Good Morning, Killer

by April Smith

  “Of course we got shoe prints. What do you think, we’re incompetent?”

  “What size?”

  He clicked computer keys. “Ten.”

  “Like Ray Brennan.”

  “Your guy, Brennan?”

  I could hear the surprise. “Is it a match?”

  More anxious clicks. “The problem is, the outsoles are different and we couldn’t get the wear characteristics off the impression on the skin of that first rape victim. It was a herringbone pattern from a tennis shoe we recovered in the park.”

  “But the same size?”

  “Correct. And, obviously, he asphyxiated her, wasn’t that the ritual?”

  “He did? The new victim?”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Out of town.”

  I had called Dr. Arnie on the odds that news of my preliminary hearing situation had not yet reached Fullerton. Propellerheads live in a parallel universe from ours; parallel to most.

  “We sent a full report to the Bureau last week.”

  “Last week?”

  “Sometimes we do our job.”

  Jason’s look came back to me, the averted eyes behind the green lenses.

  “But you’re not prepared to say it’s Brennan?”

  “Not conclusively. Look, I’m sure it’s all up on Rapid Start.”

  “I’m not in the office.”

  “Want me to fax our report to you?”

  “You’re an angel.”

  I placed the glass with the spent mint leaves in the water and watched it float.

  Three hundred tiny lights from three hundred candles grew brighter as the sun sank behind the gymnasium building. The memorial service of Arlene Harounian was held late on a cloudy afternoon in the football field of the high school, where a stage had been outfitted with microphones and floral arrangements. The stage was big enough to hold the school orchestra, which played with heartbreaking finesse. The kids were good. They had accomplished something.

  Silently they stood and carried their instruments off and the madrigal singers filed to the microphones, like everyone else wearing ordinary teenage grunge, boot-cut jeans and wind pants and baggies and T-shirts, underdressed for the gathering chill. It had been sunny in the morning. The few dozen grown-ups there, old enough to have read the weather report, came wrapped in scarves and winter coats.

  The singers lofted into “Ave Maria,” and I began rooting around in the pockets of my leather jacket for tissues. Man, why was I there? To tap into that spring of grief that ran underground, seemingly always just beneath my feet? There must be a river of sadness below the pavement of our cities. One after the other, for at least the past hour, friends and teachers had stood at the podium and universally described Arlene Harounian as a girl with unusual promise, whose smile “lit up the world,” who “wanted you to feel better.” White doves were released and her basketball jersey retired. The team showed it to us from the stage, horribly laid out flat inside a frame.

  Her parents sat on folding chairs with the other siblings and did not speak. The father had a wild head of madly blowing black hair and big teeth that snapped shut like a nutcracker into a stupefied smile. The littlest sister read a poem Arlene had written in seventh grade called “I Am,” which they printed in the program: “I am purple sunsets / I am the sick child who wonders why / I am a bell / I am a big sister who sometimes wants to be a little baby / I am a leaf …”

  A history teacher called for the study of nonviolence, a boy played a keyboard solo. Two girls holding each other for support took turns recounting how fine-looking Arlene was, but how practical about her gifts. She had determined to become a model in order to pay for college. They wanted to be models, too, but she was the one who actually went out and had a portfolio made. It was dark by then. The little paper cups on the end of the candles, which sheltered the flames from the wind, glowed in the evening like homespun orange lamps. My fingers were caked with melted wax from turning the candle to keep it alive. Here and there the cups would catch on fire and be stomped out. Nobody giggled. A screen had been raised, and someone clicked a laptop, and we were watching a montage of slides and rap songs that told us all about Arlene Harounian’s life, from a dark-haired tyke on a bicycle to a confident young woman in a lacy cutoff top holding on to a tree and arching her back, but whose look into the camera said, I’m in charge, not you.

