April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

“That would be worse.”

I never wanted to go back to that apartment again.

“Sit here,” said Mike. “I’m going to get you an iced vanilla blended.”

“Can I have one, too?” called Barbara as he left. Her phone was ringing. “Nicest man in the world.”

I knew that.

“Yes, she’s in here.” Pause. “Ana, it’s for you.” Her eyes were sober. Her whole body was sober as she moved to give me the phone. “It’s the lieutenant from the Santa Monica police.”

“I just spoke to him, two minutes ago.” Panicked. “Is it about Andrew?”

She sat down close and put her arm around me.

“Barry?” I whispered.

“Since you asked about the weapon, I thought you’d want to know. Just got word. We think we found it.”

“You found it? Where?”

“In Andy’s car.”

“In Andy’s car? How could that be?”

“I don’t know, he sure as hell didn’t shoot himself, but it’s a thirty-two, same size as the slugs.”

“Well, that’s good news.” I turned to Barbara with a madcap grin. “They recovered the gun!”

The automatic doors swung open, I walked into the deserted lobby, and my knees went out like rubber bands. Eight-fifteen at night is not the time to be visiting a hospital. Not when the rest of the world is washing its dishes and doing homework, families coming together after the day. Night shift in a hospital is the time for separation and good-byes, for facing the hours of darkness, in whatever bed, alone.

Bad things happen in a hospital at night. Knife wounds, sick patients taking turns for the worse, walleyed weirdos on the graveyard shift of the nursing staff. What you did not care to know during the day, you definitely do not want to know now, lost in a maze of empty corridors smelling of institutional mashed potatoes and gravy, buildings and parking structures cloaked in shadow; no escape. To run out of here screaming would put you right into the arms of the dark.

Eight-twenty-three p.m. Visiting time at the ICU would be over in seven minutes. I picked up the pace, although I did not want to see him. I did, and I didn’t. I had come late hoping at least the family members would be gone.

Two Santa Monica uniforms, obese Detective Jaeger from the Boatyard bar and a couple of other brown-suited old-timers, were standing around the nursing station with their hands in their pockets, chewing the fat in low, irreverent tones: “—Because he was stupid enough to get into a hot tub and make sexual remarks to subordinates.”

“The picture will come clear.”

“No it won’t. Not with this guy. He’s the fair-haired prince.”

“Princes don’t pick up their own droppings.”

We eyed each other until slowly my identity came into focus somewhere in Jaeger’s dog skull. An upward nod of the jowls signaled it was okay to approach the group.

“Has Andrew said anything more about the assailants?”

Jaeger shrugged. “Couple of guys in a parking lot.”

“He’s in a coma,” one of them said.

“I know.”

There was a moment of shared heartache.

“What do the docs say?”

“Not much.”

“They haven’t ruled out brain damage. He was without oxygen for some time.”

“Hopefully,” said another, “he hasn’t lost too many IQ points.”

I hesitated, looking at the door. You couldn’t see much through the glass.

“Go on in. They know when you’re there.”

I nodded but did not move.

Jaeger made eye contact and said purposely, “We appreciate you coming, Agent Grey.”

A nurse gave me a gown, and I pushed into a bright room of half humans, half machines. It was not a bad thing to have been seen here tonight by four cops, said my shadow self.

There was a curtain surrounding the bed. I parted it and looked.

He was terribly bruised, as if he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I hadn’t been prepared for that, picturing him somehow white and still as marble. But he was bruised where they had shoved an eighteen-gauge needle into his arm, where they’d pounded his chest, in the areas around the wounds, where he’d hit the floor when he fainted. Plastic tubing formed aerobatic curves above the sheet, rising from arterial lines, draining the bladder and the chest; you could see the expelled blood as it bubbled in an enclosed container.

His eyes were covered with gauze and his skin looked pasty. I touched his fingers, puffy and loosely curled. They were neither hot nor cold. The monitors that stood guard over his vital processes clicked along. Three balloons were tied to the end of the bed.

The sorrow that I felt was ferocious. It fueled the searing pain in my own abdomen. Bending over him, half in spasm, I whispered, “Oh, baby, what did we do to each other?”

I wanted to lie down beside him, kiss him, but there was no place to lie down or kiss. A respirator tube was taped over his mouth and the steel rail was up on the side of the bed.

The curtain opened. It was Margaret Forrester, dressed in black.

“He’s not going to make it,” she said.

A chill passed through me, one of those supernatural moments where you shudder at something you can’t explain.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I could ask the same question.”

“Obviously because he’s one of our own.”

“In that case, I came on behalf of the Bureau,” I replied evenly. “To show our concern.”

At least we were not going to reenact the scuffle in the parking lot over the man’s hospital bed. Still, I did not like her deep eyes on me. She was clutching a circle of twigs with rawhide strings and feathers hanging down.

“What do you have there?” I had noticed things went better when they had to do with her.

“A Native American dream catcher.” Her chest heaved in two big gulps. “So he doesn’t have … bad dreams.”

“He doesn’t know a thing,” I said darkly.

“NO!” she barked, so loudly that I flinched. Then, “Don’t you leave me!” shaking a finger at Andrew. She could cycle up and down faster than a slide whistle. Now she hung the dream catcher on a cardiac monitor, where it would no doubt be removed.

“That looks really nice there, Margaret.”

She squinted at her reflection in a metal band around the machine.

“Look at me,” grabbing her hair and parting it to the roots. “I’m getting old. Did you know Andrew and my husband were best friends? They were in a Friday night poker game together.”

“I heard.”

“Wes and I went to Victoria Island up in Vancouver together on our honeymoon and stayed in the most elegant hotel. We had afternoon tea, and went out on those pedal boats? Wes wore somebody’s white suit. Not that I thought life would always be like that … But I’ve got two young children.” She shrugged as if having two young children were suddenly a big surprise. “Wes should be standing here beside me, right now, today,” pounding the bed rail. “ Today . Instead of me being a widow .” “Don’t do that.”

She was shaking the tubing, the bed.

The curtains swept open all the way and a male nurse came barging through. He was a big soft gay fellow wearing maroon scrubs, a long ponytail and three or four silver bracelets, looking somehow miscast, and peckish about having to play the role.

“Visiting hours in the ICU are now over. You’re not supposed to be in here, not with two people and not without a gown.”

Squirt bottle at the ready, he was about to do something to Andrew’s eyes.

“What’s that?” murmured Margaret.

“What’s that ?” echoed the nurse, with a disdainful glance at the dream catcher.

He lifted the gauze, revealing dark purple bruises on Andrew’s lids.