I want to make it home sober but there’s a bar sitting perfectly just between the station and my house and I need to sit somewhere in between until my jaw can loosen up; the stink of your burnt car still in my nose.
I want to wake up clear-headed tomorrow instead of feverish in a swamp of bedsheets, but I sit down at a stool with nobody on either side; order an old fashioned just to have something sweet to burn me from tongue to guts.
There were no witnesses to what happened today: just a hassled store manager who relented when we started to scare away customers and let us watch his surveillance footage. The flames from your car so bright we could see the blaze reflected in windshields two blocks away. I canvassed for eyewitnesses—the addicts and laborers, all of them sullen and walled off; no one saw anything, and all of them smelled terrible.
I want to make it home sober but two of your palm prints—both from the left hand—were preserved, smoky and crisp, on a section of windshield spiderwebbed in the heat. I didn’t think anyone took photos of that so I got out my iPhone and snapped a few pictures.
When we do notifications, we say things like:
We want you to know the medical examiner says there were no signs of suffering.
Like, how could we ever know a thing like that? In the best of circumstances, with the best of evidence?
Someone at the jukebox puts on an Eric Church track and I try to think about the words. A rowdy voice yips at the crack of billiard balls; I hope nobody sees me flinch.
I want to focus on the music but I got your name from your car’s registration—the VIN still legible on the passenger doorjamb—and when we ran the plate something in my face must have given me away when we learned the car was registered to you. An evidence tech asked if I knew you and I told him no; feeling the lie before I knew for sure I was lying—your name, familiar on the patrol car’s screen—pumping a sour stomachache into my throat. The music in your name with regret hitting like vertigo.
By midafternoon we’d found the four prior restraining order applications you’d filed. Three of them unserved.
Showed up at my job last week. Put his hands on my neck when we were arguing once. Doesn’t let me keep my money. Always jealous.
No signs of suffering.
I want to make it home sober but there’s top shelf whiskey and I’m finally in the space to appreciate it after so much of the cheap stuff. Never mind the cost tonight: how did he keep you trapped in the car? We know you tried to get out from the vinyl under your fingernails from the doorjamb.
Behind me a woman screams. I turn my head too fast. A lady in cut-off jeans just made her pool shot, crying out with a lusty whoop of celebration and someone’s high-fiving like a mortar shell. She looks my way; I raise a glass. The bartender gives me a refill without asking.
You only called the police one time before. One time total, I should say, and somebody kept the 911 call on a disc in an old manila evidence envelope. The fragile terra cotta of your artifact voice; worn out like gummy tires or a dog with bad hips. The way you started to say I need help and settled on I just need someone to deal with my boyfriend.
I want to make it home sober but before I left the station tonight I made the mistake of pulling the report from that time when you called. This was five years ago—a lifetime in cop years. My old report—my rookie voice, my greenhorn writing—and I hate the sound of those words in my mind. I stand up to put a different song on the jukebox and bump my hip against the bar while I make the trip.
Me, when I was a rookie cop who showed up wet behind the ears, swing shift patrol, clean uniform like Officer Friendly. Didn’t arrest your boyfriend when I saw that you’d bitten him.
Both parties presented with injuries, my report said.
I want to wring my own neck the way he wrung yours. She bit him in the armpit, you idiot. The only way a woman bites a man in the armpit is if he’s got her in a headlock. I didn’t know this yet; hadn’t seen this a hundred times. Like that was any excuse
No arrest, information only.
No signs of suffering.
I imagine that all you learned that night was never to call 911 again.
I go to the bathroom and level myself out; frozen nostrils turning to acid in the back of my throat; cold compass needles bringing my eyes true again.
His address, when I look it up, is still the same as it was when I wrote that report. I imagine the remote chance they’ll make an arrest tomorrow. That’s if a warrant gets signed. And then if a case gets filed.
If he ever goes into custody.
If there’s ever a conviction.
I want to make it home sober but there’s a cold mountain shadow of my mistakes outside the window; driving the opposite direction from home gives me time to listen to the police radio.
I wait outside his home until there’s a call for service somewhere else, something good—Code three, all units—and all the on-duty cops are too busy to follow up on a noise complaint at your boyfriend’s house, an address that attracts nuisance calls like ticks on a dog. All units too busy to hear someone screaming, the way I was too busy to care about you until he kept you in that car and burned you alive.
Think about all the notifications I’ve done.
No signs of suffering.
Think about all the Jane Does and the copy-paste reports I’ve written when I told myself nothing could be done.
I’m here to help.
Information only.
I walk to his back porch and do a quick check to see that he doesn’t have a dog. I think about whoever finds him—whatever traces remain after tonight? Will they have to do a notification?
And if they do:
What will they say?
What could they possibly say after tonight?
