Susan Smith - Out at Night

“Then he needs to be careful.”

Jeanne tightened her arms against her body, as if trying to warm herself. “Frank can only tell me a fraction of what’s going on, but everything he says, Grace, scares the hell out of me. You have no idea how many times a day bad guys threaten to maim or blow up or poison somebody.”

“Uh. Yeah, actually, Jeanne, I do.”

“I’m talking about Palm Springs, Grace. Crumbly, aging, jauntyfaced Palm Springs. Every time they slap a face-lift on that old girl, the plaster crumbles. She’s still got the moves, but it’s motor memory. She’s harmless. And an ag convention dealing with world hunger. That sounds safe, doesn’t it? Except lots of countries ban GM crops. Frank says he thinks the protests have tapped some big nerve.”

“Mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

“Exactly. I loved that movie, too. Liked it less when I saw it in the middle of men’s sportswear waving its fist at my Frank. Oh, and get this. Then Bartholomew whips out this throwaway camera and takes a picture of me.”

Grace shifted in her chair. The fan feathered cold air along her arms.

“He did the same thing the day he crashed my lecture. Got right up in my face and snapped a shot.”

Jeanne looked at her. The cracks along her mouth seemed to have deepened in the weeks since Katie’s kidnapping. “Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“What are you supposed to do there?”

“You mean, today? It’s one thing to go to Palm Springs and tell a bunch of FBI agents the gist of my lecture. That’s my only intersect with the vic and maybe they can find something in there. It’s another getting dragged into the middle of a murder investigation, and that’s exactly what Uncle Pete’s doing. He booked a room for me. I’m there for the count.”

“Except that’s not your only intersect with the vic.”

Grace looked her.

Jeanne glanced at Grace over her glasses and hunted through bottles, picked one up, held it to the light.

“Bartholomew didn’t call out Frank’s name. Or mine, either. He asked for you. ”

A dark green liquid sloshed inside, as if it were a vial of alien blood. She twisted the cap off and inserted the needle.

“Look. I didn’t like that guy any more than you do, Grace. And my reasons were a lot better.”

“Yeah, but he had the nerve to send for me when he was dying.”

“There you go. Good reason to stay away. Why get involved if it’s not about you?”

“I guess what I’d like to know,” Grace tried to keep her voice light and failed, “is whether it’s okay not to go. Not to do some things. Even if we’re asked. Even though we’re called.”

“What’s the cost?”

Outside, someone went by on Rollerblades, the cracks in the sidewalk making the rollers clack. It sounded like steel balls in a garbage disposal.

“Maybe nothing.”

Jeanne shook her head as if Grace were a very slow pupil. Grace held her gaze defiantly.

“Go in peace, my girl. Live.”

Grace looked away. “I’ve worked hard to hang on to this anger, Jeanne.”

“Be a shame to give that up.”

“Uncle Pete hurt my family.”

“And you’re trying to come to terms with the guilt you feel about lying to Katie and Mac by doing what again, exactly?”

Grace checked her watch and slipped her bag over her shoulder. “I have to go.”

Helix cocked his head, looked from Grace to Jeanne, whined, his tone urgent, mournful.

“Shit.” Grace sat down. “A recipe for living, please. In English. Make it snappy.”

“All I’m suggesting is that maybe by pushing into whatever snarledup mess is waiting for you in Palm Springs, you’ll find a way through the stuff that matters.”

“Let me guess, it involves sacrifice, right?” She held out her hands, palms up. “Slit my wrists right now and be done with it.”

“Actually, the real question, Grace, is what are you not willing to sacrifice.”

On the wall were posters of body art. Grace’s gaze settled on a skull filled with flowers.

“I’m going to lose her, Jeanne. I’m going to lose my daughter.”

“I think you’re underestimating the power of forgiveness.”

“Hers? Or Mac’s?”

“Try yours.”

It was a strong, sweet sucker punch and it took a moment to recover.

“Can’t see myself trying that, Jeanne. Not anytime soon.” She got up. Helix thumped his tail once and put his head between his paws. “I’ll be in Palm Springs.”

Grace was almost at the door when Jeanne spoke. “I need you to do something.”

Grace turned. Jeanne pulled on her lip. She wasn’t looking at Grace, and then she did, and her eyes were filled with anxiety and defiance. “It wasn’t just any field.”

Grace waited.

“Where Bartholomew was killed. He picked Frank’s field to die in. My Frank. He got my Frank involved.”

“As a suspect?” Grace felt as if she had slipped down a rabbit hole.

Jeanne shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Frank didn’t tell me, Grace. I had to find it out on TV. It’s all over the TV. He’s not telling me squat. And another field went up in smoke last night. He’s trying to protect me, and all I want is the truth. Help me get the truth.”

Grace tightened her grip on her bag and nodded.

“Two fields burned, Grace, and a man dead. Be careful. Come home to us safely.”

“Sure. Will do. Easy. As soon as I find where that is.”

Jeanne put down her needle and held open her arms. “Come here, sweet girl.”

Grace went to her and knelt, the embrace clumsy. Jeanne’s skin smelled leathery and rich.

She stayed that way, her head cradled in Jeanne’s arms, a long time.

Grace got caught in truck traffic heading north on the 15. She had a low-grade headache that carried her past the brown and yellow scrub of Camp Pendleton, the blackened burn area from the Indio fire through the checkpoint as officers glanced into cars looking for illegals, and on past the auto dealerships and neat rows of identical condos stitched together with soft red roofs.

She passed a nursery with palm trees on a brown stony hillside, trunks cut so that they looked like rows of crosses. She stopped at a roadside stand in the heat and bought organic cherries and then found she couldn’t eat them. The heat bled the juice onto the paper bag like spatter at a crime scene. She put the bag in the trunk, changed her mind, and tossed it in the trash.

She reminded herself that Guatemala had happened a long time ago. Before Katie was born and she was five now. What had happened there had been serious enough that she’d quit medicine and taken a job in the San Diego Police crime lab, working with fluids and not people. She’d stopped the drinking and reached the point where she could work crime scenes, handle spatters, dead bodies, compartmentalize. But since the kidnapping, the fragile boundary between reality and nightmare was porous again, and it took all her energy staying in the moment. Not going back. She wasn’t ready to see a dead body.

She pulled in to a rest stop when she got to Highway 215. She had a fresh shirt in her suitcase and she put it on over her tank top. A row of hang gliders floated high inland as she took the Perris exit. They hovered against the sky like a band of delicate, mutant butterflies.

She pulled into the parking lot next to the sand-colored coroner’s office and parked. She turned off the ignition and immediately the air in the car grew suffocating.

Her nostrils felt pinched. She took little sips of air, as if she were rationing it, delaying going in, and finally burst out the door in a damp gulping rush, hurrying down the white bleached path to the sliding front door.