Stephen White - Critical Conditions

I lifted the bar of soap from beside the sink. The creamy muck below was tinted pink.

“Brenda? Look, she washed up in here.”

Brenda said, “So? She obviously washed up somewhere. It figures that it would be here.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t mean anything.” I put the bar of soap back in place and, to dry my hand, chose a towel from a neat stack on top of the vanity.

Beneath the top towel was a small handgun.

“Brenda? Brenda?”

In the bathroom mirror I watched her. Her lips parted and she backed slowly away from me, feeling for the cool tile of the wall, edging her sculpted nails into the grout lines, putting distance between herself and the reality of the gun. Her complexion had paled to the same color as the off-white ceramic tile. I tried to imagine what it would be like to discover a handgun in your child’s bedroom and saw the answer in Brenda’s face: shock and horror and disbelief.

“Brenda, come on, let’s get out of here, go find a place to sit down.”

I took her hand and led her back through Merritt’s room to the landing at the top of the stairs, where a pair of ladder-back chairs flanked an elaborately painted hunt table. Meekly, she lowered herself to one of the chairs.

“Brenda, I’m so sorry. This must be yet another terrible shock for you.” Silently, I rebuked myself for how lame my words seemed, how they always seemed to sound in the face of the harsh winds of tragedy.

She moved her lips as though she wanted to speak, but no sound emerged; all she managed to do was shrug her shoulders in resignation, look plaintively back toward Merritt’s room, and start to cry.

I realized as I stood helpless that the house was growing dark. I flicked on a hall light and the brightness seemed to nudge Brenda from her stupor.

She spoke so suddenly and so rapidly, she startled me. I had trouble changing gears to keep up with her torrent of questions. “Why does she have a gun? Why does Merritt need a gun? Is she in some kind of trouble? Why is it in the bathroom? Why would it be there?”

My impulse was to say something perfectly inane like, “Kids today, who knows?” but caught myself enough to offer a less offensive platitude instead. I said, “I’m sure there’s an explanation.”

“She’s my baby, my little girl.” Her words were slower now. After weeks of dealing with Chaney’s illness, she was so accustomed to the shock of trauma that it now energized her only briefly.

“Brenda, the gun in there? Does it belong to you and John? Do you recognize it?”

“No, no, no. God, no. We don’t own any guns. With the baby in the house, oh God, no. I wouldn’t think of it. Trent wouldn’t have it.”

I’ve been told I’m slow sometimes. But it wasn’t until that moment that the events of the previous thirty-six hours joined my current consciousness and I realized that Dead Ed Robilio had spilled a lot of blood recently and that no murder weapon had been discovered at his home. Although a connection between Merritt and Dr. Edward Robilio seemed remote, I feared the worst. Boulder, Colorado, just didn’t have too many pools of unexplained blood, bloody basketball uniforms, or bathrooms with mysterious handguns.

“Brenda, I want to go see something. Please wait for me here, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She nodded through her shock. If I had said I was going to be gone a minute to pick up some keys I’d left on Jupiter, she would have nodded at that, too.

I found my way back to the bathroom and turned on all the lights and bent close to examine the weapon, still resting on the towel. I was pretty sure the gun was coated with a not insignificant amount of dried blood. The caked, rusty tint covered not only the grip but also the blunt barrel.

I flicked the bathroom lights back off and returned to Brenda at the top of the stairs. I didn’t think she had moved a centimeter.

Brenda asked, “What? Did you find something?” Naive hope infused her tone, as though she expected me to come back with news that the weapon was really a toy and that Merritt was playing a cruel joke.

“Yes, I did. I went to see if there was any blood on the gun.”

“Is there?”

“Yes. There’s blood on the gun.”

“Oh, God,” she said, the vigor returning to her cadence. “What should I do? I can’t handle this now. I just can’t. I can’t handle any more anything. And I have to go to work. I can’t miss any more work. I just can’t. And then I’m spending the night with Chaney. It’s my night with Chaney. And Trent? Oh, God, poor Trent. What did she do? Merritt, damn it, what did you do?” The words spilled out smoothly, like a child down a slide.

Brenda cried again and then her muscles tensed as she tried to contain the pressure of her agony. Tendons appeared to burst through the smooth surface of her skin and I thought her neck was so taut and constricted she wouldn’t possibly be able to breathe.

“Brenda, look at me.” I used my softest voice but tried to imbue it with determination and authority. Lauren had once told me when I used it with her that it was one of my sexiest tones. I never understood that.

Brenda raised her eyes to mine.

“This isn’t just a family problem anymore. I think what you need to do right now is call your husband and tell him what it is that we found.”

“You’re right, I need to tell Trent about this. I do, right? Don’t I?”

“Yes, you need to talk to your husband. Then you need to call the TV station and tell your boss you won’t be in tonight. I can do that for you if you would like; I’ll just explain that it’s something about your daughter. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“I’m supposed to tape tonight. It’s a story I’ve been working on. But I can’t do that now, no. Yes, would you call them for me?”

“Of course.” I wanted her to face me. Her eyes were fixed on the stairs, as though salvation were coming from that direction. “Please look at me, Brenda. After we do those other things, I think we need to phone the police.”

“The police? Call the police? You think Merritt’s done something wrong, don’t you? Something with that gun in there?”

“Yes. I guess I do think that’s possible.”

“And you think, what, that she feels terrible about whatever it was and that’s why she tried to kill herself?”

“It’s a simple explanation. It may not ultimately be correct, but it’s a reasonable place to start.”

“You want me to call the cops on my own daughter?”

“Well,” I said, steeling myself for her reaction, “actually, I’m thinking we should call your brother-in-law and ask him for some advice. He’ll know what to do.”

“What?” Her face was as incredulous as if I had suggested she call the White House and ask the First Lady for counsel on how to handle Merritt. What would you do if you found a bloody gun in Chelsea’s bedroom?

“I said I think you should call Sam.”

“You know my brother-in-law? You know about-? You know Sam and Sherry?”

In my face she probably saw a mixture of acknowledgment and confusion.

“How do you know Sherry and Sam? Are you friends with them? Goddamn it, you should have told me.”

“I know Sam, not Sherry. We’re friends. It started off as a police thing a few years ago, but since then we’ve become friends. I barely know Sherry.”

Brenda made a series of funny little popping sounds, rapidly expelling air from between her closed lips. I wondered if it helped her think.

“But he told you about…that Merritt was his niece, that I’m his sister-in-law, that-you know?”

“No, no one told me. Sam and I stumbled over the connection last night. We went to a hockey game together, and he started telling me about some personal things, some family things. Chaney’s situation came up-”