Falling Down Page 8

  “You didn’t know about the girl,” I said. Trying to calm myself in the old way I’d calmed for years. Deep breath, one Mississippi, breath, two Mississippi.

  “What girl?”

  “I just met Mary Emich.”

  “Her daughter? Is that who you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, Bob. Her daughter, my daughter, my granddaughter. You played me, Bob, you fucking played me.”

  “Laura, whoa, what, oh, no,” he said. “I did not play you.”

  “Yah, sure. The dead girl at the crime scene. You knew about her when you came to see me yesterday.”

  “Laura. I talked to you yesterday. I first heard about the crime scene not more than twenty minutes before I called you today. Besides. The dead child was a boy. Not a girl.”

  “You played me, Bob. You’ve known these bastards killed children. You played on that, you knew I’d have a hard time saying no once I knew this maras business involved dead children.”

  “No. I did not.” I waited, he’d something more to say. “Kligerman,” he said. “He thought, he calculated you’d have more interest. Knowing about the children. I told you, he’s an accountant.”

  “And you want me to meet him later.”

  “If you can. Yes.”

  “For drinks.”

  “Just to introduce you.”

  “To introduce me.”

  “He’s not all bad, Laura. He’s divorced, got a young girl of his own, you know, he thinks about children’s safety.”

  “Children’s safety. There’s an inside hook there, Bob. He’s using you in order to use me. And what’s the story with this detective, this Christopher Kyle?”

  “The story?”

  “He told me, he said there were rumors, whistling down the lane, that I might be working for TPD.”

  “Laura. He’s guessing.”

  “How would he even know what to guess about? How many people know about me, Bob?”

  “Five. Me. Kligerman, and three of his most trusted staff.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “The chief of police originated the idea.”

  “And Kyle? Is he a suspect?”

  “Christopher Kyle? God, no. He’s a legend in Homicide. Old school. Excellent at a crime scene, a disaster with new information technologies. Somebody tried to get him to work a computer, he finally pointed the mouse at the screen and clicked.”

  “I like him,” I said. “If I decided to do this work for TPD, and I have not decided that at all, but if it happened, could Kyle be assigned to the team?”

  “Not my decision. But I’ll ask Kligerman.”

  “Are you on a secure line?” I said.

  “Ummm. What does that mean?”

  “Find a pay phone and call me back.”

  “A pay phone,” he said. “Geez, do they still exist?”

  “Just do it.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Because I can dump this cell number in a minute, but you’re…you’re not secure, where you’re calling from.”

  He hung up abruptly. My cell rang in seven minutes.

  “What does that mean?” Gates said. “That you can dump your cell number?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I need to ask you a basic question.”

  “About working for TPD?”

  “Yes.”

  “So ask.”

  “I’m assuming this whole business with Kligerman is a smoke screen.”

  Gates laughed into the mouthpiece, a real belly laugh. “I told him you weren’t dumb.”

  “But the real thing is to find some digital trace of this bad cop. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So give me a direction,” I said. “Steer me so I don’t waste all kinds of computer time for myself and my staff, looking at records of everybody who works for the Tucson PD.”

  “Detectives,” he said finally.

  “Have you got a name?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “How about…I looked at the org chart for TPD. There are four basic substations. East, South, West, Midtown.”

  “Could be somebody in any of those substations.”

  “Bob,” I said. “Narrow the search for me. Please.”

  “Violent Crimes.”

  “That’s definite?”

  “That’s a guess. Nothing more. Not even a guess. A hunch.”

  “You’re playing me, Bob.”

  “No. I won’t let my gut instinct steer you. Not yet.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet Kligerman. I’ll play along with him, about whatever I assume he thinks is the real reason for TPD wanting my help. Thanks.”

  I flipped my cell shut, cutting off the call. I started to power the cell down, but it rang.

  “I’m in Tuba City,” Nathan said. “I’ll just wait for you here.”

  “Tuba City,” I said. Shit, shit shit. “Umm, well, I’m just about ready to leave.”

  “It’s almost noon, Laura.”

  “Yes. Noon.”

  “It’ll take you at least four hours to get here.”

  “Tuba City,” I said brightly. “I’ll show you where I used to live.”

  “Well…I can’t wait here that long.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay, where do I go?”

  “To meet me?”

  “Yes. Where on the rez?”

  “You haven’t left yet,” he said finally.

  “Just another half hour, maybe an hour.”

  “The ceremony is at sundown.”

  “What ceremony?”

  “The boy,” Nathan said. His voice drifted in and out, I’d moved around and without knowing was between two different cell towers, the signal weakening. “The born-to and born-for clans are already assembling up near Monument Valley. There’ll be many, many people there.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  “No,” he said. The slow, almost toneless cadence of sadness. “No, you won’t be here.”

  “I might be late, but I will be there.”

  “No.” A very very long pause. “Goodbye, Laura.”

  “Nathan! Wait, what are you telling me, wait, I’ll be there. I promise.”

  “If you’d meant to come,” he said, “you’d be here already.”

