The Nitrogen Murder

by Camille Minichino

  Dana looked at him, focused now. “Yeah?”

  Matt patted his pockets. Front, back. Nothing. He clicked his tongue. “I guess I left them in the car. Want to walk out with me to get them?”

  Dana pushed herself off the couch. “Yeah, sure.” She glanced at Elaine and me. We nodded back. Permission granted.

  Matt stood and followed Dana out the front door. I heard their footsteps on the old wooden stairs and started at the loud bark of a nearby dog.

  A moment later, Elaine jumped up. “They don’t have the keys,” she said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think they need them.”

  Elaine went to the kitchen, leaving me with my thoughts about Sergeant Matt Gennaro, the man I was engaged to. I was proud of the way Matt presented himself to Dana, but something gnawed at me. I wondered how long you had to be with someone before you’d seen all his potential and knew all his secrets. Was Dana hearing something I’d never heard? Or was this just Matt and Dana, ES worker to ES worker, engaged in shop talk?

  Matt didn’t tell me much about being in the line of fire. I could only imagine how frightening it would be to confront violence as part of your everyday work life. Had he witnessed the death of a fellow police officer? A partner, as Dana had? A criminal? I was aware of some of the crises in Matt’s life. His wife of ten years died of heart disease, and he was still dealing with his own prostate cancer. What else was there? I chided myself for not being more alert.

  Elaine’s return and the smell of the espresso she brought distracted me from further uneducated psychological analysis.

  “It’ll be great if Matt can help Dana,” Elaine said. “We should have thought of that in the first place.”

  I nodded and smiled, as if I’d done something good by bringing Matt to California just when it needed him.

  When Matt and Dana returned, we decided there was time for one more round of coffee. “Then we need to let Dana get some rest,” Elaine said.

  It was my turn in the kitchen, and I volunteered to freshen the mugs. No one mentioned Matt’s “notes,” and the atmosphere had become significantly more cheerful.

  “You’ve done a nice job with the place,” Elaine said. She did a similar “nice job” of sounding sincere, considering she’d recently invested a month’s pay in a new carpet because the color was maybe ten wavelengths off from matching her new couch.

  We all looked around, as if to verify Elaine’s judgment. It was clear that her evaluation didn’t include the pots and pans stacked on chairs and window ledges, nor the unopened cartons scattered through the common area.

  A laptop computer and its peripherals occupied most of the dining room table. The cord was looped over the backs of chairs and along the floor until it disappeared into one of the bedrooms, to an AC outlet, I assumed. The living room had a badly scratched bookcase stuffed with paperbacks, and stacks of CDs (the equivalent of my old crate of LPs, I told myself ) were strewn around a stereo system. Two sleek, contemporary-style bicycles were propped against the wall outside one of the bedrooms.

  If we’d been playing a game from a puzzle book—find the object that doesn’t fit—I’d have chosen the expensive brown leather briefcase, standing in a corner next to a Whole Earth canvas tote bag full of recyclable cans and bottles. The case was the attache style, thin and rectangular, with a gold spinning combination lock at the top.

  “It belongs to the guy,” Dana said when she caught me staring at the briefcase. “The guy Tanisha and I took to the trauma center last night—a gunshot vic. He had a briefcase plus a duffel bag.”

  “So the person who shot Tanisha probably just got sweaty gym clothes,” Elaine said, sadness in her voice.

  Dana nodded, twisting a long strand of brown hair in her fingers. “We usually make two trips into the hospital, the first one with the patient, of course, and then we go back to the ambulance, and one of us changes the paper on the gurney and cleans up whatever”—I tried not to picture “whatever” from an ambulance patient—“while the other makes a run inside with the patient’s belongings. But this guy had a lot of stuff, so Tanisha said she’d run in with the big duffel bag while I checked around the back of the ambulance for anything that might have spilled, and”—Dana’s voice cracked—“and then I’d take this briefcase and whatever else I found, like his wallet was on the floor, and some cards fell out and I wanted to make sure I got them all. And … I was sort of reading them, because it looked like there were a dozen IDs, all different. The same face. An Indian, I’m pretty sure. But different names. A lot of what looked like lab badges. I’ve seen a few of those. Now I’m thinking, if I weren’t so nosy, if it hadn’t taken me so long …”

  Matt seemed to have unleashed a talkative Dana. A dozen IDs, that was interesting. I made up a quick story about how the patient ran an identity theft scam, then I clicked my tongue at my runaway mind. This new habit of seeing criminal behavior everywhere must be a substitute for my former theorizing days in a physics lab, I figured, when an errant data point on an otherwise smooth curve might unleash one theory per hour.

