novelxo Half Moon Bay: Chapter 2
I didn’t know anything yet. I wasn’t at the bureau.
I was trapped in a chair, being held hostage.
“Please,” I said.
Pitiless eyes stared back.
“Please,” I repeated, my voice breaking. “I can’t do this any longer.”
The eyes scrutinized me. Are you truly this weak.
“It’s been two hours,” I said. “I can’t feel my arms.”
The eyes blinked lethargically. They were getting bored of me and my pleading.
“Thank God,” I whispered.
The eyes blinked once more, fluttered, then closed.
Slowly—I’d never known I was capable of moving so slowly—I rose from the glider, carried the baby to the crib, and set her down.
I tiptoed out.
I shut the door.
I ran.
—
I MADE IT to the kitchenette, seizing an abandoned tuna fish sandwich from the counter before pivoting sharply toward the futon—the kind of elegant, ankle-straining maneuver that, back in the day, would’ve thrown a defender off balance and gotten the crowd going.
Ooooh lookit! That right there is dis-re-speck-ful.
I stretched out, groping for the remote, bringing the sandwich to my mouth.
My right pocket vibrated.
A text from Amy.
everything ok
Before I could thumb a reply, more bubbles started popping up.
how many oz did she take
did she seem gassy
remember to mark the bag after u sterilize nipples
don’t you have patients I managed to write.
in 5 min
we’re fine don’t worry
it’s hard I miss her I’m thinking about her and my milk is letting down
I’m sorry. she misses you too
should I come home
The baby began to wail.
we’re totally fine I wrote, except that what I actually wrote was were totally fone, which my phone changed to we’re totally done.
done with what Amy wrote.
fine we’re 100% done
what’s going on is everything ok
fine fine duck this ducking shirt
The crying built steadily.
we are fine I wrote. promise
can u send me a pic
she’s in her crib I wrote, not lying.
when she wakes up
The crying filled the universe, blotted it out.
remember Amy wrote dr said we need to avoid day/night confusion
ok
expose her to sunlight
ok
don’t let her nap more than two hours at a stretch
not a problem I wrote.
I left the sandwich and the phone on the coffee table and went to Charlotte’s room.
She’d worked herself free of the swaddle, knocked the pacifier out of her mouth, and was now whacking herself in the head like a crazed penitent.
“My love,” I said. “Why must you do this to yourself?”
She went quiet and looked up at me.
I read somewhere that all babies start out resembling their fathers—a trick of evolution, meant to curtail paternal abandonment or infanticide. Almost certainly it’s apocryphal, and I was suffering from infatuation.
But.
The dark, floppy hair: mine.
The light-brown eyes, flecked with gold: mine.
Through the baby fat you could see the contours of her face, and they were mine, slightly feminized.
The way she liked to lie, curled up on her left side—that’s how I sleep. When I stood her in my lap I could feel her not merely bearing weight, but actively trying to jump, and I pictured her long body, drawn out like molten glass, reaching to haul in a rebound.
Her resting expression, studious and steady, fixing on a point of interest with unnerving tenacity. It’s the face I use to wait out a suspect withholding information.
When she smiles, though, it’s pure Amy. Starting on the right and working its way across, a slow-rolling wave of joy. All aboard the happiness train. That includes you.
Charlotte smiled.
I smiled back.
“Very funny,” I said. “You know what this is, right?”
“Ooh,” she said.
“That’s right. It’s Stockholm syndrome.”
“Ooh.”
“I agree.” I lifted her out of the crib. “Coffee sounds great.”
—
THE DISCOVERY OF potential human remains sets a protocol in motion.
The first call goes to local law enforcement. Not necessary: Sibley was already there.
The next step depends on the competence of the officers at the scene. Ideally, they touch nothing, back away, and secure the area. Bored or creative or stupid types have been known to poke around. I’ve had uniforms move a body for no other reason than to remove a bothersome sight.
We don’t like that.
Thankfully, Sibley was diligent by nature. Even her impulse to rummage in the dirt stemmed from a more fundamental desire not to fuck up.
Flo Sibley knew protocol.
The second call goes to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, Coroner’s Bureau. That Sunday, there were four deputy coroners on duty, none of whom were me. I was home, mixing formula.
On any other day, under any other circumstances, with any other officer running the show, I never would have gotten the case. But shrewd, diligent Florence Sibley—desperate to not be the person responsible for bringing a ninety-eight-million-dollar project to a standstill—did something that was, for her, unprecedented.
