Outburst

by R. D. Zimmerman

  “Right. You'll see in my report and everything. I mean, it's clear why they let him go back then—they didn't have anything concrete.”

  “Which is exactly like now.”

  Rawlins nodded. ”A little too familiar, wouldn't you say?”

  “Actually … yes.” Daylen slipped her glasses back on and looked through the papers. “Did you turn up anything else after you got the search warrant?”

  Rawlins shook his head. “Nope.”

  They had searched not only the car but the house, yet they'd discovered no weapon, no additional article of clothing with blood on it, nor any evidence whatsoever linking Kenney to Officer Mark Forrest, not so much as even a phone number. Hoping he'd hit pay dirt, Rawlins had seized the answering machine attached to Kenney's private phone line in his basement room, but that, too, had yielded nothing.

  “Aside from Kenney's, we got a couple of partial prints from the Olds,” added Rawlins. “Maybe we'll get lucky.”

  “If they match Mark Forrest's prints, then we're in business. Big business.” She looked at him, her brow raised in doubt. “You gotta get me something that'll link Christopher Kenney to Mark Forrest, something that'll prove Kenney knew him or contacted him or—”

  “I'm trying.”

  “Between you and me, let me say this, Rawlins: I'm willing to stick my neck out on this one. Because this is about a cop-killing and this Kenney guy has already been arrested once for something like this, I'm willing to write up a charge even if we're only, say, seventy-five percent there. But frankly, we're only sixty percent there right now. You gotta get me something more, or,” she said, glancing at her watch, “we're going to have to let Kenney go at noon tomorrow.”

  Pushing himself to his feet, Rawlins knew they needed a break or a lead, something to spin them off in a new direction. And they needed it soon.

  “I don't know what,” began Rawlins, “but I'm going to come up with it. You can trust me on that one. In fact, you can plan on writing this all up tomorrow morning. That way I'll still have time to get it to the signing judge.”

  As the Hennepin County prosecuting attorney handling this case, Denise Daylen had to first write up the complaint against Christopher Louis Kenney. Then Rawlins had to take the documents to the signing judge on duty, Judge Brown, who would review the documents, ask a few questions, and if she thought the evidence sufficient, sign the complaint and formalize the charges. Only then would Kenney be officially arraigned, whereupon the judge would surely find probable cause and set bail.

  Given that a cop was killed, though, Rawlins doubted any judge would set bail. Or if she or he did, it would certainly be astronomically high.

  “Good.” Closing the report on her desk, Daylen looked up at Rawlins and said, “I spoke with the signing judge just before you came in, and he's very, very interested in this case.”

  Rawlins stopped and stared at her. “He? I thought Judge Brown—Judge Sharon Brown—was on duty this week.”

  “Well, she was until this morning. I don't know what's going on up there, but as of about ten this morning the rotation schedule changed and Judge Stuart Hawkins took over.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah, and right now they don't get any bigger than him. Trust me, he's quite hot to trot on this thing, which, by the by, is why I'm willing to press charges even if we're a bit short of evidence.”

  “Good. Very good. In fact, aside from the raincoat, that's the best news I've heard all morning,” said Rawlins, heading for the door.

  31

  Clenching her eyes shut, Kris knew she shouldn't have come back to Minnesota. Everything she hated about herself was here.

  No, after what had happened in California, she should have kept going. Escaped to a place where no one would ever have found her. Hawaii. Thailand. Katmandu. New Delhi. Someplace far, far away. Instead, she'd returned if not to Duluth, then to her home state, and now she'd been caught. How could she have been so absolutely stupid? This was it. All her life she hadn't felt simply shunned and rejected, but pursued. And hunted. In California she'd escaped, but now they had her once again, and perhaps this time they'd really do it, succeed in destroying her.

