Crime Scene

Chapter 14

We managed to fit eight of the eleven remaining boxes into the Prius, leaving the three rotted ones behind.

“Are you okay to drive?” I asked.

She ignored me and got into her car.

Sitting in my own car, engine off, I watched her brake lights fade.

The case was closed, or would be soon, with one click of a mouse. On paper, Tatiana and I would revert to being strangers. That could create opportunities. Or destroy them.

We’re not a delivery service.

I started the car, swung a three-point-turn, and eased toward the driveway, cresting the top and immediately jamming on the brake.

Down at the bottom, a man stood on the sidewalk.

He was gazing up at Rennert’s house. I couldn’t see his face. The angle was wrong; he was wearing a hoodie, pulled up, and my headlights blew out details, leaving me with no more than a general sense of size and shape.

He was goddamn enormous.

That was as much as I could process before he spooked and ran, disappearing behind a hedge.

I lifted my foot off the brake, rolling to street level.

The cul-de-sac was deserted.

I edged forward to peer along Bonaventure Avenue.

No sign of him.

I was off duty, unarmed, fatigued.

I had my couch, my TV, my ice pack.

Why run?

Peeping Tom?

Burglar, casing?

Someone who pushed people down stairs?

I deal in facts. I try to be pragmatic. But so much comes down to instinct, a tickle in the brain stem that says This feels wrong.

Where the hell had he gone?

The street was the only way out for a vehicle. Then I noticed the sign for a footpath, poking out at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac.

BONAVENTURE WALK.

I left my car at the curb.

The path snaked between two of the south-side properties, twisting and dropping. I couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. To my left grew towering bamboo hedges; from behind them came the loud burble of a fountain or pond, the owner’s attempt to block out the sound of pedestrian traffic. It also meant that I couldn’t hear what lay around the bend.

No one would hear me coming, either.

I picked up the pace, boots slapping concrete, knee beginning to complain.

A steep run of crumbling cement stairs fed me into a second cul-de-sac. Less ornate homes, brown shingles and station wagons, funky statuary and overgrown planter boxes.

I spotted him: a block and a half off, headed toward College Avenue at a rapid clip.

I followed.

He glanced back.

Stiffened.

Broke into a sprint.

Definitely wrong.

I went after him.

Within ten feet I could feel the mistake in my knee.

“Sheriff,” I yelled. “Stop.”

He hooked left down Cherry Street, his receding bulk shored up against banks of moonlight and the icy spillover from living room TVs. For a man his size, he could move. Or maybe it felt that way to me because I was limping like a junker.

I yelled again for him to stop.

He raced ahead.

It’d been a long time since I’d detained anyone, let alone made an arrest. But I’m still a peace officer; I was in uniform, and his failure to heed me amounted to probable cause. Forget whatever hunch had triggered my suspicion. He could be carrying drugs or a weapon. He might have warrants out.

At Russell he went right, westward again, ducking out of sight.

I came stumbling around the bend.

College Avenue was bustling and fragrant, bookstores and cafés doing a brisk nighttime trade. Hipster dads bounced toddlers awake way past their bedtimes. Undergrads in North Face walked with their arms linked. Bursts of laughter and breath-steam.

Given his height, given mine, I should have been making easy eye contact with him.

He was nowhere.

I hitched along, peering into shop windows. People gave me a wide berth. I was sweaty and red and filthy.

He wasn’t in the Italian grocery. He wasn’t sampling Tibetan cloth.

I crossed over Ashby and doubled back, passing the movie theater, the gelato shop. Weather be damned, there was a line out the door, patrons corralled by a black velvet rope. Everyone was having fun, except me.

He could have gotten into a car.

Taken a side street.

Hopped a fence.

Air whipped my face as a bus barreled past.

I craned to see if he was on it. Too late; it farted exhaust and plunged into darkness.

I stood with a hand on the back of my head, panting.

He was gone.

I trudged back to my car. My knee felt thick as a barrel, and I considered calling in sick. Physically, I doubted I could do more than shuffle paper. But Shupfer had already left the team shorthanded. She had a sick kid, pretty much the definition of a legitimate excuse.

What was mine? I’d hurt myself in pursuit of a suspect?

Suspect in what? A guy in a hoodie fleeing the scene of a death that had gone down two months ago? What was I doing there in the first place?

Explain yourself, Edison. Make it make sense.

I couldn’t.

In agony, I crawled behind the wheel, popped the glove box, shook out four generic ibuprofen from a jumbo bottle, dry-swallowed.

For the next two hours I sat in the cul-de-sac, waiting for him to show himself.

Shortly after midnight I drove home. I wrapped my knee in ice, stuffed a pillow beneath it, and stretched out on my bed.

At four thirty a.m., I woke to the beeping of my alarm. I rolled over. The ice had melted into a sloshing bag. Gingerly I removed it and tested my range of motion. The joint felt stiff, but the pain, at least, had receded to a dull threat.

I hobbled to the shower, letting the hot water loosen me up, praying for a slow day. The hulking silhouette of the man flashed through my mind, sending my heart rate leaping. To calm myself, I turned instead to thinking about Tatiana.

Her dancer’s posture. Her collarbones. Her body as I imagined it, all parts seamlessly knitted together.

I dried off, dressed, went to work.