She squints at nothing I can see. "It's a white door. I remember thinking it was the whitest door I'd ever seen. Something about that made me feel hollow. Cynical."
"How so?"
She looks at me and her eyes seem ancient. "Because I knew it was a lie. All that white. Total bullshit. I felt it in my gut. Whatever was behind that door wasn't white, not at all. It was going to be dark and rotten and ugly."
Something cold twinges inside of me. A kind of vicarious deja vu. I have felt what she is describing.
"Go on."
"We knock, and we call her name. Nothing. It's quiet." She frowns.
"You know what else was strange?"
"What?"
"No one peeked out their door to see what was going on. I mean, we were 'cop knocking.' Loud and pounding. But no one looked. I don't think she really knew her neighbors. Or maybe they just weren't close."
She sighs.
"Anyway. Charlie looks over at me, and I look back at him, and we both look at the uniforms, and we all unholster our weapons." She bites her lip. "That bad feeling was really strong. It was an anxiety ball bouncing around in my stomach. I could feel it in the others too. Smell it. Sweat and adrenaline trembles. Shallow breathing."
"Were you scared?" I ask her.
She doesn't answer for a moment. "Yeah. I was scared. Of what we were going to find." She grimaces at me. "Want to know something weird? I'm always scared just before I get to a scene. I've been on homicide for over ten years, and I've seen everything, but it still scares me, every time."
"Go on."
"I tried the doorknob, and it turned, no problem. I looked at everyone again and opened the door, wide. We all had our weapons up and ready."
I switch perspectives on her. "What do you think the first thing Charlie noticed was?"
"The smell. It had to be. There was the smell, and the dark. All the lights were off, except for the one in her bedroom." She shivers, and I realize that she's unaware of it. "You could see the doorway to her bedroom from where we were standing. It was down a hallway almost directly in line with the front door. The apartment was close to being pitch-black, but the bedroom doorway was kind of . . . outlined by light." She runs a hand through her hair. "It reminded me of that whole
'monster in the closet' thing I had sometimes as a kid. Something scratching on the other side of that door, wanting out. Something awful."
"Tell me about the smell."
She grimaces. "Perfume and blood. That's what it smelled like. The smell of perfume was stronger, but you could smell the blood underneath it. Thick and coppery. Subtle, but kind of . . . aggravating. Disturbing. Like something you could see out of the corner of your eye."
I file this away. "What then?"
"We did the usual. Called out to the occupants, cleared the living room and the kitchen. We used flashlights, because I didn't want anyone touching anything."
"That's good." I nod, encouraging.
"After that, we did what made sense--we went toward the bedroom door." She stops and looks at me. "I told Charlie to put on gloves before we even entered, Smoky."
She is telling me she knew, felt, that murder was on the other side of that door. That she was going to be dealing with evidence, not survivors. "I remember looking at the doorknob. Not wanting to turn it. I didn't want to look inside. To let it out."
"Go on."
"Charlie turned the knob. It wasn't locked. We had a little trouble opening it because there was a towel stuffed along the bottom of the door."
"A towel?"
"Soaked in perfume. He'd put it there so the smell of your friend's corpse wouldn't come wafting out. He didn't want anyone finding her until he was ready."
And just like that, part of me wants to stop this. Wants to get up, walk out the door of this coffee shop, hop in the jet, and go home. It is a feeling that surges over me, almost overpowering. I fight it back.
"And then?" I prompt her.
She is quiet, staring off. Seeing too much. When she begins to speak again, her voice is flat and empty. "It hit us all at once. I think that's what he wanted. The bed had been moved so that it was in line with the door. So that when we opened it, we could see it all, smell it all, in an instant." She shakes her head. "I remember thinking of that white, white front door. It made me feel so fucking bitter. It was just too much to process. I think we stood there for at least a minute. Just looking. It was Charlie that realized it first--that Bonnie was alive." She stops talking, staring into that moment. I wait her out. "She blinked, that's what I remember. Her cheek was lying against her dead mother's face, and she looked dead herself. We thought she was. And then she blinked. Charlie started cursing, and"--she bites her lip--"crying a little. But that's between us and the uniforms we had there, okay?"
"Don't worry."
