The Safety Expert

by Doug Richardson

  “I was digging up what there was, asking around the PD. Then his name popped up on an accident report. Would you believe that I caught up to him in his post-op bed?”

  “You talked to him?” asked Ben. “You actually met the guy?”

  “Think he was still a little narced from the anesthesia. But yeah. We met. I talked. I asked him questions about that night. Mostly, he just listened.”

  “Listened...”

  Ben’s left foot was involuntarily tapping the metallic bleacher seat, making a dull ring. It was now or never. He could dam the tide of darkness. He could ask Gonzo to go away and leave him be with the cushioned life that he had remade.

  Gonzo nodded as if Ben had asked her a silent question, then sat herself one row below him.

  “Ask an innocent man about a crime he didn’t commit, he still feels accused,” said Gonzo flatly, as if repeating something learned in a graduate criminology course. “He’ll appear shocked, incredulous, curious. But never silent.”

  “You think he did it. You think he murdered my family?”

  “Not that simple... Ask a guilty man about a crime he committed, he’s as likely to put up the same sorta protests as the innocent man.”

  “But Stew said nothing. Yeah?”

  “Every so often though, you get another kind of criminal. Smart guy that knows the less he says the better for him. Admit nothing, deny nothing. Give your accuser zero help, no handholds, nothing to go home with. Just a lotta silence.”

  “He could’ve been on meds. Post anesthesia.”

  “Do you want to know my opinion?” asked Gonzo. “If you don’t want to know just say it. We can all move on. You. Me. Stew Raymo.”

  No luck for Ben. The storm clouds of his first life had returned and the rain was already starting to fall. He felt flush. Angry. Abused. The rage was returning. The same damn fury that had followed his original stage of grieving.

  They’re not dead. Just a bad dream. My wife and baby girls. They’re not gone!

  Ben attempted to recall the five stages of grieving.

  Denial. Anger...

  Anger, hell. It was utter rage. And in his rage, Ben couldn’t remember the other three stages.

  Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.

  With that, Ben’s chin moved ever so slightly, left then right, repeating itself in a primal head-shake. Ben didn’t want to know. He needed to know. The rage in him demanded it.

  “Did Stew Raymo kill my wife and baby girls?”

  “My opinion?”

  “Just say it!”

  “Yeah,” said Gonzo. “He’s your guy. Gave me goosebumps just being in the same zip code as him.”

  Ben could feel the darkness infecting him all over again. He shut his eyes, brought his knees together and leaned into them until his forehead was cradled. His fists were balled and his knuckles as white as pearls.

  “Ben. I’ve been straight with you, okay? But now I’m gonna be even more honest and direct.”

  Gently, Gonzo placed her hand on Ben’s head and began to stroke his hair. Her voice softened, but remained resolute.

  “You listening?” asked Gonzo. “Now that you know, you’ve got to forget you ever heard the name Stew Raymo. You’ve got to put him and all that ill stuff behind you.”

  Incredulity welled up in Ben, spilling over.

  “Cannot believe you are saying this to me,” he croaked.

  “Believe me! I know what—”

  “You’re a cop! A goddamned cop and you’re telling me you think I ought to leave it be? A capital fucking offense?”

  “A minute ago, I could swear you were going to say you didn’t want to hear it—”

  “That’s your fix? Wind me up then tell me to leave shit be? Forget I ever heard the bastard’s name?”

  “I know it’s not easy—”

  “He took my life from me! Everything I cared about. You have a clue what it took to bring me back from that place? The kind of work? Give up one life for another? Do you?”

  “My point exactly!”

  “You know? Just go away! Please.”

  “You came back, Ben. You built a life. A new life with a wonderful wife and family. Now, I shoulda said this to you that night by the pool. Don’t go diggin’ in the graveyard. It’s just ghosts and bones and badness—”

  “Asked you to go. So go, okay? Go.”

  But it was Ben who shoved off. He showed her his palm at the end of a stiff arm, stood and started to walk.

  Gonzo snagged Ben by the elbow. Her grip instantly had the feeling of authority.

