The Face of Death

  Bonnie gazes at me without hesitation or reserve. I smile at her, and put my hand over hers.

  “We’re here to help,” Elaina says. “Just tell us what to do. Do you want to split up the rooms? Or do you want everyone to go from room to room together?”

  “Together, I think.”

  “Good.” She pauses. “Which room should we start in?”

  I feel glued to the couch. I think Elaina senses this. So she’s prodding. She’s making me move, telling me to stand up, to get into motion. I find it irritating and then feel guilty for being irritated, because I’ve never been irritated with Elaina before and she doesn’t deserve it now.

  I stand in a single motion. Like jumping off the high board without thinking about it first. “Let’s start in my bedroom.”

  We put a bunch of boxes together, a startling cacophony of ripping tape and scraping cardboard. Now it’s silent again. Matt and I each had our own closet in the master bedroom. I’m looking at the door to his closet and the air is getting heavy.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” Callie says. “It is just too damn serious in here.”

  She stalks over to the windows and yanks open the plantation shutters on one, then another, then the last. Sunlight comes rushing into the room, a flood of gold. She opens the windows in decisive, almost savage, motions. It takes a moment before a cool breeze begins to eddy, followed by the sounds of the out there.

  “Wait here,” she growls, heading toward the door of the bedroom.

  Elaina raises an eyebrow at me. I shrug. We hear Callie tromp down the stairs, followed by some sounds from the kitchen, and now she’s tromping back up to the bedroom. She enters holding a small boom box and a CD. She plugs in the boom box, puts in the CD, and hits play. A driving drumbeat begins, mixing with an electric guitar riff that is catchy and a little familiar. This is one of those songs: I can’t name it, I’ve heard it a thousand times, it always gets my foot tapping.

  “Hits of the Seventies, Eighties, and Nineties,” she says. “It won’t deliver on substance, but it’ll deliver on fun.”

  Callie has transformed the room in the space of three minutes. It has gone from shadowed and somber to bright and frivolous. Just another bedroom on a beautiful day. I think about what she said earlier, about her inability to commit, and realize that avoiding the serious in her personal life has had at least one good side effect: She knows how to have fun at the drop of a hat.

  I look down at Bonnie, raise my eyebrows. “Think we can boogie our way through this, babe?” I ask.

  She grins at me and nods.

  “Yeah,” I reply back. I take a breath, walk over to the closet, and open the door.

  6

  THE MUSIC AND SUNLIGHT WORKED, AT LEAST IN MY BEDROOM. We went through Matt’s closet without me feeling too sad.

  We packed away his shirts and slacks, his sweaters and shoes. The smell of him was everywhere, and the ghost of him. It seemed like I had a memory for every piece of clothing. He’d smiled wearing this tie. He’d cried at his grandfather’s funeral in this suit. Alexa had left a jam handprint on this shirt. These memories seemed less painful than I had expected. More rich than depressing.

  Doing good, babe, I’d heard Matt say in my head.

  I didn’t reply, but I had smiled to myself.

  I thought about Quantico and that possibility too. Maybe it would be good to leave this place behind.

  If I do, it needs to be about choice, not retreat. I need to embrace my ghosts and lay them down, because they’ll follow me wherever I go. That’s what ghosts do.

  We got through the closet and the bedroom and then the bathroom, and I floated through it all, the pain there but tolerable. Bittersweet, waitress, heavy on the sweet.

  We filed down the stairway together with the boxes, moved into the garage, then up into the attic above the garage, dropping them off and pushing them back into corners where I knew they’d sit in the dark and gather dust.

  Sorry, Matt, I thought.

  They’re just things, babe, he replied. The heart doesn’t get dusty.

  I guess.

  By the way, Matt says, out of nowhere, what about 1 for U two 4 me?

  I don’t answer. I stand on the ladder, in the attic from the waist up.

  “Smoky?” Callie calls from the doorway of the garage.

  “Be there in a sec.”

  Yes, I think. What about 1 for U two 4 me? What’s the plan there?

