The Trade. Shirley Palmer

midnight. The arc of the night sky from east to west was still red with fire, but something was different. The wind had changed direction and was blowing onshore. He wouldn’t call it moisture exactly, but for the first time in hours he felt as if he could take a full breath without cooking his lungs.

      He went out to the street again. Everything in the front of the house was gone, the fence, the bushes, a couple of trees, and the bougainvillea that his mother had planted for privacy thirty years ago. At least the house had survived, scorched but still there. Many landside houses above his, and several along his stretch of beach, were smoking ruins. Fire crews hadn’t even made it down here until now, when it was all over and the firestorm had moved on.

      A sheriff’s patrol car cruised by and Matt stepped into the road to wave it down. The black and white slowed. The deputy sheriff looked him over.

      “Who are you? This area is evacuated, authorized personnel only.”

      Matt had been hoping for Bob Eckhart. He didn’t recognize the man speaking to him.

      Matt said, “I live here. You got a minute? I’ve got something here you should see.”

      “You got identification?”

      “Sure.” Matt reached for the wallet he’d transferred from his wet jeans, flipped it open to his driver’s license.

      The deputy reached for it. “What happened to your arm?”

      Matt held it up, surprised to see a gash and streaks of dried blood. “I don’t know, I guess I must’ve cut it when I broke a window at the Cove to get some water.”

      “I see.” The deputy handed back the license. “Well, I’ll have to get back to you, just as soon as I’ve checked out the end of the road. Things are still pretty hectic.” Fire equipment moved along the road, wetting down hotspots, checking roofs. The black and white started to roll.

      Matt paced with the car. “No, wait a minute. Listen, you’ve got to come inside. Sounds crazy I know, but I’ve got a dead baby here.”

      The car stopped. The deputy stared at him for a long moment, then pulled off the road. He retrieved a flashlight, played it over Matt’s face, along the still-smoking stumps of the bougainvillea, across the newly exposed house and patio. Barney, muzzle pressed against the bedroom window no longer shielded from the street by shrubbery, barked a warning. The deputy picked up his radio transmitter. “This is 103. I’ve got a report of a 927D at…” He looked at Matt. “What’s the address here?”

      Matt told him, the deputy repeated the address, then signed off. He stepped out of the car.

      “How come you didn’t evacuate with everyone else?” His voice was guardedly neutral.

      “I wasn’t here when the order came. I came home later by way of the beach.”

      “What’s your name again, sir?”

      “Matthew Lowell. Yours?”

      “Deputy Timms.” Ramrod posture, early thirties, dark hair short back and sides, but surprisingly long on top for a deputy sheriff. He followed Matt across the patio, along the deck by the side of the house into the candlelit kitchen.

      Matt opened the door of the refrigerator. Except for a small bundle wrapped in a bright-blue polo shirt, the shelves were empty.

      “What is this, some kind of joke?” Timms turned a darkening face toward Matt.

      “No.” Matt gestured to the sink piled with jars and containers, orange juice, mayonnaise, olives, a carton of eggs. “In this heat, I couldn’t think of what else to do. And I thought if the house burned, she would be safer, maybe. I don’t know. I found her on the beach last night when I was coming home.”

      “Jesus.” Timms reached into the refrigerator.

      Matt turned away. Even in the flickering candlelight, he couldn’t bear to look again at the little face.

      “There’s a lot of blood on this shirt,” Timms said.

      “Must be mine. From when I cut my arm.”

      “You say you found this baby, you weren’t there when it was born?”

      “No, I wasn’t there when she was born. I found her, I told you. I took my shirt off and wrapped her in it because there wasn’t anything else to use. I didn’t realize there was blood on it. It wouldn’t have made any difference anyway, that’s all I had, my shirt.”

      “I see. It’s a girl,” Timms said. “Where did you say you found it?”

      “Her. I found her on the beach.”

      Timms gave him another long, hard stare. “How long have you lived at this address, Mr. Lowell?”

      “Most of my life, on and off. It belonged to my parents. We lived on Point Dume but we spent a lot of time here. They planned to tear this old place down and build a decent house, but my mother—” He stopped. Timms would think he was nuts, running on with his life’s story. “I’ve lived here permanently since I got out of college. Fourteen years.”

      “I see. Well, I can’t get the M.E. out here now, they won’t get through. PCH is still closed in both directions. I’ll have to call this in. You wait here.”

      The deputy hesitated as if uncertain what to do with a dead child, then put the tiny body back where he’d found her, and started across the kitchen. He stopped at the sound of a voice, and footsteps on the wooden deck.

      “Hey, Matt. What’s going on? Everything okay?” Deputy sheriff Bobby Eckhart walked in without knocking. Lean and athletic, he was powerful through the shoulders from years of paddling out to meet the surf. Blond hair cropped close, tonight his usually clear gray eyes were swollen and bloodshot.

      “Pete, what’s going on?” Bobby said to Timms. “I heard the 927D.”

      “Mr. Lowell here says he found a dead baby on the beach.”

      “What?” Bobby looked sharply at Matt. “Where?”

      “I don’t know, exactly. Somewhere this side of the Edwards place. When I was trying to get home.”

      “Oh, Matt. How old?”

      “Maybe only hours. No more than a day.”

      “That’s a rough one, buddy. You okay? You’re bleeding.”

      “It’s nothing. Just a cut. I broke a window at Jimmy’s place to get some water.”

      While they spoke, Timms had reopened the refrigerator, and unwrapped Matt’s shirt from around the tiny form.

      “Oh, jeez, just look at this.”

      “I’ve already seen her.” Matt went out onto the deck, leaving the two deputies alone. He heard Bobby’s calm voice.

      “Pete, I think you’d better take it up to the courthouse. They’ve got the command post set up there.”

      “You know this guy?” Timms asked.

      “All my life. Those are my surfboards in his Range Rover. I keep them in his garage—saves me tracking them down from Las Flores. I catch a few waves after work sometimes.”

      Timms grunted. “Yeah? Then better if you take the baby to the courthouse and I get his statement.”

      Matt stared out over the ocean, one of the few remaining places in Los Angeles uncontaminated by city lights, where a star-filled night was visible. But tonight the sky was shrouded, the glow from the fire still coloring the smoke hanging low over the sea.

      If he had the juice, he thought, he’d be pissed off at the doubt he could hear in Timms’s voice, the guy obviously thought he was lying—but suddenly the events of the last few punishing hours had come up and hit him in the face. He felt wrecked, and knew something in his life had shifted, although he had no idea what that could be.

      He