Always (44 page)

The stroking, paused, resumed. Her muscles firmed. She lifted her head.

“Yesterday,” she said. “After the Duwamish park, when I had to leave, it was because I had an—Shit.” Something thumped into the concrete behind me. She jumped up. “Jefe! Drop it. Drop it right now!”

It was the black cat, weighed down by a huge rat in its mouth. He dropped the rat at Kick’s feet and looked pleased. The rat lay on its side, panting.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, God. Is it hurt?”

The rat jumped to its feet and made a dash for the gap under the fence. Jefe pounced, seized it, threw it in the air, caught it, shook it, brought it back. Dropped it again in front of Kick. How much simpler life would be if we could act like cats: just drop our trophy at the beloved’s feet.

“Oh, God. Aud, get him away. The cat. Get the cat away. Get him away.”

I picked Jefe up, carried him to the fence, and dropped him over.

"Don’t,” I said, when Kick bent to the rat. “It will bite.” It could have rabies.

“It’s hurt. Look. It’s not moving.”

Its chest was heaving, its heart beating so hard its ribs shook, but from the hips down it didn’t move.

“Do something,” she said.

I walked back to the grill, picked up the boning knife.

“Do something,” she said again. Then she saw the knife. “What are you doing?”

“You might not want to watch.”

“What are you doing?”

“Step back a little, please. Thank you.” I knelt, put the tip of the knife in the soft place at the base of its tiny skull, and pushed, once. The thin blade slid past the brief resistance of skin and through the spinal cord. The body convulsed, then went still.

“You killed it.”

“Its back was broken.”

“We could have done something.”

“No. Its back was broken.”

“So, what, that’s it? It doesn’t work perfectly anymore, so throw it away, like an ugly, broken toy?”

She wasn’t making any sense to me. Was this still about the cherry tree? Except the cherry tree hadn’t been about the cherry tree.

“What were you going to say, earlier?” But she didn’t hear me; she was looking at the bloody knife in my hand. I walked to the grass and stabbed the turf a couple of times. Kick watched me. When I put the knife in the Pyrex dish and walked back to the rat, she backed up again.

I picked the rat up by its tail. If I threw it into the bushes at the bottom of the garden, it would be gone by morning. But Kick, I knew, would object.

She watched silently while I unfolded the aluminum foil she had used to cover the fish, laid the rat on it, and folded it into a neat package. “Where do you keep your garbage bags?”

“I’ll get one.”

It took her a minute. I saw she’d got herself another beer, too. I put the foil packet in the garbage bag, tied a knot in the top, and dumped it in the rubbish bin by the fence. Jefe was sitting there, washing his face.

“I need to wash my hands,” I said.

“Yes,” Kick said. “You go do that. And take your—take the knife, too.” She stepped aside so I could go through the door. She didn’t touch me as I passed.

When I got back into the garden, she was covering the grill, one handed, beer in the other. When she was done, she tilted back her head and drank the bottle dry. She stared at it, half turned as though to get another, then changed her mind. “I have to get out, go somewhere.”

I stood. I wasn’t sure whether she wanted to get out or to get away from me. “Are you all right?”

Her laughter was like the spill of mercury from a broken thermometer: slippery and fascinating and one small step from toxic. “Am I perfect as a circle? Oh, no, no, I don’t think I am. I’m definitely flawed.”

“I meant, are you all right to drive?”

“Not being perfect doesn’t make me incapable.”

“You’ve already had three beers.” And it was clear she would be having more. “I’ll drive you, if you like.”

“Fine. You do that.” She turned her shoulders from me, though not her hips. Pushing me away, begging me to stay. I’d seen the dynamic before with people who had been sexually abused, a twisty self-hatred: Love me, but if you do I’ll find you contemptible because I don’t deserve love. There’s something inside me that is wrong and bad and you shouldn’t touch it.

“The grill’s still hot,” I said.

“It’ll be fine.” She put her hand on the gate. “If you want to drive, do it now.” In the car she found a rock station and turned the music into a wall.

