THE OPEN DOOR TO OUR MOTEL ROOM. The ambulance pulling into a parking bay as I am thrown in the back of a patrol car. The hand on the top of my head, pushing me down through the door. Me yelling, smacking my forehead against the window and the partition that separates me from the front seat. Screaming her name again and again until both rear doors fly open and fat deputies pile into the space on either side of me, leading with batons and elbows and fists. They drag me out onto the concrete. You’re resisting, they shout, for the benefit of some dash or chest cam. I am not resisting. I am just screaming. I am screaming out my grief and loss in the blackness framed by the doorway. I am screaming at the crowd of jostling cops.
Through the kicks and punches, I dimly realize they are setting a scene, erecting a legal framework within which I can be killed.
—Stop going for our guns!
It will be quick, a justifiable homicide. Brave officers acting in self-defense. I flinch from the next thing, the bullet. When it comes, I am going to go through that doorway into the dark. I will push my way to the front of the crowd.
Excuse me. Excuse me.
But instead of shooting me, they just hit me some more with their nightsticks and then bounce my head off a concrete parking divider.
After that they drive me downtown.
Leonie, oh Leonie. I remember the car in motion, an intermittent orange flare against my eyelids. I remember getting to the precinct, half-supported by two uniforms into an office where they took my prints and wiped my cuts and bruises with a greasy cloth fished out of some sink. They cleaned me up that much for my mug shot; after it was taken I waited as the arresting officers were seen by a doctor, who took more pictures, documenting their not immediately obvious bruises and contusions. I was told there would be assault charges, resisting arrest. I sat there, hunched on the bench. The entire night shift stopped what it was doing to give me the hard stare.
It was a relief to be put in an interview room, a solid door shut behind me. Cuffed to a table, I waited and stared at the peeling green paint on the walls, the scuff marks at the foot of the door, suggesting that it was frequently kicked open or shut. Slowly the room began to contract, to compress itself around me. I could feel the pressure on my eardrums. Against my will, I began to tune in to what was there, just at the limit of perception. I tried not to hear it, the static sorting itself, separating out into syllables. No conversation held in that room had ever stopped happening. The interrogations just carried on.
Why did you. Where is. Don’t give me that. Captain, have mercy.
She was dead. It was the only possibility. They would only behave like this towards me if she were dead.
Murder.
I’d left to get a bottle. A bottle of tequila and a bottle of Sprite. I’d left her alive, watching television.
Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep I may dream things cause your heart to weep.
I had left her alive.
Through the crowd, through the door, into the darkness. What was in the room? Leonie was in the room. All of them, staring at her, so cold, so fair.
Murder.
What was it they wanted so very much to see?
A detective came in, carrying a phone directory and a cup of coffee. Lacking a free hand, he kicked the door shut with his heel. He was a bulky man in his forties or fifties, with a broad blunt face and thinning sandy hair. He registered nothing much as he looked at me. A man eyeing his inbox. He put the coffee and the fat book down on the table, scraped a chair across the floor and flopped down on it, wearily loosening a button on his suit jacket. He smiled to show a mouthful of widely separated teeth, then the smile faltered, to be replaced by a look of consternation.
—I forgot my notebook and pen. I need my notebook and pen, right?
He waited for a response. The pause lengthened. He raised his eyebrows and nodded encouragingly.
—I guess, I said.
—Right. Because you’re going to make it easy and write out what happened. College guy like you, am I right?
A telephone directory.
—But you haven’t told me anything. What happened to Leonie?
—Aw, shucks. Really? Don’t be like that.
—Like what?
—All what happened boss what happened. Trust me, things will go quicker if you write it out.
When did I last see a telephone directory?
—I need to know what’s happened to Leonie. Is she OK? Is she in the hospital? Please, what’s going on?
—So you don’t know what’s going on?
—I keep telling you.
—That’s all you want to say to me? That you don’t know what’s going on?
—That’s right.
—Are you fucking kidding me?