Skies of Ash (25 page)

Once Pepe returned, I measured the room’s dimensions, then asked him to take pictures of the exterior, interior, and the stack of boxes.

“What are we looking for again?” Luke asked.

I flexed my gloved right hand. “The official answer? We seek to obtain any financial records detailing malfeasance that may have led to the deaths of Juliet, Cody, and Chloe Chatman.”

“So who gets what?” Pepe asked.

“I’ll take… that one.” I pointed to the box closest to us. Fingerprints had been left in the dust on the box top.

Pepe snapped pictures of those fingerprints.

I removed the box top.

Paper, paper everywhere. Prospectus prepared for… Prospectus prepared for… About thirty of them, and all prepared for clients of Vandervelde, Lansing & Gray.

“I got me some CDs and jump drives.” Luke said, combing through another box.

“We want those.” I scanned the last of the business statements. “Luke, put this box and the one you have in my trunk, please?”

“We shoulda brought some music,” Luke said as he waddled over to retrieve the box. “And some chips and dip.”

“Next time.” I slipped the top off the next box—it looked like my mother’s drawer of Important Stuff.

More paper. More folders. Matchbooks. Receipts.

I plucked out the first document: AT&T statement from October. “Found a phone bill.”

Pepe looked over my shoulder. “This is the number for his secret cell phone. What else is in there?”

More phone bills… CD marked
FLAG DAY
2011… CD marked
ALL SAINTS DAY
2012…
ST. PATRICK
’
S DAY
2010… Lots of deposit slips, wire-transfer slips… Two passbooks…

“I want all of this.” I found a deposit slip. “L.O.K.I. Consulting—”

Pop-pop!
High-pitched gunshots cracked through the stillness.

We froze.

“Sounds close,” Luke said. “Like, real close.”

“That a .22?” I pulled my Glock from its shoulder holster.

“Yep,” Pepe said, pulling out his Sig.

We inched to the unit’s door and peeked out to see my Crown Vic and Pepe’s Impala, both untouched.

Pepe and I darted out to the driveway and ran out into the night.

Luke, steps behind us, keyed his Motorola. “Shots fired,” he said, then provided Dispatch with our location.

The reflection of green lights from the traffic signals, then yellow lights, then red lights glistened on the wet blacktop—the only illumination on this moonless night. The oniony, charred-meat aroma of
carnitas
wafted from the Del Taco across the street.

Pepe pointed to the ground. “Look.”

My eyes dropped to the sidewalk and to crimson drops of blood leading to the ivy forest beneath the 405 freeway overpass.

Guns out, radios crackling from our hips, we followed the blood trail south. There were no lights beneath the freeway. Nothing but ivy and darkness and noise from speeding cars and the reek of piss from thousands of God’s creatures sprayed into the dirt. Mangled wires… Torn newspaper… Ripped pillows the color of feces… Blankets lighter than air… Flies, lots of flies…

“Homeless camp,” Luke said.

“Yep.” Nausea worked its way from my stomach to the back of my throat. But my breathing remained steady. Guess my lungs didn’t know I wanted to vomit.

An Olde English malt-liquor bottle rolled from a patch of ivy and onto the dirt path ten yards in front of us.

We stopped and raised our guns.

“Police,” I shouted, barely audible over the commotion of the 405. “You hurt?”

No response.

I glanced at Pepe.

His eyes were trained on the ivy.

The leaves rustled.

I took a deep breath, then shouted, “Police. Are you hurt?”

The creature writhed beneath the filthy blankets.

Pepe stepped forward and deeper into the cloud of flies.

Luke took Pepe’s place.

I stayed in my spot, legs steady and spread apart, gun trained on the blanket.

Seconds slammed into each other.

Pepe crept closer, then looked at me over his shoulder. He mouthed, “On three…”

One… two…

Pepe bent and grabbed the edge of the blanket.

Three!

He yanked.

The pit bull snarled.

Pepe reeled back and fell on his ass.

Luke shouted, “Shit!”

The dishwater-colored pit bull didn’t lunge. No, it stayed in its spot. Blood gushed from its left flank. The dog bared its teeth, but didn’t mean it.

“Someone shot a dog,” I screeched, relief erupting from me.

Pepe, sweating and wild-eyed, stumbled to his feet.

The poor animal’s head dropped back into the ivy.

