Sing Her Down, page 15
“I do if you’re ignoring evidence.”
“Chill, Lobos. I’m just giving it to you up front. I like my pretty girls pretty, not violent. Don’t get bent out of shape.”
Lobos dumps half a canister of Tic Tacs into her mouth so she can’t respond. Always jumping down her partner’s throat. Always expecting the worst. Always waiting for him to say the wrong thing. Because until Easton that’s what always happened.
Lobos looks at the mug shot of Florence Baum. Party girl after long night. California blonde with racoon shadows under her eyes. “I wonder—” she says through a mouthful of mints.
She scatters Baum’s case file in front of her. Her mind is on the crime scene photos. The strength and will it must have taken to slash a grown man’s throat. The hatred.
She’s trained to pretend she doesn’t understand the hatred, couldn’t possibly identify with the lawless rage that comes across her desk. Desensitization is the norm. Understanding is off the table.
But she does. Years in vice gave Lobos an education in rage, hatred, retaliation, the emotional and physical scars that goad and spur someone to violence.
Good lord, a few hours in the breakroom with her fellow officers at her old precinct was enough to do it too. It was all she could do to keep her anger in check. How many times?
Occupational hazard—getting raped on the job.
Trick of the trade for a trade of tricks.
Hard to prove he didn’t just take what he paid for.
On and on. Until Lobos slammed the coffee carafe down in anger, broke a glass.
Easy, Detective. Hos are criminals too. Don’t forget. Don’t let your heart bleed all over them.
They goaded her. They loved it when she snapped, even small things like sloshing coffee, tripping over a chair, dropping her cell. Any rise they got out of her was a win.
So Lobos tamped it down. Packed this rage on top of the other. Stored it away until it numbed her and she imagined that she’d stopped caring.
* * *
She sifts through the case file.
A fire. The man who was Baum’s accomplice had been found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder as a result of arson. She’d been involved. To what degree was unclear. You never know the truth behind a plea.
Arson is a hands-off crime. It’s a common juvenile crime—dumb kids not thinking about the deadly havoc a simple match might wreak. Spark a flame, end up with an explosion, even a pile of torched bodies, like nothing at all. Take down a hillside, a town, just like that. Take down half of the fucking California coast without getting your hands dirty. Without hardly lifting a finger.
A women’s crime?
Lobos slams down her fist, driving the thought away. No such thing.
Easton jumps back. She hadn’t noticed him looking over her shoulder. “Arson, huh?”
“You think she was in on it, don’t you?”
“So do you,” Easton says. “Because arson.”
* * *
What if? What if people are better liars than we thought? What if cops like Lobos made as many mistakes as the public thought they did? What if Florence Baum was more than a party girl who got in too deep?
What if, even back then, throughout the high-priced defense and perfect plea deal, she had been a killer all along?
That happens. Lobos knows how quickly things can slip. How one minute you are staunch in your independence, your confidence, your certainty that you are operating aware of the danger around you but not compromised by it. And the next you are in that danger or, in Florence Baum’s case, perhaps you are that danger.
When do you become the thing you’ve kept at bay?
When do you become the abused or the abuser?
When do you become someone frightened in your own home, rage-numbed and cowering?
When do you become the person for whom violence is easily within arm’s reach?
Trace it back. Every incident is a stepping-stone to this recent incident. Violence is rarely spontaneous. It almost never occurs in a vacuum.
Accessory to second-degree murder after the fact.
What came before?
Speeding tickets. Lots of speeding tickets.
Driving underage and unlicensed.
A few DUIs and disturbing the peace violations.
Before that.
College friends. High school friends.
Reported as missing, possibly abducted.
Further.
Two counts of possession of an illegal substance.
Trace it back.
Cops called to a party at the house in Hancock Park.
It’s in there somewhere. Find it. The moment that tipped the balance.
Everyone is a puzzle. The hardest thing to figure—what kind of puzzle you’re looking at. A knot? A maze? A game of Tetris, with pieces angling to fall into place?
“Lobos?”
Of everyone she’s ever worked with—or tried to work with—Easton is the most generous with her long pauses.
“Lobos, your phone.”
She’s back in the conference room. Back with Florence Baum’s mug shot and the crime scene photos—her case file and prison records. Lobos glances at her phone. Two missed calls and three messages.
“Her prison record.” She holds up the papers to Easton. “What did you make of it?”
“Your phone,” Easton says with a meaningful look at the table, where Lobos’s phone is buzzing again.
“Clean, right? Pretty damn clean for someone who does this.” She jabs a finger into a glossy from the bloody crime scene. “Too clean.”
“Are you going to take that?”
Lobos glances at the screen. She doesn’t recognize the number.
“The other woman,” she says, knocking back a mouthful of mints. “What about the other woman?”
Her phone is still buzzing. She lifts it to her ear. “Lobos.”
