Trauma Read online

  Bonnie was having a difficult time even pretending to smile. Jesus, she thought. Submissive eyelash thickener?

  It took Doris Feinman an hour and a half to choose what she wanted and to place an order. Ralph would be reasonably pleased, over $13,500’s worth. But she hadn’t taken any of the Millennium Face-Glow. She had tried it on one of her assistants and said it made her look as if she were dead.

  The Goodman Apartment

  She was driving over to Hoffman Drugs when her pager bleeped. It read MEET MUNOZ 8210 DE LONGPRE SOONEST. “Dammit,” she said. She took a left on Spaulding Avenue, and then a right, and five blocks farther along De Longpre she saw two police squad cars and a silver Oldsmobile with a red gumball on the roof. A straggle of neighbors and passersby were hanging around outside—the hyenas, Bonnie called them—sniffing out tattered scraps of excitement from somebody else’s tragedy.

  She climbed out of the car, and one of the officers lifted the police tape so that she could duck underneath. “The cleanup lady, right? Rather you than me, sweet buns.” Bonnie gave him the finger.

  A sharply sloping concrete forecourt led down to the basement garage. The building itself was a three-story block of apartments, stucco-fronted and painted a rusty ocher. A flight of red tiled steps led up to the front entrance, where Lieutenant Dan Munoz was leaning against the railing, smoking a bright green cigar and talking to Bill Clift from the coroner’s department.

  Dan saluted Bonnie as she climbed the steps. “Hi, Bonnie. You got here quick.” For a police detective, Dan was almost laughably handsome, with curly chestnut hair and a clean-cut, movie-star jawline. It was his eyes, though, that Bonnie tried to avoid. They were brown and liquid, and she always felt that he knew everything about her just by looking at her—from the recipe she was planning to cook that night right down to the washing instructions on the label of her panties.

  Today Dan wore a blue silk suit and a splashy red-and-yellow necktie, and he smelled of Giorgio aftershave. He could have been going out to a swanky dinner instead of examining a crime scene. Bill Clift, on the other hand, was freckled and scruffy with a sagging gray linen coat and eyeglasses that had been glued and reglued and finally taped around the bridge with a grubby Band-Aid.

  Dan put his arm around Bonnie’s shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “If you get on the scene any faster than this, you’ll be able to roll up the rugs before they start murdering each other.”

  Bonnie nodded toward the half-open front door. “What’s the deal?”

  “Come inside and I’ll show you.”

  “I don’t know. I’m real tied up at the moment. I only stopped by because I was on my way to Hoffman’s.”

  “Well, it’s a shocker, believe me. Three kids—four, seven and nine. The scenario is, the mother’s away, seeing her elderly folks in San Clemente. The nanny’s been given the night off. The father goes to the kids’ bedroom and shoots them at point-blank range with a pump-action shotgun. Then he goes back to the living room, puts the gun in his mouth and redecorates the wall with the back of his head.”

  “Jesus,” said Bonnie. “Any idea why he did it?”

  “Just flipped, I guess. Didn’t leave a note or nothing.”

  “Where’s the mother now?”

  “Still here.” He flipped open his notebook. “Mrs. Bernice Goodman, age thirty-six. That’s why I called you. She’ll be staying with friends this afternoon, but she’s pretty anxious to get the place cleaned up as soon as she can.”

  Bonnie hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “Okay—let me look it over. Are you and your people all done here now?”

  “Sure, we’re done. Bill, you’re done, aren’t you?”

  “All bagged up and ready to roll.”

  Dan ushered Bonnie through the front door into a small L-shaped hallway. The walls were cluttered with group photographs of bowling teams, their eyes red, like werewolves, from the camera flash. In one corner stood a large, prickly pot plant and next to it a table crowded with decorative brass paperweights.

  “In here,” said Dan. “This is the living area. Well, dying area, I should say.”

  Bonnie found herself in a large, cream-painted room. The vertical slatted blinds had been closed, so the light was muted. The room was furnished in a modern, minimalist style, cream leather upholstery and glass coffee tables. The only exception was an antique-type display cabinet in one corner, fussily filled with rosettes and silver cups and bowling trophies.

