The Expectant

The peculiar mass shooting of October 17th occurred at the gender reveal party of a yoga studio owner and former actress named Diana Prentice. Forty guests had been invited to celebrate her coming child at her Silver Lake home and most of the party highlights were posted online through their various social media accounts. Diana’s coming baby would be a boy. Diana’s musician husband Holden Coltrane wore a light blue suit in honor of his unborn son. Servers dressed in Hindu-style saris roamed with trays of vegan appetizers and organic rosé.

By nightfall, the crowd had thinned. Jordan Drake, an instructor at Diana’s studio, checked his watch. It was 8:20 PM. The remaining guests had settled down to watch the movie Young Professional Woman, a romantic comedy Diana had appeared in fifteen years earlier. Jordan, who had already seen the film a few times during the years he’d worked for Diana, decided to call it a night. He said his goodbyes.

Outside the front door, on his way to the street, Jordan encountered two young men in baggy black hoodies, both of whom were staring down at the ground as if they didn’t want to be noticed. Jordan would later tell the LAPD neither of these men seemed like friends of his boss or her husband, even though he never got a clear look at their faces. “They just seemed off for a Silver Lake party,” he said. “I wondered, who invited them here?”

The intruders entered the house and made a straight line to the living room, where Diana’s guests were gathered. There, they drew semi-automatic handguns and began firing, at first into the living room ceiling, and then, a short moment later, directly at the people. The guests stared blankly into the gunfire, as if this could not actually be happening. A little girl was the first one hit. Other children were shot. Diana fell. Realizing their situation, the guests began to scream and the ones that could still move got up and began crashing into one another.

The shooting lasted less than a minute. The two hooded men ran back out the front door and across Rockford, passing a terrified Jordan who had just gotten ahold of a 911 operator. After confirming the perpetrators had escaped, the operator asked Jordan to go inside and report on the scene so the first responders could be given accurate details about what to expect.

The living room was chaos. Jordan tried to focus, but couldn’t. His vision zeroed in on a blood-spattered iPhone. It was Diana’s. She had dropped it after being shot in the leg and the screen displayed a recent Instagram post that featured a slideshow of happy stills from a few hours earlier. Her caption read:

It’s a boy. #Familyiseverything.

Shelby finished her coffee as Dobbs turned onto Rockford. He parked near the black and whites and the ambulances. Locals were out on their lawns, watching. People were crying. Media crews were filming. On the lawn Shelby saw a beautiful young blonde woman with bloodstains on her shirt. She was sobbing violently. Shelby and Dobbs walked under the tape and into the house.

Villareal, a veteran Rampart patrolman, approached them. “It was a baby shower for the couple that lived here. Diana Prentice and Holden Coltrane.”

Shelby and Dobbs followed Villareal down the hallway. They stepped around bloodstains on the carpet.

“Diana Prentice. That the actress?” Shelby asked.

“You heard a her?”

“No. The dispatcher reported to our lieutenant that the person who called it in kept bringing it up. Keep going.”

They entered the living room. Cotton bits were floating. Cordite hovered in the air. Chairs were knocked over. A glass coffee table was spiderwebbed. Shelby noticed a painting of a glowing cow hanging on the wall.

On the floor near the TV was the dead body of a little girl. She wore a blue dress. A bullet had gone through her throat. Two M.E.s were examining her corpse.

Shelby had visions of a media shit storm.

“DOA’s name is Layla Dennison,” Villareal said. “Seven years old. Came here with her mom Andrea, who wasn’t hit. She’s outside.”

“I think I saw her,” Shelby said.

“How many else shot besides Layla?” Dobbs asked.

“Nine, including the mother-to-be. Two of the others hit are also kids, ages two and five. Everyone else’s still kicking.”

“Two years old,” Dobbs said. “Shit.”

“Who got a look at the shooters?”

“The witness who called it in said they wore black hoodies and kept their heads low. Two of the witnesses from in here said they looked Latino.”

