surrounded by hundreds of mansions. Whenever things got dangerously ostentatious in the neighborhood-a fancy symphony party or political fund-raiser at the Versailles-like palace around the corner, attended by glittering people in formal wear-it comforted me to imagine our modest homes as pioneer wagons, circled for self-protection. If our protective circle were ever breached, it probably wouldn’t take long before every ranch house on the street got torn down and replaced with some stucco-slathered behemoth three or four times as big, crowding its property lines and its equally steroidal neighbors. Not that I was bitter or anything.
Plopping the steaks on a plate, I sprinkled both sides with salt and pepper, rubbing the seasonings in, then dashed some Worcestershire sauce on top to add a little zing.
Jess nodded approvingly. “You gonna put some sizzle in that steak?”
“Gonna try.”
“How you cooking them?”
“I’m a guy; on the grill, of course.”
“Gas or charcoal?”
“Be a waste of a good steak to cook it over gas,” I said.
“Indeed,” she said. “Gas is great for a crematorium, but a steak just cries out for the extra flavor of those charcoal carcinogens.”
“You do have an eye for the tarnished lining. Anybody ever tell you that?”
She looked down at her drink. “Ouch. Actually, I’ve been told that’s one of my special talents,” she said. She looked up again, and I could see hurt in her eyes.
“I was just joking,” I said. “Who said it that wasn’t joking? And why does it make you look so sad all of a sudden?”
“My ex-husband. My most recent ex-husband, to be clinically precise.”
“You introduced me to a lawyer husband a couple years ago; that the one?” She nodded. “How many other exes you got scattered around?”
“Just one other. If you’re only counting husbands.”
“And if I’m counting other significant others?”
She rolled her eyes. “It’d take me some thinking to tally them up. Four or five semiserious guys, and one experimental woman.”
The world had changed in the several de cades since I’d last dated, I decided. “A few months back, you told me you were happily lesbian. Was that the experiment?”
She laughed. “Naw, that was just to fend you off in case you were harboring any designs on me. You seemed so bogged down in your grief over Kathleen still, I knew you weren’t ready for anybody yet. Or maybe I just didn’t want to get tangled up in all that sadness.”
“And now?”
“Now you seem over it, or at least through the worst of it. Not exactly giddy with joie de vivre yet, but then again, that’d be a stretch for a guy in your line of work. You seem…solid now.”
“Did I seem solid a few months ago, when we had that near miss with a dinner date?”
“Solid enough,” she said, “at the center. A little gooey around the edges, maybe, but who isn’t sometimes?” As she said it, she cocked her head and shrugged slightly, and smiled not so slightly. I could have sworn I felt myself getting a little gooey around the edges but stirringly solid at my center. I took a step toward her and reached up a hand to touch her cheek. When I did, she nodded her head up and down, rubbing against my hand. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the feel of her skin. “So you didn’t mind that I invited myself to dinner to night?” My eyes still closed, I shook my head. “So why didn’t you ask me out again after I had to skip out all those months ago?”
The truth was, I’d gotten scared, but I wanted to appear more suave than that. “I was playing hard to get,” I said. As I said it, I heard my voice crack like that of a boy just hitting puberty. So much for suave. I laughed. “I’ve heard nothing interests a woman more than acting indifferent.”
I felt a palm smack my face, but it was a playful smack. I opened my eyes and saw Jess shaking her head, but she was grinning as she did it. “You are such a lying piece of shit,” she said. “You are a seriously bad liar. But a seriously good man.”
She moved closer to me and turned her face to mine. Maybe some things in the world hadn’t changed all that much, because I had no trouble interpreting an invitation to kiss her. With her boots on, her mouth was nearly at the level of mine. Just enough lower that it felt good to reach a hand around to the back of her neck, threading my fingers through her thick auburn hair.
I felt a pleasant tingling in my loins for a moment, then it stopped. Then it returned, and I realized the tingling was not actually within my loins, but against them.
“Oh,
“That’s the park that stretches along the Tennessee from downtown all the way up to Chickamauga Dam?”
“Yeah. Seven or eight miles. This was right near the downtown end, a stone’s throw from the aquarium and the art museum.”
“What happened? A tourist mugging that turned violent?”
“No. A local. A runner with a dog. Dog’s dead, too.” She got an odd look on her face. “I think maybe I’ve been in this job too long, Bill. I’m upset about this.”
I touched her arm. “That just shows you’re not jaded.”
She shook her head. “No. What I’m upset about is the dog.”
She turned to go, then veered back and gave me a quick peck on the lips. “I’m sorry to cut and run,” she said. “I was looking forward to dinner. And dessert.”
She clomped back through the entryway and out the front door. As it latched shut behind her, the timer on my microwave beeped to tell me the charcoal was ready. I picked up the plate of steaks and headed for the back porch.
CHAPTER 7
THE RINGING PHONE SOUNDED far away, and I felt myself swimming up from a deep and viscous sleep to answer it.
“Bill? It’s Jess.”
Her voice and her name jolted me awake. “Jess? What time is it? Where are you? Are you okay?”
“It’s about four. I just got home from the scene. Bill, could you…could you just talk to me for a few minutes? Talk me down a ways?” Her voice shook and her nose sounded stopped up, as if she’d already done some crying.
“Sure, Jess. Of course. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I might have to work up to it,” she said. Her breathing started to run away with her; I could hear her struggling to rein it back in. “It was a bad scene. Brutal. Like some biblical retribution. Blood everywhere. Stab wounds all over the victim. Multiple dog bites. Two slaughtered dogs.”
“Two?”
“Two. One was the victim’s; other belonged to one of the killers.”
“Was it a dogfight that spread to the people?”
“No. Other way around. We got the story from a couple of witnesses. A homeless guy who spends a lot of time sleeping under this bridge where it happened, and a bike rider who was just up the hill. Apparently there was
