35

My days were once again consumed by nanny background checks and subpoenas and Tyrone’s Quikbail, long surveillance hours on Larry Quinn’s personal injury cases—all the things I’d once complained about. Getting so close to the violence again, to a violent serial offender, to something as sinister as the Wishbone murders, had put life in perspective for me. I knew now that I didn’t want to go back into the darkness.

But I still had the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. A sponsor of mine at AA once told me that that was a normal state for an addict. We learn to carry that foreboding when we live in the shadows, always hiding our interior life, our addictions and cravings and demons.

Charlie Ramsey was in jail and awaiting trial. I felt sure he would never again see Atlanta’s streets. Two more women had come forward to identify him as their rapist. Charlie’s list of crimes spanned almost two decades, and the blood and knife evidence found in his home had finally shut him down and sealed his fate. The DA was confident of a conviction in the rapes and at least two of the Wishbone killings—Dobbs and Melissa Dumas—where physical evidence had been found on the knife. The carpet fiber that matched to Charlie’s hidden Wrangler wasn’t much by itself, but it would add to the growing evidence, another nail hammered in. Most important, and I suppose most telling, the killing had stopped. The letters, the emails, the roses had stopped too, of course. I wondered what Charlie had had planned for me in his fraudulent and damaged brain. Had I been destined to become another photograph on the War Room bulletin board? He went for Dobbs not because he fit into his selection process but because Dobbs was high profile. Charlie was expanding. He’d begun killing for the headlines and for the pure satisfaction of outmaneuvering law enforcement. It was not an unusual pattern for a serial murderer, but it was a terrifying one.

I had been so wrong about Charlie. My profile, in retrospect, had been shockingly uninformed. There was nothing in Charlie’s background that pointed to abuse. I was so sure that Anne Chambers and David Brooks had been symbolic of parental figures. So sure. There were other characteristics that did fit, however. His achievements as a star in football and in the complicated field of biomedical engineering. My advice had been to look for an overachiever, a star in his field. I never imagined someone who had excelled to that degree would then settle for the kind of goofy social veneer that Charlie had settled on. But what choice did he have, really? The accident had left him incapable of a normal life. We had learned that after the accident, Charlie, who had early in life exhibited volatility and sexual aggression, had even more anger. Because of his brain injury and the way it had manifested in a cognitive deficit, Charlie experienced more impulsiveness and had trouble socially processing. He had chronic pain, head and neck aches, depression, trouble concentrating. After surgery and some rehab, he had tried to return to work but had become verbally abusive, even resorted to violent threats in heated moments with coworkers. The poisonous pattern that had trailed him through life deepened. I myself had experienced it. It explained a lot about Charlie and who he had become. Still, my analysis had been so terribly wrong in so many areas. Was it a sign? The universe has a way of telling you when to let go of something. Maybe I wasn’t as great at my job as I thought I was. The universe has a way of telling us that too, doesn’t it?

The days had grown shorter and cooler at last. Autumn was here and the trees had turned fluorescent. Brown paper bags bulging with yard clippings lined the curbs in Winnona Park, where my parents lived. The crisp air was perfumed with fireplace wood.

My brother, Jimmy, who had for years resolutely resisted my mother’s urgings to come home, had flown in from Seattle for Thanksgiving. He did not bring his partner Paul with him, which was to me a disappointment. I loved Paul almost as much as Jimmy loved him. I scheduled a webcam date with Paul for later in the day.

Jimmy and Rauser had hit it off the very first time they met a few years back, just after I came out of rehab. Today the two of them had ended up in my parents’ oak-paneled den watching football with my dad—Cowboys fans all of them. Mother, who had been hovering and fussing over Rauser and Jimmy since we arrived, turned them loose with a platter of sausage balls and cold beer while she finished dinner preparations.

