Stephen White - Blinded

“Wrong conclusion, I think. I am a romantic. I’ll be romantic about this storm all day today and all night. Then tomorrow morning, sometime around fiveA.M.,my neighbor will fire up her little green John Deere and start plowing our lane. That’s when the romance will begin to disintegrate, with the sound of my neighbor singing Christmas carols on her John Deere at five o’clock in the morning.”

“And that’s so bad because…”

“You’d have to know Adrienne. She makes up her own words to the carols, and she can’t sing to save her life.”

Reynoso stepped away from the windows. “At least you get your driveway plowed.”

“You have a little Pollyanna in you, don’t you, Detective?”

“Very little, Doctor. Tomorrow’s Sunday. Maybe your neighbor will take the Lord’s day off.”

“Maybe,” I agreed. “That would be nice.” I didn’t bother to clarify that if Adrienne was anything religiously, she was Jewish, and that affiliation would make her Sabbath Saturday, not Sunday.

“The time of Louise Lake’s death has never been made public.” Reynoso’s change of direction was abrupt. Sam did the same thing to me sometimes. I was beginning to suspect that cops in general have an underappreciation of the value of segue in conversation. “The press has always reported it was Wednesday, and we’ve never contradicted them in any of our public statements. Gibbs’s contention that it was Tuesday, not Wednesday, is what hooked us-hooked me, anyway-that her story might be… real. Because the coroner says it was indeed late afternoon, early evening on Tuesday, and not late Wednesday, that Louise Lake was murdered.”

I tried to keep my face impassive.

“But what really hooked me was something Gibbs didn’t say, that she only implied. We’ve left the public with the impression that Louise was murdered on the beach and her body was pulled out into the water. Numerous reports from neighbors indicated that she walked the cove and the tide pools at least twice a day when she was staying in town, often at dawn or dusk. The public version of the crime is that someone followed her to the beach, or waited and accosted her there, and killed her. Maybe a crime of opportunity, maybe not.”

“But she didn’t die on the beach?”

“No. She died on the rocks. Her body had premorbid wounds from the rocks. And the broken window in her back door? It’s not public information, either. Therefore Sterling knew something he shouldn’t know.”

“Why was the window broken? Is there is evidence of a struggle in the house?”

“No comment.”

“You haven’t talked with Sterling yet?”

“No. He’s in Florida. Something tells me he’s going to lawyer up anyway. I’m proceeding as though we’re not going to have an opportunity to interview him.”

“Do you have enough to arrest him?”

“If we did, he’d be in custody.”

I tried a segue-free transition of my own. “Why a tide pool? The killer must have known the body would be discovered soon enough.”

“Louise Lake’s body was not placed in the tide pool. It was dumped into the Pacific, we think it got caught on something, and was in the water for almost thirty-six hours before it floated free and back into the tide pool during high tide.”

We walked to the entryway, and I helped her with her coat.

“You can’t repeat any of this,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. I was already wondering why she had told me what she’d told me. I wasn’t considering the possibility that her volubility on the subject of Louise’s murder was evidence of indiscretion. Rather, I assumed that Reynoso had another motive for talking with me. What? I wasn’t smart enough to know.

She went on. “I heard from a couple of local cops that over the years you’ve demonstrated some wisdom about forensic things-you know, from a psychological perspective-so let me ask you something. From what you know about him-I’m talking Sterling Storey, obviously-could he have done it? Could he have killed Louise Lake?”

I considered the flattery-the spoonful of sugar-and the question-the bitter pill-that she wanted me to swallow. I said, “I’m sorry, but answering that would take me places that I’m not permitted to go, confidentialitywise. I wish I could respond, although I’m not sure of the value of what I might have to offer. Opinions are opinions, you know.”

That little crease reappeared above her nose. She said, “I think I’ll just take that as a yes.”

Changing the subject seemed like a good idea. “Are you okay driving in this? In snow?”

“How would I know?”

“If you don’t know, then you’re not okay.”

“Any tips for a virgin?”

“Take it slow. Don’t be afraid to use second gear. Ignore the assholes plowing by you in four-wheel-drive pickups and SUVs.”

“And if I skid on the ice?”

“Don’t. It’s better if you don’t skid.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to remember that.”

Lauren and Grace arrived home less than ten minutes after Detective Reynoso departed.

Their arrival wasn’t a pretty sight. They had both left the house dressed for a warm fall day, and both were wet from the storm and chilled to the bone. Lauren’s violet eyes had taken on the gray-purple pall of extreme fatigue; whatever she and Grace had been doing since I’d left to meet Sam that morning had worn her beyond whatever limits she possessed that day.

How guilty was I feeling?

With Grace in my arms, I cranked up the heat in the master bathroom and began running a bath for Lauren. Then I took Grace into her room, and got her dry and clean and into fresh warm clothes. My daughter, sometimes a tough kid to put down for a nap, found the sanctuary of sleep moments after her head hit the mattress in her crib. I promised her, silently, that because of her compliance during this crucial moment in our lives, I would overlook at least one moderate-to-severe teenage indiscretion that was certain to occur in her future. She seemed to smile back at me from her sleep, as though she were already planning whatever it was I would need to forgive her for.

I shuddered at the thought.

When I got back to the bathroom with a steaming mug of tea, I found Lauren in the tub.

“No caffeine?” she asked.

“Mint. No caffeine. I’m sorry, I screwed up today.”

“I know you’re sorry.”

“Sam-”

She shook her head, just a little, and asked, “He’s okay?”

I nodded. She forced a smile in reply.

“You didn’t look too good when you came in,” I said.

She lowered herself farther into the soapy water. She was covered all the way to her chin. Her toes and colored toenails, painted a shade of coral that I was sure Grace had selected, popped out of the water at the far end of the tub. “Something’s cooking, Alan. I have brain mud. I’m more tired than Bill Gates is rich, and in case you haven’t noticed, my eyelids aren’t blinking at the same time.”

I tried hard to look her in the eyes but not stare at her eyelids. “So what can I do?”

“Let’s give it a few hours, see what develops. The pin is definitely out of the grenade. We’ll see what’s going to blow up.”

“Maybe it’s a dud. Can I get you something to eat?”

“No, I’m not hungry. Some quiet, okay? Take the dogs, and don’t let me sleep past five. I love you.”

Multiple sclerosis roughly translates as “many scars.”

When a new wound forms on the protective covering of a nerve in the brain or spinal column-apparently caused by the body mistaking its own neural insulation for a gremlin of some kind-symptoms develop. What symptoms? It depends on what nerve is involved. As the wound heals and scar tissue grows to replace nature’s myelin, the symptoms either disappear totally, or they don’t diminish at all, or-and this is most likely-something happens in between.