Darkness peering (11 page)

"Dad used to say "Shoot straight." " She shuddered. "Isn't that
weird?"

"Prophetic and weird."

" "Shoot straight." "

"You know what the obituary said? "He died unexpectedly."

She closed her eyes for a moment. "It pisses me off."

"What?"

"Why'd he have to kill himself like that?"

He stroked her cheek. "It wasn't us, Pickle."

"What was it, then?"

"I don't know, but I don't think it was us."

THE DREAM WAS ALWAYS THE SAME. HIS FATHER WAS UP ON

the roof, walking as easily as you'd cross a floor. Nalen Storrow
walked to the edge of the roof, looked down at Billy with his ice-blue
eyes, gold badge glinting in the sun, and said, "A conscience doesn't
come with a dimmer switch, son." Then he began to glow as if lit from
within. Eyes smoldering, he leapt into the sky and disappeared. And
in his hand, Billy found his father's revolver. His heart pounded as
he pointed the gun at his own head and pulled the trigger, and his
bones dissolved and his brains came rushing out the back of his skull
as he crashed to the ground.

Billy woke up drenched in sweat. The bed was damp, the sheets
stifling. He kicked them off, sat up, rubbed his eyes. His hands were
trembling. "Stupid fuck," he said. "Stupid shit ... stupid fuck .."

He switched on the light. Three in the morning. He got up and started
re shelving some of the books stacked haphazardly around the room. He
stacked them alphabetically by author. He'd made the floor-to-ceiling
scrub pine bookshelves himself.

A distant memory came to him. He must've been three or four years old
when he found a moldy old baseball in the backyard and brought it
inside to show his father. Nalen Storrow snatched

the baseball away and chopped it in half with a hatchet. Only Billy
couldn't be sure if it'd actually happened that way or if perhaps he
had dreamt it. He wasn't sure of anything anymore.

Now the familiar nagging thoughts, bad thoughts, corrosive, tried to
pry their way into his brain, and he did what he always did whenever
that happened. He picked up a book among the stacks of books that
littered the house and skimmed its pages. He didn't usually buy
self-help books, but this one was about the children of alcoholics. He
paused to read a random paragraph: Some children grow up to become
"super-coping adults," extremely diplomatic and capable ofivorking very
hard for little reward; people who set out to save others.

That was Rachel, he thought. Whereas Billy fit the category of those
who had low self-worth and difficulty maintaining intimate
relationships. That was him, no self-esteem. Just a big emptiness
inside he kept trying to fill up with a human being.

Billy didn't know who he was; he didn't fit into the world. He browsed
and re shelved until dawn cracked the horizon; this was the way he
dealt with his nightmares.

rachel's conversation' with billy had left hlr feeling raw, angry and
confused. For the first time, she understood what McKissack was
talking about and she hated him for being right. She was too close to
the case, and the hard weight of this knowledge sat inside her like a
stone. She'd recognized pain in the sharp, cracked color of her
brother's eyes and that had stopped her from questioning him further.
Still, she wasn't ready to give up just yet.

Looking downrange at the target, she attempted to create in her mind a
potentially life-threatening situation. She told herself she had no
backup. It was just her and the perp and her life was in danger. What
should she do? Her heart pumped rhythmically as she tried to imagine
the perp's face but couldn't. He was a cipher. A face in shadow.

She'd been a patrol officer for three years now, a detective third
grade just over a year, and yet she'd never shot at a suspect, never
killed anyone. On Boy Range back at the police academy, she'd learned
to shoot at the body-shaped targets stapled to stanchions across the
range. The bullets were caught in sand piles behind the stanchions
embedded in concrete. In her headset and goggles, she stood with the
other recruits in the ready position, gun drawn, arm extended. "On the
whistle, fire two rounds." Unload and reload with the speed loader.
Fire off four rounds in fifteen seconds.

And always at the back of her mind was the question: What did it feel
like to get shot? What did it feel like to turn your gun on yourself?
To take your own life? Head ripped apart at the pressure of your own
finger?

No, don't think about that now. Stay focused.

