She stares at the blue light from her screen. Her eyes glaze as she tries to arrange the puzzle pieces in her head. But instead of the crime scene, her brain is flooded with another picture—the sky falling back as she was pushed to the street. The furious, ruddy face of her attacker. The barely stifled apology that she swallowed just in time. She pounds her desk to banish the memory.

  * * *

  Lobos stares at an overhead shot of the prison—a collection of squat gray squares in the shape of a skewed cross encased in a pentagonal yard. An old-school child’s vision of a space station, but dropped into a bleak desert.

  Lady-killers.

  Femmes fatales.

  Black widows.

  Thelma & Louises.

  Bitches with problems.

  Lobos can hear it already. All the cute or sarcastic names the perps will be given to soften their crimes—to make a sport or light of what they did, to make men able to consider that women can kill.

  “Two fucking lady-killers, huh?” Easton swings into the chair next to Lobos’s desk.

  “Lady-killers kill women. Technically,” Lobos says. “Or rather they do it emotionally.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Lady-killers are men. Not women who kill. Your usage is incorrect.”

  “I’m just saying,” Easton says. “Lady … killers.” He drags out the space between the words, as if the misunderstanding was all on Lobos.

  Seven years in vice and you see a lot of battered women, beaten women, dead and dying women. You see angry women, scared and scarred women, tortured and trafficked women. You see women enslaved by women, pimped by women, turned out by women in their own families. You see women coerced by their boyfriends, pimps, and husbands into committing heinous and horrible crimes.

  Why is it so hard to believe two women are guilty of killing the man on the bus?

  Lobos side-eyes Easton.

  “What?” he asks.

  “It’s staring you right in the face and you still can’t believe that two women did this.”

  “I can believe a lot of things. But it doesn’t mean I want to.”

  Lobos shakes her head and turns away from her partner. How is it that this polite frat boy is so deep in her own thoughts?

  “You okay?” Easton asks.

  “Fine,” Lobos mutters.

  This whole thing sits uncomfortable, like putting a shoe on the wrong foot or having a sock slip way down in your boot. Women can’t be violent because that will justify violence against them. Women need other women to remain mild, docile, nurturing in order to save themselves from the wrath of men.

  Lobos empties more mints into her mouth. She cracks several between her back teeth trying to think past her own prejudices.

  She would have been within her rights to retaliate against the man who assaulted her. Easton would have backed her up. He might have commended her, seen her in a bold new light. Called her ballsy. Now there’s a word.

  “Well, anyway,” Easton continues. “The prison is putting together a list of all the women they sent to Chandler for quarantine. And a list of motels.”

  Lobos checks the clock. Prison bureaucracy is fast asleep now. “We’ll get the prints from the lab first. Maybe in two hours. Maybe less.”

  “I’ll hound them,” Easton says.

  “Be my guest.” Lobos takes a fresh canister of Tic Tacs from her top drawer and pushes back from her desk. “I’m going for a think.”

  * * *

  Skid Row is dead quiet. Darker than dark. Stiller than still on the near-blackout streets.

  The choppers over city hall and downtown have fallen back. The towers in the financial district a mile to the west are looming, lightless silhouettes over the ghost town.

  Down here, though, there are people, actual ghosts strewn and sleeping. The quiet streets thrum with their collective living, their sleep sounds, their rumbles and coughs.

  Lobos always marvels at the deference given to the night hours, how the chaotic daytime streets yield to the need for sleep after dark. There’s action, of course, black-market trades carried out in the open. There’s crime too, rapes and murders after dark. Homeless-on-homeless crime mostly.

  But still the sleepers sleep, not necessarily safe and secure, but down for the count.

  She turns off Sixth and heads down a side street, passing Seventh, leaving the precinct, the missions, and other services behind, and plunging into the darker recesses of Skid Row, where the laws of the nighttime are more fluid.

