Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You

by Laurie Lynn Drummond

I raised an eyebrow.

  She snorted, the one that meant “You’re such a fuckin mama,” and shook her head. “All right, all right,” she said. “Ms. Jeannette was not a hooker.”

  “I want the group to do this one,” I said, expecting her usual grumbles. Gwen figured it was an exercise in futility, called it “touchy-feely shit we shouldn’t be dredging up.” Said it made more sense to go light a candle at St. Joseph’s.

  Gwen started in on the knuckles of her left hand. “Talk to Tracy about it?”

  “Yep.”

  “And?”

  “She’s got the heejies about it for some reason.”

  “Can’t discount those. Remember that call over on North Street?”

  “This is different. We aren’t the target. The woman’s already dead.” I pushed my lower back harder against my unit, relieving some of the pressure from the gun belt digging down on my hipbones and into my kidneys.

  “You aren’t going to do anything foolish, are you, girl?”

  “I’m just going back there.”

  A couple of uniforms came out the back door carrying shotguns. We watched them stow the shotguns in the crevice between the unit’s seat and floor, slip their five-cell flashlights into the gap between the prisoner screen and the inside roof, pull rain gear out of the trunk. I looked up at the sky. The afternoon storm was about to hit.

  Gwen leaned up against me, bumped my shoulder. “I’m with you, you know.”

  “I know.” The smile I gave her was only my second real smile of the day. “I know.”

  I lived in an area of town that had no real name, no clearly defined neighborhood. It was on the wrong side of Government Street to be considered the Garden District—an eclectic collection of mansions, bungalows, and renovated shotgun houses—and on the wrong side of Acadian to be part of the upwardly mobile Capitol Heights area. My garage apartment sat back from the road, a huge live oak full of ball moss sheltering one side, in the middle of a cluster of short streets inhabited mostly by older widows. With the exception of the Medi-Vac helicopters flying in and out of the BRG Hospital four blocks away, it was quiet.

  I’d been here nearly three years, and despite Gwen’s occasional attempts to get me to buy my own place (“a woman over thirty should own her own house, Sarah”) and Ricky’s recent less-than-subtle hints that we should live together (“I’m over here most every night anyway”), I had no intention of leaving. I didn’t want the responsibility of owning, and I liked picking and choosing the time I spent with Ricky. I felt safe here, safer than any of the apartments and duplexes I’d lived in during my ten years as a cop. There was only one access point: a massive, solid-wood door on the ground floor with three locks. A second solid-wood door at the top of the stairs with two locks. And anyone who wanted to come through the windows either had to throw an extension ladder up against a wall or possess Spiderman-like qualities.

  I passed my landlady’s tiny stucco house and pulled up to the garage. As I got out of my unit, I heard the familiar whir and click of the electric shuffler my landlady and her friends used for their Monday-afternoon bridge game. The game was less about bridge and more about the gin and tonics and neighborhood gossip that flowed faster and deeper than the Mississippi. I’d sat in on a couple of hands at their invitation soon after I moved here and quickly determined those old ladies could run circles around me—and drink me under the table.

  They yoo-hooed and waved at me to join them on the sun porch, but I smiled and shook my head. Upstairs, I let my shoulders slump, tossed my keys on the couch, started unzipping and unsnapping, letting the edges of my cop persona start to dissipate as I ditched my gun belt—blessed relief of the absence of weight—stripped to underpants and camisole, walked to the bathroom, pulled the bobby pins out of my hair, combed it back with a wet brush, filled the sink up with cold water, and submerged my face in it.

  I wandered aimlessly around the apartment, trying to figure out what to do next. I hated day shift; the hours stretched out in front of you. At least on evening and dog shifts there was work and there was sleep, with a few hours for play crammed in and no energy left for much of anything else.

  Eventually, I fixed a bourbon straight up and sat out on the porch off my kitchen and tried not to think. I briefly considered going out to City Park and blasting the hell out of the backboard as I so often did after day shift, but the sight of my racquet made my stomach quiver. When the afternoon shower hit with a vengeance, I made a second drink and carried it to the bath, where I soaked for a long time, dozing.