“Just a graze,” Luke said. “Poor baby.”

“That son of a bitch was about to eat me,” Pepe shouted.

“Oh, stop wettin’ your panties, Peter.” I dropped my arms but didn’t holster my gun—a pit bull is still a pit bull. I radioed in for Animal Control to ferry the dog to a vet for stitches and kibble. “What kind of asshole shoots a dog?” I made a sad face at the pup. “You’ll be okay, Bullet.”

Luke smiled. “Bullet. I like that. I’ll stay with her. She kinda reminds me of Lupita.” He inched closer to the dog with his hand out for sniffing. “
Duérmete mi niño
,” he sang softly. “
Duérmete mi amor
.”

As Luke lullabied Bullet, Pepe and I trudged back to the storage unit, sweaty but enervated. As detectives, our hearts no longer pounded from the chase but pounded from all that had been left behind
after
the chase. Not tonight, though, and it felt good.

Pepe stepped back into the unit, and muttered, “Shit.”

I stood beside him and saw it, too. And my knees weakened as though someone had punched me in the gut.

The space closest to the unit’s door was empty. Problem was: that space had been occupied by two file-storage boxes filled with deposit slips and phone bills.

And now those boxes were gone.

THE GRAINY BLACK-AND-WHITE FOOTAGE FROM THE SURVEILLANCE CAMERA
showed Pepe and me, guns drawn, tiptoeing out of Christopher Chatman’s storage unit. Luke waited ten seconds, then followed us off camera, radio to his mouth.

Twenty seconds later, two individuals wearing dark hoodies crept on camera from the north to the storage unit. Suspect 1 stood at the doorway as lookout while suspect 2 entered the unit. The hoods kept their faces hidden in shadow—they knew that they were being recorded. Ten seconds later, suspect 2 returned to the door holding two stacked document boxes. Suspect 1 took the top box. They both looked south, to where we had been following the trail of blood. Then, they ran north and out of camera range.

Pepe and I had returned at the six-minute mark, smiles on our faces, minds already knitting together the story we’d tell at the station the next day. Pepe had entered the unit. My face was hidden but my shoulders had hunched to my ears.

Luke, Pepe, and I now stood in Sudanek’s musty little office, our faces sweaty, our mouths agape as we watched the surveillance recording on the fifteen-inch television monitor.

Luke popped an antacid tablet and muttered, “
Carajo
.”

Sudanek shrugged. “Happen all times. People watch. People, they steal. What do you do?” He shrugged again and burped into the back of his hand. “They call you. They steal from
you.
What do
you
do?”

We couldn’t answer—embarrassment had squeezed out all irate thoughts.

Luke waddled to the Impala to complete a stolen-property form. Pepe and I plodded north, in the direction the thieves had taken. My feet burned in the high-heeled boots, and my legs stayed rigid—I didn’t deserve to walk with a spring in my step.

We passed Del Taco and approached an alleyway near the Dollar Store.

“What the hell happened?” Pepe wondered.

“They shot the dog, knew that we would hear the shots, knew that we would leave to investigate the shots, waited until we left, and grabbed what they could.”

“Looking for what?”

“Pawnable things? I don’t know.”

“Chatman knew you were coming here?”

“Uh-huh.”

Pepe paused, then asked, “Is it possible…?”

“Certainly.”

“So?”

I halted in my step. “What’s that?”

Up ahead and deeper into the alley, two document boxes sat near a garbage bin.

Pepe sprinted toward the Dumpster as though the boxes would disappear at any moment.

Aching feet be damned, I raced behind him with the same horrid expectation. By the time I reached his side, Pepe had already taken off the box tops. I watched him shuffle through the boxes, shifting from foot to foot, pressure building in my bladder as though I had to pee.

Receipts… random pieces of paper…
No CDs. No deposit slips.

“Not pawnable?” Pepe asked.

“Guess not.”

“CDs and deposit slips, though—”

“Aren’t pawnable, either.”

“So?”

I closed my eyes and groaned.

Pepe rubbed his mouth. “As my Korean grandma says,
Jen-jang
.”

I shivered. “Does your grandma have a saying for ‘our ass is grass’?”

“Yeah, but it loses a lot in translation.” He stared at the boxes, then said, “If she saw me now, she’d call me a
byung-shin
.”

“Dumb ass?”

He nodded. “Will you tell L.T. or…?”