  “It’s just not that simple.”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “I’ll find you tonight, no matter how long it takes me to get there, I’ll leave in five minutes. Where will you be?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I’m sorry, Laura.”

  “I’ll find you.”

  “That’s just not really going to happen.”

  “No, wait, Nathan, what does this mean?”

  “I’m sorry, Laura.”

  “Sorry? Sorry about what?”

  Vibrations pulsing through the cell, just a technical thing where digital signals exactly match a resonance point on the cell phone chip, but the vibrations moving up my hand like symptoms of a heart attack.

  “I’m driving through a flock of sheep,” Nathan said. “They’re spilling across the road, probably thirty of them, nobody’s watching them, they’re just moving to find someplace to eat.”

  “Fuck the sheep!” I shouted. “Don’t do this to me.”

  “I belong up here,” Nathan said. “I’m part of Dinehtah. Someday, you’ll figure out where you belong.”

  “I belong with you!”

  “Goodbye, Laura.”

  He disconnected.

  Figure out where I belong? Figure out my identity?

  I’ve been working on this forever, I thought I’d finally resolved my life.

  Those of you who’ve known me over these years, those who’ve read my stories, you all know, my friends, you know I always talk about crossing borders. Drug addiction, yes, I crossed back and forth over that border.

  Safe now.

  Safe for good.

  Computers. I’ve broken into so many computers illegally, I no longer c
ould even estimate with any certainty how many computers or networks or websites. For several years, I used computers all over the world, against their will, against their owners’ lousy security, I’d used those computers as drones. Mostly to hide my digital self from anybody. I rarely left traces.

  Now any twelve-year-old boy with the will, the computer, and the impishness or malignancy, anybody could do what I’d done. At night, instead of playing with themselves, boys play with their computers. So I, personally, I no longer did that, I no longer crossed over the border between illegal and legal.

  Death.

  Now, there’s a border.

  You either are. Or you’re not.

  You can kill entire families, just because you can kill.

  You can even kill Ena, kill Bambi’s mother, with a hunter’s bullet. You can also walk up and kick Bambi in the face, but he will grow up. Until he dies. That’s the fate, the destiny of loving animals. They live just long enough to break your heart. Of course, people are animals, too.

  Love.

  I’d thought I’d crossed this border for good, once I’d met Nathan Brittles. And yet…and yet, here I am, he’s…gone?

  There’s one final border I want to cross.

  My name.

  Over the years, I’ve had many names. Many names. For the past few years, I have been Laura Winslow.

  That is not my real name.

  My Hopi name is Kauwanyauma. A Hopi word.

  Butterfly Revealing Wings of Beauty.

  This is the irony of that last border I want to cross. I am an expert in tracking people down, in exposing false identities, yes, in creating them as well. At some time in my past, probably in those years of drugs and sex when I lived in Yakima, I created a whole new identity for a woman named Laura…Laura…I don’t even remember what last name I used at first.

  Winslow is a small, decaying town in Arizona. I chose that name one day while looking at a map. I created my whole identified life from the name Laura Winslow. Social Security number. Driver’s license, credit cards, even a major-league business in computer forensics.

  You see the irony, my old friends? I can track down anybody. Eighty percent minimum. Guaranteed. I’d just been asked to create a new identity for Mary Emich and her girl. I could do that in thirty-six hours, bottom line.

  But sometimes, creating new identities works. I’m the proof.

  I don’t even know my real name.

  I was born on the Hopi reservation in a traditional village. I never knew my mother, never knew her name, never knew her life except for the singular fact that she was a prostitute working the southwest rodeo circuit. My father had a name. George Loma. But he left no written records behind that he ever existed. When I knew him, he didn’t even carry a wallet or any kind of identification holder. I can distinctly remember when I was twelve, by then I had spent a lot of time in bars in Flagstaff, so I knew about ID cards and driver’s licenses and social security cards. When I asked my father about these things, he pulled out an old cigar box filled with newspaper clippings of rodeo events that he’d entered and sometimes won. Here’s my identification, he said then. See my name? I circled my name every time.

  But in the dozens of newspaper clippings, the circled name varied from year to year, gradually stabilizing on George Loma. So I don’t even know if that was his birth name, nor did he ever reveal his secret Hopi name.

  I am nameless, as much as anybody can ever be.

  But with my ability to create truly authentic-looking identity papers, I am now named Laura Winslow.

  Do you see the irony of my life?

  One of the best private investigators in the business, absolutely dynamite at finding people who don’t want to be found. But I can’t even find my own past!

  9

  “I love this part of the park,” Mary said.

  She’d come back to get me, not really paying attention to me, intent on her own purpose and leading, toward that purpose, me along one of the park’s paths. I hardly looked at the signposts, scarcely could focus on where I was, on what I was doing.

  “Goddamn those sheep,” I said.

  “What?”

  Still within myself, everything outside my emotional shield.

  “Fuck those goddam sheep,” I said.

  “Laura,” Mary said. “What sheep?”

  “What?”

  “You’re cursing some sheep.”