  Then it was as if that kid with the keyboard had come back for an encore, ringing out chords of dissonance and rage. I sat up straighter and straighter, as if the conviction growing inside would fill the stadium, as if everybody must know, as I knew then, that the amateur modeling photos we were looking at on the screen were the work of Ray Brennan. All the loveliness of Arlene swirled like a crescendo of discordant notes into an artifact not of her, but of what had taken her, and that was the greatest injustice of all.

  Even before I reached my car, the cell phone was ringing.

  “The judge handed down his decision,” Devon said.

  I did not even hold my breath.

  “The judge is holding you to answer. He has found reasonable suspicion that you committed this crime, and you are held to answer for attempted murder.” He paused. “Ana?”

  “We’re going to trial,” I repeated.

  “No surprise,” Devon rolled on smoothly. “We expected this. We’ve heard their witnesses, and now we punch holes in every single one. It’s clear Andrew Berringer was lying. And I have investigators going after Margaret Forrester, there’s obviously a screw loose there. You’ll be happy to know Mark Rauch has already come back and asked the judge to raise bail.”

  “On what basis?”

  “Now that you know you’re facing trial, you’re supposedly a greater flight risk. It’s a bogus argument, of course—”

  “Devon?” I said calmly. “I’m fairly certain of the fact that Ray Brennan killed Arlene Harounian. The girl who was found in the park. She was his most recent victim, and I’m sure there are more. Let me call you back.”

  I stood unconcerned in the middle of the parking lot as cars zigzagged and honked. In the stadium they were taking down the screen and carrying off the floral arrangements. The father had stepped down, clutching his wife’s hand. Awkwardly tucked beneath his other arm was a basketball signed by the team.

  Brennan had photographed both Juliana and Arlene. He had posed them the same way, according to his own ritualized and private reasons, holding on to a tree with their butts sticking out. The photo of Juliana we had up in the command center was identical to this one, of Brennan’s latest victim.

  Juliana looked scared.

  Arlene looked assured.

  I had found stillness.

  Twenty-three.

  If I were working the case, I would jump all over the photography angle. I would show Ray Brennan’s picture to everyone in Arlene Harounian’s life until we could pinpoint how and where they met. I would redraw Brennan’s “hunting field” to a twenty-five-square-mile grid on the map in the command center—west to Culver City, south to Manhattan Beach—and all the eager new agents would say, Ahhhhh.

  But I was not working the case. I had been held to answer, and the trial was coming now like a pair of headlights when your power steering has died. A sense of fatalism replaced whatever moxie I had felt in court. Devon might wave his crutch, but nothing would stop Mark Rauch’s head-on prosecution now.

  Also, the story broke in the papers: fbi agent to stand trial in love shooting—Veteran Agent Ana Grey Allegedly Wounded Police Detective Boyfriend in Marina Del Rey Apartment. As my lawyer kept reminding me, the slightest violation of bail would be a public relations jackpot for the other side.

  I returned to the prison of the hobby room, with the brown carpeting that had the flat cracked nap of an old sheep and smelled like an old sheep, and sat on the checked sofa and stared at the empty fireplace. We had lost our motion to prevent cameras in the courtroom. The trial would be televised, and after that, even if the verdict were not gui
lty, my career would be over. The Bureau did not deal in damaged goods.

  There was no longer a reason to leave the house or even get dressed. Aside from a call or two from the law firm every day, I would sit on the couch in my pajamas and make obsessive checklists concerning the Santa Monica kidnapping. I would meditate on Brennan’s watery picture over the mantle, then reconstruct the assaults on Arlene and Juliana, noting time and date, location of the victims, method, physical evidence, laboratory findings, and make spiderlike diagrams showing possible connections between Brennan, Arlene and Juliana.

  There was one promising link. The lab report faxed by Dr. Arnie said tiny chips had been found in Arlene’s hair—the same sandwich of floral wallpaper between two layers of old paint that had collected in Juliana’s clothes. Both girls had been taken to the same 1940s-era house “in a loamy area near the coast.”

