Girls Like Us

by Cristina Alger

  The only person who has called me while I’m here in Suffolk County is Sam Lightman, the head of the Behavioral Analysis Unit and my boss at the FBI. Last month, I shot and killed someone in the line of duty. His name was Anton Reznik. He was an associate of Dmitry Novak, one of the Russian Mafia’s most profitable traffickers of drugs and women within the United States. Reznik was known to his friends as the Butcher, for obvious reasons. Not someone I will miss. Still, killing a man is never pleasant and this time has been particularly hard on me. For one thing, a bullet nicked my shoulder in the exchange. I was lucky, technically speaking. An inch to the right and it could have opened my brachial artery, almost certainly killing me on the spot. Instead, I traded my badge and my firearm for a couple of stiches, a paid medical leave, and the business card of a Bureau-endorsed therapist who specializes in PTSD. By now, the doctors say my shoulder should’ve healed, and it mostly has. It still feels sore now and then, particularly in the evenings, but that’s probably because I haven’t found the time to do physical therapy to rehabilitate the muscles beneath the wound. The Bureau thinks my head should be on straight, too. It isn’t yet. Maybe it never was to begin with.

  My father’s death has earned me a reprieve of sorts. “Take the time you need,” Lightman said when I told him, which we both knew meant “as little time as possible.” I can tell Lightman’s patience with my recovery is wearing thin. I’m sure he’s getting pressure from the higher-ups to either put me back in the field or cut me loose. These days, I’ve started to think that the latter is the right thing to do.

  I pour myself a stiff glass of Dad’s Macallan and retire to the porch with a wool blanket. I drink quietly and alone, as I imagine he did most nights, until the last streaks of sunset fade and stars light up the sky. I listen to the roar of the ocean and the faint shudder of music from one of the bars across the bay.

  It’s over. I will never feel a gravitational pull back here, back home. Not for holidays or for birthdays or for weddings of people I once considered friends but no longer think about. I won’t feel obligated to call my father and I won’t feel guilty when I don’t. I can burn his things; sell this house; never return to Suffolk County again. For the first time in years, I don’t need to medicate myself to sleep. I lie back on the deck couch, put my feet up on the driftwood coffee table. I close my eyes and let the darkness take me.

  2.

  The cry of a seagull rouses me. My eyes open. It’s light. For a few seconds, I’m disoriented. I sit up, startled, and take in my surroundings. The faded wood decking. The openness around me. I’d forgotten the singular pleasure of waking up to clouds overhead.

  The air has an edge to it that it didn’t a few days ago. I pick up the smell of salt and peat and, for the first time, something else: firewood. There is smoke coming from a chimney a few doors down. I get up and watch it rise in tufts and then dissipate into the slate-colored sky.

  Fall has arrived. My favorite season on the island. The colors fade from vibrant greens and blues to gentler shades of brown and gray. Light dapples the marsh. Just beyond the deck, a snowy egret stands stock-still in a sea of sumac and switchgrass. In a flash, the bird dips its beak into the water and swallows a killifish whole. Then it morphs back into a statue, lying in wait for its next victim. I used to watch the egrets for hours when I was little. I admired their pure white feathers and long, graceful necks. I thought they looked like ballerinas. Pop told me that they almost died out years ago because women so admired their plumage that they killed them and turned them into hats. It broke my little heart to hear that.

  Egrets are ruthless killers, too. They know how to extend their wings out while hiding their beaks, fooling small fish into seeking refuge from the sun beneath their shadow. Sometimes you can see them moving their reed-thin legs in the water in a rhythmic, hypnotic way. It looks as though they are dancing. But really, they are shaking up prey from sediment around their feet. When something moves, they pounce. Knowing this made me feel better. We kill them. They kill small fish in return.

