Sing Her Down, page 11
Now every lot, corner, and walkway harbors the tents that are no longer just tents but block-long shanties, elaborate structures of tarps and chairs, cookstoves, grills, repurposed office furniture, plywood boards, wiring jacked from lampposts and car batteries. Cars turned into micro-apartments: kitchen, storage locker, bedroom all-in-one. Cars that haven’t moved in years, that are burdened until their axles break. Cars that are sinking into the street until they become part of it. Cars that are burned and then abandoned.
That’s a new sight. Abandoned camps. Abandoned cars. Abandoned shelters and tents. Even the unhoused moving on, creating their own ruins.
This is a sick city getting sicker. The street is its own local pandemic within the global one.
Homicides. Overdoses. Death by exposure. Heat stroke.
Since she transferred to Central a year ago, Lobos has been called to all of these, witnessed every manner of death outdoors. So she gets how someone can die—can be killed—in plain sight or on a bus and no one marks it.
The straight world is now like the undomiciled one—too concerned with its own survival to note a neighbor in distress.
* * *
She and Easton turn from Alameda up Fourth and are forced into the street in order to skirt a patch of sidewalk someone has cordoned off by tying two tarps to an office chair lashed to a tree.
“Fucking mess,” Easton says, skipping over a puddle of something oozing from somewhere.
As they pass, Lobos glances through a gap in the tarps to check the camp. The streetlight shows her a mattress, bike, some books, bedding, a battery-operated lantern. Her lingering is a habit she can’t break—a futile hope that if she solves the present puzzle she will understand the larger picture of how a tough cop like her became an unwitting victim.
Lobos runs on secrets and puzzles. She runs on the small lies people tell that reveal larger truths. It’s household objects, their arrangement, their dust, disuse, or high polish that unveils something their owners want to hide—the background noise, the timestamps, the light in the sky that tells a different story than the social media caption.
This game is harder here downtown.
The usual markers are gone, lost or stolen, erased by the grime, the hard living, the mental and physical dereliction. But they are still there, and each person out here has a story that brought him to this point.
Lobos wants to know them.
“Let’s go,” Easton says.
There’s something about this tent that grabs her. It takes Lobos a second to dial it in. The place is clean—or cleaner than average. She takes a step closer.
“Lobos.”
A charred scent lingers in the air. She remembers it now—last week whoever camped here had his spot torched. Lobos was called to the blaze. She saw the body. And now there’s someone new. Somebody with fresh gear.
“You making yourself at home?”
It’s a long shot—keeping an eye out for one man in this undomiciled sprawl, in the unnameable city. One man among those hidden in plain sight. But Lobos can’t help herself.
Lose your wife. Lose your savings. Lose your home. Lose your friends. Lose your way. Lose your mind. You have to wind up someplace. Her hunch is that her ex-husband is here or somewhere like it. She’s a detective. It’s her nature to keep looking although instinct tells her not to.
Puzzles. Logic problems. So much boils down to a process of elimination. When you lose the last thread tethering you to the straight world, the streets beckon.
Lobos rolls more mints across her tongue, pulls out her phone, and turns on the flashlight.
“Lobos, what the fuck? We have a stabbing victim at the morgue and a bus driver waiting back at Central.”
It’s the books that demand a closer look. Lobos can’t quite make out their titles from the street, so she takes another step. Her face is now a foot from the space between the tarps. Eckhart Tolle and a DIY business book.
Her heart quicksteps. Her mind starts calculating—balancing evidence and probability. But before she can come to a conclusion, a man springs from the tent.
Lobos barely has a moment to react or to grab her badge before he’s on her, shoving her from the entrance and back into the street. Lobos is a flyweight—a hundred pounds soaking wet—and reels back at the man’s touch, falling into the street, where she has enough time to reach for her badge and gun.
The guy, riled and raging, doesn’t see or doesn’t care that she’s packing. He keeps coming. Lobos has time, if she wants, to fire a warning or worse.
She has time.
But her mind is blank and then a blur. And instead of living in this moment, she’s tunneling into the past, where the dozens of moments she failed to act occur to her simultaneously—the dozens of times she took her rage and packed it away so tightly it rendered her immobile.
Lobos has time.
The man in front of her is not who she’s looking for. He’s a complete stranger—grizzled with a blistered, ruddy face.
She has time. Her rage hammers her chest but she doesn’t move.
Lobos has time and then she doesn’t. But before the man grabs her, Easton pounces, pulling the guy away from her, tossing him back toward his tent.
Lobos scrambles to her feet. She holsters her gun. She brushes grit from her suit pants.
The rage hits harder now, transforming into shame. Her cheeks burn. Her heart stampedes in place.
Easton stands between her and her attacker. “Are we cool?” Easton asks the man.
“Bitch was peeping in my tent.”
“This bitch is LAPD.”
“She didn’t announce as such.”
“I asked,” Easton repeats, “are we cool? Or do we have to continue this?”
“You can’t just go peeping in people’s property,” the man says. “I don’t break into your home. I don’t peep in your motherfucking windows.”