"That was the first and--I hope--only fuckup. Charlie just ran into the room and untied Bonnie. Trampled all over the scene." Her voice sounds both hollow and bemused. "He wouldn't stop cursing. He was cursing in Italian. It sounds very pretty. Strange, huh?"
"Yeah." I'm gentle in my reply. Jenny is there, completely in the moment, and I don't want to jar her out of it.
"Bonnie was limp and nonresponsive. Boneless. Charlie untied her and whisked her right out of that apartment. Right out, before I could even think to say or do anything. He was desperate. I understood." Her face twists. "I sent the uniforms out to call EMS and CSU and the ME, blah, blah, blah. That left me there with your friend. In that room, smelling like death and perfume and blood. Feeling so angry and sad I could have puked. Staring down at Annie." She shivers again. Her fist clenches and unclenches. "You ever notice that about the dead, Smoky?
How still and quiet they are? Nothing alive could ever fake that kind of stillness. Still and silent and nobody home. I shut off at that point."
She looks at me and shrugs. "You know how it works."
I nod. I do. You get over the initial shock, and then you shut down the part of you that feels so that you can do your job without weeping or puking or losing your mind on the spot. You have to be able to give horror a clinical eye. It's unnatural.
"It's funny to look back at it, in a way. It's like I can hear my own voice in my head, some kind of robotic monotone." She mimics this as she speaks. "White female, approximately thirty-five years of age, tied to her bed in the nude. Evidence of cuts from neck to knees, probably made by a knife. Many cuts look long and shallow, showing probable torture. Torso"--her voice wavers for a second--"torso cavity open and seems to be empty of organs. Victim's face is twisted, as though she was screaming when she died. Bones in her arms and legs appear to be broken. Killing looks purposeful. Appears to have been slow. Posing of the body suggests prior thought and planning. Not a crime of passion."
"Tell me about that," I say. "What's the sense you got of him from the scene, at that exact moment?"
She is silent for a long time. I wait, watching as she looks out the window. She turns her eyes to me.
"Her agony made him come, Smoky. It was the best sex he ever had."
These sentences stop me. They are dark, cold, and horrible. But they are some of what I was looking for. And they ring true. Even as they empty me out, leave me hollow, I begin to smell him. He smells like perfume and blood, like doorways in shadow, outlined by light. He smells like laughter mixed with screams. He smells like lies disguised as truth, and decay seen out of the corner of your eye. He is precise. And he savors the act.
"Thanks, Jenny." I feel empty and dirty and filled with shadows. But I also feel something beginning to stir inside. A dragon. Something I was afraid was dead and gone, amputated from me by Joseph Sands. It's not awake, not yet. But I can feel it again, for the first time in months.
Jenny shakes herself a little. "Pretty good. You really put me in it."
"It didn't take much skill on my part. You're a dream witness." My response sounds listless to me. I feel so tired right now. We sit for a moment, quiet. Contemplative and disturbed. My mocha no longer
tastes exquisite, and Jenny seems to have lost interest in her tea. Death and horror do that. They can suck the joy from any moment. It's the one thing that you have to struggle with, always, in law enforcement. Survivor's guilt. It seems almost sacrilegious to savor a moment in life while talking about the screaming end of someone else's.
I sigh. "Can you take me to see Bonnie?"
We pay the check and leave. The whole way over, I'm dreading the thought of seeing those staring eyes. I smell blood and perfume, perfume and blood. It smells like despair.
11
I HATE HOSPITALS. I'm glad they are there when they're needed, but I have only one good memory of being at one: the birth of my daughter. Otherwise, a visit to the hospital has always been because I am hurt, or someone I care for is hurt, or someone is dead. This is no exception. We have entered a hospital because we need to see a young girl who was bound to her dead mother for three days. My own time in the hospital is a surreal memory. It was a time of intense physical pain and an unending wish to die. A time of not sleeping for days, until I'd pass out from exhaustion. Of staring at a ceiling in the dark, while monitors hummed and the soft sound of nurses' shoes shuffled down the hallways, overloud in the cotton-stuffed quiet. Of listening to my soul, which had the empty rushing sound you hear when you put your ear to a seashell.
I smell its smell, and shiver inside.