Shelby said, “So two brown shooters target a baby shower, fire wildly into a crowd, shoot nine, kill one, and run off?”

“That’s it,” Villareal said with a nod.

Choi, another patrolman who’d been out on the street canvassing, approached them. “I got something.”

“What?” Shelby asked.

“A neighbor who heard the shooting looked outside and saw two men in black hoodies run to a green Taurus and drive off.”

“Get that out on the radio,” Dobbs said.

Choi nodded. “There’s something else,” he said. “The media is reporting on the victim who lived here. Diana Prentice. They’re saying she lost her baby.”

Her wounded leg was wrapped in a cast and propped up. Diana’s husband Holden, who had not been hurt during the attack, sat beside her. Shelby and Dobbs walked into the hospital room.

“Boo, these are the detectives who are going to find out who did this. They need to ask us questions. Okay?”

“I’m ready,” Diana said, squeezing his hand.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Prentice,” Shelby said. “We can’t imagine what you’re going through.”

“My baby was so close to starting its life,” Diana said, crying. Shelby noticed that Diana’s accent had a Southern lilt. She had a bunched up blanket covering up her stomach. “I had visions of his beautiful future. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Thank God you’re still here,” Holden said.

“The party at your house tonight was a baby shower?” Shelby asked.

Diana wiped tears away. “A gender reveal party.”

“It’s a boy,” Holden said, pointing to his blue suit. An ashamed look covered his face. He began crying as well. “It was a boy.”

“Can you walk us through what happened?” Dobbs asked.

“Take your time,” Shelby said.

Diana took a deep breath and summoned inner strength. “The main part of the party was over,” she began. “But some people decided to stay and watch Young Professional Woman.” Diana waited, expecting a reaction from the detectives. None came. “My first major studio release.”

Shelby and Dobbs said nothing.

“Diana runs a yoga studio now. A lot of our guests tonight were clients, people in the community who she’s helped. My wife is spiritually enlightened. She’s revered for her teachings, actually,” Holden said with sincerity.

“Go on,” Shelby said.

“We were maybe twenty minutes into this movie when two men came in and just started shooting everywhere. It was so loud and awful. I didn’t even know I was shot until after they ran away.”

“Boo,” Holden said while reading his phone. “Our GoFundMe campaign already has twenty-two thousand dollars donated.”

“Twenty two-thousand?”

“That’s not just people from the studio. These are people who remember your movie career too. They all love you.”

Dobbs asked, “Did either of you get a good look at the shooters’ faces? Did you recognize them?”

“They wore hoodies but I saw their faces,” Holden said. “They were Latinos. They had sores on their faces, like from meth.”

“Can either of you think of anyone who would want to hurt you or anyone else at the party?”

“I have loving kindness for all beings,” Diana said. “No.”

“What about the mother of Layla Dennison? Can you think of any reason why someone might want to target her or her daughter?”

“Who would want to hurt a little girl?” Diana asked.

“Those monsters weren’t targeting anyone special. They were just shooting into the crowd. It was senseless,” Holden said.

Diana watched both detectives closely. “Are either of you parents?”

“I have two daughters,” Dobbs said.

“My wife and I have been discussing whether we want to adopt,” Shelby said.

“I lost my baby tonight.” Diana kept eye contact with Shelby. “But one thing I know is that I’m a survivor.”

“You’ll survive, boo,” Holden said.

“Find my baby’s killer, detectives. Deliver justice for him.”

“And for Layla Dennison,” Shelby said. “As well at the others who were hurt.”

“Yes.” Diana began crying harder. “For them as well.”

Shelby and Dobbs went back to their side-by-side cubicles. It was their first break from witnesses or the media in hours.

“Nine years in homicide and I’ve never caught anything like this,” Dobbs said.

“Me neither. A mass shooting I get, but this many kids? Two-year-olds?”

“At least the other victims are stable,” Dobbs said.

“We’re missing the connection between the people at that party and the shooters. It’s someplace we haven’t looked yet.”

