by Ellery Kane
Who? I’ve asked myself the question a thousand ways, a thousand times. Who wants the world to see me as a killer? The names whip and toss around in my head—Cleo? Ricky? David?—like lawn chairs in a tornado. So fast, each one is lethal. At the eye of the storm, just one name, the name I try to never think of: Wallace Bergman. The things we did to him. This is my punishment. And his ghost holds the whip.
I slow my pace. But I keep jogging, head down, past Seaside Sweets. I can’t be too careful. Marianne would out me to Luke without meaning to—“Guess who I saw this morning?”—and I’m already on shaky ground.
I let myself in and take the stairs two at a time. The office is warm, the ancient heater grumbling at me, and I shed my long-sleeve layer and tie it around my waist, above my running pouch. Usually, it holds my cell phone, pepper spray, and a tube of energy gel. Today, it’s empty. A body bag waiting to be filled.
Just get it over with, Ava.
I’m still breathing hard when I reach the desk. When I open the drawer. When I touch the bag and pick it up and shove it inside the pouch without looking. And when I zip the pouch tight, my breath is the sound of the ocean in my head. Obliterating everything. And each rise and fall of my chest brings a wave of relief.
It’s half done. The hard part is over. I replace the false bottom, push the drawer shut with my foot, and head for the door. I lock it fast and slip my office key inside the pouch without looking. Legs twitching and ready to run.
But then, the screech of sirens. Faint at first. Though it’s meant for me. I’m sure of it. Like music only I can hear. I know it in my bones, the same way I’d known that summer so long ago. I’d stood there listening—like now—frozen and waiting. For the police, the ambulance, the professionals. Waiting to be told what I already knew. My father was dead. My father had killed himself. And I was to blame.
Well, me and DeAndre Mack, the armed drug dealer he’d shot dead inside a warehouse two years prior. The biggest cocaine bust in LA County since 1989. “People shouldn’t get medals for that shit,” I’d heard Dad tell Mom on the way home from the commendation ceremony when they thought I was asleep in the back seat. “It’s bad karma.”
Now, the siren is loud and wailing. And right outside. I see two squad cars through the window. They’re coming. For me.
I pull the long-sleeve shirt back over my head and tug it down over the pouch.
I start down the staircase—there’s no time to toss the knife, nowhere to toss it to—and try to remember how to look innocent. When I’m anything but.
****
“So you were in your office for about ten minutes?”
Before I can answer, Cooper speaks into the radio at his collar, calling off the dogs. Now that we’ve established there is no masked intruder breaking into my office. No burglary in progress. No laws being broken—well . . .
He regards me the way he always does. Like I’m a coffee stain on his best dress shirt. A scuff, a black streak, on brand-new white sneakers. And I remember the look. Junior year, Carmel High. At the end of the football game, I’d spied Cooper under the bleachers making out with a cheerleader. Not his girlfriend, Jenny, who played the flute and worshipped the holy ground he walked on. He’d seen me too, flashing that same glare over her delicate shoulder. I swear I didn’t say a word to Jenny. But if someone happened to drop an anonymous note in her locker, it would’ve been more than deserved. Right?
“Right,” I say. “Ten minutes. I just wanted to be sure I’d shut off my desk lamp when I left last night. I figured I’d swing by on my run down to the beach.”
“And you didn’t call the station?”
“No.”
“Well, someone did.” The same someone who put a bloody knife in my drawer. That’s what I want to say. But I shrug instead.
“Do you mind if we have a look inside the office? To be sure.”
I fight the urge to refuse. To return the smug tilt of his head with one of my own. I closed the drawer. I have the knife. There’s nothing to worry about. “It’s fine. Go ahead.”
Cooper nods to the other officer, Donnelly, and she brushes past me toward the door. Her hand meets the knob. And that’s when I realize.
“We’ll need the key, Doctor Lawson,” she says, giving the knob a jiggle that rattles my bones.
Can a laugh sound guilty? Mine does. At least to me. “Of course.” The key. The one that’s tucked in the pouch at my waist. Nuzzling against the paper bag that holds my secret.
