“You ever notice how all hell breaks loose just before it’s time to get off shift?” Mona asked. “Tow truck’s on its way.”
I nodded and watched her drive off to another call, burglary in progress or something.
I stood there a minute, hands tingling and sore. I checked my watch: just after 6:00 A.M. The sky was starting to blend back into blue in the east.
I turned to the job at hand: measurements to be taken, vehicle to be inventoried, debris to be collected and cataloged. I threw my bloody glove on the dashboard of my unit, removed a plastic bag from the glove box, pulled the flashlight out of the ring on my belt.
I was alone on the roadway; the red lights of my unit reflected off the shattered remains of his car. The lights made a shush…click…shush…click sound as they revolved. I bent to my task. Slowly, I picked up the small pieces of brain and skull along the pitted blacktop.
I thought of that boy a lot as I was lying in the hospital after my own wreck, how peaceful his face had seemed. I replayed his accident as much as I replayed my own, putting myself in his driver’s seat, wondering if he too had that moment where he realized there was absolutely nothing he could do to prevent what was about to happen.
But of course I wasn’t drunk, it wasn’t nighttime, I didn’t die. And, as my sister likes to point out, it wasn’t my fault.
I was just driving down Capitol Heights Boulevard, headed toward the school zone near Catholic High to write a few parking tickets. I saw the green van ahead, on the street off to the right, perpendicular to me. The van slowed for its stop sign; I had the right of way: no stop sign, no slowing down. But the van lurched forward. Accelerated. That moment before impact, a hesitation of breath. The air thickened, and I was suspended in time. A long glide: one, two, three seconds elongated, stretched like hot-blown glass and became minutes of sailing across the road.
Real time returned with a rush. I smashed my right foot onto the brake pedal, locked my knees and hip as though that would stop me in time, turned the steering wheel hard to the left to deflect the impact. Metal thuds, scrapes and screeches, the downpour of shattering glass. There was a time lapse of sound, as though I heard everything two seconds after it actually happened.
My body was whipped left to right, something sharp entered my knee, my calf, my ankle; then I was whipped to the left again. There were jolts back and forth, until my unit came to a stop in the intersection. Dazed, I lay against the door, head down.
Dimly I reminded, then demanded my muscles to relax. I needed to get on the radio, get units and an ambulance out here; I needed to get out of my car, check on the other driver. After a moment, my hands unclenched the steering wheel. My leg muscles loosened and the pain, the pure white piercing pain rushed in and took my breath away again.
I moved my head slowly to the right and studied a shoe on the floorboard, near the radio console. The sunlight was bright and the shoe, a black Red Wing just like mine, appeared three-dimensional, popping out of a flat background; everything surrounding it was flat. It was bloody, the shoe. I should have been able to smell that blood, it looked so real.
I looked at the leg attached to the shoe. It was familiar, yet not. Someone’s leg was twisted around and wet-white bone poked out, a good inch jutting forth, sharp and foreign to the air.
Then everything happened too fast. People talking, running up. “Ambulance,” I heard. “I’ve called the police.” “Doesn’t look good.” And, “Oh God, she’s bleeding too.”
I couldn’t seem to move, my head too big, my arms numb and detached. I whispered to a figure standing near my window, “The other person?”
“Don’t you worry,” a voice said.
But I insisted, mumbling the question over and over. Finally, the voice told me the other driver was just fine. Later I learned she died on impact, face through the windshield, skin peeled back like the husk off corn. Traffic investigators determined her shoe had been wet, slipped off the brake pedal and punched the accelerator instead.
She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. But then neither was I. Neither was that boy out on the interstate. I wonder if it would have made a difference for either of them.
Something about that boy’s accident has stuck with me, although I’ve worked other accidents just as bad. Cops remember most calls they work; I remember every murder, every suicide, every fatality, and it colors everything I do. But you compartmentalize and joke those calls into a tame and distant place. I can’t find a place for that boy.
Anyway, enough stories. It happened long ago, in another life.