  Still, the man was shot.

  Elaine moved closer and put her arm around Dana’s shoulder, handing her tissues. Matt went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of water. I sat, helpless, putting myself in Dana’s shoes, rubbery yellow thongs at the moment. I could guess what she was thinking. If she’d been faster, she might have been out of the ambulance and able to help Tanisha immediately; if she’d have been alert, she might have been able to warn Tanisha; if she’d gone out first, she’d be dead and her friend Tanisha might be alive. All the ifs and might-haves of survivor guilt.

  It wasn’t too long before Dana was able to talk again, perhaps remembering Matt’s “notes.”

  “I didn’t know what to do with the briefcase. I mean, Valley Medical doesn’t want it, right? So I called the police. I gave them all those cards that were in the guy’s wallet, because I’d already stuffed them in my pocket before I heard the … shots.” Dana cleared her throat and swallowed. “I didn’t think of the briefcase. Anyway, they said they’d come and pick it up, but I don’t know when.”

  “I’m surprised they haven’t already claimed the case,” I said, looking at Matt, as if he were the “they” and not three thousand miles from his sphere of responsibility. “What if there’d been a bomb in it?” I asked, and immediately regretted it. We all moved back an inch or so and then laughed.

  “Too late,” we all said, in one form or another.

  “The cops wanted to question me at the station, so Julia, my boss, had to send a couple of people to get the ambulance back to Valley Med headquarters.”

  “The ambulance was not the crime scene,” Matt said, as if to defend the Berkeley PD for not taking custody of a vic’s belongings immediately.

  Dana continued. “And this guy, Reed, is new, so he thought the briefcase was mine.” Dana slapped her forehead. “Go figure. He brought it here, thinking he was doing me a favor.”

  “And now here it is,” I said, nearly salivating at the idea of opening it. I stared at it, and then it came to me. In our midst was a briefcase, not a duffel bag. Phil had been correct this morning when he said a duffel bag had been taken from Tanisha. But how had he known? “Elaine, didn’t you say the shooter”—oops, police talk—“uh, the person who shot Tanisha absconded with a briefcase?”

  “Yes, I guess I did. I must have heard Dana wrong last night.”

  “But at breakfast, Phil said the murderer took a duffel bag. Did you tell your dad it was a duffel bag, Dana?”

  Dana shook her head. “No, I don’t think I went into that kind of detail with Dad.”

  “I’m the one who told Phil about the briefcase,” Elaine said. “Or maybe I did say duffel bag.” She waved her hand. “Who knows what we said, with all this confusion.” She gave me a strange look, as if to ask why any of this was important.

  Matt’s look, however, was quite different.

  I could hardly wait for a private talk.r />
  “I see where you’re going with this, Gloria,” Matt said the next time we were alone. It was late that afternoon, back at Elaine’s, when she left us to make some phone calls. Matt shook his head, put his hand under my chin, and stared into my eyes. “You’re as bad on vacation as when you’re on the job in Revere.”

  At least he followed the scolding with a kiss.

  “Just hear me out,” I said. “Assume Dana got it right the first time and told Elaine the shooter took a duffel bag. Elaine doesn’t own a duffel bag. She wouldn’t be caught dead—uh, she would never own one. She thinks they’re sweaty when they’re brand-new. So she probably translated it in her mind to a briefcase. Then she tells us, and Phil, it was a briefcase that got stolen, but Phil knows it was a duffel bag.”

  “How would he know that?”

  “Exactly.”

