her, Ranger lifted his snout to the sky and howled.

Lights filtered through his slit lids, but then the drums rumbled into thunder and there was lightning, a laser of gold, filling the dusty air. Black beetles swarmed the table but left an ace of spades turned up in a scattering of red-and-white playing cards. Dan picked up the ace, knowing he would need it later as a ticket for a ride. He lost sight of Salt and Ranger among the rust-colored rocky hills. He listened carefully for the dog's long yowl and kept watching for the black twists of Salt's hair—a hound and a woman he somehow now realized he'd been searching for.

—

“
B
REATHE
,”
S
ALT
SAID
to herself as she stood against the wall of the Homicide conference room while a police photographer took distance and close-up shots of her and her clothes. She was still wearing the white blood-smeared blouse. Her mouth still tasted of Dan. Sergeant Huff, Wills, and several other detectives sat at the polished table waiting for the photographer to finish.

When she sat down, from across the table Wills handed her a bottled water. He kept his eyes on hers with no hint of expression. As she twisted the top, the thin plastic bottle crackled in her grip. “How is he?” she asked, gulping from the bottle.

“In surgery. They aren't saying one way or the other. Critical.” Wills had just come from the hospital.

Sergeant Huff, seated at the head of the table, had a yellow pad and pen in front of him, as did Wills and the others. Salt took another swig of the water. As she took the bottle from her lips, a rusty red residue filtered down through the water in a swirl.

“Now, Alt, what is it everyone calls you?—Salt?” Huff leaned forward. “I'm gonna try to be sensitive to what all you've just been through, but still, you're a cop and a witness to a possible homicide, and I'll be goddamned if I can figure out how in the hell you have managed to get from working an old, cold, suspicious death case to now being mixed up with the Solquist case and with a man who is shot while you are dancing with him—in the Blue Room, of all places. Were you the intended target?”

“What? What does this have to do with Solquist?” She sat up, focusing on Wills.

“Solquist's alibi—John Spangler, the guy he was with on the fishing trip?”

Salt looked at Wills. “Wait. Tall John, John Spangler?”

Wills nodded. “He owns the Blue Room, Toy Dolls, and has some kind of interest in both Magic Girls and the Gold String.”

“All I had was a first name, ‘John.' Wills had mentioned the name ‘Spangler' to me in connection with the Solquist case but didn't say his first name, and even if he had, I couldn't have connected John Spangler to the John I was trying to identify.” Salt took another gulp of the water.

“What does Spangler have to do with your case?” Wills uncapped his pen and wrote something without looking at her.

She felt the muscles across her chest tightening. “Both Dan Pyne and Curtis Stone told me that a man they only knew as ‘John' was Mike Anderson's supplier. Neither of them remembered or knew his last name. Stone said John owned and ran drugs and prostitutes out of Sam's and the Toy Dolls Club.”

“Wait,” Huff said. “I know who Stone is. I read his statement about Anderson's death, but how is the guy that was shot—what's his name? Dan?—how is he connected and how did it happen that you were dancing with him?” Huff pronounced dancing like an accusation and
a statement of incredulity. “I'll ask you again—was the shooter aiming at you?”

Salt licked her lips. “Are you interrogating me? I don't know if Dan Pyne took a bullet meant for me. I don't know.”

Wills began making slashing marks with his pen on the yellow lined paper.

—

D
AN
CRAWLED
UP
a red, crumbling, flaking hill, climbing until his hands were abraded. The thunder had ceased, never having produced rain. The wind seemed to have settled in a steady
whoosh
. The harder he tried, the more his legs and arms turned to sludge. He lifted his head again to search for Salt and to listen for Ranger's call. All he saw was blowing dust. All he heard was
whoosh, whoosh, whoosh
.

O
ne of the little dams was penned against the fence, held there by Wonder's stare and Salt's knee. Salt bore down with the clippers, snipping at a bit of hoof.

“First time I came here you were armed with those.” Wills stood at the paddock gate, holding a cup of coffee. He nodded at the clippers in her hand.

