Cartilage snapped, blood sprayed her face. The beast wasn't so tough.
Its grip slipped. Soledad slid, tried to slide away.
The beast still had speed. It took her by the throat with a hand like steel. It got back to squeezing, added twisting to the action.
Soledad felt the bones of her neck collapsing.
But the beast had her arm's length away. She could take the shot. Probably she'd live.
Didn't matter.
Her arm came up.
Kill the beast.
There was a click. The gun did not fire. There was a snap. Soledad's head being torqued until her spine broke. She heard that.
Soledad survived just long enough, just the fraction of a moment of time that was required for her ears to fill with the sound of her own death.
Eddi thought about going to the gym. Thought about lifting. But the weather was decent. A good day for cardio, for some outdoor running. But Fred Segal was having a sale and better-in LA-to get there early than try to go late, have to fight the crowds, the traffic. No matter. Nine point eight million people in the city. If a fraction had the same thought, the store'd be sick with bodies. So skip shopping. Skip cardio too. It was going to be the gym, then on to IHOP for a little…
Then Eddi remembered. Soledad was dead.
Soledad was dead.
Soledad was…
Eddi could repeat it as much as she cared, as many ways as she could. Her brain wouldn't take to what it rationally knew.
Soledad was dead.
Whatever else in Eddi's world that would evolve, grow, differ from day to day, what would not change was the reality of Soledad. That was beyond alteration.
Just awake, Eddi hadn't gotten out of bed. The thought of Soledad dead fresh again in her head, she couldn't exit the sheets.
She wanted to cry.
Wasn't going to happen.
Eddi had bartered off her emotions a long time prior. Tears for fearlessness. Softness for survival. The amputation of her frailties kept her, ironically, whole. Gave her the ability to act and react without the burden of emotion. Such a condition had kept Soledad alive too. For a while. For Soledad "a while" ended. Then what? Literally ashes to ashes. Soledad cremated. Tears Eddi couldn't cry. A feeling seeping through her that regular people call sorrow and that Eddi, hard-guy cops like Eddi, passed off as nothing more than an inner call for activity. Cops needed to be working, doing, enforcing. What she was feeling was just the malaise of passivity that all cops got when they had too much downtime, and not when they lost one of their own.
That feeling: How do you shake it?
Ten days since Soledad's death. Four since she'd been cremated. And every time Eddi did that count in her head- adding a couple of hours, adding a day to the bottom line-it still hit her like she was getting bitch-smacked with the news for the first time as it was hand-delivered from a drunken wife beater.
Soledad was dead.
How do you shake that ill feeling? Most times, most other cops she'd known and lost the feeling never even came. Death was sad, yeah, but it was part of the job. It was a done deal before you even put on a badge and blues, so why go crying little girl-style after the fact? You didn't. You didn't take on feelings, you didn't have to get rid of them.
And as much as she… not hated, Eddi didn't hate Soledad. As much difficulty as she'd had with the girl, as much friction, what Eddi felt now was like a shiv to the soul delivered with a quick, vicious, surreptitious jab. Unexpected, and unexpectedly painful
How do you, how do you shake such an ill feeling?
There had to be something. Some way more than just the cop send-off Soledad'd gotten. The obit that'd run deep in the LA Times.
Nothing that Eddi could figure at the minute. At the minute she couldn't figure anything besides lying in bed a little bit longer. A little bit longer being, like, the rest of her day off. The month. The reminder of her life, which, considering Soledad was one of the heaviest hitters MTac ever birthed and she didn't make it past thirty years of age, seemed like it might not be too much longer.
But Eddi wasn't going to ditch the effort. She'd figure out something to do for Soledad.
She'd figure it out.
Later.
Eddi rolled over, tried to sleep off her malaise.
Eddi rested her hand on the door. It was slightly open. The door. Her hand too. Splayed over the wood. From beyond the door came sounds. Things scraping against cardboard. Objects being packed. A life being put away. No voices.
Her hand on the open door. It opened no wider.
Eddi had kicked in how many doors on the job? Solid wood, steel-lined. Rarely, though sometimes aided with a ram, had she ever had a problem knocking her way through any of them. This door, already partly open, she couldn't pass through. She knew what was on the other side. Soledad's mom and dad. The primary grievers. Eddi liked to think she was in, or at least she self-elevated herself to, the number three spot.
A distant third.
And she knew she really had no business being in breathing distance of numbers one and two.
But…
There was a but. Always is.
But Eddi had already called the O'Roarks, offered condolences. Had wanted to keep things brief but didn't know what to say and ended up saying way too much. Blathered on and on about what a good person Soledad was and what a good cop she was and how much Soledad would be missed and couldn't be replaced and would not be forgotten and shut up already, Eddi. But they, Soledad's mom at least, had been so gracious on the phone. Had said they would be in Los Angeles to collect the remains of their daughter. The consumed remains and the remains of her life. The clothes and the photos and the books and the this and the that. They- Soledad's mom said "they"-very much wanted to meet Eddi, put a face with the voice that spoke with such grace and regard for her daughter.
Grace?
So in that phone call Eddi had formed a loose bond with people she had only one connection to. They had among them Soledad's death. As much as she did not want to go into the condo, tenuous as it was. breaking the connection was beyond Eddi.
Hand on the door, she pushed it open.
Inside the condo: a man kneeling before some cardboard boxes; a woman standing taking knickknacks from a shelf. The woman was a little on the heavy side. Or, or the bloated side? Wore a scarf covering her head. The mars, although of a height and girth that would be considered above that of an average man and though his health seemed well for a man of his age, his presence was weak and tired. As a life had been taken from him, liveliness had been drained from him.
From the man: "Yes?"
"I'm Eddi Aoki." Looking to the woman. "I think I spoke to you on the phone. I'm a friend of Soledad's."
"Soledad didn't have friends." A little mournful smile on the woman's lips. Gallows humor.
"Well, next best thing, then."
"Thank you for coming," Gin said.
"I wanted you to know your daughter will be missed. She was a good person, and she sacrificed herself for her convictions. Anybody would tell you Soledad was one of the best cops to ev-"
"I'm going to take this down to the car." Soledad's dad, Richard, hefted a box, brushed passed Eddi without a word, left the apartment.
A chill lingered.
In her mind Eddi damned her blather.
"My husband doesn't think Soledad died for her convictions. That she died for any good reason, really."
"I'm sorry. I didn't come here to upset anybody."
"The thing about losing someone, I'm learning," a little laugh, "is dealing with other people's sympathy. Everyone wants to tell me that things are all right or that Soledad's gone to a better place. Things are not all right. I've lost my child. She is not in a better place. She's dead. And all the well-wishes just remind you of what's gone."