  “I looked that prick right in the eyes,” she said. “Some people you get a feeling from.”

  “You’re right. I got a feeling from you. I thought you’d help. As a matter of fact, I recall you saying you would help!”

  “This Stew Raymo guy,” urged Gonzo. “He’s a package you do not want to open! You got that? Stay away from him.”

  Ben didn’t pull his arm away from Gonzo. He merely glared at her kung-fu grip until she released him. Gonzo watched as Ben set a heading for the parking lot without once looking back.

  Damn it, she thought. If only she had been wearing the uniform. She rarely made mistakes on the job. With civilians she would always remain detached and impersonal. She never would have crossed up some poor citizen with conflicting advice. Why then, did she make such an idiotic error with Ben?

  Later she would wonder why she really hadn’t called him back. And why she had approached him at school, out of uniform, and dressed like a bull dyke.

  Mixed signals. Hell, thought Gonzo. That’s all I am to men.

  Given context and a little history, the argument on the bleachers between Ben and Gonzo was easily understood. But from less than a hundred yards away, the altercation appeared altogether different. Especially when viewed through the designer lenses of three small-minded school parents. The scandal-selling troika of power moms, Layla Johnson, Rhonda Markel, and Janie Hart, also known as the Yummy Mummies, was parked and chatting underneath the crimson and gold umbrella-covered tables on the bricked patio outside the student store.

  Each of the trio had a wealthy husband and shared sex and cosmetic surgery secrets with the others, not to mention trendy vacation getaways. And while their children were toiling in school, the women had far too much money and free time on their hands. Theirs was a small universe and very little escaped their keen attention.

  The primary purpose of the Simi Canyons student store was to sell junk food and hooded sweatshirts to high school students. It was run by volunteer parents, mostly middle-school mothers, and served decent cappuccinos and chai lattes, thanks to the well-intended family who had donated the restaurant-quality espresso machine. Since the installation of a genuine Pasquini, the student body had taken to calling the closet-sized shop Student Starbucks. And not unlike its namesake, some of the more social parents had begun gathering there for their morning doses of caffeine and gossip.

  The Student Starbucks was within clear eyeshot of the football field bleachers.

  There was already a faint buzz about a possible affair between the odd but well-regarded Ben Keller and the suspected lesbian, Lydia Gonzalez. Thus, her “suspected lesbian” label had been replaced with that of “bisexual” through such whispers as, “she must play for both teams.”

  But it was just idle chatter. Ignored by most.

  If Ben and Gonzo had only known. Except for a small grove of decorative palms, the view from the Student Starbucks to the athletic field was mostly unobstructed. The bright blast of morning sun put a spotlight on the bleachers and the man and woman there as they engaged, argued, and angrily separated. The body language was unmistakable, depicting affection, anger, and pain. A lovers’ spat in plain view of Simi Canyons’ most malicious magpies.

  Layla, the former department store model, was closest to Alex. It would be her mission to artfully inform Alex of Ben’s suspected infidelities without appearing underhanded. After all, her television-producer husban
d was known for an occasional out-of-town liaison. She would joke to her friends that he was only following the old show business axiom—it’s not adultery if you’re on location.

  The trio agreed, though, that Ben’s alleged affair was far more dangerous. It was within the school community and played out in full view of the children.

  For the children’s sake, something had to be done.

  Once again, Ben withdrew from living in the present.

  Since receiving the anonymous CD, he had felt like an unwitting passenger on a never-ending emotional roller coaster. Only the ride was in reverse. Each twist and dip sent him backward into a yet untapped depth. How deep was the bottom? How far could he actually sink?

  So instead of faking his way through another day, Ben wrote himself a get-out-of-work-free pass. He asked Josie to cancel everything, giving her his proxy to make any kind of excuse she saw fit, and then buried himself in a conga line of mindless movies playing at the local megaplex. Lunch and dinner were buttered popcorn, jumbo Diet Cokes, and five-dollar boxes of Raisinettes. When one film ended, he would get up, wander into the next theater, and hope the next picture would help him forget.

