It was my goal to relay everything I’d heard about Patty’s story verbatim. But surely I was filling in gaps, shading or erasing murky or forgotten details. I tried to picture Detective Pierucci. Did his face match his tone? Was it devoid of affect or expression like his voice? Probably. I conjured him up as a comic foil, the clear-headed one, the stone-faced straight man to his funny man partner. He was described as “…a real stand up guy” by a fellow member of San Francisco’s Italian club. He is a family man. In 1999 he handled domestic violence cases and believed “you can help a lot of people.” If only he could help me.
“That’s admirable because you want to find out who did this. I’d be the same way. If my very close friend when we were kids, and now someone took her life, I mean why would somebody do that to somebody that nice?”
I wanted to parrot his words back to him. She was nice. At the beginning. I wanted to recite a line from MK Asante, a line that has stuck in my brain like chewing gum: “There are people you can have in your heart, but not in your life.”
We were both textbook juvenile delinquents: deviant behavior, involvement with deviant peers, lack of parental monitoring, weak social and school bonds, low academic grades, alcohol and drug use; we ticked every box. The line from where we started to where we ended up was more a scribble than a straight line. Our parents might reel us in. We’d return to school, sit straight-backed at the dinner table, attempt to explain what we learned that day, try to shape ourselves into children our parents could be proud of. But it lasted only so long. Patty, at some point, probably realized what I did. We could no longer be in one another’s lives.
