These Women Read online

  With no encouragement from Detective Perry, she launches into the story—the birds she’s found behind the fish shack and now the ones in her yard. “I’m being targeted.”

  To her surprise, Detective Perry seems to be writing it all down. Her fingers are racing across her noisy keyboard, clicking and backspacing.

  Dorian takes this as a sign to continue. She goes into more detail—describing the mental prowess of scrub jays, how they seem to know what other birds are thinking. How they hide food but only if they have stolen it from another bird. She talks about the navigational genius of hummingbirds.

  Detective Perry’s fingers freeze above the keyboard. The snap and clack of her gum ceases. “Dorian Williams, right?”

  Dorian’s certain she gave her maiden name. “Parkhurst?”

  “But you are Dorian Williams,” the detective says, meeting her eye for the first time. “Says it here.” She taps her computer screen. “Simple background check.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not,” Detective Perry says. She resumes typing. “It’s a health code violation. Dead animals in a commercial kitchen is a health code violation.” She lays off the keyboard and squints at her monitor. “Why do you think someone stops killing after thirteen victims? You think he finds God or some other kind of redemption?”

  For a moment Dorian thinks she’s misheard the detective. “Excuse me?”

  Detective Perry doesn’t look away from her monitor.

  For twenty-four hours Lecia’s death hasn’t given her a moment’s peace. And now here it is again, unbidden. Dorian shakes her head, trying to stick with the present, trying to hold on to her equilibrium. “I’m here about the birds,” she says.

  “Birds?”

  Dorian holds up the boxes. “Thirty-one hummingbirds and two jays.”

  The detective rubs the corner of one of her eyes. “What’s this about birds?”

  Dorian’s not sure she has the energy to go into it all again.

  “Someone’s poisoning them? That’s what you said?”

  “Right,” Dorian says, relieved not to have to repeat herself.

  Detective Perry snaps her gum. “There’s a reason they never caught the guy.”

  “What guy?” Dorian says. And here it is again.

  “The one who killed all those women back then.”

  All those women back then. Dorian takes a deep breath. “Lecia wasn’t like the other women.”

  Detective Perry leans closer to her monitor. “What matters is who killed her, not who she was.”

  “Both of those things matter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lecia was a mistake. I told you she wasn’t like the other women. He made a mistake killing her. That’s why he stopped.”

  Detective Perry glances up from her computer. “Someone told you this?”

  “No,” Dorian says. “It’s just the only thing that makes sense.”

  “The only thing that makes sense to you.”

  Dorian tries to hold her stare but the detective looks away. Who else should it make sense to? Who else matters besides Dorian? Who else cares?

  “Do you ever think about the person who killed your daughter?”

  Dorian opens her mouth to reply but Detective Perry cuts her off. “I mean as a person, not as a killer. Like what does he do? How does he spend his days? Does he like hamburgers or tacos? Does he watch baseball or football or maybe soccer? Does he drive a sedan? Is he in good shape? Does he put sugar in his coffee? Does he drink beer or liquor? Does he listen to the radio? What’s his email address? Does he recycle? What supermarket does he use?” She pauses to pat her brassy blond hair. “Or when you think about him, do you think about some kind of faceless evil incarnate? Some criminal mastermind who stole something from you and got away with it? A sociopath cobbled together from the nightmares of profilers and psychologists to satisfy their own shortcomings because they can’t find him?”

  “I stopped thinking about him years ago,” Dorian says. “What he’s like doesn’t matter. Not to me. Clearly not to the LAPD. All that matters is Lecia.” And all that matters is that the past stays put. All that matters is that it not gate-crash her every day. But these last few days that has seemed impossible, as if that whole history is out to get her, as if her mind is threatening to shake off its delicate reality.

  “This guy, you wouldn’t notice him on the bus.” The detective returns to her monitor, still punishing her gum. “It’s a guy thing, that way of thinking. They need their foe to be their equal. All the detectives you talked to back then were male?”