My cousin Miki had come for dinner too. Miki was a photojournalist, sandy-haired and blue-eyed, and like our faces, our lives were worlds apart. She was the daughter of my mother’s sister, Florence, and years ago when Miki began showing up for our holidays without her mother, we were told Aunt Florence had left for Europe. When we got older, we discovered that Europe was just code for the loony bin. Aunt Florence has been institutionalized since Miki was twelve. Once, before Aunt Florence left for “Europe,” I remember visiting their home. There was a houseboat in the backyard. No one offered any explanation for this or acted as if it was unusual, but I remember seeing Aunt Florence walking down the ramp of the grounded houseboat to greet us as if she lived there. Jimmy sneaked on the boat when no one was watching and later swore it was lined with full clothing racks and cosmetics and coffee cans brimming with coins. My beautiful and talented cousin had scars on her arms from wrists to elbows. She had begun the war against her own flesh at fourteen. Cutting, overdoses, institutions, drugs, eating disorders, and years of misdiagnoses followed. She was now thirty-five and I knew nothing at all about her life, but I’m very glad that the poison in her veins is not the same blood that pumps through mine. I have enough crazy of my own. Thankfully, I seem to lack either the depth or the attention span for long-term depression.

Late Thanksgiving afternoon, we gathered in the dining room that hadn’t changed since my childhood—high ceiling and arched doorways and plaster walls that had been dented and patched a million times over the years. The room was a very pale yellow, with an oak table and chintz-cushioned chairs and an antique china cabinet in the corner. My mother’s taste ran to the traditional. She had packed the table with food; a leaf had been extended on each end. We joined hands for the blessing, as was the tradition in my Southern Baptist family. My father began, “We’re grateful to you, Lord, for all this good food and, well, for Miki and Keye being here, since they both damn near killed themselves with drugs and alcohol.”

My eyes popped open. My dad’s head was bowed and his eyes squeezed tightly shut. Jimmy cleared his throat to cover a laugh. Miki’s eyes met mine. She was grinning.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Howard,” my mother said, hotly.

“And thank you, Lord,” Dad went on, “for my wife still being pretty and for my queer son.”

We all raised our heads on that one.

“Well, amen,” Rauser boomed firmly, and sat down at the table.

“Amen,” we all followed enthusiastically, and took our seats too.

“That was interesting,” my mother said, and shot Dad a look. “Potatoes, anyone?”

An enormous bowl of garlic mashed potatoes sat on the table along with a green bean casserole, chipotle sweet potato cakes covered with mango and cilantro and fresh chopped jalapeños, breaded baked goat cheese rounds on salad greens with fennel and bing cherries, and a stuffed Cornish game hen for each of us. For dessert, Mother had made Jimmy’s favorite, deep-dish blackberry cobbler with berries she’d picked and frozen in summer, and the pumpkin cheesecake with maple glaze and toasted pecans I wait for all year long.

“I made something spicy just for you,” Mother told Rauser with a smile. She had watched him sprinkle red pepper over nearly everything she fed him.

Rauser nodded and reached for the chipotle sweet potatoes. “You’re the best cook I know, Mrs. Street. You can’t get food like this anywhere else.”

“Well, I love doing it,” Mom told him, and flushed. “Especially for a man with a good appetite. It’s a sensual thing, cooking. You can’t peel the skin off a mango without realizing that.”

I stared at my mother, suddenly aware that she was flirting with Rauser.

“Awkward,” Jimmy muttered.

My dad seemed not to notice. I glanced at the water-size glasses filled with rum and eggnog and wondered how many of those they’d both knocked back today.

“Wasn’t always true,” my father said. I had heard him say this for as long as I could remember about my mother’s cooking. It was generally his sole contribution to our holiday conversation. “When we first got married, it was so bad we prayed after we ate.”

“Howard,” my mother complained. “That joke was not funny the first thirty years you told it. I frankly do not know why you think it would be now.”

“I think it’s funny,” Miki said without looking up. She was examining the ceramic turkey-shaped napkin holder next to her plate.

Mother looked at her, then moved her violet gaze to my dad. “Howard, you have turned my only sister’s daughter against me. I hope you are happy,” she declared in her rich coastal accent—a betrayed Scarlett O’Hara. My mother seemed to become more southern as she became more of a martyr.

“Hey, Keye, where’s Diane?” Jimmy asked, probably hoping to change the subject. My brother was a natural peacemaker and an expert at diverting my mother. “I was hoping to see her while I’m here.”

