J. Wachowski - In Plain View

“Guess I’m done.” Nicky flashed me a grin but asked his cousin seriously, “Trouble?”

Curzon shrugged, noncommittal.

Nicky crossed the patio in a hurry, his voice drifting as he closed the french door behind him, “Whaa-at?”

I shot Curzon a look and he was smiling, too.

“Family.”

He nodded. “The food’s ready. Brats are done.” He pronounced it like a good midwesterner. Brahtzs . Sausages. “Dad promised him first pick since he lost the ball game.”

“Doesn’t the winner get first pick?”

“Of dessert.”

I laughed. What was it about being gathered in a family unit that made people revert to their prehistoric patterns? Big man. Little man. Boss lady. She-bitch. I looked over at Jenny and my momentary bubble of equilibrium popped. Who was I to her?

Somehow, Curzon managed to slip a question into that breach. Then another, and another. Questions about how long the drive had taken us, and how long I’d been working out, and how long I’d been away from Chicago Land. I knew he was pumping me. At first, I answered with the thought, give a little, get a little. Maybe I’d get a little something about Tom Jost out of him. Much later along the way, I realized I was giving more than I could reasonably expect to get, but the conversation continued. I told him things about work, about me, that I hadn’t told anyone.

“Holy shit,” Curzon marveled. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“That was about the worst.”

Some of the things I’d turned into pictures haunted me. Most of them weren’t frightening exactly. The danger had passed.

They were only bones. Bones can’t hurt you. Even rows and rows of bones. Human skeletons. And me, picking my way across the ground, stepping oh, so carefully. In dreams, it always ended the same. I choose a skull and turn it in my hand, considering the best angle for my camera’s eye. I am trying to find a way to get the light to shine inside behind the empty sockets. No matter how I twist it, nothing ever works. The skull stares back at me, eyes so black they give me vertigo.

That’s the dream that wakes me in a sweat. Curzon took a long drag on his Anchor Steam beer. “The shit people do to one another,” he said philosophically.

“And to themselves,” I added, thinking of Tom Jost.

The kids were organizing a game on the lawn. Ainsley put up a token resistance to being dragged in to play, pulling Jenny along with him. Their voices crossed the space in little sound bites of high-note happiness.

We watched them play as Curzon talked about the things a cop sees.

Work stories. War stories. Everybody has them. I’ve probably got it easier than the sheriff in one respect. My stories might be on a bigger scale but they originated far, far away; his hit closer to home. Maybe it was calculated to charm me. Maybe.

If so, it was working.

“Right. That’s enough, you two clams. Come join the party.” Donna Curzon came with a tray full of glasses, filled with an iced yellow liquid topped by two inches of white froth. “Maddy, you have to try this. It’s lemonade beer. Really nummy.”

“What the hell have you done to that perfectly good beer, Mom?” Curzon said. “Ice and lemonade? I’m going to have to issue you a warning for indecent mixing.”

She gave me the long-suffering look but otherwise ignored her son. “Go ahead, Maddy. Have a taste.”

“I’m not much of a drinker.”

“That’s not much of a drink,” Curzon said.

“Your father likes it.”

I accepted a glass to keep peace with the hostess. She smiled at me and wandered off to sell the rest to other guests. I took a sip. “Your dad must be a politician, too.”

“Only when it comes to my mother,” Curzon answered. “My job would drive him crazy. He’s all cop. Married to the same woman, living in the same place, going to the same barbershop over thirty years. Drives a Crown Vic. Always has a hundred dollar bill in his wallet for emergencies. Upright guy.”

Nicky came out of the house carrying a plate piled with enough food to feed Jenny and me for a week. Curzon noticed he was headed our way and pointed out across the lawn. “You want to walk?”

“Sure.”

He stopped in a quiet spot beside the half-wall that banked steps leading down to the cellar. We could still see the touch football game, but the rest of the gang was out of our line of sight-or we were out of their’s. “Except for politics, you and your dad sound like two of a kind to me.”

“No way.” He sucked back a swallow of beer. “My wife left before we’d marked a nickel. My car’s foreign and I got nothing in my wallet but plastic.”

That’s the problem with sharing war stories. It brings you down. If there’s one thing I dread, it’s decent guys flaying themselves for an audience. Time to change the subject.

“Any word on that police report you promised me?”

He looked the other way, irritated with himself. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He made an effort to laugh. “Cause of death, gross displacement of spinal cord and cervical vertebra-”

“Translate.”

“Broken neck. Time of death was approximately nine o’clock-”

“No shit, nine a.m.? ”

“Guy died about a half hour before we got there.” He sounded matter of fact, but I could see him questioning my reaction. I waved it off.

“How’d you hear about it?” I asked.

“Phone tip. Somebody saw him setting up, I guess. We ran the plate and knew it was Jost by the time we sent guys to the scene.”

“Phone tip called in the license plate?”

“Yeah.”

That seemed weird to me, given the off-road nature of Jost’s parking job. His little car had been parked parallel to the road in the ditch. The person who called it in would have to have driven right by the car.

“Coroner thinks Jost must have been out there a while, setting himself up. There was a lot of foot traffic between his car and the site.” Curzon shifted back to a recline, against the patio wall. Sipped his beer. Nothing like a little shop-talk to make you forget your troubles. “He used rope from the ambulance rig. Stacked the boxes he had in his trunk to get the lift he needed, kicked the top box out from under him…or it slipped.”

“Does the coroner have an opinion?”

Curzon hesitated. “Off the record?”

“Why not? Everyone else is.” I took a sip of lemonade beer to wash the bitter out of my voice. On the fourth sip, I decided Mrs. Curzon was right. It was nummy.

“Evidence is contradictory. I assume you saw what was inside those boxes?” he asked.

“Porno magazines.”

“Yeah. Same ones found in the trunk of his car the night he was brought in.” He said it as if it might not mean a thing, but the silence that followed said otherwise.

Figuring people was a skill that improved with experience. Tracking people, tracking behavior, the more you knew of the possibilities the more likely you could imagine a solution to a scenario. Things fit or they didn’t. I figured Curzon was one of the lucky few who could keep up with me when it came to tracking someone into the dark of uncharted, unhappy possibilities.

I threw out a suggestion. “Everybody already knew about the mags, so why bother to take them out of the car?”

Curzon crooked one of those black eyebrows in disbelief. Didn’t sound right to me either. A guy like Jost wouldn’t leave them in his car once they’d been discovered. He’d have the guys at work asking to see what he had in his trunk every damn day.

“He used the same magazines that got him busted to hang himself. Could be remorse. Self-punishment.” I sipped my lemonade. “What’s ‘contradictory’ about the evidence?”