  A streetlight on Bay Street is flickering, catching a heavily graffitied wall in its intermittent glow. Lobos pauses as she passes. There are murals all over Skid Row and the adjacent Arts District. But this one is different—so detailed it almost seems to be animated. It shows the current protests—the streets filled with people, their backs to the viewer, their fists raised, their banners flying. Maybe it’s the on-off glimmer of the streetlight, but Lobos could swear the mural is moving, that the banners are flapping, the protesters’ fists punching skyward. Then the streetlight loses its battle, leaving the wall in darkness.

  Lobos keeps on, her eyes peeled, always looking, always searching.

  Where do you go when there is nowhere else? To whom do you turn to when there is no one?

  Her boot strikes echo.

  People move about the streets, shifting through the dark, shadows within shadows.

  Lobos knows some of them stay wired all night to protect their camps, then shoot up to sleep off the day. She knows that a great number of the undomiciled suffer a kind of day-for-night confusion that exacerbates or is exacerbated by cross-addictions and mental illnesses. She knows how quick the world falls away, turns hostile, and turns you even more so.

  When she figured out what was happening in her own home, it was too late. Nearly a decade of late nights—all nights—in fealty to his monitors, swapping daylight for their artificial glare, had chipped away at her husband’s brain. Each click took him deeper down a hole until he began to drown in misinformation. Until he started to believe the mistakes he’d made, the jobs he’d lost, the money and opportunities squandered hadn’t been his fault but the fault of a larger worldwide conspiracy to undermine men just like him.

  Lobos let these complaints slide in favor of the increasingly infrequent ordinary evenings when they managed a meal together, maybe a movie on television.

  He was supposed to be trading and investing their money. Lobos didn’t ask questions.

  By the time she learned that he’d grown mistrustful of the banks, it was too late. He’d grown suspicious of society altogether—social security, the Federal Reserve, geology, geography, and science. He’d begun to mistrust Lobos herself. He mistrusted her job, her civic employment. People like you oppress people like me, he told her.

  Lobos laughed it off. If she had a dollar for everyone who bagged on cops. Easy pickings. A cop joke at every dinner party.

  But then he lost half their savings.

  Then he lost all his friends.

  And when she questioned him—finally—he lost his mind. Rising, unkempt and unslept from his office chair, his eyes glazed, his lip curled, a snarl emanating from his throat, roaring how dare you question me. And before she knew it, before her years of training and experience kicked in, he threw her against the wall, pinning her, his hand over her throat.

  It ended quickly. He backed away, she hit the floor, not a cop but a victim.

  The excuses Lobos made—late nights, stress, isolation. The lies she told herself—as long as no one knew what happened, perhaps there was a chance it hadn’t. She gave him space, granted him the grace to apologize. And when he didn’t, she willed herself to forget the incident.

  But his anger grew, fueled by her acceptance. His rage intensified, revealing itself in short, sharp insults hurled as she walked past—thrown objects, pens, coffee cups, investment manuals.

  Lobos turned prisoner in her own home—tiptoeing past the office on her way to work. Holding her breath when she heard him on the stairs at night, praying he wasn’t returning to the bedroom.

  An officer of the law but she couldn’t protect herself at home. Her work suffered. She overreacted. She threatened people who had done little. She lashed out and accused. She lost sympathy for the abused and terrified. She reviled their weakness.

  And then, after badgering a prostitute instead of her trafficker, Lobos snapped out of it. She moved to a hotel and served her husband with a restraining order.

  That man on the bus—the terrified rictus of his features, the desperate clutch of his hands. Lobos would have liked to have seen her husband in that position.

  So here she is—scouring the streets, looking for him based on a tip that he’d been spotted downtown.

  Here comes a man, stagger-stepping down the sidewalk, doing the junkie shuffle, the shake-walk. There he goes, crossing in the middle of the street in the dark, not looking for cars as he stops to argue with someone invisible. Listen to him as he notices Lobos. Listen to him unload a jumbled tumble of curses and vitriol.