Somehow, I keep my hand steady as I unzip the corner. My fingers root for the smooth metal. Don’t look at him. Don’t look up. But I do both, meeting Cooper’s eyes as I find it. Glacial. And beneath the ice, more ice. Layer upon layer of frosty judgment.
He knows. Again, I think it, squinting in the glare of a perpetual spotlight. Because that’s how it feels when you’ve got a secret. More than one. When you’ve told a lie. Many.
I hold the key out to him, the distance between us vast. A deep crevice in the ice.
“I suppose you’ve seen the pictures of your ex-husband,” he says, mid-reach. “Or was your marriage so long ago you forgot what he looked like too?”
The key falls from my hand. Bounces and skitters to rest at his feet.
“Uh, sorry.”
He bends to pick it up, and I zip the pouch. Careful not to be too hurried. Or too slow.
“Yes. I’ve seen them.” The key passes to Donnelly. She unlocks the door and wanders inside. “They’re probably not even real.”
Cooper grunts. “These days it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t. Or who. Don’t you think?”
I shift my weight from one sneaker to the other, the way I did as a girl. As if the weight of all of it—of all of me—is too much to bear.
You, Cooper, are an asshole. Now, that’s what’s real. “I had a patient once who thought he was an alien. Who am I to say it wasn’t real?”
Cooper blinks at me, perplexed. And I savor it, his confusion and the way he tries to hide it. It feels good to throw him off balance, to watch him stumble for once.
Over his shoulder, Donnelly stands at my desk, staring. And I look too long at her, because he turns, curious. “See anything, Donnelly? Or should I let you pose that question, Doc?”
I realize, then, why he’s asking, why he’s chuckling at her. Sneering at me. The framed Rorschach inkblot—card IV—propped atop the latest diagnostic manual. I don’t tell him what we’re taught to ask: “What might this be?” Or that IV is known as the father card. Or that I’ve always only seen a monster looming over me from a great height. Or that I remember showing him that inkblot and the other nine a few years back after he’d been referred to me for a psych eval following a few too many citizen complaints.
Silent, I will Officer Donnelly away from the desk. But she doesn’t move, and Cooper leaves me to join her.
“I remember that test,” he says. “Waste of time, in my opinion.”
“Well, you’ll be happy to know I don’t administer it anymore. At least not for those types of evaluations.”
Cooper’s jaw tightens and Donnelly clears her throat. She steps aside, pretends to gaze out the window, then at my bookshelf. But the look on her face is twitchy, like she’s stumbled into an ants’ nest.
“Finally realized it’s a bunch of BS, huh?”
“Actually, I realized a lot of cops look up the test online and just tell me what they think I want to hear.”
He runs his hand along the polished oak, casually opening the top drawer. “You should probably check these,” he says to me. “Just in case there’s something missing.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.”
He opens another, and I shiver at the sound of the scraping wood.
“I said, it’s fine.”
“Suit yourself.” He lingers for a moment, shrugs. “Still looks like a run-over cat to me. Splat.”
I nod, in that therapist way that can mean anything—good or bad. Officer Donovan relates to the world in a conventional way, meaning he’s likely to adhere to the rules. However, he harbors strong aggressive impulses that push against his need for order. That’s what I’d written in my report, which was generous if you ask me. Fifty-two weeks of anger management recommended before consideration for promotion.
Donnelly shuts the office door and returns the key to me with a nod. It rests in my palm for a moment, cold and all-seeing, before I bury it in my fist.
****
I’d planned to take the knife home with me, stash it under the mattress, and drive it to Pescadero Point after dark. Fling it like a madwoman from the rocks into the deep, churning water below. But I’m spooked, and I want to be rid of it. Now.
I wait until Cooper’s car disappears down Juniper Street. Then I run—faster than before, wilder—down Ocean Avenue toward the beach. I don’t look over my shoulder. Not once. Even though someone followed me this morning. I’m certain of that. Certain someone is playing with me. The way a cat bats at its prey until it’s tired and dazed and a fatal bite to the neck comes as a relief.
