“It’s mold,” Dan told Nayoni. “Some dirt, but mostly black mold. Any century-old stone building will have it.”
Nayoni was wearing a white bathrobe over silky pj’s. Morning sunlight bounced golden off her cascading hair. She’d been Teri’s best friend. For that alone he would’ve helped her but, truth tell, to Dan Nayoni, his late wife’s best friend, was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known.
“I’ll blast it clean with diluted bleach — it won’t hurt the stone,” he told her.
Her green eyes flashed. “Todd’s fretting somehow about the water pressure …?”
“Yeah. High pressure could erode the rock, but I won’t go more than 1500 psi. That’s standard for historic buildings.”
The scents of cut grass, damp masonry, and summer dew mingled in the air. The tall church stood stoic against the neighborhood sky. The surrounding street had held, till recently, a few large houses, but half-erected condo frames began replacing them now, lining up like peaceful skeletons.
Nayoni bit her lip. “Todd should be back already. He had a breakfast with some client. He knows I don’t have my car today.”
“I’d rather talk to you anyhow.”
She arched an eyebrow, and Dan’s cheeks burned.
“What I mean is, thanks for the break,” he said.
She danced her fingers through the air, dismissing his embarrassment. “You’re the best man for the job.”
He hadn’t worked all year. He wouldn’t be working now if anyone else had asked.
“I’d say go ahead, but Todd’s funny about stuff. This is his baby, you know.”
“You might think about not doing anything. Sometimes it’s best to let these old buildings alone.”
Nayoni rolled her eyes. “Todd? Leave something alone! You don’t know my husband.”
Todd had had the church de-consecrated and converted into a new headquarters for his architectural firm. He had knocked out the rectory walls and demolished the bible-study classrooms to make a second-floor loft. He and Nayoni lived there now.
“You know how much we all miss Teri,” said Nayoni.
He swallowed.
“For what it’s worth I don’t believe the rumors about the recall notice.”
“The rumors weren’t true. We got the notice a couple days before the accident. It was a holiday week. But I should have never let Teri get back in that car. Not even once. I wasn’t thinking about it. I just forgot. I would never hurt Teri. I forgot. I didn’t think.”
“Nobody blames you.”
Up the block, Todd’s Jag took the corner, screeching.
Todd parked against the bumper of Dan’s pickup, then climbed out, spreading his arms. He was wearing black driving gloves. “Where are the scaffold guys? Sweet Jesus it’s eight a.m.!” He glared at the black stone.
“Morning darling,” said Nayoni. “Look, Dan’s here.”
“Dammit I want this scaffolding up today, so Dan here can get to work! I’m gonna call the sonofa –” He pulled a phone from a pocket and flipped it open. It was about a tenth the size of Dan’s own phone, which felt suddenly heavy and conspicuous clipped on his belt.
Nayoni shot him an apologetic look, then spoke to her husband. “Honey, Dan’s been here half an hour waiting for you.”
“Naynee, there’s no point in speaking to Dan if there’s no scaffolding for Dan to work on. Get him a coffee or something!”
Dan knew Mickey Sanchez, the contractor Todd had hired to erect the scaffolding. Mickey had always stood by Dan. Todd cursed into the phone, probably at an answering machine.
Nayoni rolled her eyes, and climbed the front steps to the archway. “Coffee, Dan?”
“Thanks, Nayoni. Black.”
“Cream and sugar in mine!” shouted Todd.
Without looking back, she shot her husband the one-fingered salute. Then she padded inside like a white leopardess.
Todd snapped the phone shut. “Women. Ballbreakers. Not Teri, though. She was a good one. Tough break for you. Tough break. I mean it.”
Dan almost asked just what did he mean, but decided for Nayoni’s sake to let it go. He’d heard Todd had an affair with his own real-estate agent, a woman from the place Teri once worked reception. But people like to gossip.
“You look good,” said Todd. “You been working out?”
