John was late getting in to the squad room Monday morning after a not-so-restful weekend of on-and-off arguing with Lizzie. "I kept reminding myself to tell you about your mom, Johnny, I swear I did! And then something would happen and I would forget!" At least he had figured out a way to locate the elusive Cabbage Clay: the last thing he'd done Friday was stop at a mailing services company and mail him a large cardboard box sealed in red tape. He'd put in a couple of short curtain rods and some packing peanuts so it would rattle.
John pulled his blue '72 Olds 442 convertible into a space and cut the ignition. Mike Little's Monte Carlo sat in another space directly across the parking garage.
John could have handled the situation the other day differently. He could have—no, should have—waited for a better time to tell Mike ... well, pretty much the same thing, but in a much calmer manner. Saying that in a quiet moment, he supposed, was probably the best way to approach things. Which he would definitely have to do, since his desk stood right next to Little's.
Mike Little sat studying a file, his chair swiveled to face the wall and away from John's desk. John walked in and tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, Mike ..."
Mike shot around as fast as a chopper blade, poked his finger in John's face, and hissed, "You are not here! You. Are. Not. Here!" And snapped around and continued reading his file.
John blinked, and noticed Savonn peering over from his desk in the corner. With the eye contact, Savonn gave him a frown, a head shake in the negative, and a quick "cut" gesture across his throat.
John felt like a kindergartner seated next to the class bully. Was it permissible to change desks? He sat down to his own files and found, on top of the pile, an unexpected, and unwelcome, name.
He got up, searched for Arlene, and found her in the corridor. "Sarge! Why've I got the Greenhouse file back again?"
"The father refused psychiatric treatment, and now Daughter is saying he tried to kill her." "Father" sounded like "fahtha" and "daughter" sounded like "dawta." "You caught it the first time around, so it's all yours. Oh, and John. Meet me back in my office and brief me about you and Little on that case. I haven't got a clue what the deal is with Little even after reading your report. I've got to run upstairs. Back in a few."
Arlene hurried off. So much for John's attempt at not mentioning specific problematic actions in the report.
John wandered back into the squad room, stopping to lean over Savonn's desk and murmur, "What's up with Little?"
"Light duty pending I-don't-know-what," Savonn mumbled back, eyes glued to his computer screen. "Bad mood. He needs those yellow hazardous waste signs over there, with the triangles."
***
After John spilled his guts to Arlene—and felt like the world's biggest weasel—a trip to the evidence room was in order. John signed out Tyler Greenhouse's .44 Smith and Wesson revolver and the evidence bag of rounds and brought them back with him to his desk. The serial number matched what he had in the file. Six rounds; things appeared to be all present and accounted for.
Animosity rolled across the space at him like an invisible tidal wave, although all John could see was the back of the tall, ergonomic chair Little had purchased and brought in himself. The prospect of filing more paperwork and going out to interview these people again loomed, like a tax audit or an annual physical. Something about Tyler Greenhouse, the manipulative feel of that entire afternoon, pressed on John like a giant hand. He turned the rounds idly over in his fingers, procrastinating.
John held up one round—a lead semi-wadcutter on a silver case. The head stamp was Winchester Western, but this round had to be a misfire. The primer had been clearly and deeply struck by the firing pin. When did Greenhouse actually fire?
He held the round between his thumb and forefinger and shook it next to his ear. The powder rustled around inside like pepper in a shaker. Just as he thought the bullet could be a light target reload, he felt the projectile shift in the casing. Startled—reloaders always resize and crimp their reloads—he twisted the projectile like a bottle cap. It moved, but he couldn't get it to come out.
He clamped his teeth on the lead bullet, and with a twist the bullet popped free of the casing. A sweet taste exploded across his tongue.
He poured out the powder. White granules sprinkled across his desk. John glanced at the head stamp again and jotted the number down on a sticky note. He slipped it into his notebook.
The remaining five bullets all had the same head stamp and dented primers. He decided to leave the rest of the "taste testing" to a lab tech.
***
Donna Greenhouse answered her door in a flowing orange tent that did a lot for her auburn hair and her blue eyes. Her extra sixty pounds looked less obvious in it, but nothing could ever completely hide that much weight. John prepared to pull out his badge, but she stopped him in a whisper.
"Detective Robin! I remember you. Come on in. Dad's asleep."
The glow of daylight from the floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding door looked as blue today as it had the first time he was here. Like a strange alien light at the end of a dark tunnel. At least, that was what the place felt like.
"I was having some coffee out on the balcony. Want some?"
"Sure, that'd be fine. I have to talk to you and your father, but we don't have to wake him up immediately."
Donna opened the sliding door and they stepped out into blinding sun; the traffic at Fourteenth and Dock sounded as if it were right on the balcony with them. Eighty-three degrees was hot for early April, but a cool breeze off the James made it possible to stay in his jacket. A little coffee pot stood on a wrought iron table on the balcony, with a blue flowered mug, a pint carton of cream, a glass container filled with packets of artificial sweetener, and a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal. Two slices of dewy cantaloupe sat on a little glass plate, garnished with several strawberries and a handful of fat blueberries.
