Good Morning, Killer

by April Smith

  “We were hiking the San Bernardino Mountains. We see a rattlesnake lying across the trail. He, of course, has to poke it with a stick. I’m telling him not to, but he’s like a little boy, he just won’t quit, and then all of a sudden he takes out his weapon and shoots the damn thing.”

  “Was it attacking him?”

  “No. It was just lying there.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told him he was a fucking Neanderthal and turned around and started running down the trail.” I had been crying but did not share that with Devon. “He called after me, but I kept going and basically he chased me all the way down. It was not fun.”

  “Was he trying to catch you? Hurt you?”

  “I didn’t let him catch me. By the time we got down we were completely wiped and had nothing to say to each other. We broke up for about three weeks after that.”

  “When Andrew acted like this, what did you make of it?”

  I frowned, trying to sort it out, holding on to our most private moments, the way a child hides a clear glass marble in her hand, believing that it is not glass but crystal, powerful and made of magic.

  “Andrew had a short fuse when it came to anger. Like me, I guess. I thought it was a good thing we were so much alike.”

  “If you were so much alike, what were you doing rolling over a coffee table, trying to kill each other?” Devon wanted to know. “Let’s go back. Tell me what happened in your apartment from the moment you opened the door.”

  “I didn’t open the door. He got in. Somehow.”

  “With a key?” suggested Devon.

  “Didn’t have a key.”

  “A duplicate he made without you knowing?”

  The idea chilled me. “That would be upsetting.”

  “Yes, it would.”

  I told Devon that Andrew had been agitated when he arrived. The lawyer wanted to know what we fought about. It built, I said, small rocks skittering, the way arguments do: The money he owed me. The scene in the bar. Me going after him and Oberbeck. Me intruding into his life.

  “What was the straw?”

  “The straw was the bank robbery. We recovered a ski mask and were checking out the DNA. This was his case, that he could get major credit for, but when I told him I reopened it on my end, he went ballistic. That’s when he came over the table at me.”

  Outside, the traffic glided silently by. The afternoon light had cooled since I’d first entered the office, and the hunched figure of my attorney against the softly glowing cityscape seemed muted as well. The firebrand inquiry had burned out, leaving one core question: why?

  “My gut says the intensity of this was not about him being pissed because you didn’t like his girlfriend,” Devon said slowly. “There was a threat he perceived as so serious he was willing to kill you to wipe it out.”

  “You keep saying that, but—”

  “He kept coming after you, even when you showed him the gun. As a cop, that is nothing I would ever do. You wouldn’t normally throw yourself at the shooter, would you?”

  I had to admit, “No.”

  “No!” Devon put down the pen. “Unless you were unhinged.” He paused. “Or desperate.”

  “Desperately what?”

  “Scared.” Devon shrugged in his white shirtsleeves. “Andrew Berringer was trying to kill you, and you responded in the only way possible, which was self-defense. That is what we need to prove.”

  I lay back in the chair, spent. “Go ahead,” I said, with an ironic wave of the hand.

  “I’m planning to subpoena Juliana Meyer-Murphy.”

  “What does Juliana have to do with this?”

  “We might need her as a character witness.”

  “She’s a fifteen-year-old victim of rape who is suffering from posttraumatic stress—she can’t even go out of the house!”

  “She will help your case.”

  “Drop it.”

  “I will not.”

  “You know what, Devon? I’m starting to lose my game face here.”

  “I can see that.”

  “What would it be like for her if someone she trusts, an FBI agent for God’s sake, turns out to be an accused criminal, like the guy who raped her, who she also trusted—”

  “If this goes to trial,” he interrupted, “she will see it on TV. The whole fucking world will see it on TV.”

  “I spoke to her!” I said triumphantly. “This morning! Six and a half minutes on the phone! They could claim witness tampering. You can’t go there!”

  Devon shook his head dismissively.

