He would check around before calling for backup.
He put his right hand on his holster and strolled along the hall. He checked three doors as he went by. He turned the knobs, two didn’t open. The third opened into a semi-lit room of old and snoring people. Someone was singing in their sleep about a certain Lorraine.
Tom closed the door gently and continued ahead.
He almost went past a fourth door. He had, in fact, taken two steps past it when he heard the muffling sound.
He pulled his gun instantly and pointed it back the way he came.
There was no one behind him. On his left, doors stood numb in the walls and on the right, the white balcony and the night sky.
He listened, willing his auditory senses in the direction of the third door, the room where he had just seen residents sleeping.
The choking sound came again, this time more clearly.
The gun now pointed at the fourth room he had missed a while ago, he got on his talkie.
In a firm but hushed tone, he said, “This is Sheriff Tom Garcia. I need backup at the Baker Home, two units. There’s a possible 245 going on!”
The choking had gotten louder as he was talking. Tom cursed. “Shit.”
He tucked his talkie away and threw his right leg at the door. It swung in easily. Cool air hit his face as he lunged into the dark room.
“Police, freeze!” he snapped.
His heart was pounding. Blood pumped in his temples. The room seemed bare, at least, on the floor. He stumbled around, squinting his eyes in the dark, his gun aimed at the dull and eerie walls. He saw that there was a patio, and curtains billowed like restless waves.
He aimed his weapon at the patio. There was no one there, of course. But whoever was in there could be behind the walls of the patio, waiting to strike.
“Police, come out with your hands in the air where I can see 'em.”
He pulled his safety on, and then off. It made a soft click, for the benefit of the intruder.
Tom busted onto the patio, rapidly turning with his weapon in both directions, right and left. There was no one there. There was only a twenty-foot drop onto the edge of the parking lot, grasses shiny with moisture, the woods beyond that and the trailer park beside Highway 11.
He went back in. He found a switch.
Tom Garcia’s shoulders sagged at the sight when the light in the ceiling came on.
He brought his talkie to his lips. He felt enormous exhaustion suddenly hit him.
“This is Sheriff Tom Garcia,” he mumbled at the prone body on a chair. “Make that a 10–52, we have a dead body here.”
Tom went back to the patio and gazed into the woods on the left side of the hill. It was too dark out there for him alone. He glanced back at the man on the chair. A pool of blood gathered around his unclad feet. His head was bent at an odd angle. The pale face looked mashed up and one of the hands also appeared broken.
Someone had made an opening in his throat, from ear to ear.
2
It was 8:45 am. And she’s been drunk now for two hours. She’s also been playing chess with her cat, Smokey.
She moved a pawn. “Rook to E8, Smokey.”
The cat followed her moves with keen brown eyes. He looked like a furry sphinx.
Olivia Newton scratched her face, behind her ears. She hoped she wasn’t catching an infection there. How could he not get a bug? she asked the querulous voice in her head, the one that she called her Moral Bitch.
“Hello, Moral Bitch. I’ve been drinking since 3:00 am. What’d you think about that?”
That voice was silent this morning. It was odd.
Smokey meowed.
Olivia wiped the hair out of her face. The act hurt in places around her breasts and back. She groaned. She had taken a fall the day before. She had been talking with the Moral Bitch when she slipped and tumbled down. She woke with the pain and a shattered bottle of good whiskey.
She smelled of it now, the whiskey that is. She smelled of problems as well.
She heard a commotion in the street below. Someone was howling and the voice was familiar.
Whiskey in one hand, her hip in the other, and an accompanying groan of pain, she went to the window. She pulled the curtain to the side. The early morning sun stung her eyes.
Some big guy in a black jacket and a fedora was yelling at another guy who was in his car. The details of the quarrel were not so obvious from up here. Olivia didn’t care much. But the white fedora.
There’s only one person Olivia Newton knew who had that fedora. The big guy looked up just in time to see her peeping from the window.
“Hey, Olivia.” He waved.
“Shit.”
Olivia pulled the curtain back. She loitered across the house into the kitchen, kicking things like the vacuum cleaner she hasn’t used in weeks as she went. The kitchen smelled. She spat into the soiled sink.
A work crew of red and fat cockroaches spilled out of the dishes in shock.
She ignored the creatures.
She fetched a pack of cornflakes from the cupboard. More cockroaches had taken tenancy. Back in the living room she poured whiskey on the flakes.
There was a knock at the door.
“I’m not home,” she whined at the door. “Go 'way.”
The knob worked, clockwise and anti-clockwise. She watched it in amused sadness as she poured the rest of the whiskey all over the cornflakes. Olivia was left with only one man in the entire universe who would come all the way up there to see her. That man would twist that doorknob until it fell out of the door.
She didn’t really want that. Yet, she was mad at him. Olivia was mad at the world. She closed her eyes, tightly, an act that usually called up hot tears in the recent past. Lately, her tear ducts had ran out of water. Nowadays, that simple act only produced hotness and tingling, and a consummate other realization: that she was mad at herself too.
And that was the worst of all the various ways she felt.
Olivia scooped more cereal into her mouth; it tasted metallic.
Her apartment had the appearance of a dumpsite. It reeked of bad food, body odor, and frustrated anger.
She went to get the door.
Tom Garcia was there with the expression of a disappointed dad.
He glanced over her shoulder. “Shit.”
Tom Garcia stood in the middle of the room, looking around.
He refused the urge to cover his nose on account of the reek.
“Olivia, what happened here?”
She had already flopped back onto her couch and resumed her whiskey and cornflake meal. Smokey was on the chessboard, contemplating the crown of the Queen.
“Life happened, Tom,” she mumbled through a full mouth.
“Is that—?”
Tom took his nose closer to perceive the smell of whiskey in the bowl of cereal. He took off his fedora and wrinkled it in his hands. He hung his hat on a rack and opened the curtains. Harsh daylight cast itself across the room, over the table. Olivia winced.
Copies of the Daily Mail littered the floor. Clothes piled on the floor, everywhere, and on her reading table where there were more newspapers, sheets of papers with scribblings, and the dead face of a Dell laptop.
Tom pulled up a chair and sat in it.
“The stairs were good for me. Look at my gut, remember what I used to look like? Me, with the six-packs?” he laughed.
Smokey, now tired of the chess game, walked into the kitchen, tail up. Olivia finished her cereal and belched.
“Excuse me.” She attempted a smile.
“Uhuh.”
“Let's not talk about me, Tom. What’d you want?”
“Can we talk about your neighbors downstairs parking like they own the street?” Tom said quietly.