“You brought me tiger lilies.” She let go of the sheep's spindly leg and called the dog off. The spring afternoon sky was beginning to darken, and the wind had the new green leaves of the trees twirling, loose petals from the dogwoods scattering over the paddock and orchard. She shoved the clippers in a back pocket of her jeans and picked up her cup from the fence post. “Maybe we ought to have breakfast. Looks like we're in for some rain.”

As they walked to the house, Wills said, “I called Gardner. Pyne is still critical, on life support. He has spinal cord damage. They still don't know if he'll survive.”

Salt sat down on the back porch steps. After a pause she began to loosen the laces of her boots. “We have a lot of work, a lot of follow-up from last night.” She jerked at the laces.

“You're off today and tomorrow, your regular off days, remember?”

“I can't just take off now.” She tugged at the boots. “I made a mess. Dan Pyne might die.”

Wills bent down, lifted her foot by the heel, and grabbed the boot. “Who made you the center of the universe? You think you're the only one who makes shit happen or who can solve these cases? One piece of advice I will give you about working murders,” he said as he pulled one boot off and then the other. “You can get to a point where your personal life seems less important than the cases. But if you have no life other than murders, you'll find yourself wrapped around an axle.” Wills lifted her with one hand and gave her shoes with the other. “Come on, I'll fix us breakfast. We need to sort through this.”

—

S
ALT
WAS
at the old sink washing the dishes and looking out at the rain. Wills sat at the kitchen table feeding Wonder little pieces from his last strip of bacon. “We've just gotten the background on Spangler. He was raised by his grandparents, who lived over on Adair Avenue when the area was mostly working-class whites. Their only heir, he inherited the buildings and properties now occupied by the Shack and Toy Dolls. The actual businesses are licensed as LLCs with generic names: ‘Freedom First,' I think is one of the names; the other is similar. We also think Spangler's branched out and probably has investments in Magic Girls and the Gold String. The feds are helping us with the paper trail to Solquist.”

Salt turned and grabbed a dish towel. “I wish the feds had been as helpful when Stone gave them the information he had on John
Spangler. Maybe Dan Pyne wouldn't have taken that bullet. But I guess some victims get more justice than others.”

“A part of me understands how you, you being who you are, could come to be dancing with a—I'm not sure what Dan Pyne is. A witness? A suspect? Victim?”

Salt dried her hands and sat down across from him. “And the other part?”

“I worry that you've gotten enmeshed again—that a combination of the newness of being a detective, the mystery and romance of the blues, your father, and the Michael Anderson case has you entranced. You've always worked, in my opinion, way too close. You were too close to the gang on your old beat. It scares me because it's dangerous, both to you and maybe to us.”

“I don't see it that way. I don't think of it like that.”

“How do you think about Dan Pyne?”

The chair scraped as Salt pushed back from the table and went back to the window. “Wills, I'm working this case the way I do. Dan is part of the case. There was this dream I had. I can't ignore the connections.”

“My God. Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

She jerked open a drawer, pulled out a tablet and pen, slapped them on the table in front of Wills, and sat back down. “Just the facts, ma'am. Ask me your fucking questions now, Detective.”

“You're not right,” he said.

“One, Dan Pyne knew and was close to Mike Anderson in the months, weeks, and days before he died. Two, Dan Pyne manages and plays with musicians who knew the scene back then, who played with Mike and knew the business and, therefore, maybe John Spangler. Three, he saw Mike with John Spangler the night before Mike was found dead. Four, Dan's current live-in girlfriend was Mike's
girlfriend at the time he died.” She pushed the pad toward Wills. “You're not writing, Detective.”

Arrff, arrff!
Wonder's barks were loud, directed at Salt, responding to her harsh tone.

Wills stood. “I think I'll take the dog for a walk. The rain has stopped. Maybe you can take the time to catch your breath, get yourself under control.” The screen door sounded like a slap behind them. Salt stood at the window and watched them walking away, Wills with his hands in his pockets. Wonder, at his side, had on his bent ears.

