by Erik Carter
He wondered how much time was left, how much longer he had to convince Ventress not to eliminate Dale.
He checked the clock on the wall.
4:53 PM.
Shit! It was almost 5. He only had a few more minutes. How had he lost track of time?
He breathed harder, stared at Ventress, wondered why the hell she wasn’t saying anything.
She’d looked at one of her folders while Nash answered her last question, and when he’d finished, she didn’t look up. And hadn’t since. She was still perusing the folder’s contents.
Finally she spoke.
“Conley has a ‘code of honor,’ and you believe in it.” She set the folder on the table and looked up. “How cute. But that still doesn’t explain to me your unwavering support for him. If someone got me canned, I don’t give a damn what their personal ethics are. I’d never forgive them.”
Nash looked away from her.
He’d pondered this himself many times over the last few years. Too many times. Thousands of times.
Those last few interactions with Dale.
The highs and the lows.
The best anyone had ever treated him…
And the worst.
Nash stormed out of the office in Chicago. Dale was in front of him, moving briskly through the desks. The Chicago agents—all ties and dress pants and rolled up sleeves—stopped what they were doing, frozen in the middle of phone calls and handing folders to each other. And they just stared.
Because Dale was striding quickly, intently through their space. Nearly jogging. Notebook in his hand. And Nash was right on his heels.
“Dale, goddammit! Give me that notebook!”
Dale didn't respond.
“Dale, damn you!”
He grabbed Dale’s shirt from behind.
Dale whipped around, smacked Nash’s arm away, and stepped into him, getting right in his face.
“It’s coming with me,” Dale said through gritted teeth, wearing the coldest expression Nash had seen him wear. “I’m doing what’s right.”
“The hell you are.”
Nash reached for the notebook. Dale shoved him away. Half-strength. Not hard enough to hurt him, but hard enough to give him a warning, to let him know that Dale meant business.
Nash panted, teeth bared. Glared at Dale. And then he lunged at him. His shoulder caught Dale in the chest, and they flew back into one of the metal desks that filled the office space. Dale’s back hit the edge of the desk hard, painfully, and he yelled out.
Both men slid onto the desk’s surface, spilling papers, pens, knocking over a full coffee mug.
Nash put one hand on Dale’s neck, and with the other, he reached for the notebook.
Dale slugged him across the jaw. Nash fell off the desk, onto the floor, landing among the pens and pads of paper.
Dale jumped on top of him, and Nash immediately reached for the notebook again.
Dale grabbed the arm Nash was reaching with and gave it a quick twist.
Nash yelled out.
Another pull to the arm, and Dale whipped Nash onto his stomach. He twisted the arm behind Nash’s back.
“Stop! God, stop! You’re gonna dislocate it!”
“I need you to know that I’m going the right thing. And that’s that. Okay, Nash?”
Nash didn't respond.
Dale gave the arm a sharp twist.
Nash screamed out.
“Okay?”
“All right! Okay!”
Dale released Nash and stood up. He looked across the office. The agents stared at him in stunned disbelief. He took off.
Nash glared at him from the floor.
As Nash remembered all this, it was easy for him to feel that hatred, the same hatred that made him despise Dale three years ago, send him away. And it also would have been easy for him to forget the other memory. The good one. The one that was a polar opposite to the image of Dale leaving the Chicago office, holding Nash’s notebook.
He wasn’t looking at Ventress. And he didn’t turn to her when he answered. He just stared at the window, the rain, as he replied.
“I admire Dale’s code of honor, yes. But it’s not why I support him. Even though he got me canned, even though he sent my life spiraling down, he was better to me than anyone has been in my entire life.”
Ventress groaned. This was surely because Nash was about to bring new information to light, something fresh in an hours-long inquiry that she was clearly wrapping up. Or because of her clear distaste and distrust of the bond between human beings. Or both.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “Do explain.”
Nash cleared his throat. “I was back in Detroit. My last day at the Bureau. I’d already been fired. I was cleaning out my office. And guess who knocked on my door?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The office was half-empty, and Nash realized that the last time that he'd seen it half-empty was the day he’d moved in. Putting his items in the drawers. Hanging his diploma and certificates. Lining books on the shelves. The last time the office had been half-empty was when it was half-full.
It looked strange and foreign to him now after all those years with it set up the way he’d liked it, filled with his items. Now there were empty stretches on the shelves, corners of the room that had been covered for years, dust that had never gotten the chance to be cleaned.
He'd been here in Detroit for six years, his longest stay as an agent. The office was more chic than his previous ones had been, with nice materials and modern design. But it was also more comfortable than the offices at his other stations. It was both classy and homey. And he was going to miss it.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up, top button open, tie loosened. As of half an hour earlier, he was no longer an FBI agent. A cardboard moving box sat on the desk in front of him.
He picked a softbound text off the shelf. Forensic Basics. One of his texts from the Academy. It was an introductory volume and one he rarely referenced anymore. He turned to the index and wondered, when was the last time he’d cracked the spine? He closed it.
