First Avenue Read online

  “Who knows what some people think?”

  “She’d have to be awfully sick to do that.”

  “There are plenty of sick people around here.”

  “I guess so. I’m getting the names of everybody on this floor. Nobody knows much, not yet anyway. Hennessey is taking a statement from the manager. Murphy is getting one from the old woman who notified the manager. She’s so drunk I’m not sure what we’ll get, but she lived next door and heard the baby crying—sounds like for days. Then she noticed the smell.”

  “Jesus Christ,” the sergeant muttered, shaking his head slowly, uttering a curse that was a prayer at the same time.

  There were footsteps on the stairway, and they both turned to look at Hennessey coming up the last few steps.

  “Take a look at this,” Hennessey said, holding up a sheet of paper. “Can you believe they actually fill out a rental application in this dump? Look where our Miss Sanchez worked.”

  Sam took the paper from him and skimmed down to the employment line.

  “The Donut Shop. She worked for that son of a bitch, Pierre. Alberta Sanchez. I know who she is,” Sam said. “Do you know the girl?”

  “I don’t get to know these people,” Hennessey said.

  “I’ve seen the baby, too,” Sam said, passing over Hennessey’s remark. “I even held her once. Jesus, that’s the one.”

  Not more than a few weeks before he had been standing at the window inside the Donut Shop looking out at the street when Alberta had come to the door. As he remembered, she had gotten part of the day off. She had a grocery bag from the Market in one arm and the baby in the other. He had hurried over and opened the door for her. That was all he had done, and yet she had seemed so surprised, so touched. He told her how pretty her baby looked with her pink cap pulled down over her ears. Alberta asked if he wanted to hold her. He forgot for a moment that he was in Pierre’s dirty little donut shop at First Avenue and Pike Street and awkwardly held the little girl, holding her away from his gun belt and bulletproof vest, smiling and trying to get a smile in return. He remembered Alberta’s face, the brief happiness of a mother whose child has cast her amnesiac spell over another adult. Alberta was not like the others in the Donut Shop who were afraid to say anything to him, who slinked into the corners whenever he walked in the door. Then he remembered the baby’s smile and the uncompromising delight in her eyes.

  Sam also remembered Pierre at the cash register, staring, even when he handed the baby back—staring with open hatred, not trying to conceal it with his usual fake smile. Hate all you want, you bastard, he had thought, but Alberta handed me this baby and I made her smile. The anger rose in him again as he remembered Pierre’s face. He wished he could hold on to that anger until he was out of this hallway, out of this run-down hotel, away from this street, but the anger melted away and he was left with the nearly weightless impression of the child.

  Why had Alberta given him her baby? Maybe she had forgotten his blue uniform for a moment. Maybe she had looked only at his face, or maybe she didn’t care. And the father? Who was he? Where was he? How could a father leave the mother and child in a place like this? He could answer none of his own questions. He knew only that Alberta had not abandoned her baby.

  When the sergeant left, the three of them stood by the stairs and waited for the detectives. Sam could have begun his report, but the hallway was too dark and oppressive to think.

  It was a half hour before the two detectives arrived. They had been called from home, from comfortable beds. Sam knew Markowitz well, the older of the two detectives. He didn’t know the other one. While Markowitz looked as if he had just gotten up and thrown on a pair of pants, the other detective was trim in his new suit and neatly brushed hair. He had an evidence case in one hand and a camera in the other. He didn’t have time for introductions.

  “Which room is it?” he asked Hennessey.

  “Four-oh-three.”

  The detective went to 403 and put his case on the floor. The others followed. He tried to open the door.

  “Anybody got a key?” Unless Sam was mistaken, there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice. There was a touch of something that grated.

  Sam fished in his pocket and pulled out the set of keys. He selected the one for 403 and let the others dangle from the key ring. He handed the keys to Markowitz.

  “The girl who lived here worked at the Donut Shop at First and Pike,” he told Markowitz, who had time to listen. “A lousy place, but the girl seemed okay. I talked to her a few times there. I haven’t seen her for about three weeks. It’s her baby in the room. A little girl. She’s been there quite a while. We have statements from the manager and the woman who called it in, and I have the names of the people who live on this floor. Nobody saw or heard anything. Just Hennessey and the sergeant and I have been in the room. Hennessey opened the window, but we didn’t touch anything else.”

  “Are you working plainclothes now?” Markowitz asked.

  “No. First Watch. Hennessey and Murphy had just picked me up and were giving me a lift to the station when the call came in. I’m handling the paper so they can get out of here.”

  “That’s a good idea for all of us,” said the other detective, still waiting for the door to be unlocked.

  Markowitz chuckled softly. “Jim likes these wake-up calls. He just came over from Auto Theft.”

  Jim did not share Markowitz’s humor or else did not appreciate that he was labeled the new guy.

  “Do you want us to wait for the coroner?” Sam asked.

  “Damn right,” Jim said. “They might be in Mukilteo for all we know.”

  “Mukilteo is in Snohomish County, Jim,” Markowitz said, his patience fraying a little. “We’d appreciate it if you would,” he told Sam.

