by W E DeVore
Get. Down.
Even though he couldn’t see her through the one-way glass, Sanger instinctively glanced in her direction. He turned back to the boy. “Tell me what happened. So, we can get you some help.”
The boy’s voice was uneven, broken by choking sobs bursting up through his throat at irregular intervals. “My cousin and I, we got paid five Gs each to shoot this lady and her husband. So, we drive to their house and my boy, he shoots the dude. Tall dude with long hair and he falls and tries to cover his woman. But he doesn’t make it and that’s when I saw it, her belly, and I couldn’t kill a pregnant lady like that. So, I tell her to get down. But she doesn’t understand. So, I shoot off to the side, to give her some time to duck or something but my boy hits her leg, and she turns and I hit her stomach instead. She falls to her knees, slow motion, like in one those war movies. And she looks at me, right at me like she was asking ‘why’ and she goes down. And we just get out of there. But then, the baby, it starts crying at night, it won’t stop crying…” His voice broke and he started hitting his head screaming over and over, “What did I do?”
Q watched in horror as he beat himself, covering her mouth with both hands, feeling like throwing up what little was in her stomach.
He’s a kid. He’s just a kid.
Unable to watch the boy hurt himself anymore, she left Observation and walked into the adjacent interrogation room.
Sanger stood up, his chair scraping against the floor as she entered through the door. “Clementine, what are you doing? You can’t be here.”
She ignored him and went to Remi, grabbing his wrists to get him to stop hitting himself. “Shush, baby. It’s alright. Please stop. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Recognition washed over his face and his entire body quivered with violent tremors. “I’m so sorry.”
Falling to his knees, he wrapped his arms around her waist. Sanger jumped up and Q shook him off. She sat in the chair and cradled the boy’s head in her lap. Letting him sob, listening to him cry.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “Oh god, I’m so sorry. What did I do?”
Q began to cry with him and she whispered, “It’s alright, baby. It’s ok.” She closed her eyes and let the tears fall down her cheeks, knowing exactly what she needed to do, but also knowing that any defense attorney worth their law degree wouldn’t let her forget it once those words were said. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled her pardon. “I forgive you, Remi. I forgive you. It’s ok.”
A strange thing happened and she found that it was true. That all the rage she’d felt for months couldn’t be directed at the sick, whimpering teenager resting his head in her lap. He looked up and she smoothed away his tears, whispering, “Hey, it’s ok. I’m ok. See? You didn’t kill me.”
He collapsed back down and Q continued to rock him, cradling his head in her arms.
“I need you to help me, Remi. Do you think you can do that?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Good, I need you to tell me who hired you.”
“I don’t know,” he said, hugging her legs for support. “I didn’t talk to him. My cousin met him while he was in lock-up for dealing. But he’s a bad man. When he found out that you were going to make it, my cousin thought he’d be mad, but he wasn’t. He was happy. Said it was better this way. My cousin said he laughed. He’s a monster, lady. Howling with the devil.”
She looked up at Sanger. His jaw was tight and his hands were balled into two fists. She turned back to the boy. “Remi, sweetheart. Is this man still in prison?”
“I don’t know. My cousin didn’t say.”
“Can you to tell me who your cousin is? The one that shot my husband. The one that talked to the monster.”
“He’ll kill me,” he whispered. “The man he works for will make him do it.”
Q’s stomach twisted in on itself and she chewed her lower lip, guessing that she knew exactly who employed Ben’s murderer to deal drugs. “Ah, now. Urian Galinos wouldn’t hurt me. We’re friends.”
Remi’s eyes widened. “That’s why he’ll kill me. He told his crew if he found out who hurt you he’d… hurt them. Bad.”
“You leave Urian to me. I’ll keep you safe. But first, my friends here are going to get you some help. Urian won’t hurt you. I won’t let him.”
“Clementine,” Sanger interrupted. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
Q stood, lifting Remi to sit in the chair. “I have to go talk to my friend. While I do, I want you tell this officer who shot my husband and where he can find him. Can you do that for me? And then we’ll get you to a doctor and make you feel better. I promise.”
She walked towards Sanger and he pulled her out into the hallway.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said in an angry whisper.
“That boy’s not mentally competent to stand trial and you know it. He needs a hospital, not a prison cell,” she whispered back. “If you put him in jail, he’ll kill himself, if one of Urian’s men doesn’t get to him first.”
“I really don’t give a fuck.” He clenched his jaw. “I’ll give him my belt to help him along. He tried to kill you. If Urian wants to flay him, I’ll sharpen the fucking knife.”
Her face distorted in horror. “Listen to yourself, will you?” She grabbed his wrist and yanked him into the Observation room. She pointed at Remi through the glass. “Look at him. He’s just a child.”
“That child got in a car, with a gun and went to your house to murder a pregnant woman and her husband for $5,000. That’s not a child, Clementine, that’s a criminal,” he said.