They had to prepare a statement for the press. “You want to write the statement? This one’ll look better coming from a woman.”

Shelby checked her watch. “We can re-canvas the scene again before the press conference. There’s time.”

Dobbs read a text from his wife. “Debbie saw us on the news. She said you looked good. Sure, we can go back to the scene. I gotta hit the head first.”

Shelby walked over to the elevator lobby and took out her phone. She had three missed calls from her wife Crockett. She called her back.

“Everything okay, Tubbs?” Crockett asked.

“Yeah,” Shelby said. “I just caught a big one.”

“I checked the news. Is it the gender reveal shooting?”

“Yeah.”

Crockett paused for a long time on the phone. “So you aren’t coming home tonight then?”

Earlier in the month, Crockett had gotten a four-month job as an art director on a big budget movie in San Francisco. They were supposed to spend this weekend together before she left.

“I’m sorry,” Shelby said. “I wish I could.”

Beto Rodriguez and Ruben Vaca were out of meth and cash. They saw two options for how they could get money for more, and they’d been sitting in their green Taurus, parked on Temple near the entrance to the tunnel under the 101, arguing about which one to choose for the past hour. They could steal from a fiend they knew who was hiding a lot of cash in his mattress, or they could hold up the market on Glendale, the one they’d hit twice already. The fiend was a wild card — he carried straps and was down to use them. They’d hit the market eight months ago and gotten away with it. Enough time had passed to try it again. They couldn’t decide which route to take.

“I say the store, fool,” Beto said.

“The fiend’ll be less heat though.”

“After what we did, who gives a fuck about knocking over some store?”

They didn’t notice the LAPD cruiser that rolled up behind them. They didn’t realize that the officers inside were calling for back up.

Shelby and Dobbs walked into the interrogation box. Beto sat there, cuffed to the table. Shelby took a seat. Dobbs stood beside her.

“I want a lawyer,” Beto said.

“No, you don’t,” Shelby said, shaking her head. “What you want is a deal. Showing the judge you helped us out is your only chance for leniency.”

“We’ve got you in the getaway car, we’ve got the murder weapons that are going to match to both of you when they get back from ballistics, and when we put your faces in a six-pack we’ve got a room full of witnesses that that are going to I.D. you both as the shooters. You are fucked in the ass, Beto Rodriguez.”

“If he ain’t that now, he sure will be soon,” Shelby said. “Unless.”

Beto’s eyes widened. “Unless what?”

“Unless you tell us every detail. If you lie, we’ll know.”

Beto waited. “We did the shooting.”

“Why?” Shelby asked.

“We were told to.”

“Why?” Dobbs asked. “Told by who?”

“It was just about scaring everyone. She said that big time scares cause miscarriages. She said that’s a known medical fact.”

Shelby squinted. “Who said that?”

“She did.”

Shelby leaned in. “Someone wanted Diana Prentice to miscarry her baby so they sent you two to take shots at her? Who?”

Beto shook his head. “You ain’t listening. Diana wasn’t having no baby.”

Shelby looked at Dobbs, then back at Beto. “The woman whose house you busted into was having a party for the baby she was about to have. She lost it after you shot her.”

Beto kept shaking his head. “That bitch was never pregnant.”

“He’s talking out of his ass,” Dobbs said.

“Who told you she was pregnant? You see it on the TV? Hear it from her? Or did you actually ever ask the doctor if that crazy bitch was just making shit up?”

Shelby and Dobbs left the room. They looked at each other uneasily: They had not spoken directly to Diana’s doctor at any point. Confirming the validity of the pregnancy hadn’t been a step that occurred to either of them.

Shelby got him on her speakerphone.

“This is Doctor Patel,” he said.

“Doctor, this is Detective Jones, I’m down here at NPC looking into the gender reveal mass shooting. I was hoping you could clarify something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Medically speaking, how does a bullet wound in the leg cause a baby to be miscarried? Could you walk a laywoman through it?”