There was a tapping at the office door, and he looked up.
Dale stood in his doorway.
Nash had the book in his hand, ready to go into the box, and he froze, the book hovering. He remained like this for a half moment as he stared at Dale, and then he looked back to the box, put the book in and started grabbing other items.
“Unbelievable,” he said, not looking up. “You’re just unbelievable. Do you know that?”
“May I come in?”
“It’s not technically my office anymore, so you can do whatever the hell you want.”
Nash didn’t look up, but he heard Dale walk in and stop halfway to the desk. There was a pause. Nash heard the jingling of keys, as though Dale had put his hands in his pockets and was fidgeting.
So annoying.
“I figured this would be my last chance to get a hold of you,” Dale said. “No one has a forwarding address for you. They didn’t have a clue what you’re doing next.”
Nash put another book in the box. He still hadn’t looked up. “That’s because it’s none of their business. The FBI is done with me, and I’m done with the FBI.”
“So what will you be doing next?”
“It’s none of your business either.”
“I can set you up with a nice life. The BEI has the resources to—”
Nash opened the right-side drawer of the desk again. He still couldn’t find his blue coffee mug. “I got your fax. Not interested. Why are you here, Dale?”
“I have something to offer you. Something to help.”
“I just told you I’m not interested.”
“Not that. Something different. Let me ask you: these dark fantasies of yours, has anyone ever listened to you about them?”
Nash stopped packing. He finally looked up at Dale.
“What I mean is,” Dale continued, “I imagine you’ve had shrinks or family members, maybe some c
lose friends who you told part of the story to. But I’m guessing you’ve never felt that you could unload it all onto anyone. You’ve probably not told anyone how dark your thoughts really get.”
Nash crossed his arms.
“I started to tell some of the truth to a shrink,” he said. “Before I joined the Bureau. And it became clear to me that she was getting nervous with what I was telling her. Confidentiality only goes so far, you know. If she thought I was going to hurt myself or someone else, she would have had to turn me in. So she started saying leading things like, ‘But you’d never go through with those thoughts, of course’ or ‘Those images in your head are all very abstract, yes?’ I began to understand that she was running damage control for herself. In a way, I guess I don’t blame her. She didn’t want to get mixed up with the law. But it seemed pretty damn negligent at the time. And heartless. At least she helped me to realize that I was never going to find anyone who would really listen.”
“I kind of assumed that’s what your experiences were like,” Dale said. “And that’s why I’m here.”
“What do you mean?”
Dale gave him a comforting smile. “I’m here to really listen.”
Chapter Forty
Dale took a deep breath and released it quietly. He didn’t want Nash to see. He wanted the guy to be perfectly comfortable.
But he had to make himself comfortable too. He was about to willingly listen to someone talk about his desires to hurt and kill other people…
That’s why Dale was taking deep breaths.
Dale and Nash sat on a bench in a Detroit city park, aging and plain but well maintained. The park was deserted. They were alone.
Nash leaned forward, elbows on his knees, rubbing his hands nervously.
“Are you sure about this?”
Dale nodded.
Nash looked him over. “You wearing a wire?”
“You’re already fired from the FBI. You just cleared out your office, for God’s sake. Why would I need to record you? Come on. Quit stalling. Tell me about these thoughts of yours. Let it out, man. Lay it on me.”
Nash paused for a moment longer. Then started.
“My mother was domineering. I guess that’s where it started. Cold. Distant. Never physically mean, mind you. She didn’t hit me once. Hers was a psychological game. Control. Manipulation. Humiliation. I started fantasizing about my teachers. Probably around second grade. Touching their parts before I even knew what a vagina looked like. It didn’t take too long before I progressed to wanting to not just touch the teachers but to hurt them. I pictured myself … sticking my fingers through their eye sockets.”
Dale shifted on the bench. And he felt a wave of discomfort. He didn’t know it was going to get so dark so quickly. He hoped he could make it through the whole thing…
Nash paused. Looked at him for a moment. And continued.
“That was the extent of it for the longest time. The eyeball thing. For years. Until I was a teenager. Hit puberty. Then everything just exploded. I wanted to cut them, the girls at school. And whereas the eyeball thing was pure fantasy, very abstract … this was a real desire. I wanted to cut them."
Dale’s mouth opened a bit. He uncrossed his arms.
Nash stopped again.
“Are you sure this okay?”
“Yes. Continue, please.”
Nash nodded. “I forgot all about the eye-gouging. That was childish, I thought. It was all about the cutting now. In high school, I started thinking about strangulation too, so it became a combination of the two. Cutting and strangulation. I was very concerned with the visceral details. Making dinner, I’d cut through a chicken thigh with a sharp knife, feeling the sensation of the splitting skin through the knife’s handle. And I’d imagine that as a woman’s flesh. Except she’d be screaming. And my mother would be screaming. And I’d be in control. I’d have the power.” He stopped. “Dale, you’re losing your color. You’re starting to sweat.”