Q folded her arms and studied Remi on the other side of the window. He was thin. The long braids she remembered him having must have become too much maintenance because they’d been shorn off. He was frantically writing down everything he had told them, hitting his ears, rocking back and forth. His fingertips were raw. Bite marks clearly visible on his dark skin.
“Aaron, look at him, will you? Really look at him,” she said. “He’s sick. He needs a doctor. And he’s trying to make it right as best he can. I can’t keep feeling this rage. It’s eating me alive from the inside. It’s starting to change who I am and not in a good way.” She squeezed his hand. “It’s changing you, too, my love. I can’t keep holding onto this. I have to let it go. We need to forgive him. It’s what Ben wants. I know it and he’s right. Sending a sick kid to Death Row won’t fix anything.” She reached out to stroke his jaw and Sanger took her hand in his. “My little boy was only alive for three days. And I don’t think those three days were full of anything but pain and fear. He won’t get to grow up or go to college or get married.” She tilted her head towards her killer. “But he could. He could do all those things if we help him. He could take what he did and turn it into something good. Stanley used to say that there are two way to deal with something ugly. You can either let it twist you into something ugly, too, or you can twist into something beautiful. You and me? We’re going to twist this into something beautiful. Something good has to come out of all this pain.”
Sanger closed his eyes and cursed. He slowly let all the air out of his lungs and said, “You win.”
Renewal
Warm sunlight tickled Q’s eyes and she stretched, lazily releasing the stiff fatigue from her body. She felt Sanger stir beside her and turned her head to watch him sleep. He lay on his side, his hand resting on her stomach. She wrapped her fingers through his and moved nearer, savoring in his warmth. She’d had good days before - especially these last months with Sanger - but this felt different. The rage that had filled her was gone. When she forgave Remi, she realized she’d forgiven herself, as well. Forgiven herself for living when Ben had died. Forgiven herself for not being strong enough to hold Jasper in her womb.
“Good morning, my love,” she whispered, before kissing him. Sanger sighed and kissed her more deeply.
I am in love with this man.
He smiled down at her. “What are you thi
nking?”
“You tell me,” she replied. “You’re the detective.”
Sanger shook his head. “You’ll tell me when you’re ready. I have to go to the station and fill out some paperwork about last night. Then I need to pull some records. Go see some folks you helped send to prison.”
“Start with Chris McMillan.”
His eyebrows stitched together as he studied her face. “Why?”
She measured her words carefully. “It’s fresh, for him. Marianne Multer wouldn’t have met Remi’s cousin in prison. Gus Multer served his time in Federal, so they would have had to meet in OPP during a transfer or something, seems unlikely. Ethan is on death row and they don’t let serial killers out hang around non-violent offenders…”
“We don’t know Remi’s cousin is non-violent,” he interrupted.
“No, but we know he was in for dealing,” she reasoned. “Chris McMillan is in his – what? Third year in the joint? I put him there, yes, but only on accident. If the dumbass hadn’t beaten his wife halfway to death and then hid out in a closed music store where people could still be coming in and out, he’d probably have gotten away with it. He didn’t have to confess to killing Mike and Ms. Genevieve. He certainly didn’t need to confess his crimes it to me. And he didn’t need to shoot you and hold us hostage…” she paused, thinking it through. “That’s a whole lot of regret. A whole lot of ways to get mad at yourself for being such a fool. It might be easier to pass some of that blame along. Might make the next twenty to thirty years in a cell bearable if you knew the person to blame for your situation was dead.”
“You should have been a cop,” Sanger replied, overtly impressed with her logic.
She winked at him. “I’d rather fuck one.”
He grinned and kissed her briefly before saying, “I’ll get someone to pull McMillan’s visitor log and phone calls, see if anything bubbles up.”
“Boo,” she said, as he got out of bed and retrieved his clothes from the floor. “Don’t get dressed, get back here. It’s your day off.”
Sanger pulled on his pants and buttoned them before leaning down to kiss her. “The sooner I take care of it, the sooner I can start my weekend. I’m taking you out for a fancy lunch. Linen tablecloths, wine, the works. And then I’m going to spend the next two days coaxing three words out of you in a very specific order. It’s happening.”
Q started to giggle and rolled onto her stomach, propping her head in her hands to watch him dress. “You are an amazing detective, you know that?”
“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” He kissed her slowly and slapped her behind. “So, go shower and put on the very best of your death metal t-shirt collection. We’re going to get a table by the window and make every man that walks by jealous that you’re mine.”
◆◆◆
A few hours later, they pulled up in front of Sanger’s favorite restaurant. B’tayavon was run by an Israeli family from Tel Aviv and served all his favorite dishes from his childhood. When they walked in, he was greeted warmly by one of the owners. Q patiently listened to them visit in Hebrew, picking out a word every once in a while that she actually understood. The sunshine filtered in through the windowed wall at the front and Q looked out onto the street, following the light as it tracked through the leaves of the live oak tree outside.
