A Kind of Justice (35 page)

“That's a choice only you can make.”

I knew she would say that.

“What would you do?” I ask her.

“Oh, Bobbi,” she sighs, “my answer would have no weight. It's a hypothetical question for me. For you, it's real. If I confess, it's about morality and principle. If you confess, you spend the next twenty years in jail.”

“So you see it as a moral dilemma?”

Marilee thinks for a moment. “No,” she says. “Not to me. If you were a hit-and-run driver, or you had hurt an innocent person, then yes. It would be a moral dilemma. You took hostage someone who wanted to kill you. A murderer who had no conscience. I don't see that as an immoral act. You just did what you had to do. The question now is whether or not you can live with it.”

Marilee was the first to hear my confession after I kidnapped Strand and he was found murdered. She knows about the tortured dreams I've had ever since, dreams of guilt and dread.

“Somehow, I don't think confessing and going to jail will make the nightmares go away. In fact, it seems like it would be worse because
I'd also have the guilt of abandoning Betsy and Robbie in their time of need.”

Marilee nods her head soberly. She won't say it out loud, but that's what she sees, too. The only rational act is to deny everything. I shouldn't even be thinking about it, but I hate lies. I hate living my life that way. My life as a male was a lie, at least after I figured out who I was. Having come clean, having survived being cursed and spat upon and gawked at and abused to emerge on the other side of the tunnel as a person, a person I like, I don't want to go back into the dark with another lie.

I say all this to Marilee.

“Of course,” she says. “But you don't have to lie. You can refer the police to your attorney who can tell them you refuse to answer questions that might tend to incriminate you.” She's been the wife of a cop for several decades.

“That would satisfy the legal code,” I agree, “but to me, it's like lying without saying the words.”

I wonder how Wilkins would handle it. By the book, no doubt. Let the chips fall where they may. Live with the consequences. Honor the honor code.

Of course, who am I to think about honor? I'm a felon. And if I do the honorable thing, many of the people I hold dearest will suffer. Betsy and Robbie. The L'Elégance staff. Roger. Cecelia won't cry herself to sleep nights, but there will be a hole in her life.

It's the perfect mind fuck: a real-life problem with no right answer.

T
UESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
23

W
ILKINS STARES AT
three packages on his kitchen table. One is for his daughter, Anita, at her college address. Along with his mother's jewelry, it contains the gifts he got her for Christmas and a letter explaining his illness, how much he regrets the distance between them after the divorce, how much he loves her. How, if there's an afterlife, he'll spend his looking after her and her brother and her mom.

Another box is addressed to his son, Stephen. It contains Christmas gifts, along with his mementos and his journals. Medals, citations, newspaper clippings from some of his big cases. The half dozen journals he kept off and on over the years. The last journal has a lot of soul searching about his cancer and how it feels to see death standing in the doorway.

He stares at the third package, the one containing the murder book for the Strand investigation. It is complete, right down to the identity of the person who finished off Strand after Logan left. It took him an intense day and night to figure it out, but it's there. His last case is done.

He can deliver it to the DA, something he has put off for days because he felt weak and tired and wasn't sure he had the energy to deal with one of the snot-nose assistant DAs. Truth be told, he also had misgivings about fucking up Logan's life. She's a decent person who
just got trapped between a rock and hard place. She was right about some things. None of this would have happened if they had investigated the transwoman's murder right.

And she was right about Andive. If that wretched piece of shit had raped his daughter or his wife, they'd be digging up his body parts for the next thousand years.

And now there's another life at stake. The murderer. Who wasn't a murderer, but more a lifesaver. Someone who wanted to make sure Logan survived. Someone who knew Strand would add her to his line of victims as soon as he could. Two more lives ruined because the department couldn't bring Strand to justice. A bad exchange.

He tries to change his line of thought. Even when you see that justice won't be served by following the law, there won't be justice for anyone if cops start making the calls themselves.

