Good Morning, Killer

by April Smith

  I walked around the coffee table (more glass granules on the soles of my shoes) and sat down wearily on the couch where Andrew had thrown his weight on top of me and I had pummeled him with my legs. The absence of that struggle made me feel light-headed. But no, it was the sudden absence of him, as if he had been sucked backward out of my life as quickly as he had been rocketing forward, into the future—a home, shared; a partnership taking root. I missed his loud opinionated criticism of the Dodgers; his puppy love for the Lakers; the puffed-up hyperbole about his job (“I know all my geese are not all swans”); the way he would slice a roll the other way and butter each side and put it back together because that’s the way his dad did it; the boasting (“I hitched through Argentina and never had to pay for a hotel room”) mixed with self-deprecation (“You can pick my brain. Not much to pick”); the long, wonderful back rubs; the way he adored my body with his large sensitive hands.

  As I hovered, weightless, knowledge came to me that we were too close to go out this way; that stunned awful look he’d thrown as we wrestled for the car door meant to say he was as bewildered as I at how far things had gotten out of hand. I have noticed our destinies are wound around our physical selves: Andrew was built big, big enough to absorb heavy body blows—his, and those of traumatized victims of crime he had comforted during the wearing routine of twenty years of homicide investigation. I sensed that he would take this blow, as well. If he had been sitting across from me in this mess, I know he would have felt just as disoriented, as responsible as I. Neither one of us could have told you what had been true during those scrambled seconds, but we might have said this: We cared for each other. And we shared a code.

  Nobody was coming to get me because Detective Andrew Berringer had not turned me in.

  I wanted it to be true. It would mean an ending of such happiness.

  Lifted by the hope that he was actually protecting me, that we were still in this together, I rose from the couch and settled into the familiar depression in the rattan chair. The laptop sat on the glass table. I believed this was what Andrew was somehow telling me to do, yet logging on to the Bureau website created the most toxic self-loathing of the entire ordeal. I was planning to use classified material on detecting bloodstain evidence to cover up the crime. As it was loading, I came as close as ever to swallowing the gun. It would have made a pretty picture, with the FBI logo shining on the computer screen.

  Between the supermarket and a pharmacy in the Marina I was able to get everything I needed. At a hardware emporium it cost almost a hundred bucks for wire brushes, nylon scrubs, wood putty, pine oil cleaner, garbage bags, disposable gloves and a rented rug shampooer.

  There was not much blood splatter. I was able to scrub it up with ice water, cleanser and bleach, and then I put on Marvin Gaye and steamed the carpet and washed the floors. It is amazing how much dirt came up. Buckets of black water poured down the sink until the gold flecks in the floor tile winked. I scoured the coffee table and the walls. Threw the cotton bamboo cushion covers into the washing machine. Washed the sliding glass doors. Sprayed the kitchen tile a million times with mold remover, polishing it shiny with rolls of paper towels.

  All this time I kept checking the clock, as if knowing the hour were reassurance that I was proceeding on course.

  There were so many things to get rid of! The doormat. The vacuum cleaner bag. I unscrewed the swinging door with the bullet hole, and the hinges, loaded three bags of trash onto a disposable tarp in the trunk of the Barracuda and distributed the evidence in haphazardly chosen Dumpsters. Then I came back and sanded the marks where the hinges had been, and puttied, and sanded and puttied again. Tomorrow I would repaint the door frame.

  At intervals, by the clock, I would call Andrew because there would have been another of those big black arrows pointing to the sudden halt in communication, and left a couple of messages: “Hi, it’s me, just checking in, give me a call.”

  Since I could not go to a doctor without documenting my injuries, I took some old antibiotics and leftover Tylenol with codeine. There was fever and my pelvis ached. Peeing was agony. The toilet bowl went red. I waited until after midnight to sneak along the empty hallway, removing traces of the blood trail with my trusty brush and bucket. It took working until 4 a.m. to do all that housework because I was moving slowly and had to rest.

  FD-823 (Rev. 8-26-97)

  RAPID START

  INFORMATION CONTROL

  Case ID: 446-702-9977 The Santa Monica Kidnapping

  Control Number: 5231 Priority: Immediate

  Classification: Sensitive Source: Culver City Police Department

  Event time: 11:27 PM

  Method of contact: CDVDB (California Domestic Violence Data Base)

  Prepared by: Ripley, Jason Component/Agency: Kidnap and extortion squad, FBI, Los Angeles

  Event narrative:

  A seventeen-year-old female calls 911 to report her mother’s boyfriend is beating up the mother. Officers find only the girl at home. Suspect she has been abused also, but she vigorously denies it and denies even making the complaint. Report attached.

