The Nitrogen Murder(10)

It was difficult to ply my trade in front of Matt, but I wasn’t deterred.

“I know you’ve told me, but what exactly does Phil do again?” I asked Elaine. A casual question while sipping from a dainty glass.

“I don’t know much about it, except that it’s classified and has something to do with nitrogen.” Elaine smiled, lifting her eyebrows slightly. “I suppose you’ll want to tell us all about nitrogen, Gloria.”

“Yeah, Gloria, what should we know about nitrogen?” Matt asked.

“It’s the N in TNT,” I said, and took another sip of my drink.





CHA PTER FOUR

Dana leaned over the basin of her bathroom sink and looked down into the bowl. She studied the chipped porcelain, the rust rings around the drain, a curvy black crack radiating from the bottom. She held her hand under the leaky faucet and watched as the drops piled up on the pad of her finger, then slipped around to her nail and dropped off, like tiny liquid divers plunging to their death.

Until yesterday the condition of the sink annoyed her; she’d finally convinced her roommates they should talk to their landlord about a new one. Now the sink seemed right, normal. The sink was like life—chipped, rusty, cracked, leaky. Why else would Tanisha be dead at twenty-six, punished for doing her job?

Dana squinted and pulled a chestnut hair from the stained basin. Hers. Long, and straight as a bullet. She thought of Tanisha’s hair. Seventeen-hour hair, their mutual friends called it when Tanisha described the long process of producing an intricate design of braids and cornrows.

Tanisha’s friends teased her about her car, too, an old blue station wagon, a hand-me-down from her grandfather, who’d marched with Martin Luther King Jr. The wagon sported an American flag decal and a BLACK Is BEAUTIFUL bumper sticker, both also from her grandfather.

“‘African American’ is too much of a mouthful, girl,” Tanisha had told Dana in her rich voice. “They got it right in the sixties. Too bad I was born so late.” And her laugh, from deep in her large bosom, would fill the room.

I could have been the one to tech the call, Dana thought. I could have made the first effects run. Why wasn’t it my turn to ride in the back with the patient while Tanisha did the ring-down?

Dana finished brushing her teeth, moved slowly to her bedroom, and flopped backward onto the pale blue comforter. She thought of Rachel, Tanisha’s four-year-old daughter, with a set of tiny cornrows of her own and a dozen braids that ended in bright plastic balls. Pink, blue, white, yellow. Rachel knew all her colors.

Dana knew she needed to visit the San Leandro home where Tanisha and Rachel lived with Marne, Tanisha’s mother. She shouldn’t wait until the funeral. Rachel’s father was a loser, out of the picture from day one of the pregnancy, Tanisha had told Dana. Dana might be able to help, maybe take Rachel for an ice cream or to the Oakland Zoo.

If she could only get out of bed. Maybe she’d had one toke too many after Elaine and her friends left. Or maybe the strain of grass was not a good one. Sometimes Kyle brought shwag—stuff Dana felt was from the reject bin in some warehouse in Colombia. It had a harsh taste and left her feeling more tired than relaxed.

For the hundredth time, Dana went over the events of Friday evening. Looking for answers? Trying to roll back to the beginning of the shift and do everything differently? Who knew why? But she couldn’t stop rerunning the hour through her mind.



In her marijuana fog, Dana is back at the scene.

Dana and Tanisha are lounging in the front seats of the ambulance, having a snack. They’re parked in the lot of a strip mall off 1-580 in Oakland, not far from Lake Merritt. Dana is in the driver’s seat.

“I love all the perks,” Tanisha said. “I swear they think we’re cops.” They were joking about the attention they got in their black EMT uniforms and rehashing stories about the guys that hit on them regularly.

“Hey, I need resuscitation,” one cute guy had yelled out his window up to the cab where Dana sat, waiting for a green light. “I’m feeling faint. What’s your phone number?”

“911,” Dana had yelled back as she roared away, and she and Tanisha had laughed for the next quarter mile.

Tanisha dug into the bag of chips she’d just received, gratis, from a fast-food place. They talked about the complimentary passes they got at theaters, and the free convenience-store sodas now and then, depending on the neighborhood.

“Who wouldn’t think we’re cops? The uniform’s the same color, and we have all this stuff hanging on our belts.” Dana jiggled her radio and pager, and Tanisha followed suit. They were having a good time, almost as if they’d just shared some wacky weed. No smoking on the job, though; they were together on that.