Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

“My wife’s been hurt,” Tom pressed Fuller. “I don’t have time for your stupid theatrics.”

Andy Fuller took a step in Tom’s direction. Tom slammed the van door shut. At that moment, even though he was two feet from Tom, Fuller staggered.

“You’re incompetent, Schulz,” Fuller crowed once he’d recovered. “How many times have we gone over this?”

“Are you saying I can’t do my job?” Tom replied, undeterred.

Fuller hunched his shoulders, as if he were gathering himself into a cannonball. “I’m saying what I’ve said lots of times before, that I’m your boss . You just don’t seem to be able to accept it. Maybe it’s time you did.” Tom glared at him.

“Stop, please stop,” I cried. I looked frantically down at the first car. The windows were up. The motor was running. There was no way the other cops would hear me if I called for them to come intervene. “There’s no reason to—”

“Shut up!” Fuller barked at me.

I’d heard about their arguments before: Tom had told me how vicious and unreasonable Fuller could be. But I’d never witnessed one of their conflicts. And this one was getting out of control. God forbid that Fuller would lay a finger on Tom. If Fuller were that foolish, my husband would manhandle him so quickly that Fuller would wish he’d bypassed law enforcement altogether.

“Fuller,” said Tom, “get into your car. Get the hell away from this crime scene.”

“You are intent on ruining this case for me!” Fuller’s indignant voice howled. His hands were clenched into tight fists.

“No,” I whispered. “Don’t—”

“Aren’t you?” Fuller cried, lunging toward Tom.

Without thinking, I jumped between them.

“No!”

But Tom’s warning came too late. I lost my balance. Andy Fuller and I slammed against my van, then hit the ground. Beneath me, Andy Fuller struggled weakly. “Help,” he gasped. “I’ve been assaulted!”

“Goldy, Goldy, oh, Goldy,” Tom murmured as he gently lifted me off the assistant district attorney. “What have you done?”

I don’t remember much from our trip home. Just leave, Fuller had told us, red-faced and indignant. Watching from their car, the other cops had seen Fuller come at Tom first, had seen me stupidly try to intervene. Still, Tom was very angry. With me.

“Don’t you think I can take care of myself, Goldy? Don’t you think I’ve spent enough time in police work to sidestep some five-foot-tall creep? What on earth were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything,” I answered honestly. “Tom, I’m really sorry. I just—”

“Why didn’t you get in the van, the way I told you?”

I pressed the handkerchief into my oozing palm and didn’t respond. After all, what could I say?

When we arrived at our house, bedraggled, tense, and silent, we found Arch on the phone with his friend Todd Druckman. The two fourteen-year-olds were avidly discussing telephone encryption: whether they needed it, how much it would cost, whether girls would be able to decode their conversations. Still short for his age, Arch was dressed in an oversized burgundy T-shirt and sweatpants. He shook the straight brown hair off his forehead. “It would be worth it if you thought a girl was tapping your phone,” he observed. “You know how those girls in our class can be”

I washed my hand and bandaged it, then asked Arch to hang up. He pushed his smeared tortoiseshell glasses up his freckled nose and sighed. To Todd, he said, “Later.”

Ordinarily, our family has heart-to-heart conversations in our kitchen. But in the rosy light of early evening, the plastic-draped hole where the window had once been gave the space the discomfiting feel of an abandoned stage set. The kitchen was no longer the heart of our home, thanks to the late Gerald Eliot. Since we weren’t able to retrieve the leftovers from Cameron Burr’s guest house—the cops were going through it—Tom and I set the living room coffee table with bowls of cheese, cold chicken, sliced hard rolls, romaine leaves, chutney, and mayonnaise.

“Julian called,” Arch announced morosely. “He didn’t sound very good. I guess he’s not coming.” My son threw himself down on the couch and surveyed the spread. “He really wants to talk to you, Mom. Anyway, he said he was going to call Marla.”

“Was he in New York?” Tom asked. Arch shook his head and mumbled something about Julian’s being on the road.

“I’m sorry, Arch,” I said, then asked, “Did André call? Is he doing all right?”

“He left a message,” Arch said uncertainly. “He’s okay, I guess. Says he’s not going to make enough on the shoot to pay the cost of caring for his wife if some guy wrecks all the food. What’s the matter with his wife?”

“She has macular degeneration, which is a problem with the eyes. She’s virtually blind, and needs a full-time nurse. It’s expensive—”

“Who wrecked the food?”

“Just some guy on our job today. Is André’s message still on the tape?”

“Sorry. I erased it because Todd and I were doing some experimenting with dialing. You’re just supposed to call him back. What’s the matter, Mom? You said your hand was just scratched.”

“Remember the guy who made the mess in our kitchen?”

Arch smeared mayonnaise on half a roll. “Gerald Eliot? The builder scratched your hand?”

“No, hon. He’s dead.”

Tom added, “They found his body out at Cameron Burr’s place.”

“No kidding?” asked Arch, incredulous. He put down his roll. “What happened to him?”

“We don’t know yet,” I replied, then hesitated. “Anyway, while we were all out there, I … had a somewhat … physical argument with the assistant district attorney. I … sort of lost it when they arrested Cameron,” I added.

Arch bombarded us with questions. How did Eliot die? Mr. Burr didn’t kill Gerald, did he? I said I couldn’t imagine that he would have. Was Mr. Burr okay? Probably, I replied. Did Mrs. Burr know Mr. Burr had been arrested? It was possible Barbara was too sick to be informed of this news, I told him; it might just make her worse. Arch loved the Burrs. He couldn’t process what this would mean for them. Instead, he decided to focus on my altercation with the assistant district attorney.

Arch’s father, Dr. John Richard Korman—dubbed The Jerk by Marla and me—was currently in jail for assault. Would he now have two parents in jail? Arch asked. Jail time for me was unlikely, I assured my anxious son, after I’d made us steaming cups of hot chocolate and brought them out to the living room. The other deputies had seen Andy Fuller come at Tom first.

“So who’s in trouble?” Arch asked pragmatically. It was hard to tell, Tom and I told him.

The phone rang: Tom held it up so we both could hear.

“Hey!” came a hearty voice. “You should have knocked Fuller out with one of your frying pans!”

“Boyd,” Tom announced, and I smiled and nodded. Despite my increasing worries, it was good to hear our old friend, barrel-shaped and straight-shooting Sergeant Bill Boyd. Despite his perfectly serviceable first name, to us and everyone he was always “Boyd,” since there were too many sheriff’s department deputies with the first name Bill. Boyd had told us he’d gotten tired of getting the wrong call and worse, the wrong pizza. Now, he was glad to hear we were all right. He promised to stay in touch and hung up.

Ten minutes later, Tom’s new captain—a fair-minded, all-business administrator—called. Their conversation was tense and brief. Eliot was being autopsied in the morning; Cameron Burr was being held without bail; his wife was indeed too ill to be notified of the arrest. Moreover, things did not look good vis-à-vis Fuller. We’d know more the next day.