  Soon, the waters here will grow cold. The egrets, like the plover and the gulls, will be forced to move farther south in order to survive. The change will happen overnight. One day, I’ll wake up and they’ll be gone. As a child, I always mourned the day they left. The migration marked the end of the outdoor season, and the beginning of a long winter cooped up in the house with Dad. Winters on Long Island are cold and dark. Most of the folks who stay for it drink more during those hard months, and my father was no exception. I wonder if I’ll still be here when the birds leave this year, or if I, too, will have headed south by then. It’s probably time I start thinking about packing up and moving on. The bite in the air is a good reminder.

  I open the sliding door and go back into the house. In the bathroom, I turn on the tap and splash cold water on my face. I fill a glass to the brim and drink it down, trying to offset the effects of drinking too much scotch on an empty stomach the night before. I stare at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve lost weight. My cheekbones protrude. The hollows around my hazel eyes seem more pronounced. I’ve stopped preparing proper meals. I can’t remember the last time I showered. It’s hard to do it with my shoulder. I fatigue easily, even when washing my hair. The bandaging gets wet and needs to be changed, and that seems like a lot of effort for me these days. It isn’t as though I’m expecting much in the way of company. Still, I am startled by my appearance. I’m not caring for myself. It shows.

  I flick on the shower. I need to pull myself together before Howard Kidd stops by this afternoon. There are papers to sign, bank accounts to close. A house to sell and bills to pay. My clothes drop to the tile floor. The tap rumbles and then sputters out water the color of bourbon. Rust. The pipes need replacing. So does the roof, the deck, the dented screen doors. One of the windows blew out in the last hurricane and no one bothered to replace it. My father used to hammer boards over the windows when hurricane season came. Nail marks mar the wood frames. Any broker will tell me to paint over them when I’m ready to sell the house. But I love those marks. As a child, I used to run my hands over them, my fingers feeling out each bump and rivet. They are scars from battles this house has fought and won.

  The whole house needs replacing, really. I know that. Maybe there’s no point in painting walls and putting in new screens when, more likely than not, a buyer will tear it down. Maybe all I need to do is tidy things up so that it looks presentable. Put away personal effects. Remove my father’s hunting trophies: the stag’s head with its glistening, dead eyes. The needle-nosed sailfish arched over the front door. I need to ensure that the air conditioner doesn’t leak and that the fridge stops making that strange, rattling sound. I have to clear out my father’s clothes from his bureau. His office door is locked. So is his gun closet. The guns need to go. So does his toothbrush, its frayed bristles hanging downward off the edge of his sink. My mother’s ashes are probably still stashed in the back of the office closet, in the brass-necked urn that has long since dulled from neglect. I don’t know for sure that the urn is still there, but I bet it is. I haven’t had the heart to check.

  I want to pick up Dad’s bike from the impound lot. If it’s at all restorable, I want to keep it. If not, I’ll take it to the junkyard myself. It seems like a personal job, something I shouldn’t farm out to Cole Haines. The bike, like my dad, deserves a decent goodbye.

  So much administrative work remains. The thought of it all exhausts me. I’ve been ignoring it, hoping it will dissipate, like the fog that hangs over the house in the early morning. But it won’t, of course. There is no one else to do these things but me. The stream of water begins to run clear. I step beneath it. It’s cool, but that’s good. The chill wakes me up, wipes the cobwebs from the drainpipes in my head. The water in this house has always been finicky. My father, a military man at his core, believed in cold showers. As a teenager, I resented him for making me bathe beneath an icy tap. His own showers were two minu
tes long, maybe three. They always seemed like punishment, as though he was repenting for his sins of the night before. Short, hard, cold showers. He didn’t understand how long it took for a teenage girl to wash her hair, to condition it, to shave her legs. Or maybe he did, but he wanted to punish me, too. I cut off my hair when I was fifteen. Used my own scissors and everything. My father approved. He applauded practicality. He thought blow dryers and curling irons were frivolities, especially for a girl who played sports and didn’t much care what she looked like. He had a point. I’ve worn it short ever since.

  I step out of the shower and dry myself off. I fish the last bandage out of the box below the sink and apply it to my shoulder. I slip on my jeans and a T-shirt, the kind with thumbholes at the cuff, so that the sleeves stay in place. I throw on a shoulder harness and, over that, an old FBI fleece vest that I borrowed from Lightman and never returned.