She’d expected official business—the lab with a hit on the other woman, a call from Perryville saying which other prisoner is MIA from the motel.
“Mrs. Lobos?”
“Detective Lobos.”
“Yes, Mrs. Lobos. I have your cat.”
Lobos tips a waterfall of mints into her mouth. “Who is this?”
“Mr. Franklin. Your cat, I have her.”
Lobos’s mind is nimble, flying from the immediacy of the present down a warren of past events or future eventualities. But right now, it refuses to leave this room—this present problem scattered in front of her on the conference table—and attend to whatever is summoning her over the phone.
“Mrs. Lobos, your cat, please. You will come home. You are coming? I cannot hold her.”
It clicks. “Franklin. The super. My super. Mr. Franklin.”
“I told you that.”
Lobos is on her feet, gathering her stuff. Then she’s out the door.
“Lobos? Everything okay?”
She turns, once more startled by her partner’s presence.
“My cat got out.”
Her mind—still tangled up in getting a foothold in Florence Baum’s past—is lagging behind her feet. She’s already on San Pedro before she pulls up short.
Her cat got out.
In her old life, in her old home with her husband and the fragile illusion of stability, the cat wandered frequently, disappearing for days at a time, out of sight and out of mind until she wasn’t.
But the apartment—the only way out is through the front door, which Lobos closed.
The day is muffled.
Two more blocks until home.
Lobos has watched this same story unfold too many times to count—victims, family members hoping that the reality hardening in front of them will dissolve. Women claiming: hedidntmeanit, hereallylovesme, hewontdoitagain.
There must be a reason. The cat slipped out without her noticing. She left the door unlocked and ajar. Her cleaning person had come unexpected.
Mr. Franklin is standing in the entrance with a cantankerous cat in his arms. “He was outside. He tried to come back.”
“She.”
“You should be more careful. This neighborhood is no good for cats.”
“Did you check the apartment?” Lobos asks.
“No answer. I called you.”
The super didn’t notice the scratch marks and dents on the lock.
The super didn’t notice the rattle of the door handle.
The lock is hanging on by a few pins.
As she opens the door, Lobos is still hoping a different story awaits. Break-ins and property crime are peaking. The pandemic has driven people out of town, making their houses easy pickings for thieves.
Those homes are not apartments on the upper floors of a building in Skid Row.
And yet, Skid Row is simmering with a new tide of desperation. Services scaled back. Shelters taxed to the limit. There’s no telling what risks people will take.
Lobos steps into her apartment. The feeling of violation is immediate.
The invasion is personal, not random.
And, of course, the last argument she’d had with her husband had been over the cat.
* * *
Her loft isn’t ransacked as much as it is rearranged—small instances of minor disturbances that her eye is trained to detect. There are larger ones too. Her papers are shuffled and scattered. Her bedside table drawer is ajar, the pillows and covers indented and wrinkled. The photos and postcards have been removed from the fridge. The glass on her two framed commendations spidered and shattered.
Lobos strips the bed and jams the blankets in the closet.
She puts the broken frames in a drawer.
She texts her housekeeper and begs her to come as soon as she can.
She jumps at a tap at the door. She draws her gun. It’s the super. “I’m just checking. You’re going to call the police?”
Lobos pulls her badge. “I am the police.”
She slams the door. Her cheeks are burning. She is the person to call. She is the person to ask for help.
* * *
For months—no, really, for years—her husband had retreated into his office, his only portal to the world, the blue glare of his monitors. Weeks passed without them exchanging a word. Lobos scurrying about the house as noiselessly as she could, worried about disrupting the silence that she seemed to realize was her only safety. And then there was the day she slowed as she passed the office, checking on her husband—just a quick glance.
That was all it had taken to break the dam.
You never fucking talk to me anymore.
You belittle me.
You diminish me.
He’d burst from the office, the accusations flying fast.
You’ve done this to me. You’ve reduced me to a coward in my own home. You’ve terrified me. I tremble before you. You’ve made me weak. You’ve made me scared.
Everything he’d done to her emanating from his mouth as if she’d been the aggressor.
Even inside these doors you wield your badge like it gives you power over me. I know what you’re up to. “One wrong step, mister, and I’ll have my friends from work sort you out.” You are a bully. My tormentor. You’ve brought me to my knees. You’ve ruined me.
If he’d only known that the last thing Lobos would ever do was let anyone on the force know what went on in her own home.
You’ve made me nothing.
You’ve enslaved me to this house while you work all sorts of hours, never coming home, never paying attention to me. You’ve left me with nothing except my computers. That’s all you’ve left me with.
For a few days Lobos believed his accusations, because maybe it was her fault. Maybe she did work too hard. Maybe after her husband’s accident, the one that led to his being fired, that led to his social exile, that led to his fealty to his monitors and the misinformation that dripped from them like poison, maybe it had really been up to her to make it right. Maybe it had all been her fault because she hadn’t been able to deal with his spiraling depression and slow-burn rage. Maybe.
