The 37th Hour (7 page)

“It’s not like you’re on a tight schedule. You’ve got all day to get there, and it’s only about a two-hour drive.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Look, it’s not too late for you to come along.” I poured water into the coffeemaker.

“No,” he said. “Thanks.”

“I’m just afraid I won’t know what to talk about. You always know what to say in hard situations. I never do.”

“You’ll do fine.” Shiloh rubbed the back of his neck, his gesture for stalling and thinking of how to phrase something. “I’m supposed to report at Quantico on Monday. I don’t want to cut it that close, if we were to have trouble getting back. My plane ticket’s not transferable. Or refundable.”

“What kind of trouble would we have? I mean, you’re already willing to count on me to give you a ride to the airport.”

“I’m not counting on you. It’s a two-thirty flight. If I don’t hear from you by one, I’ll call a cab.”

The coffeemaker made its choked gurgling noises. I’d already known I wasn’t going to convince him. When Shiloh made up his mind, it was like making water flow uphill to change it. He took my travel mug down from the shelf and handed it to me.

In the bedroom, I pulled my duffel bag out from under the bed and checked what I’d packed. A change of clothes, something to sleep in, something to wear if I wanted to go for a run. That was all I needed, but when I lifted up experimentally on the handles, the sides drew in, concave. The bag was about a third full, ridiculously thin.

I felt and heard Shiloh kneel down beside me on the bedroom floor. He scooped hair off the nape of my neck and kissed the skin underneath.

It was a quick thing. We didn’t even get undressed, really.

A lot of things had changed for us in the past year: Kamareia gone, Shiloh heading to Virginia, his career to take him God knew where after that. He must have felt the world tipping out of balance as much as I did. It had been Shiloh who’d first brought up marriage, in the same conversation in which he told me he’d passed his Phase II testing and had been given a place in the next class at Quantico.

Shiloh’s proposal had been an attempt to solidify at least one part of a world gone too fluid. I had understood that, and realized that in considering marriage we were probably grabbing too hard at something that was meant to be finessed.

Then I’d said yes and married him anyway. I’d never been a finesse kind of person anyhow.

Shiloh was still breathing hard when he said, “Just in case you do stay down there and I don’t get to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye to you too,” I said, brushing a lock of hair away from my eyes.

Shiloh came out to the driveway with me and scraped ice off the windshield of the Nova, while I pitched my thin, light duffel bag into the backseat and unlocked the driver’s-side door.

“I’ll call if I won’t be back in time to take you to the airport,” I said when he came around to stand near me. “But I’m sure I will.” I leaned over the open door and kissed his cheek.

Before I could pull away, Shiloh took my face in both his hands and kissed me on the forehead.

“Be safe,” he said.

“I will.”

“I mean it. I know the way you drive. Don’t make me worry about you.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “I’ll see you soon.”

The freezing rain that had fallen on the Cities had also fallen on the southern part of the state, and I eased up on the gas once I got out into the countryside, because there were patches of ice still on the road, although they were shrinking and melting under the friction of car wheels. On the radio, the forecast called for more rains over southern Minnesota later, with the temperature likely to dip down to freezing in the night. But I’d be long off the roads by then. By noon I had shot across the line into Blue Earth County.

In one of those quirks of geography that drive newcomers to an area up a wall, Mankato was the county seat of Blue Earth County, while the city of Blue Earth, nearly on the Iowa border, was the seat of Faribault County.

Blue Earth was where Royce Stewart, who’d killed Kamareia Brown, lived and walked around free. Best not to think about that.

Genevieve’s sister and brother-in-law lived in a farmhouse south of Mankato, although they only had two acres and didn’t farm. This was the first I’d been to their house, although I’d seen a lot of Deborah Lowe in the weeks following Kamareia’s death. She’d come up to the Cities and helped with the needed arrangements, taking as much of the burden as she could from her sister.

Their family, of Italian and Croatian extraction, went back for four generations in St. Paul. Genevieve’s parents were working-class liberals, both union organizers. They’d sent four of their five children to college and one into the priesthood as well. When Genevieve had become a cop, her parents had accepted her career the same way they’d accepted the marriage to a black man that had resulted in a biracial granddaughter.

