Steel Breeze (7 page)

“What
do you think that means?” asked Pasco, zipping the bag shut.

“Maybe
nothing. But Lamprey’s driver’s license says he wore glasses. We should find
out if they’re his.” She circled the obelisk, and when she came around the
south side, her jaw went slack. “Ranger Abath, do you speak Japanese?”

“That’s
why I got the job.”

“Can
you read it, too, or do you just have that inscription memorized?”

“Both.
I mean, yeah; I can read kanji,” he said, following her around the side of the
stone slab and seeing the scarlet brushstrokes there. “Holy shit, is that
blood?”

“What
does it say?”

His
Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “
Shikata ga nai
.”

“And
that means?”

“It’s
kind of a famous saying around here. It means,
it cannot be helped
.”

“What
can’t be helped?”

“Anything.
Everything. The internees used to say it to express their resignation. A more
literal translation might be, ‘It must be done.’”

Chapter 7

Desmond put on
the Beatles CD as soon as they got in the car so he wouldn’t have to spend the
entire drive answering questions about where they were going and what it would
be like. He usually flipped the rearview mirror down so he could glance up and
see if Lucas was getting into the music or nodding off to sleep, but today the
mirror stayed up and he found himself looking more at the road behind than at the
road ahead.

Lucas
soon tired of the music and started complaining that he wanted to skip ahead to
the next track or to a favorite number. Just a few weeks ago, Desmond had
thought it was cute that Lucas already had favorite songs and clever that he
had memorized the track numbers. Now he regretted letting the kid boss him
around like a personal DJ. He had his attention on the stereo controls more than
the road, and when he had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a pickup truck
that had pulled out of a donut shop, he jabbed the power button and announced
that they were done with music. He tried to remember if the dark red metallic
sedan two cars behind them had been there on Ocean Road, but he didn’t know. What
he did know was that even grocery shopping with a four-year-old was nearly
impossible for him, so why should avoiding a tail be any easier?

Before
long they were cruising through tree-lined suburban streets like the one they
used to live on. Lucas craned his head around to look for kids, and covered his
ears when they passed a loud lawnmower. When the sound faded behind them, he
asked, “Is this where Carl lives?”

“Yes,
in one of these houses. I just have to figure out which one.” He looked at the
Post-it note on the steering wheel. He had worked with Laurie Fisher at the
school for three years and considered her a friend but had never visited her
home. He was just grateful that she’d made him feel welcome, even when the
first call he made to her since losing his job six months ago was to ask her
for a favor.

“Does
Carl have trains?” Lucas asked.

“I
don’t know, buddy. We’ll see.”

“
Why
we’ll see?”

“I
don’t know if he has trains. He might. Carl is a little older than you. He
might have other cool toys. He might have trains…I think this is the place,
buddy.”

Laurie invited Desmond in for a cup of coffee and
a look around. “I trust you completely,” he said, trying
to brush it
off and get back in the car. It was obvious that the house was well kept. It
sure was nicer than their apartment. The manicured lawn, polished floors, and
antique furnishings reminded him of their old neighborhood and awakened an
unexpected dissonance in him that made him anxious.

“
You
do,” she said, “but Lucas has never
been here before. He doesn’t know me. Just come in for a few minutes while he
gets comfortable.”

Desmond
settled on the couch and waited as she got the coffee. Lucas scanned the room
with wide eyes but stayed close to his father’s knee. Laurie called up the
stairs for Carl, who came down with a gadget in his hand. In a whisper, Lucas asked
Desmond what it was. “I don’t know. Go ask
him
.”

And
that was all it took to break the ice. Carl started asking Lucas what
characters he liked and then pulled them up on his handheld video screen. Lucas
followed Carl upstairs without so much as a backward glance. Laurie handed
Desmond a mug and sat down beside him. “Well, that was easy,” she said. “Carl
likes younger kids.”

“Yeah.
It’s nice to see Lucas with another boy. Thanks again for watching him.”

“Happy
to. And don’t worry; I’ll get them out in the yard too. It’s too nice of a day
to stay in and watch videos.”

“You
aren’t planning on taking them anywhere…out and about, right?”

“No.
Why?”

“Desmond
sighed. “I’ve just become a little overprotective around playgrounds, that’s
all.”

