Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  It’s just as well he’s not grilling me, because I can’t remember anything. My thoughts are jumping all over the place.

  My dress is covered in Zane’s blood, but I don’t know how it got there unless I laid down on top of him. My mother’s blood was all over the bathroom. The killer had smashed in her head with Champ’s bat, and head wounds bleed like crazy. I couldn’t get over how much was on the walls and floor yet how much was still left inside her to slowly ooze out and turn the bathwater crimson. Camio’s head would’ve bled the same way. Whoever killed her had an almost impossible task trying to clean up. Grandma tried to clean up Mom’s bathroom. The next day after the police had been in and out what seemed like a hundred times, we’d all been questioned, and Mom’s body had been moved from the coroner’s morgue to the funeral home, Grandma descended on the bathroom armed with a bucket, mop, sponges, steel wool, and a whole host of soaps and solvents. Gil had to forcibly take a scrub brush out of her hand and explain to her that he’d pay someone to clean. I remember Neely asking me how much that would cost. I thought it was a strange question.

  We arrive at the hospital and Nolan maneuvers me down corridors covered in colorful murals of dinosaurs, rainbows, and cartoon characters, in and out of elevators playing songs from Disney movies, past quiet, dimly lit rooms I don’t want to look into.

  “Is Children’s the best hospital for a gunshot wound? Getting shot isn’t exactly a common childhood affliction,” I ask him as we round a corner and almost plow into a dad taking a walk with his bald little girl in pink fuzzy slippers and a matching satiny robe wheeling an IV stand.

  I’ve noticed how no one even looks twice at the old lady covered in dried blood.

  “It’s not the bullet you have to worry about anymore; it’s the internal damage,” he explains. “He’s past needing a good ER doctor; now he needs a great surgeon.”

  Brie and Terry Massey are standing in front of a nurses’ station talking to an older couple. Grandparents, maybe. A woman who resembles Brie and I assume is her sister hands her a paper cup of coffee. Everyone looks awful, but they’re talking. They’re not crying or collapsing. A girl with braces and long dark hair in a ponytail clings to Terry’s side. I recognize her as their daughter from the family portraits I glimpsed in their living room before I let their son get shot in front of me.

  Terry notices me first. He calls out my name. Brie sees me and waves weakly.

  They don’t realize they should hate me. They see me as a hero: a plucky small-town police chief who left a family cookout to go barreling into harm’s way to try and save their son. I may not have succeeded but I tried.

  I pull Nolan’s jacket closed over my dress.

  “Any news?” I ask them.

  “He’s in surgery. They won’t tell us anything.”

  “That’s normal,” Nolan assures them.

  “This is our daughter, Courtney,” Terry makes the introduction.

  “What happened?” she blurts out.

  She’s the first person who’s asked me this.

  “Why didn’t you stop him?”

  And this.

  “Chief Carnahan did her best,” Terry answers for me. “She could’ve been shot, too. She was very brave.”

  This is more than I can handle. I excuse myself and walk away. Nolan catches up to me just as I start to cry.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t be here. I shouldn’t be here.”

  “Calm down.”

  He puts his hand lightly around my shoulders and the feel of this innocent gesture makes me want to do him. Right here. Right now. Up against the rows of sick little boy and girl self-portraits made from bits of yarn and dried macaroni hanging on the wall behind me. I want to be pounded again until I reach that rapturous release, then can collapse on this clean, cold floor with glitter-coated ziti in my hair.

  “I’m sorry. I’m acting like a girl.”

  He doesn’t comment. He takes me by the arm and leads me to an empty playroom. All the toys have been neatly put away for the night. I plop down on a stool. It’s uncomfortable. I slide off it onto the floor. He takes a seat on a table after carefully checking it for traces of finger paints or Play-Doh.

  “I’m going to lose my job,” is the first thing that comes out of my mouth.