I smiled. “She has a new thing.”

“Ahh,” Jimmy said, nodding. We had all watched Diane cycle through relationships for years. She was not the kind of person who could be happy alone.

Mother threw up her hands. “The one woman on God’s green earth you’re attracted to and she’s dumb as a box of hair.”

“Diane’s not dumb, Mother,” Jimmy said. “She’s sweet. And you will always be the only woman in my life.”

Mother softened instantly. “You’re just about the most handsome thing I ever laid eyes on. Do you know that?”

I had to agree. My brother was a pretty man, fine-boned, hazel-eyed, with deep chocolate skin. His heritage was a mystery. Nothing at all was known about his birth parents, but he had been a calming force in our high-strung family since he’d become part of it.

“You should come home more often,” Mother told him. “It’s not like it used to be. We have several African American families in the neighborhood now, and China must have opened some gate somewhere, because there are little Chinese girls running around everywhere.” She patted my father’s hand. “Howard, we were ahead of our time.”

I made a big show of eye-rolling and Jimmy had to look away. We had been in trouble at the table for most of our lives, my brother and I. Generally during the blessing I’d make him laugh, and Emily Street didn’t put up with laughing during the blessing.

It didn’t take long for Rauser to practically annihilate his game hen and start piling on seconds. He reached for another heap of green bean casserole. Mother made it southern-style with rich mushroom cream, bread crumbs, and fried shallots piled on top. Her casseroles were always a heart attack on a plate. A bowl of Crisco had less fat.

“Keye, don’t you ever cook for this man?” Mother asked. Then to Rauser, she said, “I did teach her a thing or two, you know.”

Rauser touched the napkin to his mouth. “We’re big on takeout,” he said, and turned and looked into my eyes, smiling. “And I’m just fine with that.” To my astonishment, he leaned over and very gently kissed the corner of my mouth. I felt his hand on mine under the table.

“Well, a man like you shouldn’t have to eat takeout,” I heard Mother say, but my eyes hadn’t left Rauser’s.

My father suddenly announced into the silence that followed, “I got something to show y’all after dinner.”

“He won’t let me set foot in that garage,” my mother complained, and wagged a finger at my dad. Rauser squeezed my hand, then let it go and turned his attention back to his plate.

So after dinner and coffee we all ambled out into the front yard and waited for the garage door to open. Rauser was next to me with his arm draped over my shoulders. I looked up at him and he kissed my forehead. I was dumbfounded. He’d been gooey like this all day.

Mother had her arm around Jimmy’s waist and he was holding Miki’s hand. The neighbors from the houses on each side came out and joined us while we waited for my father to reveal his latest project.

The garage door began to lift and there was a collective gasp as Dad’s new hobby came into view. All six hideous metal feet of it. We looked at it, squinted, looked at one another, and then looked at it some more. No one said a word.

My father seemed bewildered. “It’s a sculpture,” he told us. “An eagle with a rat in its mouth.”

Someone said, “Eeeww!” And finally Jimmy had the good sense to clap. Then we all clapped and cheered and my father took a formal bow.

“Damn fool,” Mother whispered, and covered her face with her hands. “It’s not enough that he spells out Leon on the roof every year in Christmas lights. Now this!”

My father was dyslexic but would not admit it.

“Feel like taking a walk?” Rauser asked me after the unveiling.

We strolled silently to the end of Derrydown and crossed Shadowmoor Drive. “By the way,” Rauser said as we walked over the wooden footbridge to the playground behind Winnona Park Elementary, “I broke it off for good with Jo.”

“Who’s Jo?” I said, and grinned at him.

“Keye, that night on the interstate when you went off the road, I thought my heart was gonna stop.”

We were standing near the swing set on the soccer field behind the school. Lights glared in the houses on Inman Drive and Poplar Circle, the two streets that bordered the school. It was an old neighborhood and full now of young families and renovated homes and new money. I saw a car pull alongside the park and cut its lights. Teenagers come here to make out. People park in the school lot at dusk and let their dogs run on the soccer field.