His mind wanders. This is his last act as a detective. A legacy in its own right. It's all about how you handle yourself when you're at the end of the line. Do you stay disciplined and professional or drown in self-pity and go through the motions? Allan Wilkins would be a role model for his son. Stephen would be facing all kinds of challenges in his adult life. Allan Wilkins might not be there with him, but he could leave a legacy that the boy could draw on.

Which got him thinking. What would Stephen think? Would he be proud if his old man stayed true to the oath and put away someone he didn't want to put away? Or would he see Logan as someone who got screwed by a system that wouldn't protect her from a killer but will prosecute her for defending herself?

Wilkins sighs. In twenty-four hours, give or take, he'll be a monster, wishing he were dead, afraid to show his face in public, a prisoner in this miserable apartment.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
24

Wilkins finishes writing the letter, folds the pages, slides them in the envelope. He doesn't seal the envelope, just pushes the flap inside the V.

It's lunchtime, but he doesn't eat anymore. Even the liquid crap they give him hurts to swallow. Now there's no point in putting himself through that pain. He stands, puts on his coat, slides the letter in one pocket, his meds in another, and grabs a water bottle from the refrigerator on his way out.

An elderly couple shares the elevator with him on his way down. He's seen them before. They say nothing when he gets on, just look at the floor. That's how most people react now, and he hasn't even had the surgery. He can see them standing in a puddle of their own pee if he got on wearing that monster face . . .

At the ground floor he strides out to the street and walks half a block to his car. The effort exhausts him.

It's cold. Chicago cold. Noon on Christmas Eve day and it feels like maybe twenty degrees, enough wind to chill you to the bone. He's shivering and his hand shakes a little as he unlocks the car. It's a department vehicle, unmarked. The captain pulled strings to let him use it, at least until his surgery.

Well, he's already an hour late for the surgery. The phone has been ringing for the past half hour. Some rich surgeon is missing a payday on the last day before Christmas. Poor guy. Wilkins has problems of his own.

He settles into the seat behind the steering wheel, fires up the engine, dials up his favorite music station on the radio. He reclines the seat back to an easy-chair angle, then fishes the meds out of his pocket. He takes a sleeping pill first, just one. It usually knocks him out in about five minutes. He checks his watch, then lays back and enjoys an old Aretha Franklin song on the radio. He gazes out the windshield at the trees, the gray sky, a lamppost draped with holiday
decorations. He closes his eyes and rests. He opens them and looks at the headliner of the car, feels the comfort of the seat, thinks how nice it was of the captain to let him use the car. Which is why he's going to do this with pills, not his Glock, which is the way a cop should go out. The more he thought about it, the more he could see the captain getting burned for breaking the rules and the department ending up with a blood-spattered car that they'd have to write off.

Wilkins sighs. He opens the other bottle, a concoction of sleeping pills and pain pills. He starts downing them, four or five at a time. It hurts to swallow. He wants to get it done as fast as he can. If he ends up having a lot of pain in his gut, he'll just have to deal with it, but not for long. Hopefully, the first sleeping pill will knock him out, and he won't feel the rest.

He hopes his wife and daughter forgive him for all his failures. He hopes Stephen finds something to love about his memory. He hopes someday there won't be so many people robbing and killing other people.

Johnny Hartman sings slow and sad about an affair that was almost like a song, but much too sad to write.

Amen, Johnny, Wilkins thinks. Saddest song he ever heard. In a movie about white people in Iowa, for goodness' sake. The blues is for everyone.

It is the last conscious thought of his life.

*    *    *

W
EDNESDAY
, D
ECEMBER
24

This is insane, but no one can refuse Cecelia when she gets like this, not even Betsy, not even when we all know what she's doing is completely and totally insane.

Which is why Betsy, Robbie, Cecelia, and I are spreading a blanket on North Avenue Beach at one o'clock in the afternoon on Christmas Eve day, even though the air temperature is somewhere south of twenty degrees. There's a steady wind blowing, but mercifully, Cecelia has put us in a protected spot. She acts like she just invented Florida.