  CULVER CITY POLICE DEPARTMENT

  Culver City, California

  Domestic Crime Unit

  Complaint Intake

  1. NAME Santos Roxy Angela

  Last First Middle

  2. ALIASES none

  3. STREET ADDRESSES 3340 Keyes Drive Palms CA

  4. RACE (check all that apply) Black White Hispanic Asian American Indian Other

  5. DATE OF BIRTH 4/23/80

  6. HEIGHT 5’6”

  7. WEIGHT 123 pounds

  8. HAIR COLOR Blond

  9. OCCUPATION High school student

  10. AFFILIATIONS WITH GROUP OR ORGANIZATION THAT MIGHT BE RELEVANT TO THIS CRIME? No

  11. VICTIM mother, Mrs. Audrey Santos, age 35 OCCUPATION Cashier EMPLOYER Home Depot

  12. OFFENDER Carl Vincent, age 30 OCCUPATION Lab Technician EMPLOYER unemployed

  13. PREVIOUS ARRESTS unknown

  14. TYPE OF ATTACK unknown

  15. WEAPONS USED unknown

  16. FREQUENCY OF ATTACKS unknown

  17. HOSPITALIZATIONS unknown

  Responding Officers: Stewart and Salerno

  Officer’s Statement: Upon arrival at the home, the complainant denied making the 911 call that Carl Vincent, the mother’s live-in boyfriend, had attacked her mother, and instead refused to make a statement. Several broken bottles were found in kitchen garbage. Complainant denied they were result of a domestic dispute. Stated that her mother and the boyfriend were at the movies. Officers left the premises at 12:40 AM.

  “Did you see this report?” asked Jason Ripley.

  It was the following morning, no news of Andrew. I was sitting rigidly in the ergonomic chair, mind flip-flopping between chaos and a vacuum of black.

  “What report?”

  “A teenage girl in Culver City says the mother’s boyfriend is hitting the mother. Then she retracts the statement.”

  I did not respond.

  “You didn’t see this thing on Rapid Start, first thing this morning?” he asked incredulously. “I beat you! First time, ever.”

  “I’m entitled to a late night,” said my shadow self with a leering grin.

  The idea of the boss on a date seemed to embarrass the young man, and he began talking rapidly about his wife.

  “Lunaria is like that, she’s a night bird, loves to party. I’m a farm boy, up with the cows.”

  I nodded. I was supposed to know all the ins and outs.

  “She’s still back at Princeton. Studying for the bar.”

  “Right.”

  “I think we’ve been together six days since I was transferred out here.”

  Then I remembered: Jason had married chewing tobacco and whiskey money. His new father-in-law was CEO of some megacorporation that relocated from Illinois to Montvale, New Jersey. The two-hundred-thousand-dollar wedding had been covered by Vogue. In exchange, the family kept th
e girl close. Another of life’s mysteries. Jason was a shy farm kid, earnest as a mallet, but he was also no dummy, and as he handed over the printout of the report, my eyes fell with charity on the strawberry blond freckled skin below his rolled-up sleeve. If he were still an agent two or three years from now, he would also most likely be divorced.

  “We might have something here,” he said of the 911.

  My brain was frozen. “Why?”

  “It’s within striking distance of the Promenade.”

  “Mmm, twenty minutes away. With no traffic.”

  “Brennan could be using an alias—Carl Vincent.”

  “That’s it? That’s ‘something?’”

  “No, no,” said Jason self-consciously. “I have a—theory.”

  He used the word tentatively, as if he had not yet earned the right.

  “Okay.”

  “What if Brennan split from Arizona when the cops came after him for shooting ducks? He came here for a reason, whatever reason, we don’t know.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “No. But we’ll find that out.”

  “Good.”

  “Meanwhile,” Jason continued, “he’s a manipulator. He finds another roost. See,” he said excitedly, “here’s my theory: I think the girl is the one getting beat on.”

  “Did the officers find evidence of abuse?”

  “I don’t know, but I have a call in to Child and Family Services. She’s close in age to Juliana. I just think she’s protecting this fool.”

  “Afraid of him?”

  Jason nodded earnestly and pulled up a chair. We sat knee-to-knee, amidst cartons of files and odd discarded office debris, like a broken Venetian blind lying underneath the next desk.

  “Here’s another thing. Brennan enacts his ritual to relieve some life stress, right? Well, it says here this guy is an unemployed lab technician. It could be a photo lab. Maybe he’s unemployed because he got fired.”

  The young agent was leaning forward, elbows on thighs, light blue eyes fixed on mine. Suddenly I felt foolishly affected, almost teary, because of the fact that Jason Ripley once had been a ginger-haired little boy and left his mother and learned to tie a tie. That’s how whack I was.

  “I think it’s worth talking to the girl,” he continued seriously.

  “Convince me. Then we’ll both take a ride.”

  It was a weak lead and I didn’t care what he did with it. I was feeling stoned, sleep-deprived, and the low abdominal pain was coming back. He stood uncertainly.

  “Is the case still alive over at Santa Monica?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think they’ll give us someone else? Or are they out of the picture by now?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He looked even more uneasy, not sure if I had been mocking him all along—if there were substance to his theory, or if he’d made a mistake in bringing the report to my attention. I let it play. This would be a little test. Either young Jason would work his butt off to prove his point about the connection between this young girl, Roxy Santos, and Ray Brennan, or he would back off and fade away. New Jersey or the stars.

