Lisa’s eyes crinkled. “That’s what friends are for.”
I laid my head on her shoulder. “Alcoholics don’t usually have friends. They don’t deserve them. But you stuck with me through it all. I won’t forget it.”
She blushed, actually blushed. “Have you given any more thought to L.A.? It’s a great house in a great town. Swimming pools, movie stars. It would be good for you.”
“I know it would. You’re right, as always.”
“You flatterer. So… chick night tonight? TNT is running a MacGyver retrospective.”
“You’re on, girl.”
My esteemed lawyer, Quentin Delacourt, stared uncomprehendingly across his desk. I knew I should be taking his mystification more seriously. But he was wearing a red bow tie, and how can you take anyone seriously when they’re wearing a red bow tie?
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You want to give it up?”
“Right. Throw in the towel. Call it quits.”
“But-”
The Shepherds were also in his office, at my invitation. “I just wanted you all to know. The battle is over.”
“But Susan-” The lawyer leaned forward. “Do you understand what will be the consequences of this action?”
“Yeah. I get that.” There was a sudden thickness in my chest that I tried to ignore. At any rate, I wasn’t going to let it show. “Just get me some visitation rights, okay? So I can see her every now and again.”
“That won’t be any problem,” Mr. Shepherd said. “Whatever you want.”
I turned toward him, shutting the lawyer out. “You’ve been pretty hostile to me in the past.”
He cleared his throat. “It’s possible that… my opinion has changed.”
His wife cut in. “I don’t want to intrude, but… may I ask why you’re doing this?”
I sucked in my breath. “Because you’re better for her than I am. I know that now. I guess I always did, really, but I didn’t want to admit it. I’m not saying this is forever-I’m going to try like hell to pull myself together, and if I do, I’ll want to talk about custody again. But for now-this is best for Rachel.”
Mr. Shepherd held out his hand. “You’re doing the right thing, Lieutenant.”
I took the hand with my good arm and shook it firmly. “I know I am. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Take good care of my girl, okay?”
“We will. And Lieutenant?”
“Yeah?”
“You take good care of yourself.”
One last stop before the hearing. I could tell Lisa didn’t think this was a good idea, but she took me anyway. Let me stop by the florist, then onward.
Not many people at the cemetery this time of day. A groundskeeper, a few scattered mourners. Found David’s grave in no time at all. It looked pretty scruffy, barren, unkempt. ’Course, I hadn’t been here since the day he was interred.
I stood there just staring at the grave for the longest time before I finally spoke. “Look, it’s not like it was a gigantic surprise or anything. I knew that you were… confused. I knew your interest in me… sexually… was declining. I’d seen the way you turned away whenever a hot-looking guy passed us in the mall. How unconvincing you were, laughing much too loudly whenever Granger made crude remarks about a Super Bowl cheerleader’s anatomy. And I know, intellectually, as a psychologist, that it was no reflection on me. Not that that’s stopped me from engaging in humiliating, degrading affairs, desperately trying to prove to myself that I might actually be desirable to someone.”
I drew in my breath, then slowly released it. “My point is, I had my suspicions for a long time. I just didn’t expect to have them confirmed the way I did. To come home and find you… you…”
I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to stop the mental movie from replaying. “I’m sorry I threw that huge fit in the office. I had no right to do that, not in front of your friends, co-workers, even if they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. They still don’t know. I never told anyone and I never will. But what you did, David-” I felt myself tearing up, something I promised myself I would not do. I steeled myself, then started again.
“I mean, bottom line, I didn’t care about any of that. You were what you were. But whatever you were… I needed you. Rachel needed you. And to just… leave us like that, leave me feeling guilty and betrayed and… alone. That was what hurt, David. That was what screwed me up the most. That was what I couldn’t forget-or forgive. We didn’t get a chance to work it out. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.”
The wind whistled through the barren oaks that dotted the yellow field. A few crows circled overhead, singing their sad songs. “But you were right. It’s time to move on, sugar bear.”
I crouched down and laid a single red rose across his resting place. “Consider yourself forgiven.”
The Bad Man still comes for me, but he comes in my dreams. Daddy says that it isn’t real but it is real I know it is just like I dreamed that Mommy would leave and she did and she never came back and now the Bad Man is dead but he keeps coming for me and I don’t know when he will ever stop.
I saw Susan in the hospital and she looked broken but better and I asked one of the doctors who looked at me like I was a weirdo but he told me she could still have babies and that made me happy.
I don’t miss the Bad Man but I miss being a policeman. I’m glad Susan is getting out of the hospital so I can be a policeman again. Susan is my friend. Everything has been better since she came to see my dad that night and I don’t know if she knows that she makes me happy but she makes me get tingly when she winks at me and has sort of a happiness beam that she shoots out and I feel like I could do more things when she’s around I feel like I could do anything I could focus like my dad tells me to focus focus and I could be of use to people. If Susan wanted me to.
It’s lonely here without my dad. I used to dream about being alone and not having my dad scowling and being disappointed in me all the time but now that he is gone it isn’t nearly as nice as I thought it was going to be.
