Shutter(11)

Grandma pulled into the driveway of St. Mary’s Church, skidding the gravel out with the truck’s tires. The white chapel had a turquoise doorway and a long, steep stairway that led up to the entrance. She parked and carried me into the double doors. Her arms gripped me like a baby as she dipped her fingers into the holy water and walked to the front pew. The lacquered wood floor of the church creaked and swayed with each step.

My nose filled with the sweet and burning smell of incense and the hot air of lit candles. She laid me in the front of the altar and kneeled, her hands pressed together, her eyes closed, her face raised to the sky.

I could hear the rain on the roof of the church, a sacred dance of angels tapping on the shingles. I could hear the overlapping voices over the rain and thunder—the words of the ghosts that still lingered in the church. My grandmother prayed and prayed. She asked my grandpa to give me peace, to spread the word. She asked all the ghosts to leave me to my childhood and to the future I had not lived.

WHEN I AWOKE the next morning, a dull pain remained behind my eyes. One spirit remained. Grandpa. I waited until I heard the running of water in the kitchen before speaking.

“Grandpa. I think Grandma thinks I’m crazy.”

“No, she doesn’t. She’s just worried about you. That’s all. And she should be.” Grandpa paused. “Remember what I told you. Just like there are bad people out there in the real world, there are bad people in this world too. If you let them get too close to you, then they can grab you.”

“You mean they can take me? Like a dead person?” I asked.

“Maybe. Or they can make you crazy.”

“But they are invisible people, Grandpa. Like you. They can’t touch me.” I reached out for his hand. “See, I can’t touch you, so you can’t touch me.”

“No. I can’t touch you,” Grandpa answered. “But there are spirits that are much more powerful than your grandpa.”

“Who are you talking to?” Grandma asked. I hadn’t even noticed that she had turned off the water. When I turned back around, Grandpa was gone.





CHAPTER SEVEN

Nikon DSLR—NIK3PRO Night Vision Module

AT 3:25 A.M., the phone rang. I sat and listened to it ring four times, then answered it without a greeting.

“Rita. Rita? Are you awake?” Samuels sounded desperate. “We’ve got a Popsicle downtown.” He waited. “Rita. Rita?”

“I’ve got it. Where?”

“Down on Third Street. It’s kind of in your neighborhood. That’s why I called you. Angie’s working the scene and she was hoping you could help her out.”

My apartment was freezing. I couldn’t muster a response.

“I promise to leave you alone for a day if you go out to this one.”

“On my way.”

I staggered to my closet, taking out the only clean shirt I had, white as bone, lonely and uneven on the hanger. I pulled my arms through the sleeves, put on my work shoes and whatever warm clothes I could find, and stepped into the hallway.

As I walked down the stairs and through the building’s narrow, dusty corridors, the sound of an argument was already pouring out of the floor below. Mr. Taylor mumbled through crumbling doughnuts and coffee, lecturing the couple next door about their odd hours. I nodded as I trudged past, noticing his sweaty T-shirt and musty robe.

“And you too, Kodachrome,” he bellowed. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

I kept moving.

I made my way in and out of alleyways and between the crackled buildings. The scene was only three or four blocks from my apartment, near the stretch of homeless shelters and food distribution centers. I brought a couple of cameras, flashes, and lights with me, and I could feel their weight. Fake luminarias and Christmas lights lined the adobe walls along the downtown offices, waiting for the snow.

Albuquerque cold never really means snow. It only means the deep, dry freeze of the high desert. That, mixed with sixty-mile-per-hour winds and the occasional flash rainstorm, characterizes Albuquerque’s winter woes. They call it the “snow hole.”

My body shivered inside long underwear and three jackets.

When I made the turn on Third Street, I saw the patrol cars— one sitting with the lights turning, sending ropes of red onto the wet road. Officers sat in their cars, heaters on, watching me walk by through the holes of condensation in their windows. The Crime Scene Specialist Unit had already arrived and were just beginning to pull their toolboxes from the vans.

“Hey, Rita,” Angie called out. Sergeant Seivers was one of the senior CSS field agents, now only a few months from retiring. She had three kids, twin girls and her eighteen-year-old son, all wrapping up high school in the next couple of years, so she was getting ready to move to California with her husband. “I know you went home to sleep, but I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“No rest for the wicked, I guess.”

“Girl, I don’t know when you have time to be wicked.” She laughed a contagious laugh, and I caught myself smiling. Angie was one of those women who could be your sister and your mom all at the same time. She’d hugged me the first time she met me, always brought extra sandwiches in her lunch box, and stocked caffeinated sodas in her mini fridge. She knew when I didn’t sleep. She could tell when I was hurting. Just the motherly type. She was also my supervisor.