Clown Girl - Monica Drake [87]
He said, “Relax.”
OK.A prisoner in custody would ride in back. I got it, that was my role in the shtick. I lay across the seat and rested my head on the scorched Pendulous Breasts, two big, leaking pillows. The seat smelled like the K-9 unit, animal and damp.
“I have a fever,” I said.
Jerrod drove through the sprawling acres, the endless prairie, of the hospital’s lot. He said, “You’ll be fine. I’m taking you over to the evidence room.”
What was that? I sat up fast. The bunched Ass held me at a cocked angle. “So now I’m evidence?” I pushed against the iron grating that separated the front and back seats, and tried to right myself. “Thought you’d take me home.”
He said, “That too. Maybe. First, we’re holding some evidence you’d be interested in.”
“Evidence of what?”
Through the metal grating, in the rearview mirror, his lips parted. “It’s a surprise.”
So he had evidence of my arson effort, my Big Girl Suit, Herman’s pot plants in our shed? Maybe he had the juggling torches, the turp can, a melted wig, charred grass. I was a dog on the way to the pound, the perp with the turp. “I don’t know if a cop springing evidence on me is the kind of surprise I need.” The snaps at the crotch of the Fabulous Ass chafed my sweaty thighs. Ash residue was like minute shards of glass caught in the elastic at my elbows and waist.
Jerrod rolled his window down.
I wanted evidence of my own bed, and a cool shower. I’d been up for a day and a half, through the fire and out again—reborn by fire, a Hopi Indian yellow clown might say. I reached inside my pants with both hands.
“What’re you doing back there?”
The IV works in the back of my hand snagged. My throbbing arms were sticky with ointment. Jerrod’s eyes darted back and forth in the rearview, between me and the street, me and the street.
“Eyes on the road.” I tugged at the crotch snaps on the Fabulous Ass. Jerrod looked at me in the mirror again. I said, “OK, if that’s how you want it, watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat. A bra down the sleeve, roast beef from a deli case.” I tugged, the snaps gave, and my hands slapped against the inside of my pants. With a wiggle and a shove, I pulled the Fab Ass out past the waistband. “Ta da!” I dropped it on the floor, fluffed the burnt pillow of the Pendulous Breasts, lay across the seat, and closed my eyes.
THE EVIDENCE ROOM WAS A WHOLE CINDER BLOCK WAREHOUSE behind an abandoned grocery. We drove down the alley and parked in front of an unmarked door.
“This is what they call the Annex. There’s Impounded Cars.” Jerrod pointed to a narrow, gated parking lot between buildings.
One long white car in front had the windshield broken out and doors pocked by bullets. Walking without the sandbag weight of the Ass for the first time in hours, I was light as an astronaut. I made my way toward the car corral barefoot over rocky macadam, free of the big shoes.
“I’ll warn you, the cars get grisly. Baby seats, flattened roofs, things you don’t want to have on your mind.” He bent to work his key in the lock in the shadow of the doorway. “That white sedan was a high-speed chase. Maybe you saw it on the news.”
“I don’t watch the news.” A silver cross on a piece of yarn dangled and glinted from the sedan’s mirror; the car itself was a white ghost.
The evidence room was huge and dark until Jerrod flipped a switch to bring it all into full color. Everything was under plastic, with yellow tape and orange labels.
“Check this out.” He pointed to a plastic-wrapped door that’d been taken off its hinges. “Bullet holes from both sides.” He lifted the door away from where it leaned against a wall. “A big drug bust, about six blocks from here. That shoot-out didn’t even make the news.” He held the blown-to-bits door in his hands and dropped the weight back and forth to look at one side, then the other. “And look at these locks.” He ran his hand over the plastic, over a row of dead bolts and sliders. “They knew somebody’d be coming.”
The cement floor was cool and smooth under my bare feet. I brushed a finger over the door’s ragged metal