  Fuckyoucuntwhatyoulookingatwithyoufuckingbitchfacefuckingfuckyoucuntstaringyoujustgetthefuckawayfrommeworldisfullofbitcheslikeyounomatchformeicancutabitchlikeyouicankillyouwithmybarehandsicankillyoujustbylookingatyoumysuperpoweriskillingbitcheslikeyouseeyoubleeddrinkyourblooddirty- fuckingbitch.

  Listen to him hating on her for nothing. Listen to him roar. Curses and condemnations. Rage upon rage upon rage. An unceasing fountain of anger.

  Now he’s approaching her as she flashes her badge. Now he stops and jerks. Now he’s quiet, like someone pulled the plug. Now he’s down, falling like a collapsed marionette.

  Lobos is stunned. She approaches the man. She toes away some trash with her shoe and steps closer.

  She shines her flashlight over his body. He’s breathing—a ragged up-down, spittle on his cracked lips.

  She nudges him with her shoe. He groans. He’s not overdosing. He’s not in any immediate medical danger save lying in the street.

  She nudges him again, as if she can roll him back onto the sidewalk. He doesn’t budge.

  Lobos checks the block to see if she’s alone.

  This guy. This guy who insulted her. This guy whose untethered rage at the world emptied onto her—why should he get a pass? Why do they all get a pass: her husband, the man in the tent earlier, the good old boys at work? Why are they all worthy of her hands-off goodwill?

  Her body vibrates with rage. She reaches for her mints but leaves them in her pocket. She won’t allow herself any distraction from her anger. No, let it flow, let it fuel, let it swell.

  Lobos’s mind flashes to the scene on the bus. Now she sees the crime differently. Here on the dark street, away from the duties of the job, the facts of the story hurriedly jotted in blue lines and dashes onto her notebook, it begins to look like a release.

  Her breath quickens. It’s part of the job, she tells herself, putting yourself in the perp’s shoes. What was it like to wield that knife? What was it like to hold that power?

  She holds on to the rage. Lets it churn.

  Lobos glances at the ground, at the toe of her shoe and the man prostrate before her. Her foot twitches, like it’s thinking its own thoughts.

  Kick him.

  The rage is swirling.

  Kick him.

  It would be nothing, trivial, worthy payback.

  Kick him.

  She feels the tension in her calf as the muscles and tendons coil.

  Who would notice? Who would care? Who would know? A secret. A source of strength, a single declaration of power.

  Kick him. Just once. Or as many times as she needs.

  She jumps at the sound of her phone ringing and vibrating against her leg. She jumps as if someone has reached out in the dark street and touched her.

  Her heart races as if she’s been caught.

  She fumbles with the phone, dropping it on the street as she starts to answer.

  “Lobos?”

  Her name called out, echoing, reverberating in the night.

  “Lobos?” Easton’s voice.

  She retrieves the phone, brushes it off, and puts it to her ear. “What’s up?”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah … yeah. I was just … I’m heading back.”

  “No need. We’re on hold ’til morning. Everyone’s shut up shop.”

  “Even the lab?”

  “No answer for the last hour.”

  “Okay then,” she says.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  Easton lingers before disconnecting.

  “I’m fine,” Lobos repeats, and ends the call.

  She pockets her phone and looks down at the man at her feet. He groans and heaves in his narcotic doze.

  She pulls on a pair of plastic gloves, grabs the man under the shoulders, wrestling him away from passing cars, and hoists him onto the sidewalk.

  Then Lobos steps back and screams. A chest-emptying bellow that pours out into the street, bouncing off the shuttered, abandoned warehouses, rushing over the sleepers, tangling with the trash around gutters and tree trunks, until it settles into silence.

  There is no reply. No callback from the night. No concern or care.

  She knows one thing for certain: the murder on the bus was not a crime of desperate revenge or self-defense. It was a stance, a stand, a demonstration of power by someone who wants to be seen.

  * * *

  Time to go home.