  Ben never called Alex to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner. He assumed Josie had covered for him, which explained the lack of text messages or emails from his wife.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when Ben pulled into his driveway. He stood at the front stoop, twirling his keys on his finger, daring himself to enter. He suspected Alex would be angry. She had a right to be. He had been AWOL for the better part of the day. Totally incommunicado. That was the stuff of lousy husbands.

  The fog had crept in again. Thick. The low voltage lights that lined the path gave off an appearance of glowing pods, one way leading into a domestic refuge of peace and tranquility, the opposite way pointing toward the world of the unknown. Somewhere, just beyond the glistening rooftops and dimmed streetlamps, was a man named Stew Raymo. Was he sleeping? Was he enjoying his life and liberty? Did he even recall what horrors he had committed?

  And Simi Valley was supposed to feel safe.

  Ben quietly entered the house and punched in the alarm code. In the kitchen he grabbed and swallowed three slices of lunchmeat to make up for his day without protein, then ascended the stairs. He slowed at the first landing, directing his eyes upward to try to figure out what was wrong with the picture. It was how the light fell on the stairs. The doors, Ben worried. All the doors to the upstairs bedrooms were usually propped open with antique doorstops. As a rule, firemen warned that doors should be closed at night in case of fire. A closed bedroom door could prevent fire and deadly smoke from spreading.

  Transversely, Ben knew that earthquakes presented an equal or greater danger. If supports or sheering walls of the house somehow failed or buckled, a closed bedroom door could be jammed in the doorframe and impossible to open. Weighing the risks, Ben had decided the safest bet was for all the bedroom doors to remain open at all times. This of course didn’t suit Nina at all. The budding teenager wanted as much privacy as she could extract from her parents. She wasn’t beyond affixing a rude, handwritten sign, locking her door, and damning the consequences.

  But Nina’s door was open.

  Traveling two steps more, Ben could see that it was his own bedroom door that was shut. The master suite. It puzzled Ben because he couldn’t recall Alex closing the door at night—ever!

  She’s angry. She has a right. Asshole, you didn’t so much as call.

  The master bedroom door appeared as a deep rectangular shadow, inset and without much relief. Just some shine off the doorknob as a teasing invitation.

  Go in, Ben thought. Just go in, wake her if she’s asleep, and demand she give him what for. Then after she cooled, after he had apologized for the self-absorbed infraction he had committed, he would tell her all of it. Confess. Tell her about the audio confession, Stew Raymo, Gonzo, all of it. Even the visit to the gravesites. Tell her that he loved her more than life—that he needed her in his time of renewed grief.

  And renewed rage.

  Then came the cry. The slightest of whimpers in the dark. A tiny voice trying to form words from inside the black hole of sleep. It was somewhere behind Ben. Betsy’s voice. Cries for help from deep within her nightmare.

  On impulse, Ben hurried into her room. The pastel walls were cast with diffused gray from the streetlamps in the fog outside. Ben had to tiptoe around the clothes and tiny toys that littered the floor. Little Betsy was twisted out of her covers, not quite thrashing, but struggling as if she were bound in cling wrap.

  “Sshhhh,” soothed Ben. “It’s okay. Daddy’s here, now. Sssshhhh.”

  Ben lay next to her, pulling her in a bit closer, his voice hushed with assurance.

  “It’s okay, Bunny. Daddy’s not gonna let anything hurt his baby girl.”

  “Scary,” forced Betsy with a jerk. Her eyes were still squeezed shut. She was still in the dream.

  “What’s scary?”

  “It’s scary!”

  “Well, you just tell it to go away. Say, ‘Get out of here bad thing.’”

  Betsy’s mouth pursed and she punched the air.

  “Get out of here bad thing!”

  “Go away and never come back to my dreams.”

  “Go way.”

  “Never come back to my dreams.”

  “Never come back...”

  “To my dreams.”

  “To my dreams.”

  And as quickly as he had heard the first cry, Betsy’s face slackened into the heavenly pose of a sleeping six-year-old. Perfect. Without a world to worry for. Just as it should be, thought Ben. Just as it should be.