  The link that did not make sense was that one of the girls was dead.

  Killing the victim did not fit Brennan’s known pattern. He had wounded the ducks; strangled Juliana to the point of unconsciousness and let her go. Why? Guilt? Torture? Ambivalence? Another clue was the grave. If he had meant to hide the body, he would have done that. If he had meant to show it off, he would have done that, too. This was hasty and halfhearted—maybe, I scribbled, because it was not part of the plan. Perhaps she had asphyxiated accidentally during the sex act. His ritual is interrupted. Suddenly, he finds himself not in control of the game. He swallows the rage and reverts to his military training—a quick burial, leave ’em by the trail, go on to accomplish the mission.

  That compulsive drive—to finish the act at all costs—might prove stronger than the intelligence that had protected him so far, the canniness that had allowed him to set up his victims (it could be dozens, including those from back east, never put together by local law enforcement because he would move out of their territories—attack and withdraw to safety).

  He would be overwhelmed by the uncontrollable need to find another girl.

  Now.

  Who could I tell? Who would listen? All connections with the Bureau had been stripped. There were no more encouraging e-mails; hell, nobody even returned my calls. When it was announced that we were going to trial, Galloway must have come down hard. I couldn’t talk to Mike. For weeks we had stalked around each other in the confines of the house, avoiding mention of the case. He was my final sanctuary. I would not put him in a position of disloyalty now.

  It was about two in the morning and I was awake, as usual, barreling through an old Donald L. Westlake mystery, dug up from the dad’s side of the hobby room, although not even a hilarious band of thieves could distract for long. I put the book down and finally, with restless despair, threw open the white cabinet that had been standing as an enigma all this time amongst the old possessions of Mike’s parents. Inside was a jewel box of sewing notions: a hundred rolls of thread lined up in rainbow order on hooks set in Peg-Board. There were drawers of bobbins, scissors, glue and markers. Scraps of crocheting and spools of ribbon, each in their places; a clear box just for Christmas glitter and felt.

  Here was a marriage. Mike’s dad had built this cabinet for his mom, I was sure. He had made a place for her pleasure and her work, and she had done her work, and there were the garments, hanging on a rack—half-made blouses with the patterns still pinned. I sat down on the rancid carpet and allowed myself to become lost, handling old cellophane packets of bindings (twenty-five cents each), unrolling silver lace, finding peace, like an orphan, in the fairy-tale world of the phantom parents. It scarcely mattered whose parents they were, so deep was the yearning to be comforted. I dug into the cool layers of the button bin, letting them sift through my fingers like stories.

  Then, emboldened, I pulled out a drawer in the sagging file cabinet that held the trout-fishing magazines. Burrowing into the one spot in the left side of the couch that still had spring, in the light of the fat brown-shaded lamp, I studied yet another watercolor rendering of a steelhead trout. Over and over these magazines showed the trophy, and it was always the same trophy. And what about those hours tying flies beneath the magnifying glass, only to have most of them, and the trophy, lost? What could I, as an investigator, learn from this?

  I went back to the fishing magazines. Then I discovered that hidden behind them, way back in the file drawer, was a pile of Playboys dating from the sixties. The top cover (Miss February) was coated with a perfect layer of dust, as if the secret stash had lain untouched for thirty years.

  Miss February’s interests were “tennis and kittens.” For the centerfold, she wore a G-string sewn with tiny hearts and stroked a white fluffy cat. She had enormous pinkish breasts that barely fit on the page. She’d be a grandmother now. What I loved most were the one-inch ads in the back of the magazine that whispered to the anxieties of the male psyche: “Helps you overcome false teeth looseness and worry”; “Bill Problems?”; “A Timely Message to the Man with Hernia”; “How to Speak and Write Like a College Graduate”—and a classic pictorial essay on “Favorite Valentine’s Day Gifts,” featuring Playboy bunnies and red satin sheets. Then I saw the photo credit.