  She opened her eyes, horrified that she was here in this small cell on the fifth floor of City Hall, a tiny hole not much more than six by eight, the walls and even the ceiling covered with steel. On one side hung a steel platform covered with the skimpy mattress on which she now sat. On the other stood a stainless-steel sink and toilet, the two of them combined into a stumpy little tower, the sink on top, the lidless toilet protruding from the bottom. The only window, a small glass one in the door, was covered from the outside with a piece of paper, on which was written: The Truth Will Set You Free!

  In the upper corner of the cell was a video camera mounted behind a shield of glass and steel, and she looked up at it and screamed at the top of her lungs, “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  This was a cruel place, this Minnesota.

  Never had Kris been anywhere so ruled by climate, never had she heard of a city or a state where a person's mood was defined by temperature, humidity, dew point, windchill. And by light—sunlight—from the wonderfully long summer days when the glory seemed to never fade, to the short, cruel days of winter when getting out of bed was like crawling out of a black cave into a black cave. In equally severe but southern climes like Florida, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, they'd conquered their cruelty with air-conditioning, so much so that people complained not about the severity, but the monotony. But not here. Not in Minnesota. In these northern plains the winds came up, the storms blew in, things heated up, they chilled down. They blew away, they froze. And thus people's lives were defined, just as hers had been.

  Bringing her knees up to her chest as she sat on the bunk, she clutched her arms around her legs, bowed her head forward, and closed her eyes. Recalling happier times, Kris was taken back to the summers of her youth, when the blue sea of Lake Superior would stretch and stretch forever until it somehow melded with the heavens and did a Möbius flip of sorts, looping back over Duluth in endless delight. Those summers seemed to never want to end, but of course they always did, and all too soon as well, the sun dropping from a beacon of strength to a weak orb that skimmed just above the horizon.

  Kris reached around and down to her crotch, feeling her empty sack. If she'd had the voice of a bird and if these were Venetian times, she might have enjoyed life as a castrato. As it was, the world today saw her not as a gift but a monster.

  It had been so cold.

  Tumbling back through time, she started crying. This kilt's kind of cool, Chris had thought, picking it up in the laundry room. I wonder what it would feel like?

  What a fool. What a complete idiot. If she could only do it over, that one moment, that one act. It had changed so much. Everything really. Her brothers had come down, spied their brother Christopher in a skirt, and started screaming and shouting the worst of all possible curses: “Homo!” And little Chris had torn away the skirt, pulled on the gym shorts, and run out, dashing through the frigid night to his grandparents'.

  Then, of course, he'd fallen. What a sissy. Couldn't even make a dash through the winter night without tumbling.

  As if she were watching a video that she could play over and over again, Kris had conjured it up countless times, how Chris had torn through the subzero night, his stocking feet running over that dry, packed snow, the cold biting at his lungs and turning his tears into icicles. God, they know. Now what? He'd been running so quickly that he hadn't seen it, the patch of ice lingering beneath the snow, a film of ice so thin as to be invisible. His feet had hit it, shot right out, and swung way above his head. There was no way Chris had been able to catch himself, and he'd fallen back and smacked his head so hard that everything had gone black. I've got to get up, Kris remembered thinking. It's thirty below. But of course Chris hadn't been able to move and had slipped away. If a neighbor hadn't spotted him lying on the sidewalk nearly thirty minutes later, h
e would have died. How many times had he wished that he had?

  Oh, fuck, thought Kris, sitting in her cell. Only in Minnesota could you freeze your balls off, quite literally so.

  That night they'd rushed Chris to the very hospital where his mother was working, treated him for hypothermia, and amputated not only the frostbitten tips of three fingers and two toes, but his testicles, which had flopped exposed from his gym shorts. And thus his fate was cast. Which was why a few years ago he'd moved to California, where he met Joan Ryan, first his transgender mentor and later his lawyer, started on hormones, and tried his best to become Kris.

  It might have worked too. No, it had been working. She was on her way to being happy. Yes, Kris was going to be whole. Loving and loved. Not the tragic outcast. And for a few fleeting minutes, when Dave had taken her into his embrace and pledged himself to her, Kris had seen it too—happiness, pure and unbridled. For the briefest of moments she sensed that the hard times were over and that Dave was hers and she was his. An honest man and a string of pearls, that was all she wanted out of life. But it had been so fleeting, so brief, the love she felt for him and he for her and the future she clearly saw for them both, because then Dave's groping hand had discovered her truth—her erect penis—and in a single second he'd gone crazy.

