Don't Know Jack

held her palms together, rhythmically opening and closing each set of matched fingers, one set at a time, like a metronome, counting.

Counting what?

She had a recent manicure. She had perfectly shaped nails, quite short, painted pastel pink. She had a large square onyx ring with a silver cable around it on her right index finger, and a smaller turquoise ring by the same designer on her right pinky. She was wearing the kind of black patent sandals that fashionable women covet, and she had a fresh pedicure. Her toenails were polished deep purple. Her yellow silk blouse had a pink and green designer’s monogram. Dark silk slacks tapered smartly down her calf, where an ankle bracelet sat near a yellow rose tattoo.

Then someone made a noise and Sylvia’s head snapped up, eyes darted wildly. Kim saw dark beauty, enhanced by skillful makeup. Sylvia’s eyes met Kim’s, and then she lowered her gaze to the floor and began her finger tapping again.

Kim reached into her pocket and pulled out her camera. She framed the shot and said, “Sylvia?”

The woman looked up and saw the camera. She squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and smiled, revealing bright white teeth offset by shimmering pink lip gloss.

She was posing.

Kim switched the camera to video mode and followed her gut.

“I love your shoes,” she said. “Jimmy Choos, right? They look great on you.”

Girlfriends.

“Thank you,” Sylvia replied, holding her leg out in front, the better to display her stylish footwear. “These are my favorites.” She looked up into Kim’s face again. “Want to try them? Your foot’s really tiny, though.”

“I’d better not,” Kim said, as if the refusal cost her a lot. “They wouldn’t like it.”

They.

Us and them.

Girlfriends.

Sylvia pressed her lips into a firm line, nodded as if to say she understood, and lowered her head again.

Kim asked, “So what happened here?”

Sylvia looked up again. Unsmiling this time, but not distraught. Not like she’d just killed a man whose body still lay in her marriage bed. “I’m not supposed to talk about it. I shot him. I couldn’t take him any more. That’s all I’m allowed to say.”

“Who told you that?”

“I’m not allowed to say.”

“Well, aside from his horrible taste in interior design, what was wrong with him?”

Sylvia smiled. She didn’t seem to grasp her situation. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Mentally. “I’m not allowed to say,” she repeated, smiling sadly now, as if she had much more she wanted to say, if only she was allowed to, which she wasn’t.

“Did he hurt you? Do something to you?” Kim continued to record. Sylvia knew she was being filmed, but didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t ask for a lawyer or object to the questions. But she didn’t offer any information, either.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Was that a confession? Remorse generally followed when wives killed their husbands, in Kim’s experience.

“About what?” Kim asked.

“That I’m not allowed to say anything.”

Kim heard another car outside. “When do you think you’ll be able to tell us what happened?”

Sylvia asked a question of her own. “What time is it?”

Kim looked at her watch. “It’s one o’clock, give or take.”

“Maybe later this afternoon,” Sylvia said.

“Why then?” Kim saw Sergeant Brent and another Margrave cop come in.

“I’m just not allowed to say.” Silvia returned her gaze to the floor, and began her finger tapping again. Kim filmed the ritual for a full minute, but Silvia didn’t look up again.

“I’ll catch up with you later,” Kim said.

No response.

***

Kim slipped into the bedroom for a closer look. The master suite contained two rooms. She checked them quickly before focusing on the body. Both were lined in rough pine planks like the rest of the house. There was a small bathroom on one side, and a small closet on the other. The closet was open. It held three empty wire hangers on the rod, and two men’s sneaker boxes on the shelf above, and dry cleaning bags and paper shoulder covers on the floor.

The bathroom was barely large enough for a shower stall, a sink and a toilet. The shower curtain was moldy and stained by iron-rich water. The toilet was running, porcelain cracked. The bedroom itself had a fourteen-inch oval mirror hung too high for Sylvia Black. A ceiling fan hung in the middle of the room, not turning. One jalousie window with frosted panes provided weak natural light.

But the bed itself was the main attraction. It filled most of the room. It was just a queen mattress on a box spring. No headboard or footboard. There was about two feet of space all the way around the bed. There was a beige cotton blanket tangled up in sheets that might once have been white once. There were three pillows with cases in the same yellowed percale as the sheets. There was not as much blood as there might have been.

Kim noticed everything: the blood, the smell, Black’s pallor and the blue bruises unmistakably creeping up his sides from where he lay on his stomach, rigid with full rigor. She was certain he’d been dead more than ten hours. Probably closer to fifteen. But absolutely, positively, most definitely more than two.

She memorized his position. She’d need a recent photograph to know anything about his face. The bullets had gone right through. They were buried in the wall planks. Kim thought about the difficulty of removing them for evidence.

Black’s left arm was bent at the elbow, his hand resting near his face. A thin gold band encircled his ring finger. Not a symbol of love and fidelity in his case, clearly. His right arm was bent palm up. His legs were splayed.

Kim counted the entry wounds: seven visible. Two in his head. One in each of his four limbs at the elbow and knee joints, and the seventh at the base of his spine.

Out in the woods, no one can hear you scream.

***

Next Kim checked the kitchen and noted the camper stove, the small refrigerator, and the dirty sink. She opened the cabinets and saw plastic dishes and plastic glasses that might have been yard sale bargains ten years ago. One cabinet held canned food, mostly soup and beans, with a few cans of sausage. Stuff that would last a good long while, she guessed.

The refrigerator was just as sparsely stocked. Three bottles of beer, some orange cheese, some yellow mustard. Some catsup, half a jar of sweet pickles. Nothing that would sustain a human soul.

Kim found Gaspar waiting on the porch.

“Now what, number one?” he asked.

She said, “Did you know that a hummingbird consumes more than four times its weight in food every day?”

“What?”

“Try and keep up, okay? We tiny Asian women eat like birds.”

One beat. Two. Then he got it. He grinned.

“You see all that and still want to eat?” he said. “You’re cool.”

Home run.

She said, “I saw a diner on the county road. Maybe they’ll have something that won’t give us a disease. But let’s walk around the house, first. Outside. I don’t want to miss anything. I’m hoping I never have to come back