Jodi Compton - The 37th Hour

“No,” Ligieia said. “This is the right number. Do you sign?”

“No,” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t. You’re saying if I want to talk to her, I’ll need a translator.”

“Yes. I translate for Sinclair, usually. In her classes, and I read her poetry at the slams. If you want to set something up, a meeting, it’d be easiest to do it through me. I’ll talk to her when she gets home.”

“Might her husband be able to translate for us?” I suggested.

“Sinclair isn’t married,” Ligieia said.

“She got divorced, then,” I said.

Ligieia paused, processing the fact that I knew a little bit, at least, about Sinclair. “Yes,” she said. “I’m going to need to tell her what this is about.” Her voice lifted a little, prompting me.

I wished hard that I knew sign language. Already, it was unpleasant going through an intermediary I didn’t even know, and it would probably be more intrusive when I was face-to-face with Sinclair. “Like I said, I’m a detective with the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department. But my married name is Shiloh,” I said.

“Oh,” Ligieia said, surprised. She recognized the name.

“I’m also Sinclair’s sister-in-law. Her brother Michael, my husband, is missing. So it’s police business and it’s family business, too.”

“Oh, wow,” Ligieia said. The phrase made her voice sound yet younger. “Okay. Are you in town? Or up in Santa Fe?”

“I will be, as soon as I can get a flight. I’d like to talk to Sinclair tonight,” I said.

“Well,” Ligieia said, “I’ll have to talk to her before we can set anything up. Can I give you a call back?”

“I don’t have a number where I can be reached,” I said. “It’ll really be better if we can set something up now, and you can tell me how to get to her place.” I was pushing.

“Really, I can’t do that,” Ligieia said. “I’m her housemate, and I translate for her sometimes, but that’s all. She’s completely independent. I’m not like an aide for the disabled.”

“I understand,” I said.

“She might be okay with meeting at the house, but she might feel more comfortable meeting on campus, or someplace in town,” she said.

“Let me call you when I get into Santa Fe,” I said, capitulating.

“That sounds good.”

“Listen,” I said, curious, “if you translate for Sinclair in her classes… isn’t she holding a class now?”

“Right,” Ligieia said. “But Bale teaches sign through their language department. Sinclair agreed to let one of the honor students translate for her today, as an assignment. So I got some time off to study.”

“Are you studying sign language?”

“No, creative writing. I write poetry. But I had a deaf boyfriend all through high school, and that’s how I learned to sign.”

A group of noisy schoolchildren walked by the pay phones on their way into the library. I stuck a finger in my ear and turned away from them.

“Look, I hope I didn’t make Sinclair sound standoffish earlier,” Ligieia went on. “She’s a really amazing person. I’m sure she’ll be pleased to meet you.”

I was going to have to make excellent time if I hoped to speak to Sinclair Goldman this same night, and I pushed my rental car up to seventy-five on the highway out of town. But nearly as quickly, I had to slam on the brakes at a traffic signal. The light was green, which was why I very nearly shot into the intersection and into a long black sedan. As I skidded to a halt partway into the crosswalk, I saw that the sedan was one of many like it, moving in a slow and sober chain. I looked to the left, the front of the procession. The very first car was a hearse, rolling through a wide stone gate behind which a narrow road wound through well-tended emerald lawns.

I hoped it was not a young person they were burying.

The mortuary where Kamareia’s arrangements had been made clearly had overcompensated for the cold snap we’d been having; the interior nearly glowed with heat. Furthermore, my funeral dress-the one I bought and last wore when my father died-was wool, appropriate for wintertime. As Genevieve’s family and friends trickled in and the room filled, I felt uncomfortably warm and wished I could slip away.

Shiloh was across the room in his dark going-to-court suit. I had taken a personal day to be with Genevieve and the family members who were staying in her house, to help her through the viewing, service, and burial. Shiloh had arranged a split shift so he could be here now, for the viewing.

That was a figure of speech in this case. The mortician could only do so much with a face battered like Kamareia’s had been; the casket at the front of the room was expensive, gleaming, and closed. I stared at it a moment too long, then turned my gaze to the arriving mourners.

One of them arrested my attention immediately.

I’d heard Genevieve talk from time to time about her brief marriage. She was working-class white Catholic from the urban North; he’d been born black in rural Georgia and was raised in the First African Baptist Church. When those differences doomed their marriage, he’d gone on to Harlem, then finally to Europe as a corporate lawyer, while she’d stayed to be a cop in the Cities that had been her family’s home for several generations.

I’d never seen a picture of Vincent, but Genevieve described him to me once, early in our friendship. So when I saw him, there was really no reason for me to think, Who the hell is that? but I did, and then of course I realized.

It was my habit to categorize people I saw as the athletes they might have been in high school: linebacker, cross-country runner, swimmer, point guard. That wasn’t possible with this man. Vincent Brown was six-foot-four and he had a powerful physical presence that was impossible to characterize. He was power all over, in a rich man’s monochromatic suit, with something Aztec about his cheekbones and hawklike in his profile. His dark gaze reminded me not at all of Kamareia’s light-hazel, wide-set eyes. It was difficult to imagine him as the father of that lighthearted, gentle girl, and equally difficult to envision him as Genevieve’s husband, the two of them making a home together.

Vincent saw who he was looking for: Genevieve, among her family. He went to her side, and her brothers and sisters moved aside slightly at his approach. Genevieve raised her eyes to him, and Vincent kissed her. Not on the cheek or even the forehead, but on the top of her head, and he closed his eyes as he did it, a gesture of immeasurable tenderness.

Suddenly I saw what I hadn’t been able to only seconds earlier: kinship. Belonging, despite everything that seems to argue against it.

Vincent spoke to Genevieve, and she to him. He turned and looked at me, and I realized I was being discussed. Caught staring, I glanced away, but already Vincent was moving toward me, so I turned back to acknowledge him.

“Sarah,” he said.

“Vincent?” It was half a greeting, half a question. He didn’t exactly shake my hand, but took it and held it a moment.

“You were with Kamareia, weren’t you?” he asked. “On the way to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you,” he said.

At the Salt Lake City airport I found a flight to Albuquerque that I could be a standby on. I laid down my credit card and bought a ticket.

If Shiloh’s various statements-bank, phone, credit card-had shown no suspicious activity, I was leaving a paper trail that a child could follow: long-distance calls on my card, paperwork at a rental-car agency, plane tickets on the American Express.

But my name was not called, and I was left standing to watch the boarding agent close the door to the jetway. Behind the counter, the little red lights spelling out “Flt. 519-Albuquerque-3:25” went dead.