“That’s
understandable.”

He
realized that she would think it was because of what had happened to Sandy, and
in a way it was, but she had no idea.

Laurie
took a sip, set her mug down on a coaster, and said, “So…read any good books
lately? Write any?”

Desmond
smiled and felt gossamer webs that had been constricting his breathing let go
and float away. She wasn’t going to ask him about the hard stuff. She knew
better, and he felt a disproportionate gratitude welling up in response to this
small kindness, this omission that he knew had nothing to do with her own level
of comfort or skill when it came to heavier conversation. “Well, I’m always
reading, it’s a great escape. And we should definitely talk books sometime, but
speaking of escape, I should really get going while he’s distracted. I don’t
know exactly how long this errand will take.”

“No
worries, take your time. He can stay for dinner. In fact, why don’t we plan it?
Does Lucas like macaroni and cheese?”

“Loves
it.”

* * *

Desmond
switched the car radio to a news station just because he could. When there was
no weather report, he poked around and settled on a hard-rock station. He drove
north toward the box stores by the highway. Bob, his landlord, had agreed to let
him replace the locks, but Desmond had to do the installation himself and pay
for the hardware if he wanted the expensive stuff. Desmond had protested that
the place wasn’t safe; there had been a break-in. But when pressed about what
was stolen he had backed down, admitting that nothing was missing. He didn’t
want to tell Bob about the haiku.

“So
nothing was stolen, but you reported a break-in to the police? I’m gonna see my
address in the police log of
The Tribune?”

“No.
But the door was open, Bob, and I know it wasn’t me or Lucas who left it that
way.”

“You’ve
been through a lot. I’ll pay for the upgrade, okay? But you’re still doing the
installation. Are you handy?”

Desmond
lied: “You bet.”

There
was a hardware store not too far from his first stop.

The
Blue Fort was a complex of windowless buildings with powder-blue roll-down
garage doors and heavy-duty locks, surrounded by a tall chainlink fence, with
no barbed wire but plenty of video cameras. Sheds could only be accessed during
business hours, and a small office guarded the entrance. Desmond had moved most
of the family’s possessions into one of the sheds after Sandy’s death when he
sold the house. He knew he should have had a yard sale before packing
everything up and putting it in storage, but he just didn’t have the emotional
grit to sift through all of Sandy’s things and everything they’d acquired as a
couple and then leave half of it out on the street for strangers to pick over. Even
if he’d been able, he sure as hell couldn’t put Lucas through that. And what if
the wrong kind of people were interested? Was there a market for a murder
victim’s personal effects on the net? The thought had chilled him.

He
liked the anonymity of the Blue Fort. Whenever he drove past it, he couldn’t
help glancing at the rows of sheds and thinking that one of those plain
utilitarian garages was the most haunted place in town. It helped that he could
never pick out exactly which unit was his; that made it easier to drive by. Lately,
however, he’d been thinking about an object that was tucked away in there with
all of the furniture, photos, and bric-a-brac. One item that, as Lucas’s
workbooks would say, was not like the others. Over the past twenty-four hours
Desmond had been ruminating on how terribly easy it would be for a determined
person, a person with some skill, a person who wasn’t just taking a chance on
robbing any old storage shed, but who knew what he was looking for with bolt cutters
and a flashlight…how easy it would be for someone like that to break into his
shed and leave no trace but some damaged video cameras. After all, he was
paying a fair rate for storage space but not for maximum security.

Desmond
pulled up to the office, thumbed the driver’s side window button, and presented
his card. An employee scanned it, handed it back, and opened the gate for him
to drive through. “Remind me where this one is?” Desmond asked. “It’s been a
while.”

“They’re
numbered,” the guy in the powder-blue polo shirt said, like he was talking to
an imbecile. When Desmond didn’t take his foot off the brake, he said, “Third
row back.”

With
his SUV parked in front of the unit to provide some small measure of privacy,
Desmond opened the padlock and rolled up the blue door. Sunlight flooded the
contents of the shed like a time-lapse film of dawn breaking on a landscape. Couches,
chairs, and stacks of boxes and bins were all covered with bed sheets, adding
to the brief illusion of a snowy mountain range. Desmond had told Lucas that
the sheets were for keeping dust off of everything, but they were really a
precaution for this day—the day when he would have a reason to come back.

