Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [65]
My personal territory that day was a region of numb, disbelieving shock. The ritualized motions of entry and claim did nothing to make it familiar. This was not a place I could have imagined, nothing I had been trained for, a scenario so extraordinary the conscious mind could not hold it all at once, but like a poor clay pot in a fiery kiln, cracked in two. I always thought of working for the FBI as a privilege to serve my community—yet here I was, sitting in my senior-rank ergonomic chair (the chair was a cheap knockoff), scheming like a criminal: You cannot appear upset. You cannot appear to have prior knowledge of what happened to Andrew.
Although I may have seemed to be scrolling through e-mail, I was frantic. My head turned. The chair swiveled. It was early, but I could not stop watching for the arrival of Rick and the troops. Would they provide safe passage—or the opposite? If they knew, they would have no choice. It would be moi kneeling down on the carpeted box in the office in the garage, hands cuffed behind my back, while Hugh Akron hovered lasciviously with the ink pad. Suddenly it seemed a spectacularly bad idea to be there. Leave.
I got as far as the bathroom.
“Put cold water on your face,” my grandfather would command, after he had made me cry. I would weep for an hour during his violent verbal tirades. I hardly remember what they were about—boys, virginity—but I would cower on the narrow bed while he stood in the doorway smoking cigarettes and ranting. If my hands weren’t clean before dinner, he would spoon dirt from a potted plant onto my plate. He was not crazy, nor a drunk. He was, as far as I can figure it, a rage-aholic, addicted to the power of his own anger. Once, when I was late coming home from a date, he surprised me at the front door with a crack across the head.
“Go. Put water on your face.”
Dismissed, I would slink off with mongrel gratitude.
Years later, I had authority and carried a gun; I had long surpassed the status my grandfather held as lieutenant in the Long Beach Police Department, but in the mirror now saw only turbulent red-faced chaos, a guilt-ridden mess for which Poppy would have only had contempt. “You messed up, stupid.” I willed the tears to stop and when they would not, smacked my own temple with the heel of my hand. I did it again, alone in the tidy rest room.
When I emerged, Barbara Sullivan was coming right at me with bright alert eyes. She had just arrived at work, loaded with shopping bags and cartons to be mailed.
“Do you believe it? Deirdre’s already outgrown her six-month stuff. I have to return all these gifts!” she sang, and swept into her office as if I had replied; as if I were not paralyzed with fear of what she might have seen in my face, macabre and chalky-looking from the powder I had hurriedly pressed over swollen eyelids and hot cheeks.
I don’t know what impression I gave. But then I had truly become my shadow self, and shadows are tricksters with canny ways of deception. So maybe Ana Grey was standing there beaming, and maybe when Ana settled back at her workstation, others registered a generous sigh of pleasure in sharing her friend’s joy.
It seemed a good idea to be looking at something. Files. I counted twelve that needed cleaning up for the ninety-day review, including extortion, an inmate who was stabbed at the Veterans Administration hospital (crime on a government reservation), threatening letters to a software company and three cases of movie stars being harassed by stalkers. The inspectors would pull a document at random and expect it to have met the standards. They would not pay attention to content, only form. The Bureau is all about standards. Standards of behavior. Standards of protocol and language and law.
I was feeling nauseous. Barbara had been, just, too carefree. She had not stopped for conversation. Not asked about the Santa Monica