  Dorian doesn’t want to reach back to the countless interviews, the endless appeals to the Southwest Station, the frustrations and dead ends. “Yes,” she says, “all men. Not one cared that Lecia was different.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “She was his last victim. She had to be different.”

  “You keep the birds,” Detective Perry says.

  The swing catches Dorian off guard.

  Detective Perry taps the topmost box with a pencil. “In there,” she prompts.

  “Yes,” Dorian says, snapping back to the present day. “They’re in there.”

  The detective doesn’t seem to think that there’s anything odd about thirty-three dead birds on her desk. She taps the box with her pencil again, then peers at her monitor. “Hummingbirds and jays?”

  “Exactly,” Dorian replies. “Mostly at my restaurant but now at my house, too. I think someone is trying to send me a message.”

  “Why would anyone want to send you a message?”

  Dorian fumbles for a reply.

  “Leave them.” Detective Perry spits out her gum and unwraps another piece. She stands and holds out her hands for the shoeboxes. She opens the bottom drawer of her desk and places them inside. Dorian winces, waiting for her to bang the drawer shut, but she slides it in place carefully. “We’ll be in touch,” the detective says. She doesn’t offer Dorian her hand. She doesn’t meet her eye. She’s already back in her seat, lost in her monitor.

  Dorian glances around the station.

  Dear Idira, Let me tell you something that I know from experience. You’re going to keep shouting, but no one’s going to listen. It’s their job not to listen. To listen would mean that you matter, but you don’t. You’re just a problem, one that will eventually go away. I did. I went away. I made myself scarce, because I couldn’t take the do-nothingness, the brush-offs, the anger at my own anger. I had become a problem on top of the problem of my daughter’s death. So I shut up. You think it will be difficult, impossible. You think you’ll never get used to it. But you do, because all that rage is exhausting. You need something left for yourself when it’s over.

  She clears her throat. “I suppose it’s going to be the same old thing,” she says. “Hear my story but don’t listen to it.” Her voice is louder than she expected. “Take the easy way out, hope this blows over, goes away. Hope there’s nothing you have to do about it.” She’s on her feet. “And hope whoever’s killing these birds will just stop. Or be hauled in for something else. Or even better, maybe I’ll just stop caring that they’re dead and that it’s okay you’re not doing your job.” She bangs a hand on the metal desk.

  Detective Perry looks up, a strange expression on her face like she’d been somewhere else. “I heard you. Lecia wasn’t a prostitute,” she says.

  Dorian stares at her. But the detective is back at her computer screen, her brow furrowed. When Dorian walks off, she doesn’t even look up.

  THE SHIFT IS CHANGING—cops coming and going. Radios crackle. Someone is brewing a pot of coffee that already smells burned. It looks like it was a bad night in Southwest. Several officers from the late show are still wrapping up business—their eyes bloodshot, their faces heavy. Dorian’s almost at the door that leads to the sergeant’s desk when she hears her name, or thinks she does.

  “Dorian Williams?”

  She turns. It takes her a moment to realize what
she’s seeing. For the second time in twenty-four hours, it’s Lecia in front of her, in the flesh, not returned as a ghost. The feeling upends her. She grabs for the nearest desk and steadies herself.

  “Dorian, you okay?”

  Julianna again. Right there. Right in front of her. Her long orange hair—Lecia’s hair—tumbled over her shoulders as she slumps on the bad side of a booking desk.

  “Julianna?”

  Julianna’s wearing last night’s clothes, tight, high-waisted black jeans, a stretchy teal crop top, shoes that you wouldn’t think you could walk a city block in. On her lap she’s holding a shiny pink bomber jacket made out of some kind of flammable-looking material.

  “You’re up early,” Julianna says in her singsong lilt that’s a little slurred.

  “And you’re up late.”

  “Had my choice, I’d have been home in bed hours ago, fuzzy pajamas and all,” Julianna says. “Maybe a little TV. Some hot cocoa. But that pendejo had other plans.”

  She gestures at a detective crossing the room with two cups of coffee. She’s still a little high. That’s pretty clear from the way she widens her eyes and bobs her head at the end of her sentences.