  Although it was so plain, the room had an atmosphere that made Bonnie draw in her breath, as if she had suddenly stepped up to her chest in cold water. Most of the trauma scenes she attended were weeks or even months old. But here the feeling of violent death was so recent and so overwhelming that for a split second she thought that she would have to turn around and leave and never come back.

  “Come on,” Dan coaxed her, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  On the opposite wall hung a large abstract painting: a blue triangle and a white square and a small red dot. It was titled Serenity III. On the facing wall there was a wide, fan-shaped spray of blood and pinkish clots of brain tissue, and a roughly oval hole in the plaster that Bonnie could have fitted her fist into, surrounded by dozens of tiny black speckles. Pellet holes.

  The cream leather couch was spattered and smeared all over with blood. As Bonnie walked around it, she could see that the white rug immediately behind it was stained with a glutinous ruby pool. The children’s father had shot himself, and what was left of his head had fallen backward so that, juglike, it had emptied his blood all over the floor.

  Dan came and stood beside her. “Sure made his mark, didn’t he?”

  Bonnie nodded “He surely did. But that’s the difference between men and women, isn’t it? When women kill themselves, they always make sure they do it on a wipe-clean surface, or in the bathtub. Men—what do they care? They sit right down in the middle of the living room and bang.”

  “You sound like you take it personal.”

  “Do I? Maybe I do. It’s like adding insult to injury, don’t you think? It’s like the man saying, ‘Not only does my life not matter anymore, and not only does our relationship not matter anymore, but the home we built together, that doesn’t matter anymore, either. Who cares if I spray my head all over it?’”

  She looked up at him and said, “Yes, Dan, I do take it personal. I’m a woman. And besides, I have to clean it up.”

  “You won’t get that bloodstain out, will you?”

  Bonnie hunkered down and ran her hand through the carpet pile. “This is wool and nylon mix. The trouble with wool is, it leaches up blood, and it won’t let go. I have a new enzyme solvent I could try … but you’re going to be left with a brownish mark here no matter what.”

  She stood up. “I guess it depends on the widow’s insurance. She could always shift the couch back to cover it.”

  Dan raised one eyebrow.

  “What?” she said. “I’m trying to be practical, that’s all.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Dan, not every woman can afford to recarpet her home just because her husband was selfish enough to off himself in the middle of the living room.”

  “I guess.” He looked around and shook his head. “It just makes you wonder what went through his mind, doesn’t it?”

  Bonnie nodded toward the wall. “That was his mind. Look at it now.”

  “So what do you think that means, when it comes to the bigger picture?”

  “I guess it means that there’s a whole lot of difference between who we are and what we’re made of.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Except that I’m relieved to see that this wall has a washable eggshell finish, so the blood won’t have soaked right through to the plaster.”

  “Well, good deal,” said Dan. They looked at each other, and they both knew that their hard-cooked offhandedness was only an act. Nobody who walked into this house and saw what had happened here could fail t
o be horrified. The muted light, the blood, the terrible emptiness. The endless droning of a single fly.

  “How about the bedrooms?” asked Bonnie.

  The Bedrooms

  A corridor led from the left-hand side of the living room to the master bedroom, the bathroom and three smaller bedrooms. The smallest bedroom contained a single bed, a desk and a bookshelf. The walls were decorated with pinups of Brad Pitt and Beck. Out of the window there was a view of the side of the next-door garage, with a lone deflated basketball on the roof.

  “Nanny’s room,” said Dan.

  He took her through to the end bedroom. It was here that the four-year-old boy and the seven-year-old girl had slept on bunk beds. There was a brown, metallic smell in here—the smell of recently dried blood. The room was prettily wallpapered in blue stripes and knotted pink flowers. A blue-painted toy chest stood under the window, crammed with Barbies and doll’s-house furniture and model automobiles and Star Wars figures. On the walls were framed prints of The House That Jack Built by Randolph Caldecott.