She had tried. She had cooked dinner. She had ordered takeout. She had bought flowers and suggested an evening out.
Don’t pretend.
Don’t go through the motions.
Don’t act as if you love me when you hate me.
I know why you joined the force. It’s been in you since you were little—your defect, your pathology. It’s a scar from your childhood. You want to set the record straight. You want to bring men like me down. You’re a cop out of vengeance, not responsibility. Right? Right? Am I right? I’m right.
You don’t need to tell me.
I’m right and I know when I’m right.
Over and again. Every little thing weaponized against her. Her every move misread, translated into an attack. Everything she did recast by his hurt.
There’s no arguing with someone stuck in his own mud, drowning in the quicksand of his own making.
Nothing good enough. Everything poisoned. Every book she read. Every phone call she made. Every movie she chose—a direct condemnation of him and their marriage. Every restaurant, every word out of her mouth—an empty vessel in which to pour his anger, his hate. Everything designed to demonstrate her contempt.
Except. Except for one thing. In the face of it all, in the face of his moods, his paranoia, his rising anger, she was still there. She wasn’t leaving. She wasn’t running away. She stayed and stayed. While his rage filled the house, while his accusations and insults reached a fever pitch. While he tore her down.
She stayed and it angered him. Even that choice turned against her as a demonstration of her disdain. She stayed until he turned violent. And then she slunk away, tail between her legs. Everything her fault, even when she knew it wasn’t.
* * *
Lobos takes out her phone again. She knows the protocol—whom she must call to file a report about a B-and-E and a violated restraining order. She knows the stories too—women who failed to report their exes turning up. She knows what happens to these women, how they come across her desk as statistics or in crime scene photos.
She also knows what it feels like not just to lose control but to have control wrested from her. She knows what it’s like to seem weak exactly where she must be strong. She knows that she appeared this way to Easton when she’d let the man in the tent knock her down.
She punches in a number. The lab tech picks up on the fourth ring.
“Who is the other woman from the bus?” Lobos barks.
“I was just going to call—”
“I don’t care what you were about to do as long as you tell me who she is.”
There’s a long silence from the tech, long enough that Lobos wonders if she’s going to have to enlist Easton to do damage control.
“Diana Diosmary Sandoval.”
“Diosmary?”
“I think you heard me,” the tech says.
FLORIDA
She wakes before dawn. She smells of her surroundings. She smells foreign to herself.
There’s birdsong. A predawn chorus from tree to tree singing away the night. It’s not just one song, it’s many—different cadences and timbres, different pitches and rhythms. Rising and falling, calling and responding, louder, or so it seems, than any city noise.
The man is asleep in his tent under a web of dream catchers and bells.
She slips out slowly, making sure she doesn’t hit the chimes or peal the bells. He let her rest undisturbed. There’s a mercy there, Florida’s sure.
Now in the predawn light—the purpling hour where the dark goes gray—she walks east toward the first slip of sunrise.
A name rises from her subconscious yet again.
Renny.
What happens to people like Renny? The aging drunk. The long-toothed party boy. The burglar. The petty criminal. The sad gun for hire.
What happens when the bars close? The party ends?
What happens when you get old?
How old would Renny be now? Fifty? Fifty-five? He was older than them when he got tangled up with Ronna and Florence. Too old to be making time with sixteen-year-olds. Too old to do their bidding. Too old to care so much about their lives.
She and Ronna made a pact never to say Renny’s name again even though he might say theirs.
Ronna was dead.
Florida was halfway gone.
Maybe Renny was the answer.
How old is she now? Just shy of Renny’s age when they met. And although she and Ronna clung to him, they knew he was a dead end, someone who would eventually run his course as they raced on ahead to privileged pastures.
Look at her now, Renny to the max.
* * *
The sunrise is a slice of pink at the horizon past downtown. The pale light summons the long arms of the cranes that reach out over the city to grasp at nothing.
The light is fire on the mountains.
It will be swallowed and dampened by the marine layer hovering above the hills and penthouses.
This is the light’s first and last gasp.
Summer in Los Angeles can be such a tease.
* * *
Back into downtown, to an area of the city that could be mistaken for any city in Central America with its storefronts and stalls, its quinceañera dresses and piñatas and ornate floral displays for the recently dead. The dresses are now bagged in huge Saran-wrapped bundles and the flowers are faded and forgotten.
There’s one thing that stands out—a mural like the one of the tents rounding Western. This one showing the backs of protestors with raised fists clamoring for justice. Like the other mural, this one too seems to be in motion—the fists pumping the air, the placards, signs, and banners shaking.
Florida rubs her eyes.
She needs to sleep. She needs to eat. She needs the world to settle and solidify.
* * *
There’s a small chance that Renny still lives above his family’s old sweatshop between the Flower and Fashion Districts, where tents line the street—a city on top of a city.