That’s how I feel. Worn out by something with bigger teeth than me.
When I hit the soft sand just past the parking lot, I walk. Let my feet sink in surrender.
I turn around.
Nothing. No one. What did I expect? Who?
The parking lot is mostly empty. It’s still early. And February. Gloomy and cold. The tourists are nestled snug in their B&Bs, wishing they’d gone south instead. To LA or San Diego, where sunbathing in the winter is practical.
A hoarse laugh scrapes from my throat when I spot it. An orange tabby, all fur and bones, trotting toward me. A long, flesh-colored tail twitches from the side of its mouth. A mouse. A soon-to-be dead one. And I wonder if this is how it starts. Losing one’s mind. Seeing connections where there are none. Thoughts blurring the edges of reality until there’s no line between them at all. No way to tell one from the other. Soon enough I’ll be no different than my alien patient. There’s even a word for it, one Ian taught me.
Apophenia. The tendency to perceive connections where none exist.
“Drop it,” I say to the cat, clapping my hands at it. “Go on.”
It glances in my direction, with a look of judgment—crazy lady—then saunters away. Mouse still firmly in its mouth, of course. Both of us doomed.
I take one more nervous look around, before I start down the beach. When I reach the packed wet sand near the water, I start to jog again. The ocean—the smell of it, the sound—salves my wounds a bit. The vastness of it. The indifference. The serene brutality. It knows which secrets to swallow and which to spit back out again.
The day after my dad’s funeral, I’d taken the city bus to the Santa Monica pier. Walked past the games and the souvenir shops and the Ferris wheel to the end, where a few fishermen stood behind their poles basking in the June gloom. I reached into my pocket and removed the lined paper I’d folded into a small square, the shape of a headstone. My father’s suicide note. Leaning out over the water, I watched it fall from my hand. As if the words could be unwritten—and what was done could be undone.
I’m still thinking of my father—of those poison words he wrote—when I reach the natural jetty at the far end of the beach. Low tide is coming, and the water laps at the mossy rock faces, slick beneath my sneakers. I walk to the end, measuring my steps. Because with my luck, I’d fall and crack my head. The paramedics would be summoned. The police too. And then they’d unzip the pack at my waist, searching for my ID.
When I reach the last section of stone, I look up toward the horizon. Where the ocean goes on and on forever, as if all the world is water. I think of my father’s note when I open the pouch, then the paper bag, and peer in at the knife.
I won’t touch it. Because fingerprints don’t just wash away. Not according to chapter three in my dad’s old Practical Guide to Homicide Investigation.
It looks expensive, this knife. The sort Ian would’ve picked out from some snobby kitchen store in Beverly Hills. The handle is black resin, the blade stainless steel. The markings on the blade tell me it’s a Wusthof. And that can’t be a coincidence. No apophenia here.
I hold up the bag like an offering. Turn it upside down. And the knife falls out, sinking beneath the waves. I blink my eyes at it. Because for a moment, blood swirls in the water. Or is it ink?
****
If today had a to-do list, it would read like a jailbird’s diary.
Lie to the cops, Luke included.
Get rid of the bloody knife.
Figure out what to do about partner in crime.
Now that I’ve put a hard black line through one and two, Ricky is on my mind. He might’ve stolen the pictures himself, sold them to the tabloid. He might’ve killed Ian and Kate and left the murder weapon for me as a gruesome screw you. But if he didn’t—how would he have known where to find the pictures?—then he’ll be livid, thinking I’ve sold the photos out from under him. Whichever it is, there’s only one thing that can set it right. One thing that will send him packing.
When I reach home, Luke’s truck is gone, so I let myself in with the spare I keep hidden in the birdhouse. The dishes are washed and put away, and there’s a note on the counter. Went to see Mom and Dad. Be back soon, signed with Luke’s usual well-ordered script. Even if it is easier this way, I’d expected him to be here, and the house feels strange. Abandoned.
