Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [87]
Devon took a breath to observe me in silence. Our eyes held, like infrared devices connecting and adjusting, sharing information. We were framing the relationship. Who was in charge? How far would the other yield?
“If you can’t keep it together in the courtroom, the ramifications will be—well, let me remind you. Sometimes clients need to hear it again: Your life is on the line.”
Devon let his thick lids fall in a slow, deliberate blink. He wanted me to sit with it, but instead everything I’d been holding back suddenly spurted out.
“I’m pissed at him for getting me into this position, I’m upset with myself for going there, I feel guilty, upset, ashamed,” smacking a fist on the cockpit chair, “and I’m tripping, because on some level, I still love the guy! So, I don’t know! You tell me! What am I supposed to do?”
“Put on your game face,” my attorney advised.
That I understood. From years of interrogation, I understood.
“All right,” I said, and took a moment to drop the emotionality, or at least stuff it back into its sack. “Game face on.”
He nodded and picked up the pen.
“Detective Berringer is a hundred pounds heavier than you, correct?”
“Yes.”
“At least seven inches taller?”
“Nine inches taller.”
“Have you seen him before in a state of rage?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever have moments in your relationship when you feared for your safety?”
“I have.”
“Talk about those.”
Having rendered all this easily, I suddenly discovered I did not wish to reveal more. If there was a pattern of impulsive violence in Andrew’s behavior, I had not seen it and certainly did not want to admit that failure now. Here in the corner office, in the uncompromising light of success, I had a deep, vital need to appear as competent and accomplished as Devon.
So I smiled with professional accord and lied.
“Andrew can be opinionated, but whatever minor incidents there might have been, they were nothing you would tag.”
Devon was looking at my feet. Always position the suspects so you can see what they are doing with their feet. Often the feet will be dancing to a different tune than the one playing upstairs. Mine were pointing out the door—what does that tell you?
“Give me an example,” Devon pressed, “of something minor.”
“Driving fast,” was the first thing that came to mind. “A lot of people drive fast when they’re angry, even though we do our best to—”
“Andrew drove fast when he was upset.”
“Angry.”
“How fast?”
“I don’t know. Ninety? A hundred?”
“This was where?”
“On the Ten, out near Indio. We were coming back from riding dune buggies.”
“What set him off?”
“We had a fight.”
“Can you recall what the fight was about?”
“Girls. If we were going to still see other people. I wanted to get it clear. You know, where we were. He told me to stop nagging.”
Devon’s blue-jeweled pen kept looping across the yellow pad.
“What else?”
“What else?” I spread my arms. “I was not dating some psychotic maniac.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“Andrew has a manifesto, in a frame on the wall. ‘The Homicide Investigator’s Oath,’ it says. ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’ This is a guy who truly believes he is working for God.”
“Give me another minor incident.”
“Once upon a time, Andrew shot a rattlesnake.”
I folded my arms defensively, although I was giving Devon exactly what he wanted. Even through my resistance I could see he was one smart lawyer. The resistance came of my desire, even at this late hour, to protect the truth about who Andrew Berringer was—the poignant facts of his humanity that would not be evident in the skewed furniture in the Marina apartment, nor the broken scree of a mountain track.
“We were hiking the San Bernardino Mountains. We see a rattlesnake lying across the trail. He, of course, has to poke it with a stick. I’m telling him not to, but he’s like a little boy, he just won’t quit, and then all of a sudden he takes out his weapon and shoots the damn thing.”
“Was it attacking him?”
“No. It was just lying there.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him he was a fucking Neanderthal and turned around and started running down the trail.” I had been