copied were in her bag. She pul ed them out and read through the material once again. Then she felt the key in her pocket. It opened the CTA access door near Clinton, the spot where they had found Maria Jackson’s body a week ago. Lawson checked her watch. Her meeting was set for five. Plenty of time. She stood up, put on her gloves and pul ed them tight. The woman in the Target uniform smiled as the train glided to a halt. Lawson smiled back. Then the doors slid open, and she stepped onto the dim platform.
Lawson scraped her shoes through the dirt, looking up at layers of dust floating above her in various levels of light. Jackson’s body had been discovered less than a mile from where she was walking, but that wasn’t the federal agent’s concern. Her eyes fol owed a string of lights, running along the subway tracks and into the darkness. This wasn’t the sealed fluorescent lighting she’d seen on her ride into the city. These were lightbulbs, old-school, just as she remembered from the Jackson crime scene. And that bothered her.
Somewhere, a rumble vol eyed and echoed. Lawson instinctively stepped back and touched the grip on her gun. She could feel the vibration through her feet, hear it in the steel. The rumble grew until the train seemed like it was right on top of her. Then she saw it through a gap, a leap of fury and light, three tracks over, blowing around the corner and down the tunnel. Lawson cast her eyes overhead and watched the bulbs sway, throwing shadows on the wal s around her. Then the train was past. The bulbs continued to rock in a subtle, declining arc, and soon the only sound was again the shuffle of her feet.
Lawson walked for another ten minutes, then turned back toward the door she’d come in. She’d spend the rest of her day thinking about the subway, the lightbulbs, and her meeting, al of which was good-mostly, because it kept her from thinking about the rest.
CHAPTER 48
I remembered the smell of burned wax and perfume, a door opening and cool air sucking me down a dark hallway. I stepped into a narrow room with a single overhead light and a plain wooden table. The suit motioned me to sit. He passed some paper across the table. I signed. He read what I signed and nodded. Then he left the room and returned with a vessel made of plain black stone and sealed with white wax. I pulled the vessel toward me. It felt cold and heavy in my hands. I could smell the crush of dead leaves and saw a pair of thin, bloodless lips, set in a cruel line and stitched together with dead man’s silk. A shovel turned over in my mind, and the world went black. I looked up. The suit grinned and offered me the stubs of his teeth, sunken into yellow, swollen gums. I pushed the vessel back across the table and left. Voices chased me down the hall. I could feel their eyes as I grasped the handle on the front door and nearly took it off its spindle. Then I was outside again, into the sun’s blister, the blast furnace of South Central L.A., the storefront undertaker on his stoop, yelling now, telling me I needed to come back. There were more bills to pay. More credit cards to run. I shucked my coat over my shoulder and hit it. Walked along Florence Avenue for the better part of the day, feet melting into the pavement, sun bursting inside my head. I sat on a bench at a bus stop and closed my eyes. A couple of locals hit me up for money, but I shrugged them off. Buses came, buses went. Their exhaust fused with the heat and settled into a sludge that I breathed. Finally, the sun went down and a blessed cool came into the valley of the city. I opened my eyes to headlights from the traffic and the sun dissolving orange against a blue-black sky. I took a cab to LAX. The early flights to Chicago were booked, so I caught the redeye. I leaned back in my seat as the plane lifted off beneath me, thinking I had left my father behind. How wrong I was. MY EYES SNAPPED OPEN to a ceiling fan cutting lazy strokes through the late afternoon sun. My heart thundered in my chest, and my mouth felt parched.
The phone rang. I checked cal er ID, lifted the phone, and dropped it back onto its cradle. Then I went into the kitchen and found the Macal an. Or what was left of it. The phone rang again. This time I picked up.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Rodriguez said.
I looked at the water glass of scotch in front of me. “Getting drunk. How about you?”
“No one’s heard from you for a day and a half.”
Actual y, that wasn’t true. Four days ago, I watched as they put Hubert Russel in a hole I’d dug for him. I spent the next three days at Northwestern Memorial. They let me in to see Rachel once. She cried until I left.
“What do you want, Rodriguez?”
“How is she?”
“Nothing’s changed.”
“You gonna try and see her again?”
“They said they’d cal.”
“You want to get a drink?”
“I’l let you know if I run out.”
Rodriguez grunted and hung up. I found an old pack of cigarettes and lit one up. The pup didn’t like that and went back into the bedroom. From the bottom drawer of my desk I pul ed out a folder tabbed L.A. and opened it. On top was a police shot of my father, cold and stiff in a one-room SRO in South Central. Underneath, more of the same.
I turned the picture facedown and picked up the phone. She answered on the first ring.
“Yes, Michael.”
“Anything new?”
“From an hour ago? No, Michael, nothing’s new.”
The woman’s name was Hazel Wisdom. She worked the day shift on Rachel’s floor. My contact at night was a nurse named Marilyn Bunck.
“Did she eat lunch?” I said.
“I don’t know, Michael, but I’m betting yes.”
“Did the doctors see her?”
“I told you. They see her every day.”
“Did she talk to them?”
“I wasn’t there when they examined her, but I know she’s getting stronger. It’s just going to take a while.”
“Meanwhile, I need to keep my distance.”
“It’s not distance. It’s space. Just a little space so she can heal.”
“Doing nothing doesn’t work for me, Hazel.”
“Real y? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Don’t blow things out of proportion.”
“You hung around here for three days, living on coffee and Snickers bars, sleeping on the floor when you weren’t staring at her door and haunting every nurse and doctor that came in and out of her room.”
“Until your hospital booted me out.”
“It wasn’t helping her, and that’s what’s important. Listen, if I could make it happen for you, I would. We al would. But it’s just not the way these things work. You’re in the business, Michael. You know.”
She was right. I’d sat with plenty of them: fathers and husbands, boyfriends and brothers-victims once removed. Most would nod and gasp for air, hands clenching and unclenching, faces moving in broken pieces, lips mouthing questions for which there was never a good enough answer. And now I was one of them, asking a nurse to play God, wishing I could turn tomorrow into yesterday, wishing I could make Rachel whole. Hazel’s voice brought me back to the moment.
“The truth is you just have to sit tight. Chances are she’l be asking for you. Another day or two at most.”
I nodded to an empty room. “Thanks for putting up with me, Hazel.”
She laughed. “For what it’s worth, if I’m ever sick or hurt, I hope you’re on my side.”
“Be careful what you wish for. You’l cal me if-”
“If she asks? What do you think?”
“Bye, Hazel.”
“Talk to you in an hour, Michael.”
I hung up the phone and felt the silence, heavy around me. I took my smokes and drink into the living room,
