April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

“We don’t know.”

“No. But we’ll find that out.”

“Good.”

“Meanwhile,” Jason continued, “he’s a manipulator. He finds another roost. See,” he said excitedly, “here’s my theory: I think the girl is the one getting beat on.”

“Did the officers find evidence of abuse?”

“I don’t know, but I have a call in to Child and Family Services. She’s close in age to Juliana. I just think she’s protecting this fool.”

“Afraid of him?”

Jason nodded earnestly and pulled up a chair. We sat knee-to-knee, amidst cartons of files and odd discarded office debris, like a broken Venetian blind lying underneath the next desk.

“Here’s another thing. Brennan enacts his ritual to relieve some life stress, right? Well, it says here this guy is an unemployed lab technician. It could be a photo lab. Maybe he’s unemployed because he got fired.”

The young agent was leaning forward, elbows on thighs, light blue eyes fixed on mine. Suddenly I felt foolishly affected, almost teary, because of the fact that Jason Ripley once had been a ginger-haired little boy and left his mother and learned to tie a tie. That’s how whack I was.

“I think it’s worth talking to the girl,” he continued seriously.

“Convince me. Then we’ll both take a ride.”

It was a weak lead and I didn’t care what he did with it. I was feeling stoned, sleep-deprived, and the low abdominal pain was coming back. He stood uncertainly.

“Is the case still alive over at Santa Monica?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think they’ll give us someone else? Or are they out of the picture by now?”

“What are you talking about?”

He looked even more uneasy, not sure if I had been mocking him all along — if there were substance to his theory, or if he’d made a mistake in bringing the report to my attention. I let it play. This would be a little test. Either young Jason would work his butt off to prove his point about the connection between this young girl, Roxy Santos, and Ray Brennan, or he would back off and fade away. New Jersey or the stars.

“I mean,” he pressed on, “we might need someone else over at the police department because of what happened to Detective Berringer.”

Chemical material burst inside my chest.

“What happened to Detective Berringer?”

Quick. An alibi. What did I say about being late last night?

“He was shot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I think it was yesterday? Or maybe the day before?”

“How is he?”

Before Jason could answer, I began to cough. Dry throat. Closing up. Don’t retch. Breathe.

“Are you okay?”

I gulped the last of some cold, sugary coffee, wiggling my fingers to show everything was fine.

“Berringer?” I gasped.

“In the hospital,” Jason answered.

“Wow. That’s terrible. How is he?”

“I don’t know—”

“How did it happen?”

“Armed robbery.”

“No kidding.”

“He was off duty and a couple of guys just came up to him.”

“Catch the guys?”

“No.”

“How do they know it was armed robbery?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Andrew said that?”

“That’s what he said in the hospital.”

“Sorry, I don’t know why I’m smiling, there’s nothing funny about this.” I tried to suppress a giggle and look fierce. “How come nobody told me? I thought I was senior agent on this case.”

That made him nervous again.

“Sorry about that, I definitely should have come to you right away. I heard them talking in the radio room—”

“It’s okay,” stroking his arm. “Now I know.”

Now it was safe to call Lieutenant Barry Loomis.

“I can’t believe it,” I said over again.

“Things are still touch-and-go.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s in intensive care,” said Barry. “They’re only allowing family.”

That would be his sister down from Oakland. Did Andrew say he had a brother, too? Somewhere in Florida? The euphoria that had lifted me plain off the floor at Jason’s news that Andrew was not only alive, but claiming he had been the victim of a robbery, and we were going to get through this thing, crashed. Now there were frightened family members waiting in a hospital corridor.

“You said he drove himself to the hospital.”

“He did, but he collapsed. They rushed him into surgery. One of the bullets pierced his lung.”

“Oh my God.”

“That was okay,” Barry went on, “but then he had a cardiac arrest in the ER.”

“No!” I shouted.

Barry was saying things like, “Take it easy. He’ll make it. He’s as tough as they come—”

“I’m sorry, it’s just so—”

“It’s a shock.”

“Why didn’t anybody call me?”

“At a time like this,” he said stiffly, “you tend to close ranks.”

“But he’ll pull through?”

“He’s in a coma, Ana.”

The pain in my kidneys. Everything. I was just undone.

“They don’t know,” he went on. “They’re watching him. Real close. He might have to have heart surgery later on. They found some underlying situation, I’m not exactly clear on that.”

I couldn’t speak. He let me be with it.

“You okay?”

“I’m okay,” I managed. “Thanks, Barry. So, look. Any suspects?”

“Not yet. He hasn’t been able to say a hell of a lot.”

“Did you recover the gun?”

There was a pause. “No such luck.”

“Stay in touch, okay?”

“You got it, hon.”

What’s the matter?” Barbara asked as soon as I walked into her office.

“Andrew was shot. As if you didn’t know.”

“I don’t know. How could I know?”

“Jason knows. The girls in the radio room know.”

I sank to the couch. Barbara went down on one knee, putting herself below me, as you would not to agitate a child, and asked very gently what happened. I told her about the armed robbery and intensive care but then came a round of tears no amount of head slamming was going to stop.

Soon Mike Donnato was in the room and the door was closed and the two of them were beside me on the couch; their hands were quiet on my hands, their voices low and steady.

These were professionals.

“Are you serious about this guy?” asked Mike.

“I care about him.”

“Doesn’t sound like a match made in heaven,” Barbara said.

“Well, it blows hot and cold.”

Mike: “As it were.”

Barbara smacked him. “All I can say is, Ana dear, you better know where you were that night.”

I winced. “Not funny.”

“Irish humor.”

“He’ll be all right.” Mike shifted his head so I could see the constancy in his eyes. “The bullet wounds sound like no big deal.”

“What about the heart attack?”

“Same thing happened to my uncle,” he said stalwartly. “Eighty-three years old, goes in for a hernia operation and his heart stops. Major alcoholic, so you’d think, End of story . Well, he’s in Vegas, as we speak.” “In a pickle jar, in Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” said Barbara.

“He was a good uncle to me.”

“Why? Because he took you out and got you laid when you were twelve?”

“Actually,” said Mike, “we didn’t have sex in our family.”

“You still don’t,” observed Barbara.

“That’s not entirely true.”

“They have a chameleon,” was my contribution through a swollen nose. “And the chameleon just had babies.”

“See?” said Mike.

“I think there’s a cable channel devoted to exactly that sort of thing,” Barbara replied. “Why don’t you go home, girl?”