Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [137]
“Your husband came home and found you two together.”
“We were together.” She nodded, unaware of what she was confessing. “The detective and I—”
“In bed.”
“—And they got into an argument, two big angry men. Their faces were this far apart, I couldn’t stop them, it was terrible.” Her voice twisted up and she grabbed her own hair. “Stop that, Margaret!” she scolded herself. “I don’t want to be like this anymore!”
During the fight the Hat had fallen down the stairs, hit his head and died. Andrew and Margaret panicked, covered it up, but made a mistake. They did not pay close enough attention to the time. They waited too long to move the body. What went on between them—arguments, declarations, deals—during those minutes or hours cannot be known. But afterward, even after he gave her all the money from the bank job, the Thunder Queen was not assuaged. She wanted Andrew, and he wanted out. He thought a million bucks in cash would buy his freedom, but things did not work out that way, and when Margaret was threatening to come apart all over the map, he tried to appease her with more money. My money.
“Mom!” called a voice, and a little boy was at the door staring at us with resentful impatience. He had a faint milk mustache and buzzed hair and was eating a croissant. A TV was going in the background and the sounds of a video game. He wore a soccer uniform and had strong legs. “Mom!” he demanded. “When are we going?”
The captain had finished his recitation. “Please turn around, ma’am,” he said.
“Please, please, don’t do this to me.”
The boy ducked back inside the house.
The captain and I exchanged a look. “Do you own any firearms?” he asked.
“I’m a widow,” Margaret wailed. “My husband was a policeman, just like you. It was an accident. It was an accident.”
“What was an accident, ma’am? Your husband falling down the stairs, or his skull being smashed with a baseball bat?”
The sharp inhales had become vocal sounds, like braying. She stepped back from our approach, and her body went stiff and her eyes went wide with the most God-awful desperation.
“You’re going to jail, lady.”
“No!”
“I’m going to ask you to cooperate, ma’am,” said the captain. “Out of deference to your deceased husband, we’d rather not drag you from the house in front of the neighbors, do you hear me? But we will if we have to. Think about your children, okay, Mrs. Forrester? Who is going to stay with them? You got a family member we can call?”
“Ana,” she said. “Help me.”
Two officers were coming up the steps.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” I put myself in her face. “Andrew never gave you up.”
“What is the purpose?” she said, and her legs buckled.
“He never gave you up.”
They held her upright.
“No please,” I said to the officers, “let me.”
I unhooked my handcuffs off the back of my pants and felt their weight and the smooth familiar heft of a useful and reliable tool and put them on the woman’s wrists and listened as they ratcheted shut with a delicate sound, like the winding of a clock.
“Remember,” I told the captain, “I want those back.”
Bright plastic flags strung over the entrance to the pool snapped and pulled in the canyon breeze. I was used to getting there by 7 a.m. for the workout anyway, but by seven-fifteen on the morning of the swim meet there was no place to park within half a mile, and you had to walk all the way up from the beach. I was shocked to find the pool deck jammed with four or five hundred children and adults on blankets