“Some weights.” Dan started lifting for rehab after the crash, then kept at it because he had nothing better to do. He bench pressed in the garage late into the nights. It came to a lot of hours in thirteen months.
Todd gripped his own belly and pulled it. “I wish I had the time to get buff. Maybe I can hire you as my personal trainer, too.”
“I haven’t even decided I’m going to clean your church, Todd.”
“All right,” said Todd, taken aback. “What’s your best price? Your friend price.”
“Don’t you want to talk details?”
Todd started scratching his neck, which was flaking. Stress? Hives? “You know what to do. Get this black off.”
“I was telling Nayoni sometimes it’s better to leave these historic buildings alone.”
“Look look, I know buildings. This is my living. It can be done safely, or I suppose you don’t think so?”
“There’s no question it’s safe, but looks-wise …”
“Looks-wise! I redo buildings for a living. I don’t need clients seeing an office that wasn’t touched in a century — then what do they need me for? Let me make a living, guy.”
Dan usually fretted over setting prices. Mickey Sanchez had tried to teach him to bid smarter. Contractors, despite what people think, often underbid, and have trouble meeting overhead during slack times. He needed cash, and couldn’t bring himself to touch Teri’s insurance money.
In his head, he exaggerated what he could work for, and doubled it. Then, special for Todd, he doubled that. For fun he tacked on five percent more, and rounded up. Hoping it would give Todd an aneurysm, Dan told him the final amount.
Todd’s lip quivered, but he didn’t blink. Dan stared.
Todd’s ego got the best of him.”You start tomorrow,” he said, extending a glove. Dan shook it.
“I guess it’s no coffee.” Todd checked his watch. “I have to meet a client in Seattle at 8:30. I can’t wait for Sanchez. How’s your morning? Can you supervise? Twenty-five an hour?”
“You can trust Mickey.”
“But you’re like family. Stay. Naynee’ll feel better too.”
“Sure.” He suddenly felt a little bad over extorting Todd. “Forget the twenty-five an hour. Today’s included in the total.”
Todd slapped Dan on the biceps and bounded toward the Jag. “No way, guy. I won’t have Naynee say I took advantage.”
Before leaving, he rolled the window down and waved Dan over. “I’m supposed to be back later to take Naynee to get the Beemer, but I can’t. Will you drop her on your way out? Tell her I’ll call.” He popped the Jag in reverse and squealed around the corner. An instant later, he sped forward through the intersection and disappeared.
By late afternoon, tube and coupler scaffolding covered the entire church. A monumental job, but Mickey had promised Todd it would be done, so it was. After Mickey left, and with time to kill while Nayoni got ready to be driven to the car dealership, Dan checked the uppermost platform. He shook the anchoring points and guard rails: solid as the church itself. Mickey did good work.
The high platform of the scaffolding came even with an ornate stained-glass window. Round, tall as Dan, and wide as he could stretch, the window had swivel-hinges at top and bottom so it could open to let air in the loft. Its irregularly-shaped sections would have been hand cut. The darkly colored glass seemed fragile enough to punch through. Flower and vine designs formed swirls within swirls when viewed from the street below. Up close, where he could marvel at the workmanship of those nineteenth-century craftsmen, the effect looked even more lovely.
Some pigeon droppings had fouled it. From his tool belt, Dan took a screwdriver and attacked a large dry gollup. Taking care not to scratch the pane, he settled for thinning down the dropping.
A pink shadow moved on the other side. He put the screwdriver down on the guardrail. For an instant he did not know what he saw, then it dawned on him. The glass led to Nayoni and Todd’s living loft, and Nayoni had crossed the room naked. He didn’t see anything, but he should have turned away quicker. Only after she disappeared into another room did he slink down the scaffold to the street.
Nayoni came out a few minutes later. She wore white again, a silk blouse with a plunging neckline and loose pants. The folds fluttered as she bounded down the steps.
“Dealership?”