In this life, I walk with a limp and have blinding, white-pain headaches. The doctors tell me I’ll recover fully, some day. My sister says I’m lucky. She says I need to move on, suggested I take classes at the university and get my degree. And so here I am, surrounded by vibrant young men and women; when I meet them in classrooms or walking under the live oaks that dominate the campus, I study their faces and look at the shadings and depths within their eyes. I am glad to be among them, although I have no idea what or who I’ll be in this new life.
I try to avoid that stretch of interstate, but it’s hard. This is a small city, and when I find myself there, especially at night, I feel him again, warm between my hands. I’ve been thinking about going out west—maybe Idaho or Colorado. Someplace where the sky embraces you and the hours are slower. I’ve been reading about firewatchers, people who sit up in these rickety little cabins all summer, high above the rustling trees, searching for signs of smoke. I like the idea of that.
MONA
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
—Oscar Wilde
UNDER CONTROL
This is what I see the first second into the room: The hands of the three men are empty.
Then: The gun, a blue steel .357 across the room in front of me, there on the floor, lying next to the body. Dispatcher said, Man with a gun; possible shots fired. She was right.
Next: The face of the man near the gun, a quick study of his features—eyebrows, forehead, mouth, cheeks, jaws: muscles, it’s all about the muscles in the face—his body language. A threat, but not imminent, not at this particular moment.
Last detail: Blood. Lots of it. Two additional doors, both on the right side of the living room, one in the back corner, one toward the front. A quick glance back over the six hands of the two living and one dead. Yep. Still empty. I check the body’s hands last; I’ve had bodies come back to life and start shooting. But this body is a body. Bet my life.
Finally: Process everything. Old man in a raised hospital-type bed in front of the door in the corner closest to me. A gaunt, withered celery stalk of a man. Oxygen and IV attached. Hasn’t moved a muscle except his eyes since I arrived. Mouth open in a perpetual twisted smile. Paralyzed.
Other man, late forties, stands near the body. Blood on his shirt. Upper left side of head caved in—missing?—old injury?—maybe birth defect? Fresh bruises, large welts on his face and neck. Wailing, agitated, early signs of shock. Over and over he chants softly, “Mommy’s gonna be mad, so mad, mean mad.” He is too damn close to the gun on the floor.
As I sweep the scene again with my eyes, the room twists and blurs; a parallel world slips in and I see my brothers and my father in place of the three men. They are all grinning at me, even the dead brother, I think it’s my oldest, he’s grinning, too.
What the fuck you think you know, my father yells.
I blink. Quickly. Knowing it will go away, this vision.
There are three strangers, a gun, and too much blood in front of me. I am first on the scene. My father is not here. I am his daughter, empowered to protect the living and keep the peace. Officer in charge.
First, lower potential violence. Defuse. I slide my revolver back into the holster, leaving it unsnapped. I put both hands out, palms down, close to my body. “Move away from the gun. To your left. Move!” I speak firmly but softly.
The man pauses for a moment, frowning and sniffling. Almost as thou
gh he’s listening to something.
“No!” he screams, throwing his hands out. “Lady, you go away. You go away now.”
Four slow steps back into the hall foyer, three-quarters of my body tucked tight behind the door frame. The front door is open behind me. My right hand, fingers spread wide, hovers gently above my holster.
“All right,” I say, calmly, cajolingly. I am good at this. It is amusing yet bewildering at times: me, twenty-one years old, and they, decades older, hand over their lives for inspection, correction, solutions.
Too early to tell which way this one will go. My portable radio’s breaking up, and there’s no chance of anyone just swinging by. Too shorthanded. Everyone’s on call already, and most supervisors won’t move from the office without a Signal 63. Dispatcher should send backup when she doesn’t hear my Code 4.
“Okay, mister. It’s all right.” I tilt the palm of my gun hand toward him, gently pressing the air between us. If he was kneeling here in front of me, this gesture would be a benediction: thou art forgiven.
He squints his eyes, lower lip thrust out. “Everything’s all bad. Go away. No more hurting.” His voice is high and breathy, like a child’s. He wipes a sleeve against his nose. The lower half of his face is much larger than the upper half. Something about this guy is not all there. More than the stress, the emotion, the killing.
