by Mark Tiro
Roger had one more distinction. Roger had a completely separate career. Most weekends, especially in the warm summer months, Roger was in charge of security for all local movie premiers for one of the more prolific film studios in the city. Which is how, every so often, he would find himself in the back of a gossip magazine shot of some celebrity walking the red carpet. It’s also how more than a few Public Defenders ended up going to movie premiers they had no business being anywhere near (and otherwise probably would have been forcibly removed from).
“How’s the wife, Roger?” Maya asked, in a sardonic way Roger never seemed to catch.
“You know, Maya, how when you come into the investigations office pretty much any afternoon after two, and it’s deserted except for me?”
“Yeah. What’s up with that? I wanted to ask you after the last time we went out for lunch. You’re always coming back to the office, but all the other investigators always seem to be going out to the ‘field’? Where exactly is this mythical ‘field’ anyway?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“No seriously though. Why do you always come back to the office most days? Why don’t you just go home Roger? Spend some time with your wife?”
“Coming back to the office here is better than the alternative I guess,” he told her.
“You mean you’re avoiding going home? To your wife?” Maya said.
“She’s, you know—she won’t stop. She’s so angry, all the time, Maya.”
“Well, maybe she’s angry because you’re here in the office instead of ‘out in the field’. With her.”
“I just wish Maya,” he stuttered, “—well, you know, she’s not like you—”
“—don’t say that!” she forcefully cut him off. “Do not go there. I thought I told you that. Why don’t you listen?” She wanted to scream, but never did. Years of practice. Maya never lost control.
Roger had never had anything more than a professional relationship with her. That had been due to no lack of trying on his part, however. Like so many of the other married men Maya had gotten close to, Roger had initially seemed safe to her. Because he was married, she would never have to worry about him becoming emotionally attached to her. At least, that’s what she told herself. This was Maya’s version of a safe, professional social life. Only it never seemed to work out like that. Sooner or later, so many of her married friends ended up where Roger was now: wanting something more. It was usually at this point where ‘safe’ morphed into ‘needy’. It was also usually the point where Maya would banish the offending party onto one list or another she kept segregated in her mind, and remove them from her life altogether. Roger, however, was the investigator currently assigned to David’s murder case. Because of this, and also because she wasn’t actually as cut-and-dry, or as cold, as she sometimes made herself out to be, Maya couldn’t just remove Roger from her life. The look in her eyes just betrayed a strange cross between her present contempt for him and her deep kindness—affection even—born of their long history together.
“You know how uncomfortable that makes me, Roger. I do not want to talk about this now. What’s happening with the case? The case, Roger? The case?”
“The Nagai case?”
She stood there, glaring derisively at him now, not saying a word.
“Of course, Nagai,” he said, getting her point at last. “I just got back from speaking with the paramedics.”
“And? Did they talk?” Maya asked, barely looking up from her laptop. No reason to risk third degree burns by leaving the computer unattended.
“I think you’re gonna want to listen to this one,” he told her.
She looked up now. Roger walked in and sat down on the couch across from her desk. And began speaking almost immediately.
“I’ll write it all up for you in the report, but I just wanted to catch you and let you know what they said. The paramedic who first got to the car told me that the little girl was probably dead on impact. Looked to him like the car seat may have been defective. She was all strapped in, and looked peaceful. Eyes closed, all that stuff. He thinks her neck was snapped somehow on impact, so they immobilized her, tried CPR, all that, but she never…”
Maya looked at him, much more comfortable now listening to him talk about dead babies and case stuff. The thing that made Maya deathly afraid was that he would all the sudden tell her he liked her more than his wife. Or some such thing. Or worse—that he wanted to leave his wife to be with her.
“Well, she was dead anyway. That’s not the helpful part,” Roger continued reporting, oblivious to Maya’s commitment fears and mind wandering.
“No, it’s not,” she replied.
“Then he got real quiet. I think he started to get a tear in his eye—and this is a guy who does this everyday, sees this stuff all the time. I know that, because I had to get him to go through his whole background, experience, that stuff.”
He waited for a second to give her a chance to come up to speed.
“Anyway, he gets all sort of quiet,” Roger paused—this time for effect—“and then he looks straight at me, and says, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’ And he goes on to say describe Nagai, in detail. He says that your guy looked like he had just been sun-burned. He even checked his skin to see if it was hot, but—and here’s where it starts to get weird—he says when he looked closely, your guy’s skin looked perfectly normal. It was some energy, something… he told me he just wasn’t sure. But there was some ‘energy’ radiating from your guy. Maya—here’s a guy who’s been a paramedic for like 15 years or whatever it is, and he’s telling me he’s never seen anything like that ever before.”
“What? I don’t understand what you’re—” Maya started, but Roger cut her off.
“He said it wasn’t drugs—he went through all the tests. Plus he did a preliminary tox screen on the spot and—” Roger hesitated mid-sentence.
“—and what?” Maya asked, as she got up and walked over towards where Roger was sitting. She looked at him intently now, waiting for him to go on (overheating laptop from hell be damned).