  “No problem,” Sam said. “I’ll call them right now.”

  The coroners were not in Mukilteo or anywhere far away and arrived long before the detectives finished. When the coroners saw their mission, they returned to their van and brought back only a black rubber bag, leaving their stretcher behind. They folded the heavy rubber bag in half, and the older of the two men carried the tiny body down the stairs. Even folded in half, the bag was still too big.

  It was nearly seven o’clock when Sam, Katherine, and Hennessey walked out of the hotel. Daylight had come while they were inside. Sam blinked his eyes rapidly to adjust to the bright, harsh, inhospitable light.

  Katherine drove south on First Avenue. Sam watched a small group of pedestrians start against a red light but step back onto the curb when they saw the police car approaching from the north. Some in the group laughed nervously as though caught in a prank.

  “Where do you suppose all these people are going?” he asked nobody.

  Hennessey looked at him with a puzzled face. Sam saw it but chose not to repeat his question, which was not meant to be answered. He saw Hennessey turn back to the front and raise his eyebrows to Katherine in a way that clearly showed what he thought. Sam turned his head even farther so he would not see her response.

  “I don’t mind doing the report,” Katherine said as she looked back over the car seat at him and pulled his attention away from the street.

  “No,” Sam said. “You guys turn in your statements and shove off. You’ve had a long night already.”

  “It was our call,” Katherine said. “I’m not tired anyway.”

  “I am,” Hennessey said. “Damn, I forgot to call my wife. You know, you guys are lucky you don’t have to account for every minute of your life. Hey, so there wasn’t a phone there, right?”

  “There was one in the hallway,” Katherine said.

  “What? In that fleabag joint? Not possible.”

  At the station Sam began the report. He tried to remember the baby’s name. Alberta had told him the name the day he held the baby. He was usually good with names, but it wouldn’t come to him. The detectives may have found the baby’s name written on some form, but he had not thought to get it from them. It didn
’t matter anyway—not for his report. Still he sat for the longest time in front of the manual Royal typewriter and tried to remember. He called the victim “Baby Sanchez.”

  The report was simple, hardly different in form from any of the hundreds of other reports that would be written that day—easier in some ways because the detectives had gathered and marked all the evidence. There were no suspects to list, although it took half a page to list all the witnesses, or non-witnesses, who saw nothing and heard nothing and knew nothing except for one drunken woman who could no longer stand the smell.

  It took longer to write the officer’s statement. What he saw and what he did were the easy parts. What he thought was something altogether different. The officer’s statement was the place to say what he thought as long as it made sense. He believed the child had not been intentionally abandoned, that there was another reason for the mother’s disappearance even if she had not shown up yet as a name in the coroner’s files. Why? Because she washed her dishes? Because she had handed her baby once to a cop for a few minutes and had looked on with such pleasure and fondness that it was inconceivable she would voluntarily turn away from her child? But living in that room with a baby? He heard the doubts of those who would later read his statement and wondered if he should doubt, also.

  “It is my opinion,” he hammered on the old sticking typewriter keys, “based upon my previous observations of the mother and victim, that the mother, Alberta Sanchez, did not voluntarily abandon her baby.”

  He tore the page out of the typewriter and almost hit Katherine on the nose. She was bent over his shoulder and had been reading as he typed.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know you were that close,” he said.

  “That’s okay,” she said.

  He signed the statement and put it on top of the stack of papers he had assembled. Katherine didn’t move and looked down at the paper on the table. He slid his chair sideways so he could see her.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “It got to you, too, didn’t it?”

  They were alone in the report room. She should have left by now.

  “It gets to everybody.”

  “How can something like this happen? We were in that tavern last night below the baby’s room, and I remember laughing about something as we walked out. We were down below talking and laughing and going to one nothing call after another, and that baby upstairs is crying and crying and crying. And we can’t hear it,” she said.

  Her voice was unsteady, and he was afraid she might cry.

  “The baby had been dead for a long time, Kat. It wasn’t crying last night. You couldn’t have heard anything.”

  “I know that. That wasn’t what I meant.”

  He knew what could happen if she started thinking about herself as part of the whole cycle. What could she do? What could any of them do? Walk into every hallway, every night, listening for babies crying? If you were going to survive, you had to shield yourself from it with leather gloves and a shiny badge and an impenetrable face. Most of the time, anyway.

  “Well, look,” he said, deciding to keep his advice to himself. “We’ve had it for today. What do you say we go someplace and get a good stiff drink? It’s after nine o’clock,” he said, checking his wristwatch. “It’s okay to have a drink after nine. Wright’s law.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, her face brightening a little. “Where shall we go?”

  “How about my place? You can give me a ride home. I’m going to skip early.”

  “What about your boat?”

  “The kayak? I’ll leave it on the dock. I’m not in the mood for paddling. Why don’t you change while I get this stuff signed. By the way, Kat,” he said, knowing he didn’t want to say it, “you probably don’t want to leave your uniform in the locker.”

  She looked down at her blue gabardine shirt as the brightness faded from her face, then nodded slowly in agreement. He should have kept his mouth shut.