  The bunk beds, however, were almost impossible to look at. Both children had been fast asleep in Disney comforters with pictures of the Lion King on them, and these had been blown into bloody blackened shreds, like monstrous flower blossoms. The Lion King still smiled benevolently at Bonnie out of the carnage, here and there. The mattresses of both beds were completely soaked in crimson. There was blood all the way up the walls, and two umbrella-shaped sprays of blood on the ceiling. It was no consolation at all that the children couldn’t have known what hit them.

  Bonnie picked up a Raggedy Ann doll, only to find that it had a thin string of unidentifiable human tissue draped across its face. Dan was watching her so all she did was put it down again.

  “You know, we have a whole lot in common, you and me,” said Dan.

  “You think so?”

  “Maybe we should meet for a drink one evening, talk.”

  Bonnie turned. “Why would you want to talk to me, Dan? I’m a thirty-four-year-old mother with only three topics of conversation. Cookery, cosmetics and cleaning up messes like this.”

  She could see that Dan wanted to say something to her, but he didn’t. He turned and led the way into the nine-year-old’s bedroom. Pink curtains, tied back with bows. A small dressing table, with play cosmetics set out neatly on top of it, as well as three or four nearly finished lipsticks that she must have been given by her mother. Bonnie picked one up. It was Startling Scarlet, by Glamorex.

  The bed was the same bloody riot as the other two, but here it looked as if the father’s first shot hadn’t been immediately fatal. There were handprints on the wall, and the white sheepskin rug beside the bed was matted with blood, so that it looked like a slaughtered animal.

  Dan said, “She had half her pelvis blown away, but she tried to escape. She managed to get as far as the window.”

  “Yes, I can see.”

  They looked around the bedroom a few moments longer, and then Dan said, “Think you can do it?”

  Bonnie nodded. “Let me go talk to the mother.”

  Discussing Terms

  Mrs. Goodman sat at the kitchen table. A black woman police officer stood beside her, with one hand on her shoulder. Mrs. Goodman was a thin woman with a prominent nose and blond-highlighted hair that was pinned back in a tight French pleat. She wore a black dress with a diamante poodle brooch. She was holding an undrunk mug of coffee in her lap and staring at nothing at all.

  Bonnie gave the police officer a little finger wave, and the officer smiled back. “Hi, Martha,” she whispered. “Haven’t seen you in a coon’s age. How’s Tyce?”

  Dan leaned over Mrs. Goodman and said, “Mrs. Goodman? This is the cleaning lady I was telling you about.”

  Bonnie leaned over her, too. “Mrs. Goodman? My name’s Bonnie Winter, from Bonnie’s the cleaners. If this is all too soon for you, just let me know. I can always call again some other time. But Lieutenant Munoz here said that you wanted to normalize your apartment as soon as possible.”

  Mrs. Goodman didn’t answer at first, didn’t look up. “Is she still in shock?” asked Bonnie. “Shouldn’t you take her to the hospital?”

  But Mrs. Goodman lifted her head and said, “No, no, I’m all right. I want to stay here. This is where my babies died. I want to stay.”

  Bonnie drew up one of the kitchen chairs and sat down close to her. The sawtoothed shadow of a yucca was nodding up and down on the Venetian blind, and for some reason it put Bonnie in mind of a giant parrot. She gently took away Mrs. Goodman’s coffee mug and set it down on the table.

  “Why do you think he did it?” Mrs. Goodman asked her, after a while.

  “I guess only two people know that, Mrs. Goodman. Your late husband and God.”

  “He loved our babies so much. I think he loved them more than I did. He was always saying that they made him proud, because they were ours, and I made him proud.”

  “You never know nobody completely,” said Bonnie. “Take my husband. What he thinks about, it’s a total mystery. Well, it is to me.”

  Mrs. Goodman unfolded a Kleenex and dabbed it against her cheeks. “My father always said that Aaron would come to no good. He said he was beneath me, I should have married a lawyer or a realtor, somebody professional, not a dry cleaner.”

  “Hey, you can’t help who you fall in love with.”

  “I know. But why did he do it? I talked to him on the phone only about a half hour before it happened, and he sounded fine. He was talking about going to the reservoir Friday to do some fishing. You don’t talk about fishing and then kill your children.”