Lobos chokes back an apology before it escapes.
“Watch your language,” Easton growls.
“Easton, let’s go.”
“This man assaulted you.”
“Let’s go. We’ve got work to do.”
“Lobos—”
“Like you said, we have people waiting on us.” She needs to be out of there, as far as possible from another failure.
“Fuck it,” Easton says, stepping away from the man. “It’s your lucky day. Isn’t it?”
That’s a funny thing to say to someone sleeping on the street, Lobos thinks. “Let’s go,” she says again.
They continue up Fourth.
“That motherfucker,” Easton said. “All these motherfuckers. And what were you doing poking your head in there?”
“Nothing,” Lobos said.
“You looking for someone?”
“Not really,” she lies.
She checks the sky. She can see the blinking lights of the choppers on standby—one over city hall, one making a wide arc across downtown.
The city is still.
The city is hiding.
The city is primed to explode.
A pink-and-blue blossom of fireworks erupts to the east.
* * *
The station is quiet. It’s quiet on top of quiet with officers and plainclothes dispatched to quell the mobs that flash and flare in response to out-of-town violence.
Lobos gets why a group of twelve strangers refuses to find cops guilty. Over and again. It’s the same reason she sticks with her job despite its imperfections. A misguided devotion to a sense of authority. An inability to see the worst when the worst is staring you down. The world is crumbling. We try to hold on. Or we wind up pitching a tent on a spot where someone else was living until he got burned.
She passes the desk sergeant.
“They’re waiting.” He nods toward the interior of the station. “Translator complained you’re taking your time.”
“Tell him to go.”
“You tell him.”
* * *
The translator and the driver are in an interrogation room at opposite ends of the table. Easton melts away to chase down other information. He knows that if Lobos doesn’t question the man firsthand, she’ll have too many questions for him down the line. He cedes the honors. Lobos dismisses the translator, then pulls out a notebook and her phone.
“Tell me the route again.”
“Chandler, Phoenix, Ontario, Los Angeles.”
“And these women got on in Chandler. Together?”
“No. One needed money. She went to the ATM. I already told you. Then she got on. The other was late. Almost missed the bus.”
“Did they know each other?”
“I don’t know.”
Lobos scribbles, then clicks over to her phone and starts to retrace the 10 back east. LA—Ontario—
“And the victim?”
“Gets on in Phoenix.”
Ontario—Phoenix.
“And he sat with them?”
“No. Yes. Later. They didn’t sit together. He sat with one. Near the back. I’m not sure. I just drive. Hard to see from the front.”
“The women bought tickets to Ontario?”
“Los Angeles. I told you. But one gets off there. Then the other follows. Says she missed her stop. Made me pull over.”
“And you do that? That’s regulation?”
The driver’s eyes darken. He draws back. “I let her out.”
“Why?”
“She wanted to get out.”
“What did she say? Did she seem agitated? Angry? Did you see blood?”
“Black pants. Just like the other one. Black men’s pants. Maybe there was blood. I don’t know.”
“They were dressed alike?”
“Same pants. Same shirts. Blue, like for working.”
“You sure?”
“I think so.”
“What else?”
The driver looks at Lobos as if he has no idea what she’s asking.
“Same pants,” he repeats. “Those women. Same shirt too. I think.”
“Like a uniform?”
“Same clothes,” the driver says.
Lobos picks up her phone and zooms in on Chandler, Arizona—a blue dot on a gray-and-yellow grid. “What’s it like?”
“What?”
“Chandler?”
“I just drive the bus.”
“Who gets on in Chandler?”
“Passengers.”
“And you’re sure they were women.”
“Women. I’m sure.”
“Did you hear anything from the back after they got off?”
“Coughing. Lots of coughing. Everyone gets nervous. I think, maybe that’s why the women get off. So much coughing.”
The same information she’s gleaned on-site. Except for the clothes.
There’s a tap on the window. Easton holds up a notepad. Lobos moves to the door. “ME says our dead guy’s a CO out of Perryville.”
Lobos’s brain splinters. She knocks back some Tic Tacs, swirls them side to side. She turns to face the driver.
“Do you pick up a lot of prisoners?”
“I just drive the bus.”
“Do you clean the bus?”
“I just drive the bus.”
“Does someone clean the bus?”
“Supposed to,” the driver says. “To sanitize. Because of the virus.”
“Do they?”
“Sometimes.”
* * *
Lobos sits at her desk. The first part of this could be easy. She closes her eyes. She visualizes the bus.
Surfaces. The news is dominated by a fear of surfaces that contaminate, transmit, incubate. There’s a collective paranoia about every shared space—the forensic record of fingers and other smudges as virus vectors.
The bus is a petri dish of surfaces—armrests and windows, tray tables and their latches. What the world fears will tell the story Lobos needs to know.
It could go two ways. If the bus is sanitized between routes, properly wiped down to remove germs and evidence, the only prints will be those of the last passengers. If it’s not, Lobos is looking at dozens of people passing through—many of whom will be guilty of something.
