Good Morning, Killer

bookstore. The sad, lost look in his flat eyes. With icy fumbling fingers I unbuckled one of the pockets. Inside was a handful of sparkly girlie hair clips and ponytail scrunchies, cheap beaded bracelets and dime-store rings.

“This stuff isn’t Willie’s!” I shouted. “It’s Brennan’s trophies. From his victims, like he said!”

“Where is Willie?” Jason shouted back. “Is he out here? Did Brennan kill him, too? Is he dead?”

I did not answer but watched as Jason, carrying the pack, lumbered through the blustery sandstorm to the van where Brennan was receiving first aid for the injury he had suffered by falling down on a rock.

I turned to the open desert, its monotone mauves blurred by rain.

“Willie!” I bellowed. “Wil-lie!”

And lifted my arms and stood up on my toes and felt the wind under me.

The house was near the Venice canals, in a funky working-class pocket. It was, amongst Spanish shacks and Victorian clapboards, a two-story remodel painted blue, with all sorts of adornments hanging off the eaves — whales and wind chimes and snowflakes and a whole school of angelfish. Carved into a wooden oar were the words Welcome to the Forresters. A boat was still hitched to a trailer in the drive. On the porch a table was laden with young plants in flats from a nursery; above them, an American flag. On top of a pole, like a totem, sat a pelican with head tucked. I wondered how they’d gotten a sculpture up there, but then the wind ruffled its feathers and I saw that it was a real bird.

“Who’s there?” Margaret Forrester demanded, impulsively opening the door before hearing a reply.

The air had a swampy, cabbage smell, which must have carried from the languid, slow-moving channels that ran beneath arched bridges to the sea. People who lived in the expensive houses on the canals kept rowboats and canoes. But that upscale neighborhood was several blocks away.

“Ana Grey, with the FBI.”

“I know who you are.” She stepped out. “What are you doing here?” Then she saw the police.

“We have a warrant for your arrest.”

She folded her arms and laid her weight back on one hip.

“Is this about the guava trees?”

“It’s not about the guava trees.”

“—Because I’ve had it up to here. Have you met my neighbors? Obviously you have. I’ve told them if the fruit falls on their side, keep it, what is the problem? These are the oldest continually producing guava trees in Venice!” “You are under arrest as an accessory in the murder of your husband.”

The eyelids began to flutter, the eyeballs circling uselessly as if cut loose from their stalks. She whimpered like a child.

The police captain said, “Ma’am?”

Now there were sharp intakes of breath as if she had found herself in a gas chamber.

“I’m sorry. I was up until five a.m., working in my garden.”

The captain said, “What is it, a moon garden?”

“She has guava trees,” I explained.

“I’m going to read you your rights,” he began.

Margaret cried, “Andrew is the one who killed my husband. But he’s dead, too, so what is the purpose? Why are you doing this to me?”

“What did Detective Andrew Berringer have to do with the death of your husband?” I asked, although I knew.

I knew because during preparation for the trial, my attorney had obtained the coroner’s report on the death of Wes (the Hat) Forrester. He’d had it reviewed by an expert in tool and weapon marks, who found significant discrepancies in the stated cause of death. Lividity showed the body had been killed in one place and moved to another. Also, there were two kinds of wounds. One was consistent with a whack from a baseball bat to the back of the head; the second looked more like a hit from the riser of a stairs. The riser had caused a subdural hematoma, which had killed him. The baseball bat came later. The expert stated there was no bleeding in the margins of that wound, which meant Margaret or Andrew had hit him over the head to make it look like gang revenge after the heart had stopped pumping.

“Your husband came home and found you two together.”

“We were together.” She nodded, unaware of what she was confessing. “The detective and I—”

“In bed.”

“—And they got into an argument, two big angry men. Their faces were this far apart, I couldn’t stop them, it was terrible.” Her voice twisted up and she grabbed her own hair. “Stop that, Margaret!” she scolded herself. “I don’t want to be like this anymore!” During the fight the Hat had fallen down the stairs, hit his head and died. Andrew and Margaret panicked, covered it up, but made a mistake. They did not pay close enough attention to the time. They waited too long to move the body. What went on between them — arguments, declarations, deals — during those minutes or hours cannot be known. But afterward, even after he gave her all the money from the bank job, the Thunder Queen was not assuaged. She wanted Andrew, and he wanted out. He thought a million bucks in cash would buy his freedom, but things did not work out that way, and when Margaret was threatening to come apart all over the map, he tried to appease her with more money. My money.

“Mom!” called a voice, and a little boy was at the door staring at us with resentful impatience. He had a faint milk mustache and buzzed hair and was eating a croissant. A TV was going in the background and the sounds of a video game. He wore a soccer uniform and had strong legs. “Mom!” he demanded. “When are we going?” The captain had finished his recitation. “Please turn around, ma’am,” he said.

“Please, please, don’t do this to me.”

The boy ducked back inside the house.

The captain and I exchanged a look. “Do you own any firearms?” he asked.

“I’m a widow,” Margaret wailed. “My husband was a policeman, just like you. It was an accident. It was an accident.”

“What was an accident, ma’am? Your husband falling down the stairs, or his skull being smashed with a baseball bat?”

The sharp inhales had become vocal sounds, like braying. She stepped back from our approach, and her body went stiff and her eyes went wide with the most God-awful desperation.

“You’re going to jail, lady.”

“No!”

“I’m going to ask you to cooperate, ma’am,” said the captain. “Out of deference to your deceased husband, we’d rather not drag you from the house in front of the neighbors, do you hear me? But we will if we have to. Think about your children, okay, Mrs. Forrester? Who is going to stay with them? You got a family member we can call?” “Ana,” she said. “Help me.”

Two officers were coming up the steps.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” I put myself in her face. “Andrew never gave you up.”

“What is the purpose?” she said, and her legs buckled.

“He never gave you up.”

They held her upright.

“No please,” I said to the officers, “let me.”

I unhooked my handcuffs off the back of my pants and felt their weight and the smooth familiar heft of a useful and reliable tool and put them on the woman’s wrists and listened as they ratcheted shut with a delicate sound, like the winding of a clock.

“Remember,” I told the captain, “I want those back.”

Bright plastic flags strung over the entrance to the pool snapped and pulled in the canyon breeze. I was used to getting there by 7 a.m. for the workout anyway, but by seven-fifteen on the morning of the swim meet there was no place to park within half a mile, and you had to walk all the way up from the beach. I was shocked to find the pool deck jammed with four or five hundred children and adults on blankets and beach chairs cheek-to-jowl,