Homicide My Own (15 page)

12.

Naked and crazy, with icy salt water over my head, I looked to the shore and my partner. I had to either swim back while I still could or drown. Odd stood at the water’s edge, not knowing where to put his eyes. I came out of the brine not knowing where to put my hands. I was too cold and exhausted to care. I pressed my nakedness against him and he gave me his warmth, rubbing my back roughly with his big warm Swedish hands, bringing back the circulation. He had my jeans draped over his shoulder. He pulled my t-shirt over my head. Then he held me by one arm and helped me step into the jeans. He wrapped himself around me again and squeezed tight, and soon the numbing cold was gone and I had some feeling again. He didn’t know what to ask and I didn’t know how to explain it, and so he kissed me, full on the mouth. It was honest and comforting and I took it all.

“I’m sorry, Quinn. I’m way out of line.”

“Forget it.”

I didn’t make a big deal of it. I made no deal at all of it.

“You ready to go back?” he asked.

I nodded. He took my arm, like I had just had four wisdom teeth removed and he was walking me to the car. I did feel
something
had been removed, I just didn’t know what.

We were halfway through the stand of cedars before a greater sense of reality took hold and I realized another actor should have been onstage.

“Odd…where’s our prisoner?”

“I handcuffed him to the refrigerator door. Otherwise, I could have caught you before you took the plunge. Where did you think you were going, Canada?”

“Odd…? I wouldn’t want anyone knowing about this.”

He smiled his half-crooked smile. “I wouldn’t either.”

“Let’s let it slide, all of it.”

Going back across the gravel to the cottage, I felt every pebble under my bare feet. When you walk like that you tend to look at your feet, helping them along, which is why I didn’t notice who was on the porch until I heard Odd’s hoarse whisper, “Good night…” and I looked up to see Gwen, Stacey’s mom, sitting on the step, her elbows on her knees, dragging deeply on a cigarette. My panties and bra were within range of the second-hand smoke, draped over a porch rail.

We knew it was her before she recognized us, dismissing us at first as another couple shacking up at the cottages. When she did realize who we were, her face turned apologetic. She tried to say something but couldn’t get any traction between her mind and her mouth.

“What are you doing here?” asked Odd.

That didn’t concern me as much as the whereabouts of her orally inclined daughter and our prisioner.

“God,” she said, “I thought…it’s you. You threw me. I was waiting for a couple of cops, and then…you guys…”

“Where’s Stacey?” I said, all else put aside, except for my underwear, which I grabbed.

“Inside,” she said. “You see, we…”

Neither one of us was interested in her explanation. We rushed by her and into the cottage. Thank God, Houser was still cuffed to the reefer, the door swinging open. Stacey was next to him, hips touching, leaning against the counter and drinking from a bottle of Molsons. When she realized it was us, she put the bottle down in front of her loverboy.

What a waste of a mad run naked through the rain and a baptism in the cold salty Strait. I was all outrage and business again, bent on keeping the peace and covering my ass.

“You,” I spit at Stacey, “stand over here.”

She looked like she’d love to make an issue of it, but it was my cottage, after all, and she was there univited. She obediently moved away from Houser.

“You didn’t have to chain him like an animal,” she said, needing not to let it go on my terms entirely.

Gwen had tossed her cigarette and now was behind Odd, who was behind me. “I can explain it,” she said. Odd made her sit on the wicker. I made Stacey sit on the bed. We stood between them. Houser watched from his tether.

“You’re soaking wet,” said Gwen.

“Yeah, I know that.”

“You should get out of your clothes and dry off before you catch a cold. We’re in no rush.”

“Oh, you’re not in a rush. Thank you.”

“Maybe you’d better,” said Odd.

“Off,” I said to Stacey, and when she stood up I tore off the bedspread and went into the bathroom.

I pulled off the wet t-shirt and the muddy jeans and toweled myself off. I wrapped myself in the bedspread and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. How do I explain all this to Connors, and do I leave out the kiss with a man thirty-one, two, three? A
naked
kiss, me anyhow. If I tell him it meant nothing, an unavoidable accident, will I free him up to make a similiar confession to me, using the same alibi? All it was was a kiss, though if Houser were an authority, and he might be, a kiss is the “glory of the universe.” It
was
nice.

I longed for twenty-four hours ago, when all I feared was losing my essence, and that had already happened.

“You aren’t gonna believe this,” said Odd, when I emerged from the bathroom.

“They got a litle laundromat here,” said Gwen, jumping in nervously, “next to the boiler room. I could laundry your clothes for you. Between me and Stacey, we ought to have enough for you to put together a dry outfit. Our bags are over there, just help yourself.”

“What are your bags doing in our cottage?” I asked, knowing that was part of what I wouldn’t believe, according to Odd, who was smiling at me and the situation.

“They were on their way to the ferry,” he said, “homeward bound. But…”

“But what?”

“Their car broke down.”