  Later that evening Ricky and I sat at an old table from my parents’ house and peeled shrimp, dipping them in the aioli he’d made, talking mostly about the former governor’s latest shenanigans, which were considerable; about the mayor’s attempts to keep Catfish Town financially feasible. Ricky teased me about my insistence on deveining each shrimp before I ate it. He’d taken off his shirt and shoes, and I watched the muscles bunch and relax in his arms and down his chest, eyed the thin tuft of dark hair that trailed below the waistband on his jeans. For the first time that day I felt soft.

  The storm had cleared out and a light breeze smelling of wet grass came in through the windows. Ricky’s massive Rhodesian Ridgeback sprawled on the floor snoring, her head resting on my foot. She was a beautiful grayish-tan dog named, for reasons Ricky could never explain, Peacock. She didn’t have an arrogant, showy bone in her body. He frequently accused me of loving the dog more than him.

  “That would be an affirmative,” I’d reply. I didn’t much care for cats, but dogs I had a soft spot for. They trusted so implicitly and loved unconditionally, the only creatures that had those characteristics as far as I could determine, besides babies. The only time I’d ever teared up at a scene was on a burglary off Barber Street where the perp had shot and killed the complainant’s two gorgeous German shepherds, which had been gated off in the kitchen. The guy stood there, shaking his head, and said, “Why’d they have to kill my dogs, man?” I’d had no answer to that one.

  “You hear about the letter they found?” Ricky asked.

  “Who?” I said, still staring at Peacock, wondering what she was dreaming about with all those nose twitches.

  “The one that woman wrote.”

  I tensed slightly, remembering Barker’s earlier comment about a letter. “From today?”

  He nodded.

  “Her name was Jeannette,” I said softly. “What about the letter?”

  “Jeannette.” He nodded again, got up, washed his hands, then pulled a sheaf of oversized colored photographs out of his backpack, sifted through them, and handed me one.

  “They found this letter in a desk drawer with a bunch of other stuff,” he said.

  I stared at the photograph. Two pages of narrow, spiral notebook paper were barely readable. They lay on top of other papers and two paperback books, one of which I could just make out the title of: Night of the Assassin.

  “How’d you get this?” I said.

  “Kirk. I went down to HQ while they developed the stuff.” He started peeling shrimp again.

  I looked at him. “Why?”

  “I thought it was interesting.”

  “Did you?” I turned the photograph sideways. Her handwriting was painfully childish: big curvy letters, tiny circles over the i’s, fat loops, self-consciously styled e’s and a’s, spelling and grammar errors. I started with what she’d numbered page (2); only four lines were visible:…if it was going to ruin our marriage. For the past two weeks I have been home waiting on you and you are still…

  Page (4) lay crosswise over page (2). I turned the photograph upside down and continued reading:…after a hard days work and talk to me about nothing in particular but everything in general. I would like a husband that doesn’t put that much important on sex. I want a husband that I can sit down and express my likes and dislikes, my fears, and my disappointments with true understanding not just be listening because I’m telling. I would like to do the same with you. Honey I so
rry this letter is so long. I have a lot on my mind. I want this marriage to work because…

  I put the picture to one side, took a sip of white wine, and methodically peeled another shrimp, deveined it, dipped it carefully in the aioli so it was completely covered, then put it in my mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  “Interesting, huh?” Ricky was careless as he peeled and often had to spit out pieces of shell still clinging to the shrimp, which he did now, grinning at me as he wiped his face with the back of his hand. Peacock groaned and stretched, licking my bare foot once before she returned to her dreams.

  “What we think is that she wrote that letter and gave it to him, her husband. The whole thing reads like that. Mentions him hitting her and stuff too. It was dated a week ago.” Ricky chewed noisily as he talked, drank from his Abita Turbodog with enthusiasm. “He got pissed, went back out on the road, thought about it awhile, stewing away, came back, she tried to talk to him, and he started torturing her, figured he’d show her who was boss, and eventually he just went too far and killed her.”

  “Is that so?”