  From the drawer in the bedside table, I withdraw my Smith & Wesson. It’s my personal weapon, the one I’ve been carrying ever since my Bureau-assigned firearm was confiscated last month. I carry it in my harness, hidden beneath the long sides of the vest. I will continue to do so, at least until Dmitry Novak—the man we were hoping to arrest when I shot Anton Reznik—is in custody. I imagine Novak is unhappy with me for killing his favorite butcher. I won’t be safe until he’s behind bars, and perhaps not even then. With six years at the BAU under my belt, I’ve made plenty of enemies in addition to Novak. Enemies with long memories and violent tempers. I’ll likely always carry a gun. Dad did. He kept an arsenal in the closet of his office, locked of course, and pristinely maintained. If he was awake, he was carrying, and if he wasn’t, he was sleeping with a firearm in reach; usually in the drawer of the nightstand next to his bed. It never occurred to him not to. In his world, you were either predator or prey. Egret or killifish.

  In the kitchen, I set coffee to brew. I look up the number for the Suffolk County Police Impound Lot in Westhampton and dial. I know Cole won’t be there—it’s too early—and I’m happy enough not to have to make conversation about Dad’s passing. I leave a brief message with my name and cell phone number, saying that I’d like to swing by and pick up my dad’s bike as soon as possible. I want to do it quickly, without too much fuss. The idea of seeing Dad’s bike torn apart or reduced into scrap makes my stomach twist. In the sober light of morning, I realize Dorsey is right. I may have seen a lot of crime scenes, but everything’s different when it involves family.

  As soon as there is enough coffee in the pot, I pour myself a mug and step back out onto the deck. I take one sip before my phone rings. I set my coffee down, check the number. When I see that it’s Sam Lightman, I grit my teeth. After a moment’s pause, I pick up the call.

  “Flynn here.”

  “How are you doing, Nell?”

  “Fucking fantastic.”

  “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Barely a scratch.”

  “And your dad’s service?”

  “Over.”

  “Sounds like you’re ready to come home.”

  “Are you ready to bring me home?”

  Lightman clears his throat, something he does before he delivers bad news. “About that. I talked to Maloney.”

  Paul Maloney is the assistant director of the Office of Professional Responsibility, an arm of the FBI that I didn’t know existed a month ago and very much hope to never encounter again. After the shooting, Maloney insisted that I undergo counseling with Dr. Ginnis, a psychiatrist kept on retainer by the FBI. Ginnis reports to Maloney, and Maloney has the ultimate say on whether or not I’m fit to work. I get the sense that he’s not inclined to sign off on me unless I do what he tells me to do, and that includes a lot of therapy I’ve been avoiding.

  “And?”

  “Maloney’s concerned. He said you don’t keep your appointments.”

  “I don’t need PT. I feel fine.” I cup my hand over my shoulder, my fingers probing the wound to see if it’s still tender. It is. I stop.

  “Not just physical therapy. You need to see Dr. Ginnis, too.”

  “I’ve talked to Ginnis.”

  “Nell, come on. You can’t go once and call it a day.”

  “It’s not my fault I had to leave DC.”

  “Of course not. But you could do sessions over the phone. Ginnis needs to write up a full report about your mental fitness. You won’t get a clean eval until then.”

  “I get it.”

  “We need you back, Nell. I need you back.”

  “Are you begging?”

  “I would if I thought that would help.”

  “Can’t you get Ginnis to sign a form or something? I don’t want to lie on a couch and talk about my childhood.” My voice has taken on a petulant tone that annoys even me.

  “No one has asked you to do that.”

  “That’s exactly what he wants me to do. He has an actual couch. I’ve seen it. I lay on it. Once. That was enough.”

  Lightman chuckles despite himself. “Well, he’s a psychiatrist. They all want a little of that. You might feel better, you know.”

  “How about we find the guys who blew off a piece of my shoulder? I’d feel better then.”

  “We all would. We’re working on it.”

