Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

I thought of her apartment, stripped down to its essentials, the lack of attachments, a reminder to herself that her return to California was supposed to be temporary.

I said, “You think you’ll move back?”

She looked at me quizzically.

“To New York,” I said.

“Why would I do that?”

“To dance.”

She shook her head. “I’ve missed my window.”

“Come on.”

“That’s how it is. You get a few good years and then it’s over.”

“I hear that.”

“Mm.” A smile. “Look at us. Washed up at thirty.”

I smiled, too.

She said, “People ask me what I do and I tell them I dance. That’s what I told you. But I don’t, not often enough to call myself a dancer. I teach dance. I teach yoga. So that makes me a teacher.”

“Why does it have to be one or the other?”

“You can call yourself anything you want,” she said. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“Sure it does,” I said. “This is America.”

She snorted.

We fell silent, our breath returning in short, flat echoes that shrank the space surrounding us. Then one of the furnaces roared to life.

“Holy shit that’s loud,” she said, palming her chest.

I reached for the screwdriver. “Ready?”

We got back to work.

Eventually we loosened the unit enough to toddle it out. I carried the three boxes upstairs. They were badly wrinkled and stank of colonizing fungus. Tatiana told me to leave them in the service porch, out of reach of her sinuses.

My shirt was dark with sweat, my knee dangerously tight. Sipping on tap water, I followed her to the dining room so she could pour herself another half glass of wine. She was patched under the arms, too, both of us smeared with grime and rust. I needed to sit, to take some weight off my leg, but I didn’t want to soil the nice leather chairs, so I leaned on the table to relieve the strain.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Of course.”

“You’ve been really kind throughout. Beyond the call.”

“No big deal,” I said.

“But it is,” she said. Her voice was raw. “It’s a big thing. A great big thing.”

I made a gesture of demurral.

That seemed to anger her. She turned away and gulped her wine and grabbed for the bottle. Then she reconsidered and set it down with a clunk and took two hungry strides toward me, her body sliding against mine as she lifted her face and rose up on her toes.

It wasn’t going to happen. Not without my help. At six-three, I had a good eight inches on her. I was going to have to become an active and equal participant.

I did. I bent down, and we met where we could.

The kiss didn’t last long. I drew back with salt on my tongue.

She remained pressed against me, her back in a tight, gorgeous arch; peering up at me with those green eyes, her rib cage biting into my stomach, her slight frame bearing down on me with a paralyzing heaviness. She was waiting for me to move, to move back toward her, and when I didn’t, she began searching my face. I could see her taking me apart in her mind, realization dawning, followed by discontent.

She broke away from me and went for her wine.

I said, “I don’t want to do the wrong thing here.”

“What’s the wrong thing?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

She said, “Let me know when you figure it out.”

She drained her wine and set the glass down hard on the sideboard. She still had her back to me. She put her hands on her hips, kicked at the nearest box, one of many. “Help me, please.”

We managed to fit eight of the eleven remaining boxes into the Prius, leaving the three rotted ones behind.

“Are you okay to drive?” I asked.

She ignored me and got into her car.

Sitting in my own car, engine off, I watched her brake lights fade.

The case was closed, or would be soon, with one click of a mouse. On paper, Tatiana and I would revert to being strangers. That could create opportunities. Or destroy them.

We’re not a delivery service.

I started the car, swung a three-point-turn, and eased toward the driveway, cresting the top and immediately jamming on the brake.

Down at the bottom, a man stood on the sidewalk.

He was gazing up at Rennert’s house. I couldn’t see his face. The angle was wrong; he was wearing a hoodie, pulled up, and my headlights blew out details, leaving me with no more than a general sense of size and shape.

He was goddamn enormous.

That was as much as I could process before he spooked and ran, disappearing behind a hedge.

I lifted my foot off the brake, rolling to street level.

The cul-de-sac was deserted.

I edged forward to peer along Bonaventure Avenue.

No sign of him.

I was off duty, unarmed, fatigued.

I had my couch, my TV, my ice pack.

Why run?

Peeping Tom?

Burglar, casing?

Someone who pushed people down stairs?

I deal in facts. I try to be pragmatic. But so much comes down to instinct, a tickle in the brain stem that says This feels wrong.

Where the hell had he gone?

The street was the only way out for a vehicle. Then I noticed the sign for a footpath, poking out at the opposite end of the cul-de-sac.

BONAVENTURE WALK.

I left my car at the curb.

The path snaked between two of the south-side properties, twisting and dropping. I couldn’t see more than five feet ahead. To my left grew towering bamboo hedges; from behind them came the loud burble of a fountain or pond, the owner’s attempt to block out the sound of pedestrian traffic. It also meant that I couldn’t hear what lay around the bend.

No one would hear me coming, either.

I picked up the pace, boots slapping concrete, knee beginning to complain.

A steep run of crumbling cement stairs fed me into a second cul-de-sac. Less ornate homes, brown shingles and station wagons, funky statuary and overgrown planter boxes.

I spotted him: a block and a half off, headed toward College Avenue at a rapid clip.

I followed.

He glanced back.

Stiffened.

Broke into a sprint.

Definitely wrong.

I went after him.

Within ten feet I could feel the mistake in my knee.

“Sheriff,” I yelled. “Stop.”

He hooked left down Cherry Street, his receding bulk shored up against banks of moonlight and the icy spillover from living room TVs. For a man his size, he could move. Or maybe it felt that way to me because I was limping like a junker.

I yelled again for him to stop.

He raced ahead.

It’d been a long time since I’d detained anyone, let alone made an arrest. But I’m still a peace officer; I was in uniform, and his failure to heed me amounted to probable cause. Forget whatever hunch had triggered my suspicion. He could be carrying drugs or a weapon. He might have warrants out.

At Russell he went right, westward again, ducking out of sight.

I came stumbling around the bend.

College Avenue was bustling and fragrant, bookstores and cafés doing a brisk nighttime trade. Hipster dads bounced toddlers awake way past their bedtimes. Undergrads in North Face walked with their arms linked. Bursts of laughter and breath-steam.

Given his height, given mine, I should have been making easy eye contact with him.

He was nowhere.

I hitched along, peering into shop windows. People gave me a wide berth. I was sweaty and red and filthy.

He wasn’t in the Italian grocery. He wasn’t sampling Tibetan cloth.

I crossed over Ashby and doubled back, passing the movie theater, the gelato shop. Weather be damned, there was a line out the door, patrons corralled by a black velvet rope. Everyone was having fun, except me.