She imagined the perp several yards away, pointing a gun in her face.
She needed to remain calm. She bent her knees, turned to the left and
dumped her speed loader, slammed in a new one. Trigger control. Take
it easy. She fired off six rounds.

Rachel liked her gun, liked the feel of it in her hand, the weight of
it. Her gun was an extension of her sense of safety. She carried
eighteen rounds of ammunition at all times: six rounds in the revolver,
six in each of the two speed loaders she kept inside her purse.

Now she aligned the rear and front sights, then allowed her vision to
refocus on the front sight and the distant target, choosing the Weaver
stance, placing her feet in a professional boxer-type

position and keeping a forty-five-degree angle to the target. More
shots. The acrid smell of gunpowder. Two rounds supported, four
seconds. Combat-unload and reload with the speed loader. Align the
target in your rear and front sights. Squeeze the trigger.

She'd always wanted to be a cop, ever since she could remember. She'd
loved her father's uniform, his gold shield, his shiny black shoes. He
kept his gun loaded in the bedside table and she was forbidden to go
near it, but sometimes she snuck into her parents' room and played with
the ammunition he kept in his sock drawer.

Now she took a step back and arched her neck. Squinted at the target.
Good grouping, probably in the high nineties. Not bad.

"Why the Weaver?" It was McKissack, coming up behind her on Charley
Range. She'd know that voice anywhere. It crept up her spine and
curled her toes.

"There's less of me exposed to my adversary. Greater mobility while on
the run."

"Disadvantages?"

"Difficult to perform while under stress."

He squinted at the target. "Good grouping, Storrow."

"Thanks, Jim."

He flashed her a look that made her jump inside her own skin.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and his features softened. "I don't know
what to call you anymore. Not even when we're alone. Should I call
you Chief?"

"Frankly, I don't know what I want," he admitted.

She reholstered her weapon.

"In a gunfight," he said, "you have no way of knowing when you're about
to be fired on. So you take cover wherever you can find it. You have
to respond quickly. There's not much time to establish sight
alignment, and you usually end up returning fire instinctively, by
pointing and shooting."

She gave him a puzzled look.

"Some things you can never prepare yourself for, Rachel," he said and
walked away.

since ozzie rudd's daughter attended the school for the Blind, Rachel
had made an appointment to meet him inside the Main Building on Friday
afternoon around three o'clock when classes let out. You weren't
supposed to drive your vehicle over twenty miles per hour inside the
campus gates. Rachel parked he hind the Main Building and entered the
front lobby, where she greeted the receptionist, a large woman with
navy blue nail polish and vamp irish eye shadow whose nametag said

Cassandra.

"I'm supposed to meet Ozzie Rudd here."

"Oh yeah." Cassandra removed a can of Static Guard from her purse and
sprayed her clothes with it, a plume of toxic chemicals misting the
air. "Cut through the library. Take any door on your right and
proceed all the way down the hall to the very end. Room 138."

"Thanks," Rachel said with a dry cough.

In the library, a crystal chandelier illuminated what many of the
children could not see--glass cases full of stuffed animals and shelves
crammed with Braille books. The library's interior brick walls had
been polished smooth from decades of handling by sightless children.
The Venetian blinds were dented at about the same height--that of a
child's groping hand. The white walls were also smudged, a dirty gray
trail leading from one end of the room to the other.

Rachel passed a small group of children gathered in front of one of
the glass cases, where a boy with deep-set eyes was counting the fangs
on a Bengal tiger, its jaws opened wide enough to swallow him whole.
Taking the nearest door on her right, she walked down a long corridor
to Room 138 and knocked on the door. The teacher, a perky hrunette in
a blue cardigan, swung around and smiled at her through the glass.
"Can I help you?"

"I'm Detective Storrow. I was supposed to meet Ozzie Rudd here at
three." She glanced apologetically at her watch. "I'm a little
early."

"C'mon in. My name's Peggy Morrissey."