  “I wish I could take a shower,” she said.

  “Go ahead. I don’t mind waiting.”

  “No towel. I never thought I might need one.”

  He unzipped his bag, pulled out a towel, and tossed it to her.

  “I’ll wait for you here.”

  “You sure you don’t want to use it?”

  “I’ll wait until I get home. Go ahead. It’s all right.”

  “Thanks. I’ll hurry,” she said, and she was hurrying already as she went out the door to the locker room.

  His sergeant was in the patrol office waiting for the paperwork to be brought to him. Sam placed the slim stack in front of him and sat down in a chair beside the sergeant’s desk. The reading glasses that rested low on the sergeant’s nose made the old veteran look scholarly. When he wanted to look at Sam, he lowered his head a little more and peered over his glasses. He took them off and stuck one of the bows into his mouth.

  “So, you’re sure we’ve got two homicides here?”

  “I think that’s likely.”

  “Likely.” The sergeant repeated Sam’s word, not as a question, and not as a statement either. “You knew this Alberta pretty well?”

  “I knew her a little.”

  “Don’t you think you could just walk upstairs and give the detectives the benefit of your opinion? You’re kind of telling them here what they should do. They don’t usually like that. What if you’re wrong about the mother?”

  “Then I’m wrong. It’s no big deal.”

  “Maybe. So why not let them find her first? They’ll be looking for her anyway.”

  “They might not look in the right places. I think it should be written down. It seems like we owe her that much.”

  The sergeant nodded his head, the contour of his mouth slowly revealing a decision. He signed the report and handed the papers to Sam.

  “Drop them in the box, will you?”

  “Thanks, Sarge. Mind if I take a few hours of comp time? It feels kind of late to hit the streets.”

  The sergeant looked at the round wall clock above the door.

  “Don’t worry about the comp time. Give it back to me later.”

  Sam waited for Katherine in the report room. He propped his worn tennis shoes on top of the table and shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights overhead. The dark green chair on which he sat and the table beneath his shoes had not changed in the fifteen years he had assembled reports here, and the walls were the same lime color they had always been. Somebody had been fond of green. The typewriters had not changed either, and it was difficult to find one that had both a ribbon that printed legibly and keys that didn’t stick. This morning it was a particularly dreary place. He had heard that there were plans to remodel the whole building, to bring it up with the times and make it more efficient. It was said they were going to use soothing colors in the holding rooms to make the prisoners easier to handle. He thought they should use the same colors in the report room.

  Fifteen years ago he had not thought about colors in the police department. He had not thought about much of anything. The police job was only to be a temporary fill-in until he decided what he was really going to do. When he was twenty-one, nobody could have told him how quickly thirty-six comes, how time would stumble forward, day by day, paycheck by paycheck, until one day he would find himself wondering why he was still around.

  It was more interesting, he remembered—those first years back in the early seventies when he took literature classes at the university during the day and stood against his fellow students on the streets at night. He remembered the riot gear, the plastic shield of his helmet, and the long ironwood riot stick. With that stick he could block a blow aimed at him or strike one if necessary—maybe even if not so necessary. Cracking books by day and heads by night, he was quite certain then he could travel in both circles and not be touched by either. During that strange time, it did not seem strange that in neither circle could he admit he was in the other.

  The divisions were not as clear anymore.
There were no lines of men in blue—there were only men then—and angry crowds in paisley. And it was a good thing. None of them, neither side, could have stood it much longer. Still he realized that he missed the feeling that came with it—a feeling that he was somehow special. “Special?” he asked aloud. He looked around to make sure there was no one to answer, then snorted and leaned back in the green swivel chair and stared up at the seasick green ceiling.

  When Katherine returned, her wet hair was shiny and flat against her scalp, and her face had regained some of its color. She was pretty out of uniform, he thought. She was pretty enough in it.

  “I’ll wash this and bring it back to you,” she said, meaning the towel under her arm.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “I want to. I think you saved my life. I can’t believe how much better I feel.”

  “You look like a million.”

  “I look like a drowned rat.”

  “Hardly. What do you say we get out of here?”

  They walked through the garage to Cherry Street and then up the steep hill toward the freeway that separated the downtown from the neighboring hill above it. There was free parking beyond the freeway underpass, and the cops working headquarters laid claim to it with one shift slipping in when the previous one left. Their steps became slow and exaggerated as they climbed the hill, and each began to reach deeper for breath. The sunshine was in their faces.

  It was September weather, and he especially liked Septembers. There was something left of summer, but the air was sharper in the mornings and gave notice to prepare for winter. He had nothing to prepare. Still the warm afternoons of September seemed like a time of grace.

  He lived a few miles northwest of downtown. The street to his house dropped precipitously from the arterial road and passed new big homes carved into the hillside. Each of the new houses stretched for a glimpse of Elliott Bay that began at the end of the road. His house was on the beach, one of a dozen or so built as summer houses in a protected cove back in a time when the three-mile trip to Magnolia Bluff was an excursion out of the city.

  “What a great place!” she said when she turned into his driveway off the remaining single lane.