While she studied the sparkling pattern on the sidewalk outside, she realized that the constant anxiety to which she’d grown accustomed was gone. The world was finally solid and steady around her. She reached for Sanger’s hand and he instinctively brought it to his lips.
They sat at a narrow table in the front of the restaurant. Sheer white curtains at either side of the window made a dreamy haze. Sanger picked up an olive from the glass bowl in the middle of the table and stretched his arm across to put it into her mouth. “My god, you’re beautiful.”
She smiled at him, chewing slowly. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
Their waitress delivered a plate with two neat, layered pastries. A glass bowl of bright red sauce, a scoop of dark green paste, and sliced hardboiled eggs sat next to them.
Q eyed the dish with curiosity. “And this would be….?”
“Jachnun. You’ll like it. It was Avi’s favorite.”
She tore off a piece of pastry and pointed to the plate. “What’s the red stuff?”
“Tomato. The green is called skhug. Hot sauce.”
She dipped the pastry in the green paste and took a tentative bite. The sweet, savory heat hit her tongue and her mouth flooded. “Oh my god, this is like sex.”
Sanger laughed and took his own bite. “Avi would have loved you.”
“So, you’ve said,” she reminded him.
“That’s because it’s true. You two would have gotten on like a house on fire. He always wanted me to be with someone who made me smile.”
Q leaned across the table. “Well, it is quite a smile. It’d be a shame to hide it.”
Sanger moved to meet her and kissed her slowly. As they sat back in their chairs, he said, “I like this, Clementine. Us. Together.”
“Me, too, Aaron. Me, too.”
They had just finished their lunch when Sanger’s phone vibrated on the table. Q covered it with her hand. “No, you’re mine.”
He grinned at her. “Yes, I am, but let me take it. Five minutes. Those visitor logs from McMillan might have come in. I’ll feel better when I know what we’re facing.”
She reluctantly surrendered his phone and he answered, getting up from the table and handing their waitress his credit card on the way. After he walked outside, Q rested her elbow on the table, and rubbed the back of her fingers over her lips, watching Sanger lean against his truck as he talked on the phone.
I am in love with that man and I am going to be happy again.
As she considered him through the window, a visceral tremor ran up her spine. Someone was watching at her. She glanced around the restaurant and soon discovered who it was. Gus Multer sat at a table on the far end of the room. His black on black hunter eyes stalking her.
She hadn’t seen him since his trial. Six years in prison hadn’t done much to soften the disgraced former Louisiana Senator’s overall appearance. His hair had gone from steel grey to mostly white and stuck up at odd intervals around his head. The etching on his face had deepened. Flashes of the video she’d found of him repeatedly raping a bound and gagged teenaged girl covered her vision and a panic attack thundered its way to the surface of her mind before she could stop it.
Her body began to shake and she searched for a way to escape. The memory of hot breath on her own neck, tinged with cigarette and sweat overwhelmed her as visions of the crime that Multer had committed merged with the residual traces of her own rape. Struggling to steady her breathing, she attempted to stand and found that her legs wouldn’t move. She helplessly watched Multer get up from his table and approach her, effortlessly gliding his way through the maze of tables until he stood two feet away.
“Ms. Toledano,” he said. “So lovely to see you again.”
She was mute. Her mouth refused to move and she looked desperately at Sanger through the window as he paced on the sidewalk outside, deep in his phone conversation. Finally recovering control over her body, she pushed herself up, pleading with her legs not to fail her but Multer put his hand on her shoulder, holding her in place.
“I wanted to offer you my condolences, Ms. Toledano,” Multer said in his smooth drawl. “I heard about your husband. So unfortunate, but it looks like you’ve found someone new. And so soon, too.”
She wanted to scream; to run from him as fast as she could; but blind panic and Multer’s grip had her paralyzed. The door to the restaurant flung open and Sanger rushed through, walking directly to Multer. He grabbed Multer’s shirt collar and pushed him away from Q, placed his own body protectively between her and the Senator.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he yelled.
“Just offering my condolences to the lady,” Multer
replied calmly.
Sanger flashed his badge. “As of yesterday, you’re not supposed to be within a hundred feet of this lady. Shall I call your probation officer or should I just arrest you right here?”
“Arrest me? For what?”
“For whatever the fuck I want, you child-raping asshole.”
Multer’s eyes flickered around the crowded restaurant, every fork frozen in mid-bite, and every face turned in their direction. “You’re making a scene, officer.”
“This isn’t me making a scene, you sick fuck.” Sanger raised his voice and announced to their audience. “This man here is Gus Multer. He sodomized a thirteen-year-old girl while she begged for him to stop and he videotaped it so he could watch himself do it again. Then he hired a hitman and had her strangled and her body dumped like a piece of garbage. He just got out of jail. Y’all make him feel welcome.” He leaned over to Multer and said, “That was me making a scene. If I see you look at my woman, glance her way, or step an inch inside that hundred-foot barrier ever again, I will throw you into OPP with the gang bangers and play that video of you saying the n-word on every television in the place on a fucking skip loop. Do you understand me?”