Magic Line (25 page)

‘You're not wrong,' Ollie said. ‘And Monday was longer than that. We have passed through a period of flex-days.'

‘And the best remedy for that,' Ray said, ‘is luckily right here in front of us. Why are we letting good pizza cool in boxes? Come on, Sarah. Comfort food.' He knew they both felt the way everybody did, going on administrative leave – in a word, angry. No use going on and on about it, though – it was a righteous shoot; they had good clean records and a loyal crew to attest to how long and hard they had chased the murderer they finally killed.

But, oh damn, it would be good when it was over.

They all ate hearty – they had the appetites you get from putting in monster weeks, and they knew there was no point in waiting for the advent of perfect justice before enjoying what there was to enjoy. Dumping her greasy garbage when the feast was over, Sarah asked Jason, ‘You ready to go to the hospital?'

‘If you are. I'd just as soon get this interrogation done before I go on leave, wouldn't you?'

‘Yes. If we wait till we come back we have to go over all our notes again to remember everything.' It was true, but she still longed to skip it and go home. Robin had been a clear case of a personality gone rogue. All along she'd expected they would have to kill him to stop him. Zeb seemed like one ambivalence too many at the end of a long week.

In the parking lot Jason looked over her shoulder while he asked, ‘How about . . . Would you ride down to St Mary's with me? We have to come back to the station anyway to check out.'

Sarah watched him for a minute, said, ‘Sure,' and got in his car.
Does he understand I'm not wise enough to be a mentor? Damn.

Driving away from the station, she asked him, ‘This your first kill?' No use pussyfooting around it. He wants to talk – let's talk.

‘Yes. You?'

‘Third. In sixteen years, though.'

‘Well, does it get any easier?'

‘No. Well, one thing's easier, I know now I can survive how it makes me feel. But it still makes me feel like shit.'

‘Really? You too?'

‘I'd be ashamed if it didn't. Who am I to play God? Except it's my job.'

‘Yeah. There's that.' He drove well and it seemed to settle him down. Doing one thing expertly gave him more courage to stumble through the other thing.
Or maybe it's just that we're both looking through the windshield so we don't have to make eye
contact
. He was silent a minute, thinking how to say it. ‘I'm kind of . . . surprised at myself,' he said. ‘You know, it's not easy being black in this society. I know that sounds like a cliché, but . . . my mother never found a man who would stay. My brothers and I had three different fathers. Two of my cousins are in prison right now. I'm not saying I was raised in the street – my mother did her level best, still does. But . . . I thought I'd had a rough enough ride so I was fully prepared to take the tough stuff in stride, you know?'

‘Jason, the guy we killed yesterday was fully prepared for the tough stuff. That's the kind of person full preparation makes you into: ready to use an old woman as a body shield. I don't think you want that.'

‘God, no.'

‘So this is the choice police work offers you – keep your humanity and suffer when you have to do hard things, or grow a crust and take the tough stuff in stride.'

He tried a joke. ‘So you'll understand if I suck my thumb and cry?'

‘As long as you don't wipe anything off on me.' They chuckled, but the world didn't change. They rode a block in silence before she said, ‘It's not really a choice for me, and I don't think it is for you. We need the joy that's in life if you reach for it, people to love. Those things make you vulnerable but they make life worth living.'

Jason turned in at St Mary's and found a parking place. He sat with the keys in his hand, staring out the window, all his usual bops and tics quieted now by the depth of his thinking. ‘I love being a sworn police officer. That's what I like to call it in my mind, you know? It has so much . . . substance. I took an oath. Something solid to rely on, that nobody can take away from me – that's what I thought when I joined the force. Well, I still think that. But yesterday and today, for the first time I realized what a high price I am going to pay for that.'

‘We still have a critical incident debriefing to do, and you can get all the counseling you need after that.'

‘Those things help you?'

‘Not very much.'

‘I gotta tell you, Sarah,' Jason said, and with relief she saw his savvy, cynical street persona coming back, ‘you are not exactly a ray of sunshine.'