  Looking around, lost just for that instant. Like when you’re in your car at a stoplight, foot on the brake, but the car next to you moves ahead and you react in panic that somehow you are moving.

  The entire heavens shift while you remain static, you’re aware that events and people and machines function totally outside your control or awareness.

  “I can’t stay here,” I said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Talk to me while I go to my car. That’s all the time I’ve got.”

  “But…Laura. You promised. You said at least you’d look. At the computer. You said you’d help me. Laura?”

  “Let’s do it really quick,” I said.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Let’s get it over with.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Walking ahead of me, always turning to slow for me trailing behind, lost in my own world, Mary herself very much a person used to walking these paths while dealing with the public, while accommodating other people.

  I can’t exactly say what I’d seen to like in Mary Emich.

  I can’t tell you why I felt close to her, but most of all, why I didn’t just leave her and drive away, drive up to the rez.

  I’m really confused, I thought. What do I do?

  My offer to help Mary. Something morbid or coincidental, a contrast between the murdered child, Mary’s not-quite-a-daughter, and my own girls, Spider and her baby?

  Two years, that’s how long I’ve loved Nathan.

  Two years.

  However does somebody say goodbye, after just two years?

  Is it my fault?

  These thoughts left me paralyzed, so I had to tamp them way down inside and resolve to come back to them later.

  “I love this grotto,” Mary said. “I really love the riparian area. Don’t you?”

  “I’ve got bad memories of this place.”

  But lost in her own thoughts and emotions, she ignored me.

  “This place, the grotto, it makes me write poetry, it makes me put things into words. In the shade of the sycamores, in the ramada, the plaza, with its deep blue Mexican tile work, oh, I try to write haikus about this. Except I have a hard time keeping myself to the three lines.”

  She stopped.

  “‘As a gentle breeze wafts the scent of chocolate flowers up into my brain and the splisssshsplassssh of the waterfall snarepats my eardrums, there, there, it’s okay, everything’s okay, sweetheart.’ I wrote that poem, it’s really a dreadful poem, but I wrote it for my daughter, for Ana Luisa. I got a few lines like a haiku. Around the rock wall, five syllables for the first line, but I kept wanting to write more first lines of five syllables. ‘The wild-flowers in spring. The pingponging penstamens,’ no, that’s seven. ‘The bowing bluebells, the shimmering salvia,’ well, seven again.”

  No idea where she was leading me. Not with her poetry. Not with our destination along the caliche pathway.

  “The night-blooming cereus of Ron’s garden, intertwined and climbing up the mesquite trees. You know, it’s hokey. I think of poetry when I look out Mary I’s window, that’s one of the women I work with. They call us Mary E and Mary I. I love watching the baby coyote pups cool off and splash in the fountain of the vacated children’s garden. And there’s this chunky, purple lizard, he’s called Vin. He hangs out near the stone-covered water fountain, he dares to cross my path every day. Maybe he’s telling me to slow down? Someone or something snatched off his tail the other day. He’s not bothered at all. Life goes on. Here we are. This is what used to be the Haunted Bookshop. Now it’s our edu
cation center, our discovery center.”

  She swung open a door, held the metal bar with her left hand. A gold wedding band, a diamond ring, and on her small finger, a Cladagh ring, the heart turned inward.

  I’m taken.

  “I didn’t know you were married,” I said.

  “Well, I am, well…I’m not, I’m…he’s dead.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “A year ago. Fourteen months. Iraq. Are you? Married?”

  She’d already scanned my left hand, looking for a ring. Not much got by her.

  “No. I have a daughter. And a granddaughter.”

  “You’re old enough to have a granddaughter?” she said. “I’m thirty-six, you don’t look much older than me.”

  “I was really young when I had the baby. Fifteen, I think.”

  “You were married before…?”

  “That was a long time ago,” I said. “And I don’t talk about my life.”

  The edge of my sorrow popped out, she smiled, I wondered again, does she cry? Her smile widened even further, she tilted her head slightly, and I felt her sweetness wash over me, so it wasn’t just a coincidence that I liked her.

  Sometimes, two people just hit it off. Bam. An emotional connection during the first ten minutes.

  “Uh…let me show you the computer.”

  “What kind of facial muscles make these dimples?” I said. Held up a finger, reached out to touch the vertical lines above her smiling mouth.

  “Actually, it’s the lack of muscles. You smile, but your whole face can’t smile with you. We’ve got to go upstairs.”

  Inside the building, she led me past photographs and exhibits, up a narrow flight of stairs, and past a closed office door.

  “Jo’s office,” she said. “Jo Falls. Director of public programs.”

  “Mary?”

  A man’s voice from an alcove overlooking the downstairs exhibits. Mary steered me around a corner into a work area, several computers placed at different stations along three sides of the alcove.

  “This is Ken,” she said. “Ken Charvoz, Laura Winslow.”

  Tall, slim, long curly black hair, somewhere along toward handsome but definitely eroded somehow by life, and certainly on the other side of forty. He gave Mary a slight hug as we shook hands.

  “Bob mentioned you,” I said. “Bob Gates.”