Deb, I had learned, had flirted with becoming a nun in her teenage years before abandoning the idea. (“Guys,” she’d explained succinctly.)

She’d become a teacher instead, starting in St. Paul and then moving outstate to find a kind of lifestyle her family hadn’t known for over a century.

She and Doug Lowe didn’t work the land, but they did have a sprawling kitchen garden and a henhouse to reduce the grocery bills and supplement the paychecks of two schoolteachers.

It was Deborah who heard the car’s engine and came out of the farmhouse to greet me as I was pulling my bag from the backseat of the Nova, which I’d parked in front of the apple tree in their yard.

Deborah was a hair taller than Genevieve, a shade thinner, but otherwise they looked a lot alike. Both had dark eyes and dark hair—Deborah’s was long, worn today in a ponytail—and a pale-olive complexion. Deborah descended the front steps, followed by a dog, a fat caramel-and-white corgi that yapped intermittently without a lot of interest. He stopped at the bottom of the steps, content to observe the interloper’s behavior from a safe position.

Reaching the car, Deborah hugged me while I stood, a little surprised, in the circle of her hard-muscled arms.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, releasing me.

I opened my mouth to say “How is she?” but even as I did, the screen door opened again and Genevieve came out to stand on the porch, looking at us.

She was letting her short, dark hair grow—or more likely, she simply hadn’t thought to have it cut since Kamareia died. The few pounds she had on her sister weren’t fat; they were muscle from the gym. Her physique reminded me of the hard roundness of ponies that used to work down in coal mines.

Shouldering my bag, I stepped around Deborah and walked to the porch. Genevieve held my gaze as I climbed the front steps.

It seemed only right to hug her in greeting, but she was as rigid in my arms as I had been in Deborah’s.

From the front room came the sounds of a basketball game on television. Deborah’s husband, Doug, lifted a hand in greeting but didn’t rise from his place in an easy chair.

Deborah led me down the hall. “You can put your bag in here,” she said, gesturing through the doorway into a spare room.

Inside were two twin beds. The comforter on one was slightly rumpled as though someone had been lying on it in the middle of the day, and I realized that this was Genevieve’s room that I would be sharing.

I set my bag down at the foot of the other bed. On the dresser, in an old-fashioned pewter frame, was a familiar picture of Kamareia. The photo was only a year old; a 16-year-old Kam looked at me with her wide-set hazel eyes. She was smiling, almost laughing, and holding the Lowes’ corgi partly on her lap. The dog wanted to be set at liberty, and Kam was trying to hold on until the picture was taken; that was the source of her merriment.

I’d seen the same picture in Genevieve’s house and wondered if she’d brought it with her or if the Lowes had always had the same one in their spare room.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Deb asked from the doorway. “We’ve got Coke, and mineral water, I think. Beer, if it’s not too early in the day for you.” It was approaching one in the afternoon.

“A Coke is fine, thanks,” I said.

In the Lowes’ big, sunny kitchen, Deborah fixed me a glass of Coca-Cola with ice. Genevieve was so quiet she might as well not have been in the same room with us. Deliberately I caught her eye.

“So,” I asked her, “what do people do around here for fun?”

“I thought you were just down here for a day,” Genevieve said.

A little bit of heat rose under my skin; it was embarrassment. I’d been hunting around at random for a conversation starter and had seized on that one. “I meant, in general.”

When Genevieve appeared to have no answer, Deborah intervened. “There’s a cineplex in town, and that’s about it,” she said. “If we want nightlife, we have to go up to Mankato. There’s a state university there, so they’ve got the stuff that keeps college kids happy.”

“All college kids need are bars,” I said.

“Bars and music,” Deborah agreed.

A moment of quiet followed that. Then Deborah spoke up again. “How’s your boyfriend . . .what’s his name?”

I couldn’t help but glance at Genevieve, to see if she’d correct her sister. She knew Shiloh and I were married. But she remained silent.

“Husband,” I said. “Shiloh’s fine.” I sipped my Coke and turned back to face Deborah. It was clear that Genevieve didn’t have much to contribute.

