Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

Maybe she should be happy the G were taking over, let it be their headache, the way Denton thought, right?

Denton.

She pictured him, chest puffed out, needling Rodriguez. It would not have surprised her if he’d whipped his dick out. A contest he would have lost. The thought brought a smile to her lips, but it didn’t last. She couldn’t figure it out, what Rodriguez meant to her: Was he the talented cop who she’d thought could win her the case, or the guy she was falling for, or both?

She cracked open a new jacket: a cabdriver murdered, something that might knock the Sketch Artist off the front page, the press always hungry for a fresh kill. She tried to read the report, but the words blurred.

Was it too soon to check back with Perkowski and Tutsel, see if they had looked into that old murder book yet?

Terri closed the file on the taxi driver and stood up. As she had told Rodriguez, she liked to have all the facts-and wouldn’t he?

By the time I got back to the city it was dark.

I knew there was nothing in my fridge but a six-pack and a block of cheddar past its prime, so I stopped at the Cupcake Café and bought a wedge of quiche and two cupcakes. Whoever said real men don’t eat quiche didn’t know it was okay if you washed it down with real beer and finished it off with real cupcakes.

The daytime workers had cleared out of my building, the lobby empty.

The elevator was a mess, small anthills of dust in the corners, scraps of crumpled paper on the floor. Likewise, my rusty apartment door covered with peeling alarm warnings that had been there since I’d moved in, all bogus.

I balanced my drawing pad and art supplies along with the quiche and cupcakes in one hand and put the key in the lock. It got stuck and took ten minutes to get out. In the process I dropped the cupcakes. By the time I got inside I was in a really bad mood.

My apartment looked worse than usual-walls dingy, wooden floors scuffed, my clothes draped over my Goodwill furniture. Maybe it was my overnight stay in a sterile hotel that made everything look worse.

I asked myself: Is this the home of a man or a teenage slacker?

I set the food down, plucked my clothes off the furniture and stuffed them into the laundry bag. My bed was unmade and Terri’s smell was still on the sheets. It made me miss her. I flipped open my cell to call, then closed it, went back to the kitchen, glanced across the room, and noticed my iPod was on the floor. I picked it up, saw the crack, and stared at it trying to will it back to life. I felt like a little kid whose favorite toy had been busted.

One of my big anatomy books had fallen off the shelf and landed on the iPod docking station. But when I checked the shelf it looked secure, and no other books were out of place. It seemed odd.

I glanced at the drawings on my work table and started sorting through them. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but something seemed wrong. I tugged my drawing pad out from under the table and opened it. I had a really weird feeling and needed to see if my drawings were all there. They were. I looked at the most recent one of the face I’d been trying to draw.

That’s when I felt it, a presence accompanied by a chill so palpable I was afraid to turn around. But when I did, there was nothing.

I made a beeline for the closet. My Smith & Wesson was still there, and for the first time in seven years I put in a new clip. I went around the apartment, checking closets, the bathroom, even under my bed, holding my breath, heart pounding. But nothing was out of place. So why did I feel as if someone had been here?

Santerian gods were in my head, Akadere, who protected the home, Abaile, messenger in charge of moving things from one place to another. I went over to the window and gazed out at Thirty-ninth Street, the face I could not complete shimmering in my mind. The candle my abuela had given me for protection was sitting on the sill.

There is a man in that room with you, Nato.

I found a match and lit the candle.

Dolores Rodriguez had slept fitfully, her mind replaying the vision, her nieto in a burning room with someone evil.

She had already consulted her shells, and lit candles, made appeals to Santa Barbara, and bought quail eggs as an offering to the powerful Babalu-Aye. But the bad feeling, the algo malo, had persisted. It was the strongest feeling she had experienced since her son was killed.

She knew her grandson was not a believer, but it made no difference. She spread a clean white cloth over the bóveda, filled seven glasses with water, added a crucifix and a string of rosary beads, glanced up at the photograph of her son, Juan, and asked that he keep a watchful eye over Nato. She believed this was the moment Juan’s ori had been waiting for, that it was being called upon to fulfill his destiny on earth; after that, he would stand before Olodumare and Orunla, and they would finally allow his soul to rest.

He has had no sleep, but is not tired. He has been here and home and back again, a new drawing tucked into his pocket. He has talked with God. An hour ago he saw the man come home, go into the building, turn on the lights. Now he sees the man in his window.

Two factory workers, dark-skinned women, come out of the building. He lowers his cap, darts across the street, and gets a gloved hand on the door just before it shuts. The women are nattering away in Spanish and barely notice him. He thinks another time he might just as easily have killed them.

Inside, the lobby is quiet. He heads to the back stairwell, removes the small piece of wood he wedged into it earlier, and opens the door.

My abuela ’s candle had burned down, leaving a trace of ginger scent in the air. In the last two hours I’d eaten the quiche, washed all the dishes that had piled up in the sink, swept the floor, scrubbed the bathroom sink and shower stall, but had been unable to wash away the bad feeling that someone had been in my apartment. I was overtired but too antsy to sleep. I turned on the television, watched a few minutes of a Seinfeld rerun, but couldn’t sit still. Plus, I was cold. The heat was off and there were ice crystals forming on my windows. I decided to call the super, a mean-spirited drunk who lived in the basement and was quick to turn down the heat the minute the businesses closed for the evening regardless of the temperature. We had argued about this for years, but being the sole resident in the building I always lost. But this was ridiculous; the radiators were stone-cold.

I called his number but he didn’t answer. I pictured him crapped out in front of his Panasonic, warmed by the booze in his system. The guy was a Dominican and he seemed to hate me, maybe because I was Puerto Rican, and because, according to him, I was a bohemio and a hippi.

I pulled on a sweater, left the TV on for company, and went over to my work table unsure of why I was going. I blew on my hands to warm them, then sharpened a new Ebony pencil, and got to work.

The whole time I was drawing it was as if someone were guiding my hand.

I’d never really believed in anything that could not be explained, a cynic if you got right down to it, but lately things seemed to be taking on a spiritual significance that was unexplainable.

When I saw what I’d done I was surprised. I hadn’t realized I’d been stuck in one spot. The detail in the eye gave the face a sense of reality that hadn’t been there before. One of my Quantico instructors always said you had to find the anatomy under the facial expression, and I thought I was starting to do that. There was something recognizable in the face, but I didn’t know what. Had I seen him before? In real life? In a dream?