Tom Piccirilli - The Cold Spot

She was saying, “If your mama ain’t learned you no manners, then maybe the fine gentlemen at Rikers Island will!” When she was pissed her accent came on even stronger. “You goin’ to see what they there charge you for lessons in flesh and bone, boy!”

With every word she nudged up and down on his neck and he went “Gug!”

The cops finally wrestled her off and nearly arrested her until she flashed her badge. They hauled the punk off, she gave her statement and signed the papers. It had all taken less than ten minutes.

Chase stood there as she stepped over and took the bagged pizza from him. “I’m a damn sight on the far side of hungry, sweetness,” she said, tearing into a slice. “Bless yer soul.”

I t rained like a son of a bitch the day she died.

He was showing the kids how to flush a transmission and do a fluid change when one of the math teachers appeared at the door. He called Chase aside. He’d been on break in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette listening to his car radio, and told him what he’d just heard. The breaking news report hadn’t mentioned any names, but when they said a female police officer had been taken in for emergency surgery after a shoot-out at a diamond wholesaler in Hauppauge, he thought he’d better tell Chase.

Chase kept his cell phone turned off during class hours. He snapped it on and checked the messages. There was one from Hopkins. Chase could barely make out what the fuck he was saying due to all the sirens in the background. Hopkins was crying.

Taking flooded corners at seventy, Chase got to the hospital in fifteen minutes and parked in the red zone. It was coming down so hard that the twenty-yard dash to the door left him completely drenched. He spotted Hopkins beating the shit out of a coffee machine. Chase walked past, found a nurse, and gave her Lila’s name.

The nurse scuttled off and came back with a young doctor who needed to work on his people skills. The guy blurted out that Lila had taken a bullet in the throat and two in the chest, one nicking her heart. Thirty seconds later, as an addendum with artificial syrup dripped on, he stated how they’d tried their best, their very best, but there was really nothing anyone could do. It was her time. The young doctor licked his teeth like he smelled sirloin. His black hair was moussed with the front swirled into a little curtain of tight, dyed-blond ringlets that wasn’t marred by any breaking sweat. Chase asked if she was DOA.

No, the doc said, no. No. She’d died on the table. He told Chase where to go if he wanted to see the body.

The body.

He didn’t. He put the flat of his hand on the doc’s chest and shoved him away. The guy fell back into the nurses’ station and almost said something. How smart of him not to.

There was blood in the air. Some of it Lila’s, none of it Chase’s. Think about the mistake of that.

Chase dove for the cold spot and couldn’t seem to find it. It had moved from the place where it had always been before. Seconds ticked off like lifetimes going by as he kept seeking the spot and coming up empty. Finally he realized he was already there.

It was a deeper and blacker place than he remembered, but the ice slid over his utter desolation, cooling him, forcing him to function. Chase asked what caliber the bullets had been, and the doctor just looked at him. The storm tore at the windows. Chase repeated himself and the doc lurched backward.

Nothing more out of that one. Chase turned and Hopkins’s wife was there sobbing in the hallway. So was Hopkins, the two of them staggering around together, not quite touching for a minute, and then finally grasping hold of each other. Hospital security was yelling about the busted coffee machine. Hopkins’s hands were badly skinned, blood leaking onto the floor. Hopkins and his wife went to their knees. Nothing out of them either.

They didn’t notice Chase until he was almost to the door and then they started calling to him, his own name sailing past. He didn’t look back.

H er parents refused to come up to New York and Sheriff Bodeen insisted that Chase ship Lila’s body back to Mississippi. The man’s voice was empty of strength. He sounded halfway to being dead himself. Chase said he’d get it done after the service the Suffolk County Police Department wanted to have since she was killed in the line of duty. Sheriff Bodeen dropped the phone and started weeping. Hester got on and said more to Chase right then than she’d said during the five years he’d lived down the road from her in Mississippi.

It was all ugly. Chase listened and absorbed every curse and caterwaul. He promised to send her body back. He didn’t know how the fuck something like that was done, but he’d find out and get it accomplished. He knew he’d never see the Bodeens again. He tried to find it within himself to care-losing these people, his in-laws, Lila’s mama and daddy-but it just wasn’t there. He hung up and they were gone from him too.

He slept in fits. He’d wake up from a deep sleep with a noise so loud in his head that he had to press his hands over his ears.

It was the sound Walcroft made after Jonah had shot him in the head. It went on and on, growing louder as it came down through the years to find him.

After the big police production where they played taps and fired their rifles in the air, wearing their fancy gear and little white gloves, with a huge photo of Lila’s face on an easel beside her casket, Chase shook hands with the mayor and took the folded flag they shoved at him, and stood there while they all got in their photo ops. They talked at him for hours and he just nodded when he thought it was appropriate. Sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes they frowned at him or shook him by the arm.

A lot of cops came up and said how much they admired Lila. Students and teachers and lunch-room attendants took his hand and tried to make him feel better by talking about peace and paradise, telling him to put his faith in God’s wisdom and justice. Before it was all over Chase had given the flag away to somebody, he didn’t know who.

He had to shift gears quickly, get back up to speed.

Two days later, when Lila’s body was on the plane heading back to her parents, he called Hopkins at home and said, “I want whatever you’ve got on the ice knockoff.”

Hopkins went, “The what?”

The Suffolk cops really did have a cush job. So cush they didn’t know the language of action. “The diamond merchant score. I need whatever paperwork you have. I want you to tell me everything. In detail.”

“Christ, no.”

“I have to know what happened that day. From the beginning.”

Hopkins started crying again. Chase hated the sound of it, but let him sob, knowing that in some way, great or small, Hopkins had been in love with Lila. He’d felt protective of her, responsible for her, and buoyed by her. Chase couldn’t fault the guy for that. He waited until Hopkins got a grip, blew his nose, and cleared his throat. Then he broke down again. Chase waited.

Finally Hopkins said, “We don’t allow that.”

Chase let it slide. “Who’s in charge of the case?”

“Detectives Murray and Morgan.”

“Out of your precinct?”

“Yeah. Listen to me, about Lila-”

Chase listened and Hopkins said nothing. He asked, “Well, what about her?”