  “Work harder. Or better yet, let me come back to work and I’ll do it for you. I spent eight months hunting Novak. No one is closer to that case than I am.”

  Lightman sighs. “I’m worried about you, Nell. You’ve had a hell of a month. I can’t in good conscience send you back into the field on such a dangerous assignment. You know that. You need to take care of yourself. I can get you other names if Ginnis isn’t the right fit.”

  “Ginnis is fine.”

  “Then talk to him. That’s what he’s there for. You know, Ginnis lost his mom when he was young, too. He was raised on a military base. Just him and his father.”

  “So?”

  Lightman sighs. “So I think you have some stuff in common.”

  “Fine. I’ll talk to him. Don’t expect a miracle.”

  “I don’t. I’ll give him your cell number. You can call me, too. I know what it feels like to take a life. It’s brutal, Nell. It stays with you. It can really fuck you up if you aren’t careful.”

  I hear the rumble of a car approaching on Dune Road and then the crackle of tires on the gravel outside the house.

  “Thanks for the pep talk. Someone’s here. I gotta go.”

  I hang up before Lightman can protest. My hand falls to my firearm. It’s daylight. The driveway isn’t too far from the parking lot for the local beach. Sometimes folks get the two mixed up. Still, I’m not expecting anyone, especially not this early. In my situation, unexpected visitors aren’t exactly welcome.

  I hear the gate at the back of the house creak open. I move across the deck and flatten my body against the corner of the house. The wooden shingles press into my shoulder blades. A fly, trapped between the screen door and the window, buzzes overhead. I steady myself, ready my weapon. A rustle of birds shoots up from the dune grass, startled by the visitor. They’re as skittish as I am, and as unaccustomed to guests.

  I count the footsteps. Five will take you to the top of the stairs. A tall male figure appears. For a brief second, I panic. From behind, he looks like Dmitry Novak.

  My heart rate spikes. My finger grazes the trigger. I step out of the shadows.

  I don’t need to say anything; the man raises his hands slowly in surrender. “It’s me, Nell. It’s Lee.” He turns slowly.

  When I see his face, I lower my weapon.

  “Lee Davis. Jesus Christ. You scared the living shit out of me.”

  “Hi, kid.” Lee has always called me kid, even though we’re the same age. I think it has something to do with the fact that he’s a solid foot taller than I am. He moves in and hugs me so hard that I groan in pain.
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  “What’s wrong?” He withdraws, his face pinched with worry.

  “It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound.” I tap my shoulder, feeling the color slowly return to my face. “Lightly grazed by a bullet a month ago. Still a little sore.”

  “Lightly grazed. That sounds like something your dad would say. I’m glad you’re okay.”

  “Never better.”

  He nods and looks me up and down; I do the same. He hasn’t changed much since our days together at Hampton Bays High School. Tall and thin as a pencil. His shoulders hunch inward, like he can’t quite hear people talking down below. His hair, once jet-black, has a few strands of silver in it now. He probably hates that, but I think it makes him look distinguished. His face, freckled and lineless, is still boyish enough to carry him. He’s handsome in a quiet sort of way that I find appealing. I glance at his ring finger. It’s bare, which surprises me. He always seemed like the sort who’d be driving his kids to soccer games by the time we were in our thirties.

  Lee dated nice girls in high school, field hockey players and cheerleaders who smiled a lot and flipped their hair when they laughed. The kind of girls who pretended I didn’t exist. I tried hard to convey that the feeling was mutual, but no one at Hampton Bays High School really cared one way or another what I thought about them. I was just the quiet, skinny girl who wore a black leather jacket to class and was taking college-level math by the time I was in ninth grade. The girl whose dad was a homicide detective; whose mom was a homicide victim. My mother’s brutal murder was well publicized in our area. For years afterward, there were whispers about it, about her, about us. Suffice it to say, I was given a wide berth at school.

  “Sorry about the greeting,” I say, running a hand through my hair. “Occupational hazard.”

  Lee waves me off, like a gun in his face first thing in the morning is no big deal. “How was the service? Dorsey said it was nice.”