“It’s a dirty work truck, and you’ve got on white.”
“It’ll be okay. It’s fun. I’m sorry Todd stuck you with this chore. He should have take me. I could kill him.”
“Don’t say that.”
She shrugged and put a sandaled foot on the door jamb and carried herself up with ease.
He got in, then turned the ignition. The engine started eventually. “A little sluggish this morning,” he said sheepishly.
At the BMW dealership, he let her off near the garage. Leaving, he spotted the new X5 luxury SUV. He pulled beside a metallic-silver beauty and peered at its sticker: 4.4 liter V8, 282 horse-power. Montana leather and moon roof. Xenon headlights, on-board navigation. Forty-nine thousand dollars.
Anyway, the back-end had awfully limited cargo space for a “utility” vehicle. He had nothing but the pickup now, as he’d never replaced Teri’s totaled wreck. The pickup was fine.
The engine sputtered and died. Nobody was behind him, but he still didn’t like blocking the exit. While trying to get her to turn over, he pressed the gas one time too many, flooding the engine. The dealership lay at the bottom of a slight hill. Down the white line a crouched skateboarder shot the incline, blew a light, and kept going, wheels and trucks roaring like a punctured muffler. The skateboarder just missed the front bumper of a Volvo as it crossed the intersection.
Trying to impress some girl, thought Dan, but Dan didn’t see any girl.
“Hey!” shouted Nayoni. Through the rear-view he watched her trot toward him. “My car’s not ready!” she told him when she got to his side. “Glad I caught you.”
He didn’t want to say he’d flooded the pickup. “I stopped to check this one out,” he nodded to the silver SUV.
“That’s the one for you Dan. It’s very … you know what I mean.” She flexed like a body builder and growled.
“Nah.” Teri would’ve never gone for it. The money, the showiness. No way.
“Why not? You could carry all your tools and stuff in back. You could write it off on business.”
He hadn’t thought of buying the SUV for business. “It’s too much.”
“There’s Teri’s insurance money …”
He gave her too sharp a look and she covered her mouth. “I’m stupid. Was that a stupid thing to say?”
“Get in, I’ll run you back.”
She obeyed, and they sat a moment longer.
“Dan, I …”
“No one ever even says Teri’s name to me anymore. Like I can’t handle it. Like I don’t know my own wife’s dead.”
“She was my best friend since before high school.”
“Thank you for not pretending to me she doesn’t exist.”
In the mirror Dan watched a salesman venture forth, ambling in the deliberate casual way salesmen have.
“Can you wait for a bit?” Dan asked. “To go home? Half an hour?”
“Sure. I suppose. What’s up?”
“Nothing.” He pushed the door opened, and it gave a rusty creak. “I want to have a look.”
An hour later he signed the last paper and the salesman handed him his new keys.
He offered them to Nayoni. “Would you mind following me back in the SUV?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Hand over the truck keys. You should be the first to drive your own new car.”
“The truck’s a little difficult.”
“You think I can’t handle it. You forget my Dad drove Greyhound for thirty years.”
“Sometimes she stalls at lights.”
“It’s like two miles, what could happen?”
Most accidents happen close to home. Everybody knew that. But he gave in.
It took only a block for him to lose her. The truck’s engine roared behind him, and Teri whipped off around a corner and out of his rear view. If she knew a shortcut she didn’t tell him. He doubled back … nothing. He headed to the church to wait. She’d probably be there, hand on hip, leaning against the truck’s grill, asking what took him so long.
She wasn’t. He parked and hoped she had her cell, but he didn’t know that number even if she did.
She turned up five minutes later. “Stopped for groceries,” she said, hopping from the truck. The “groceries” was a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock. “Todd will only let me get microbrew. Take me for a ride around the block in your new wheels and I might let you have one.”
He let her into the SUV. She sat the beer on the floor and sank into the leather.
