Good Morning, Killer

Years later, I had authority and carried a gun; I had long surpassed the status my grandfather held as lieutenant in the Long Beach Police Department, but in the mirror now saw only turbulent red-faced chaos, a guilt- ridden mess for which Poppy would have only had contempt. “You messed up, stupid.” I willed the tears to stop and when they would not, smacked my own temple with the heel of my hand. I did it again, alone in the tidy rest room.

When I emerged, Barbara Sullivan was coming right at me with bright alert eyes. She had just arrived at work, loaded with shopping bags and cartons to be mailed.

“Do you believe it? Deirdre’s already outgrown her six-month stuff. I have to return all these gifts!” she sang, and swept into her office as if I had replied; as if I were not paralyzed with fear of what she might have seen in my face, macabre and chalky-looking from the powder I had hurriedly pressed over swollen eyelids and hot cheeks.

I don’t know what impression I gave. But then I had truly become my shadow self, and shadows are tricksters with canny ways of deception. So maybe Ana Grey was standing there beaming, and maybe when Ana settled back at her workstation, others registered a generous sigh of pleasure in sharing her friend’s joy.

It seemed a good idea to be looking at something. Files. I counted twelve that needed cleaning up for the ninety-day review, including extortion, an inmate who was stabbed at the Veterans Administration hospital (crime on a government reservation), threatening letters to a software company and three cases of movie stars being harassed by stalkers. The inspectors would pull a document at random and expect it to have met the standards. They would not pay attention to content, only form. The Bureau is all about standards. Standards of behavior. Standards of protocol and language and law.

I was feeling nauseous. Barbara had been, just, too carefree. She had not stopped for conversation. Not asked about the Santa Monica kidnapping, nor what was up with Andrew, not invited me for morning tea. This was not her pattern. Andrew must have told them and she knew. Everybody in the Bureau knew. They were getting ready for the takedown and they would do it here, where I was containable. Should I sit it out, or escape through the Corridor of Winds?

Another blackout was coming, and I couldn’t fight it. Instead of escape, I dozed in the chair, wondering if offenders shut down in the midst of crimes; if the Mission Impossible Bandit, at the peak of excitement, having made it through the roof and on his way, had not also been overwhelmed by a contradictory torpor; if he had not lain down and slept a while on the warm, waxed linoleum floor of the employee lounge, while the ticking minutes unlocked the vault.

The phone on my desk jerked me awake. It was Dr. Arnie from the forensic lab.

“You told me to put the pedal to the metal on the rape so we cross-referenced the chemicals in the paint flake with particles of soil found on Juliana Meyer-Murphy’s clothing. Might have something for you.”

I reached for a pad.

“She was probably taken to a post — World War Two house in a loamy area of the coast.”

“What do you mean, loamy area?”

“Well, loam is soil that’s generally a mix of sand, clay, silt and organic matter.”

“I know what loam is, it’s the area I would like more clearly defined.”

“You mean, where the house was that he took her?”

“Yes. Where the house was that he took her!”

“That would be an older residential section, not too far inland, most likely on the Pacific coast, judging from the plant material, which is mainly—”

“Arnie.” Struggling. “The Pacific coast of the United States is almost a thousand miles long.”

“You might like this better. About the shoe print on her back. Turns out to be an outsole lug pattern on a combat-style boot manufactured in New Hampshire, sometime in the past two years, sold under the name Climbers. Total order seventy-five thousand pairs. I know what you’re gonna say: Hold it, Dr. Arnie! This is what you give me? One boot in seventy-five thousand pairs that walked in an area approximately one thousand miles long, sometime in the last two years? This is what I say to you: I can reduce the possible number of boots that could have made that particular impression to six-point-two-five pairs!” Hearing nothing in reply, Dr. Arnie continued talking to himself:

“Out of seventy-five thousand pairs, they made ten thousand in size ten, for which four hand-engraved molds were needed. That would be twenty-five hundred left and twenty-five hundred right outsoles from each size-ten mold. The possible left or right outsoles sharing class characteristics of the molded outsole would therefore be twenty-five hundred …” The numbers came at me like enemy fire. They drilled holes in my head.

Where was Andrew? Had he made it to a hospital? Had he told them? Was he dead? Was that possible? Him, inert? I know what dead is. Could I have done that? What a colossal mistake, pulling that gun. What a horrible, tragic, unbearable bungle. Stupid. I messed up, all right. What did I think? He was Ray Brennan coming at me? What was I aiming for? Ray Brennan’s face on the bathroom door?

“The same pair of left and right outsoles, bearing the same crime scene impressions, will occur six hundred and twenty-five times out of ten thousand …”

I wanted to stand up and scream. An unseen hand reached around from behind and clamped itself over my mouth.

By evening of that day in hell, I had still heard nothing. No grave message from the Santa Monica Police Department. No burly pair of homicide detectives showed up for a private talk.

As an investigator, I’d had to learn patience. It was a skill I worked hard to achieve, since I have the metabolism of a hummingbird — dart here, dart there, get the gist and be gone. Now I forced myself to slow down and ask, What do I really know?

Andrew had been wounded but had gotten into his car and driven away. Our trainers tell us if you are seriously injured and you know it within fifteen seconds, you are likely to survive. It takes a lot to bleed out. Even a critical trauma can be survived if you get to an emergency room within that first golden hour, and the hospital was fifteen minutes from my apartment.

He would seek medical treatment. He would be identified.

The police would know.

It would be easy to find out: call Margaret Forrester on a ruse about the kidnapping and she would spill it, whatever it was.

Like a bad scene from a bad movie, I picked up the phone and let it drop.

Okay, call someone else over there.

Picked it up and let it drop.

I couldn’t do it. I was too afraid of knowing, although one fact was unavoidable: Andrew had driven off with my gun.

I left the office at six-thirty-five and drove home, aware of nothing until I was suddenly unlocking the front door. Nobody had been inside, which was good luck, as any rookie would have known she was walking into a crime scene.

There were glinting pieces of glass I had missed with the vacuum cleaner. Furniture was still slightly askew, and come to think of it, there were bloodstained clothes in the laundry hamper. If you missed all that, there would be a bullet hole in the white swinging door between the kitchen and the pantry, which might as well have had a huge black arrow pointing to it.

It was hopeless. All the forensics guys had to do was come in here with Luminol and the details of the struggle would fluoresce in the dark like the answer in the window of a magic eight ball. In a fit of despair I moved to the phone to turn myself in and get it over with. All I wanted was for the headache, like screws in an iron mask tightening over the facial bones, to stop.

I walked around the coffee table (more glass granules on the soles of my shoes) and sat down wearily on