To be on the safe side, I back the cars out of the garage and move the essentials – our rarely used bicycles, the generator, the fuel and water, my tools – onto the back deck. With the weight of that oak still resting on the roof, there’s no point in taking chances. Back inside, I throw some sheets on one of the couches, but Tommy’s too wired for sleep. He darts through the house, front windows to back, like he’s rooting for more damage and doesn’t want to miss anything.
Giving up on sleep, I rummage through the fridge, which already feels lukewarm. We’ll need to get the generator started pretty soon. But for now I grab a bottle of still-cool water and imagine the phone call I’ll have to make later today.
The bad news, Charlotte, is that your garage has a new skylight. The good news is, your tenant’s going to need a new place to live.
In her mind, it’ll seem like a fair trade.
Just after daybreak, the empty water bottle still resting on my chest, I hear Tommy above me and open my eyes. I installed myself in a chair, not meaning to nod off. He hunches over, speaking in a whisper.
“Hey, Mr. March. The cops are outside.”
“The cops?”
“There’s one coming up to the door, and another one in the car.”
He’s talking like we might be in trouble with the law, like maybe it’s time to bolt out the back. I pry myself out of the chair, the bottle dropping to the floor. I peer through the front window, then open the door. Sergeant Nix is shaking off his rain poncho on the porch. He looks up, smiling awkwardly.
“How ’bout you get yourself dressed and take a little ride with me?” he says.
“What’s the deal?”
He glances back to the patrol cruiser on the curb. “I’m bending the rules as it is, but I figure I owe you after the other day.” His eyes drop to the bandage half-exposed by my shorts.
“Yes, you do,” I say, patting his arm. “Give me five minutes.”
My mind racing with possibilities, I head up the stairs, ignoring Tommy’s whispered questions. I pull on a pair of cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a lightweight raincoat to keep my gear dry, then I’m out the front door, trailing Nix, who opens the back of the cruiser for me, ushering me in with an ironic bow.
“This is Webb.” He motions to the uniform behind the wheel.
Webb takes us down Durham, across Interstate 10 and the Allen Parkway, until it becomes Shepherd. Though the storm has passed, the wind gusts remain strong enough to lift the wiper blades off the glass. Condensation spider-webs the edge of the windows. We turn on West Gray, passing between the two Starbucks locations that sit like Scylla and Charybdis on either side of the street. Onto Montrose, heading back to the neighborhood where I left Carter Robb, near Joe Thomson’s Morgan Street studio.
Nix gives verbal directions at every intersection, but Webb anticipates most commands, leading me to suspect that we’re returning to someplace they’ve just come from.
We drive the rain-slick streets, avoiding side turns where water’s risen higher than the road, and the power lines snapped free and coiled through severed branches. As the sun rises, we see a few people emerging from shelter for their first look at what the hurricane has done.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask.
Nix shakes his head. “I’m gonna show you.”
Ahead, a side road is blocked off by a parked hpd cruiser. Nix tells Webb to turn and then to pull to the curb. Soon he’s out the door, advancing toward some debris strewn across the road, motioning for me to follow. A derelict building off to the right has come apart under the pressure of wind, giving up the scraps of plywood that have long sealed its windows and doors. Out of them poured the structure’s long-abandoned contents, mainly soaked boxes and broken-down furniture, a refrigerator door, a lidless cooler with rusty stains inside.
I know these blocks pretty well, and no doubt I’ve passed this building a thousand times before, never taking any particular notice. On the opposite corner, a sleek modern three-level house is going up, or was until the storm knocked a padlocked trailer sideways against the cantilevered porch.
A long spool of plastic sheeting has unwound, too, running across the derelict’s yard and into the street. It snaps like a sail in the wind. As I approach, the plastic glistens, streaked with mud and leaves. Lumps of debris are caught up inside. It makes me think of a distended intestine. The tail end, right across the middle of the road, swells like the body of a python after it’s swallowed something whole.
Nix hunches over the unspooled plastic, lifting corners as he edges along its length toward the swollen end.
He grins. “Nothing like a decomp first thing in the morning.”
The plastic is opaque, the kind of sheeting used on construction sites to seal openings. I kneel beside the swell in the plastic, which is in fact a swaddled corpse. Discolored clothing, an emaciated and withered shape, a brownish husk of a human being, gender indeterminate, age indeterminate. Small enough that it must be a woman, though, or maybe a child.
My eyes trace the long spool of plastic back to its source, the derelict building, yet another square two-story structure in brown brick, a former business or maybe a duplex but now just a rotted shell waiting to be rehabbed or more likely demolished. Ten blocks or so east of Montrose, ten blocks or so north of Westheimer, tucked into a neighborhood without sidewalks where time-blackened bungalows sit cheek by jowl with the kind of glass and steel architecture projects going up across the street. The yard is overgrown, the windows boarded up, the doors inaccessible, a place so forgotten its plywood coverings aren’t even tagged by spray paint.
“Why am I here? You could’ve just called this in.”
“Yeah,” Nix says. “But come take a look inside.”
We follow the unwound plastic back to its source, the sheet overlapping in vine-like rings. The body must have been tightly wrapped. The wind, knocking through, snatched the bundle up and unraveled it, bringing some long-hidden secret out into the light. Although, in this heat, it wouldn’t have to be hidden long to reach such a state.
Glancing through the doorway, I see the interior walls are gone, leaving a vast dark cavity with a feral reek. A stack of wooden pallets is scattered across the floor, more plastic caught up in the slats.
“The body must have been against the far wall,” Nix says, “with the pallets stacked in front. Then the wind came through and vomited everything out.”
Underneath the pallets I spot something pink and shiny that doesn’t belong, a surface too pristine and fresh. Nix stands still, letting me advance alone. Whatever it is, he’s already seen it. A faux leather purse almost untouched by the surrounding filth, its surface glinting dully, zippered shut and waiting.
“Everything’s just how we found it. Only I did check inside.”
I slip on a pair of gloves, then pull the zipper open. A slim wallet nestles up top. I lift it gingerly and place it on the floor, using the edge of my finger to pop the strap. The wallet falls open. Behind the plastic id window, there’s a Texas driver’s license.
“No way.”
Back at the entrance, Nix smiles grimly. “Murder will out, right? But I’ve never seen it happen like this before. I thought you’d want to get in on it, all things considered.”
I stand up slowly, blinking at the light outside.
“You better put everything back how you found it,” he says.
I obey, operating on muscle memory, my thoughts elsewhere. Numb with disbelief. No feeling of accomplishment, certainly no closure. The usual exhilaration a big break induces, utterly absent. Tommy’s maniacal grin flashes in my mind. The tree on top of my garage, the translucent winding sheet out on the road. The wound in my thigh starts to throb.