  Ricky stopped, a shrimp halfway to his mouth. “What’d I say?”

  I took a deep breath and was about to launch into a withering attack when the phone rang.

  Ricky laughed and bit into the shrimp. “Saved by the bell, cher.”

  “Fuck you,” I said as I went back to the bedroom, picked up the phone.

  Tracy spoke quickly. “I’m not thrilled about doing this.”

  “Tracy—”

  “Save it. We’ll do this one. Tomorrow night, eleven-thirty. Park on the levee, across from the T-intersection. We’ll go on to her place in two cars, park beyond her house.”

  “I’ll call Gwen,” I said.

  “No talking about this at work tomorrow, okay?”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re in and out, ten minutes tops, understand?”

  “Thank you,” I said again, but she’d hung up. I punched in Gwen’s number, and told her the plan.

  “We’re not going in the fuckin’ house, right?” she asked.

  “Do we ever?”

  “Done. Pick you up?”

  “You’re on the way. I’ll swing by and get you.”

  “Ricky over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Plant a big wet juicy one on him for me.”

  “Oh, please.”

  Her burro hiccup laugh blasted out of the earpiece as I hung up. I turned around and jumped to see Ricky’s outline standing in the doorway, backlit from the kitchen.

  “Girls’ night out?”

  “How long you been standing there?” I spoke sharply, still pissed at his enthusiasm over Jeannette’s crime scene.

  He walked over, put his arms around my waist. “Long enough to know you’re deserting me for a bunch of women tomorrow night.”

  I stood stiffly under his touch. “Gwen and I are going out for drinks with a few others after they get off shift.”

  “I’ll be here, if you want.”

  “We’ll be back really late.”

  “Trying to get rid of me, cher?” Just an undertone of teasing to his voice.

  Yes, no, I thought. It was unsettling sometimes to realize how much he cared.

  “About earlier, I was insensitive.” He kissed my hair, rubbed his hands up my back. “That woman, Jeannette, she got to you today, didn’t she?”

  I nodded into his chest, fighting the urge to sink into his warmth, trying to hold on to the more familiar feeling of irritation. He trailed his tongue down to the place where neck becomes shoulder and bit lightly. He lingered there, kissing and licking and nibbling until I gave in, moaned, brought my hands up, and pulled him hard against me, losing myself in the firm curves of his body, his smell, the taste of his flesh, remembering that this was why I stayed with him.

  We undressed each other quickly and collapsed onto the bed, me saying, “Hurry, hurry,” and him saying, “Slow down, cher, slowly, hush,” as his fingers and lips traveled over my body. Peacock lumbered onto the bed, licking bare flesh, taking up most of the available space, and we tumbled to the floor, me on top of Ricky, and I didn’t think for a long, long time.

  Much later, when Ricky was sleeping soundly, still on the floor, and Peacock was snoring crosswise on the bed, I slipped into Ricky’s shirt and went to the kitchen porch, lit a cigarette, and watched the sky, too bright from the city’s lights even at this time of night to see many stars, watching the nearly full moon bob in between the leaves of a tulip tree, thinking about Jeannette and her longing to be heard, her desire for a deeper connection, how being lonely in a relationship was the worst kind of lonely, those silly romance novels in her car, her impish grin in the picture on her dresser, her mangled, tortured body. I imagined what it must have been like for her, what she was thinking as he came at her with the pliers, the cigarette, the tennis racquet, what he might have said to her—and what he didn’t. Round and round until I pulled the wastebasket over and threw up, dry heaves wracking my body as the tears finally came. I sat against the wall and sobbed. Peacock appeared and leaned heavily against me, licking my face, her breath stale and doggy, trying to catch each tear. By the time I’d finished, my cheeks and nose and chin were sticky from her tongue. I wiped my face on Ricky’s shirt, lit another cigarette, and contemplated all the ways I’d like to torture that sumabitch Vince Durham.

  Gwen was in a full-out snit when I picked her up the next night. Seemed her husband, Joe, was not pleased she was going out with the girls, thought she should transfer out of uniform so she could work a straight day shift, didn’t care for the chicken casserole and mirlitons she’d fixed for dinner. He thought she might have gained a little weight.