‘Don't ask if you don't want to know,' she said. They walked up to the floor together, still carrying their Glocks and badges. They would turn everything in when they went back to the station, and walk through the world feeling naked without it till they were officially cleared.

On the stairs, Jason asked, ‘This kid still has to face the music, huh?'

‘Some. Depends on . . . oh, a lot of stuff that lawyers can argue about.'

‘Like what?'

‘Well, he admits to having been in on the prep for that home invasion, and four men died there, so . . . at the far end of the scale, there's a death penalty for even trespassing if it results in a homicide. In his favor, we know he ran away when the time came to enter the house. All the men who died were attempting murder themselves at the time they died. And Doris is suitably grateful for his efforts on her behalf.'

‘Which really may have saved her life.'

‘Maybe. More likely we saved her life when we shot the guy who was holding a gun in her ear. But we can testify that he tried.'

‘Too bad he got shot doing his one good deed. At least we didn't shoot him.'

‘I was ready to,' Sarah said. ‘I fully intended to, if he hadn't lain down on his face when I told him to. But by the time we put Robin down, Zeb was down too and Doris was standing there with the Lorcin in her hand, crying and saying, “I'm sorry, Zeb, I'm so sorry.”'

‘And I guess that's established, isn't it?' Jason said. ‘She shot Zeb? Not us?'

‘The Lorcin had one bullet missing and Doris had the gun. She meant to shoot Robin, of course, but when Zeb broke Robin's arm and we shot him in the head, he sort of crumpled suddenly and the shot she fired put a new part in Zeb's beautiful haircut, right along the back of his skull. He's a lucky boy.'

‘I understand why she went poking around her new roomer's bedroom and found the gun. What I don't get is why she didn't put him out after she found it.'

‘She said he reminds her a lot of her own boy when he was that age.'

Jason rolled his eyes and said, ‘Incredible.'

Sarah said, ‘Here's an axiom of police work you can carry with you and trust: mothers are crazy.'

‘That so? I sometimes think mine is, but I didn't know it was a universal rule.'

‘Believe it. And now that I'm raising a niece I'm beginning to understand.'

‘The stress, huh?'

‘The conflict. Trying to discipline and cuddle at the same time.'

‘Must be. Ask Mama why she goes postal over small things, she looks at the sky and says, “Sons.”' He grinned at Sarah suddenly. ‘All those bystanders we had at Granny's house by the end thought you must be some kinda Nazi, you know that? I could hear them whispering, “Why is she putting chains on a dead man?”'

‘Dead man with a broken arm, I heard one of them say. I'll believe Robin's really dead when I see his autopsy report.'

Jason was getting better already, Sarah thought – making jokes about the scene at Doris' house. It had been a gritty circus for a while, all those neighbors getting in the way and nobody there to help them for half an hour.

At the door of Zeb's room they badged the guard on duty and signed his roster. Inside Zeb lay on the bed, his head wrapped in a pressure bandage. Considering he was in a hospital gown with an IV dripping in his arm, Sarah thought he looked pretty good.

They badged the prisoner and Sarah read him his rights. They told him their errand – to record the extent of his involvement in the invasion of the stash house. He expressed his willingness to be interviewed without an attorney present. He knew he had screwed up, he said, and that he was lucky not to be on a slab in the morgue alongside Robin.

Before they started, though, he wanted to show them a card that had been waiting on his bedside table when he woke up from a nap this afternoon. It said ‘Get Well,' in big letters, and had some silly verse about nurses. What he wanted them to see was the handwritten message. ‘Come back when you get out,' it said, ‘and read me the rest of the story.'

Home by five on the dot, hah!
Sarah parked on her side of the carport, surprised because Will's car was gone from his slot. He'd called to check on her ETA, ‘So I'll know when to start the charcoal.' And she could smell barbecue smoke coming from the patio, but Will didn't seem to be around.

The door was locked, too. She opened it and went in, calling hello, but nobody answered. Aggie might be resting in her little house across the patio, but where would Denny be?

