Killer Swell

7

The cops were unrolling yellow crime-scene tape like birthday streamers when Detective Liz Santangelo arrived just before eleven. She wore a white blouse under a black leather jacket, black jeans shimmying up her long legs, and open-heel sandals on her feet. The jacket was gathered at her waist, accentuating her figure, and more than a few of the twenty or so cops now on the scene tried to eye her inconspicuously as she strode in my direction.

Since I’d seen her naked a couple of years ago, the thrill was gone for me.

She strode right up to me and spread her hands out in front of her, palms up, and said, “You opened the trunk. Why?”

In my head, I kept replaying the moment I’d opened the trunk. I couldn’t make it stop. “I didn’t know she was in there, Liz.”

She narrowed her blue eyes beneath her jet-black hair. “You thought the smell was what, an old sandwich?”

Liz’s beauty was matched only by her sarcasm. “Gimme a break, Liz.”

She shook her head and folded her arms across her chest, disappointing much of the crowd. Her hair was pulled back away from her face, a small silver hoop in each earlobe. Her thin, pink lips were somewhere between a frown and a snarl. And her eyes could be hypnotizing, particularly when they were rolling.

“Noah, you know better,” she said, shaking her head. “This is junior varsity stuff.” She stared at me for a moment and her expression changed. “You know her?”

I nodded. “Kate Crier.”

Liz’s eyes blinked, she stood up a little straighter, and she glanced at the car. “Kate?”

I nodded and Liz frowned, her chin dropping slightly. Liz had been two years ahead of Kate and me in school. It occurred to me that they might’ve played volleyball together, but I wasn’t sure.

“Shit,” Liz said quietly. “Why are you here?”

I let out a deep breath. “Her mother hired me to find her.”

“They thought she was missing?”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone knew she was in the trunk,” I said sharply, irritated by everything.

She stared at me with a hard look I’d become all too familiar with during our six-month relationship two years ago. The look was a mixture of condescension, disgust, and confusion. I always bring out the best in women.

“Be right back,” she said.

She walked over to the cops stringing the tape, pointing at several spots that she wanted secured. She then made her way over to the medical examiner’s people. Beneath the bright police lights that bit into the darkness, they were taking Kate’s body from the car. I turned away. I knew that I would never be able to remember Kate as the gorgeous eighteen-year-old high school senior again. She would always be looking at me from the inside of that trunk.

“Noah,” Liz said, back at my side. “What else do you know?”

I shook my head. “Not much. I talked to her mother and her husband earlier tonight.”

She nodded and watched over my shoulder at what I assumed to be the removal of the corpse. I closed my eyes and tried to flush the image of Kate’s dead face from my memory.

“I’m gonna need you to make a statement,” Liz said, as I opened my eyes.

“Tomorrow,” I said, exhausted. “I’ll come down in the morning.”

“Tonight,” she said, the hard cop look returning to her face. “You’ll make the statement tonight. I don’t want to miss anything.”

I had never appreciated the fact that Liz could turn her cop behavior off and on so easily. More often than not, it was the cop behavior that I had to deal with in our relationship, and that had never worked for me.

I stared at her for a moment, and she held my gaze. Then I said, “Now I remember.”

The corners of her mouth twitched. “Remember?”

“Why we broke up. I remember why now.”

Her eyes went flat, and she glanced over my shoulder again. “Really. Why’s that?”

“Because I decided you were a bitch,” I said, and walked away.