  Bonnie took hold of her hand. “I can’t even begin to understand why your late husband did what he did, Mrs. Goodman, but I can do my best to clean this place up for you so that you can go on living the rest of your life.”

  The tears began to slide down Mrs. Goodman’s cheeks again, and this time she made no effort to wipe them away. “They were so beautiful. They were so, so beautiful. Little Benjamin, little Rachel, little Naomi.”

  Bonnie waited for a decent period while Mrs. Goodman silently wept. Eventually she glanced at her watch. “Mrs. Goodman, most people don’t realize that the police don’t do the cleaning up after a tragedy like this. You have to call in a specialist cleaner like me and pay for it yourself. Now I’m not the only cleaner available. I’ll give you an estimate, but you’re welcome to look in the Yellow Pages if you think my prices are too high.”

  Mrs. Goodman frowned at her as if she were speaking Greek.

  “Do you have insurance, Mrs. Goodman?” Bonnie persisted. “I’m sorry to sound so businesslike, but a cleaning job like this could run you into quite a lot of expense.”

  “Insurance?”

  “You should listen to her, Mrs. Goodman,” Dan put in. “This lady knows what she’s talking about.”

  “Right now, Mrs. Goodman, you’re at your most vulnerable,” Bonnie told her. “You’re going to have all kinds of sharks circling. People offering to clean your house, sort out your legal problems, restructure your finances. All I’m trying to do is protect your interests here.”

  “Aaron never cared about money. If he had it, he spent it.”

  “I’m sure. But this job could cost upward of fifteen-hundred dollars, not to mention replacement rugs and furniture. You’re probably okay. Most regular insurance policies also cover trauma-loss restoration. If you give me the name of your insurance agent, I’ll talk to him this afternoon—see if you’re entitled to put in a claim.”

  “Insurance agent? I don’t know. Aaron handled all of that.”

  “Well, no need to stampede. Here’s my card. As soon as you find out who he is, give me a call.”

  “You can do it, though? You can clean it all up? You can make it look the way it was before?”

  “Pretty much, Mrs. Goodman, yes.”

  “You can’t make my life look the way it was, though, can you?”

  “No, Mrs. Goodman, I can’t do that.�
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  Mrs. Goodman gave Bonnie’s hand a tighter squeeze. Her fingers were very cold, and it was like being gripped by a corpse. “Will you call me Bernice?”

  “Bernice? For sure, if that’s what you want.”

  Just as Bonnie was leaving the Goodman house, a thirtyish man in a flax summer-weight suit walked in, followed by a Mexican girl of about seventeen, wearing a dark blue sleeveless dress with big black flowers on it. The man was an inch shorter than Bonnie, with crinkly ginger hair and rimless glasses. The girl was moonfaced and plain, with pockmarked cheeks and pigtails.

  “Help you?” Dan asked him.

  “Dean Willits, friend of the family. I’ve come for Mrs. Goodman. And Consuela here needs to pick up some clothes.”

  “Ah, yes. Mrs. Goodman is right through there, in the kitchen. I’ll have an officer accompany Consuela.”

  Dean Willits looked around the living room. “Holy shit,” he said, when he saw the shotgun blast in the plaster and the fountain of blood up the wall. “I didn’t have any idea.”

  “Let’s just get Mrs. Goodman out of here, shall we?” Dan prompted him.

  “Yeah, sure. Sorry. Aaron was such a great friend of mine, that’s all. A terrific father, you know? A really outstanding father. Wouldn’t touch a hair on those kids’ heads.”

  “Yes, well,” said Dan.

  Outside, in the glare of the midday sunshine, Dan said, “I’ll leave it with you, then?”

  “You bet,” said Bonnie.

  “Something bothering you?”

  “No, not really. I was wondering the same thing that Mrs. Goodman was wondering. A terrific father who loved his children so much. What the hell possessed him to kill them?”

  Dan shook his head. “Cases like these, you never find out.”

  Bonnie ducked under the police tape and walked back to her car. Dan followed her and opened the door for her. It groaned on its hinges like an irritated pig.

  “How about I buy you dinner tomorrow night?”

  “I’m not your type. Besides, what would I tell Duke?”