  I’m stunned by my selfishness. A boy may by dying. His family will be destroyed. Another boy is going to jail. And all I can think about is how I make a living and Nolan’s big . . . hands. But it’s much more than that. Watching the Masseys through the playroom windows as more teary friends and relatives arrive, it suddenly hits me that my job is my life. I have no kids, no husband. I don’t even have a goldfish.

  “You’re not going to lose your job,” Nolan says.

  “I should lose my job.”

  He gets up and starts throwing open tiny brightly painted cabinet doors looking like an ogre rummaging through a woodland cottage kitchen where a fairy princess is rumored to be hiding. He comes away with a roll of paper towels and rips off a couple for me.

  I wipe at my face.

  “I went barging in,” I finally tell him. “I called out Tug’s name, and when he turned toward me . . .”

  “The Massey kid made a break for it,” he finishes for me.

  I nod.

  “Then the Truly kid had no choice but to shoot him,” he continues. “He wasn’t allowed anymore time to think about what he was going to do. You took that away from him.”

  I nod again.

  “And then. . . ?”

  “I froze. I couldn’t shoot Tug. I have no idea why I’m not dead.”

  I’ve known Nolan a long time. He won’t tell me Everything’s okay and We all make mistakes any more than he’d tell a team of eight-year-olds who suck at soccer that everyone’s a winner.

  “What would you have done if you’d been stupid enough to get yourself in that situation?” I ask him.

  It’s a pointless question. We both know he never would have been in that situation. He would’ve proceeded by the book and Zane Massey might be sitting at home right now, shaken up but physically fine. After the initial shock passed, his mom would be all over Facebook.

  “You know what I would’ve done,” he says. “I would’ve shot that boy. He’d be dead.”

  A chill goes through me as much for Nolan as for Tug. How would Nolan have lived with that? Even knowing he had no choice? Maybe I knew I couldn’t live with it. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t shoot.

  “I lost my mind,” I say.

  “You lost your objectivity,” he corrects me. “You took it personally. You went all mama bear.”

  I guess I must still seem pretty upset, because he comes and sits on the floor with me. This big man with his iron gray crew cut in his suit pants with his serious black shoes looks ridiculous down here.

  He puts one of his hands over mine.

  “I don’t care how many years you have on the job, no one is ever prepared for a life-and-death situation. Everything you know goes out the window except your instincts. Your instincts wouldn’t let you shoot that boy even though he had a gun pointed at you, and odds were he was going to shoot you and then turn around and put a couple more bullets in Zane.”

  “So my instincts are crap?”

  “Maybe. But no one’s dead yet. So maybe not.”

  My phone beeps. I’ve been in touch with the station and Neely all night, keeping up-to-date on Tug through calls, but this is a text.

  I take out my reading glasses.

  Nolan raises his eyebrows.

  “You don’t need those to shoot, do you?”

  “I can see at a distance just fine.”

  I take a look and manage a tired smile.

  “What could possibly make you happy at a time like this?” Nolan asks.

  I show him the photo of Everhart and his wife holding a tiny blue bundle surrounded by a cloud of blue Mylar balloons with the caption: The Jakester’s here!!

  chapter fourteen

  I WALK INTO my litt
le brick police station with its drab waiting area and poorly stocked vending machine, past the scratched and dented filing cabinets and four communal desks with squeaky chairs housed in a room painted the same shade of gray as an eraser smudge, and into my office where I put a forearm against a wall and rest my head upon it. I’m overcome with a mix of relief and familiarity. I love this place. I love every stain on the putty-colored carpet and every spider that keeps diligently reweaving its web in the ceiling corners. I love the smell of burnt coffee and Pine-Sol, and the feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day, whether we helped find a lost pet, or mediated a dispute between a business owner and an irate customer, or stopped a man from beating his wife, or just gave out a bunch of speeding tickets.

  I’d be lost without my job. And my men.

  “Chief ?” Singer knocks on my door.

  Blonski and Dewey are with him.

