“Same MO?” you ask.
I wince away from that. “Take a look. I don’t want to poison the well.”
You press past me and enter. I follow. Our flesh touches in the corridor of wood-grain laminates and aluminum flashing. I step back. A snarl of power cords fills the hallway. You tread lightly. I watch you move. Your boots fit carefully in the clear spaces, your canvas pant legs gathering around your ankles. Your hands are held, curved and idle, near your face, like the hands of a surgeon who has washed but not yet gloved. Your hair is braided back. It sways between the shoulders of your jacket.
The smell of soiled trousers comes to you. You stop. You’ve seen it now. I move up behind you. The initial sight is familiar and disturbing enough. The body sits in the dining room, on a red vinyl bench seat removed from some junked truck. Its feet are flat on the floor, its wrist stumps rest on its lap, and its neck stump juts up beneath a wide, red-rimmed hole in the wall and ceiling of the trailer. The cold night air pours through the hole, bringing with it the rustle of brown leaves. All around the headless, handless torso, investigators and technicians swarm.
“A shotgun blast?” you say immediately. “He was decapitated by a shotgun blast?” You speak loudly enough that those working in the room turn toward you. I flush. I am glad you aren’t turning around. “I – you said there had been a gun used on the priest.”
“A pistol. You’ve been following this closely enough to know that,” you respond.
“Well,” I reply, scrambling, “I didn’t know whether he might have changed his weapon of choice.”
You are angry. I see that. “Where is ‘Samael 5:2:356’?
Anywhere?”
Why are you so angry? “The teams haven’t found anything yet, but I didn’t want to wait until-”
“And why do I smell marijuana so strongly in here?
I’ll bet there was a closet full of the stuff before the perp came in.”
“We did find some leaf fragments under a bed.”
“This is a drug hit, staged to look like our guy, and you know it. The head is a critical trophy for this killer. He wouldn’t blast it away. He wouldn’t change his MO now, after some fifty hits.” You turn, not looking at me, and try to push past, but the passage is too narrow.
I retreat before you. My feet are sloppy among the cables.
“Mother of God.” You push me back with one small hand. “I can’t believe you got me out of bed for this.”
I whisper back. “I wanted to see you. I thought you wouldn’t come down except on business.” I’ve backed into the living room now.
“Wouldn’t come down?” you ask, exasperated. You pass me and turn for the open door. “Why didn’t you come up to see me?”
I follow, out into the cold night. “I should have. Yes. But, well, I hadn’t made any progress and didn’t want to go up there without some new evidence, and then this came up and I thought-”
We are halfway to the police line when you whirl on me and halt. I run into you, and we both stagger a step back. Your voice drops to a whisper so that none of the neighbors can hear. “Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“What calls? You mean you -?”
“How many messages did I leave for you at the station house? Four? I left four messages on your voice mail, ‘This is Donna. If you want to talk, call back.’ Did you call? Maybe some other Donna…”
So that’s part of the problem. I’d not checked in at the station house. I’d let them think I was in Indianapolis for a conference. “I’m sorry. That was a foul-up. I swear, I never got your messages.” I look at the crowd, which has quieted to watch us. “Could we go get a cup of coffee?”
“I’m going home,” you say.
I watch your eyes, dark brown and resentful. “I’ll follow you.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Wisconsin still has snow on the ground. I see it out the window as I peel back your blouse. The snow is white beneath the waxing quarter moon, just now rising above the dead trees. The ground is smooth-hipped and silent beyond the glass and the curtain of heat that surrounds us. You direct me to lie down on your bed. It is still unmade from the morning. I let your hands lead me and, soon, as smooth and pure as the snow, you settle atop me.
I tremble.
Always the union between angel and human gives birth to something monstrous.
EIGHT
Donna rose in the preconscious moment before the crash. Through her bedroom window, she saw the crazy sweep of headlights in driving snow, heard the violent whisper of tires sliding on ice. The pickup was only a spreading stain of blackness on the gray night. It rushed down the hill, vaulted from the street, and soared into her yard. It filled the whole window.
Whispers went to metallic shouts. The bumper wrapped itself around a tree. Headlights crossed inward. The hood arched up in an angry grin. A white oval winked on the windshield and then exploded as the driver, macerated, launched outward. He seemed the spectral figurehead of a ghost ship heaving up out of the snow. His leg snagged on something. Half-emerged, he slumped across the hood.
Sudden fire turned the blue landscape red. That was the first moment, as Donna came fully awake. In the second moment, she realized she was naked. In the third, she saw that Azra was gone.
And then the tree was falling. Sparks plumed as power lines snapped. The ancient elm crackled and pivoted once, magnificently, and then surged down toward her, naked in the window.
She could not move. It was as though this was her preordained moment to die. It was as though she were merely acting now, the scene staged by someone else. Breath and voice and all failed her. Not even the sign of the cross came to her clutched fist. He was there. Azra. He stood between the window and the falling tree. And the tree was not falling. He held it up. In the flare of fire and spark on snow, he was there, for one undeniable moment, naked and holding back the descending fist of death. Or was he? Transfigured in pasting flakes and jags of flame he seemed both Christ crucified and Adam wincing back from the fiery blade of banishment. Then the moment was gone. The tree crashed to one side of the house. Nearby, power lines danced in Medusa snakes upon the torn blanket of snow.
Azra stood there, small and naked, framed in the surreal snow, in electricity and fire. Now she could move. Grabbing up a pair of robes, Donna ran for the front door. “I’m coming!” she heard herself shout stupidly. “I’m coming!”
The deadbolt stuck, frozen because of the blizzard. How did Azra get out? She kicked the door with her bare foot, receiving only a throbbing bruise for her efforts. Growling in frustration, Donna turned to the bay window where the love seat was. She clambered over the stack of books by the love seat and flung up the sash. The storm window grated upward, and cold and wind and snow sluiced into her living room. She scrambled out that streaming space. With the robes still clutched in her hand, she rolled over paving stones and two inches of new snow.
Beyond, sparking wires danced, fitful and violent. The truck had turned into a flaming geyser. Its burst radiator spewed steam into the night. A regular apocalypse – Ragnarok, night of fire and ice. Azra was there. His young face flashed and disappeared in the orange glare of the engine fire. He stood just beside the place where the dead man burned. Fitful flames now and again belched out over him. He was insensible to them. He was a small boy before an open furnace.
“Mother of God, get back!” Donna shouted, catching his arm and pulling him away from the wreck. “He’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”
Azra’s voice was husky. “I know.”
She drew a white robe around his shoulders, cinching it at his waist, before she took the time to put her own on. “Come inside. It’s a blizzard-”
“I’m not cold.”
She glanced at the blazing truck. “Doesn’t matter. Come inside. There’s a thousand ways to die out here.”