I was feeling fairly buoyant when I hobbled into the hearing. And devastated when I left. Like what little I had left had been ripped away from me. As if I had nothing, nothing at all.
Never being one to display much decorum, much less sense, I confronted him in his hospital room.
“You did this to me, didn’t you?”
O’Bannon sat up. “What are you talking about?”
“I had my hearing today. With IA. For reinstatement.”
“How did it go?”
“I thought it went brilliantly. They complimented me on my work on the Edgar case. Talked about the pleasure they got from the fact that all those FBI dudes went home empty-handed while one of theirs made the collar. Talked about my impressive courage and resilience. How I seemed to be conquering my personal demons. I thought I had it made in the shade.”
“And?”
I punched his pillow. “And then they pulled out the report you filed. You blackballed me, you son of a bitch.”
“Hardly that. I just said-”
“You knew they wouldn’t reinstate me against your wishes. Your recommendation was critical!”
“Susan, listen to me.”
“Why should I, you bastard? I did your dirty work for you! I caught your killer. I even-I even-what he did to me-” I broke down. Just lost it.
O’Bannon intervened. “Susan, stop.”
“Why should I?” I screamed. “I wanted my job back! Don’t you understand-it’s all I have left!”
He looked at me with tired, cheerless eyes. “You’re not ready, Susan.”
“Who the hell are you to judge?”
“You know it as well as I do. If I reinstate you, that means you carry a gun. That means maybe a partner depends on you for their life. Are you ready for that kind of responsibility?”
“I caught Edgar!”
“You’re an alcoholic, Susan. We both know it. I think you’re
trying to pull yourself out of that gutter, but how can I know whether you’ll make it? You’re a brilliant behaviorist, but until I’m certain you’re one hundred percent, I will not put another officer’s life in your hands.”
I fell back in my chair, feeling all the pain, the hurt, the futility wash over me. “What can I do?”
“You can go back to those IOP meetings, for starters. Join AA. Get a sponsor. Read the Big Book. Work the steps.”
“I’m not the talky-feely type.”
“You’ll force yourself. You’ll get better. And when your doctor tells me you’re solid, I’ll put you back on the team. In the meantime, your consultation contract continues. Believe me, I can find plenty for you to do. You won’t be bored.”
He fiddled with the controls on his hospital bed, raising himself. “And now that we’ve got that out of the way, would you mind dropping by the house to check on Darcy? He called the front desk-he’s having some kind of problem. He’s been all by himself since I went into the hospital. He’s a good kid, but-you know how he is. He needs someone looking out for him. And God knows there’s no one he likes better than you.”
“Oh, that’s not-”
“Don’t kid a kidder, Susan. He adores you. I’m his old man, sure, but I know the score. I love him, but he’s wary of me. Too much discipline-or attempted discipline, anyway. Too many mistakes. Too many unresolved issues. And I’m laid up. So would you run by and see what’s going on? He probably just needs someone to hold his hand for a minute. Would you do that?”
“If I say yes, will you reinstate me?”
“Hell, no. But I’d consider it a personal favor. I think your daddy would, too.”
Bastard would play any card in his deck, wouldn’t he? “Fine, I’ll go. But you can stuff your damn consulting contract.”
“Are you sure? Why?”
“After I see Darcy, I’m blowing town.”
I rang the bell and Darcy came to the door almost immediately. His eyes were like balloons. His hands were flapping. He ran around in circles, screaming, barely coherent, even worse than when I’d taken him to that sex club. “Fire! Fire!”
I raced inside. The kitchen was indeed on fire, flames shooting out from the microwave oven. Looked like he’d been reheating some Pizza Hut chicken wings, but he’d left the food in the box with the foil wrapping. Darcy ran circles around the kitchen table, screaming, running his fingers through his hair. He collided into the wall. He fell backward against the table and hit his head.
I grabbed him and held him in place. “Darcy, where is the fire extinguisher?”
He was so messed up he couldn’t talk, could only point. I opened the pantry door and grabbed the extinguisher. A minute or so later, the fire was out. But the kitchen was a mess. As was Darcy.
He crumpled on the floor, hunched over the linoleum, rocking back and forth, babbling incoherently, hitting himself in the face.
“I called and asked Dad about dinner but Dad couldn’t fix dinner so I thought that’s fine I’ll fix my own dinner and I did but the oven was mad at me and it started a fire and I didn’t know what to do and…”
On and on and on. He hit himself so hard he made bruises.
I had to do something. I reached around him with my good arm and grabbed both hands, restraining him. Becoming his human straitjacket.
“All I wanted was something to eat but there was no one here and there’s never anyone here anymore and I was all alone and I didn’t know what to do and did you know that sixty-seven percent of all domestic fires begin in the kitchen but I opened the microwave and the flames just leaped out they just leaped out like they were trying to get me they wanted to punish me because I did a bad thing a really really bad thing…”
I hugged him tighter and tried to speak in a soft, soothing voice. I figured it didn’t really matter what I said. He just needed to hear someone. It was hard, because I had one arm in a cast and the other ached at the wrist, but I held on to him.