About a dozen eight-to-ten-year-olds turned toward her as the door
thwunked shut behind her, their eyes alternately milky or roving or
piercingly focused. Some of the children had visible deformities,
whereas others were perfectly normal-looking. A boy in a wheelchair,
his arms twisted like pretzels, directed his motorized chair by
manipulating a lever attached to his chin. Moving slowly toward her,
he parked a few feet away to gaze at her through his Coke-bottle
lenses. She assumed he could make out the general shape of her, that
from his point of view, she'd entered the classroom and stirred up the
shadows.

"This is Bradley," Peggy Morrissey said. "Bradley, say hello to
Detective Storrow. She's a police officer."

"Hello," the boy said.

"Hello, Bradley."

Peggy walked away, leaving them alone together. Bradley had the
cockeyed look of a Picasso portrait, eyes slightly crossed, face
stretched out where it shouldn't be, cheekbones two triangles under the
artist's brush. A sweep of black hair drifted across his eyes, and a
tangerine button on his sweatshirt announced "I have permission to
roam." He jerked his head and the wheelchair shot forward half a foot.
"You a cop?"

"I'm a detective, yes."

"Do you have a gun?"

"I have my se vice weapon."

"What's a service weapon?"

"It's a gun."

He had an exuberant laugh, one that came deep from his belly, air
pushing through his nose with foghorn force. His fingers were twisted
rigidly together, like Play-Doh that's been left out overnight.

"I like your laugh," she told him.

"You do?" He seemed delighted.

In a far corner, the other children were cleaning up after an art
project. Water ran in the sink as they took turns washing their hands
and groping for the paper towel dispenser.

"What're you doin'?" Bradley asked her.

"I'm supposed to be meeting someone."

"Who?"

"A man."

He looked confused. "What man?"

"His name is Ozzie Rudd."

"Colette's father?"

"Yes," she said.

He stared at the floor for a moment, then burst into song.

"Oh I had the time of my life ... and I owe it all to you-only
you....."" There was no self-consciousness in his singing.

No artifice. His face filled like a sail with joy.

Now another student tapped her way toward them, a little girl of about
eight. She walked hunched over, arms clutching invisible bundles, head
bowed, eyes squeezed shut. In one hand, she carried a cane caned out
of a branch, its pointed tip dulled from months of skittering across
the school's tiled floors. She put her hand on Bradley's head and
probed his face with soft fingers, and Bradley laughed.

"Hi, Colette."

She gave a delighted squeal, her overall strap sliding off one

shoulder, Roger Rabbit peeking out from the turquoise T-shirt. "Hi,
Bradley poop."

"You're a poop."

They both giggled helplessly.

The door opened behind them and in walked Ozzie Rudd. Rachel hadn't
seen him in quite a while, and his appearance shocked her. There were
circles under his faded blue eyes and his forehead was taller than she
remembered. She could tell he was holding in his gut. He wore a plaid
flannel shirt and straight leg jeans but still had the
honey-and-whiskey voice that appealed so to women.

"Hi, Raeh."

"Hi, Ozzie."

"You meet Colette?" He lifted his daughter into his arms and,
squealing with delight, Colette traced his weathered face with eager
hands and kissed the tip of his nose. He laughed as he bounced her in
his arms. "Oof, you're getting big."

"Hi, Daddy!"

"Have a good week?"

"Yup!"

"Where's your homework?"

"We didn't get any!"

"No homework, huh?"

"Nope." Her eyes were marbled and deep-socketed, the irises like runny
gray eggs, and she swung her head to and fro as if responding to some
inner rhythm.

"What's this then?" he teased, opening his daughter's backpack and
pulling out a heavy Braille book. Her hand groped for it, her delicate
fingers ruffling its pages.

"Oops!" She giggled. "Homework!"

"Well, whaddya know?" He smiled, then turned toward her teacher. "See
you later, Ms. Morrissey."

"Have a great weekend, you two."

Rachel followed them out the door, back through the library and into
the parking lot where Ozzie's eighteen-wheeler was parked.

"She knows when I pull up to the building," he said, "because my truck
rattles the windowpanes and shakes the walls, and she can feel it
through the bones of her feet and her bottom, if she's sitting down.
Can't you, honey?"

"Yup."