“First time that ever happened,” said Gwen. “Honda makes a dependable product, but that one does have a hundred ‘n sixty thousand miles on it, and…I got it real cheap. There’s this old boyfriend…”

“You don’t have to tell them everything, mom,” said Stacey.

“Guess who gave them a tow?” said Odd. “Guess who’s fixing their car?” said Odd.

“Karl Gutshall,” said I, and he laughed. I didn’t see what was so damn funny.

“
Trying
to fix it,” said Gwen. “I gotta call tomorrow and get the damage.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Beginning to see why they’re here?” asked Odd.

“No, no…”

“This is the only place got rooms,” said Gwen, “and they don’t got any rooms, not that it matters much anyway, since my Visa is maxed out. Anyway, that nice old couple told us you had this place and we should talk to you.”

“Why in the world would you feel we’re obliged to take you in?” I asked Gwen.

“I was kind of hopin’ Spokaneans would stick together,” she said.

“We don’t even like Spokane…or Spokaneans.”

Odd laughed. I went to the reefer, pushed Houser aside and got a Molsons. I popped the top and took some down.

“That can’t be true,” said Gwen. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be cops there, takin’ an oath and everything.”

“By this time tomorrow we probably won’t be cops.”

“Oh, sure you will, ‘cause we’re all gonna cooperate. Now, listen, I’m a good cook,” argued Gwen. “I could make us a nice dinner here. And don’t think that I would want to take your bed away from you, you two can have that…”

“We’re
partners
,” I said, “we don’t sleep together, doesn’t anybody understand that?”

“Well, whatever…. I only meant, we can work something out, it’s just for the one night.”

“This man is our prisoner,” I tried to explain. “He will be charged with statutory rape, and that one,” nodding toward Stacey, “is his victim…”

“I’m
not
a victim!” she hissed. “How can you charge him with anything if there’s no victim? You think I’ll testify? As
if
!”

“…and whatever his sentence turns out to be,” I continued, ignoring her for the moment, because it would be impossible to ignore her for much longer, “it will include the order to never again come in contact with her.”

“Try and stop us,” said Stacey.

“And you expect me, as an officer of the law, to allow a rapist and his victim to share the same room for an overnighter? I don’t think so.”

“I’m not a rapist,” whispered Houser, ashamed.

Stacey was too outraged to spit, that I should label their love with such crass and negative name-calling. I got all that from her eyes, and in spite of myself I envied the passion I saw in them.

“I don’t think anyone would fault us, Quinn, considering the circumstances. We can let Houser sleep on the kitchen floor, cuffed. Gwen and Stacey can have the bed, you can sleep on the sofa, and I’ll sit on the rocker with my weapon in hand. Anyone tries anything, I’ll shoot them.”

“You’re just dying to shoot someone, aren’t you?” said Houser.

Odd smiled.

“Are you enjoying this?” I asked.

“Compared to everything else,” he said, “it’s a relief.”

14.

Odd drove to the little island grocery store and persuaded them to stay open a few minutes longer so that he could buy the things on Gwen’s shopping list. They stayed open even longer, long enough to tell him what they remembered, that Jeannie was a rare beauty, jewel of the island. Everybody had a crush on her, but there was one particular boy, only twelve, who followed her around like a puppy. Who? They couldn’t remember. They remembered only that for a time he was her shadow.

Gwen, true to her word, gathered up my clothes and some of their own and took them to the laundromat. I was left with Houser and Stacey and my second bottle of Molsons. I moved Houser from the reefer to the rocker and cuffed him to the arm of it. He was no great risk and I was thinking seriously of bagging the cuffs, but the presence of Stacey made me uneasy. Individually, they were harmless. Together, I didn’t want to know.

I made her stay on the bed and the inactivity was driving her nuts.

“No TV in this dump, no magazines even. Charlie, don’t this suck?”

“Don’t talk to him,” I ordered.

“I can’t talk to him?”

“What did I just say?”

“Well, then, can I talk to you?”

“Only if you have something big to say?”

“How do I know if it’s big?”

“If you don’t know, don’t say it?”

She was in bare feet. She yanked at a ragged toenail, then said, “Your boyfriend’s a real babe.”

“He’s not my boyfriend, and that wasn’t a big thing to say.”

“You have to tell Charlie not to get jealous, ‘cause he gets jealous when I say somebody else is a babe, even though I might be teasing. Your guy really is, though. What’s his name?”

“None of your business.

“Jeez, don’t you ever chill out?”

“No.”

“I’d just as soon hitchhike home as be stuck here with you, lady.”

“I’d just as soon you did that too.”

“Girls, girls…,” said Houser. “Can’t we all just get along?”

She was a spirited girl, I’ll give her that, and I wondered what she saw in Houser. My mother always used to say, there’s a lid for every pot. Even she would have to admit some matches are better left unmade. I had to remind myself this was neither a match nor a mismatch, it was a felony.