  Ben fell asleep next to Betsy. When he woke, he was alone in the child’s bed. The house was bursting with daylight, but sadly quiet and empty. Alex had left a note taped to his tube of minty-fresh toothpaste.

  “WE NEED TO TALK. LUNCH?”

  ****

  “Had this bad dream last night.”

  “Okay. Want to describe your nightmare?”

  “Said it was a bad dream,” grumbled Ben.

  “Essentially you’re saying that it wasn’t bad enough to qualify as a nightmare,” confirmed the psychotherapist.

  “Weird, annoying, uncomfortable.”

  “Go on.”

  Ben rewound for a moment. He allowed his head to tilt back into the pillowy chair. His eyes unconsciously counted the knots in the open-beam ceiling. But he was thinking about the chair. A damned comfortable chair, upholstered in soft, green and gold chenille. Of course, the chair matched the rest of the mellow-voiced therapist’s backyard office, a vaulted room tastefully appointed in earthy colors and textured fabrics. There was a couch to Ben’s left, a coffee table with a ceramic vase that sprouted a neatly cut splay of seasonal golden wheat, and underfoot, a plush oriental rug. Everything about the room was tuned—warm, comforting, neutral. Much like the man in the matching chair opposite Ben, the noted grief guru and published author, Dr. Daniel Dhue.

  It had been eight months since Ben had last visited the Tarzana-based therapist. And years since they had talked of profound subjects like death and grief. Ben would just dial up the doctor like a patient in need of his annual physical. Most sessions quickly evolved into something akin to a social checkup. There were more laughs than anything else. Dr. Dhue was fascinated by the way Ben had turned his pain into a proud profession and profit. Danny Dhue praised Ben as his personal Safety Geek. And Ben jokingly called him Dr. Frankengrief.

  This session was different. Neither man had once cracked wise. They had been talking for forty-two minutes.

  “Betsy, my wife’s youngest daughter,” recalled Ben, “I’d say she was having a nightmare. She has about one a week. These fits. So I do what I do. I lie down with her and talk—”

  “You said, ‘my wife’s daughter,’” interrupted the therapist.

  “Yeah. We’ve talked about her before. She’s six—”

  “You’ve never called her
that before.”

  “Called her what?”

  “My wife’s daughter.”

  “I was talking about the bad dream.”

  “When you talk about Betsy, you usually say, ‘Betsy’ or ‘my daughter’ or ‘my youngest.’”

  “So what’s your point?” asked Ben, barely containing his aggravation. He wanted to convey the content of his lousy dream. But the shrink was digging beneath the skin where Ben was raw.

  “Just pointing it out. If you don’t think it’s important, go on with your dream.”

  “You’re baiting me.”

  “Am I?”

  “You think that because I referred to Betsy as hers instead of mine...”

  Dr. Dhue scratched his beard with his knuckles.

  “I think you’ve regressed. Understandably so.”

  “So you don’t want to hear about the dream,” growled Ben. “You want to tell me how I feel before I tell you.”

  “Your time. But do I really need to hear the dream?”

  No. The good doctor felt he was already miles ahead of Ben, and no doubt, the time clock on the session was running out. Another Daniel Dhue Grief Relief patient would surely be arriving soon and Ben’s time would be up.

  “I think it’s important,” insisted Ben. “In Betsy’s dream, she was fighting something. I told her to shake her fist at it. Call it a bad thing and tell it to go away.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, in my dream, I was lying there with Betsy. Her room. Same as if I were awake. But I was sleeping and she was telling me to shake my fist and fight the bad thing.”

  “I see.”

  “No. You don’t see. Because when I turned back at Betsy to remind her that I was the dad and she was the little girl, it wasn’t Betsy anymore. It was one of the twins.”

  “Just one?”

  “Yeah. Except she was older. Six. Betsy’s age.”

  “I’m with you. And when she was telling you what to do—the twin—did you get angry with her?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Because you’re angry now.”

  “’Course, I am. That’s why I’m here.” Ben felt a flush in his cheeks. “We’re going backwards now.”

  “Regressing, Ben. That’s all.”