She broke protocol.
Instead of calling the Coroner’s Bureau, she phoned her boss, Captain Albert Yang.
He said, “Goddammit, Sibley.”
Not wanting to be that person, either, he called his boss, Donald Vogel, the chief of UCPD (“Goddammit, Al”), who called the UC Berkeley chancellor.
She didn’t pick up. She was at a conference in Zurich, serving on a panel about the changing nature of standardized testing. Nice timing.
The chief then called the executive vice chancellor, who said, “Oy vey.”
With no one to punt to, the chief hurried to reassure the vice chancellor that in all likelihood the bones would turn out to be nonhuman. And if they were human, that didn’t necessarily portend a lengthy hiatus. There might be a completely innocuous explanation.
“For God’s sake, Donny,” the vice chancellor said. “Beneath the stage?”
Vogel agreed the optics weren’t great. Still, after an initial in situ analysis, any investigation would take place offsite, at which point they could authorize work to resume.
The vice chancellor said, “Give me worst-case scenario.”
Vogel said, “Well, say the remains were Native American. You know.”
“I don’t. What happens then?”
“There’s a group takes care of it. They repatriate to whatever tribal land’s closest.”
“And then?”
“And then we get right back to work.”
“I asked for worst case.”
“In theory, they could ask to inspect the rest of the site. But—but, look, around here, it’s not uncommon to find bones. Happens all the time.”
“Exactly.” The vice chancellor was thinking of the myriad local development projects drowning in litigation. He was envisioning his brand-spanking-new mixed-use dormitory, smothered in crime scene tape.
“Native versus non-Native,” he said. “Who makes that determination?”
It dawned on the chief that there was someone he could punt to.
“The Coroner,” he said.
“Not an anthropologist?”
“They have people they work with.”
“Have they been informed yet?”
“I was going to call them next. I wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“I appreciate that,” the vice chancellor said. “You are aware that we happen to have an outstanding anthropology department right here on campus. Number two, worldwide.”
“That high? I didn’t realize.”
“Top five, at least, for the last several years. I’m confident this is a question they’re more than capable of answering.”
“Right.” The chief hesitated. “In my experience, the Coroner’s Bureau has individuals they prefer to use.”
“Of course. Of course. By all means, do what you need to do. I’m not suggesting otherwise. I’m saying from an informational standpoint. So that I—we—can know what to reasonably expect. You can understand, given everything at stake—people, and jobs—that it’s essential for us to stay a step or two ahead.”
“I understand.”
“It can’t hurt, either, to have our own expert on hand. As a supplement. To provide the scholarly perspective. You don’t mind if I make a quick call.”
“Sure,” the chief said. “How long will it take?”
“Not long at all, I should think.”
“What do you want me to tell the foreman?”
“Tell him,” the vice chancellor said, opening his contacts, “to enjoy his lunch.”
—
AMY SAID, “HOW do people do this?”
At four p.m., I was dressing for work. She was getting ready to shower. Steam billowed over the curtain.
The logic behind my transfer to night shift was that, by trading off with the baby, we could both return to work relatively quickly. The pregnancy was unplanned, which meant I’d banked precious little leave. Amy had more flexibility. She’s a psychologist, and the clinic where she works has a decent maternity policy. But she felt a duty toward her patients, caught in the throes of addiction and crisis.
She had a PhD from Yale. She refused to be mommy-shamed into submission.
With at least one of us at home round the clock with Charlotte, we could avoid paying for daycare.
That was the plan. Its success assumed that Charlotte would sleep at some point in every twenty-four-hour cycle.
So far, that had proven a piss-poor premise.
Most days Amy and I saw each other awake for five to ten minutes, purely to exchange information: How many ounces? Diapers? Burps? Naps?
“I don’t get it,” she said. Her blouse hung unbuttoned, nursing pads peeking up from her bra. Her face was puffy and her eyes half-closed and I loved her. “How does anybody function?”
I wrung out a smile, bent to lace my boots. “Do they? Function.”
“Somebody must. Planes aren’t crashing. The power’s on.”
“Most of the time.”
“True. But there must be at least a few people out there capable of doing their jobs.”
“They don’t have kids.”
Amy laughed. This was the most substantive conversation we’d had in weeks, and it took me a moment to realize she was also crying.
I stumbled over to embrace her.
She rested her forehead against my chest. “I feel like I’m failing at everything.”
“You’re not.”
“It’s like, rather than be a good mother or a good doctor, why not be shitty at both?”