  “It’s really late,” I tell them. “You should go home. There’s nothing more we can do tonight.

  “And tell Matt congratulations,” I say to Dewey. “I’ll be by to see the Jakester once he’s settled in at home.”

  “Okay, Chief,” Dewey says, and starts to bolt like a kid who’s been let out of school early, then catches himself and turns back to me. “Are you okay?”

  I hold up my hands and do a fashion model pivot so they can admire the Looney Tunes nurse’s scrubs I was given at the hospital.

  “I’m fine. Our thoughts should be with the Massey boy.”

  Dewey leaves, but I motion for Singer and Blonski to take seats. They look as tired as I feel, but they’re young. They’ll look like a million bucks tomorrow after a good night’s sleep. I won’t.

  I take a seat on the edge of my desk.

  “Where’s Clark Truly?”

  “We took him to Rockland,” Blonski replies. “We would’ve just let him sleep it off in the holding cells here, but he was a fighter.”

  He grins and jerks a thumb in Singer’s direction.

  “Singer maced him.”

  “He kicked me in the balls,” Singer protests.

  “I wanted to light him up,” Blonski says eagerly.

  I tick-tock a forefinger at him.

  “No Tasers unless absolutely necessary.”

  “He fought dirty,” Blonski continues. “Even before he started throwing punches at us, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable taking him home to his family.”

  “And we definitely wouldn’t have let him back in his vehicle,” Singer adds. “We got him on DUI, resisting arrest, and assaulting an officer.”

  “Did you get anything useful out of him in regards to Tug?” I ask.

  Blonski leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head.

  “Nada. He was pickled. He may have known why he was coming down here when he left his home, but he didn’t know by the time he got here.”

  “Tug’s mother?”

  “Never showed.”

  We all fall silent for a moment as we let the significance of this sink in. I know Singer and Blonski are very close to their mothers. They both still live at home, though Singer has been looking for his own place at his father’s urging. Blonski’s mom is a widow, and I know he wouldn’t feel good about leaving her even though she, too, has given her blessing if he wants to move out of her garage apartment.

  None of us can understand how a mother could find out her fourteen-year-old son is in jail for attempted murder and not rush to his side.

  I make a mental note that it’s time for me to have that serious talk with Shawna Truly.

  “The sister came,” Singer adds. “She even brought her baby with her. She was upset.”

  “Did she say anything useful?”

  “Only that Tug didn’t mean it. She said he’s not the kind of kid who would hurt somebody. He was just crazy with grief.”

  “Did you get his statement?”

  They exchange smirks.

  “Your sister had Sandra Goldfarb over here so fast I thought the woman had been hiding under my desk,” Blonski says.

  “Best defense attorney in the county,” I provide. “Maybe the world.”

  I know the Trulys won’t pay for her, and Neely doesn’t have that kind of money. Maybe Sandra took the case pro bono, but why? Tug’s not a sympathetic client except to Neely and me. My officers certainly don’t feel sorry for him.

  “Mizzz Goldfarb . . . ,” Blonski continues, drawing out the “Ms.” that Sandra insists on putting in front of her name.

  Nolan does the same thing whenever he encounters these two abhorrent letters he insists are helping to undermine the domestic tranquility of our country.

  “. . . wouldn’t let Tug say a word. She said he’d give a statement tomorrow.”

  “Is he still in holding?”

  “We kept him like you said. We’ll move him to juvie tomorrow.”

  Against my better judgment, I decide to have a word with him. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish. I think I just need to see him looking like his regular self again and not leveling a gun at my head.

  He’s on the cell bench curled up on his side with his hands clasped under his bare head and his knees pulled up to his chest. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him without a ball cap. It was taken from him at booking along with his shoelaces and his belt. The same chill of desolate loneliness I felt at his uncle Eddie’s house courses through me. Asleep in the dark, barely lit by a parking lot lamp shining through the small barred window, he looks half his age, and his age isn’t much to begin with. He’s too young to be facing any aspect of life on his own, let alone something this devastating.