“I’ve been meaning to follow up with the police since I was told that’s been the story in the media,” Dr. Patel said. “I’ve been in surgery since just after I was told so I wasn’t able to make the call.”

“Call about what?” Shelby asked.

“Ms. Prentice was not pregnant when I treated her gunshot wound. Wherever that story came from, I don’t know. But all the news reports aren’t true. Diana Prentice had no baby to lose.”

Shelby swallowed. “Are you sure about that?”

“I’m sure.” Shelby hung up. She and Dobbs went back into the interrogation box.

“Like I said,” Shelby said to Beto, “telling us everything is the only way to help yourself out.”

“When we say everything, we mean everything,” Dobbs said.

“No one in the media decided to independently confirm that the story was real before running with it. They got the information from Diana, the husband, or someone representing the husband and they just took their word for it,” Shelby told their Lieutenant, Arletta Thornton. They were in her office.

Thornton frowned. “Why would a woman have a baby shower for a baby she wasn’t really having?”

“Why lie about having a baby at all?” Dobbs asked, looking at Shelby.

“Don’t look at me,” Shelby said. “I’m never getting pregnant.”

“I saw pictures of Diana on the news with a pregnant belly,” Thornton said. “She looked due any day.”

Shelby shrugged, noncommittal. “She must have been walking around with a pillow up her shirt. Or, since she is a former actress, maybe she put whatever props they use to make women look pregnant in the movies.”

“What are the suspects saying?”

Shelby said, “That they met Diana at a bar in Boyle Heights six months ago. She did meth and slept with both of them regularly and told them she would pay them for coming to her house and firing shots into the ceiling to scare everyone.”

“Scare everyone? They shot nine people. Kids. A two-year-old. Even her, the woman they’re saying put them up to it. Why?”

“They got higher than they were supposed to,” Dobbs said.

“They say she wanted to use the drama of the shooting as a way to get out of the lie that she was having the baby.”

“Do you believe them?”

“These vatos seem too stupid to make up a story like this,” Shelby said. “And Diana Prentice was not pregnant.”

The Lieutenant huffed. “The media will go insane. Where’s Diana now?”

“According to her doctor she’s going to be released today. He wanted her to stay and rest for another day but she’s scheduled multiple media appearances to tell her story. She’s raised over a hundred grand and counting from people who are upset she lost her baby.”

“The shooters are off the street. But we don’t know what’s going on with this woman, Lieutenant,” Dobbs said.

“Be there at the hospital before she checks out,” Thornton said. “If she really put these two up to this, I want a confession.”

“Yes ma’am,” Shelby and Dobbs said simultaneously and left her office.

Shelby and Dobbs waited in the hospital hallway.

“I’ve got no idea what’s going on in this woman’s mind,” Dobbs said.

“Me neither.”

“Truthfully, I really don’t understand any women.”

“My instincts tell me this is a white people thing, not a woman thing,” Shelby said.

Dobbs considered this. “Well, I’m worried about the long term media implications. This could turn into some sort of O.J.-type circus, where the two of us get paraded on camera and everything we’ve ever said receives national scrutiny.”

“Let’s not make mistakes then,” Shelby said.

The door opened. Diana walked out on crutches. Her hair looked glamorous. She wore a purple sari. Holden was close behind her.

“Detectives,” he said. “See who’s ready to get back to the world?”

“Any news?” Diana asked them.

“That’s what we came to talk to you about,” Shelby said. “We found Beto Rodriguez and Ruben Vaca.”

Diana blinked but kept a poker face.

“Yes?” Holden said. “Who are they?”

“Maybe you should ask your wife,” Dobbs said.

Holden was confused. “What do you mean?”

Shelby watched Diana. “Do you want to tell him?”

Diana did nothing.

“What’s going on?” Holden asked. “Someone explain.”

Shelby said, “Diana, those media appearances you’ve got scheduled are going to have to be put on hold. We need you to come with us to answer some questions.”

“What questions?!” Holden asked, yelling.

“It’s going to work out better for you if you cooperate,” Dobbs told her.

