Unending Nora

Chapter 25

Julie Shigekuni 215 Chapter 25 Detective Gomez was the one who came for him. “You’re under arrest for aggravated assault in connection with the disappearance of Nora Yano,” he said, turning Joaquin around to cuff him after flashing his badge. A rainy Friday afternoon, winter had arrived with a vengeance. It seemed somehow appropriate that the front room of the house was dimly lit and the hall leading to the back almost black. Joaquin’s breath reeked of beer, his hair tousled and longer than before. It had taken him a full minute to answer the door. Had he been asleep? The detective reading him his rights was noting the hard-on bulging from his jeans when a woman presented herself in the hallway and the detective’s tone changed from brusque to sardonic. She wasn’t who he’d have expected, though he didn’t know why not. He’d seen all kinds of situations in his line of work, but the woman clinging to the doorframe didn’t come around often. Someone he’d consider going out with, she appeared confident . Dressed in a white tee-shirt that she’d hastily tucked into jeans, she looked like a college girl and her presence commanded attention. “What’s going on here?” she asked, pulling a mass of black hair off her pretty face. “What has he done?” “Who’s this, Joaquin? You got a thing for Asian women?” Sgt. Gomez wondered what he might have missed, and Joaquin ’s involvement with the woman in front of him, clearly not from the neighborhood, tugged at his thoughts. Unending Nora 216 “Sorry to end the fun, but your friend here is being arrested. If you don’t mind accompanying him to the station, we have some questions for you as well.” Noting the woman’s hesitancy, his partner added, “It won’t take long.” “Of course.” The woman looked frightened, sensing she didn’t have much of a choice about riding with Joaquin to the police station. “I need to get my purse,” she said, disappearing down the hall and returning with a fancy black shoulder bag. Gomez didn’t know if he believed the woman’s story, that she’d met Joaquin in a bar, that her acquaintance with him didn’t extend beyond that afternoon. But what she said would later be confirmed by the bartender of the Tavern, a local bar just off the 101 freeway. “I thought I told you to stay out of trouble.” Recalling Joaquin’s recent incarceration for DWI, Gomez stared across at Joaquin who kept blinking like his eyes refused adjust to the light. “Whatever.” Joaquin thought he might recognize the detective, though he couldn’t be sure of anything except for the pounding in his head that began the second the cops had arrived, and the dry, pasty feel of his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. “You know, we still haven’t found the body.” Gomez’s partner leaned back in his chair to show that he wouldn’t be moving any time soon, pausing to let his words take shape in Joaquin’s head. “You could really help us out by telling us what you did with it.” Curious as to what kind of turn the case had taken, Joaquin guessed they’d be explaining it to him, along with a bunch of other crap he’d rather not hear. Dealing with other people’s problems was a tedious process, like the time he sat up through the night with his boy at the emergency room, the paperwork and hours of holding his son’s limp body just so he could have a stick shoved down his throat and a bottle of pills to take home. But the comparison didn’t hold together. A defense attorney was brought in the next morning, just prior to Joaquin’s initial appearance in court. “Are you aware of the charges that have been brought against you?” he asked. After holding out his hand Julie Shigekuni 217 for Joaquin to shake, he was all business, flipping through the stack of papers without looking up. “The prosecution is arguing that you assaulted the defendant.” “Aggravated assault?” Joaquin laughed. So he’d fucked her a few times. Now she couldn’t stop fucking him. But he knew that that was just part of it. The detectives had wanted to scare him...