In Plain View

“They reprimanded you for sending the letter?”

“Yeah.”

“What about the guys at the firehouse? Did they give you a hard time?”

“Let’s just say, I better hope nothing near me catches fire anytime soon.” Nicky smiled that feral, humorless grin that stands for bring it on.

Police and fire service are boy gangs-for-good. They may fight the bad guys, but they live the same code. Fuck with a brother, get fucked back. No firefighter ever had to fear a speeding ticket in his hometown. No cop had to carry out a dead body, even if he made it dead. Especially if he made it dead.

Pat the fireman was twitching his way toward the exit, saying his good-byes. He was full of nervous tension, glancing around, checking his watch. Donna Curzon tried to slow him down, gesturing toward Nicky and I. Pat shook his head and took a backward step.

“I heard Jost was getting a lot of grief back at the firehouse.”

“Guess we both got our share.”

“Anyone in particular?”

Donna crossed her arms and watched Pat head down the driveway. Her husband slipped up behind her. His face said, let him go.

Obviously, Curzon’s mother was a politician as well. If Nicky was getting shit from the men at the firehouse, who better to make peace than Tom’s pal?

Nicky laughed. “Why? You gonna go beat him up for me?”

“You don’t think I can?” We were easing out of it now, using the jokes to back away from something that was still pretty raw. “I’d like to see you try,” Nicky said. “Especially in those shoes.”

We both took a moment to admire my sandals. Not the kind of footwear that inspires fear in your enemy. Or maybe it was the pedicure. Jenny had insisted on helping me feel better by polishing my toes with bubble-gum- pink-and-extra-glitter after the emergency-room staff held me down for the stitches. I had some fine painkillers on board by then.

Nicky ceased with the admiration when we noticed cousin Jack headed our way. “You must be tougher than you look, if Jack’s interested.”

“He’s not interested in me. I’m a useful irritant.”

“Don’t tell Nana. This is the first peace he’s had from the nagging since Sharon left.”

“Sharon? The ‘She-bitch’?”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Family pet-name Jack never appreciated.”

Right about then, the sheriff himself came striding into the conversation with all the tact of a cop breaking up a house party. “You’re done. Dad wants you inside.”

“Guess I’m done.” Nicky flashed me a grin but asked his cousin seriously, “Trouble?”

Curzon shrugged, noncommittal.

Nicky crossed the patio in a hurry, his voice drifting as he closed the french door behind him, “Whaa-at?”

I shot Curzon a look and he was smiling, too.

“Family.”

He nodded. “The food’s ready. Brats are done.” He pronounced it like a good midwesterner. Brahtzs. Sausages. “Dad promised him first pick since he lost the ball game.”

“Doesn’t the winner get first pick?”

“Of dessert.”

I laughed. What was it about being gathered in a family unit that made people revert to their prehistoric patterns? Big man. Little man. Boss lady. She-bitch. I looked over at Jenny and my momentary bubble of equilibrium popped. Who was I to her?

Somehow, Curzon managed to slip a question into that breach. Then another, and another. Questions about how long the drive had taken us, and how long I’d been working out, and how long I’d been away from Chicago Land. I knew he was pumping me. At first, I answered with the thought, give a little, get a little. Maybe I’d get a little something about Tom Jost out of him. Much later along the way, I realized I was giving more than I could reasonably expect to get, but the conversation continued. I told him things about work, about me, that I hadn’t told anyone.

“Holy shit,” Curzon marveled. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“That was about the worst.”

Some of the things I’d turned into pictures haunted me. Most of them weren’t frightening exactly. The danger had passed.

They were only bones. Bones can’t hurt you. Even rows and rows of bones. Human skeletons. And me, picking my way across the ground, stepping oh, so carefully. In dreams, it always ended the same. I choose a skull and turn it in my hand, considering the best angle for my camera’s eye. I am trying to find a way to get the light to shine inside behind the empty sockets. No matter how I twist it, nothing ever works. The skull stares back at me, eyes so black they give me vertigo.

That’s the dream that wakes me in a sweat. Curzon took a long drag on his Anchor Steam beer. “The shit people do to one another,” he said philosophically.

“And to themselves,” I added, thinking of Tom Jost.

The kids were organizing a game on the lawn. Ainsley put up a token resistance to being dragged in to play, pulling Jenny along with him. Their voices crossed the space in little sound bites of high-note happiness.

We watched them play as Curzon talked about the things a cop sees.

Work stories. War stories. Everybody has them. I’ve probably got it easier than the sheriff in one respect. My stories might be on a bigger scale but they originated far, far away; his hit closer to home. Maybe it was calculated to charm me. Maybe.

If so, it was working.

“Right. That’s enough, you two clams. Come join the party.” Donna Curzon came with a tray full of glasses, filled with an iced yellow liquid topped by two inches of white froth. “Maddy, you have to try this. It’s lemonade beer. Really nummy.”

“What the hell have you done to that perfectly good beer, Mom?” Curzon said. “Ice and lemonade? I’m going to have to issue you a warning for indecent mixing.”

She gave me the long-suffering look but otherwise ignored her son. “Go ahead, Maddy. Have a taste.”

“I’m not much of a drinker.”

“That’s not much of a drink,” Curzon said.

“Your father likes it.”

I accepted a glass to keep peace with the hostess. She smiled at me and wandered off to sell the rest to other guests. I took a sip. “Your dad must be a politician, too.”

“Only when it comes to my mother,” Curzon answered. “My job would drive him crazy. He’s all cop. Married to the same woman, living in the same place, going to the same barbershop over thirty years. Drives a Crown Vic. Always has a hundred dollar bill in his wallet for emergencies. Upright guy.”

Nicky came out of the house carrying a plate piled with enough food to feed Jenny and me for a week. Curzon noticed he was headed our way and pointed out across the lawn. “You want to walk?”

“Sure.”

He stopped in a quiet spot beside the half-wall that banked steps leading down to the cellar. We could still see the touch football game, but the rest of the gang was out of our line of sight-or we were out of their’s. “Except for politics, you and your dad sound like two of a kind to me.”

“No way.” He sucked back a swallow of beer. “My wife left before we’d marked a nickel. My car’s foreign and I got nothing in my wallet but plastic.”

That’s the problem with sharing war stories. It brings you down. If there’s one thing I dread, it’s decent guys flaying themselves for an audience. Time to change the subject.

“Any word on that police report you promised me?”

He looked the other way, irritated with himself. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He made an effort to laugh. “Cause of death, gross displacement of spinal cord and cervical vertebra-”

“Translate.”