April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

That was it. Lynn crumbled and Andrew was there to catch her, just as he had been for the pair of terrified bank managers on the Mission Impossible job. He’d had both arms around them — one male, one female — as they wept on his shoulders after the ordeal of being held in the vault. I had been impressed to see that. With quiet patience he now held Lynn Meyer-Murphy through the present wave of anguish, his face closed down and solemn.

“Why don’t we sit?” Andrew said finally, indicating the breakfast nook. “When was the last time either of you had anything to eat?”

Lynn opened a drawer, pulled out a bag of bagels, put them on top of the counter and forgot about them.

Spread before us on the breakfast table was evidence of a family in the midst of a life too hurried even to sort out: mounds of magazines, catalogues, homework pages, The Silver Palate Cookbook, spelling tests and piles of mail still in rubber bands.

“What is that hammering?” Ross was staring at the ceiling.

“We’re putting in direct lines to the Santa Monica Police Department.”

“What for?”

“We’re setting up a command post over there. But we will have agents in your home, twenty-four/seven.”

This, also, was “new politics.”

“Twenty-four hours a day!” cried Lynn in a panic. “Where do they sleep?”

There was some drama happening across the room where Ramon was messing with a phone jack.

“Excuse me,” the uniform was saying. “You can’t just go ripping out our stuff.” She was holding the discarded tape recorder by the wires. She thrust it at him like a dead rat.

“Lady,” said Ramon, “the Bureau always puts in its own equipment — you never worked a kidnap before?”

“It’s Officer Oberbeck —”

The parents were watching. Andrew scrambled to his feet.

“Sylvia …,” he called.

“We were here first.” She jabbed an acrylic fingernail.

“It’s our jurisdiction.” Ramon angled the screwdriver.

“The right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing,” Ross commented grimly.

“Sylvia,” said Andrew, walking over. “Take a deep break.”

“Don’t let them talk to you like that!” Lynn chimed in. “Just because you’re a woman!”

Officer Oberbeck suppressed a smile. “I’m really okay.”

“You’re more than okay — she’s terrific !” Lynn declared to the room. “When we got that hang-up call, I thought I would go over the edge—”

Me, alert: “A hang-up? A second call? Did anybody monitor it?”

Negative, according to Officer Oberbeck, and there was nothing on the tape.

“So nobody logged the call,” I said heatedly.

The police officer straightened, wiping an arm across her forehead, midsection held in tight. I could see her in basketball shorts playing hoops with the boys.

“I’m going home,” she said, adding kindly: “Don’t worry, Mrs. Meyer-Murphy. By dinnertime Juliana will be sitting here, and you’ll be yelling at her for scaring you to death.”

Lynn started blinking rapidly again.

It was twenty minutes into Day One and already I was corked.

“A call came in that we missed, people. We don’t know who it was or what they said? What the hell is going on? ”

“It’s chillin’,” said Ramon. “We got it under control.”

Holstering the screwdriver, he left.

His emotion, my emotion, none of it mattered. The pressing absence of the girl was making itself felt even in the confusion of the kitchen: A leopard bag with ruby beads hooked on a chair. A Tale of Two Cities in paperback, a pink marker stuck in the pages. Blue nail polish. Size-eight pool thongs. These things, obviously Juliana’s, had become Day-Glo talismans, striking my eyes with mocking urgency as we took swipes at one another in frustration and landed on our butts.

There was a moment of bleak silence.

“Cream cheese or butter?” Andrew asked.

You had to love a guy standing in the center of a room, holding up a bag of bagels.

The dad’s eyes slowly rose.

“She’s Meyer, I’m Murphy. You figure it out.”

“No problem,” Andrew replied crisply. “My first wife was Jewish.”

“I didn’t know that,” I blurted.

“Lots of things you don’t know about me.” Untwisting the bag.

I hoped they thought we were being entertaining for their benefit instead of slip-sliding into the wrong movie.

I flipped a page in my notebook. The phone calls had come four hours apart. Maybe there would be a pattern.

“The next time the phone rings, who is going to answer, Mom or Dad?”

Lynn slowly raised her hand.

“The guy says, ‘We have Juliana and we want a million dollars ransom.’ You say, ‘I want to talk to my daughter. Put my daughter on the phone.’”

“I don’t ask where she is or anything like that?”

“You want to hear her voice, ” I repeated calmly. “Before we even get into any type of negotiation, we need to know she’s alive. We call it ‘proof of life.’”

Lynn looked stricken by the implication. Her fingers went to her throat. “‘Proof of life’?”

“Anyone else, tell them nothing, get off the phone.”

She caught her breath.

“What if it’s my mother? I can’t tell her what happened. I can’t say, Mom, your granddaughter is missing, we don’t have a clue where she is, but we’re good parents, we really are. ” She was twisting her wedding ring.

“Where does your mother live?”

“Florida. She moved there after my dad died.”

Ross: “After the loser ”—making an elaborate point of gesturing to himself—“took over the business.”

Lynn’s cheeks were suddenly flushed. “You don’t understand. She’s very critical.”

“There will be a negotiator sitting right there, wearing headphones, listening to the conversation, passing notes on what to say.”

“A team of professionals,” said Ross, “trained to deal with your mother. God bless America.”

“I can’t do this.”

“For Juliana,” Andrew prompted. “Come on, you’ve been very brave.”

Lynn looked up with brimming eyes. She almost believed him.

“I’d do it,” said Ross. “But I hear that bastard’s voice, I’m gonna go ballistic, tear his fucking throat out over the phone …”

Then he saw something in his wife, a deep, sick fear he perhaps had never understood.

“You’re a good mom,” he said firmly. “ Never let anyone tell you different.”

Lynn held on to her husband’s hand.

I asked about their manufacturing business.

“Business is fine,” answered Ross briskly, rubbing his beard. “Andrew went all over that.”

“We still need to look at your records. It would be helpful if you’d allow access to what’s on your desk.”

“My desk ?”

“Employee records, ledgers, address books …”

“Fine,” said Ross. “How about what’s up my ass?”

Lynn said crossly, “Oh for Christ’s sake.”

Ross put his hands flat on the table and tilted back on the hind legs of his chair.

“Goddamnit, we are not the criminals.”

“In most kidnappings, the victim and the suspect know each other,” Andrew reminded them. “Someone in your world might have taken Juliana.”

Ross’s eyes went out of focus.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore.”

We waited.

“I just want her home.”

The scrambling went on around us. You could hear them working in the walls. Ramon appeared at the doorway, got the vibe, and backed away.

“Why,” whispered Lynn, “would someone we know take Juliana?”