“No one’s going to hurt you. I’m here to help.” I croon it like a lullaby.
I will help you, I tell my mother, he hits you again.
The man is crying. Tears stream down his puffy chalk-white face. It is cool in here, a weather warp from the ninety-degree day outside. A ceiling fan wisps in lazy circles overhead. The old man’s eyes are rolling around and around in their sockets, darting back and forth. The gun is closer now to the living, pacing, crying man’s foot.
“I really didn’t mean to. He kept coming at me, miss. You saw, Daddy. I couldn’t. I had to.” He pounds one fist against his chest, the other arm thrown wide.
A father and son—sons? Where’s Mom?
Where’s Mom? I say to my father. I am ten. He tilts his head toward the hall closet. I unlock the door, sit on the floor beside her, watch the door swing shut, hear the latch turn.
“Okay. We’re all right here, now.” I speak slowly. “I didn’t catch your name. What’s your name, sir? I’m Officer Burnnet. Mona Burnnet.”
This is the first step: soothe, lull, distract. It’s been maybe two minutes. We have all the time in the world. I take off my hat, toss it on the floor behind me. I want the man to see me, not the badge, not the gun.
“Victor. That’s my name, miss. My name’s Victor Franconi, and this here’s my brother. We don’t look much alike, I know. Everyone says so.”
A hard point to dispute; one of them is dead.
Victor has backed up against a table and is rocking from the waist. He keeps glancing at the gun on the floor. “My only brother, Frankie. Frankie Franconi. I hurt him bad. Yes? I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t mean to hurt him. We’ll get it straightened out, Victor. But first I need to check on your brother, see if he’s still alive.”
Victor stops rocking and looks down at the body. “Oh, he’s dead, miss.” His voice has gone flat; there’s a metallic taste to the tone. “Dead as my turtle. Dead, dead, dead. Shot him three times, maybe four. Had to make sure. He wouldn’t stop.”
His voice rises. “You saw him, Daddy. You saw, I had to stop him, miss.”
“I believe you, Victor. You had to defend yourself. It happens. It’s going to be all right.”
The dad’s eyes are still rolling, but they are fixed on me now. I wonder about the twisted, frozen smile—what was he doing when this illness caught up and squashed him? What was so funny?
Suddenly I sense movement. Behind the door blocked by the dad’s bed. I watch the door swing inward, seven inches or so. I watch Victor. I watch the door. My hand is sweaty, gripped tight around my gun. I relax the muscles in my legs and prepare to drop back, to my knees, away.
I see eyes, tiny brilliant blue eyes, eyes with depth to them on a doll-sized person, the face framed by a wad of paper white hair. The mother? She watches me, the back of her hand up against her mouth. I shake my head slightly: No, I am telling her, stay put. She nods and turns her hand around to put a finger to her lips.
Victor is pacing again, mumbling to himself, throwing wild-eyed looks my way. What I’d like him to do is throw himself at the dad’s feet—beg for mercy, cry, whatever will erase from his mind the possibility of the gun nearby. I could rush him, I could pull my own gun and advance into the room, but I don’t want him to go for the gun. I don’t want to kill anyone. As is, Victor’s thinking too much; there is the potential for choices. Shoot himself? Shoot Dad? Me? There are either one or two bullets left.
The first time my father pulls his gun on my mother I am twelve. My oldest brother tackles him from behind. The gun flies from his hand, slides along the floor, and rests at my feet. My mother yells at my brother not to hurt my father. I kick the gun away.
“Victor,” I say. “Victor, think of your father. Let me come check your brother. Step away from your brother, Victor.” I begin to ease myself slowly around the door frame and into the room. My hand still caresses the air above my gun.
“My daddy’s a devil, miss. He’s a mean, ugly, stupid, old man. He’ll never die, that’s what Frankie said.” Bits of spittle burst from Victor’s lips as he moves closer to the dad. “You want to know something?” His voice drops to a whisper. “I hate them. I hate both of them.”
