Good Morning, Killer

accomplished as Devon.

So I smiled with professional accord and lied.

“Andrew can be opinionated, but whatever minor incidents there might have been, they were nothing you would tag.”

Devon was looking at my feet. Always position the suspects so you can see what they are doing with their feet. Often the feet will be dancing to a different tune than the one playing upstairs. Mine were pointing out the door — what does that tell you?

“Give me an example,” Devon pressed, “of something minor.”

“Driving fast,” was the first thing that came to mind. “A lot of people drive fast when they’re angry, even though we do our best to—”

“Andrew drove fast when he was upset.”

“Angry.”

“How fast?”

“I don’t know. Ninety? A hundred?”

“This was where?”

“On the Ten, out near Indio. We were coming back from riding dune buggies.”

“What set him off?”

“We had a fight.”

“Can you recall what the fight was about?”

“Girls. If we were going to still see other people. I wanted to get it clear. You know, where we were. He told me to stop nagging.”

Devon’s blue-jeweled pen kept looping across the yellow pad.

“What else?”

“What else?” I spread my arms. “I was not dating some psychotic maniac.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Andrew has a manifesto, in a frame on the wall. ‘The Homicide Investigator’s Oath,’ it says. ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’ This is a guy who truly believes he is working for God.”

“Give me another minor incident.”

“Once upon a time, Andrew shot a rattlesnake.”

I folded my arms defensively, although I was giving Devon exactly what he wanted. Even through my resistance I could see he was one smart lawyer. The resistance came of my desire, even at this late hour, to protect the truth about who Andrew Berringer was — the poignant facts of his humanity that would not be evident in the skewed furniture in the Marina apartment, nor the broken scree of a mountain track.

“We were hiking the San Bernardino Mountains. We see a rattlesnake lying across the trail. He, of course, has to poke it with a stick. I’m telling him not to, but he’s like a little boy, he just won’t quit, and then all of a sudden he takes out his weapon and shoots the damn thing.” “Was it attacking him?”

“No. It was just lying there.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him he was a fucking Neanderthal and turned around and started running down the trail.” I had been crying but did not share that with Devon. “He called after me, but I kept going and basically he chased me all the way down. It was not fun.” “Was he trying to catch you? Hurt you?”

“I didn’t let him catch me. By the time we got down we were completely wiped and had nothing to say to each other. We broke up for about three weeks after that.”

“When Andrew acted like this, what did you make of it?”

I frowned, trying to sort it out, holding on to our most private moments, the way a child hides a clear glass marble in her hand, believing that it is not glass but crystal, powerful and made of magic.

“Andrew had a short fuse when it came to anger. Like me, I guess. I thought it was a good thing we were so much alike.”

“If you were so much alike, what were you doing rolling over a coffee table, trying to kill each other?” Devon wanted to know. “Let’s go back. Tell me what happened in your apartment from the moment you opened the door.” “I didn’t open the door. He got in. Somehow.”

“With a key?” suggested Devon.

“Didn’t have a key.”

“A duplicate he made without you knowing?”

The idea chilled me. “That would be upsetting.”

“Yes, it would.”

I told Devon that Andrew had been agitated when he arrived. The lawyer wanted to know what we fought about. It built, I said, small rocks skittering, the way arguments do: The money he owed me. The scene in the bar. Me going after him and Oberbeck. Me intruding into his life.

“What was the straw?”

“The straw was the bank robbery. We recovered a ski mask and were checking out the DNA. This was his case, that he could get major credit for, but when I told him I reopened it on my end, he went ballistic. That’s when he came over the table at me.” Outside, the traffic glided silently by. The afternoon light had cooled since I’d first entered the office, and the hunched figure of my attorney against the softly glowing cityscape seemed muted as well. The firebrand inquiry had burned out, leaving one core question: why?

“My gut says the intensity of this was not about him being pissed because you didn’t like his girlfriend,” Devon said slowly. “There was a threat he perceived as so serious he was willing to kill you to wipe it out.”

“You keep saying that, but—”

“He kept coming after you, even when you showed him the gun. As a cop, that is nothing I would ever do. You wouldn’t normally throw yourself at the shooter, would you?”

I had to admit, “No.”

“No!” Devon put down the pen. “Unless you were unhinged.” He paused. “Or desperate.”

“Desperately what?”

“Scared.” Devon shrugged in his white shirtsleeves. “Andrew Berringer was trying to kill you, and you responded in the only way possible, which was self-defense. That is what we need to prove.”

I lay back in the chair, spent. “Go ahead,” I said, with an ironic wave of the hand.

“I’m planning to subpoena Juliana Meyer-Murphy.”

“What does Juliana have to do with this?”

“We might need her as a character witness.”

“She’s a fifteen-year-old victim of rape who is suffering from posttraumatic stress — she can’t even go out of the house!”

“She will help your case.”

“Drop it.”

“I will not.”

“You know what, Devon? I’m starting to lose my game face here.”

“I can see that.”

“What would it be like for her if someone she trusts, an FBI agent for God’s sake, turns out to be an accused criminal, like the guy who raped her, who she also trusted—”

“If this goes to trial,” he interrupted, “she will see it on TV. The whole fucking world will see it on TV.”

“I spoke to her!” I said triumphantly. “This morning! Six and a half minutes on the phone! They could claim witness tampering. You can’t go there!”

Devon shook his head dismissively.

“Look, I’m not pretending there are not other implications with having this young lady on the stand. We can’t call her as a character witness in a preliminary hearing where the purpose is for a judge to decide whether there is enough evidence to warrant a jury trial, but we can have her up there for an innocuous reason that goes to the prosecution’s burden of proof. And we can hope, because she’s young and emotional, that during cross-examination she will blurt things out about how terrific you are, how you got her through the worst