  Lobos lives downtown in a loft on San Pedro. She got it cheap when the developer of her building was struggling to convince buyers that the Little Tokyo lofts were indeed in Little Tokyo and not smack in the middle of Skid Row.

  She knows these buildings shouldn’t be converted into so-called luxury living because it will only make the desperation outside worse—each neighborhood refinement driving those who rely on Skid Row’s social services further afield, scattering them from the place where they are welcomed, reducing their permissible footprint and paving over their domain with a shiny ignorance.

  Each slick new conversion means more residents with less tolerance for the undomiciled and more local landlords who will get greedy and jack their rents, forcing out the few businesses that cater to the homeless or offer them assistance.

  She tells herself that being part of the community allows her to understand it better. But what she really understands is that the chaos is unceasing, the smell overwhelming, the press of bodies all consuming. She’s glad she’s on an upper floor—she has that sanctuary at least.

  Lobos crosses through the heart of Skid Row, past the brutalist, windowless station where she works, past SROs and a few stalled constructions that promise low-income housing, past flophouse hotels, past tents, past the tentless, past the missions and those left outside who didn’t snag a bed for the night, past temporarily shuttered businesses, past permanently closed ones, past signs telling her WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS—TOGETHER.

  Together—a word for the rest of the city, those sealed away, safer at home with their stockpiles and projects and childcare headaches.

  Even at night, even in the unusually thick silence, the city still quivers with tension begging for release. Lobos feels eyes watching her from tents, from sleeping bags, behind tarps, and on top of flattened boxes.

  She’s jumpy, startled by the usual noises—the scurrying, muttering, coughing—that soundtrack of nighttime streets.

  She rattles her Tic Tacs, tips the canister into her mouth, distracting herself from the loose wires sparking her nerves. Lobos picks up her pace, ashamed of her fear. Another blight on her character, another weakness.

  She drives a fist into her thigh. He did this, her husband. He unnerved her and unsettled her. When she finds him … Lobos doesn’t permit herself to complete the thought, afraid of everything she wouldn’t do.

  And when she finds him …

  One block to home. She crosses Fifth. A few shapes are passing in the dark, shadows under the shadows of streetlamps.

  She passes the Downtown Women’s Center. Up ahead is her building.

  Lobos pulls out her keys, then one glance over her shoulder— a final safety check.

  There he is, across the street, under the sick, yellow flicker of another faltering streetlight. Stalking her.

  San Pedro is wide, but well under the mandated one hundred yards that her husband must keep away from her.

  “Hey,” she calls.

  He doesn’t move.

  She has planned for this. Two years of stored outrage. Two years of visualizing her retribution. And the moment is here.

  “Hey.”

  But she doesn’t cross the street. She doesn’t raise her fist. She doesn’t look for something to throw or something with which to strike him. All that rage and the only thing she does is reach for her phone to call in this infraction.

  But her phone is already buzzing—a call and a text message arriving simultaneously.

  The message appears on the screen. A name. A rap sheet. A photograph.

  Florence Baum.

  Blond, pretty, a vacant stare. Not who she was expecting at all. Lobos squints at the screen, double-checking.

  When she looks up, her husband is gone.

  FLORIDA

  Florida—Florence—whoever she is, stands on the platform in Union Station as the train waits before making its return trip. Somewhere a thought is begging for attention, insisting that she board and hurry back east, back to Ontario, then to Phoenix, and finally back to the motel in Chandler.

  But …

  Has time already run out?

  Inside there was nothing but time on top of time. Here time is race-roaring away on a fast track of bad decisions.

  If time has indeed run out there will be another back.

  Back inside.

  Too soon the loose circle the cops have already drawn around Dios’s crime will become a net that ensnares Florida. Too soon, or already. There’s time. And then there isn’t.

  Three years sober and now a night of drugstore speed, bottom-shelf liquor, and moonshine has crippled Florida’s thinking, replaced logic with panic and planning with pain.

 

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