He turned and faced me, held both my hands. “I just always thought there’d be time. But that night I started to think more about how short time is. I’m a true jackass, Keye. I’ve waited too long to tell you that I love you.”

I looked at the lines at the corners of his eyes, the ones that always made him look as if he was about to laugh, so familiar to me, so comfortable. I looked at all that thick silver and black hair and those wide shoulders and realized I wasn’t numb anymore. Not even a little. I was on fire for him, this man who knew me so well and loved me in spite of it.

“When I called that night and Jo answered your phone …,” I started.

“I knew you were jealous as hell,” he said with a smirk.

“No way was I jealous.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “And maybe Jodie Foster will just walk right up to us right now, right here in the friggin’ park.”

“And? Where’s the part where she gives us a lap dance or shakes her rear end or something? I love that part.”

Rauser looked at me as if I’d just pulled down my panties in church. “It’s Jodie Foster, for Christ’s sake, Keye. Have a little respect.”

I leaned into him and we laughed. He wrapped his arms around me and I buried my face in his chest. He smelled like cold air and aftershave, and it crossed my mind that I hadn’t seen him light even one cigarette all day.

I heard the tiniest sound come from him, just a small oh, so faint, like a puff of air. I looked up at him and saw the oddest expression: shock, bewilderment.

“Rauser? What’s wrong?”

His brow furrowed and he took his hand away from his chest, held it out, palm up. Our eyes met just for a split second of recognition and horror. Blood. Jesus Christ! Blood! What the hell?

The second shot was just as silent and swift and pitiless, and ripped into Rauser’s temple. His legs folded and he fell. I dropped on top of him.

Oh God, oh God, oh God

I yanked off my scarf and coat with my right hand and found my cell phone with my left, used my thumb to punch in 911, then pressed my coat over the wound on Rauser’s chest and used my body to apply pressure.

“Rauser, talk to me. Rauser, can you hear me? Stay with me. Dammit, stay with me.”

There was too much blood. It was coming so hard it was pooling before soaking into the dry ground. Please God don’t let him die I’ll never drink again I’ll never complain I’ll never fight with my mother

I scanned the street while I lifted his head just enough to wrap my scarf around it. My heart was slamming against his weak pulse, his blood seeping into my coat, my skin.

“Nine-one-one, what is the nature and location of your emergency?”

“Officer down.” I think I shouted but I can’t swear to it. Time and sound and light, it all seemed to go haywire. I could hear my own breathing, like being underwater in a bathtub. “Winnona Park Elementary. The playground behind the school,” I told the operator.

My God, we’re in the playground. His arms were around me just a moment ago. Oh God—

“Unidentified shooter,” I said. My chest felt like a pallet of bricks had dropped on me. I was having trouble breathing normally. “The officer is Lieutenant Aaron Rauser, APD Homicide. Oh God, he’s barely breathing. Rauser, stay with me.”

I put more pressure on his chest. My scarf was soaked and crimson. The blood kept coming. The operator was trying to keep me on the phone. She wanted to know what I’d seen. She wanted to know my name. She needed me to be clear with the details. Was she sending officers into a dangerous situation?

“I don’t know where the shooter is. On Poplar, I think. My name is Keye Street. Oh God, just hurry.”

And then I saw it. Headlights blinked on and the car sped in reverse away from us, past the school, and spun out onto Avery.

I was still screaming at Rauser, crying. Stay with me. Rauser, I love you too. Stay with me.

“There’s a vehicle leaving the scene fast on Avery heading toward Kirk Road,” I told the operator.

“Can you make out the vehicle?”

“No, Jesus, it’s too dark. Where the fuck is the ambulance? Rauser, don’t you die on me.”

My phone beeped to let me know a text had arrived, and I held it away from my ear to look at the screen. Just habit pure and simple. I wasn’t thinking anymore, just reacting. I felt utterly removed, as if I were watching someone else’s shattered life, registering just this escalating, surreal sense of unreality.

My fingers were so slippery with Rauser’s blood I nearly dropped my phone.

It’s just the 2 of us now, the screen said. Warmest personal regards. W.