“And it was negative of course. But you knew that already. Absolutely no drugs, no alcohol. Paramedic says that Nagai wasn’t there. I mean, he was there, of course—obviously—but he had this calmness radiating out from him, almost a silent hum. It was like your guy just wasn’t there. His body was, he was conscious. Anyway, the point is, the paramedic told me he’d never seen someone who looked like that before.”
“Looked like what? I don’t have a clue what you’re telling me.”
“That’s what he said—he didn’t get it either, because it made no sense. No drugs, no alcohol—no injuries of any kind, well to him at least. You know, the kid of course…” His voice trailed off.
“I know,” Maya said softly.
“Anyway he says he looked at the little girl, and after they had gotten her out, and his partner was working on her, he goes up to where your guy’s sitting, trapped in the driver’s seat, and he tells me…” Roger hesitated, but Maya stayed silent, listening intently. She didn’t want to interrupt him.
Roger looked like he was out of words but he went on. “Well, he gets this look in his eye, the paramedic does, that is—as he’s telling me this story. He looks at me and says, ‘I thought I was staring straight into a black hole. The guy’s there, he’s breathing normal, it’s obvious he’s fine.’ Physically at least.”
Roger stopped to catch his breath. He took a drink of water from the movie studio coffee mug on his desk. Then he ruffled through the handwritten notebook in front of him. “This is what the guy’s telling me Maya, and he starts crying like a baby in front of me.”
Roger checked his notes. “So the paramedic, he tells me, ‘I could see my hands lifting up his eyelids, checking his pulse etc. You know, doing my job. But it was like I was floating in another world at the same time, and this stillness had just swallowed me up. It was coming from him, only it wasn’t coming from him. More through him, on
ly it was coming through me to him. And expanding. I just can’t explain it.’”
“Paramedic told you all this?” she asked.
“He did. I wrote down what he said Maya, word for word in these parts. Even though he wasn’t making any sense whatsoever.” Roger flipped through his notebook some more. “Paramedic told me—these were his actual words—‘It was like I was a baby and my mom was holding me; like everything I’d gone through in my life, every problem, all the pain—like it was all just gone, and I was safe at home. I just wanted to cry like a baby. Like I said, I was working, but it was like I was just watching as some spectator outside of myself.’”
“He said all this to you?” Maya asked. “Did he explain what he meant?”
“Paramedic tells me it was a ‘giant, overwhelming nothingness’ coming from your guy,” Roger said. “That’s exactly what he said—‘giant, overwhelming nothingness.’ I wrote that down.”
“Okay Roger, but what about our guy? Did he say whether David said anything? Or did anything?”
“Well hold on a minute,” Roger answered, looking down to check his handwritten notes. “One more thing, he tells me he felt like he was in the presence of something overwhelming…. ‘In the presence of love’—that’s the words he used, ‘in the presence of love.’ The paramedic’s in tears Maya, while he’s telling me all this. Paramedic tells me, ‘here’s this little girl, dead, lying on the ground, my partner’s working on her, and I can’t help feeling that everything is going to be okay.’ This guy sitting next to him is emanating some kind of super calming, peace or love or voodoo hypnotic thing—just by his presence.”
“But Roger—did our guy say anything?”
“Oh, sorry. Nothing Maya. Not a word. The guy says he’s conscious, but you know—I should have followed up on how he concluded that, because everything else he says… well, I just told you. But no. Nothing.”
“Well, if even so little as an aspirin had shown up in our guy’s blood, we’d be screwed. But this… this… well, anyway. I’ll have to see what the psych can make of it,” she said, looking straight at Roger now. “Let me ask you one more thing.”
“Sure,” he said.
“Did you ask the paramedic if our guy ever found out that his daughter was dead?”
“Yeah, I did actually. Didn’t I tell you? Sorry, I must have forgotten to tell you that part. Paramedic says it took another 10 minutes to get your guy out of the car Maya. He had been trapped when the steering wheel had broken off in the crash. Just as they were loading him into the ambulance for the ride to the hospital, he saw his little girl’s body lying there, sprawled out in the street.”
“And? Did the paramedic tell you if he said anything? Did David say anything when he saw his daughter?”
“Paramedic told me that when your guy saw his little girl there, dead, it looked like it snapped him back to reality. He still didn’t say anything though. David lifted up his head, and that must’ve been when he saw her lying there, because that’s when he just passed out.”
21
“I have your report on Nagai, Maya.” Maya realized that Joel had left her the voice message a day ago.
When she realized it had been sitting, unheard, on her phone for over a day, she texted Joel.
A minute after she sent it, Maya heard ringing in her pocket.
“Yes Joel? What is it?”
“I left you a message yesterday, didn’t you get it?”
“I told you—text me. Don’t be leaving me voicemails.”
“But you got it, right?”
“Just now. What do you want Joel?”
“I’ll email you the report for Nagai. Why are you so angry Maya?”
“You couldn’t have just emailed it to me Joel? You have to leave me a voice message, and then text me, and now call me to let me know that you’re about to hit the ‘send’ button on your email? Really?”