  “They think they can keep me here all night just for trying to enjoy myself.”

  “Is that what you were doing?” Dorian asks.

  Julianna gives her a wide smile. She’s so beautiful Dorian wants to smack her for all the crap she’s done to herself—the dyed hair, the cartoonish makeup, the ridiculous clothes. “What else would I be doing?” There’s a challenge in the question. Julianna nods her head a few times, waiting for Dorian to rise to it.

  The detective with the coffee reaches the desk.

  Julianna takes her cup. Her nails are done in an array of pinks with tiny purple flowers. There is a minuscule gold ring dangling from the tip of her index finger. Tattoos are inked on her arms—a broken heart, a zodiac sign, a couple of words in Spanish, a few names, and a rose.

  “With three sugars, how I like it?” she asks.

  “You’ll like it how I make it,” the detective says. Then he notices Dorian. “This a friend of yours?”

  “We go way back,” Julianna says.

  The officer looks at Dorian. “You’re taking her home?”

  “I didn’t even know she was here,” Dorian says.

  “She’s lucky she’s not being booked for an overnight in Seventy-Seventh Street with the rest of her friends,” the detective says.

  Dorian knows Seventy-Seventh Street. It catches the overflow from the stations that don’t have their own jails as well as from Southwest Station, which can’t accommodate women in its lockup.

  “What friends are these?” Dorian asks.

  Julianna shakes her head and lets out a slow, nasty laugh. “No, no, no. Don’t mother me. Don’t start thinking I need anyone’s help. That I need yours. Don’t go thinking like I know you’re thinking. It was just a little llelo. Keeps it real. Keeps me on my feet all night.”

  Dorian doesn’t want to ask, but she can’t help herself. “And why do you need to be on your feet?”

  “Because I was at a party.” Julianna snaps her fingers and sways her head side to side. “I needed to cut loose, you know. I needed to dance. And sometimes, I need a little help. It makes the music jump.”

  “Just under a half gram of help,” the detective says. “Anything more and you’d be joining your girls over at the jail.”

  “How come you arrested my girls and none of the other messed-up bitches at the party? All those USC sorority chicas were rolling and you just tell them to get home safe. Probably called them a cab. Bet you would have given them a police escort if you weren’t too busy dragging me and my girls in.”

  “You and your girls are on our radar,” the detective says.

  “Because we’re nasty bitches who know how to party?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Come on, Detective, we’re just a couple of cocktail waitresses having some fun. Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”

  “Cocktail waitresses,” the detective says.

  “Detective, do you have a problem with how I make my living?”

  “You know I do.”

  “Come on down to the Fast Rabbit. First round’s on the house,” Julianna says.

  The detective blows on his coffee and glances at Dorian. “She can leave with you if you want. Otherwise she’ll have to stay until she’s sober.”

  “So you’re calling me a babysitter.”

  “Do you want to leave or not?” the detective says.

  Julianna looks around the room like there actually might be something worth sticking around for, then shakes her head. “I wouldn’t want to waste the day, now.”

  She stands up, makes a show of putting on her jacket, tossing and retying her hair. The detective hands her a slip of paper. “Don’t forget to show up. Miss your court date, this misdemeanor is going to get a whole lot worse.”

  “It’s a date,” Julianna says, blowing him a kiss.

  She saunters past Dorian and out the door.

  Outside, Dorian has to blink several times to adjust to the sun.

  Julianna pulls a pair of sunglasses from her purse, then keeps riffling through the bag. “I guess smoking’s a crime now too.” She dumps her bag out onto the station’s steps. “Took my Newports.”

  “It’s not a crime but it’s a bad habit.”

  Julianna squats and scrapes her stuff back into her purse. “You think I need a lecture on top of all that shit in there?” She zips the bag and flings it over her shoulder. But she doesn’t stand. The effort seems to have exhausted her. Instead she rests her head on her knees, her sass and venom gone.

  Dorian sits next to her and places a hand on her back. She closes her eyes and for a moment allows herself to imagine it’s Lecia’s back beneath her palm, not Julianna’s.