"Here we are," Jenny says.
The cop in front is alert. He asks to see my identification, even though I'm with Jenny. I approve.
"Any other visitors?" Jenny asks.
He shakes his head. "Nope. It's been quiet."
"Don't let anyone in while we're inside, Jim. I don't care who it is, got it?"
"Whatever you say, Detective."
He sits back in his chair and unfurls a newspaper, and we enter. I feel dizzy the moment the door closes and I see Bonnie's still form. She's not asleep, her eyes are open. But they don't even move in response to the sound of our entrance. She is small, tiny, made more so as she is dwarfed not just by the hospital bed, but by her circumstances. I am amazed how much she looks like Annie. The same blond hair and upturned nose, those cobalt-blue eyes. In a few more years she will be almost a twin of the girl I held on a bathroom floor in high school so many years ago. I realize I've been holding my breath. I exhale, walking over to her.
She's on the barest of monitoring. Jenny had explained on the way over that a thorough exam showed no rape and no physical injury. There is a part of me that is thankful for that, but I know her wounds run much deeper. They are gaping and bloody and no doctor can stitch them, these wounds of the mind.
"Bonnie?" I speak in a soft, measured voice. I remember reading somewhere about talking to people in a coma, how they can hear you and it helps. This is close enough to that. "I'm Smoky. Your mother and I were best friends, for a long time. I'm your godmother."
No response. Just those eyes, staring at the ceiling. Seeing something else. Maybe seeing nothing. I move to the side of the bed. I hesitate before taking her small hand in mine. A wave of dizziness crashes over me at the feel of her soft skin. This is the hand of a child, not fully grown, a symbol of that which we protect and love and cherish. I held my daughter's hand like this many times, and an emptiness opens up as Bonnie's hand fills that space. I start to speak to her, not sure of the words until they tumble from my lips. Jenny stands off, silent. I'm barely aware of her. My words sound low and earnest to me, the sound of someone praying.
"Honey, I want you to know that I'm here to find the man who did this to you and your mother. That's my job. I want you to know that I know how bad this is. How much you are hurting inside. Maybe how you want to die." A tear rolls down my cheek. "I lost my husband and my daughter to a bad man, six months ago. He hurt me. And for a long time, I wanted to do exactly what you're doing now. I wanted to just crawl inside myself and disappear." I stop for a moment, draw a ragged breath, squeeze her hand. "I just wanted you to know I understand. And you stay in there, as long as you need. But when you're ready to come out, you won't be alone. I'll be here for you. I'll take care of you."
I'm weeping openly now, and I don't care. "I loved your mother, sweetheart. I loved her so much. I wish she and I had spent more time together. Wish I'd seen more of you." I smile a crooked smile through my tears. "I wish you and Alexa had known each other. I think you would have liked her."
I am growing dizzier, and the tears just seem to keep on coming. Grief is like that sometimes. Like water, it finds any opening, forces itself through any crack until it explodes, inexorable. Images flash through my mind of Alexa and Annie, turning the inside of my head into some insane, strobe-lit disco. I have only a moment to realize what's happening. I'm passing out.
Then things go dark.
This is the second dream, and it is beautiful.
I'm in the hospital, in the throes of labor. I'm giving serious thought to killing Matt for his part in putting me here. I am being cleaved in two, I'm covered in sweat, grunting like a pig, all in between screams of pain.
There is a human being moving through me, trying to come out. It does not feel poetic, it feels like I'm shitting a bowling ball. I've forgotten about the supposed beauty of having a child, I want this thing out of me, I love it I hate it I love it, and all of this is reflected in my screams and curses.
My doctor's voice is calm, and I wish I could smack his stupid silly bald head. "Okay, Smoky, the baby's crowning! Just a few more pushes and she'll be out. Come on, hang in there."
"Fuck you!" I yell, and then push. Dr. Chalmers doesn't even look up at me at this. He's been delivering children for a good long time.
"You're doing great, honey," Matt says. He's got his hand in mine, and a part of me registers a perverse hope that I'm grinding his bones into powder.
