Los Angeles by Peter Moore Smith

me. “She’s your girlfriend and you don’t know her last name?”
    I didn’t have an answer.
    “You an albino?”
    I sighed.
    One of the policemen tried the door, and it opened easily.
    I cursed at myself for not trying that. I must have knocked on that door at least fifty times. Why hadn’t I just turned the
     stupid handle?
    “How long have you known her, sir?” He appeared intelligent, the fat one, his left eye permanently squinting. The other cop,
     the skinny one, seemed tired, with sharp features and blinking, red-rimmed eyes. He removed his hat and combed his hair with
     his fingers again, then replaced it again. He just kept doing this over and over.
    “She just moved in a few weeks ago.” I tried to remember how many times I had canceled my psychotherapy appointment. I hadn’t
     seen Dr. Silowicz once since Angela and I had met. “Maybe it was more than that,” I said. “I don’t know, a month, six weeks?”
    “I wonder why she didn’t lock the door.”
    “She’s trusting.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Forgetful, too,” I corrected myself.
    “That’s more like it.”
    This from the skinny one. “You said she called you?” He took his hat off again, ran his fingers through his hair again.
    “And I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was calling from an enclosed, dark place, so I think —”
    “Wait, wait, wait. You could tell that by the tone of her voice?”
    I nodded.
    He paused, giving me a long look. “I’m trying to understand what you mean by that, sir.”
    I let a half second pass before I answered. “She called from somewhere,” I said, “somewhere inside something… I could hear
     it. I could hear it in the way she said my name.”
    “She was speaking low, whispering?”
    “Exactly. So it must’ve been dark. It must’ve been —”
    “You’re saying you could tell it was dark where she was calling from?” This was the skinny one again, incredulous.
    “She said my name.”
    The two cops stepped across the threshold of Angela’s front door, and the fat one flicked on the overhead. As usual, I let
     a hand fly up to my eyes, shielding myself against the brightness.
    “Your name?”
    “What?”
    “You say she said your name?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you.”
    “What is it?”
    “Angel.”
    “Angel what?”
    “Veronchek,” I offered reluctantly.
    “Hello?” the fat one said to the room. “Hello? Hello?”
    I stood on the threshold and looked in, which is when I realized I had never been inside Angela’s apartment before.
    It was nothing special, anyway. There was a blue love seat. There was a white rattan rocking chair. There was a matching kitchen
     table with a glass top, also made of white rattan, and two aluminum folding chairs. Everything was brand-new, everything appeared
     to have been bought yesterday. The walls were white, entirely absent of pictures.
    “Look in the bedroom, Trip.”
    I followed the cop named Trip, the fat one, into the bedroom, which smelled like citrus, spices, and musk, like Angela, as
     a matter of fact — it must have been the perfume she wore. The overhead light was already on. A few empty cardboard boxes
     had been stacked under the window facing the parking lot. The bed, which I could tell was also new because its plastic wrapping
     had been tossed into the corner, was covered with a pale blue comforter and matching pillows, the DO NOT REMOVE tags still attached. On the floor rested a digital clock, its enormous numbers glowing crimson, and there were two hard-shell
     Samsonites, both the same size, one blue, one red, with jeans, T-shirts, and underwear spilling out.
    Trip turned around and looked at me. “Ah, shit,” he said, “you’re not supposed to be in here.”
    “Why not?”
    “What if this is a crime scene? You didn’t touch anything, did you?”
    I looked at my hands. “A crime scene?”
    He sighed.
    “The closet,” I said. “Try the closet.”
    He opened the door.
    “There’s nothing here,