She went straight to the bedroom, put on her gi, trying to begin the breath practice while tying the belt. Barefoot, she took the steps to the upstairs dojo two at a time. At the door to the white room she took another deep breath and bowed, knelt, and placed herself in seiza on the spot where she always guessed her father's bloodstains to be beneath the mat. She tried breathing exercises but started to choke, gave up, and lay facedown on the white mat. “Crazy. Crazy.”

“It was a poor choice of words, a figure of speech.” Wills stood in the dojo doorway. “I'm sorry.”

Salt, silent, bowed to him.

He took off his wet shoes, socks, jeans, shirt, and underwear. The rain must have started again. Stripped naked, he entered the room. “I knew from the beginning that you'd always be only yourself. What draws me to you is also what scares me. I accept it. I'll find a way to trust that you can do the job your way. Now, tell me the dream.” He sat cross-legged beside her.

Salt brought herself to sitting, wrapped her arms around her knees. “The night I met the bus when Dan's band got to town, the band was joking with Dan about an imaginary dog.”

Wills leaned forward so that his waist hung a little over his shy genitals, in a way Salt found sweet and erotic. “What are you looking at, girl?”

Salt smiled.

Wills laughed. “Stop it.” He covered himself with his hands. “The dream?”

She looked off. “In my dream the dog was in an old gray board house, not much more than a shack, one room. I let light into the room when I opened the door. There was an old wood-burning stove, unlit, cold. The dog was sitting perfectly still on top of it. Only his head moved as he talked. He was talking, but I can't remember what he said. That was all there was to the dream, but my strongest feeling in the dream was that the dog had been alive once, and its words were ones I needed to hear.”

“A talking-dog story, hmm?” Wills pulled Salt into his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “So what does the dog have to do with the case and dancing with Dan Pyne? It scares me that maybe you were the intended target.” Wills turned her so that she sat almost cradled in his arms.

“I keep trying to recall what the dog was saying.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Then just the other day Mr. Gooden reminded me that before my dad died I used to talk all the time about wanting a dog, and I remembered. I wanted one so bad that I invented him and called him ‘Ranger.'”

“So, lots of kids have imaginary friends, dogs, fairies, whatever. See, you're making this into some kind of karmic happening.”

“Maybe, maybe,” Salt said. “Wills, just before Dan was shot he was telling me that he and the band called their imaginary dog ‘Ranger.' It just seems like too much coming together. My dad's connections with the blues, my first case connected to Stone, the dream, Ranger.” Salt shook her head. “And I keep thinking about Stone. He's so sick, crazy and sick. I know he's dangerous, but he never stood a chance. It doesn't seem right. Prison. He's always been in prison.”

Will stroked her hair. “You keep nothing at arm's length. I could
almost murder Huff for giving you a case that puts you up close again with a guy who almost killed you—to put you in the position of working to get his time cut.”

She turned her face to his shoulder and kept talking. “Please don't be mad at me when I tell you this. There's a way in which I owe Stone. He was another child on my beat, from The Homes, and represents for me failure, at every level, everything this city, all of us, have gotten wrong.”

“Who failed those children, Salt? Who were the individuals who failed them, almost all of them? Who? Their fathers, that's who.” Wills held her tighter. “Like your father failed you. You think you're going to fix the world one sociopath, one case, at a time? I love you, girl, but if you keep giving yourself away there won't be enough of you left for me or anybody. We bleed enough for our own. I'm not going to bleed for the Stones of the world.”

“I don't think my father failed me, Wills. That's part of what I keep trying to figure out.”

Wonder could be heard running up and down the stairs and through the downstairs hall. “The dog is nuts. He's upset and letting us know,” she said, nodding to the sound of the dog's clicking nails on the wood floors.

Salt wiped her eyes with the sleeve of the gi. “You're right.” She took his hand and stood, pulling him up with her. Facing him, she said, “I'm not going for self-inflicted wounds. I want you and me.”

Holding hands, they walked to the doorway, turned, and bowed to the altar. Salt said, “I didn't start out to dance with Dan Pyne. It was his dog. I was trying to figure out the dog's message.”