  I had learned, doing what I do, that good men and women can still have secrets. Good wives and husbands can still cheat on each other, or have secret vices, or turn out not to have been so good after all. And, I had learned, it all comes out once you die, because once you’re dead, others are free to root through your life at their leisure and you can’t do a darn thing about it.

  Which brings me to 1 for U two 4 me. It’s a password. Matt had explained the concept of picking secure passwords to me once after a family e-mail account had been compromised.

  “You want to include numbers with letters. The longer the better, obviously, but you want to pick something you can memorize and not have to write down. Something that’ll be mnemonic. Like…” He’d snapped his fingers. “One for you, two for me. That’s a phrase that sticks in my mind. So I change it a little and add some numbers and come up with 1 for U two 4 me. Silly, but I’ll remember it, and it’ll be hard for someone to guess by accident.”

  He’d been right. It was like gum on your shoe. 1 for U two 4 me. I’d never have to write it down. It would always be accessible.

  A few months after Matt died, I’d been sitting at his computer. We had a home office, and we each had our own PC. I was feeling numb and looking for something to awaken an emotion inside of me. I scrolled through his e-mail, dug through his files. I came upon a directory on the computer labeled Private. When I went to open the directory, I found that it was password protected.

  1 for U two 4 me, there it was, trotted out before I had to really think about it. My fingers had moved to the keyboard. I was about to type it out. I stopped.

  Froze.

  What if? I’d thought. What if private really does mean private? Like, private from me?

  The thought had been appalling. And terrifying. My imagination went into overdrive.

  A mistress? Porn? He loved someone else?

  Following these thoughts, the guilt.

  How could you think that? It’s Matt. Your Matt.

  I’d left the room, tucked away Mr. 1 for U two 4 me, and tried not to think about it.

  He popped up every now and then. Like now.

  Well? Truth or denial?

  “Smoky?” Callie calls again.

  “Coming,” I reply and clamber down the ladder.

  I still feel Matt.

  Waiting.

  1 for U two 4 me.

  Packing away the past, it occurs to me, is messy stuff.

  We’re standing in the doorway of Alexa’s room. I can feel discomfort looming in the not-far-off. Pain is a little sharper here, though still tolerable.

  “Pretty room,” Elaina murmurs.

  “Alexa liked the girly-girl stuff,” I say, smiling.

  It is a little girl’s dream room. The bed is queen-sized, with a canopy, and it’s covered with purples of every possible hue. The comforter and pillows are thick and lush and inviting. “Lie down and drown in us,” they say.

  One quarter of the floor is covered in Alexa’s stuffed animal collection. They range from small to big to huge, and the species run the gamut from the identifiable to the fantastic.

  “Lions and tigers and heffalumps, oh my,” Matt used to joke.

  I take it all in, and a thought comes to me. I wonder at the fact that it never occurred to me before.

  Bonnie has slept with me since the day I brought her home. I don’t think she’s ever entered this bedroom.

  Be accurate, I chide myself. You never brought her in here, that’s the truth. Never asked her if she might want a king’s ransom of stuffed an
imals, or a purple explosion of bedsheets and blankets.

  Time to fix that, I think. I kneel down next to Bonnie. “Do you want anything in here, sweetheart?” I ask her. She looks at me, her eyes searching mine. “You’re welcome to whatever you want.” I squeeze her hand. “Really. You can have the whole room.”

  She shakes her head. No, thank you, she’s saying.

  I’ve put away childish things, that look says.

  “Okay, babe,” I murmur, standing up.

  “How do you want to handle this room, Smoky?” Elaina’s gentle voice startles me.

  I run a hand through Bonnie’s hair as I look around the room.

  “Well,” I start to say—and then my cell phone rings.

  Callie rolls her eyes. “Here we go.”

  “Barrett,” I answer.

  Sorry, I mouth to them.

  A deep voice rumbles. “Smoky. It’s Alan. Sorry to bother you today, but we got a situation.”

