It takes a moment before Dorian realizes what she’s asking. “Dorian Parkhurst.”
Detective Perry takes a piece of gum from its wrapper and pops it in her mouth. She doesn’t take her eyes off the workhorse computer monitor. “So, birds,” she says after a moment. She’s typing furiously, her gaze never meeting Dorian’s.
Dorian places the boxes on the desk. “Thirty-one hummingbirds and now two Western scrub jays,” she says.
With no encouragement from Detective Perry, she launches into the story—the birds she’s found behind the fish shack and now the ones in her yard. “I’m being targeted.”
To her surprise, Detective Perry seems to be writing it all down. Her fingers are racing across her noisy keyboard, clicking and backspacing.
Dorian takes this as a sign to continue. She goes into more detail—describing the mental prowess of scrub jays, how they seem to know what other birds are thinking. How they hide food but only if they have stolen it from another bird. She talks about the navigational genius of hummingbirds.
Detective Perry’s fingers freeze above the keyboard. The snap and clack of her gum ceases. “Dorian Williams, right?”
Dorian’s certain she gave her maiden name. “Parkhurst?”
“But you are Dorian Williams,” the detective says, meeting her eye for the first time. “Says it here.” She taps her computer screen. “Simple background check.”
“Why?”
“Why not,” Detective Perry says. She resumes typing. “It’s a health code violation. Dead animals in a commercial kitchen is a health code violation.” She lays off the keyboard and squints at her monitor. “Why do you think someone stops killing after thirteen victims? You think he finds God or some other kind of redemption?”
For a moment Dorian thinks she’s misheard the detective. “Excuse me?”
Detective Perry doesn’t look away from her monitor.
For twenty-four hours Lecia’s death hasn’t given her a moment’s peace. And now here it is again, unbidden. Dorian shakes her head, trying to stick with the present, trying to hold on to her equilibrium. “I’m here about the birds,” she says.
“Birds?”
Dorian holds up the boxes. “Thirty-one hummingbirds and two jays.”
The detective rubs the corner of one of her eyes. “What’s this about birds?”
Dorian’s not sure she has the energy to go into it all again.
“Someone’s poisoning them? That’s what you said?”
“Right,” Dorian says, relieved not to have to repeat herself.
Detective Perry snaps her gum. “There’s a reason they never caught the guy.”
“What guy?” Dorian says. And here it is again.
“The one who killed all those women back then.”
All those women back then. Dorian takes a deep breath. “Lecia wasn’t like the other women.”
Detective Perry leans closer to her monitor. “What matters is who killed her, not who she was.”
“Both of those things matter.”
“Why?”
“Because Lecia was a mistake. I told you she wasn’t like the other women. He made a mistake killing her. That’s why he stopped.”
Detective Perry glances up from her computer. “Someone told you this?”
“No,” Dorian says. “It’s just the only thing that makes sense.”
“The only thing that makes sense to you.”
Dorian tries to hold her stare but the detective looks away. Who else should it make sense to? Who else matters besides Dorian? Who else cares?
“Do you ever think about the person who killed your daughter?”
Dorian opens her mouth to reply but Detective Perry cuts her off. “I mean as a person, not as a killer. Like what does he do? How does he spend his days? Does he like hamburgers or tacos? Does he watch baseball or football or maybe soccer? Does he drive a sedan? Is he in good shape? Does he put sugar in his coffee? Does he drink beer or liquor? Does he listen to the radio? What’s his email address? Does he recycle? What supermarket does he use?” She pauses to pat her brassy blond hair. “Or when you think about him, do you think about some kind of faceless evil incarnate? Some criminal mastermind who stole something from you and got away with it? A sociopath cobbled together from the nightmares of profilers and psychologists to satisfy their own shortcomings because they can’t find him?”
“I stopped thinking about him years ago,” Dorian says. “What he’s like doesn’t matter. Not to me. Clearly not to the LAPD. All that matters is Lecia.” And all that matters is that the past stays put. All that matters is that it not gate-crash her every day. But these last few days that has seemed impossible, as if that whole history is out to get her, as if her mind is threatening to shake off its delicate reality.
“This guy, you wouldn’t notice him on the bus.” The detective returns to her monitor, still punishing her gum. “It’s a guy thing, that way of thinking. They need their foe to be their equal. All the detectives you talked to back then were male?”
Dorian doesn’t want to reach back to the countless interviews, the endless appeals to the Southwest Station, the frustrations and dead ends. “Yes,” she says, “all men. Not one cared that Lecia was different.”
“You keep saying that.”
“She was his last victim. She had to be different.”
“You keep the birds,” Detective Perry says.
The swing catches Dorian off guard.
Detective Perry taps the topmost box with a pencil. “In there,” she prompts.
“Yes,” Dorian says, snapping back to the present day. “They’re in there.”
The detective doesn’t seem to think that there’s anything odd about thirty-three dead birds on her desk. She taps the box with her pencil again, then peers at her monitor. “Hummingbirds and jays?”
“Exactly,” Dorian replies. “Mostly at my restaurant but now at my house, too. I think someone is trying to send me a message.”
“Why would anyone want to send you a message?”
Dorian fumbles for a reply.
“Leave them.” Detective Perry spits out her gum and unwraps another piece. She stands and holds out her hands for the shoeboxes. She opens the bottom drawer of her desk and places them inside. Dorian winces, waiting for her to bang the drawer shut, but she slides it in place carefully. “We’ll be in touch,” the detective says. She doesn’t offer Dorian her hand. She doesn’t meet her eye. She’s already back in her seat, lost in her monitor.
Dorian glances around the station.
Dear Idira, Let me tell you something that I know from experience. You’re going to keep shouting, but no one’s going to listen. It’s their job not to listen. To listen would mean that you matter, but you don’t. You’re just a problem, one that will eventually go away. I did. I went away. I made myself scarce, because I couldn’t take the do-nothingness, the brush-offs, the anger at my own anger. I had become a problem on top of the problem of my daughter’s death. So I shut up. You think it will be difficult, impossible. You think you’ll never get used to it. But you do, because all that rage is exhausting. You need something left for yourself when it’s over.