Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

Lydia hangs back while Daniel approaches, interrupting the song. The gentleman’s muscular chest is bronzed and shaved, like some GQ model. GQ smiles a wry “my bad” smile at the deputy. Daniel’s cool—he’s always cool, and attuned to the quirkiness of whatever encounter, which is after all what makes work interesting. There’s a brief, unhassly exchange before he motions the gentleman to step outside. He complies. Lydia waits on the sidewalk for them to emerge, hand on gun. When the gentleman hits the street, he stretches out his arms like a sun worshipper and yawns dramatically before letting go an animal bellow of Dionysian bliss. Daniel doesn’t have a particular vibe (other than the oddness of it), but the detainee is built enough to warrant caution. Plus, experience has shown that when he doesn’t have a vibe, well, that’s usually not a good thing. Meth and/or mental illness can mask as anomalous eccentricity.

The gent refocuses and folksily says, “It’s that bad, huh?”—Daniel knows that he’s referring to his singing voice.

“I’ve heard worse,” says Deputy Doheny, to defuse.

“Guess I should cancel my audition for The Voice —”

With that, he shoves the deputy into the plate glass with enough force that it thunders and cracks. Then wheels around to Lydia, smiling calmly as she draws her gun. Inside the establishment, gasps and herd-scatter, but no one emerges—they rush toward the front counter instead to take cover. Onlookers make movies from across the street and from office windows.

Deputy Lydia Molloy points her gun.

“Get on the ground! Now!”

Her partner is already on his feet and tases the assailant, who plunges a Buck Knife into his chest. GQ reels, pulling the dart from his hairless sculpted torso, and turns back to Lydia. He cranes his neck to the sky and gives the dark Gods an offering of a piercing banshee cry. He charges her and Deputy Molloy shoots, three times. Squat-frozen in combat stance, she holds her aim and, when it’s unquestionable that GQ is dead, rushes to Daniel as he struggles to yank out the knife.

Three squad cars arrive.

Everything’s happened in under thirty seconds.

Lydia was directly behind GQ , which was why Daniel had tased and not shot, fearing she’d be struck if he missed. Daniel is bruised and minorly punctured, his vest and ego taking the brunt of the blow.

2.

They lay together that night at Lydia’s place in Richmond, half in shock, half exultant. (One of the quirky things they discovered about each other since beginning their “sleepovers” was that recently—independently—both had developed a thing for wearing kids’ pajamas.) “I don’t think you understand,” said Lydia. “If something happened to you, I know I would die.” Her words surprised them and moved her to tears. He put an arm around her, wincing from the knife wound. (Some stitches there.) “Don’t worry. I’ll always protect you. As long as you’re there to protect me… after I fail to protect you . ” They laughed at the sardonic remark.

She didn’t know why her feelings toward Daniel were so strong. Am I in love with him? They’d been working together a few months and she’d never felt any sort of attraction. But something changed after she fell on the Orchard Trail—she’d become almost obsessed. Then one day, not long before the shootout at Tim Hortons, he confessed that something had changed in him too. Gossip among the deputies had it that they’d “hooked up,” though they hadn’t, not really, but their denials only made things worse. They tried being with each other in that way. They fucked a few times but neither one seemed to be all that interested. Eventually the lovemaking became rote, an awkward going through the motions before it actually became embarrassing. At first, each was hurt. Am I not sexy to him/her? Does he/she just want to be friends? They finally had a talk about it. “What’s the matter with us!” they said, laughing. It was nice that it never got heavy. They decided that whatever they shared was pure and special, lovely and different, something they’d never experienced with anyone else before. A special bond that didn’t require explaining and just “was.”

The GQ killing was big news. Even Detective Willow Wylde (ret.) read the Internet item aloud during Sunday-morning roundup in his duties that week as elected “mayor” and all-around director of entertainment of the Meadows. Nothing like a singing, Tom Ford lookalike psycho to capture the cynical hearts and minds of rehabbers. The Macomb deputies vivisected the publicly released bodycam footage, celebrating Lydia and razzing Daniel for trying to tase a male model but getting stabbed instead. A lot of emasculating jokes when the two of them were present, like asking Lydia about Daniel, “How’s the missus?” Sheriff Owen Caplan was so pleased that he threw a press conference from his administrative office in Mount Clemens, the county seat, with Deputies Molloy and Doheny front and center. It was the sort of feel-good justifiable homicide that did wonders for the department’s public image and morale.

Daniel left the bedroom to take a call. Lydia knew it was Rachelle, his wife, from whom he was separated. She heard him talk in low tones from the living room, assuring his ex that he was all right, the knife had barely penetrated the skin. She went to the door and listened to him lie to Rachelle that he was back at home, in the little place he’d moved to in Smiths Creek after their marriage fell apart. Lydia didn’t intrude on that space because she loved him, she wasn’t in love (am I?), but rather it was his very special friendship she didn’t want to lose. If that were to happen, if she nosily fudged boundaries and lost him because of that, she knew that what she said earlier would come true—it’d be the death of her. Each day they grew closer and neither could explain the reason or depths of that.

It was like a union of blood.

During his private conversation, the vision came to Lydia again. The first time it showed itself was when she rose from the gully grave and walk-straddled the tracks of the Orchard Trail. But it wasn’t vivid then, not yet, it wasn’t otherworldly and panoramic until that night at home after the fall when she sank into bottomless sleep. Now she was starting to have it again, to feel it, symphonically, everywhere, in waking hours—with the smallest effort, she could summon it. A profound warmth accompanied the vision; the only way she could describe it was that it felt like family.

She wondered if it might be religious in nature. As a girl, she prayed to God to make her a saint.

The imagery was of a train filled with people, but the features of their faces were blurry and impossible to discern. The first time the locomotive roared past—a silent roar—it moved too fast for her to see the figures behind the windows. It blew by like an express, as if belonging to someone else’s sleep, someone else’s dream. Then it slowed down, the way trains do when entering cities. Tonight, lightly focused on Daniel talking in the other room, Lydia imagined, felt it slowing to a stop, as one notices a moth alighting on a book.

Daniel wrapped up the call. It was semi-awkward and besides, he wanted to get back to Lydia. His wife asked if he was sure he didn’t want to stay in St. Clair tonight, at the house they used to share, “in case you need company. I’m worried about you.” The offer was more about sweetness than it was a come-on, but Daniel said, No, I think I kind of need to be alone . Rachelle acted like she wasn’t hurt—she wasn’t, really, because by now both had a lot of experience pretending not to be hurt, enough so that they weren’t sure if the hurting was even possible anymore. One thing would injure her, though: if she knew the emotional gravitas of his involvement with Deputy Lydia Jane Molloy.