KICK DIRECTED
me to a bar in Ballard’s old town. I pulled up outside. NO FOOD, it said on the door, and MUST SHOW ID. I left the engine running but turned off the music. She unfastened her seat belt but didn’t get out.

“Will you be all right?”

“Are you offering to hold my hand?”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t have a fucking drink,” she said, and got out and walked inside without a backward glance.

HER GATE
squeaked. The hinges needed oiling. The coals were cooling. Nevertheless, I carried the grill to the middle of the concrete patio, made sure the lid was secure and the vents fully open to speed the heat loss.

Overhead, the cherry tree creaked, and creaked again. One more storm and the whole thing would come down.

THE SUITE
was cold; the maid had left the air-conditioning on high. I opened the windows the three inches they allowed and tore off my clothes, which smelled of grill smoke and Kick. I started a bath, running it very hot, and faxed Finkel and Rusen’s legal paperwork to Bette for review. I sat on the arm of the sofa and balanced the Corning-mirrored laptop on my knees, scrolling idly through lists of file names. I had the Corning-to-Bingley -to-ETH connection, now I needed to trace the other way, Corning to whoever had drugged me. Nothing obvious so far.

I put the laptop aside, checked the bath water. Dried my hands, scrolled some more. There. Something. I scrolled back. Nothing. I rubbed my eyes. Too tired. Too irritated. I put the laptop down. I’d have a bath. Order some coffee. Look again.

I climbed into the deep bath and lowered myself slowly. The bath was warm and my muscles perfectly limp. I drowsed.

Luz stood looking at Kick, who had her arms around the cherry tree. “Will you kiss it better?” she said, in her fast Mexican Spanish. “And then can we have a Big Mac?”

I jerked awake. Big Mac.

I walked dripping to the laptop, wiped my hands on the sofa, picked up the laptop.

There. A folder called Big Mac. I opened it. A record of payments to “Mackie,” three so far. I dropped the laptop on the sofa, went into the bedroom for my own. Pulled up the employment data Rusen had sent me days ago. Studied the attached thumbnail photo. Found the information supplied by James I. Mackie. Twenty-two, supposedly, a graduate of Western Washington, Bellingham. A recent graduate, therefore no work references for Rusen to check, but he had checked with WWU; someone called James I. Mackie had graduated with honors in French.

The Mackie I had met did not strike me as the studying kind.

Still naked, I dialed Turtledove and left a message.

“Take a look at Mackie. A pseudonym. I’ll forward his picture and employment records. Pull the WWU transcript and photo of James I. Mackie, class of ’06, and if it doesn’t match the one I send you, run mine past your sources in local law enforcement.” I realized I was telling him how to do his job. “Call me first thing tomorrow.”

I got myself a towel, dried off, dressed in clean clothes, ordered coffee. I had just opened Corning’s Visa account when my phone rang. I picked it up. Dornan.

“Yes?”

“. . . a rat.” Then something else, smothered by a blast of music. He was in a bar.

“What?”

“. . . your contribution today was to kill a rat.”

“Are you with Kick?”

Noise.

“I said, Are you with—”

“. . . have to kill it?”

“What? Dornan, the rat was dead already.”

“. . . upset. Today of all days.”

“And what day is that?”

“. . . very hard day ...” More noise. Then, “Peg’s going to sing? Joel, Joel, look, Peg’s going to sing.”

Peg? Joel? Singing?

“. . . hard to understand . . . All you had to do was talk to her about her day—”

No one had asked me about my day. My day of earthquakes that weren’t there, and twisty, incoherent speeches about cherry trees and perfection.

“. . . ”

“Dornan, I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Keep Kick safe for me. Dornan. Dornan?”

“. . . ”

I thumbed the phone off. I stared at the screen, not seeing the data.

I considered driving back to the bar, decided against it. Clearly, she was surrounded by friends. Equally clearly, I had not been invited.

I focused on the list of debits. Two more from Bellevue. Corning was still at the Hilton.

Turtledove had good working relationships with Seattle PD and the King County sheriff’s department; it was impossible to stay in business for fifteen years as a PI without them. By morning I would know, one way or another, about Mackie. Then I would talk to him, get the information I needed to give me leverage with Corning. Then I’d pay her a visit. Then we would go to Mindy Leptke. Then I’d get Kick’s reputation back.