Dale did feel a little green around the gills. But he waved it off.
“No. Finish, Nash. Go on.”
Nash took in a breath before he continued. “The cutting was about the pain, the little textural details, but the strangulation was about the death. To feel a woman’s final breath pass by my fingers. So that was my fantasy. I’d be a killer who cut and finished with his hands. In college, I started researching serial killers. I was studying criminal justice, so I even got credit for it.” He chuckled. “I was particularly interested in the ones who were never identified, but in my fantasy, I almost wanted to get caught. That’s what they say, isn’t it? That criminals want to get caught. To have the newspapers give them a name—the Memphis Butcher or something like that.” He stopped abruptly. “I guess that about covers it.”
And as quickly as it started, it was over.
By now, though, Dale had his hands on his head.
“I … I can’t believe you’d enter law enforcement with thoughts like that,” he said.
“Like I just told you and like I’ve told many others, they’re just fantasies. I’ve always wanted to help people not hurt them.”
Dale breathed in.
“You’re right,” he said. “Here I am trying to listen, and I immediately go down the path everyone else has, making you defend yourself. Sorry, man. I’m sure it took a lot of guts to get that out.”
They sat there for a moment. The birds chirped. They both looked forward, out into the park.
“Hey, Dale.”
Dale turned.
“Thank you.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Well, kumba-freakin’-ya,” Ventress said. “One lunatic showing compassion for another. Let me dry my misty eyes.”
Nash glared at her, his eyes cold.
Earlier in the afternoon, he had been concerned that he was showing too much. Too much of the darkness. At this point, though, his mind had completely reversed on the subject. He wanted to show Ventress the darkness. He wanted her to have a moment’s hesitation, to wonder if he wanted to slice her up.
Because throughout the course of the day, Nash had seen what she was really made of. A mean, cruel, individual who asserted her power at every turn, mocked and ridiculed people to get her kicks, to appear strong. She took things that were good—the few good, pure things that had been discussed in this questioning—and derided them. Laughed at them.
In all these ways, she reminded Nash of his mother. The worthless old hag. The methodical bitch. Cold, calculating, manipulative. But one way that Ventress was not like his mother was the fact that his mother had been a fat pig, and Nash noticed again that Ventress, despite her age, had a figure. Long and somewhat lean in her dark business suit.
Ventress screaming in agony.
A hand swinging a blade at her.
Nash laughing.
She put a folder back in the cardboard box, glanced up at the clock, then looked at Nash.
“So that really meant something to you, huh? His listening to your lunacy.”
“It was the most decent thing anyone has ever done for me.”
“And yet as I understand it, you parted ways with him, cursing the day you met him.”
They sat silently on the park bench.
Then Nash turned to Dale.
“That was very kind of you, especially to come all the way here just to do it. I’ll never forget it.” He was quiet for a moment. “But you’ve also ruined my life. So that leaves things at neutral.”
He stood up.
“Don’t ever come near me again.”
He walked away, leaving Dale sitting on the bench.
“But not only did he ignore your wishes to never see you again, but he did it by coming to your home, asking for your help,” Ventress said, pacing once more. “And you agreed to come here and help him.”
“Yes, because of his decency, the code of honor that you scoffed at. A person like you thinks that’s a joke, unattainable, something that’s written in constitutions and chiseled into the
side of courthouses but means nothing in reality. You can’t believe in your nasty, mean, judgmental heart that a person can live by such a standard. But there are people like that. And Dale is one of them.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Dale was dreaming…
But it wasn’t just any dream. It was a memory.
A time when he and Allie had gone on a short trip together. Somewhere in Maine. He couldn’t remember the name of the little town. But it was cute and picturesque and much of it was aimed toward tourists.
Dale and Allie walked down a boardwalk. Fun places line either side—fudge shops, ice cream stores, jewelry and T-shirt shops. Allie had his arm. In one hand she held an ice cream cone, which she passed to Dale.
“You need more time off,” she said, “because we need more of this.”
“Ice cream? We can buy this at the store.”
“Time, smartass. Time together. Like this.”
She squeezed in closer to him then spotted a stand with homemade jewelry—pieces of shells and beach glass. She picked up one of the bracelets, held it to the bright sunlight.
“Don’t you just love beach glass? So pretty. Garbage that nature turns into something beautiful. Amazing.”
The man behind the counter spoke.
“Speaking of beautiful…”
Allie turned away from the bracelet, looked at the man.
“Why, thank you,” she said with a smile.
She let go of Dale’s arm and leaned toward the man, kissed him on the cheek.
“Are we in France now?” Dale said.
Allie and the man looked at him.
“What?”
“Kissing a stranger on the cheek.”
“Who says he’s a stranger?” Allie said, smirking.
She leaned over the counter again, and she and the man kissed passionately.
“Hey!”
Dale took her shoulder, pulled her away from the man.