  Alan is overseeing the unit while I’m on vacation. He’s more than competent; the fact that he’s felt the need to call me raises my antennae.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m in Canoga Park, standing in front of a house. Scene of a triple homicide. Bad scene. Twist is, there’s a sixteen-year-old girl inside. She’s got a gun to her head and says she’ll only talk to you.”

  “She asked for me by name?”

  “Yep.”

  I’m silent, processing.

  “Really sorry about this, Smoky.”

  “Don’t worry about it. We were just about to take a break, anyway. Give me the address and Callie and I will meet you there soonest.”

  I jot down the address and hang up.

  The man had gotten it wrong: Death doesn’t take a holiday, apparently. Par for the course. As always, I am living my life on multiple levels: Make this a home, decide if I am going to leave this home and go to Quantico, go stop a young woman from blowing her brains out. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, hurrah for me.

  I look at Bonnie. “Sweetheart—” I begin, but stop as she nods her head. It’s okay, go, she is saying.

  I look at Elaina. “Elaina—”

  “I’ll watch Bonnie.”

  Relief and gratitude, that’s what I feel.

  “Callie—”

  “I’ll drive,” she says.

  I crouch down, facing Bonnie. “Do me a favor, sweetheart?”

  She gives me a quizzical look.

  “See if you can figure out what we should do with all those stuffed animals.”

  She grins. Nods.

  “Cool.” I straighten up, turn to Callie. “Let’s go.”

  Bad things are waiting. I don’t want them to get impatient.

  7

  “ALL TUCKED AWAY,” CALLIE MUSES AS WE PULL ONTO THE SUB- urban street in Canoga Park.

  She’s talking to herself more than to me, but as I look around, I understand the observation. Canoga Park is a part of Los Angeles County. Los Angeles doesn’t provide a lot of distance between the suburbs and the city proper. You can be on a street lined with businesses, drive two blocks, and find yourself in a residential neighborhood. It was a casual transformation; traffic lights gave way to stop signs and things just got more quiet. The city hustled nearby, never stopping, always there, while the homes were here, “tucked away.”

  The street we’d turned onto was in one of those neighborhoods, but it has lost that quiet feeling. I spot at least five cop cars, along with a SWAT van and two or three unmarked vehicles. The obligatory helicopter is circling above.

  “Thank God we still have daylight,” Callie remarks, looking up at the helicopter. “I can’t stand those blinding spotlights.”

  People are everywhere. The braver ones are standing on their lawns, while the more timid peek out from behind window curtains. It’s funny, I think. People talk about crime in urban areas, but all the best murders happen in the suburbs.

  Callie parks the car on the side of the street.

  “Ready?” I ask her.

  “Born ready, bring it on, pick your cliché,” she says.

  As we exit the car, I see Callie grimace. She places a hand on the roof of the car to steady herself.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  She waves away my concern. “Residual pain from getting shot, nothing I can’t handle.” She reaches into a jacket pocket and pulls out a prescription bottle. “Vicodin, today’s mother’s little helper.” She pops the top and palms a tablet. Downs it. Smiles. “Yummy.”

  Callie had been shot six months ago. The bullet had nicked her spine. For one very tense week we weren’t sure she was going to walk again. I thought she’d recovered fully.

  Guess I was wrong.

  Wrong? She carries her Vicodin around with her like a box of Tic Tacs!

  “Let’s see what all the shouting is about, shall we?” she asks.

  “Yep,” I reply.

  But don’t think I’m going to let this go, Callie.

  We head over to the perimeter. A twentysomething patrolman stops us. He’s a good-looking kid. I can sense his excitement at being a part of this law-enforcement cacophony. I like him right away; he sees the scars on my face and almost doesn’t flinch.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he says. “I can’t let anyone in right now.”

  I fish out my FBI ID and show it to him. “Special Agent Barrett,” I say. Callie does the same.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he says again. “And, ma’am,” he says to Callie.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Callie replies.