The coffee came. I poured, cradled the cup between my hands. I wondered if Kick had drunk herself insensible. I wondered what she was so afraid of.

I thought about the cherry tree. Luz. Kiss it better. I couldn’t kiss better whatever was bothering Kick, at least until she told me what it was. But I could take care of that tree. I could make that better.

THE AZALEA BLOOMS WERE DELICATELY TINGED WITH BROWN, AND SOMETIMES,
now, in the late afternoon, storms would boil out of nowhere and flash and throw water on everything and blow transformers in a writhe of light— turquoise, magenta, lime—similar to the titanium earrings that had been popular when I was a child. It had been on a night like this, with spring singing in my bones, that I’d met Julia. We hadn’t exchanged a word. The next day she came to the police gym. After the rookies left we faced each other in
chi sao,
knees bent and wrists touching. As we circled, her toes gripped automatically at the mat. Narrow feet, I remembered, aristocratic, and golden, already toasted to biscuit by judicious exposure to sunlight.

Almost a year later, I stared at ten pairs of feet in the Crystal Gaze basement. Therese’s feet, soles up in full lotus, were strong but brutalized— those of an ex-ballet dancer. Christie had peasant feet, blunt and solid and healthy, nails cut square and pink-and-white clean, utterly un-gothlike. Kim’s toenails were painted metallic blue, the same color as her fingernails. Suze’s left foot had a massive bruise on the instep; Pauletta’s were close to the color of old tea, her ankles delicate.

Sandra’s feet were a complete surprise. They were lovely: smooth, unhurt, and clearly cherished. Part of me had expected her to treat her feet with indifference, for perhaps the toes to have been broken and reset many times, for there to be evidence of cuts from broken glass. They reminded me of something, someone, and I was surprised by a strong, sudden urge to pat her on the leg and tell her everything would be all right.

Katherine and Jennifer were both hiding their feet, Katherine by tucking them under her and Jennifer by draping them with her hands.

I stood and gestured for everyone to do likewise. “Some people find working in bare feet makes them feel as vulnerable as working naked.”

“I’m not getting naked for anyone,” Nina said.

“Another reason to be grateful today,” Pauletta said.

They were starting early with the banter. “Why do you suppose having naked feet makes us feel so vulnerable?”

“Is this one of those call-and-response, we’re-not-going-anywhere-’til-you -get-an-answer things?” Pauletta said.

“No,” I said, surprised. “I hoped one of you would know.”

Silence. Today, I didn’t mind. Today, I felt as whippy and light as a sapling.

“Today we’re going to learn about falling. And then throwing.

I ignored the ripple of unease.

“Culturally, Americans are taught that being down in any way is shameful, inferior: something to be avoided at all costs. The older we get, the more we absorb this message. It becomes more and more important to stay on our feet: stand your ground, find your feet, stand tall. It’s likely that we become more scared of falling as we grow for two simple reasons: the ground seems farther away, and we heal less easily.

“We’re taught that once we’re down, we’ll never get up again, that we’ll be defenseless. It’s not true. There’s a whole martial art dedicated to floor techniques. Jujitsu is built on defending yourself from the ground.”

“Show us that, then,” Suze said.

“All right.” I gestured everyone but Suze away from the mats and lay down on my back in the middle, knees pointing at the ceiling and feet flat to the floor. “Attack me.”

“How?”

“Any way you like.”

She tried to run around my feet for my head. I swiveled on the mat. She ran the other way. I swiveled again. She lost patience and came straight at my feet, which I lifted into kicking position. She backed away.

“What if there’s two of them?” Jennifer said.

What if they have flamethrowers? What if they’re driving tanks? “Let’s find out. You step into the circle and attack my head.”

She stepped a cautious six inches towards me and Suze, predictably, took the opportunity to rush me.

I waited until Suze was close, swept her feet from under her with one leg, swiveled a hundred eighty degrees, and held my feet menacingly at Jennifer. She backed away, hands up.

Suze leapt to her feet. From the way she was shaking out her right hand, she’d landed on her arm.