Paint It Black

Chapter Twenty-two

The clouds chased them over the Sereno causeway and onto the mainland. But the rain still had not made its appearance by the time Louis stopped to pay the toll at the Captiva causeway.

Emily had been quiet during the drive, and now she had closed her eyes. Louis let her doze and drove on. When he finally pulled into a parking lot and cut the engine, she stirred and looked around.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Captiva,” Louis said. “The Mucky Duck.”

She nodded slowly. “Oh, right. Burgers.”

They got out and started up to the restaurant. Louis pulled on the door but it was locked. He saw someone inside and knocked on the glass. The waiter looked up and then pointed to his wrist, mouthing the words “half hour.”

“I forgot. They don’t start serving until five-thirty,” Louis said. “You want to wait or go somewhere else?”

Emily was looking at the beach. “Isn’t this where he dumped the homeless man?” she asked.

Louis nodded. “Near here.”

“Show me,” Emily said.

He led the way through the sea oats and down the sandy slope. They walked the hundred yards or so to where the body had been found. The gulf water was churning gray-green, and the beach was deserted except for two elderly women walking in the surf with a bounding Irish setter.

Emily stood staring at the spot where the body had lain. Louis watched as her eyes traveled up toward the sea oats dancing in the wind.

“We think the beating and stabbing took place up there and then he was dragged down here,” Louis said.

Emily’s eyes narrowed. She walked slowly up to the sea oats. They came up nearly to her waist. She stood there, arms wrapped around herself, staring down at the sand. The sound of the setter’s barking carried on the wind.

Louis went up to her. “Farentino,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Look, if it’s something Dan-”

She shook her head quickly. “No, it’s not Wainwright.”

“Then what?”

She was looking now at the elderly women and their dog.

“I was thinking about the homeless man and wondering if anyone is missing him,” she said.

Louis said nothing.

“He had to have someone, somewhere,” Emily said.

The wind gusted, sending the sand swirling around them. Emily’s slight body swayed with the sea oats.

“Someone is missing him,” she said.

Her voice was soft, but without emotion somehow. Louis couldn’t read it or her face. Was she talking as a cop or a woman? It was the closest she had come to saying anything personal. If, in fact, that was what she was even doing. For a second he considered trying to say something comforting. But for what? Did she even need it? Shit, she’d probably take his head off if he tried. Christ. He had come to appreciate the way her mind worked, but anything more than that would be like trying to cozy up to a porcupine.

“Let’s go back,” she said suddenly.

She started back up the beach toward the restaurant. Louis followed.

When they got back to the Mucky Duck, they still had ten minutes to spare. Emily retrieved her neon-green rain slicker from the car and they sat on a picnic table of the restaurant’s patio. Emily was quiet, hunched down in the slicker like a bird, looking out at the gulf. Whatever the reason, she still didn’t seem inclined to talk.

“This is ridiculous,” Louis said finally.

“What is?”

“Eating at five-thirty,” Louis said. “That’s what blue hairs do. Next thing you know, I’ll be wearing boxers.”

Emily’s lips tipped up. “So you’re a briefs man?”

“None of your business, Farentino.”

She shrugged. “You’re the one who got personal, Kincaid.”

They were quiet again.

“Back there with Roberta,” Louis said. “You were good with her, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“That thing you said about your parents. It worked.”

She turned to face him. “It’s true,” she said.

The challenge in her voice caught him off guard. He just stared at her.

“You think I made it up to get her to talk?” she asked.

“What? Hell no,” Louis said quickly, his own anger sparking. “Jesus, Farentino. .”

She turned away. A car pulled in behind them, a door opened and closed. The restaurant was open.

“So, you still want to eat or not?” Louis said.

“In a minute,” she said quietly.

The wind was getting almost cold now. Louis burrowed down into his windbreaker. The sky was slate gray, with a smudge of pink faint on the horizon. It looked as bleak as a Michigan sky. So much for seeing another one of those great Florida beach sunsets Dodie was always yakking about it.

“Look, Kincaid,” Emily said, “I’m sorry.”