  “Look, I’m not pretending there are not other implications with having this young lady on the stand. We can’t call her as a character witness in a preliminary hearing where the purpose is for a judge to decide whether there is enough evidence to warrant a jury trial, but we can have her up there for an innocuous reason that goes to the prosecution’s burden of proof. And we can hope, because she’s young and emotional, that during cross-examination she will blurt things out about how terrific you are, how you got her through the worst time in her life …”

  “So now we’re exploiting a rape victim.”

  “If this kid will do something for you, I want to use her, you bet.”

  “What if, on cross-examination, the DA takes her apart and she’s even more traumatized?”

  “Ana, when I was a cop, I put rapists in prison. I’m not insensitive and I don’t want to hurt anyone, but my sole focus and ethical duty is to my client and my client only, and frankly, I’m not concerned if she has to see a therapist a few times more, we’ll pay for it, so what?”

  “I don’t think I have ever been more offended in my life.”

  “You don’t have to go along with it.” He waited, eyes downcast. “You see, we are now at the point where this begs the fundamental question of the relationship between the defense lawyer and client.”

  By then it must have been five o’clock, the energy of the city draining the other direction, away from the daily battles toward resolution and home. He wasn’t exactly putting it on the line, but he was forcing a calibration. Where did we stand? Did I trust his judgment enough to override my feelings for Juliana?

  “You’re saying if I don’t want to do this, you won’t force it?”

  “My sole concern is in walking you out of that courtroom. If we can’t go down the Juliana road, we’ll find another way. But as I said, I think she can help you and it’s important.”

  I thought about it for several silent moments until Devon picked up one of the model cars and began spinning its wheels.

  “Is that a Porsche you’ve got there?”

  He nodded and spun some more. “A Boxter S.”

  “Why don’t you have a Barracuda?”

  “My clients give these to me. I guess I never had a client who owned a Barracuda.”

  I waited. Finally I told him: “All right. You’ve got one now.”

  His eyes rose.

  “Call Juliana and ask if she wants to testify. The best thing for her would be to make that decision herself.”

  “Thank you,” Devon said, and a palpable tension left the room.

  I sucked the warm, half-empty water bottle.

  “How much will the prosecution give us on Andrew?”

  “His statement, which is whatever they decide it should be. We can’t depose him until the trial. In other words, not much. They sent over a preliminary list of witnesses”—he tossed me a copy—“including someone you know from the Bureau, Special Agent Kelsey Owen?”

  “Kelsey is going to testify against me?”

  “She is being subpoenaed.”

  “Holy cow.”

  “What does she have on you?”

  “I don’t know!” I was really fried. “Nasty voice mails. Obscene gestures. That I’m an asshole because I didn’t want her taking over my case?”

  “There are two sides to every asshole.”

  I chortled. “The jokes are getting better.”

  �
�That’s good.”

  Devon had taken out a paintbrush and opened the little doors and was dusting the interior of the Porsche.

  “How are you going to prove your theory that Andrew was trying to kill me?”

  “Investigate him and everyone around him. I’ve got a string of great PIs who work for me—former cops, an ex–financial reporter who’s very good on the computer stuff. We’ll look at everything—his marriages, cases. I’m intrigued by that bank robbery.”

  “You mean what was going on in the police department at the time—”

  Devon was nodding. “—that made that particular heist so damn important to everybody.”

  “And the people he works with at the Santa Monica police?”

  “Everyone, at least going back five years. Their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, kids, vendettas, paybacks, who owed what to whom, their mortgages, car payments, bank accounts.”

  “Follow the money,” I suggested.

  “That’s my credo,” Devon affirmed. “The sign on my wall.”

  Twenty.

  Afterward, waiting for the elevator, a soundless voice cajoled me, Why didn’t you tell him about the Sandpiper motel? It’s a private matter that would not be usable in my defense. How do you know, aren’t we talking about Andrew, who he is? Devon would have discarded it, and I didn’t want to see that, his cynical dismissal. What you don’t want to see is your own face in his mirror—but the voice was silenced as the bronze doors of the elevator parted and my reflection split in two.

