April Smith - Good Morning, Killer

“Are you leaving?”

“We’ll be up in a minute,” Devon assured me.

“What’s the matter, Juliana?”

“I’m having a panic attack,” replied the girl.

I saw her rigid carriage was effort, not composure. Her face was flushed and beneath the defiantly crossed arms her chest was heaving.

“It’s okay. It will pass,” she said bravely.

“Ask for a recess,” I told Devon. “The witness is ill.”

“Juliana wants to go for it now,” my lawyer replied urgently.

“I’d rather get it over with,” Juliana said, breathing through her nose.

“What do you think?” I asked her mother.

“I’ve been told to let her make her own decisions,” she said in a voice that was raw with self-pity.

Lynn was also wearing a suit, royal blue, and the two looked as if they should be lunching at Café Pinot, except for the obvious anger crackling between them that made it hard to imagine them even sitting at the same table. Despite her equanimity, Lynn was clutching the car keys so tightly her knuckles had turned pink.

“But she’s sick,” I protested.

“I’m not sick. It’s just a panic reaction to being in a big room in front of people. It’s a feeling, not a fact. The fact is, I’m safe. I’m safe here,” Juliana repeated, apparently as she had been taught.

“Let’s roll,” said Devon, looking at his watch. “This judge likes to go home at four.”

Juliana and her mother stood up.

“No,” I said, “no. Thank you, but no.”

“No, what?”

“I don’t want Juliana to testify.”

Devon, used to all manner of sudden turns, adroitly steered into the skid.

“I know how protective you feel of Juliana, and you’ve spoken very touchingly of your concern that she’ll be further traumatized by going up there and talking to the judge—”

“She’s in no shape to do this.”

“She wants to. Don’t you, Juliana?”

Juliana nodded, clutching a tiny black handbag in front of her, as if about to fall off her feet.

“Listen to what this young woman is telling you.”

Devon stood with one hand on the round wire table to take the weight off his bad leg. The awkward posture thrust his upper body forward, made him look gracelessly eager.

“Do they know the prosecutor has a right to cross-examine?” I said. “Do they know he can question her about the rape? He’ll make her relive it and he’ll put the blame for being raped, for being kidnapped by Ray Brennan, on her.” “No,” said Lynn, looking back and forth to Juliana. “Nobody told us that. What would that have to do with—”

“I am acting in your best interest.” Devon’s voice was raised, he was plenty steamed. “I am defending your freedom. That’s what I do. It’s in your best interest to have Juliana on the stand, testifying on your behalf.”

“And how you get her there doesn’t matter?”

Devon spoke deliberately, sarcastically, annunciating every word: “She-says-she-can-do-it.”

“She has no idea. You’re putting her up against Mark Rauch? No,” I said. “No way! He’ll malign her character,” turning back to Lynn, “so the judge won’t take what she says seriously. I can’t believe you weren’t briefed on this! He’ll make her look like a pot-smoking disenfranchised spoiled Westside kid looking for kicks who got in over her head. Who’s been bullied into testifying by the big bad scary FBI agent and her lawyer. Maybe it will set her back, maybe it won’t, but look, I shot the guy, there’s no question that I shot him—” “Shut up, Ana,” said Devon County, former LAPD. “You’re fucking yourself, excuse my language.”

Juliana shrugged. Her mother looked confused.

“You’d rather go to trial?” asked Lynn, dubious. “Because, well, that’s what Mr. County said. He said, if the judge thinks you shot this policeman for a not very good reason — you’ll go to trial, right? And maybe go to jail.” A thousand replies sprung up at once. “I’ll take that risk.”

“We have to get back,” interrupted Devon, grabbing his crutch and making for the glass doors. Awkwardly, he held them open, challenging us to follow. Only Lynn walked on ahead.

“Mom?” called Juliana, waiting uncertainly, holding on to the mini purse.

She turned. “It’s up to you.”

“Since when has anything ever been up to me?” Juliana catcalled back.

Lynn’s lips compressed and her eyes were blinking rapidly.

“You told me to stay out of your life.”

“Ladies?” Devon implored.

“He’s talking to you,” Lynn repeated, in a voice as jagged as a shard of glass, suddenly a weapon capable of cutting.

It seemed impossible this same woman had sat on the kitchen floor and wept for her lost daughter.

“Lynn,” I asked, “what’s going on?”

She straightened her back and fixed her sunglasses. But before she could reply, if she were going to reply, Juliana said, “My parents are getting a divorce.”

The lazy sunshine, relaxed figures, polished fruit and chrome fittings on the espresso machine parked between two shaggy trees made a hopeful frame for an urban oasis, but it wasn’t, really, not for these two. Where there had been connection, now there was emptiness. Where there had been a family with all its gnarly, snotty, tear-filled, heated, cleaving, lustful, playful, painfully shared aliveness, now we had disembodied individuals hurtling into space.

You see, the actions of Ray Brennan had caused this to happen to the Meyer-Murphy family.

We are drawn to the nexus of violence. Everybody’s hot to reconstruct the crime scene — crawl inside the bore and ride the spiraling projectile; pilot the factors that brought so-and-so together with so-and-so at such-and-such a time and place. I have noticed small attention paid to the aftermath, the shock waves released into the human atmosphere, more deadly than the original event because they have a wider range; an infinite range, if you think about the physics.

“I am so sorry about your marriage, I cannot say.”

“A long time coming,” Lynn Meyer-Murphy sniffed.

“Mom?” said Juliana. “What should I do?”

“It’s up to you,” she repeated, tiredly this time. She was worn out by it and had nothing left. “I know you care for Ana and you want to help. That’s very admirable. I’ll support you. Whatever you want to do. I have a Xanax in my purse if you need it.” In response, Juliana raised her chin and marched toward the door that Devon County patiently still held open.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, “it’s not for a fifteen-year-old to decide to put herself in harm’s way,” and stepped in front of Juliana and put my hands on hers. They were quivering with the tension of holding on to the purse.

“Please go home,” I told her gently. “If you want to do something, do that for me.”

Then I took her in my arms and told her that I loved her.

Upstairs, I put my forehead against the marble wall of the corridor, imploring Devon, “Why did you do that?”

“I came very close to firing you,” he said.

“The feeling was mutual.”

“Take it easy,” he said, echoing my own words to Lynn the first day of the kidnapping: “We’re only at the beginning.”

It was like a doctor telling you there are only five rounds of chemotherapy ahead.

“This morning was pure hell, Devon.”

“I know.”

“And now I get to be beat up by that poser Kelsey Owen. She’s nothing.” I felt weak and close to tears as I thought of Juliana and her mother, already on the freeway, driving away in the silent depths of the limo, “Nothing.” “Owen? Your friend from the Bureau? She wasn’t called.”

I rolled my head off the wall. “She wasn’t?”