  There was a soft knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  It was Mike.

  “Saw the light on, so I thought …”

  He handed me a cup of milk and a bag of chocolate chip cookies with macadamia nuts.

  I said, “Wow.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Snooping into your parents’ lives. Did you know your dad read Playboy?”

  Mike took the magazine looking somewhat confused.

  “Am I shattering your illusions?”

  He broke into a grin. “God bless the old man.”

  “Look who took the pictures,” I said excitedly, pointing to the photo credit. “Hugh Akron.”

  “Our Hugh Akron?”

  “Got to be. Do you think he’d want to have this?”

  “What? This magazine?”

  “For his personal collection.”

  “Sure, if he wants to buy it, the slimy tea bag. He ripped me off for Lakers tickets. The scalpers were selling them for less.”

  “How does a creep like Hugh Akron get girls to take off their clothes?”

  Mike was lost in the magazine.

  “Where does he find them?” I went on. “These cute twenty-year-old girls? You know, he still does this stuff? Cheesecake, on the Internet. Did he ever show you?”

  Mike abstractedly shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

  I dipped a chocolate chip cookie in the cup and sucked out the milk. “My grandfather read Playboy. Those were the days when they put centerfolds up at the police station.”

  Mike lowered the magazine and kind of nodded, as if he had been only half listening. He was wearing plaid cotton flannel pants; mine were the same navy blue skivvies from Quantico I’d had on for days. I pulled the sweater close around my chest. As he stood there unmoving, I became uncomfortably aware of both our sex parts loose inside our pajama bottoms.

  “Would you mind listening to something?”

  “Sure.”

  He fished a microcassette from his pocket and flickered it in the air.

  “From the answering machine. The one in the hallway,” he insisted. “Right when you come in the door.”

  I nodded, wondering why the location of the answering machine was important at two in the morning.

  He sat down on the opposite side of the couch and fitted the cassette into a small tape recorder.

  “Wacko bitch. Why didn’t you take a two-by-four and do a Sam Shepard, do something to yourself big-time? If you had the guts, you’d shoot yourself with a service revolver and claim you wrestled the gun away. You could strangle yourself and leave marks. If you had the guts. Do you have the guts?”

  “Who is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The tape chattered along on fast-forward.

  “I saw you in the courtroom. I thought you looked at me kind of hot
. I’m up for anything, sweetheart, and I know you can show me the way. Do you think I have ulterior motives? I don’t have ulterior motives. Ask me if I do. I’d love to hear your sexy voice …”

  Eventually it clicked off.

  “How many are there?”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven?”

  “Now they’re coming two times a day.”

  “Did you put a trap on the phone?”

  “I will, but they won’t call again.”

  “Why not?”

  “They know that’s exactly what I’m going to do. These are cops, Ana. This is intimidation.”

  It was late, my brain running slow. “Andrew’s homies, you think?”

  He shrugged. “Got to be someone who knows where you are and how to get an unlisted number.”

  “Screw them.”

  “Right, except that Ian”—referring to his middle boy, aged ten—“took that message off the machine.”

  Chocolate burst inside my mouth, the last taste of bittersweet.

  “I am so sorry, Mike.”

  “I have to ask you to leave.”

  The world stopped then. I tried to nestle deeper into the arm of the couch.

  Mike said, “I’m sorry. This is just too close to home.”

  I nodded, stunned. My only thought was, I will go to jail.

  “Is it Rochelle?”

  He admitted, “She’s upset.”

  “I hope I haven’t—”

  “No, no,” he said quickly. “Nothing to do with that.”

  He stayed on his side of the sofa. We looked away with embarrassment at what had been left behind a long time ago, when we were partners chasing bandits.

  “You’ve gone way beyond the call of duty as it is.”

  His eyes filmed and so did mine. He was a decent man, trying to do the decent thing. “We’ll figure out another place for you to go,” he promised.