"How would you know?" I snarl. My head snaps back at the force of the contraction, and I am cursing like I have never cursed before, blasphemous, horrible words to make a biker blush. There is the smell of blood and of the farts that have been escaping as I've been pushing. I think, there is no beauty here, and I want to kill all of you. Then the pain and pressure increases, something I would not have thought possible. I feel like my head should be rotating around, I am cursing with such terrible abandon.
"One more time, Smoky," Dr. Chalmers says from between my legs, still calm in this maelstrom.
There is a gushing, sucking sound, and pain, and pressure, and then--she is out. My daughter has emerged into the world; the first sounds she hears are words of profanity. There is a silence, some snipping sounds, and then something that pushes all the pain and anger and blood away. That stops time. I hear my daughter crying. She sounds as pissed off as I had been moments ago, and it is the most wonderful thing I have ever heard, the most beautiful music, a miracle beyond my capacity to imagine. I am overwhelmed, I feel like my heart should stop beating. I hear that sound, and look at my husband, and I begin to bawl.
"Healthy baby girl," Dr. Chalmers says, leaning back as the nurses clean Alexa and wrap her up. He looks sweaty, and tired, and happy. I love this man that I wanted to swat just seconds ago. He has been a part of this, and I am thankful, though I can't stop crying or find the words. Alexa was born just after midnight amid the blood and pain and profanity, and that was something you get only a few times in life--a moment of perfection.
She died after midnight as well, taken back into a womb of darkness from which she would never be reborn.
I come to, gasping, shaking, and weeping. I am still in the hospital room. Jenny is standing over me. She looks stricken.
"Smoky! Are you okay?"
My mouth feels gummy. My cheeks are cracking with the salt of my tears. I am mortified. I shoot a look toward the hospital door. Jenny shakes her head.
"No one else has been in here. Though I would have called someone if you hadn't woken up soon."
I gulp in air. They are the deep, gulping breaths of post-panic attack. "Thank you." I sit up, there on the floor, put my head
in my hands. "I'm sorry, Jenny. I didn't know that was going to happen."
She is silent. Her tough exterior has faded for a moment, and she looks sad without pity. "Don't worry about it."
These are the only words she says. I sit there gulping air, my breathing getting calmer. And then I notice something. Just as in the dream, the pain of the moment is rushed away.
Bonnie has turned her head, and she is looking at me. A single tear rolls down her cheek. I stand up, move to her bed, take her hand in mine.
"Hi, honey," I whisper.
She doesn't speak, and I say nothing more. We just stare at each other, letting the tears roll down our cheeks. That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed.
12
S AN FRANCISCANS DRIVE a lot like New Yorkers: They take no prisoners. Traffic is medium-heavy at the moment, and Jenny is intent on ferocious negotiations with the other vehicles as we drive back toward SFPD. A symphony of honks and curses fills the air. I have a finger stuck in one ear so I can hear Callie as I talk to her on the cell phone.
"How's it going at CSU?"
"They're good, honey-love. Very good. I'm going over everything with a fine-tooth comb, but I think they covered every base, from a forensic standpoint."
"And I take it that they didn't find anything."
"He was careful."
"Yeah." I feel depression knocking, push it away. "Have you checked in with the others? Any word from Damien?"
"I haven't had time yet."
"We're almost back at the station anyway. Keep doing what you're doing. I'll check in with everyone else."
She is silent for a moment. "How's the child, Smoky?"
How is the child? I wish I had an answer to that. I don't, and I don't want to talk about it right now. "She's in bad shape."
I click off the phone before she can reply, and stare out the window as we travel through the city. San Francisco is a maze of steep hills and one-way streets, aggressive drivers, and trolley cars. It has a certain foggy beauty I've always admired, a singularity all its own. It is a mix of the cultured and the decadent, moving fast toward either death or success. At this moment, it doesn't seem so unique to me. Just another place where murder happens. That's the thing about murder. It can happen at the North Pole or on the equator. It can be committed by men or women, youths or adults. Its victims can be sinners or saints. Murder is everywhere, and its children are legion. I am filled with darkness right now. No whites or grays, just solid coal pitch-blacks. We arrive at the station, and Jenny moves us out of the still-busy river of the street into the more peaceful parking lot belonging to SFPD. Parking is hard to come by in San Francisco--God help anyone stupid enough to try and pirate these spaces.
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