  His eyes crazed with horror, he had stared at Kris.

  “You fucking freak!” he had screamed, leaping away from her.

  He'd then brought back one of those massively guy arms and punched her in the jaw. Kris had gone tumbling from the couch, screaming and falling to the floor in the tiny living room. She'd looked up, seen the vile hate in his eyes.

  “No!” she had begged. “Please! I love you!”

  When he started toward her, when Kris was sure that he meant her only the worst harm, she scrambled backward toward the kitchen, grabbing one of the chairs, pulling herself up. And as he charged toward her, she had no choice but to lunge for his gun, which lay so innocently in Dave's gun belt on the kitchen counter.

  “Stop!” Kris had screamed through her tears. “Stop or I'm going to blow your fucking head off!”

  What a disaster. What an explosion. She could still see it—she'd always see it—how his head had exploded, bursting with shattered bone and juicy cartilage. The fountain of blood. Could it have been more horrific?

  Slumped in her cell, she was lost all over again in the terror of that night and how everything had gone so wrong, when she heard the deep buzz of electromagnets. The next second her door swung in, and a detention deputy, an older man with no hair and a large waist, stood there.

  “Someone here to see you,” he pronounced.

  She wiped her eyes, then uncurled her legs and swung them to the floor. She fussed a bit with her hair, blotted her lips, but there wasn't much to be done. She hadn't slept more than an hour or two last night—some nut down the hall had screamed half the night—and, besides, there was no mirror. Plus she was wearing the same clothes she'd been arrested in last night. Oh, Christ, girl. You're not making a good fashion statement, no, not at all.

  “This way,” grumbled the guard.

  As soon as Kris neared the door, the deputy took her by the

  left arm, his thick old fingers sinking into her soft skin. He let the cell swing shut, then steered her down the corridor past cell door after cell door. Glancing once to her right, Kris saw a face filling the small window of one of the cell doors, the nose and mouth smashed against the glass, the eyes stretched wide in jealous curse.

  Moving on through a maze of hallways and gates, all that Kris was aware of was the buzzing of locks, the clanging of doors.

  “Right here,” he said, pushing Kris into a room.

  Stumbling into a small, windowless chamber with a low ceiling, Kris focused on a woman standing there. Tall and thin, a narrow face with short brown hair. Yes, attractive too. And it ran through Kris's mind: T? No. She sensed it as quickly as she thought it. The shoulders are too narrow, the hips too big, the feet too small. This one's a dyke. But who?

  The door behind them shut, and only then did Kris notice the small table with two chairs, one on each side.

  “Good morning, Kris. My name's Janice Gray, and I'm—”

  “Let me guess,” interrupted Kris. “You're my new attorney.”

  Bristling, the woman looked her up and down, then after a long moment finally said, “That depends.”

  “You know my attorney, Joan Ryan, don't you? She sent you, didn't she?”

  “No.”

  Her brow knit, Kris asked, “Then why the hell are you here?”

  “Let's just say I'm a transgender ally.”

  “Oh, for quaint. SuperDyke to the rescue—I'm saved,” quipped Kris. “Heavens, you are a dyke, aren't you?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Yep, you are,” she said with a nervous laugh. “So tell me, how're you gonna get me out of here?”

  “No,” said Janice, shaking her head and crossing her arms. “That's not how I work. First of all, you're the one in a shitload of trouble. Second, I haven't decided whether or not to take you on.”

  “Well, in that case, doll, I'm not sure if I want you either.” Kris studied her, wondered if Janice could get her off as Joan had. “In fact, before I even let you think of representing me, I want

  you to take a good look at me. God knows I look like shit, but check me out from head to toe. Just do it … that's right, that's good. Now look straight into these eyes of mine and tell me one thing: Do you see a sicko psycho killer?”