“My wife isn’t going anywhere with you!” Holden yelled louder.

Shelby raised an arm. “Come with us.”

Holden batted Shelby’s arm away. “Stop that!”

Dobbs pressed his hand against Holden’s arm. “Do not try that again.”

“Holden, stop,” Diana told her husband.

Others in the hospital began to take notice of the scene. Holden pushed Dobbs’ hand away. Dobbs retaliated by pressing Holden’s back against the wall.

“Don’t do that, sir,” Dobbs said.

Shelby slowly took Diana’s arm, making sure Holden could see. Holden pushed back against Dobbs again.

Dobbs pressed his hand into the center of Holden’s chest. “Mr. Coltrane, if you don’t stop, I’m going to have to put you under arrest.”

Shelby looked around: More people were watching, but she saw no phone cameras. She stepped in front of Diana, blocking Holden’s view of her.

“Diana!” he screamed, and pushed into Dobbs again.

Dobbs, now very aggressive, turned Holden around and shoved his face into the wall, pinning him. He removed his cuffs. Holden struggled.

“Mr. Coltrane, I’m placing you under arrest for assaulting a police officer,” Dobbs said. He got the cuffs around his wrists.

Holden kept struggling. “Is this how victims get treated? Is this how the police are supposed to act?! My wife’s been shot! She lost our baby!”

“Time to go,” Dobbs said, pulling Holden along.

“We’re the victims here!”

When they reached the elevator, Shelby looked at Diana. “It’s going to go easier for you if you cooperate.”

Diana watched her. “I’ll talk to you,” she said calmly.

Diana signed the form that waived her right to an attorney and slid it back across the table. Dobbs took the form.

He said, “We’ll hold off on filing charges against your husband. That depends on what you tell us now.”

Diana shrugged indifferently. If she cared about what happened to her husband, she didn’t show it. “Ask your questions.”

“Do you know Beto Rodriguez and Ruben Vaca?” Shelby asked.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I fuck them both. Sometimes we get high together.”

“Did you send them to shoot all the people at the party held at your house on the evening of the 17th?” Dobbs asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“I sent them to scare everyone by firing off their guns. No one was supposed to get shot. I was not supposed to get shot.”

They waited for her to elaborate.

“Why?” Shelby asked.

“Why tell people you were pregnant when you weren’t?” Dobbs asked. “Why throw a baby shower for a baby that never existed?”

“Explain it to us,” Shelby said.

Without cleaning her face, Diana walked from the bed to the table where the tequila bottle was. She poured herself three fingers and pointed at the prop hanging on the hotel chair.

“Neither of you asked me about that.”

“What is it?” Beto asked.

Diana looked at her wet face in the mirror and searched for auguries. “My first boyfriend was born in India. He converted me to Hinduism.”

They both said they didn’t know anything about that.

Diana took a sip. “Hinduism was very real to me. Something I felt deeply. Then one day, a few weeks after we broke up, I thought he had gotten me pregnant. I stopped having my period and I began to see visions. I saw that the baby inside me was the coming Kalki.”

“The what?” Beto asked.

“The tenth avatar of Vishnu, foretold to appear at the end of the present epoch, the harbinger of the end everything. I told my theatre teacher about it. All my friends. I even told my mom, who did her best to convince me that I was confused. She took me to a Christian church that prayed for me. She took me to a psychologist. She even called up Dr. Phil and tried to get me on the show. The producer said they would have taken me if I thought I was pregnant with baby Jesus, but too many Americans would be confused about who Kalki was exactly, so they turned us down. My due date came and went without a baby ever coming and my visions of Kalki on a white horse faded. I realized that I was wrong. Even though I hadn’t been consciously lying to myself, I had, for some reason, made myself really believe that I was having this baby. The whole experience made me realize that I was meant for greater things. I was meant for people to know my name. So I moved to L.A. to become a famous actress.”

“We looked you up on YouTube once,” Ruben said. “You used to come out in billboard movies and shit.”