“Ooh, this is sexy.” Kicking off her sandals, she then squeezed carpet between her painted toes.
He circled the block, then wound through the side streets.
They parked outside the church again. “Split a beer with me,” Nayoni said.
Dan said okay and started to get out. Nayoni put a hand on his arm. “I don’t want to go in yet. I hate that church, it’s so empty. Can’t we sit out here for awhile?”
Dan shut the door and leaned back.
Nayoni seemed peaceful, and that made him want to stay there and be peaceful with her. The sun would be up for a bit yet, a breeze rustled through churchyard tree limbs, and Nayoni’s perfumed scents mingled with the new-car smell. She took out a beer and borrowed his key-ring to pop the cap. The beer foamed. Nayoni tried to catch it with a finger, but a drop hit the carpet. “Oops!” she said.
“Oh well. You christened it.”
She handed him the bottle and he took a long swallow. He remembered he never liked Rolling Rock, with its potato aftertaste.
“Do you ever wish things had turned out differently?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“Things. Everything. Todd put so much into this church renovation. It’s scary. Sometimes I could just kill him.”
“Don’t even joke.” That’s how rumors start. “People would get the wrong idea.”
Nayoni shrugged, made a face. They sipped beer in silence.
“Huh,” she said at last. “This is some car. Do you remember the last time we had a Rolling Rock together?”
He didn’t.
She dropped her mouth open. “You’re kidding, right?”
Dan shrugged.
She backhanded his arm. “High school! That party when my parents left town. We sat on that sofa in my back yard for like two hours. That yellow coverlet covered in cat hair.”
“Right! Whatever happened to your old cat?”
“A car happened to her.” She clicked her tongue. “Todd hates cats. We can’t have one in the house. I can’t have a cat, I can’t have any friends, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”
“He can’t tell you not to have friends.”
“It isn’t that. Well it is, but it’s not like he tells me. Men are jealous. Most men, I mean. You know, it’s funny …”
“What is?”
“You not remembering the party.”
“I forgot the kind of beer we had. I didn’t forget being there.”
“You don’t remember the crush I had on you, though.”
He about coughed beer through his nose. No. He’d never known that. He’d thought it was all one-sided.
“Before you and Teri hooked up, we both had huge crushes on you. I made myself so obvious. God what a slut! You didn’t even care. I guess you already liked Teri. You started going out right afterwards.”
Exactly right afterwards. He could still hear Nayoni laughing, leaning against him in the cold, her intent so obvious to him now, an adulthood later. At the time, Teri told him Nayoni had a crush on some college guy and just used Dan to make him jealous. That made sense, because girls like Nayoni didn’t go for guys like Dan. He and Teri ended up having sex in her Dodge Charger and became a couple. After graduation Teri got pregnant, they got hitched and she miscarried. She couldn’t have kids afterward. Everything seemed fine otherwise.
Until driving home from last year’s July Fourth picnic. Dan lay across the back seat, because he’d had too many to take the wheel. Teri lost control on I-5. The car flipped, like the recall notice he had received two days earlier, but hadn’t acted on yet, told him it would.
When he woke up strapped in a stretcher, EMT’s were laboring to cut Teri free of crushed metal. She screamed her last words in the night. Danny, Danny, she’d cried. Danny, Danny, why won’t you help me? Again and again. It was an accident. The recall notice … he just forgot.
“Funny how things turn out,” Nayoni said.
Dan dropped the beer between his feet. He seized Nayoni and clenched her to him. He felt her breath.
She squirmed. “No, no!”
He swore and released her. “Nayoni –”
She grabbed his face and covered his eyes and cheeks with kisses. “I can’t do this,” she breathed. “What time is it? I can’t do this.”
Dan snagged his steel watchband in silk.
She freed herself from the watchband, tearing silk, and jumped from the cab. Halfway to the house she came back. “Todd’s taking the red-eye to Chicago tonight. I have to talk to you. Todd and I … it’s over. Will you come back later?”