  32

  The big news that all the media—radio, television, newspaper—were covering was the discovery of the raincoat in the trunk of Christopher Kenney's Oldsmobile. And not just any old yellow raincoat, but a yellow raincoat with blood on it. Like a lynch mob, the media was working itself into a frenzy, with some of the local radio talk-show hosts speculating that this was it, the cops had their killer and Kenney would be locked away for the rest of his or her or its life. The only question remaining was where to incarcerate him, the men's or the women's prison? Or how about the pound? One disc jockey even told the first Christopher Kenney joke: “How many drag queens does it take to kill a …”

  Todd wanted more, of course, for his story tonight. More precisely, he wanted something different. Determined to get just that, after lunch he sat down in his office and tried Maureen Shea's number another time.

  And once again he got the energetic message: “Hi, this is Maureen Shea. I'm away from the phone, but leave a message and I'll get back to you, hopefully within the hour. Thanks, and have a great day!”

  Still trying to figure out why he knew her name, he hung up without leaving a message. He most definitely wanted to talk with her, but what was this bit about calling back within the hour, and why hadn't she? Either it was a ploy of some sort or she was avoiding him, which was a distinct possibility. He guessed that in the message he'd already left he shouldn't have told her that he was from WLAK; letting someone know he was from the media usually worked for him. In this case, though, Todd suspected it wasn't.

  He was just rolling his chair across the small room when his cellular phone, lying by his computer, started to ring. He looked at it, hoped this was one of the calls he was waiting for, and grabbed it.

  “Hi, this is Todd Mills.”

  “Hello, this is the operator. Will you accept a collect call from Ron Ravell?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Thrilled, Todd reached for a pen and pad. Now the trick wouldn't simply be keeping him on the line, but also getting him to cooperate. He'd kill to get this guy on film.

  The connection went through, and Todd jumped right in, saying, “Hi, Mr. Ravell. Thank you very much for calling back.”

  “Sure …” replied the hesitant voice. “But who are you?” A bit of silence. “And what do you want?”

  “My name is Todd Mills, and I'm an investigative reporter for WLAK TV in Minneapolis. I called this morning trying to reach Ron Ravell, the younger brother of
Police Officer Dave Ravell. Am I speaking to the right person?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Wanting to hook him and hook him fast, Todd interrupted, saying, “I'm wondering if you'd be willing to answer a few questions for me about Christopher Louis Kenney, the man who was accused of murdering your brother?”

  There was a long, cautious pause, a deep breath. “Like what?”

  “Last night Christopher Kenney was arrested here in Minneapolis in conjunction with—”

  “Oh, my God,” Ron Ravell gasped, his voice cracking. “He did it again, didn't he? He killed another cop, right?”

  “It hasn't been proven yet, of course, but a police officer was murdered several days ago, and it appears that Kenney will be charged with that crime.”

  They talked for nearly fifteen minutes, Todd running through the whole situation, then scribbling down nearly every detail he could get from Ravell.

  “Ron,” said Todd as they wrapped up their conversation, “I'd very much like to get you on camera. Would you be willing to do that?”

  “Sure, but how? I mean, I'm out in California. What are you going to do, come out here?”

  “Actually, our operations department could set up some satellite time with WLAK's affiliate out there in L.A., and then we'd be able to shoot you directly from there. Would you be willing? It wouldn't take very long. I'd be here at WLAK, and all you'd have to do is go into the studio out there.”

  After some hesitation Ron Ravell agreed, and while Todd was hoping they could still do it that afternoon, on such short notice it couldn't be set up until that evening at nine Central Standard Time. In the ensuing time Todd dashed downtown for the formal tape-recorded interview that Rawlins had requested, then hurried back and pulled together an update for the six o'clock news.

  And now he sat in one of the large edit bays, a dimly lit glassed-in booth filled with monitors and control boards and taping equipment. If all went as it was supposed to, the satellite connection with WLAK's affiliate would take place in just thirty seconds.