“It hurt so much and I was all alone and I didn’t know why the Bad Man came why the Bad Man always comes when I’m asleep I didn’t want to hurt him I didn’t want to hurt anyone I didn’t hurt Mommy I really didn’t but he was going to hurt Susan because I wanted to ask you about babies and I couldn’t let him hurt Susan…”
God, my heart ached for him. He couldn’t be left on his own like this.
I whispered into his ear. “It’s all right, Darcy. Susan is here. Susan is right here.”
“And sometimes it’s dark and I hear these noises and I don’t know what the noises are and I don’t like it when people touch me why do people always want to touch me I want to be touched but when they touch me it makes me want to run away and I don’t want to be here by myself anymore I don’t I don’t I don’t…”
I felt myself choking, feeling his pain, wondering what it must have been like for Chief O’Bannon, raising this boy by himself all those years, dealing with this kind of panic attack not just once when you happen to drop by but every day, every day of your life.
The words tumbled out of me. I didn’t even think before I spoke. This boy had done so much for me, had supported me throughout this whole horrific case. Maybe it was time I returned the favor. “It’s all right, Darcy. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
I held him like that for more than an hour before he calmed down. I didn’t mind. Even though it hurt, I didn’t mind. Once he was calm again, I fixed a proper dinner, then cleaned up the kitchen mess and made myself a place to sleep on the couch.
I took a shower, and when I stepped out of the bathroom with-thank God-a towel wrapped around myself, I found Darcy standing outside the door.
He was gasping for air and dripping with perspiration. And he was holding a frozen custard in each hand.
“I hope that you are in the mood for custard. I thought that you might be in the mood but I wasn’t sure so I ran all the way to Third Street. And back.”
“Just because you wanted me to have a bedtime snack?”
His face was like a shimmering sheet of tinfoil. “Because any day you have a custard is a Very Excellent Day. And I thought that maybe you could use a Very Excellent Day.”
That night, before I fell asleep, I cried. Streams of tears, endless flows of salt water, cascading down my face. But it was a good cry. One I’d been saving up for a long time.
Guess I won’t be going to L.A. after all.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No writer can ever tackle anything so large and daunting as a novel without getting a lot of help, and I’m certainly no exception. I want to thank everyone who helped me during the time I spent creating Susan and Darcy’s world and who assisted with the enormous research required to bring the characters to life.
The United States is currently in the midst of an autism epidemic-and no one knows why. Autism Spectrum Disorders have increased over 500 percent in the last decade; the Department of Education reported an 18 percent increase in those seeking special services for autism from 2003 to 2004. In 2004, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an Autism Alert to the nation’s pediatricians in an effort to improve data collection to try to determine the cause of this epidemic and to aid in earlier diagnosis. I want to give special thanks to perhaps the leading pioneers in autism research, Ivar Lovaas and Bernard Rimland. Lovaas pioneered the use of behavioral intervention, which has been incredibly useful to many parents trying to recover a child who seemed lost to this neurological disorder. Rimland pursued biomedical research and, as a result, has produced a therapeutic protocol that many parents believe significantly assisted, or even cured, their children. Both approaches are most effective when instituted in the child’s life as early as possible. (In case you’re wondering, the only reason Rimland is not mentioned in the book is because his protocol would not have existed when Darcy was a child.) Those wanting to know more about Lovaas and his Institute for Early Intervention should visit www.lovaas.com. Those seeking more information about Rimland and the Aut
ism Research Institute should visit www.AutismResearchInstitute.com or consider attending one of his periodic DAN (Defeat Autism Now) conferences (www.DANconference.com). Parents reeling from the shock of this diagnosis and wondering where to begin would do well to read Let Me Hear Your Voice by Catherine Maurice, the inspiring story of one parent’s successful battle against this strange and terrifying disorder.
It would be impossible to write a book about a criminal behaviorist without becoming familiar with the work of the two best-known names in the field: John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood. Douglas developed criminal profiling techniques during his twenty-five years with the FBI and subsequently wrote fascinating books based on his experiences, such as Mindhunter and The Anatomy of Motive. Hazelwood built on and expanded his work; his psychological insights are perhaps the best recorded in his book Dark Dreams. I also must thank my friend Dave Johnson for his insight and information about the inner life of a police station and those who work there. If the characters in this book do not always behave as model police officers, however, it’s not Dave’s fault; it’s because these characters, like most people I know, are not perfect.
And those who want to know more about card counting and other blackjack techniques developed at MIT and elsewhere may wish to read Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, and the classic Beat the Dealer by Edward Thorp. If you’re thinking card counting will allow you to go to Vegas and get rich quick, though, please think again.
I also want to thank the many fellow writers who agreed to read an early draft of this book, indulging my friendship, not to mention my insecurity about a book I knew was a departure from my previous work. Many thanks to Jodie Nida, John Wooley, K. D. Wentworth, James Vance, and my wife, Kirsten. The worst of it is, the only compensation they received was having characters in the book named after them. But at least none of their namesakes were tortured by poisonous leeches.
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