He
stood frozen in the doorframe, surveying the threatening shapes and shadows. He
needed to remember to tread carefully. There were a few bins here that would
mess him up good if he chanced upon them. Sandy’s clothes would be the worst;
those should have gone to Goodwill. What was he ever going to do with them but
torture himself? Then there was her camera equipment: a digital SLR, some
lenses and tripods, bags and filters. She had been in love with the hobby and
scarcely ever went anywhere without a bag stuffed full of gear. In retrospect
this provided the small mercy and sad omission that there weren’t many photos
with her in them left behind. Desmond hated himself for not stepping up and
making an effort to take pictures of her while she was alive. He could have
asked her for a lesson, could have at least tried to get a decent shot
occasionally, a shot with her and Lucas. But he had always figured that was
her
thing. He didn’t need to document their life because he knew that she always
would. And now, with her gone, the document she had left behind was one that
she was mostly absent from.

So
there were few images of Sandy in this room amid the shells of their former
life, but oh so many framed images of that life as seen through her eyes. In
some ways it would hurt more to see what she’d seen than to see her. Desmond
would need to be careful.

He
walked through the minefield of sheet-draped boxes, between the couches and
chairs to the corner where a folded stepladder rested against the armoire they
had kept the TV in. Perched atop the armoire was a black footlocker with chrome
corners and latches and another padlock. It had been hard to get it up there
and it would be hard to get it down. Desmond looked back at the square of bright
sunlight behind him framing his car. The motor aisle beyond was empty, just a
row of blue garage doors, all of them shut tight.

He
climbed the ladder, took the chest by the wide leather straps on the sides, and
tried to lift it, but at this height, where he couldn’t get any leverage, it
was too heavy. He stepped onto the precarious top step and dialed the
combination on the padlock: his wedding anniversary. The latch popped. He put
the lock in his back pocket and raised the lid.

Inside,
a World War II Japanese infantry sword lay atop several stacks of hardcover first-edition
books, a few shoeboxes of manuscript pages, and a portable hard drive. Things
he’d wanted to keep above the damp concrete floor. Things he wanted to keep
under a second lock and key.

Desmond
took his wife’s murder weapon out of the chest, holding it hilt-up to ensure
that it didn’t slide out of the metal scabbard. He stepped carefully to the
floor and set the sword on the sheet-draped couch. Then he climbed back up the
stepladder, took one wistful look at the treasure trove of novels past, closed
the lid, and replaced the lock.

The
sun moved across the floor while he sat on the couch with the sword in his lap.
To a passerby, he could have been a statue. When he was ready, as ready as he
would ever be, he pressed the wire latch that secured the handguard to the scabbard,
and taking the hilt in his right hand, withdrew about six inches of steel.

The
base of the blade was stamped with a number. He had done some research last
year, looked at a few of these infantry swords on collectors’ web sites, and
learned that if the number on the blade matched the number on the scabbard, it
increased the value of the sword. In this case, they did match. He’d learned a
few other things about Japanese swords, not much, but enough to know what he
had here. He could remember very little of the traditional nomenclature, but he
knew that unlike more expensive handmade swords, these general infantry swords
had been mass produced by the Japanese military during the war. The scabbard
was made of aluminum rather than carved wood, and the handle was cast from
metal made to resemble the silk-wrap pattern used on a genuine
katana
.

The
blade was also machine made, a product of the industrial revolution. It lacked
the flowing, wavy line left on traditional blades by the clay temper process. There
were collectors who analyzed the grain of the folded steel in antique blades,
the carbon content, and the various styles of those wavy ghostlike lines that
danced and played across the edge of a Japanese blade like incense smoke, or
ripples on the surface of a lake. He had learned that such a line was called a
hamon
,
and that it indicated the dividing line between hard and soft steel, a
characteristic that gave a samurai sword great strength paired with a degree of
flexibility. Swords forged by the ancient methods could cost tens of thousands
of dollars. This one was only worth about five hundred dollars, and most of
that value came from the fact that it was a war relic. Nonetheless, it had been
designed with the same geometry that made the traditional swords so effective.
It had been made for the same lethal purpose; it had been forged for war.