Oh, well. School mornings were pretty busy; sometimes they forgot things that needed to be told.
I don't want Denny going off on her own, though. I need to know where she is.
She felt odd, coming into her room at the end of a work day with no gun and shield to put away. She took off her blouse and dropped it in the hamper, and was hanging up her slacks when Will walked in and said, ‘Hey, there.'

He was carrying two glasses of wine. ‘This one's for you,' he said, handing it to her, ‘for a toast.' She wondered,
Doesn't he know what kind of a day I've had?

‘Thanks,' she said, ‘what are we celebrating?'

‘You're supposed to say, “Here's to new directions.”'

‘OK.' She said it, drank some wine, and asked him, ‘What new directions?'

‘Tell you in a bit.' He sipped and put his glass down. ‘Why are you taking those shorts out of the drawer?'

‘What's wrong with these shorts?'

‘Nothing that I know of but I don't want you to put anything on. You blew the Thursday morning date we were supposed to have by going to work early—'

‘Oh, God, Will, I'm sorry. This case—'

‘I heard. You can tell me about that later, too. Right now I want you to get naked and go crazy in bed with me.' He unzipped his pants. Some bolts and nails fell out of the pockets as he dropped them, and stood smiling brightly in his shirt.

‘Will . . . Sweetheart, what about Mom and Denny? And dinner?'

‘Sam took Denny and your Mom to a movie. Aggie's been a little down so I called her boy friend and he agreed Jack Sparrow would be just the guy to cheer her up.'

‘
Pirates of the Caribbean
is in reruns?'

‘This is a new one. They're having burgers before the movie and fruit smoothies after. We may have to double down on the cholesterol pills for a few days, but Aggie says it's worth it.' He took off his shirt. ‘Is that enough information for you or are you going to stand there in your shoes and socks while your best chance for cheap thrills gets limp and shrivels up?'

‘Oh, God, beloved,' Sarah said, throwing off her bra, ‘come here to me.'

Later, quite a bit later actually, when the sun was a red ball sinking behind the cottonwoods, they came out to the patio, took out the roasted potatoes and put steaks on the coals. Sarah set up a folding table and they ate outside, listening to the evening sounds of doves. Will asked a question about work and Sarah said, ‘After we finish eating.'

She ate the last bite of steak, sighed, and said, ‘Any more of this wine?'

‘You bet.' He brought the bottle out and poured, sat down beside her and said,‘OK, tell me about it.'

No evasions, no euphemisms with this man. She was never going to hear, ‘How did that make you feel?' in dulcet tones from Will. He knew exactly how it made her feel to kill a man – like a pile of dog shit. And, at the same time, proud of herself – she had done what her years of training prepared her to do with enough skill to kill the murderer and let the woman he was holding fall gasping to one side without a scratch.

Since Will knew how that ambiguity felt, she didn't have to describe any
emotions
to him. She just reviewed how the case went down, from the horrific scene where he had brought her the snacks Monday night to the money in the floor, the guns and cars and more money outside and finally yesterday's crazy chase that led her to the bad guy just in time.

And then she found that after all she needed to tell him how she felt. ‘I always want to make the worst ones my babies,' she said. ‘I know that sounds crazy but when I see those terrible men with their dead eyes I want to take them right back to the day they were born and hold and stroke them; make their lives so sweet they will love being alive and never do a wrong thing.'

‘You're right,' Will said. ‘That sounds crazy. In fact, it's just about the craziest thought you ever had, which is really saying something. Plenty of bad guys had nice childhoods and you know it.'

‘I know. But something went wrong and the only way I can tolerate being in the world with them is to feel like if I had a chance I could fix it.'

‘Ah, Sarah,' Will said. ‘I love you, you know that?'

‘I love you, too. Let's do these dishes before I get any sleepier.'

‘In a minute. There's one sip apiece left in that bottle and we need to finish the toast to new directions.'

‘Oh, that's right. What new directions?'

‘I retired this week.'

‘What?'

‘I mean . . . you know, put in three months' notice . . . I can keep the shifts I've got till the last week in August. Probably take September off and start with the County Attorney's office on the first of October.'