I squeezed the Motorola so hard that it cracked. “I’ll tell him, since it’s my investigation. And then I’ll have to tell Chatman. That is, if he doesn’t already know.”

ON THE WAY HOME, I STOPPED AT TARGET FOR A BOTTLE OF SANGRIA AND A BIG BAG
of Doritos. On impulse, I also threw into the shopping cart three Christmas candles and an Anita Baker Christmas CD.

Ho, ho, ho. Fa, la, la.

Syeeda called again as I pushed my basket through Pain Relief. “Sorry for rushing you off the phone earlier,” I told her. “And right now, I don’t feel much for talking.”

“Bad day at the office, kitten?” she cooed.

“I just pulled the economy-sized tub of ibuprofen off the shelf and dropped it in a cart filled with wine and Doritos, so you know how my day has gone.”

“Damn,” she said. “That’s pretty bad. Lena told me that you guys made up? And that you’re planning Tori’s memorial?”

“Yep. Can you write a nice obit?”

“Anything for you. And something else for you: Christopher Chatman.”

I pushed my cart toward checkout. “What about him?”

“I’m sure you’re gonna look into his work history, but I called his firm today and told the receptionist that I was writing a story about the house fire. She said he didn’t work there.”

“Same thing happened to me,” I said, grabbing a tabloid from the magazine rack.

“I pressed her a bit, and she said that he’s on leave. It’s all very hush-hush and weird.”

“Could be something, could—”

“Be nothing. Right. You always say that.”

I smiled. “Cuz it always works.”

* * *

As I pulled into my garage, Colin left his third voice-mail message. I would not listen to it—this message would sound no different than the previous two.
You take shit the wrong way. Am I supposed to keep quiet cuz I’m new here? When will I be here long enough to have an opinion? I’m sorry if you’re offended
blahblahblah.

Not that I wanted to talk to him—I had already confessed to Lieutenant Rodriguez that possibly important documents had been stolen and their boxes abandoned in an alleyway. My boss had then inflicted upon me a tongue-lashing that would make DMX and Pepe’s grandmother blush. But he didn’t take me off the case. Yet. Or worse: ask for my badge and gun. Yet. So, yeah, I didn’t feel like hearing a Tic-Tac-crunchin’, cowboy-boot-wearin’, spoiled-brat bastard tell me that it had been stupid for all three of us to leave an unlocked storage unit.

Byung-shin.

Aiden, my next-door neighbor, was now exercising in his garage—Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” blasted from his stereo as his leg press went
clankbang.

The condo was cold and dark, and after the crap day I’d had, I vowed to change that. I sat one candle in the middle of the dining room table, then lit it with a fireplace match. I arranged the two remaining candles on the living room mantel, then lit those. The walls flickered with gold and grays, and the smell of synthetic gingerbread wafted as the wax melted. In the garage, I found the purple plastic storage bin full of ornaments. I carried the bin back into the house and dropped it next to the tree. I slipped the CD into the stereo—Anita’s smooth alto launched into “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Part of me wanted to join Aiden for an hour’s worth of exercise. But I had a Christmas tree to decorate. After that, I had to snuggle with Greg on the couch and watch Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters in
The Poseidon Adventure
while eating the last pieces of cold fried chicken in the fridge I had bought back on Monday. And also chug from the new bottle of sangria.

Ho, ho, ho. Fa, la, la.

The landline rang from the coffee table. Caller ID announced that Greg was calling.

I grabbed the phone and fell back on the couch. “I’m dead from the brain down, so don’t ask me any difficult questions.”

“Why do kamikaze pilots wear helmets?” Greg asked in his wonderfully husky voice.

“Because their mothers make them. What’s up, and why aren’t you home?”

“About to do a sync up with Creative cuz stupid shit is starting to happen and I’m stuck in my own bog and so I need to check in.”

“Sounds like a day full of suck.”

“But nothing’s worse than dead people. That was your day, right?”

I told him all that had happened since we’d last seen each other, including Christopher Chatman’s property being stolen and my argument with Colin.

“He’s an asshole,” Greg growled. “He’s nothing like Bruno.”

Correct: Bruno Abbiati, my partner before Colin, and now retired, was 260 pounds, saggy-jowled, and twenty years my senior.

“Colin’s okay,” I said, suddenly protective of my new partner. “He just has to get with the program and shut his mouth.”