Donna hastened back inside and returned with a glass of ice water and a white mug for John. He sat, poured himself coffee, and took a sip. Sumatra. It tasted like Lamplighter's. John practically lived at that specialty coffee shop.
"So, are you okay up here?" he asked. "I'd be worried, with my father threatening to kill me. We're not going to have to make another emergency trip up here, are we?"
She sat and picked up her oatmeal spoon. "I don't think so. He's kind of mellowed out since his trip to the hospital." She shrugged one shoulder. "That's what he wants me to think, anyway. BP's can do that, you know. Act perfectly normal while inside they're having a complete meltdown. Then, the next thing you know, bloo-ey!" She shook her head and sat back and chewed her oatmeal, her gaze cutting across the railroad tracks to the river.
John quirked his eyebrows and said, "Bipolar disorder?"
She leaned forward, her shoulders curving toward him as if to conceal a secret from the breeze. "Borderline personality disorder. Finally, a diagnosis! I always knew something was really wrong. Okay, maybe not when I was really little, but from the time I was eight or nine, I knew."
"Borderline personality disorder. I've never heard of that."
Donna swallowed a bite of cantaloupe. "I've read and read, and the more I read, the surer I was. It's a serious mental illness. I'm just thanking God that emergency room doctor listened to me. Maybe my dad has a chance now." Her freckled cheeks curved in a smile under light peach blush.
So, do these people do crazy stunts like put fake rounds in a gun and scare people shitless? John suspected that question was better saved for a department psychologist or someone at Crisis, although with Donna's air of confidence and pride, he half-believed he could get the answer right here. John flashed back to certain perps he'd known, people who had bragged about their crimes once they'd been caught. "So, what exactly is borderline personality disorder?"
Donna sat back in her chair. "The main problem is in his brain, the area that regulates emotion. People with BPD have huge emotional swings we don't have, in response to everyday things, things you and I wouldn't give a second thought to. And that causes all kinds of other problems. There's nine major symptoms of BPD, but you only have to have five of the nine to get the diagnosis. And, like, my five could be almost completely different from your five, so two people can act completely different and still have BPD."
"When did you know your father was ill?"
She rolled her eyes and blew an exasperated breath with her lower lip that sent her fluffy bangs skyward. "Oh, he was awful when we were kids. I don't know how my mother stood it for as long as she did. Always screaming at everybody! You couldn't win, or do anything to suit him. He was always right, never wrong, even about things like what kind of music or movies to like. I was the 'favorite' kid until my brother left home, then he needed someone new to pick on. My brother doesn't even speak to our dad anymore. Dad drank a lot and ..." Donna lowered her voice as if someone could overhear past the noise of Fourteenth Street below. "My mom doesn't talk about it, but I think there were other women. A lot of other women."
"So, what happened recently to make you think there was a severe problem?"
"Oh! What scared me was—" she stopped and looked at the sliding glass door as if she needed X-ray vision to see into the living room. "What scared me was—you know there's been reports that some of the businesses up Cary Street, around the Fountain Bookstore were having their windows kicked in? The few that don't have bars up?"
John nodded. "Right."
"I kept having to buy Dad more socks. They just kept disappearing. Then one day, one of his slippers looked like it had blood in it. So—" She leaned forward and whispered. "One time he fell asleep on the couch, and I crept over and lifted the blanket and looked at his feet. He had these jagged, healing cuts all over the tops of his feet! He walks around there, in the evenings. Late at night. We'd get into these fights and he'd storm out for a walk. The doctor told him to get exercise. He hates a treadmill. He'd rather go out."
John swallowed his coffee with a gulp. "And you think he's the one kicking the windows in? Do people with borderline personality disorder do that?"
"The average BP who cuts themselves is a young girl or woman. But there aren't many diagnosed male BP's, so ..." Donna shrugged. "But one thing I do know: If BP's are cutting themselves, they're really sick. It's the ones too disturbed to hold down a job who do that. And he's been so stressed out about not being able to work. Saying his life is all over and he's no good for anything anymore. And putting me down all the time because I don't have a job in my field. I can't seem to explain to him—"
Her blue eyes snapped alert and checked the sliding door. "Please, I haven't said a word. I don't think he knows I know."
John said, "No worries," and glanced out across the river. It wasn't his job to come up here and gawk at the magnificent view, so he hadn't, but now he allowed his curiosity full rein. Anyone could walk the Canal Walk or cross the footbridge to Belle Isle, but to actually live here, six stories up ...
Beyond a lush, velvet lawn with two young trees just beginning a springtime riot of tiny pink flowers, the mighty James, five miles wide at its mouth back home and about a fifth of a mile across here, tumbled down the fall line in thousands of tiny whitecaps. The skeletons of trees spread their bony hands skyward; here and there a few yellow-green leaf buds peeped out, tiny pom-pons cheering the coming of spring.