It wasn’t as if Genevieve were catatonic, or even near-catatonic. She moved around, she answered questions, she performed tasks that were immediately at hand. But if anything, she was in worse shape than she’d seemed on the job in Minneapolis. Retreating to the countryside might help her in the end, but it hadn’t helped her yet.

The conversation between Deborah and me, mostly about Twin Cities’ crime and politics, limped along for another half hour. I drank my Coke. Genevieve just listened. Eventually, Deborah said she had some papers to grade, and Genevieve and I joined Doug Lowe in the living room, where he was still watching his game.

I did that for about fifteen minutes. I’d grown up playing basketball, but I couldn’t find any interest in it today. As long as I’d known Genevieve, she’d never shown any interest in sports, unless she was being asked to play, but now she kept her eyes on the screen, the same as Doug.

She didn’t seem to care when I got up and slipped away.

Deborah was still in the kitchen, papers in two piles in front of her: marked and unmarked. A single paper was in front of her. Her eyes were skimming over it, a red pen ready in her hand. She looked up when I slipped into the chair opposite her.

“Do you think Genevieve’s angry with me?” I asked.

Deborah set the pen down and licked her teeth thoughtfully. “She’s like that with everyone now,” she assured me. “You’ve got to practically kick her in the ass to get her to say anything.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I figured that. But you know about Royce Stewart and the hearing, don’t you?”

“What about it?”

“Kamareia’s identification of Stewart, on the way to the hospital,” I said. “It was my fault that it got thrown out.”

Deb shook her head. “I know what you’re talking about,” she said, “and it’s not your fault.”

“If I’d handled things right, in the ambulance, Stewart would be in prison now.”

She set the pen down and gave me a level look. “If you’d handled it right—’right’ for a cop—what would that have been? Telling Kamareia she was going to die?”

I said nothing.

“Do you think that’s what Genevieve would have done if she’d been with her daughter?” she persisted.

“No,” I said, shaking my head.

“See? And if you’d done it, Genevieve would never have forgiven you. Ever.”

“I’m not sorry about what I said to Kam on the way to the hospital,” I said slowly. “But . . .”

“But what?”

“Genevieve might not be thinking straight.”

Deborah reached across the table and squeezed my closed fist. “She doesn’t blame you. I’m sure of that,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “I guess that’s good. Sorry I interrupted your work.”

“I think she’s glad you’re here,” Deborah said. “You’ve got to be patient with her.”

Around ten-thirty, after a quiet evening, I found myself in the guest bedroom with Genevieve.

I’d undressed in front of her dozens of times in the locker rooms at work and the gym, but this sisterly, intimate context made me feel exposed and shy. I tried to take my clothes off entirely from a sitting position on the narrow twin bed, head lowered.

“Damn,” I said, rolling a sock over my callused heel, “in bed at ten. Now I know I’m in the country.”

“Sure,” Genevieve said, as if reading from a script.

“Doesn’t it get boring, being out here?” I said, pulling my shirt over my head. Hoping, I suppose, for
Yes, it does; I think going back to the Cities would do me good.

“It’s nice out here. It’s quiet,” Genevieve said.

“Well, yeah,” I agreed lamely, pulling back the covers on my bed.

“Do you need the light any longer?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

Genevieve clicked the bedside lamp off.

She was right about one thing: it was quiet. Despite the early hour, I found sleep beginning to tug at my body. But I resisted. I wanted to stay awake long enough to hear Genevieve’s breathing change. If she could fall asleep in a normal amount of time, that at least was a good sign.

I don’t know how much time passed, but she must have believed me asleep. I heard the susurrus of the bedsheets, then padding footsteps as she left the bedroom. It took a few minutes after that for me to realize she hadn’t just gone across the hall to the bathroom. I got up to follow.

The light from the kitchen spilled, increasingly narrowly, down the hall. There was no need to wonder where she’d gone. I walked carefully on the plastic carpet runner and my steps were audible only to me. I stopped just short of the kitchen doorway.

Genevieve sat at the broad table where Deborah had corrected papers, her back to me. A bottle of scotch and a glass with about two fingers in it sat in front of her.