The lens-covered eyes settled on him. The corner of her mouth crept up, pulled by a string of nostalgia until it’d drawn her lips into half a smile.
From the phone Leo heard: “Dad?”
He said, “Honey, I have to go.” He hung up. Slowly he stood, matching his rise to her approach—so by the time she was in front of his desk, he was on his feet. He said, “Wanda?”
And she said, “Leo.” Wanda Moretti pushed the sunglasses up onto her head, then changed her mind and folded them into her purse. “Been a while, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah. You, uh … you look great.”
“Thanks. You don’t look so bad yourself.”
Leo Storgman did not often feel self-conscious. He’d had plenty of time to get used to his appearance—two decades since his card had turned. But he fidgeted now, scratching at the back of his sticky, wet neck, jostling the houndstooth newsboy cap he often wore. It sat comfortably between the thick horns that curled out from either side of his head.
“Aw, now. You don’t … you don’t have to say that. You haven’t changed a bit—not a goddamn day. We both know I can’t say the same.”
“I didn’t say you hadn’t changed. I just said you didn’t look bad.” She didn’t bother to hide her appraising gaze. “I’d heard, and I’d wondered. But you still look like you.”
“Eh. Wasn’t born looking like this.” He made a little gesture with his hands, displaying the way they’d become bone-white, almost translucent except for the scum-green liver spots that speckled his knuckles. Similar patches blotched across his mostly bald head, right down into the ring of graying hair that held his hat like a nest. “But it could be worse.”
He was careful to pin his eyes to hers, if only to keep from looking over her shoulder, or over his own shoulder at the crowded, chaotic room. Many of his fellow civil servants had drawn much stranger and worse transformations.
By the soda machine stood beat cop Rikki Michaelson, a small, greyhound-shaped woman using her slender, pawlike hand to press for a Dr Pepper. Leaning against the wall beside her was Lu Long, with the bulky, elaborate head and upper torso of a Chinese dragon. He was wrestling with the tab of a Pepsi can, his heavily clawed fingers ill-suited to the delicate task. And beside the captain’s office door Leo spied public defender Charles Herriman, his prosthetic hands wrestling with his latest case files. It almost looked like he had the situation under control, until his cell phone rang and the juggling act fell apart.
Wanda reached for the back of the chair that faced Leo’s desk and asked, “You mind if I sit down?” Without waiting for him to respond, she took the chair and settled into it, putting her purse and an expensive-looking leather satchel on the floor by her feet.
“For old times’ sake?” he asked.
“For old times’ sake, sure. And official business too—something weird, that’s for damn sure. But to tell you the truth, I didn’t know if I’d find you here. Couldn’t remember exactly how old you are.”
“Still have five months on the clock.”
“I hope they’re an easy five months. I’d hate to see you go out with a bang.”
“Easy. Sure.” He glowered mournfully at the drifts of paperwork and loose filing, and told her, “This week alone we’ve got streakers, inconveniently coincidental burglaries, and an uptick in the usual gang bullshit. The Werewolves and the Demon Princes never did get along, but it’s getting nasty out there.”
Wanda shook her head and sighed. “You remember that case back in, oh, I don’t know. Must’ve been ’89 or ’90. That gangbanging joker who got real high and then ate somebody’s poodle?”
Leo let out a short bark of a laugh. “Yeah, I remember it. Haven’t thought of it in years. Did you do the court-reporting on that case?”
She said, “No, wasn’t me. I was gone by then.”
“I heard you got married again.” He’d heard she’d married up.
“Yeah, back in ’88, but it didn’t stick. And I left court-reporting, too. Went into real estate instead.”
“Like you always said you would. I remember you talking about it, but I didn’t know you’d gone off and done it.”
She grinned. “Got my license and started moving houses, condos, what have you. It worked out better than sitting around a courtroom, tapping till my fingers were raw. Kept the kids fed better, too.”
“How’re they doing, anyway?”
“Grown, mostly. Moved out, thank God, all four of them. What about your daughter?”
“Melanie.” He cocked his head at the phone. “That was her, just now. She’s gotten into community development planning.” He picked up the flyer again and handed it to her.
Wanda said, “Hmm. Jokers only. That might have its perks. Or drawbacks.”
“I don’t know what to make of it yet. Mellie wants me to move down there, closer to her. Once my time’s up here, you know.”
Wanda hadn’t lowered the flyer yet. She looked at him over the top of it and asked in a very pointed fashion, “Just you?”
Leo cleared his throat and reclaimed the flyer. “Just me. Vicki…” It was strange, saying his wife’s name. “Vicki died of breast cancer back in ’98.”
Wanda said, “Oh, God, Leo. I’m sorry to hear that,” like she meant it.
Wanda had never been the jealous type, as far as Leo knew. And that one ill-advised night they’d shared back in the old days … it’d never gone anywhere. Vicki had never found out about it either, a fact that Leo considered one of the sole earthly evidences that there might be a God.
Leo said, “Sometimes it feels like she died a million years ago, and sometimes I forget, and start pouring her a cup of coffee in the morning.” His wife had been good to him—better than he’d deserved. Even when his card turned, all she had to say was, “I didn’t marry you for your looks. I won’t leave you for them either.” He changed the subject. “What really brings you out here, Wanda? It’s been a long time.”
“Like I said—partly for old times’ sake. And partly”—she reached down to that leather satchel and pulled it into her lap—“this.” She lifted the flap and drew out an envelope. From it, she extracted thirty or forty singed sheets and spread them out on the desk in a loose, brittle stack. “Pardon the smell.”
“What am I looking at? Besides burned paper?”
“Transcripts, or pieces of them. From an old case, somewhere between ’75 and ’79. Most of these are waterlogged or burned beyond usefulness, but the clerk at the courthouse saw this and they called me.” She pointed at a corner, where a blue pencil had scrawled “WM.”
“Your initials.”
“My initials. Other than that, you can only read a little bit, here and there. They asked me if I could tell what case they’re from.”
Leo looked up from her initials to ask, “They don’t know?” But before she could answer, he had another one lined up. “Were these damaged last week, in that courthouse fire?”
“You got it. The fire didn’t do much damage, but it made a real mess. And look.” She pulled another sheet forward, and pointed at a string of letters that stood out among the other lines of smudged, smeared, water-destroyed print. “Right here. I’m pretty sure that says ‘Detective Storgman.’ So I was hoping you could help me answer their question—maybe recognize something I’m missing.”
“Huh,” he said, peering down at the document. “I think you’re right. Then this is probably a case from ’79. I didn’t make detective until December of ’78.”
“Okay, that’s helpful. Narrows the window quite a bit.”
Leo touched the fragile pages gently, scooting them around with the tip of his finger and hunting for places where the words were not burned or washed away. “It’s hard to tell. Except.” He used his pinky to point at a spot that wasn’t very clear. “You see this part?”