Recent rains and melted snows made the river swollen and muddy, but up here no soothing rushing sounds got through. The growling of engines and the banging of tractor trailers echoed off the floodwall and the expressway like the slamming of giant steel doors.
"You have a nice view up here," John said.
Donna smirked and sat back. "I don't know. These are the only sixth floor units without a big terrace. It's right over the railroad tracks, and you can hear how noisy it is up here."
She turned and glanced up over her shoulder. "I want to put some flowers up here, though. The seventh-floor neighbors have nice ones." Indeed, just beyond her head, orange, purple, and yellow flowers nodded from window boxes on the upstairs railings.
John figured he'd established enough of a rapport. "Donna," he said, "I need to ask you a couple of questions before your father wakes up. You know we have to file a felonious assault charge here, and I have to make sure we have all the substantiating facts. You know what will happen if we file these charges, right? You know this will end up in court?"
"Right." Donna shooed a fly away from her cantaloupe.
"Your father is going to end up with jail time, or court-mandated psychiatric care, or possibly both."
Donna made a birdlike little nod.
He felt the urge to test her; he thought he knew what she'd say. "Just be aware, you can drop the charges at any time before this gets to court."
She stared at him with round hollow eyes. "I don't want to drop any charges. He needs—he needs help." Her voice broke a little, but she didn't drop her gaze.
She'd loaded the dummy rounds, John felt certain, probably because she was afraid he'd shoot her, or himself. No matter; Tyler was on the hook whether he knew the gun was loaded or not.
If that was true, though, why was she so unconcerned about staying here? Of course, she'd explained that, but John got more "cavalier" than "fear" off her attitude toward her father both before and after the incident. She ought to seem more relieved, he thought. She wasn't.
He pulled out his notebook and a pen. "Tell me, was your father's weapon kept loaded?"
Her brows knitted into what struck John as genuine puzzlement. "You know, I don't know," she said. "I know he used to take it to target practice, but I just never thought much about it. Did he unload it after, or not?" Her glance followed something over his shoulder, probably a gull or a heron. "I don't know."
"But you were in fear for your life?"
Her eyes returned to him with an expression that looked—self-aware. The tone of her voice rang as true as any actress's, but he saw a flicker of consideration in her eyes, finding the emotion just a second too late.
"Hell, yeah!" she said, her eyes catching up with her voice. She pushed herself back in her seat, credibly incredulous. "If I pulled a gun on you this second, wouldn't you worry that it was loaded? I mean, even if, say, you saw me unload it last night, wouldn't you be going, ‛Um, I think she unloaded it?'"
John said, "I get your point. Have you ever personally loaded or fired that weapon?" He critiqued himself in the middle of his interview; bad placement of the question. Coming off the emotion she had just conjured up, it would be easy for her to lie.
"No," she said, and her face and voice were completely genuine.
"When did you first see him with it that day?"
"I guess, I don't know ... fifteen minutes before you got here? Thank God the door was open and someone called, because I was afraid to go for the phone."
But you were standing there broadside when I got there, and then you jumped behind the counter. You knew I had real rounds. John made his face a mask.
She went on. "I had said something to my mother's sister about how worried he was about losing this place because he can't work. And she repeated it to him on the phone that morning, and he went off. Boy, did he go off!" She shook her head. "With my dad, you're supposed to look perfect to outsiders at all times. He'd moan and moan to his own sister about it, because he wants the sympathy, but my mom's family is ‛the enemy' since the divorce. They're supposed to be envious of us, not concerned about us. So he's going off about, ‛How dare you talk about our business?' and I'm like, ‛Good God, Dad, when you have to move out of here everyone will know anyway.'"
She rolled her eyes. "He fell in love with this location when they were building it. He was consulting for the Reynolds plant and saw this going up and just had to live here. He even had to brag to you. He hasn't made seven figures in a while. He's done it several years, but not lately. So we're arguing, and he disappears into the bedroom, and the next thing I know, he's got the gun."
John digressed out of curiosity. "Why can't your father work? He didn't look like a stroke victim to me."
"The stroke damaged his memory and comprehension. He does okay in everyday life, but he's a mechanical engineer. He just isn't able to think and problem-solve well enough to do his job anymore. They're hoping therapy will help in time, but it may not."
"Sorry to hear that. Can you tell me who loaded his gun last, and when?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know when he last used it. Before his stroke, for sure."
John jotted notes, keeping his eyes on his pad. Trying to look deceptively bored. "He can still load the gun, right? After the stroke? He knows how to do that?"
"I can't imagine that he wouldn't. He can load the dishwasher."
John raised his gaze to lock with hers. "Did you believe it was loaded with real rounds?"
Her eyebrows seesawed from "over-the-nose annoyed" to a raised "oh-shit." She recovered in an instant, russet brows angling into an angry V. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"All you have to do is answer the question," he said with a lazy half-shrug, as if the question were routine. "Just the facts, as they say." "You can't shoot my dad! You can't shoot my dad!" echoed in his mind.
Of course not. Because he couldn't shoot me.
"What else would it be loaded with?" she said. Her eyes snapped to the slider. "Dad's awake."