  I spot Alan standing in a cluster of suits and uniforms. He towers above them all, an imposing edifice of a human being. Alan is in his mid-forties, an African-American man who can only be described as gargantuan. He’s not obese—just big. His scowl can make an interrogation room seem like a small and dangerous place for a guilty man.

  Life loves irony, and Alan is no exception. For all his size, he is a thoughtful man-mountain, a brilliant mind in a linebacker’s body. He combines meticulous precision with near-infinite patience. His attention to detail is legendary. One of the best testaments to his character is the fact that Elaina is his wife, and she adores him.

  Alan is the third member of my four-person team, the oldest and most grounded. He told me when Elaina had been diagnosed with cancer that he was considering leaving the FBI so that he could spend more time with her. He hasn’t brought it up since, and I haven’t pushed him on it, but I am never really unaware of it.

  Callie popping pills, Alan thinking of retiring—maybe I should leave. Let them rebuild the team from scratch.

  “There she is,” I hear Alan say.

  I start to catalogue the various reactions to my face and then let it go. Take it or leave it, boys.

  One of the men steps forward, putting a hand out to shake mine. The other hand, I note, grips an MP5 submachine gun. He’s dressed in full SWAT regalia—body armor, helmet, boots. “Luke Dawes,” he says. “SWAT commander. Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem,” I reply. I point to Alan. “Do you mind if I have my guy fill me in? No offense intended.”

  “None taken.”

  I turn to Alan and push aside all my own internal chatter, letting the simplicity of action and command take over. “Hit me,” I say.

  “A call came into 911 about an hour and a half ago from the next door neighbor. Widower by the name of Jenkins. Jenkins says that the girl—Sarah Kingsley—had stumbled into his front yard, dressed in a nightgown, covered in blood.”

  “How did he know she was in the front yard?”

  “His living room is in the front of the house and he keeps his drapes open until he goes to bed. He was watching TV, saw her out of the corner of his eye.”

  “Go on.”

  “He’s shook, but he musters up enough courage to go out and see what the problem is. Said she was unfocused—his word—and mumbling something about her family being murdered. He tries to get her to come into his house, but she screams and r
uns off, reenters her own home.”

  “I take it he was wise enough not to follow her?”

  “Yeah, the heroics only went as far as his own front yard. He ran back inside, made the call. A patrol car happens to be nearby, so they come over to check it out. The officers”—he checks his notepad again—“Sims and Butler, arrive, poke their heads in the front door—which was wide open—and try to get her to come back out. She’s unresponsive. After talking it over, they decide to go in and get her. Dangerous maybe, but neither of them are rookies, and they’re worried about the girl.”

  “Understandable,” I murmur. “Are Sims and Butler still here?”

  “Yep.”

  “Go on.”

  “They enter the home and it’s a fucking bloodbath from the get-go.”

  “Have you been inside?” I interrupt.

  “No. No one’s been in there since she got hold of a weapon. So they go in, and it’s obvious that something bad happened, and that it happened recently. Lucky for us, Sims and Butler have dealt with murder scenes before, so they don’t lose their heads. They give anything that looks like evidence a wide berth.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “Yeah. They hear noise on the second floor, and call out for the girl. No answer. They proceed up the stairs, and find her in the master bedroom, along with three dead bodies. She’s got a gun.” He consults his notes. “A nine mm of some kind, per the officers. Things change fast at that point. Now they’re nervous. They’re thinking maybe she’s responsible for whatever happened here, and they point their weapons at her, tell her to drop the gun, etc., etc. That’s when she puts it to her own head.”

  “And things change again.”

  “Right. She’s crying, and starts screaming at them. Saying, quote, ‘I want to talk to Smoky Barrett or I’ll kill myself!’ End quote. They try to talk her down, but give it up after she points the gun at them a few times. They call it in and”—he opens his arms to indicate the overwhelming presence of law enforcement around us—“here we are.” He nods his head toward the SWAT commander. “Lieutenant Dawes knew your name and got someone to get ahold of me. I came here, checked things out, called you.”