He said he would. Yes he would. He tried to touch her cheek, but she pulled back. Holding herself tight, head bowed, she disappeared into the church.
He picked the spilling beer up from under the gas pedal, and poured the rest out the window. He tossed the empty to the passenger side, then pulled away from the church. A block later, he passed Todd in the Jag driving one-handed, phone wedged between shoulder and ear. To acknowledge him, Todd spread his fingers while balancing the steering wheel with his palm. If he was surprised at seeing Dan’s new wheels, his face didn’t show it.
At home Dan found a message on the machine from Nayoni. She could have called his cell, but she hadn’t.
She needed more time, she said. Todd would be gone two days; she desperately wanted to see Dan, but not tonight. Her voice shook. “Tomorrow morning,” she said, asking him to forgive her. “Tomorrow, darling, please wait till then.”
By midnight he’d bench-pressed to exhaustion, and lay peaceful, watching his breath steam, letting his tee shirt freeze in the garage air. He had a Springsteen tape in the boom box. Whatever happened to his Johnny Cash tape? Maybe it was in the car during the accident. Bruce was the Boss, but even the Boss was no Johnny Cash.
Nayoni was no Teri.
Whatever happened between Teri and him, no matter how it started, no matter what their problems, he could not hop into bed with her best friend — and break up a marriage a year and a month after Teri died. This thing for Nayoni had passed before, it would pass again.
He almost called, but decided he should see her in person.
He could drive over to see if the lights were on. He needed to grab the power washer and other equipment from the pickup anyway, which he’d forgotten in the afternoon’s madness. Then he’d stop this thing before anyone got hurt.
In the dark, the scaffold covering the church looked like a giant cocoon from a sci-fi movie. Light shone only from the circle of stained glass above.
Todd’s Jag was parked on the street. Maybe he’d canceled the trip, or taken a cab to the airport. It seemed odd to leave a Jaguar out at night. Dan dialed their loft’s number, and listened to its faint ring go unanswered above.
He got out, still holding the phone. He couldn’t find a bell or an intercom at the downstairs entrance. He put the phone back in its belt clip.
A crash and then a muted cry came from the loft, or he thought so. Not waiting to be sure, he scrambled up the scaffold.
Putting his face to the fragile stained glass, Dan made out shapes and colors. A ball of white lay crumpled on the floor. In the ball’s center, a mass of red. Nayoni’s bathrobe could be the white.
And the red …
The window, latched, wouldn’t swing in. Dan shouldered into the weak panes. The window gave way. He crashed through shattering glass. His shoulder hit the oak floor. Ruined shards bounced around him.
Nayoni slumped on the floor in the far corner. She faced a hall Dan could not see down. Blood soaked her robe’s front. She stared straight ahead, shaking, cradling something to her breast. Dan scuttled to her side.
The thing she held was the screwdriver he’d forgotten on the ledge that morning. She wouldn’t let go of it, but she let him move her arms. He opened her robe to check the wound.
Her white skin was unbroken and Dan breathed again. Not her blood. Nayoni stared transfixed down the dim hall. Dan turned.
The hall lead to spiral stairs, the proper entrance to the loft. Todd lay face up, arms and legs flat to the floor. His chest rose and fell in shallow heaves. He gurgled for air.
Dan rushed over. Todd’s pupils were huge. The screwdriver had gone in under the ribcage.
Todd coughed liquid. “You son of a bitch. Did you break my window?”
“Don’t talk, Todd. Till help comes.”
“I’ll sue your broke ass.”
Dan unclipped his cell phone.
Nayoni crawled forward, put her bloody hands on his wrist to stop him dialing. “I’ll go to jail, won’t I?”
“No. He attacked you.”
“I don’t know.”
“What did happen?”
“We fought. About you.”
“You won’t get anything!” coughed Todd. He tried to push himself toward the stairway, still on his back, like an upended turtle. “See if you can live on what he makes. Attempted murder!”
