Sympathy Between Humans

9

After eight uninterrupted hours of sleep at home, I woke up in my warm, stifling bedroom wanting several things all at once: ice water; a hot, hot shower; and some kind of food I couldn’t quite identify. I satisfied the first two needs first, lingering in the shower. It was amazing how much better my ear felt already. It wasn’t even sore. It just had that pleasant, empty heaviness that sometimes replaces pain, the way your head feels after a particularly nasty headache rolls out, letting you free of its grip at last.

Dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a tank shirt against the hot weather, I went into the kitchen and looked over the lightly stocked refrigerator and cupboards. Nothing appealed to me. Whatever this odd craving was, it wasn’t the usual impulse-eating suspects: caffeine, sugar, salt, or red meat. I went out the back entryway, into the yard.

Last night’s storm had left the skies clean, with just a few white clouds left over in the west. The sun was high in the sky, but the overhanging elms filtered out all but a few of its rays. My neighbor’s underfed Siamese cat prowled through the overgrown grass of our narrow, untended backyard, stopped, assessed me as no threat, and went on. I, also, went on, to the basement door and down into the cobwebbed dimness.

Down here was what Shiloh called the “Armageddon food,” canned things only to be eaten in case of natural disaster, riot, martial law, or nuclear attack. I’d always thought the kind of food that kept well in emergencies- ready-to-eat, low-sodium soups and powdered milk and fruit in syrup- was too depressing to be eaten as the world fell apart. “We need liquor down here,” I’d said. “A few bottles of whiskey and some jars of chocolate sauce.”

Shiloh, sitting on his heels in the dimness, surveying the shelves, had dryly agreed. Oh, sure, he’d said. Maybe we should put a bed down here, too. As the world goes up in flames outside, we can give ourselves over to every kind of perversion. And then he’d given me that look, the one that reminded me that few people have as deep a pleasure in wickedness as the once devout, like Shiloh, a preacher’s son.

Goddammit. While it was impossible to forget that I was living alone, that my husband was in prison in another state, every once in a while it hit me afresh that, hey, it’s Shiloh who isn’t here anymore. And today of all days I did not want to be thinking those kinds of thoughts.

Fortunately, I was almost immediately distracted. As I moved for the stairs with a jar of applesauce and a can of pears in my hands, I tripped in the poorly lit surroundings. The culprit, on the floor, was an old and battered toolbox that I knew held tools we didn’t use on a weekly or even monthly basis, unlike the wrench and pliers. But I knew without opening it that it held something else, too: an unregistered.25 with cheap silver plating.

Genevieve’s sister, Deb, had given it to me, what seemed like a hundred years ago. She’d come by it innocently enough; it was a relic from her days of living in a bad East St. Louis neighborhood. She was overdue to get rid of it, and I’d promised her I’d take care of that. But immediately after that, Shiloh ’s disappearance and our subsequent troubles had wiped my promise from my mind. I’d stashed the cheap little gun in the basement, and here it had remained. Given the suspicion I’d been under in the Royce Stewart case, I’d felt I couldn’t simply take it to work and give it to our evidence techs for disposal. That was truer than ever now, with Gray Diaz in town.

I nudged the toolbox away from the base of the stairs with my foot, deciding I’d deal with the.25 soon, but not today.

Upstairs again, I ate the whole can of pears with a little grated cheddar cheese on top of it, and was a quarter of the way into the jar of applesauce when I heard a knock at my door.

The curtains on the windowed top half of the door were sheer, and through them I could see a full, broad masculine form. I pulled back the curtain and saw Detective Van Noord, to whom I’d made my apologies yesterday before fleeing work.

I opened the door. “What’s going on?”

“Prewitt sent me,” he said. “To see if you were here. We couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“It’s my day off,” I said. “Is something going on?”

I meant a public-safety emergency, all hands needed. But the afternoon outside was quiet, no sirens in the distance.

“No, nothing like that,” Van Noord said. “But you left so abruptly yesterday, in the middle of your shift, that Prewitt was worried. He asked me to check on the situation.”

“I was sick,” I said blankly. “I told you that yesterday.”

“I know, and I told him, but he still asked me to check on you, and then we couldn’t reach you, not on your cell or your pager-”

“Why didn’t you call here?” I asked again.

“We did, and kept getting a busy signal.”

“The phone’s off the hook,” I said, remembering only now the decision I’d made very early that morning. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”

But it still didn’t make any sense, Prewitt sending Van Noord here. “Are you shorthanded?” I asked. “I’m feeling a lot better today. I could come in.”

“Oh, no, no,” he said, waving off the suggestion. “You stay home, take care of that ear. But you might want to keep your cell on. Just so we can get in touch if we need you,” he advised.

“Sure,” I agreed.

When he was gone, I went into the kitchen and put the phone receiver back on its cradle. Then I poured myself a glass of water and washed down the first dose of antibiotics. I’d bought them just after leaving Cicero ’s, at a 24-hour pharmacy, waiting at the counter with a nonchalance so forced it would have clearly broadcast my paranoia to anyone who’d truly been paying attention.

The world had gone crazy, I thought. I was scamming prescription drugs. Lieutenant Prewitt was sending his detectives around to check on sick personnel. The sanest person I’d dealt with in the last forty-eight hours was Cicero Ruiz.

Cicero. Now, there was a problem.

In the brief time that I’d known Cicero Ruiz, I’d seen him not only give an examination and dispense medical advice, but also perform something that qualified as minor surgery. Then he’d revealed himself to be in possession of a prescription pad and willing to write a prescription; I had only his word that he was making a solitary exception in my case. Cicero had incriminated himself as readily and thoroughly as if I’d written a script for him to follow. But I couldn’t turn him in, not now. It was as simple as this: I’d given him my word.

He’d extracted that promise from me only in relation to the illegal prescription and the prospect that I’d get caught with it. But in principle, I’d promised something much larger. I do not need to get arrested, Cicero had said. I’d promised I wouldn’t get him in trouble with the law.

Even if I hadn’t made that promise, would I be on more solid ground right now? The greater issue was my own behavior. I hadn’t faked an ear infection. That had been genuine, and I’d accepted medical care from Cicero for it, which had to be the ethical equivalent of buying stolen goods from a fence or placing a bet with an illegal bookmaker. Then I’d participated in a prescription fraud. And just for good measure, I’d become sexually involved with a suspect.

Whatever happened, I couldn’t turn him in now. I’d crossed too many lines.