  I never did tell Devon—and maybe it was a mistake—how our modest plan to drive up the coast to Cambria had to be postponed three times due to one or the other’s work emergencies, and how each time I was relieved. How I’d been afraid, after not knowing Andrew very long, that cutting loose on the open road would be a lot different from the occasional night at his dad’s house or my apartment, taking us further away from the security of our professional identities, safely cocooned in LA. Twenty miles out of town I was already wondering at the individual who had apparently shed his detective’s shield for the persona of some petty delinquent.

  “If it’s good to you, it’s gotta be good for you,” Andrew had said, cracking a beer he’d dug out of the cooler.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Just now figuring that out?”

  He smiled, drank, put the icy can between the tight thighs of his jeans.

  “I have complete confidence in your ability to drive,” I said brusquely, to show no fear. “Under normal conditions.”

  “If you’re nervous we can go back.”

  “I’m good.”

  He shrugged. “You won’t be the first, baby. Usually they don’t make it past that big rock over there.”

  “Who’s the one who is nervous?” I inquired.

  “Who?” he asked, completely baffled. Obviously, not him. He was taking the curves out of Leo Carrillo Beach at sixty, palming the wheel with one hand. “Be glad we’re not on the Harley, Miss Feebee Chicken.”

  “Sorry, but I have a strong survival instinct,” I said, and pried the beer from between his legs, giving it an extra twist against his bulge.

  “Do that again.”

  “Later. Maybe.”

  I let the brewski trail behind us out the window while he whined, “Oh man, what a waste!” and thought, My sentiments exactly, figuring I was on a one-way weekend pass with yet another unreconstructed sixteen-year-old male.

  Oh well, at least the sex would be good. I undid my sandals and put bare feet (pedicured for the occasion) up on the warm dashboard; the road had turned straight and the sun was flat on our windshield as we shot north past Oxnard, Santa Barbara and Goleta, picking up local oldies stations that carried blaring news of used car sales and bluegrass festivals. When we passed a sign for San Francisco, he flashed that irresistible grin and said, “Why not?” and I laughed because I guess I was relieved he liked me enough to imagine heading north forever, leaving those cocoons behind all busted open, our friends and supervisors left to guess who in hell was in there, anyway?

  “It’s because I grew up in Long Beach.” I was trying to explain why heading in a northerly direction always made me feel positive, while going south on the freeway was vaguely nauseating. “Not good memories.”

  Andrew glanced over. “No pressure, you don’t have to talk about it.”

  “It’s okay. I was brought up by my mom and my grandfather, who was with the Long Beach Police Department. He was a lieutenant.”

  “So we’re both from cop families,” announced Andrew with mock elation. “Equally screwed up.”

  “Did your dad take you around in the squad car?”

  “Sure, but mostly we hit the bars.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I used to do my homework in the Boatyard while Dad had his complimentary afternoon rosé. Ate in the kitchen with the Mexican help. No, listen, I thought it was very cool. What about your grandpa? Nice guy?”

  “Not really.”

  “So your mom was—”

  “Lost.”

  “And there was no dad in the picture?”

  “No dad in the picture.” That seemed the simplest way. I squinted at the horizon to steady the queasiness in the gut that sprang even at the memory, like a tapeworm. “My dad was from El Salvador. My grandfather didn’t like him much.”

  “Got it.”

  “It was the fifties. White girls didn’t have brown babies. Even light brown. Even light-light brown, passing for white.”

  “One more generation, and everybody in LA is going to look like you. Ana, you’re beautiful,” Andrew said. “I’m sorry to say it, but Grandpa was a jerk. Didn’t know what he had in his own house. I can only imagine—what was your grandfather’s name?”

  “I called him Poppy.”

  “—what Poppy must have thought of you becoming a Fed.”

  I laughed. “I think he was in shock. I was supposed to be a teacher.”