“Honey. Stop. You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you.”
“I feel like a dairy cow.”
“You’re the most beautiful cow west of the Mississippi. Blue ribbon.”
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “Today in session, I caught a patient staring at my chest. I’ve been working with him for a year, and he’s never been anything other than appropriate. But all of a sudden he’s gawking. He’s not even bothering to hide it. I’m trying to decide whether to say something when I feel something wet, and I look down and there’s this huge stain on my blouse. I put the pad in wrong, I’m leaking everywhere.”
“Oh no. What did you do?”
“I said, ‘I’m so sorry, please excuse me,’ then I ran into the bathroom and changed into my spare shirt.”
“Good for you, having a spare shirt.”
She shook her head. “It was dirty. I spent the whole day smelling bad.”
“I like how you smell.”
“You work at a morgue. I’m so tired, Clay.”
“I know.”
“We’re never going to sleep again, for the rest of our lives.”
“Possibly.”
She looked up, a brilliant woman terrified by a wisecrack. “You really think so?”
“No, I don’t.”
“It’s true, though. She’s never going to learn to sleep.”
“She’ll learn.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because everybody does. And she does sleep.”
“For ten minutes. In the car seat.”
“Proof she can. It’s just a matter of stretching it out.”
“What if she only ever sleeps in car seats? What if we have to keep buying her a series of bigger and bigger car seats?”
“Then we’ll send her off to college in a giant custom-made car seat.”
“Can we afford that?”
“College, or the car seat?”
“Either. Both.”
“Probably not.”
“Why is everything so fucking expensive?”
“She can go to trade school.” I kissed the top of Amy’s head. “Learn to weld.”
“I want her to be able to do whatever she wants.”
“She will.”
“I want her to be happy.”
“She is.”
“Every time I leave I think She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you. Are you kidding? To her, you’re God.”
“Plenty of people hate God.”
“She loves you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because—”
The monitor flared. We didn’t need a monitor. We lived in a four-hundred-forty-square-foot mother-in-law cottage. You could stand in the kitchenette and play catch with someone in the bathroom.
Charlotte could not yet sit up, let alone walk. But we’d put plugs in the outlets and latches on the cabinets; padded the corners of the coffee table with foam.
To enter the cottage, you climbed two bricked steps. I had installed a gate at the top to prevent our daughter—who had only recently discovered her feet—from somehow opening the door, strolling outside, and tumbling down to the garden pavers to receive a fatal head injury.
Shields on the stove knobs. Safety tassels on the blind cords. The number for Poison Control, taped to the fridge in forty-eight-point font.
I kept my unloaded Sig Sauer at the back of the highest kitchen cabinet. I’m six-foot-three, with a seventy-eight-inch wingspan, and I had to stretch to get it. Ammunition lived inside the bread machine we’d gotten as a wedding present and never once used.
Now our unneeded monitor crackled and flashed. Amy shuddered against me, wiped her face again, and trudged to the bedroom.
Hello, honey pie.
A lull, before the baby smelled her and resumed howling with a vengeance.
I’m so happy to see you.
I finished getting ready and stuck my head in the bedroom.
Amy smiled and put a finger to her lips. The baby had passed out on the nursing pillow.
Many cops make sure to always kiss their loved ones goodbye. Just in case. Sometimes it devolves to superstition. Forget and drive off, you need to turn the car around.
I don’t do any of that. It might seem odd, given how we’d transformed our home into a temple of parental neuroses. But there’s the risk to my daughter and the risk to me, and they don’t compare, either statistically or emotionally. It’s not even close.
Each year, two hundred cops die in the line of duty. That includes shootings, stabbings, vehicular crashes, aircraft mishaps, environmental toxin exposure, animal-related incidents, and heart attacks during physical fitness assessment.
Each year, six thousand children under the age of one die in accidents.
Two-thirds of them by suffocation.
One in seven in a motor vehicle accident. One in fourteen due to drowning.
Of all the jobs in law enforcement, mine is among the safest. I can’t do it properly if I’m walking around burdened by fear.
If we’re going to worry about remote possibilities, everyone leaving for work should kiss their loved ones goodbye.
You can die merging onto the freeway. You can choke on your take-out salad.
I’ve seen it all.
Either live in thrall to statistics or make them your friends.
Standing in the doorway, watching my wife and daughter, I marveled at how vibrant they appeared, and I engraved their image in my mind, an icon to clutch close as I left them behind and descended to the realm of the dead.