Shutter(15)

“That means that you can’t come back.” I started to cry. “I don’t want you to go, but you have to keep going. Otherwise, Grandma will always be sad just like when Grandpa died. She will always cry after you.”

“Okay, kiddo,” she answered, and just like that, the light was gone.

When Gloria left, she took all the others with her. From that point on, I never again saw any lights in my grandma’s house. It would always be the one place where they weren’t allowed.





CHAPTER NINE

Canon EOS 5D

I SAT INSIDE Angie’s van and closed my eyes. My body ached with insomnia. Angie got into the van just as fatigue tears rolled down my cheeks. “Honey, when is the last time you slept?” She pulled some baby wipes from her purse and placed them in my hands. “Wipe your eyes.”

The burn finally began to subside as I pushed against the sockets of my eyes, rubbing the stinging tears from my face. “It’s been a while,” I said.

“We’re all done here anyway. I’m driving you home.”

Angie started the van, buckled herself, and pushed the vents to storm force. The engine was running, the air hot and thick. I couldn’t help but roll down the window. A small group of officers chuckled around their coffee, looking my way and shaking their heads. Typical.

“Don’t worry about those guys.” Angie patted my leg. “There’s a reason they are all still on patrol.”

Buildings passed us in whirs of color as we moved from shadow to shadow in the early morning hours. Only occasional squares of light splashed on the street from open bakeries. The rest of the city was asleep in their homes or hotels, on their office couches, and in their cardboard beds in the doorways of buildings.

“You know.” Angie nudged my arm to pull my mind from the street. “This is why I’m getting out of all this while I can. I used to be able to deal with these crazy, stressful hours, but those days are gone, honey. I’m too old. And it’s only getting worse. You know that, right?”

“I do.” I was uncomfortable. Her words made me think of my grandmother growing old by herself in that house between the mountains. I felt the nausea of guilt.

“You need to get out while you still have half your mind intact,” Angie said. I could feel her stare on my face.

“After I save a little more . . .”

“You’ve been saying that for the last five years. Haven’t you saved enough? I mean, you’re always at work. You never go anywhere.”

She was right. I never went anywhere.

“Rita, you’re a good kid, and you take great pictures. That’s got to count for something. Go shoot something besides dead bodies.”

We pulled up to my building as the sun’s heat began to swing heavy. Angie grabbed my hand, depositing five pills.

“Don’t take all of those at once. Just one now to get you to sleep, then save the rest for when you’re having trouble.” Her eyes narrowed. “One, Rita.”

“One,” I promised.

The apartment building’s halls were eerily quiet, with only the faint hums of oxygen tanks and refrigerators on the bottom floors. My shuffling feet created the simplest of melodies in the echo. The dark-green light of my floor moved closer and closer until I was bathed in it—then my wide-awake neighbor opened her door.

“Mija, come in here. Come in here now!” Mrs. Santillanes pulled my arms through her threshold and handed me a dark mason jar. “Drink this. All of it. Your soul needs it, mija.”

Her hands were chilled and soft as the folds of her skin rubbed my face. I couldn’t even speak. Instead, I turned toward my apartment and let the momentum of my movement get me through the door. I pulled one pill from my pocket and drank down Mrs. Santillanes’s mixture like it was chocolate syrup. Sleep spread its warm coils through me, pulling my body down to my couch cushions.

The deep sleep did not stop my mind from working. The gears still churned, blood and memories pooling like channel lakes of faces and words. All of it was stopped by Erma Singleton’s screams.

In my dream, I sat perched on the branch of a tree that stretched over the constant roar of the freeway traffic. I watched a car park next to the embankment before the bridge. Erma was shrieking at the top of her lungs until a dull thud stopped the noise. A huge man emerged from the back door of the sedan, looking left to right in the darkness. He pulled the woman out of the backseat and threw her over his shoulder like a duffle bag. I jumped from my perch above and landed only feet from the two of them. As usual, they couldn’t see me. This was a one-way mirror.

Erma came back to life and fought like I’ve never seen anyone fight. She swung at the giant for a good minute, tugging hair and scratching skin before he hefted her over the edge. She held the railings so hard that I could see the tendons in her wrists—Dr. Blaser, the medical examiner, once told me those tendons were called the palmaris longus.

The man watched Erma fall into the lanes of traffic. He chewed his gum as a truck rolled over one of her legs, only pressing on his brakes for a second, then moving on. The giant turned and walked back to the sedan. I rushed to see who was sitting in the front seat. I couldn’t make out much, except that there were three men inside. Three big men, but I managed to hear a voice.

“I told you to keep her out of this. This. This is on you.”