Jodi Compton - The 37th Hour

“I’d go nuts,” I said, getting to my feet. “It’s not that I mind walking, but just knowing I didn’t have a car if I needed one, that’d bother me.”

“I know what you mean,” Shiloh said. “A car is a lot more than transportation. It’s an investment, an office, a locker, a weapon.”

“A weapon?” I said doubtfully.

“If people really thought about the physics of driving, the forces they control, some of them would be afraid to leave the driveway. You’ve seen the accident scenes,” he said, rounding up stray pieces of chopped garlic with the flat of the knife.

“Yeah,” I said. “Too many.” Then another thought hit me. “When you were downtown, were you looking for a ride home?”

“Yes,” he said. “I had to drive the car out to the guys who bought it, then I went to find you. But Vang said you were in court.”

“You should have waited,” I said. “That was a long walk.”

“A couple of miles. Not so long.” Then he said, “Have you heard from Genevieve?”

The question seemed to come out of nowhere. I picked up his glass of Coke and took refuge in a sip of it before answering. “No,” I said. “She never calls me. And when I call her, she’s nearly monosyllabic. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than how she was before. For a while, all she wanted to do was talk about Royce Stewart.”

Genevieve lived an hour north of where her daughter’s murderer had gone to ground in his hometown of Blue Earth. But she knew sheriff’s deputies down there, and some of them were apparently willing to give her information on Shorty’s whereabouts and activities. Genevieve had told me that he was working construction again by day. At night he was a barfly. Even though his driver’s license had been revoked, and he lived outside of town, Shorty would drink in his favorite bar rather than at home. He could often be seen, Gen’s sources said, walking home along the county highway late at night. No one had ever caught him driving without a license, and he was apparently a well-mannered enough drinker that he hadn’t had any arrests for disorderly conduct or the like.

“I remember,” Shiloh said. “You told me.”

“She’s stopped talking about him. I don’t know if that means she’s stopped thinking about him,” I said. “I wish she’d come back to work. She needs to be busy.”

“Go see her,” Shiloh said.

“You think?” I said idly.

“Well, you said you were thinking about it.”

And I had mentioned it to him. How long ago had that been? Weeks, I realized, and in the meantime I hadn’t acted on the idea. I felt ashamed. I’d been busy, of course. That was the classic excuse, and cops used it as often as CEOs. I’m busy, my job is demanding, people depend on me. Then you realize that the needs of strangers have become more important to you than the needs of the people you see every day.

“You’ve got a couple of personal days coming up,” Shiloh added.

I was warming to the idea. “Yeah, I’d kind of like that. When exactly did you think we should go down?”

“Not me. Just you.” He was at the refrigerator, turned away from me, so that I couldn’t see his face.

“Are you serious?” I was perplexed. “I asked for those days off to spend with you, before you leave for Virginia.”

“I know that,” Shiloh said, patiently, turning to face me again. “And we’ll have time together. Mankato’s not far away. You could just go overnight.”

“Why don’t you want to come along?”

Shiloh shook his head. “I’ve got things to do up here, before I leave. Besides, asking Genevieve’s sister to put up one guest is one thing, two is something else. I’d be in the way.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” I said. “You’ve known Genevieve longer than I have. You were a pallbearer at Kamareia’s funeral, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know that,” Shiloh said. A quick flash of pain registered behind his eyes, and I regretted bringing it up.

“I’m trying to say,” I put in quickly, “that if you can’t come with me, I’ll put off the visit until after you leave for Quantico. I’ll have plenty of time to visit Genevieve while you’re in Virginia.”

Shiloh looked at me in silence. It was a look that made me feel self-conscious, the way I had when I was trying to explain my jump from the railroad bridge.

“You’re her partner,” he said. “She needs you, Sarah. She’s in a bad way.”

“I know,” I said, slowly. “I’ll think about it.”

Shiloh wasn’t trying to shame me, I thought, watching him take a jar of olives from the refrigerator. He was just being Shiloh. Direct, on the verge of blunt.

“I don’t want to hurry you, but I’m going to need that chicken and the other things fairly soon,” he reminded me. Then he gave me an olive, wet from the jar. He knew I liked them.

Out on the street, as I drove toward the grocery store, the first electric light was shining from the windows of Northeast’s tall, pale houses. They looked warm and inviting, and made me think of winter and the holiday season coming.

I wondered how we’d celebrate them this year.

“No, I’m listening,” Genevieve said. “Elijah in the wilderness. Go ahead.”

Genevieve’s house in St. Paul had a big kitchen, with lots of room for several people to work, and plenty of tools for a serious cook. She lived only with Kamareia, which was why Shiloh and I had come over to make Christmas dinner with them.

While a roast crusted with a thick rub of herbs baked in Genevieve’s old, speckled roasting pan in the oven, Shiloh was working on garlic mashed potatoes, and Genevieve was slicing red peppers and broccoli to be cooked at the last minute. I, the least talented in the kitchen, had been assigned to peel and quarter the gold-skinned potatoes, so my work was done. Kamareia, who had made a cheesecake in advance, had been likewise excused from further duty, and was now absorbed in a book in the living room.

Shiloh had mentioned to Genevieve that he had a theory of investigative work based on the Old Testament story of Elijah in the wilderness.

“Explain, please,” Genevieve urged, cupping a glass of eggnog in one hand. It was nonalcoholic; the flush in her cheeks was kitchen heat, not liquor.

“Okay,” Shiloh said, with the temporizing tone of someone mentally rounding up the elements of a story that he knows well but hasn’t told in a while. “Elijah went out to wait for God to speak to him,” he began. “As he waited, there was a strong wind, and God was not in the wind. And there was an earthquake, and God was not in the earthquake. And there was a fire, and God was not in the fire. And then there was a still, small voice.”

“And the still, small voice was God speaking,” a soft voice said from behind us.

None of us had heard Kamareia approach, and we all looked toward the archway leading into the kitchen, where she stood watching us with her lambent hazel eyes.

Kamareia was taller than her mother, and slender where Genevieve had the roundness of muscle. In a heather-gray leotard and faded jeans-we’d all agreed we weren’t going to dress for this dinner-and with her dozens of cornrows pulled back and tied at the nape of her neck, Kamareia looked more like a dancer than an aspiring writer.

“Exactly,” Shiloh said, acknowledging her erudition.

Kamareia was generally confident and talkative around her mother and me. When Shiloh was with us, she was much quieter, although I noticed she tended to follow him with her gaze.

“And the point is?” Genevieve asked Shiloh.

“The point is”-Shiloh threw a small handful of garlic into the olive oil heating in a saucepan-“that a major crime investigation is kind of like a circus sometimes.”