  Between the hearty brunch and the snacks at Dana’s, none of us wanted dinner on Saturday evening, so we settled for a liqueur from Elaine’s vast store. Neither Matt nor I drink alcoholic beverages, but we both feel that liqueur is more dessert than liquor. This one was coffee flavored and lovely to look at in Elaine’s special crystal. I hoped I’d be able to control my clumsy fingers, more used to holding tumblers bought in sets of eight at the supermarket.

  It was difficult to ply my trade in front of Matt, but I wasn’t deterred.

  “I know you’ve told me, but what exactly does Phil do again?” I asked Elaine. A casual question while sipping from a dainty glass.

  “I don’t know much about it, except that it’s classified and has something to do with nitrogen.” Elaine smiled, lifting her eyebrows slightly. “I suppose you’ll want to tell us all about nitrogen, Gloria.”

  “Yeah, Gloria, what should we know about nitrogen?” Matt asked.

  “It’s the N in TNT,” I said, and took another sip of my drink.

  CHA PTER FOUR

  Dana leaned over the basin of her bathroom sink and looked down into the bowl. She studied the chipped porcelain, the rust rings around the drain, a curvy black crack radiating from the bottom. She held her hand under the leaky faucet and watched as the drops piled up on the pad of her finger, then slipped around to her nail and dropped off, like tiny liquid divers plunging to their death.

  Until yesterday the condition of the sink annoyed her; she’d finally convinced her roommates they should talk to their landlord about a new one. Now the sink seemed right, normal. The sink was like life—chipped, rusty, cracked, leaky. Why else would Tanisha be dead at twenty-six, punished for doing her job?

  Dana squinted and pulled a chestnut hair from the stained basin. Hers. Long, and straight as a bullet. She thought of Tanisha’s hair. Seventeen-hour hair, their mutual friends called it when Tanisha described the long process of producing an intricate design of braids and cornrows.

  Tanisha’s friends teased her about her car, too, an old blue station wagon, a hand-me-down from her grandfather, who’d marched with Martin Luther King Jr. The wagon sported an American flag decal and a BLACK Is BEAUTIFUL bumper sticker, both also from her grandfather.

  “‘African American’ is too much of a mouthful, girl,” Tanisha had told Dana in her rich voice. “They got it right in the sixties. Too bad I was born so late.” And her laugh, from deep in her large bosom, would fill the room.

  I could have been the one to tech the call, Dana thought. I could have made the first effects run. Why wasn’t it my turn to ride in the back with the patient while Tanisha did the ring-down?

  Dana finished brushing her teeth, moved slowly to her bedroom, and flopped backward onto the pale blue comforter. She thought of Rachel, Tanisha’s four-year-old daughter, with a set of tiny cornrows of her own and a dozen braids that ended in bright plastic balls. Pink, blue, white, yellow. Rachel knew all her colors.

  Dana knew she needed to visit the San Leandro home where Tanisha and Rachel lived with Marne, Tanisha’s mother. She shouldn’t wait until the funeral. Rachel’s father was a loser, out of the picture from day one of the pregnancy, Tanisha had told Dana. Dana might be able to help, maybe take Rachel for an ice cream or to the Oakland Zoo.

  If she could only get out of bed. Maybe she’d had one toke too many after Elaine and her friends left. Or maybe the strain of grass was not a good one. Sometimes Kyle brought shwag—stuff Dana felt was from the reject bin in some warehouse in Colombia. It had a harsh taste and left her feeling more tired than relaxed.

  For the hundredth time, Dana went over the events of Friday evening. Looking for answers? Trying to roll back to the beginning of the shift and do everything differently? Who knew why? But she couldn’t stop rerunning the hour through her mind.

  In her marijuana fog, Dana is back at the scene.

  Dana and Tanisha are lounging in the front seats of the ambulance, having a snack. They’re parked in the lot of a strip mall off 1-580 in Oakland, not far from Lake Merritt. Dana is in the driver’s seat.

  “I love all the perks,” Tanisha said. “I swear they think we’re cops.” They were joking about the attention they got in their black EMT uniforms and rehashing stories about the guys that hit on them regularly.

  “Hey, I need resuscitation,” one cute guy had yelled out his window up to the cab where Dana sat, waiting for a green light. “I’m feeling faint. What’s your phone number?”

