April Smith: Good Morning, Killer

“Your husband came home and found you two together.”

“We were together.” She nodded, unaware of what she was confessing. “The detective and I—”

“In bed.”

“—And they got into an argument, two big angry men. Their faces were this far apart, I couldn’t stop them, it was terrible.” Her voice twisted up and she grabbed her own hair. “Stop that, Margaret!” she scolded herself. “I don’t want to be like this anymore!” During the fight the Hat had fallen down the stairs, hit his head and died. Andrew and Margaret panicked, covered it up, but made a mistake. They did not pay close enough attention to the time. They waited too long to move the body. What went on between them — arguments, declarations, deals — during those minutes or hours cannot be known. But afterward, even after he gave her all the money from the bank job, the Thunder Queen was not assuaged. She wanted Andrew, and he wanted out. He thought a million bucks in cash would buy his freedom, but things did not work out that way, and when Margaret was threatening to come apart all over the map, he tried to appease her with more money. My money.

“Mom!” called a voice, and a little boy was at the door staring at us with resentful impatience. He had a faint milk mustache and buzzed hair and was eating a croissant. A TV was going in the background and the sounds of a video game. He wore a soccer uniform and had strong legs. “Mom!” he demanded. “When are we going?” The captain had finished his recitation. “Please turn around, ma’am,” he said.

“Please, please, don’t do this to me.”

The boy ducked back inside the house.

The captain and I exchanged a look. “Do you own any firearms?” he asked.

“I’m a widow,” Margaret wailed. “My husband was a policeman, just like you. It was an accident. It was an accident.”

“What was an accident, ma’am? Your husband falling down the stairs, or his skull being smashed with a baseball bat?”

The sharp inhales had become vocal sounds, like braying. She stepped back from our approach, and her body went stiff and her eyes went wide with the most God-awful desperation.

“You’re going to jail, lady.”

“No!”

“I’m going to ask you to cooperate, ma’am,” said the captain. “Out of deference to your deceased husband, we’d rather not drag you from the house in front of the neighbors, do you hear me? But we will if we have to. Think about your children, okay, Mrs. Forrester? Who is going to stay with them? You got a family member we can call?” “Ana,” she said. “Help me.”

Two officers were coming up the steps.

“Excuse me, gentlemen.” I put myself in her face. “Andrew never gave you up.”

“What is the purpose?” she said, and her legs buckled.

“He never gave you up.”

They held her upright.

“No please,” I said to the officers, “let me.”

I unhooked my handcuffs off the back of my pants and felt their weight and the smooth familiar heft of a useful and reliable tool and put them on the woman’s wrists and listened as they ratcheted shut with a delicate sound, like the winding of a clock.

“Remember,” I told the captain, “I want those back.”

Bright plastic flags strung over the entrance to the pool snapped and pulled in the canyon breeze. I was used to getting there by 7 a.m. for the workout anyway, but by seven-fifteen on the morning of the swim meet there was no place to park within half a mile, and you had to walk all the way up from the beach. I was shocked to find the pool deck jammed with four or five hundred children and adults on blankets and beach chairs cheek-to-jowl, extended families from as far away as La Canada who had moved in for the day and brought all the comforts, from thermos jars of steaming rice to beading projects for the younger siblings doomed to remain bored and dry the rest of the day.

It was disorienting to find my comfort zone overrun, like walking into the wrong apartment identical to yours. Added to the reassuring scent of wet concrete, for example, was the splatter of sausage from an open grill, where the dads were turning out big fat pancakes.

It was becoming futile to keep searching for Juliana in the milling crowd of shivering children and grim adults who crowded the event schedules as they were posted. The swimmers were indistinguishable in their caps and goggles and there were so many of them warming up, the pool looked like a frothing overpacked aquarium. The PA system cut in and out and the chaos of high-pitched voices was torturous. The odds, I had known starting out that morning, were that Juliana was not ready and would not show.

Since I had been back on the job there had been only one or two calls. It seemed she no longer needed to talk. She was in school and her parents were still split; yes, she had new friends — but her tone was guarded, as if she finally had stuff going important enough to keep safe in a private treasure box. The fear, however, could not always be contained. Sometimes, she admitted, the nightmares could still be so bad she would find herself out of bed and writhing on the floor.

I did not share my own nightmares with Juliana. I did not tell her how every day I looked into the mirror that was Andrew and me, and every day I was surprised. I had not guessed that either one of us was capable of what we had done, but every day I saw that same reflection. “Good morning, killer,” I would say, and in that way, we would always be joined.

The national anthem blared, and the meet began. The sun had risen, and people were taking off the heavy jackets. The deck had begun to steam. Somehow every part of my body had already gotten wet — pants legs, soft lambskin boots — and there were meltdowns amongst the contestants. A petite blonde girl about eight, wearing a navy team suit with a bolt of lightning on the chest, was curled up in a towel on a beach chair, sobbing.

“She just doesn’t want to,” shrugged the embarrassed mom.

It was itchy to be wearing street clothes with the water so close and beckoning. Only a few weeks ago I had started to swim with the team again.

“Welcome back, Ana Banana,” said my lifeguard friend, standing up in the next lane. In goggles and white cap, he had looked like a grandma who had somehow been endowed with broad glistening male shoulders.

“Been a while,” I said, breathing hard.

He nodded. “The water senses it.”

I laughed harshly.

But he was serious. “When you’re flailing, the water senses it,” he said, and dove neatly under.

Girls twelve years old and older were being called for the one-hundred-yard freestyle, and out of the mob of competitors that had gathered at the west side of the pool for their starts, I noticed something interesting. Two swimmers were helping a third to the blocks. They were all wearing glossy violet suits, and other members of the same violet team were pushing past the judges seated at lane one to shout encouragement. The girl who was going to swim the race held on to the arms of her mates and very carefully, one foot at a time, climbed up onto the tilting platform, from which she stared down at the water with knees locked. You could almost see them quaking. I knew that body.

Shoving through the crowd to the edge of the pool I shouted, “Go, Juliana!” She couldn’t hear me, but I kept on shouting, “Go, baby, go!”

Her skin was mottled white and blue. She bent over and pulled the cap down, and pressed the goggles firmly to her face, and the whole team of teenage girls — lumpy, long-legged, talented or not — was screaming, “Go, Juliana! Juliana, you can do it!” A lot of folks had come out here to cheer for Juliana.

“Swimmers, take your mark,” came the announcement.