Nayoni whispered. “Dan, help me.”
Todd scoffed and mocked her in a mincing voice. “‘Danny, Ooh. Help itty-bitty wittle me …’”
Nayoni slapped her hands over her ears. “Shut up, Todd! Shut up!”
Todd kept at it, “‘I’m a wittle pwincess, I need a big stwong man to wescue me …’”
“Enough, Todd,” said Dan.
“Attempted murder! Both of you!”
“Dan,” said Nayoni. “Your screwdriver. And what he’ll say about us together … Don’t you see how it’ll look?”
“What else is there to do?” said Dan.
She clung to his leg. “I don’t know. Help me, Danny!”
Like Teri, Danny, Danny why don’t you help me?
Todd reached the staircase. There the finished-wood floors gave way to carpet. Slipping in blood, Todd couldn’t muster strength to push his shoulders over the threshold.
Dan pulled from Nayoni and stood over Todd again. Panting, he glared at Dan, bloated and wet, throat flaked with psoriasis. Gin reeked from his open mouth. “Help me!” he mocked, face twisted. “Everybody knows what you did to Teri. You just forgot that recall notice, didn’t you. It was all a big accident.”
“It was an accident,” said Dan. He bent. Todd flinched and tried to bat him away. Dan used his knees to pin Todd’s shoulders.
“Naynee! I love you!” shouted Todd. “Naynee! Stop him!”
Dan cupped the mouth and nose, and squeezed. His hands turned purple with exertion. He watched Todd’s eyes, Todd’s wretched, unhappy eyes. They began to let slip focus, relieving themselves of his agonies. No more hives, belly roll or Jag payments, no clients. No mistress or gossip or wife. No nothing.
Dan drew the peaceful eyes closed.
After a moment he stood upright. Nayoni pressed herself against a wall. Dan took a step and she flinched. “You did it,” she said. “You … is he?”
“I guess so.” Then, “Yes.”
She still held the screwdriver and he pried it loose from her fingers. “Where did you get this?”
“Out there. I went out on the scaffolding earlier to smoke a cigarette. I found it and put it in my robe.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because it’s yours, I think.”
“And then?”
“He came home drunk, he lost the job he was supposed to go to Chicago for. Then I don’t know.”
Dan thought for moment. “He could have been out on the scaffold.”
“What?”
“Have you got what he’s been drinking here?”
She nodded.
“He could have been out on the scaffold, drinking, and fell. He could have slipped on my screwdriver, and he fell, and it fell too and he landed on it. Maybe.” Probably not, but maybe. “I didn’t know that, Nayoni.”
“What?”
“You still smoke.”
“I … sometimes. When I’m …”
He didn’t wait for the rest of what she would say. They had to work fast. He bear-hugged Todd’s body, and dragged it to the window. The broken glass needed explaining too. Think. Todd and Nayoni had fought over Todd’s drinking. Distraught, she barricaded herself in the bathroom, and he went outside. In a rage he kicked in his own stained-glass window. Nayoni ran out to see what happened, but he’d already fallen.
And himself, Dan. Why was he there?
He couldn’t be.
“Nayoni,” he said. “We have to get all the blood up fast, then you have to call the cops. Then I have to leave.”
He told her what she had to remember. They cleaned the floors. Dan set a half-empty gin bottle on the ledge. He filled two garbage bags with a bloody mop head, sponges, paper towels, and Nayoni’s bloody white robe.
Finally, he hefted Todd’s body out to the scaffold and let it free. It dropped to grass below, then rolled the slight incline to the sidewalk. In the time since he’d crashed through the window, nothing had stirred on the deserted block.
He loosened the scaffold ties and bracing, dropped a plank after Todd’s body. Taking the hefty bags and the screwdriver, Dan climbed down. He placed the screwdriver back in the wound under Todd’s ribcage, and laid the body on its face.
