The Halo Effect

33

I didn’t feel dirty. I didn’t need a bath when I got home. But I did want a drink and was opening a bottle of wine when the phone rang. After checking the caller ID first, I answered it.

“Hello, Detective.” I checked my watch as I talked to him. It was earlier than I’d thought. Only nine.

“I’m in the neighborhood.”

“Again? What excuse do you have this time?”

“No excuse. You are too smart. You’d see right through me. But I could wait till tomorrow if this is too inconvenient. I’ll call you at your office. Ask you if I can come up. You’ll remind me that Dr. Buttercup doesn’t want me there. Then I’ll ask you if you can come over to the station house. And we’ll spend ten minutes trying to find a gap in your schedule-”

“How far away are you?”

“About fifteen minutes,” he said.

“Okay,” I said, and heard him hang up.

In the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror as I washed my face and then reapplied just a little lipstick, I wondered why he thought it would be okay to call me at night. Or how he managed to phone just minutes after I got in.

I checked my answering machine on the off chance that he had been calling for a few hours and finally found me home. But no one had called. Then I checked my caller ID to see if anyone had called but hung up without leaving a message. Nothing there, either.

So how did he know I’d just gotten home?

Maybe I was being too suspicious.

I brushed my hair, shut off the light without checking my reflection again and went into the kitchen to open a bottle of wine. The day had been long and the night had been longer. And now it would be longer still.

Pouring the wine, I took a sip and tasted, focusing on the sensations: the cold liquid, the slightly sour and fruity scent, the way it felt filling my mouth, sliding down my throat and leaving me ready for the next sip.

When Detective Jordain rang the bell, I offered him some but he shook his head.

“You’re still on duty? It’s almost ten.”

“I might have to go back to the station after we finish up.”

He looked exhausted, not from lack of sleep, but the way people look after they’ve experienced a trauma.

As he followed me inside, I sensed that he was walking more slowly than usual. And then I was astonished I had noticed something that obscure about him-the speed of his gait. But he was tall, so much taller than me, and his legs were so long, that the last time we had walked across my livingroom floor he had overtaken me.

Not tonight.

He sat down on the couch.

“Do you want some coffee? Something to eat?”

“You know, I haven’t eaten anything all day. I didn’t even realize that till right now. Yes. Anything. Anything easy.”

“Come with me into the kitchen, then. I’ll see what I have, but I’m warning you, the best I can offer is probably a can of soup, a frozen vegetarian entrée, or maybe you’ll be really lucky and I’ll have an English muffin and some peanut butter.”

In the kitchen he leaned against the counter and looked at me with a kind of sardonic sadness. “Soup, frozen stuff? Did you eat tonight?”

I shook my head.

“Are you hungry?”

“Now that you mention it, I am. Ravenous.”

“But you really don’t cook?”

I shook my head again.

“Sit down.”

There was something so matter-of-fact about the way he said it, so easy, that I obeyed. And felt a little jolt of pleasure. I couldn’t remember when anyone had taken over before. Ever? Surely. My father used to. Nina Butterfield did. But my ex didn’t.

“So, let’s see what we have,” he said as he opened the cabinets and foraged around, searching for ingredients.

“You have everything,” he said after a moment. “This is one of the best-stocked larders I’ve ever seen.”

“That doesn’t mean I can cook it up for you. I’m a Martha Stewart wanna-be in the kitchen, as my daughter says. But I’m all wishful thinking. I have no food skills.”

“Well, then, you just sit down, have some more wine and I’ll see what I can do with all this exotica.”

Everything about him was easy. The expansive way he smiled and the slow way he spoke. So much slower than any Easterner. And compared to New Yorkese, it sounded almost excessively languid.

From my overstocked but underused supplies he pulled out cans and boxes, smiling, reading some of the contents aloud, and then putting most of them back.

What he finally assembled on the countertop included a bag of frozen precooked shrimp, a French baguette, a jar of tomato sauce, olive oil and bottles of dried spices, including red chili flakes, cayenne pepper, white pepper and salt.