I run the shower as hot as I can stand. Strip down and let the water pound against my forehead. Don’t think about the knife. But it’s my father’s note that won’t let me go. It’s funny how a memory can stay buried for so long you think it’s dead and gone forever. Until it claws its way to the surface, desperate and gasping. And very much alive.
I keep my head under. Squeeze my eyes shut. Hold my breath. Try not to see his last words, the handwritten lines I’d committed to memory. To Franny and Ava, my darling girls: I’m no hero. I’m not who you think I am—
My cell phone trills from the kitchen, its happy little ring lopping off the rest of the words. I suck in a breath. And a mouthful of water. I choke on it, and it burns through my nose. My wet feet smack against the floor as I step out, dripping, and reach for a towel.
The ringing starts again. And water pools beneath me as I stare at the screen.
Ian is calling. It’s his number. The same number he had since we met. Dread creeps in like the cold, and I pull the towel tighter against me.
I pick up the phone with damp fingers. Speak, though my throat hurts.
“Ian?”
I listen hard. I fill in the silence.
Hey Aves. How’s your day?
And I’d answer, with a smile: Crazy as usual. And then there are my patients.
But it’s not Ian. Because Ian is dead.
It’s the breathing man.
“I saw you today. At the beach.” His voice is all one note, wooden and clunking like a dead piano key.
“Who are you?”
“Consider me a debt collector.”
“What do you want from me?”
Like the tip of a finger, a drip of water zigzags down my back. I shiver as it joins the small puddle at my feet. I wait for the answer. For my sentence to be handed down. My fate sealed.
“Only what’s owed to me,” he says. “Only what you took.”
He means: Everything.
****
My hair is still damp. It clings against my T-shirt, leaving wet spots on my shoulders. I twist it into a bun at my neck, hoping my mother won’t notice. Or ask questions. Not that she’d remember the answers. It’s the asking, the disapproval that sticks between my ribs, keen as a blade. With any luck, she’ll be asleep and I won’t wake her.
Keeping my head down, I sign the l
og, wave to the nurse at the desk, and rush down the corridor. If I focus, I can be in and out in ten minutes.
She’s in bed. Awake. Shit.
I give her the phony smile that comes so easily to me. The one I’d used to greet Dad when I’d find him in bed in the middle of the day. The same one I’d offered Ian at the end, when we were both still pretending we weren’t irrevocably broken. And it feels exactly the same. At thirteen. At thirty-five. I am a fraud.
I step into the room, and she’s up in an instant, clutching at my arm.
“Help me,” she whispers. “I don’t belong here.”
Some days, her eyes are pools of stagnant water. But right now, they’re wild and bright. And I panic looking into them. “This is where you live,” I say. “This is your room.”
“No, no, no.” She shakes her head back and forth, her braid whipping from one shoulder to the other. “I live at 774 Evergreen Circle in Los Angeles. With my husband. He’s a police officer, so you better get me out of here.”
“Okay. Let’s sit down and talk about it.” So much for in and out in ten. I offer her my hand and wait for her to take it. I’ve been cautious ever since she clocked me in the jaw last summer, terrified I’d been sent to bring her to jail.
I lead her to the vinyl sofa near the window. “What’s your husband’s name?”
“Jerry.” She says his name with a kind of familiar tenderness. Like slipping on a well-worn pair of blue jeans. And my eyes well.
“Tell me about him.”
“We met at the Eagles concert. In the middle of that song ‘Hotel California.’ He spilled his beer on me.” She laughs then, and the girl she was flickers behind her eyes, glinting like pennies at the bottom of a fountain, too far down to reach. “He was so handsome I could barely speak. And he wasn’t even in uniform. We were married last year.”
I nod at her, knowing better than to disagree. Thou shalt not argue. The first commandment of dementia, the first thing you learn. That and patience. Radical patience. Neither of which comes naturally. Not to me anyway. “Sounds like you’re a lucky lady.”
“The luckiest.” She sighs, giddy as a teenager. “You know, we’re trying for a baby. We want a big family. At least four little ones. That way nobody’s left out.”