He stifled a sigh.

“What Roberta said about twenty years counting for something. That made me think about my parents, that’s all.” Emily paused. “And I haven’t done that in a while.”

“Why not?” Louis asked.

She smiled wryly. “I’m good at compartmentalizing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Putting my feelings in neat little boxes.”

There was the sound of more cars and voices in the lot behind them.

“Why weren’t they married?” Louis asked.

The question had just popped out. He knew it was because his own parents hadn’t been married either. His own father hadn’t even stayed around long enough for his first birthday. And his alcoholic mother had lost all three of her kids to child services. He had grown up believing that white kids didn’t have such secrets. Sure, those guys on Bonanza didn’t have a mother. Neither did Opie or the kids on My Three Sons, unless you counted Uncle Charley. But white kids all had fathers, didn’t they?

Black kids didn’t. That’s what the other kids used to say to him in school. Where’s your father, Louis? Why do you live with that white guy? Shit, even Diahann Carroll’s son didn’t have a father on that stupid Julia show. They killed him off in Vietnam.

Dear old Dad. . missing in action.

He waited for Emily to answer. He wanted to know.

“They didn’t believe in marriage,” she said. “It was the sixties, California, free love and all that crap. Me coming along wasn’t enough of a reason for them to change their minds.”

“But they stayed together,” Louis said.

Emily nodded. “They loved each other. They loved me. Thirty-five years. Like I told Roberta, that counts. But kids can be cruel, you know? I guess a little part of me never got over feeling ashamed.”

Louis looked out over the water. He was glad she didn’t ask him about his own childhood. He was pretty damn good at compartmentalizing, too, and right now, he wanted to stick his past back in its box. He realized suddenly Emily had been speaking in the past tense.

“Your parents. They’re dead?” Louis asked.

She nodded. “Car accident when I was a senior in college.”

Louis watched as she pulled her slicker tighter around herself. “No other family?” he asked.

She shook her head. She took off her glasses and held them up in the waning light. “Salt spray. Got a Kleenex?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

She slipped them back on. “I love the water,” she said after a moment. “It fogs up my glasses, frizzes my hair, and clogs up my sinuses, but I love it.”

“Does the ocean look like this?” Louis asked.

She looked at him. “You’ve never seen the Atlantic Ocean?”

“Nope.”

She looked back out at the gulf. “It’s similar. Biscayne Bay, near where I live, looks like this some. The ocean’s a little wilder.”

“I had a partner once who told me I should live near water,” Louis said. “He was into astrology.”

Emily nodded. “You’re probably a water sign. I’m a Virgo. That’s an air sign.”

“I knew there was a reason we don’t like each other.”

She laughed. She had a great contralto laugh.

“So,” she said after a moment, “where are you going when the case is over?”

Louis didn’t answer. Why was everyone asking him that? He thought about his conversation with Candy. Candy, who had lived all his life in one place and couldn’t wait to pull up his roots and get to the “real world.” Candy, who believed that cops-or anyone-really had any control over how their lives played out.

Louis stared out at the water. The wind-whipped sea oats were whispering. Something else was whispering, there in his brain. Where are you going, Louis?

“Miami. . you like it there?” Louis asked.

Emily smiled slightly. “I do now. It took a long time.”

“Why?”

“I went to Miami after I graduated because it was the farthest I could get away from California after my parents died,” she said. “Florida’s a big escape destination and I hated the place. Old people, humidity, cockroaches the size of small Cessnas flying across my kitchen.”

“But you stayed,” Louis said.

“Yeah. You can put down roots. Not an easy thing to do in sand, but it can be done.”

Louis waited a moment. “But you’re alone.”

She nodded slightly. “I have good friends, a few people who miss me when I’m gone. When you don’t have family, sometimes you have to just build one.”

She fell quiet again, burrowing into her rain slicker. Louis wanted to ask her more, though he wasn’t sure about what. He glanced at her profile, just her nose and those big black glasses poking out of the slicker’s collar. The moment was gone; she had retreated.

“Shitty sunset,” she said. “Let’s go eat.”