  Dorian can smell the late night on Julianna—the sweat mixed with baby powder, perfume, cigarettes, booze, and the strange sweet smell that leaks from the pores of people who use too many speedy drugs, a chemical sugary tang.

  Julianna coughs and Dorian feels the rattle in her lungs.

  What happened to the little girl Lecia would bring over after school and plop on the carpet while she got out her old toys? The little girl she introduced to her scratched dolls, her chipped tea set, her windup television that played “Row Row Row Your Boat”? What happened to the kid Lecia and Dorian taught all the games and songs that they’d played for years? She was somewhere inside this hard-partying Jujubee, hidden behind the makeup and the tattoos—the little girl Lecia started babysitting for next to nothing after discovering her playing alone in a playground one summer afternoon.

  Julianna coughs again and slides forward a little more.

  Dorian keeps rubbing her back anyway, trying to buff away last night and all the others that came before it.

  “Julianna.”

  Julianna stands up, knocking away Dorian’s hand. “I need to get some new smokes. I need a shower and a Diet Coke.”

  “How about breakfast?”

  5.

  JACK’S FAMILY KITCHEN IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER FROM the station on Western. Julianna’s all sass and swagger, tossing her hair and strutting the short distance to the restaurant. But when she takes off her sunglasses at the table, Dorian can see the weariness in her eyes—the whites tinged with red, the dark shadows underneath.

  Dorian’s not really hungry, but she orders large to inspire Julianna—eggs, chicken sausage, biscuits, salmon croquettes, and chicken wings. The waitress brings her a coffee and a water for Julianna.

  Julianna scans the restaurant, seeing no one she knows or no one of interest. “You’re hanging out at the station now?”

  “Julianna, you’re a beautiful woman, you need to be careful.”

  Julianna rolls her eyes. “Not this shit again.”

  “When was the last time anyone told you to be careful?” Dorian says.

  “Wh
o says I’m not careful?” The last hint of brassy energy has vanished from Julianna’s voice. She sounds plain worn. “I’m not the one who lost a kid.” Dorian imagines Julianna would be ashamed of her words, but she holds Dorian’s stare, challenging her for the reprimand.

  Dear Idira.

  “What’s that?”

  Had Dorian said it aloud?

  Dear Idira, They’ll try to tell you you were careless. They will say the most hurtful things because you’ve already been through the worst. They think you can handle it, that you need to hear it. That you are either tough enough because of what happened or that you need to get tougher, hear the hard truths. But there’s nothing you can do. You just listen. You ignore. You turn in and away.

  “Where are you living now?” Dorian asks.

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Do you ever go home?”

  “Fuck that shit. Some girls and I have a place down by the Rabbit, down on Forty-Seventh. But it’s hectic. Too many ladies. So I move around. Here, there. Home, if you really need to know. Can’t be tied down.”

  There’s a second when Dorian envies Julianna’s attitude. Because if there’s one thing Dorian is, it’s tied down. Tied to the fish shack. Tied to Lecia’s memory. Tied to the women on Western she needs to feed.

  “I know,” Dorian says.

  But Dorian also knows the Fast Rabbit—a cocktail bar down Western from the Snooty Fox and the Mustang Motel where the luckier girls take their customers. The bar is rumored to have a back room where the cocktail waitresses make big tips.

  “Life’s too short to be tied down by bills and rent and all that shit.”

  Dorian’s certain that Julianna has no idea how short life can really be, and if she does, she’s not paying attention. One day you can be getting dressed for work, slicking your hair, tightening your curls, lining your lips, and quarreling with your girlfriends over who’s going to wear the pink halter top. One day you can be heading out the door for your weekly babysitting gig. And the next you’re lying in an alley or worse.

  “Too short,” Dorian says. “For sure.”

  If Julianna catches her meaning, she doesn’t show it.

  Their food comes—too many plates for the table. Dorian digs in, although fried food apart from hers never appeals. Julianna picks at her plate, eating like someone who’s hungry but whose stomach is troubled. She takes a bite of a salmon croquette, then pushes it away.