X. Atkins - Richmond Noir

Another ambulance screamed by them, then another, jolting her out of her memories. They were already way up Broad Street. The car was stuffy, the seat sticky against her legs. Early afternoon in May and it felt like summer was already getting started. Rachel could feel the familiar adrenaline rush building, better than sex, really, though sex with Bobby was pretty good. She loved the familiar pressure of her Glock against her rib cage, loved the way details seemed to jump out at her from the street rushing by: coffee shop sign, dressed-up toddler throwing herself facedown in a tantrum on the sidewalk outside, the blur of summer annuals in riotous colors.

“Jesus, that’s a lot of action,” Bobby commented.

“Hang a right here,” she said as they got to the light on 29th.

“You been here before, huh?”

“Why you giving me that look?”

Bobby smirked at her. “We used to get calls from the neighbors, complaining about some chick’s bare feet pressed up against a car window.”

“Wasn’t me,” Rachel replied.

“Can’t beat the view,” Bobby said. “We should take a lunch break here some time.”

“What kind of a break do you have in mind?” Jesus, she was starting to sound like an idiot. So... high school.

He looked at her and reached out to tuck a stray piece of dark hair back behind her ear. He had great skin, freckled and translucent, a broad, slightly curved nose that she loved to trace with her fingers, brown hair that looked redder in the sun.

Behind the median filled with garish crape myrtles in bloom, Wehmeyer and Carlson were smoking a cigarette. Had they noticed? She’d be fucked if she kept it together for a year in Iraq, gave no one any reason for gossip, only to blow it now. Cops were worse than soldiers when it came to the rumor mill, and that was saying a lot. And once the rumors started, life would be no fun anymore.

“Nice place to eat a sandwich, talk.”

“Sure, Bobby.”

“Whaddya think, some rich drunk cleaning his antique guns?”

“Some loss,” Rachel said, and looked out the window again.

Bobby pulled to a halt on Libby Terrace, behind a couple of other cop cars. She could feel him looking at her, but she didn’t turn her head. “You ever gonna tell me what happened over there?”

“I always liked that you never asked,” Rachel said, unbuckling her seat belt and swinging herself out the door She stood for a minute peering out at the glittering river, listening to Bobby slam his door, then turned back to face him.

“Rach, I been thinking,” Bobby began. In the harsh sunlight she could see his crow’s feet as he squinted at her. “It’s been what, six months, for Christ’s sake.”

“Yeah. Store rooms, lovers’ lanes.”

“Christ, Rachel, you could have me over for dinner. I could have you over for dinner. It doesn’t have to be this way. See a movie, for crying out loud. Whatever normal people do.”

“Cops aren’t normal people. Didn’t you tell me that the first day in?” Her chest was tightening. Maybe Vaughn was right, the heart was a strange muscle. She imagined hers as a tangle of veins leading nowhere.

“Is there a reason, something you aren’t saying?” Around them, the static of radios. To her left, Vaughn’s carriage house with its linen drapes in the floor-to-ceiling windows upstairs. Usually he kept them closed, but once, late at night, she had seen him silhouetted there, a drink in hand, looking out over the dark river and the twinkling lights of the city. Behind him, was that someone moving in the back of the room?

Rachel glanced around, trying not to be too conspicuous. His car wasn’t here, a good thing, otherwise the excitement would surely bring him out onto the street. She tried not to think about where he might be. When she was getting ready to head over there, during those four interminable weeks at Fort Drum, there was a second lieutenant always talking to them about SA — situational awareness. When you’re outside the wire, he would say, and you’re thinking about getting to the end of the day, a cold shower and a trip to the chow hall, it means you aren’t noticing the dead dog on the side of the road, the one with an IED hidden inside it that’s gonna blow you up as you’re driving past. Not that any of them needed to be reminded of that once they got to Iraq. But now: Bobby leaning against the car, popping his knuckles methodically, the faces of two little girls pressed to the window above them, a little white dog lying inert on the sidewalk. She felt her palms start to sweat, her heart thudding in her chest. Relax, she told herself, it’s hot. The dog’s just sleeping. Jesus.

If Vaughn saw her from the window, maybe he would think she was just another civil servant keeping him safe from late-night adulterers and drunks in the park. He probably didn’t know where her money came from these days.

With his little trust fund he’d never really had to work that much — maybe his problem, but at the time very convenient. Because if he didn’t have to work, she didn’t either. She could have fought harder for support from him, but that wasn’t really going to happen, not with a JAG lawyer. They were mainly there for the paperwork, and she couldn’t stand the thought of waiting and coming home to a mess — to Vaughn’s explanations and soulful looks, to tearful discussions over who got the Velvet Underground CDs and the Indian cookbooks. Besides, Vaughn’s mother had made her sign a prenup, which she and Vaughn had laughed about, back in the days when they were so smugly sure that they would never need it.

She’d taken the check that Vaughn sent her out of guilt, mailed it off to the bank, and tried to forget about it. She wasn’t going to be one of those fools pissing away her bonus on a Corvette. On the plane home from Iraq she had all these visions of flowers, grass, strolls in the park, drinks out with old friends. After two weeks sitting inside her darkened apartment, her staff sergeant — whose brother was a Richmond cop — called her about an opening on the force.

“Come on, Gallagher. Get over here, Barstow.” They walked, shoulders nearly touching, over to where the other cops were clustered. Sergeant Harris — dark-skinned, neat mustache that would have been in style twenty years ago, gray around the temples — gave her a look, then Bobby. She stared right back at him.

“Any casualties?”

“Just a couple of stray bullets from Sugar Bottom. One of them went through a guy’s door down on short 30th.” At the end of the street, a few neighbors, coffee cups in hand, peered over the hill. “Can you get them the hell away from there, Barstow?”

Pristine restored row houses lined one side of short 30th. A tricycle in a yard, pink and green chalk flowers on the sidewalk out in front. On the other side, a tangle of brambles, weed trees. Bobby caught up to her.

“Is that all you want, a quickie in the supply room?”

“Let’s just get these jokers out of here.” She walked fast, already starting to bark out orders, her uniform feeling too tight, the air heating up, the damp cloth under her arms starting to chafe. Her voice mechanical: “Clear the site, please. Until we have determined that the danger is contained, we’ll take any statements over by the park.”

A middle-aged guy with a short white beard. Two girls in their twenties who could have been students. An older lady, shoulder-length hair, big glasses.

Through the tangle of honeysuckle and weed trees three cinder-block sheds were visible, one with torn plastic replacing the windows. Sergeant Harris came up behind her. “Shot went through this guy’s door about ten minutes ago.” He nodded his head back to where a splintery hole interrupted the varnished dark surface of the wood. “Then another one heard a few minutes after that. We got the guys down there searching the area.”