  “911,” Dana had yelled back as she roared away, and she and Tanisha had laughed for the next quarter mile.

  Tanisha dug into the bag of chips she’d just received, gratis, from a fast-food place. They talked about the complimentary passes they got at theaters, and the free convenience-store sodas now and then, depending on the neighborhood.

  “Who wouldn’t think we’re cops? The uniform’s the same color, and we have all this stuff hanging on our belts.” Dana jiggled her radio and pager, and Tanisha followed suit. They were having a good time, almost as if they’d just shared some wacky weed. No smoking on the job, though; they were together on that.

  It was a quiet shift so far, and the partners continued bantering, solving the problems of the world, gossiping.

  “What about those missing meds and supplies?” Dana asked. “I’ll bet they try to pin it on EMTs.” She was thinking of an ongoing problem with inventory—pills, drugs, needles—disappearing from local hospitals and convalescent homes.

  Tanisha popped a large potato chip into her mouth and smacked her lips. “Yeah, well, you’d think they’d be going after the big guys instead of trying to track thimblefuls of medicine.” She gave Dana a playful punch. “Wish we had a little thimble full of grass now, don’t you?”

  It was five-forty-five, near the end of the shift, when the call came.

  A little action, finally. “225 responding,” Dana said.

  “Priority 2 out of Golden going to trauma. A GSW vic.” It was the Valley Med radio voice telling them to transport a gunshot-wound victim from Golden State Hospital, off I-580, to the city trauma center in Berkeley.

  Dana and Tanisha straightened up and buckled their seat belts. Dana started the engine. “225 en route,” she said into the radio.

  Golden State Hospital was only about a mile and a half away. Dana eased the ambulance out of the lot, down a divided road, and onto the I-580 freeway. She headed west, not the rush direction, though there was less and less difference these days as the Bay Area added one housing development after another. Dana weaved in and out, able to do seventy without her lights and siren.

  They exited the freeway. Two rights, a left, and they arrived at the hospital.

  “225 on scene,” Dana said into her radio.

  Dana and Tanisha moved their patient—dark skinned, maybe Indian, Dana thought—onto Valley Med’s heavy-duty yellow gurney. No extra backboard for this guy, no scooper. Patient positioning standard. The patient had already been treated in Golden’s ER; he’d been bandaged, but he needed the more appropriate facilities of Berkeley’s trauma center.

  “It never fails,” Tanisha said, shaking her head. “Peop
le who drive themselves to the hospital always pick the wrong one.”

  “Right,” Dana said. “They should know they’re going to end up in an ambulance one way or another, so why don’t they just call us to begin with?”

  Tanisha took her place in the back on the gray vinyl seat across from the gurney and flipped through the paperwork from the ER. The patient had his IV drip and seemed comfortable.

  Dana walked quickly to the front of the ambulance and stepped up into the driver’s seat.

  A normal call, Code 2.

  They were on their way. So far, so good. Dana liked the rush, the feeling she got sitting up there high above even the SUVs. She was in uniform; she was in charge. So what if some jerks were still crazy enough to cut her off now and then? She’d loved the time she drove full throttle over the center divide on the freeway, flicking on the earsplitting sirens, going the wrong way for a quarter mile or so, and then jumping back on, past the stop-and-go traffic.

  But this evening’s patient was conscious enough to maybe be freaked out by a big fuss—he was a little looped from the morphine—so Dana decided to stay Code 2, no lights, no siren.

  This time she took city streets, winding her way north and slightly east, crossing the line from Oakland into Berkeley, headed for Ashby Avenue. She knew Berkeley; she knew how to avoid the annoying streets that were blocked by makeshift rotaries, designed to slow traffic down. The array of bulky concrete slabs in the middle of the intersections reminded her of a cemetery.

  Dana skirted a guy wearing a woolen cap that looked a lot like a yarmulke but was probably just another Berkeley fashion statement: I can wear wool in June if it makes me happy. No wonder suburbanites called it “Bezerkley.”

  Time for the ring-down. Dana steadied the ambulance with her left hand, held the radio with her right.