Decades in this job and the science of crime still fails to grab her. She digs the personal stuff. The human shortcomings and error. The truth baked into the lie. The puzzle of emotion, motivation, and history.
She calls the lab. The seats are a fucking Jackson Pollock of prints. The blood doesn’t help. They tell her to cool her heels for a bit. Read: three hours minimum. Four more like it.
* * *
Ten p.m.
Feet on her desk. Squad room quiet. Like she likes it.
The radio blips. A mob downtown. A mob going up Fourth Street.
Lobos is relatively new to this station. And she’s back in homicide after a seven-year vacation in vice. She doesn’t give out much to her fellow cops. They can look her up if they like, though there’s not much to tell. A trail that will die out. Lobos is her maiden name. That’s new again too.
Some of them know her from her old beat. They know her by her former name. Her old dye job. They also know better than to mention it.
They assume she’s reverting to her roots—her heritage. It’s a convenient cover.
Lobos’s tailbone aches from where she hit the street, tossed by the man in the tent. The things she lets slide, the petty harassments and everyday aggression. It becomes routine. Easy to see this as your fault.
She wonders how Easton will frame the story.
Fifteen minutes later the call comes in that the mob has dispersed. The real action is out west in Santa Monica. A riot on the 3rd Street Promenade.
Don’t be tricked by movies and television—more than half of Lobos’s work takes place at her desk, phone calls and web searches, a jigsaw of information that will slowly start to show a larger picture.
The women’s prison outside Phoenix confirms a CO named Reyes who matches the victim. The local station sends someone to notify. Soon that person will return with details about why Reyes was on the bus and whether he was flying solo.
She cups her hand over the phone and signals to Easton.
“CO at a women’s prison,” she says. “A women’s prison. Pay up.”
“We never settled on terms.”
“You’re gonna stiff me, Easton?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He rolls over in his desk chair, hands her a five.
“Cheap bastard,” Lobos says.
“You want to be right or rich?” Easton says.
“Right and you know it.”
Easton looks at her computer screen, where Lobos has called up the Arizona DOC website. “Makes sense they’re prisoners.”
“How’s that?”
“I’m just saying, they’re already predisposed to violence. Conditioned for it too.”
“Conditioned by it, maybe.”
“Your average woman couldn’t do what was done on that bus.”
“I hope your average man couldn’t either.”
“You know what I mean.”
Lobos stares at her screen, so close she can hear it buzz. “Not really,” she says.
She hopes the blue glare hides the angry flush on her cheeks. She had nearly apologized to the man who’d knocked her down.
Easton slinks off to kill time at his own desk. She doesn’t need him loitering, reminding her of her recent misstep.
Bad enough she has to live with the shame of having taken out a restraining order against her own husband. She knows how it looks, and worse, how it feels. How can she keep the peace on the streets when she couldn’t in her own home?
* * *
Lobos reaches the warden at home and he doesn’t sound happy about it. Dead is dead, he tells her, and can’t this wait until morning? He doesn’t have much of anything to say about Reyes. New guy. Nothing to report.
Lobos tiptoes around the question of whether he was known to use excessive force on the prisoners.
“Just because they’re women doesn’t mean they’re a walk in the park,” the warden says.
“I understand,” Lobos replies. “What about Chandler?”
“Who’s that?”
“The city. Do you know if Reyes has connections there?”
“I hardly knew him. He just started a month ago. Hadn’t even cashed his first paycheck.” There’s a pause on the warden’s end of the line. “We contract to Chandler. We use motels there to quarantine early releases.”
Women kill people they know. Even Easton knew that.
It’s coming together. Less exciting than you’d think.
“What was he doing on that bus?”
“Hell, if I know,” the warden says. “Rules are no traveling during this time. Probably thought he’d sneak away for the long weekend, fly under the radar.”
She clicks over to COMPSTAT. They are at the start of a crime wave. She can sense it. The police are stretched thin. The police are looking elsewhere. Dealers are hurting, as in any legit business. More layoffs, less cash flow. Turf wars are brewing. Tents on the streets are swelling.
Cars linger undriven and are stolen.
People have been cooped up for more than two months. Now it’s turning warm. They’re blowing off steam. They’re broke and angry. They’re opening fire on one another for no good reason. The results are mapped on Lobos’s screen in hundreds of color-coded bubbles that denote assault, robbery, vehicular theft.
She empties the last mints into her mouth and closes her eyes.
She picks up the phone and calls the lab. “I’m not rushing you,” she says before the tech can voice his irritation. “I’m just saying let me know right away if any prints match women with prison records.”
Whoever killed Reyes isn’t worried about being captured.
She isn’t worried about getting away with it.
Something nags at Lobos. This woman—these women—there’s a chance they even want to be caught. The crime is too flagrant. The exit from the bus too visible. If her hunch is right that she’s on the hunt for two ex-cons, they must have known—no, they surely would have known—that there’s no way to outrun this.