“Look, we're completely out of the wind, Bobbi. Stop whining,” she says to me. Big smile on her face, as much as I can see of it with the furry hood of her arctic parka snugged around her face leaving only her nose and parts of her mouth and eyes exposed to the raw air.

“Oh this is nice,” I say. “I'll just get out of these awful clothes and get some sun.” I try to effect the sarcastic voice of a latter-day Valley Girl. I'm pretty close.

Robbie thinks this is the greatest adventure ever. She is puffed up like a snowman in a white snowsuit and white boots. She's wearing enough layers of insulation to herd arctic caribou and she has the pent-up energy to run them to exhaustion. She dashes off, an unleashed spirit free at last of the bottle she had been living in. She looks like a powdered donut rolling across the beach. I trot after her hoping to get warm, worried that icicles are forming in my lungs.

Cecelia calls us in a few minutes later, sits us in a circle on the blanket, and distributes goodies from her bag. Sandwiches, chips, cookies, and cups of hot chocolate. No need to blow on the hot chocolate to cool it off.

It's really cold.

“You're probably wondering why I've called this meeting,” says Cecelia as we finish eating.

Betsy nods her head and smiles with blue lips. I mutter an obscenity under my breath, but smile.

“One, just to get out and shake off the cabin fever,” says Cecelia.

“We could have done that at a nice warm café,” I object.

“But it wouldn't have felt as good when we went home,” she counters. Point taken, assuming we survive to make it home.

“Second, we can't let the cold weather own us. We have to get out in it and have fun. This is very European, you know. You go to Copenhagen, Stockholm, Munich, anywhere in northern Europe and you see people having picnics in nice public places, even in the winter, even now.”

“That's old Europe.” More sarcasm, echoing the words once used by an American politician trying to dismiss European leaders in an international debate. Cecelia smiles and ignores me.

“Third,” she starts. I'm listening closely now. Cecelia's third things always knock you on your backside. “Third, we're gathered here because it's Christmas Eve day and even though my beloved Bobbi is an atheist”—she mocks indignation—“this is a special day and tonight will be a special night, and it's my Christmas wish that the two of you sit right here and think about how special it is that you have each other. I want you to be able to hug someone you love tonight and tomorrow. Take it from someone who has no one, I know how special that is.”

“Why don't you spend the night with us, and we'll hug you instead of each other,” I say to Cecelia. It just slips out. A look of shock flares on Betsy's face until she realizes I was just trying to be funny.

Cecelia laughs merrily. “I'll let the two of you have a frank and open discussion while Robbie and I go beachcombing.” She engages Robbie in the idea of looking for princess tiaras and other treasures on the frozen tundra of the Lake Michigan shore.

As they trundle off, Betsy looks at me with a blank face. “What does she think we should be talking about?”

I shrug. “I have no idea.” My attempt at speech is muted by chattering teeth and numb lips. Betsy's lips are as blue as mine. I scoot over
to sit beside her and pull the blanket over us. We giggle like kids in the darkness.

“Bobbi,” she says when we settle down. “I don't know how I'll cope if they take you away.”

“You'll be fine,” I say, rubbing her back with one hand. “You're smart and tough. You're ready to go out in the world. I'm the one who'll have to find a way to cope.”

“I'm not worried about making a living, Bobbi. It's losing you again.”

I tell her I'm flattered, but she'll be moving on with her love life soon. There will be a new Mr. Right.

“That's not what I mean,” she answers. Her voice catches. She's having an emotional moment. “Bobbi, you're my greatest love, whether you're a man or a woman. I love you like I love Robbie . . . forever, no matter what. We won't always live together, but we'll always see each other. But it would be more fun if we could meet at a restaurant or shopping mall rather than at some jail.” She starts the sentence in a somber voice, but something about it strikes her funny bone and mine at the same time. We snicker and the snickers turn to laughs.