  “I mean,” he pressed on, “we might need someone else over at the police department because of what happened to Detective Berringer.”

  Chemical material burst inside my chest.

  “What happened to Detective Berringer?”

  Quick. An alibi. What did I say about being late last night?

  “He was shot.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I think it was yesterday? Or maybe the day before?”

  “How is he?”

  Before Jason could answer, I began to cough. Dry throat. Closing up. Don’t retch. Breathe.

  “Are you okay?”

  I gulped the last of some cold, sugary coffee, wiggling my fingers to show everything was fine.

  “Berringer?” I gasped.

  “In the hospital,” Jason answered.

  “Wow. That’s terrible. How is he?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Armed robbery.”

  “No kidding.”

  “He was off duty and a couple of guys just came up to him.”

  “Catch the guys?”

  “No.”

  “How do they know it was armed robbery?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Andrew said that?”

  “That’s what he said in the hospital.”

  “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m smiling, there’s nothing funny about this.” I tried to suppress a giggle and look fierce. “How come nobody told me? I thought I was senior agent on this case.”

  That made him nervous again.

  “Sorry about that, I definitely should have come to you right away. I heard them talking in the radio room—”

  “It’s okay,” stroking his arm. “Now I know.”

  Now it was safe to call Lieutenant Barry Loomis.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said over again.

  “Things are still touch-and-go.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “He’s in intensive care,” said Barry. “They’re only allowing family.”

  That would be his sister down from Oakland. Did Andrew say he had a brother, too? Somewhere in Florida? The euphoria that had lifted me plain off the floor at Jason’s news that Andrew was not only alive, but claiming he had been the victim of a robbery, and we were going to get through this thing, crashed. Now there were frightened family members waiting in a hospital corridor.

  “You said he drove himself to the hospital.”

  “He did, but he collapsed. They rushed him into surgery. One of the bullets pierced his lung.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “That was okay,” Barry went on, “but then he had a cardiac arrest in the ER.”

  “No!” I shouted.

  Barry was saying things like, “Take it easy. He’ll make it. He’s as tough as they come—”

  “I’m sorry, it’s just so—”

  “It’s a shock.”

  “Why didn’t anybody call me?”

  “At a time like this,” he said stiffly, “you tend to close ranks.”

  “But he’ll pull through?”

  “He’s in a coma, Ana.”

  The pain in my kidneys. Everything. I was just undone.

  “They don’t know,” he went on. “They’re watching him. Real close. He might have to have heart surgery later on. They found some underlying situation, I’m not exactly clear on that.”

  I couldn’t speak. He let me be with it.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I managed. “Thanks, Barry. So, look. Any suspects?”

  “Not yet. He hasn’t been able to say a hell of a lot.”

  “Did you recover the gun?”

  There was a pause. “No such luck.”

  “Stay in touch, okay?”

  “You got it, hon.”

  What’s the matter?” Barbara asked as soon as I walked into her office.

  “Andrew was shot. As if you didn’t know.”

  “I don’t know. How could I know?”

  “Jason knows. The girls in the radio room know.”

  I sank to the couch. Barbara went down on one knee, putting herself below me, as you would not to agitate a child, and asked very gently what happened. I told her about the armed robbery and intensive care but then came a round of tears no amount of head slamming was going to stop.

  Soon Mike Donnato was in the room and the door was closed and the two of them were beside me on the couch; their hands were quiet on my hands, their voices low and steady.

  These were professionals.

  “Are you serious about this guy?” asked Mike.

  “I care about him.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven,” Barbara said.

  “Well, it blows hot and cold.”

  Mike: “As it were.”

/>   Barbara smacked him. “All I can say is, Ana dear, you better know where you were that night.”

  I winced. “Not funny.”

  “Irish humor.”

  “He’ll be all right.” Mike shifted his head so I could see the constancy in his eyes. “The bullet wounds sound like no big deal.”

  “What about the heart attack?”

  “Same thing happened to my uncle,” he said stalwartly. “Eighty-three years old, goes in for a hernia operation and his heart stops. Major alcoholic, so you’d think, End of story. Well, he’s in Vegas, as we speak.”

  “In a pickle jar, in Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” said Barbara.

  “He was a good uncle to me.”

  “Why? Because he took you out and got you laid when you were twelve?”

  “Actually,” said Mike, “we didn’t have sex in our family.”

  “You still don’t,” observed Barbara.

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “They have a chameleon,” was my contribution through a swollen nose. “And the chameleon just had babies.”

  “See?” said Mike.

  “I think there’s a cable channel devoted to exactly that sort of thing,” Barbara replied. “Why don’t you go home, girl?”

  “That would be worse.”

  I never wanted to go back to that apartment again.

  “Sit here,” said Mike. “I’m going to get you an iced vanilla blended.”

  “Can I have one, too?” called Barbara as he left. Her phone was ringing. “Nicest man in the world.”

  I knew that.

  “Yes, she’s in here.” Pause. “Ana, it’s for you.” Her eyes were sober. Her whole body was sober as she moved to give me the phone. “It’s the lieutenant from the Santa Monica police.”