He didn’t account for every detail, but anything that made too much sense wouldn’t seem real anyway.
Nayoni stood where the stained glass had been, watching. She would call the cops now as they’d agreed, or not. He got into the BMW and started the engine.
He drove home, got in bed, did not sleep. At five, the phone rang.
“The police just left,” said Nayoni.
“Okay.”
“It’s so cold up here, with the window.”
“I’ve got some heavy plastic. I’ll come cover it for you. You should get some sleep. Maybe you shouldn’t stay there tonight.”
“Dan … what Todd said about Teri, the recall on the car. Did you really just forget?”
“I just forgot.” And nobody believed him.
Later in the morning, Dan went back to the church to begin a day’s ordinary work. Not everything was different. Black mold still covered everything.
He went up. Nayoni had found a burgundy robe to replace the ruined white one. She sat on the couch, gripping cushions and watching him as he taped plastic over the empty window.
She finally spoke. “You put your hand over his mouth and squeezed. You kept squeezing, until he died.”
“If you hadn’t stabbed him …” If she didn’t get beer and flirt like crazy in the SUV, if she didn’t push him to buy the damn SUV. If he’d known in high school, that night on the couch covered in cat hair, what he learned yesterday.
After he finished taping the window, he went downstairs, and got the steam washer from the pickup.
He hooked the washer up to water and power. While he waited for the water to heat, a plain vehicle drove up with two cops in it. One went up to interview Nayoni, the other stayed behind with Dan.
The cop with Dan had a fleshy face and powder-blue eyes like a husky. They’d met before. “I took the report when you lost your wife, last year. Teri, wasn’t it?” asked the cop.
Dan nodded.
“Right. You were friends of these folks here, you and your wife. Also you work for them.”
Dan nodded again.
“Did you notice anything unusual with the decedent? Did he seem depressed or worried?”
“I guess he had some problems.”
“Money problems, marital problems?”
“I don’t know.”
The cop looked up at the ruined window. “You do that? The plastic.”
“I covered the window with plastic, yes.”
“This is a beautiful old place. It’s got some character. The whole neighborhood up here’s changing though. You can’t fight it. Did you rig all this scaffolding?”
“No. A contractor did. Mickey Sanchez.”
The cop took out a pad and pen. “Say it again?”
Dan repeated Mickey’s name.
“He do a pretty good job?”
“I haven’t checked it yet. Usually he does okay.”
“Usually,” the cop repeated, smiling as he wrote.
“From the looks of it last night, I’d be careful up there if I were you. Seems shoddy.”
The cop’s partner came out of the church. The blue-eyed cop flipped his notebook shut. Both cops got in their car. The door to the church did not close all the way, because Nayoni, still in her burgundy bathrobe, stood in the shadows holding it. She peeked out, watching the street.
Before they pulled away, Dan called them. “Hey, can I clean off the sidewalk?”
“What do you mean?” said the blue-eyed cop.
“The blood. There’s blood here.”
The cop frowned. “What the hell are you asking me for?”
“I thought it might be evidence.”
The cop spoke to his partner. “Evidence. Listen to this guy.” Then, his jaw rigid, his wolf eyes revealing nothing, he said to Dan: “Evidence of exactly what?”
Without waiting for an answer, the cop rolled up the window, then drove away.
Dan turned the sprayer on the concrete. Steam billowed. Water pounded blood. He thought Nayoni remained at the door watching, but he didn’t turn to see.
BIO:
Michael Canfield has published eighteen or so fantasy, science fiction
and horror stories in StrangeHorizons.com, futurismic.com,
EscapePod.com, in dead-tree magazines including Black Gate, Talebones,
and Realms of Fantasy, and other places. His novelette
“Super-Villains” was reprinted in Fantasy: The Year’s Best 2006 (Prime
Books). Born near to Las Vegas, he now lives in Seattle. Links to read
many of his stories free can be found at www.michaelcanfield.net.