  “I can see you as a teacher.”

  I shook my head. “No patience.”

  “Do you like kids?”

  “They’re kind of a foreign country. What about you?”

  “Had a few close calls.” He smiled remorsefully. “But I’ve avoided giving any child the misfortune of having me as his dad.”

  “You are so wrong,” I said with conviction. “You’d make a terrific dad.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re trying to get me into bed.”

  “I’ve been trying for the past hundred miles.”

  He chuckled. “I like you. You’re funny.”

  “That’s good, because you’re funny-looking,” I said, pulling on his ear for no reason. “I don’t know why you don’t think you’d make a good father. I’ve seen you work,” thinking of the bank managers he had comforted so freely. “You’re a natural caregiver.”

  He made a face. Didn’t like the word.

  “What about your mom and dad?”

  “My mom and dad?” he echoed as if he had not considered them in years.

  Then he seemed to forget all about it, involved with the road which was straight as a ruler, fussing with the radio, searching for a water bottle rolling on the floor.

  That’s when he finally said, “I’m adopted,” and I heard the effort in his voice to keep it light, but there was no mistaking the shakiness beneath. He’d thought about it before he told me and now he wasn’t sure.

  “So growing up, we were both alone, in a way.”

  “My adoptive parents were very loving,” Andrew said quickly. “The most loving people in the world.”

  My fingers tightened on his knee.

  “I couldn’t do enough for my dad. Could not do enough,” he added bitterly, and I did not yet know the source, that his dad had been a terminal alcoholic for whom it was not possible to do anything. “You had your mom,” he said so wistfully that it moved me deeply.

  “She was … I guess today you’d say depressed, but really she was young and broken
hearted because she couldn’t be with my father.”

  “Ah, fuck ’em,” Andrew interrupted suddenly. “They did their best, right?”

  We drove in silence.

  “I’m okay with it,” I said after a while.

  “Your family?”

  I nodded, tautness in my throat.

  “We think that,” Andrew said, “but there’s an animal level to things that we can never change.”

  The sun had fallen to the west, level with the road, so that bright orange rays bored at the sides of our faces and the curve of our eyes. Andrew flipped the visor over to the driver’s side window, but it did nothing to block the insistent ginger light that flooded the inside of the car.

  “How do you live with it? The animal level?”

  “I’ve had some nightmares,” he answered, “that are pretty interesting,” and beside us, endlessly to our left, the green ocean burrowed, turned, and groaned with its own weight, restlessly settling and unsettling, seeking the stillness it constantly destroyed.

  The Sandpiper Inn was a perky little motel on Moonstone Beach, scrupulously clean, window boxes jammed with pansies and geraniums. There was a decent heated pool surrounded by pine trees and set far enough from the road so all you heard was the cawing of crows and the hum of the pumps. A cheerful old salt wearing a chewed-up watch cap signed us in, urging coupons for Hearst Castle and whale watching.

  “Good to see you again,” he nodded to Andrew.

  We carried our bags into the room and each sat on one of the two queen beds and asked the other what we wanted to do, as it was still the afternoon. I was up for running into the village, getting a nice bottle of white wine and some goat cheese and crackers, coming back here and pulling down the shades and scootching under the covers. His idea was to watch the basketball play-offs on TV.

  Alone in this determinedly adorable room, with no distractions, the differences between us seemed unbridgeable: he was too old, too closed off, never went to college, divorced too many times; his loyalty was of a soldier to other soldiers, his self-discipline enormously self-absorbed, I decided, as he lay back with a yawn and clicked on the play-offs, while I sat on the edge of the other bed, really grumpy about not having that glass of wine, and began to count the hours until we could, without too much humiliation, leave. If we got back early tomorrow afternoon, there would still be time to do laundry, get on the treadmill, go to sleep and punch the reset button Monday morning. The odds of working another bank robbery case with Santa Monica police detective Andrew Berringer were nil.