Phoebe’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t smoke, do you?”
“No.” I hadn’t snitched since January, when a steely eyed cab driver refused to give me a smoke because his wife of forty-eight years had died of emphysema. I could learn from other people’s lessons. That was what I told myself.
Quitting smoking had nothing to do with the crushing sensation of being unable to breathe from having a sword stuffed through my lung. I told myself that, too. It turned out myself was a skeptical bitch and didn’t believe me. Even so, I tried hard not to think about the truth: that the sword had been wielded by a Celtic god, and in a shadowland between life and death, a Native American trickster called Coyote offered me a choice between the two.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I chose a life and became a shaman. I felt that coil of energy bubble up again inside of me, and squelched it. There was no one around who needed healing right now. Nobody but myself, anyway, and I didn’t deny I had a lot of self-healing to do.
Actually, I denied it all the time. Which was part of why I was learning to fence, instead of sitting somewhere quietly, as Coyote would like me to, focusing on my inner turmoil and getting it all sorted out. Inner turmoil could wait, as far as I was concerned. External turmoil seemed inclined to stick me with pointy things or otherwise try to do me in. Under those circumstances, I figured learning how to parry was a much better use of my time than fussing over things I’d rather let lie.
I rolled my shoulders, pushing the thoughts away. “It wasn’t cancer. Sort of more hereditary. It’s fine now. Just kind of bugs me sometimes. I think it’s mostly mental.” I knew it was mostly mental. I didn’t even have a scar.
“Is that why you started coming here?” she wondered. “A lot of people find martial arts to be a great way to center themselves after they’ve had a life-changing experience.”
I ducked my chin and let out a breathy laugh. “Something like that, yeah. Plus I could use the exercise.”
“I thought cops were supposed to be in good shape.”
I looked back up through my eyebrows. “Don’t know many cops, do you? Speaking of which, I better hit the shower and get to work. Thanks for the lesson, Phoebe.” I headed for the locker room, Phoebe taking the lead and holding the door for me.
“My pleasure. I like beating up on the big girls. Makes me feel all studly.”
“You are all studly. And you’re not that small.”
“Compared to you I am.”
“Compared to me Arnold Schwartznegger is small.”
Phoebe laughed out loud. “You’re not that big.”
I grinned as I struggled out of my tunic. I was pretty sure it had a secret mission in life to strangle me as I undressed. “Nah. I lack the shoulders.” Phoebe turned the showers on, drowning out anything else I might say. Once I got loose of the tunic, I followed her, standing to the side while the pins-and-needles water pelted from cold to too hot.
The beauty of university showers is that they never run out of hot water. I stood there, leaning my forehead against the wall, until my skin turned boiled lobster-red. Phoebe turned her shower off with a squeak of faucets, and in the fashion of community showers everywhere, the water in mine got significantly hotter. Turning it down didn’t help. That was the flip side of never running out of hot water: the only way I’d ever found to keep a public shower from being too hot was to run more than one at a time. “Ow. Turn that back on, would you?”
“Sorry.” The faucets squeaked again and after a few seconds my shower faded back to a bearable heat. Water lapped over the top of my feet, and I pushed away from the wall with another groan, listening to Phoebe slosh to the drying area.
“Thanks.” I reached for my shampoo, scrubbing a palmful through my hair. If I weren’t so fond of standing mindlessly in the hot water, it would only take me about thirty seconds to shower. A minute and a half if I used conditioner, which my hair was too short to bother with except occasionally. But I wasn’t quite late for work, so I luxuriated in the heat. Water crept up around my ankles. “I think the drain’s plugged.”
“Check,” Phoebe said. “I’ll call maintenance if it is.”
“Okay.” I rinsed my hair, turned the water off, and wrapped a towel around myself as I slogged through the shower room in search of the drain.
Two stalls down from me, a naked black girl, her skin ashy blue with death, lay with her hip fitted neatly in the hollow of the drain.
CHAPTER TWO
“Phoebe,” I said, amazed at how calm my voice was, “call the cops.”
“You are the cops,” she said. I could hear the grin in her voice in the suddenly echoing shower room.
“Phoebe!”
“Yow, okay, what’s wrong?” Phoebe didn’t call the cops. She splashed back through the showers, rewetting her feet. “What’s wrong, Joanne?”
“There’s a dead girl in the shower,” I said, still very calmly. “Please go call the police, Phoebe.”
“There’s what?!” Phoebe looked around the edge of the shower stall and went pale under her olive skin. “Oh my God. Oh my God, we have to do something!” She surged forward. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.
“We have to call the cops,” I repeated. “She’s dead, Phoebe. Look at her color. There’s nothing we can do. We shouldn’t touch her.”
“You are the cops!”
“I’m also the one who found the body. Again,” I added in a mutter.
“Again?” Phoebe’s voice rose and broke.
“I found a murder victim in January,” I said. My boss was going find a way to blame me for this. He was convinced I lived out each day with the deliberate intention to piss him off. Some days he was right, but it hadn’t been in my game plan today. I didn’t get up at five in the morning to volunteer at protests with irritating my boss in mind. Rather the opposite, in fact, not that I’d admit that out loud.
I took Phoebe’s other shoulder and steered her away from the body. “Shouldn’t we at least check to make sure she’s dead?” she demanded, voice rising. I exhaled, nice and slow.
“She’s dead, Phoebe. Look, okay.” I let her go and waded to the dead girl. She looked like she’d been posed for a photograph, her back against the tile wall, her bottom leg and arm stretched out long and her top leg folded gracefully forward into the water, bent at the knee. Her head was thrown back, slender neck exposed, as if she were laughing without inhibition. The edge of the drain was just barely visible beneath her hip, all of the drain holes covered. I wondered who would take that kind of picture, then remembered that if nobody else would, the police photographer would have to do the job.
“Christ.” I crouched and pressed two fingers against her neck, below her jaw. She was on the cool side of lukewarm, the skin pliant, and had no pulse. I tried a second time, then a third, shifting my fingers slightly. “She’s dead, Phoebe.” I stood up again, wiping my fingers against my towel. I’d never touched a dead body before. It hadn’t felt like I expected it to. “Go call the cops.”
“What’re you going to do?” Phoebe’s voice trembled as she backed away, water splashing around her ankles.
“I’m going to go get dressed.” I turned to follow Phoebe, who continued to back up, still staring at the dead girl. “Watch where you’re go—”
I lunged, too late. Phoebe’s heel caught the curb of the shower area and her feet slid out from under her, kicking water into my eyes. My fingers closed on empty air as she shrieked and crashed to the tile floor with a painful crack. My own feet slid on the wet tiles and for a moment I thought I’d