“Sorry. I thought you would be glad to get it,” he said sheepishly. Maya didn’t answer.
“Anyway, listen,” he said, less sheepishly now. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, I don’t think we should see each other…I mean, I think we should stop sleeping—”
Maya had not really expected this. Not because she hadn’t hoped for it. More because no one had ever tried to break up with her before.
“You’re absolutely right,” she interrupted him. Tersely.
Every time she made the mistake of getting too close, the point came when the guy either started to think he was falling in love with her, and she felt like running the other way screaming. Or the guy decided to go to marriage counseling or some such thing and try to be a good husband.
No such thing as a good husband, she thought.
“I see. Are you and your wife going to try to make things work? Counseling? I think it’d be good for you. I can’t remember—what’s her name?”
“Doesn’t matter now. Actually we’re getting a divorce. She moved in with… I mean, she moved out a couple of weeks ago.”
Maya began to worry again now. She had seen this before. First the guy would leave his wife. Next thing Maya knew, he’d be beating down her door, asking to go out with her, pressuring her. Then the jealousy and the clinginess would set in. Maya began thinking of how she was going to let him down and keep her distance. As her mind wandered, she lost track of what he was saying.
“Anyway, I don’t think you’re healthy for me,” he said.
She tuned back in just in time to realize that he was actually dumping her.
“Uh, what I mean Maya is that I don’t think it’s good for either of us.”
Without stopping, so as not to give her space to interject, Joel shifted gears. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’ll email you the report on Nagai.”
“You already told me that,” she said sternly. It was the one part of the conversation she actually remembered.
“Right, I did,” he stuttered. “And I will. And I can probably get you some names of some other experts you can start appointing instead of me.”
“I don’t need any fucking names,” she growled. “I cannot believe you’re divorcing your wife, and you don’t even want to see me? I fucked your brains out. What’s her name Joel?”
“No one Maya. There is no one else. I am going to therapy though, and well—like I said—it’s just not good for… You’re right that’s how it would start, you’d fuck—well, what I mean is that, eh, you’re very beautiful Maya. I’m sorry, I mean, well—you’re incredibly sexy—”
“Don’t you do that Joel,” she warned him. “Don’t you go there.”
“Maya, I always felt like you had this…” he searched for the word, “…derision for me. Maybe scorn, like you were shooting daggers through your eyes, straight at me. Like it took everything you had to keep your anger from exploding at me. Don’t take this the wrong way Maya. I mean, I do appreciate that you didn’t—”
“—didn’t what Joel?” she cut him off. “That I didn’t what?”
“Explode at me. I appreciate that.”
“Well, Joel,” she said, slowly drawing out his name now, with emphasis. “If I remember—nothing ever kept you from exploding. Usually you could never make it longer than two minutes in bed—”
“Listen, Maya,” he said. It was his turn to cut her off now. “I just think it would be a good idea if you used someone else for—”
“—for what Joel? For sex? Is that what you want to say—if I used someone else for sex? As if I even need—”
“For… your psych evaluations Maya. I was going to say, you should consider using someone else for your psych evaluations.”
“Fuck you!” she erupted. “I do not want to talk about this anymore. You know I do not want to talk about this.”
“I know,” he said.
But she didn’t hear his last words. She had already hung up.
Two days later, Maya finally got the twice-promised email from Joel, report attached. About time, she thought. She decided she’d read it later
.
That night, when she got home, after she’d changed out of her work clothes, she went to the refrigerator and took out a beer. She sat down on the couch, opened it, and pulled up the report and began reading on her iPad.
Three hours later, still sitting upright on her couch but otherwise completely passed out asleep, Maya rolled over slightly. Her still full beer rolled over with her, dousing her iPad on its way down.
Friday morning, Maya woke up, took a shower and put on a suit. She packed up the half of David’s file that she had brought home two nights before, together with her (mostly) cleaned-off iPad. And then she walked out to her garage.
She shoved it all into her car, and drove off towards the freeway. Damn stout beer! she thought as she drove. Lager smell would have been gone already… Hmmmpphhh!
I’ll read Joel’s report once I get there. Must’ve been 45 minutes I waited last time for them to bring out my client, she thought, fumbling with her iPad while she sped up and merged onto the freeway. She wanted to have something to listen to in traffic for the next hour until she made it down to the jail.
As traffic on the freeway started to back up and slow down, Maya leaned over and grabbed her phone. She texted Michelle to see if her friend wanted to go out for a drink after work. Michelle texted back, and then they both went back and forth texting plans for the evening. This helped pass the time as she made up the rest of the distance on the freeway, and before she even noticed, Maya had arrived. She pulled into the jail parking lot, and got out of her car. Then she pulled out her file, and walked off towards the front door.
22
“Good morning David,” Maya said when the deputy sheriff finally led David into the interview room, taking off the handcuffs connected to a chain at his waist. The deputy locked the door behind him, leaving David alone with Maya in the interview room.
“Morning Ms. Lee. How are you doing today? I appreciate—well, I mean, it smells like you brought me some beer, but I don’t really think that’s such a good idea—”