  I don’t want to wake him. I’m about to leave when he asks, “Is he dead?”

  I look back at him. He hasn’t moved but his eyes are open.

  “He survived surgery,” I reply. “He hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”

  “So he’s going to be okay?”

  “There was a lot of internal damage. He lost a lot of blood. He could still die.”

  Tug doesn’t say anything.

  “Do you want him to be okay?” I ask.

  “He killed Camio.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  He reaches a hand to his head to adjust the hat that isn’t there. He doesn’t answer me.

  “Will you talk to me tomorrow?”

  “What is there to talk about? I shot him. Everybody saw me do it.”

  There doesn’t seem to be any anger left in him. He sounds defeated and resigned to his fate.

  “I don’t think you wanted to do it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I was hypnotized?”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  He flips over on his other side, turning his back to me.

  A muffled, “No, you won’t,” comes from the heap of baggy clothes covering little more than skin and bones.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Get some sleep.”

  BY THE TIME I make it home to my house it’s almost two in the morning. Champ is asleep on my couch with the TV on. Mason is asleep on the bed in the guest room on top of the covers. It’s a warm night, but I find a light blanket and put it over him.

  I need to shut down my brain. This is one of those times when I wish I was a drinker or that I wasn’t afraid of chemical sedation. I don’t think a chapter of a novel or a New York Times crossword puzzle is going to do it for me tonight, but I’m wrong.

  I settle into my bed after a hot shower, slip on my glasses, pick up my book, and fall asleep instantly.

  In my dreams I’m wearing an even louder dress than the one I had on earlier along with a pair of bright red cowboy boots, a sombrero trimmed in a rainbow array of pom-poms, and two pearl-handled revolvers strapped in a silver-studded holster. A shiny gold star proclaiming me the “Sheriff of Mexico” glitters next to my impressive youthful cleavage (the stuff I had before things started going south). I’m in a shoot-out w
ith a gang of young boys whose leader is a woman with a wolf ’s head.

  I’m in the middle of the dream, holed up in a seedy cantina, down to my last bullet, when I’m awakened by a small voice and a large yank on my arm.

  My eyes fly open. My reading light is on but the sun is shining brightly now. Sometime during the night I rolled over on top of my book. My glasses are miraculously still on my face. I take them off and rub at the bridge of my nose.

  “Aunt Dove! Aunt Dove!”

  It takes me a moment to remember where I am and the identity of this little person. He’s still in the same clothes he arrived in yesterday, even the glaring orange socks. His Trapper Keeper is securely under one arm.

  “What is it, Mason?”

  “My dad’s gone.”

  I sit up straighter. My whole body aches.

  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  “He’s gone. The car’s gone and all our stuff.”

  I reach out and stroke his buzz cut while glancing at my bedside clock. It’s 7:23 a.m.

  “He’s probably running an errand or maybe getting some doughnuts for breakfast,” I try to assure him but a sick feeling begins to spread through me.

  He shakes his head.

  “No. That’s not it. He’s gone.”

  “Has he ever left you with someone before?”

  “No, but I’ve always known he’s been preparing for this.”

  “What’s this?”

  “The big drop.”

  I hear the Velcro rip. He opens the binder and pulls something out of one of the folders.

  “He left this.”

  He hands me an envelope. I fumble my glasses back onto my face so Mason won’t see me tear up. I don’t have to open it to know it’s full of tens and twenties.

  chapter fifteen

  I STAND IN FRONT of my bathroom mirror examining my Morning Old Face or MOF as I’ve come to think of it. It’s a syndrome I’ve identified that occurs when I first wake up and my face looks much older than it is. My color is bad. I have dark circles under my eyes. My cheeks sag. The lines on my forehead pop out. Later in the day I improve, but until then I wish I could wear a Cinderella false face. I actually priced them at Walmart last Halloween. They’re only a couple of bucks. The ones with hair are a little more.