In the vegetable drawer he found a slightly dried-up garlic clove, an equally sad-looking red onion and a shallot. From the middle shelf he took out a carton of eggs that I hoped were not past their “best before” date and a butter dish I was afraid might be empty.

First he heated the oven. Then he boiled some water and defrosted the shrimp by dumping it over them. Next he put a frying pan on the stovetop, dropped in a knob of butter-the dish wasn’t empty-and poured in a little olive oil.

“Olive oil and butter?” I asked.

He gave me a look. It made me start. Not because he was looking at me, but because it reminded me of how the men in Diablo’s had looked at me. I had forgotten about them and what had gone on earlier that evening. Suddenly I felt odd sitting there in my own kitchen being one person, while I had been someone so very different only an hour before, when a stranger had given me five hundred dollars just to keep some secrets.

Noah threw the onion into the sizzling fat, gave it a few quick stirs and then added the garlic. While he stirred that some more, he said, “You can handle one tablespoon of butter. What the hell is it with you women up East? In New Orleans a woman would never get hysterical about a little bit of butter.”

But he didn’t say it like that-the words were half sung in his New Orleans drawl that had a sound all its own.

While Noah continued with the cooking, I set the table, glancing over at him every once in a while, astounded that such good smells were coming out of my kitchen.

I’m just hungry, I thought.

Leaning against the kitchen sink, I watched him move: stirring one pot, working on the counter with whatever was coming next and getting the French bread into the oven.

Minutes later, he had dished up the food and set the plates on the table. The first bite was peppery and smooth and made me want another right away. “Does this have a name?” I asked.

“Sort of. It’s a frittata. That’s the egg part-”

“I know what a frittata is. I mean the whole dish.”

He shook his head while he took another bite.

“I don’t use recipes or sheet music if I can help it.”

“You’re a musician, too?”

“Piano. Jazz. I like to cook the same way I play. Loose. Whatever strikes my fancy.”

We ate without much more conversation for a few minutes.

“Well, that was delicious. Thank you,” I said when we both were done. “Do you want some coffee?”

I watched him rip off a hunk of bread and use it to wipe up the sauce from his plate.

“I don’t suppose you have any chicory?” he asked.

“No. Just Starbucks.”

“Okay. As strong as you can make it.”

He was delaying whatever he had come here to tell me. He’d been in my house for an hour and hadn’t said a word about his case or asked me one question about Cleo. That was when I got nervous. What if he was here to tell me bad news? Awful news. About Cleo. What if… Just ask, I said to myself.

With my back to him I filled the French press with ground beans. “So do you have any news?” I asked.

“It can wait for the coffee.”

“But I don’t know if I can.” My heart sped up.

“There was another Magdalene murder tonight.”

The steel coffee scoop I was using fell out of my hand and onto the tile floor. The grounds scattered. It looked as if there were ants-hundreds of dead ants-on the white squares. I moved to wipe them up just as Noah came over to help. As I bent down, he did, too, our heads close together. We both looked up at the same time.

I could see into his eyes, which were a blue so light they almost didn’t look real. I could feel his breath on my face.

For a minute I was confused. Started to sway. Felt as if I was reaching forward, as if I might actually be moving closer to him, as if he was inching toward me. And then I lost my balance just enough for him to notice, and he reached out to steady me with his hand.

My skin reacted. For the second time in one night, a man’s fingers were on me. It stopped everything. I couldn’t move. The touch was different from Judas’s. It was, in its own way, much more frightening.

But how could that be? How could this safe police detective, with his trusty weapon strapped under his arm, frighten me more than a total stranger who liked to pay women to fuck him in very public places where he might get caught?

“I’ll make the coffee,” he said. “You sit down. Let me tell you what happened. You just listen. Then you can tell me what you think. We know what we have on our hands now. There’s no question about that. But we still don’t know enough to outthink him.” Noah’s back was to me as he added more coffee to the French press.

It was a wide back with a lot weighing on the shoulders. And I wanted to help him. Not only, I knew, because of Cleo. But for his sake, too.

Because when I’d looked into his eyes, I’d seen more than a startling color of blue. I’d seen pain.