Your father’s a good man, my mother says as I drive her to the hospital. I have just gotten my learner’s permit. He just lives harder than some, she tells me. Her nose is broken, and she needs three stitches above her left eye. They have to shave the eyebrow.
I nod at Victor. “Of course you hate them. I understand.” It really doesn’t matter what I say, what lies I tell. Tone is everything. Tone and presence.
I am overly aware of the mother, of her restrained restlessness behind the partially open door. She is like a high-pitched whine: constant and just loud enough to bug the hell out of me. I swear I hear something like chuckling from behind that door.
“He hurt me,” Victor whispers. “They both hurt me all the time.”
The body on the floor is large—mostly fat. I can’t see the face. Blood has pooled beneath the body and in the low spots of the floor. It has begun to coagulate. The smell of gunpowder has dissipated into the thick, sticky smell of released body fluids. The ceiling fan continues to circle lazily overhead, cutting arcs of air down on us.
“I know,” I say. “I’m here now. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Victor is slumped over, and his face sags like Silly Putty. “So hard,” he says. “It’s so hard to be good when they hurt you.” Victor points his finger at the dad. “He hurt me most of all.”
My father has me pinned to the wall, his hand raised, poised to descend again. I am nineteen. My voice is steel: Hit me again and swear to God I’ll file charges. He is startled for only a second, then he laughs, pats me on the cheek, and turns away.
I look at the dad, but he is rolling his eyes at the ceiling: pale blue, watery eyes, large but recessed, focused on nothing. The eyes remind me of something, someone. This man can hear though; I know he can hear. Despite the eye rolling, I bet this old man doesn’t miss much. Paralyzed, his presence still eats up part of the room.
Again I glance the mother’s way, over the bony points of the dad’s body. She is sipping something from a flowered teacup. A teacup with a saucer. She has one son dead on the floor and the other trying to decide what to do with a gun. She is very quiet as she drinks.
“You see this?” Victor points at his head, the dented-in place. He moves closer. He looks at the gun, then at me, then back to the gun. I force myself to relax, project nonthreat in my body posture.
“Daddy threw me up against the wall when I was three because
I was crying too long. Now I’m not right. Frankie wasn’t either. None of us are.” He smiles slightly at me, then looks down at the floor. “I did a real bad thing, didn’t I?”
“If he hurt you, Victor, if you were threatened, then you have the right to protect yourself.”
Victor nods. “That’s what Frankie always said.”
I sense movement before I hear it and pivot to my left. Victor lets out a startled, “What?”
I quickly turn back. “It’s okay, Victor. It’s EMS, the ambulance people. They’re here to look at Frankie and take care of you.”
“Stay back.” I speak low, barely moving my mouth to Roger, the med tech standing behind me. Victor is six, maybe seven feet away and can’t see him.
“You ain’t gonna find me in there, babe.” I hear the grin in Roger’s voice.
Victor is shaking his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Victor, he won’t come in until you’re ready,” I say. “We can talk some more. No rush.”
I check my watch: six minutes since I hit the door. “Any other units out there?” I whisper.
“Just you, me, and Harold who’s driving, babe,” Roger says, much too loudly.
A quick sting of irritation: cut the “babe” shit. “Get him to call Headquarters and send me a backup. Tell ’em we got one dead already.”
“Gotcha.” Roger moves quickly away from the door.
“WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ABOUT ME?” Victor yells.
“Nothing, Victor. I just told him to go away, that you didn’t want his help.” I turn back full face to him, both hands out, a welcoming embrace. Victor is lightly slapping both hands against his face. His eyes are on the gun. For a second, less really, I see a slight resemblance to the creature in the hospital bed.
“I don’t want him here. I don’t like him. I like you.”
“He’s left. I told him to wait outside.”
The dad has his eyes on me again, and that’s when it hits me. Killer’s eyes, that’s what they remind me of. No feeling, all hate. The mother has ditched the teacup and has her face pressed against the opening in the door, one hand knuckled under her chin. She nods at me as if in encouragement.
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You Page 8