Diana stepped into the motel bathroom, got a towel from the rack and wiped off her face. She walked back out and looked at the meth pipe sitting on the table beside the tequila bottle. She hadn’t smoked with them tonight.

Diana said, “On the night of the 17th I’m throwing a party. I want the two of you to come with your guns and fire shots into the ceiling and the walls.”

Ruben sat up. “Whoa. We ain’t killing nobody.”

“I said into the ceiling and the walls. You just have to scare them.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s my gender reveal party. The people are coming for the baby they think I’m about to have.”

Beto and Ruben looked at her stomach and then at the prop she had fitted around it when she showed up.

“Why have you been lying about being pregnant?” Beto asked.

“For the attention,” Diana said, as if the answer to that question was so obvious there was no point in asking it. “When you two show up and fire your guns at everybody, the ‘shock’ from having gone through it will ’cause me to miscarry.’ I’ll become famous. Everyone will want to help me.”

“I don’t wanna do that,” Ruben said.

“If you don’t, I’ll call the cops and tell them the two of you kidnapped me and raped me. Do you think anyone would doubt an accusation like that, coming from me, against the two of you?”

“Probably not,” Ruben said.

“I’ll make both of you wish you never met me.”

Beto scratched a sore on his face. “I wish that already,” he said.

“I’ll give you ten percent of the money I can raise from helpful strangers on the Internet. Imagine how much they’ll be willing to give, knowing that two drug-addicted Mexicans came into my baby shower and shot up the place, causing me to miscarry.” Diana smiled. “The cops, or a lot of money for one night’s work. You decide.”

“You told them not to shoot you. Why did they?” Shelby asked.

“They probably got too high.”

“You didn’t realize the doctors would have told us you were never pregnant?”

“My miscarriage was already out on the news. Everything was going as planned. If you hadn’t found Beto and Ruben, would you have bothered to ask?”

“We would have found out,” Shelby said.

Diana shrugged. “That part doesn’t matter now.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” Shelby said.

“You aren’t following.” Diana stared at Shelby. “When I saw you two at the hospital and I realized that you’d figured it out, I changed my plans. Or rather, I realized that my plans had been something entirely different all along.”

“What does that mean?” Shelby asked.

“I thought that my place, where I could really get the amount of attention I wanted from the world, would come in the form of being the victim, the expectant mother who lost her baby in a mass shooting. But I was wrong. My place is in being the woman who planned this crime. Think about what’s coming. People are going to marvel at the bottomless evil inside me, they’ll speculate about my ‘real’ motive, they’ll eat up the teary, remorseful interviews I’ll do from prison where I explain how I was abused as a little girl and that a culture of oppression and drug abuse and systemic patriarchy drove me to these misguided ends. It will be a shocker for the ages. In high school, I thought that I was having Kalki. I thought he lived inside me, but I was confused. I see now that I am Kalki . . . or at least that’s what I’m starting to believe as I sit here . . .” Diana looked up at the blank ceiling of the interrogation box as if was a night sky full of astrological portents.

“Hoowee, bitch,” Shelby said. “They’re going to like your white ass in prison.”

When Shelby got home, Crockett was waiting up for her, painting the model ’69 Camaro she’d been working on all week. Shelby got a sparkling water from the fridge and took a seat beside her wife.

“I saw it on the news,” Crockett said.

“I tried to scare her about prison, but she thinks the media’s going to make her a star and she’s probably right. She didn’t care about the kid she got killed or the others who were hurt. Betraying her husband meant nothing. Makes me wonder about raising kids.”

“How do you mean?”

“Lots of people, they aren’t as bad as Diana Prentice, but they’re really just becoming parents for the social media attention. You know?”

Crockett nodded. “People are having kids for the wrong reasons.”

“Makes me sad.”

“Things are how they are.” Crockett took Shelby’s hand. “Neither of us got asked if we wanted to come into this world, but we’re both here and doing good.”

Shelby smiled. “That’s true too,” she said.