  I nodded and said “uh-huh” at the appropriate times as Gwen vented. I was used to it. The job was hard on marriages.

  Ask any cop why he or she became a cop and half of them will say, with a wry grin, it seemed like a good idea at the time; the other half will say they knew someone on the force—and it seemed like a good idea at the time. Only a handful will claim they’d always wanted to be a cop; those are the ones to watch out for. The job often eats them alive, or they eat up the job.

  Gwen had started as a civilian in Traffic Records, a common entry point for women back then. Her brother had been a cop for a short time; now he ran a service station off Jefferson and made good money.

  I’d dreamed of being a veterinarian. My daddy’d had a small piece of land in east Texas that didn’t yield much—he was always fixing somebody’s car or tractor or refrigerator to pay the bills. After my mother died from ovarian cancer when I was eleven, he’d laid out our choices: stay and probably go under, or move and have a fighting chance. We drew up a list of pros and cons, weighed our options, and faced the facts: the farm would have to go. We moved to Port Arthur so Daddy could work on a shrimp boat. He keeled over from a heart attack my freshman year at LSU. I hung in for two more years, but the science classes were hard, and, to be honest, I’d discovered my body and was more interested in sex than in studying.

  I worked retail jobs for a couple of years, but I was bored, restless. Then a boyfriend, a parish deputy with a good smile and even better hands, whom I’d been dating for several months, suggested I try the police department or the sheriff’s office; even the State Police, he said, were hiring.

  “People shooting at you? I don’t think so,” I’d told him.

  He’d laughed. “Nah, not as a cop, honey, as a dispatcher or working in Records. It’s decent pay, good benefits.”

  On a lark, I took the civil service exam and scored surprisingly high. When there was an opening, I joined the city police as a dispatcher, working rotating shifts. I liked both the simplicity and complexity of the job, matching up units with calls as if I were working some enormous chessboard. I was also very good at it.

  I broke up with the deputy, but his comment stayed with me. Why had he laughed at the notion of me as a cop? The longer I worked in the subterrane
an level of the Governmental Building where Communications was housed, the more I realized I wanted to be out there, on the streets, not just sitting behind some desk. I wanted to work the source, not function as an intermediary.

  I pulled myself away from my thoughts when Gwen snorted.

  “What?” I said.

  “You’ve said barely a word since I got in this car,” Gwen said. “Something bugging you?” She’d pulled her hair into a loose ponytail and wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. But her face was made up for an evening out, her diamond studs were in, and her perfume was suffocating. I rolled both our windows down farther.

  I glanced at her quickly and smiled. “Nope.”

  “You’re not saying much.”

  “You’ve been doing all the talking,” I pointed out.

  “And what’ve I been saying?”

  I shrugged sheepishly. “I was thinking about when we joined the department.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “Wandering mind.”

  “Girl.” She shook her head and popped two knuckles on her right hand. “This shit isn’t good for you.”

  “Thinking?”

  She snorted. “That too. I meant going out and praying over dead people you don’t know.”

  “Fuck you.” I lingered on the vowels, grinned at her to take the sting out. “I don’t pray.”

  She grinned back. “Right.”

  We were quiet as I drove down Dalrymple, the university lakes shimmering off to our left despite the cloud cover.

  “Remember Letticia Baldin?” I said.

  “Who?” Gwen lit a menthol cigarette and hung her arm out the car window.

  “The little girl in Tigerland last winter.”

  “That was a fucking mess,” Gwen said, rubbing a thumb across her brow. “Jesus. You’re on a roll. What’s eating at you?”

  You, partly, I thought, and realized that was more than half true, and it made me sad. Gwen had never done wrong by me. If anything, I owed her. But there was a place inside me that was restless, raw, crowded, and had been for some time. I couldn’t put my finger on the cause. Find the cause, you correct the problem. I sighed, shifted in my seat. We passed by the sorority and fraternity houses, crossed Highland, swung around the Indian Mounds. Gwen popped more knuckles, took deep drags on her cigarette.