Inside the O'Briens (5 page)

Joe eyes the young man cuffed and slouched before him. He's hanging his head, so Joe can't get a good look at his face under the rim of his baseball cap, but Joe recognizes the heavy ink on both arms—the Irish and American flags, a navy ship, a heart, and a four-leaf clover. It's Scotty O'Donnell, the younger brother of Robby O'Donnell, who grew up with Patrick. Robby was a star basketball player in high school and stayed out of trouble. Scotty's older sisters were all honor-roll students. His mother goes to church with Rosie, and his father works at the post office. He comes from a good family.

“Scotty, what the hellaya doin'?” says Joe.

Scotty looks down at his sneakers and shrugs.

“Look at me when I'm talkin' to you.”

Scotty lifts his head. Tommy removes Scotty's sunglasses, and Scotty's eyes are defiant, admitting nothing, not nearly scared enough.

“Y-gonna bring shame to your poor mother. She's gonna have to come down to the station and bail your dumb ass out. She doesn't deserve that.”

The ambulance is now here, and the EMTs are lifting the Olympic hurdler onto a stretcher. Officer Wallace will have to accompany this kid to the hospital and guard him through any X-rays and procedures he might need.

“You want this one?” asks Tommy.

“Yeah, I'll take him in,” says Joe.

“I'll wait for the detective.”

Joe looks down at the black backpack, and an unexpected, additional surge of adrenaline pulses through him, sending every muscle and nerve in his body back into high alert, twitching, ready to pop. It's probably going to be a long time before any Boston cop can look at a young man with a backpack and simply see a kid with a schoolbag and not a potential terrorist with a weapon of mass destruction.

Loud, sudden noises aren't any better. Every officer was called out for duty on July fourth. Less than three months after the marathon bombing, security for a public event attracting three hundred thousand civilians to the Esplanade lawn in celebration of the nation's freedom was through the roof. Joe hadn't seen anything like it in all his years on the force. The night went off without incident, but every firework
boom
made Joe's heart seize and his right hand recoil to his hip. Over and over and over. He tried all night to override this automatic startle response, to anticipate and stifle the reflex, but he was frustratingly powerless over it.
Boom
. Seize. Recoil. The grand finale was friggin' torture. He can still taste the cold beers he drank with Tommy and the guys at the end of that shift. Best fuckin' beers of his life.

“You wanna take a look in there?” asks Joe, nodding to the bag.

“Be my guest,” says Tommy.

“Ladies first.”

“Pussy.”

“I'm busy with Scotty here.”

Tommy squats by the backpack and unzips it in one fast motion, as if ripping off a bandage. The bag contains what they of course knew it would—an iPad, jewelry, a camera, some painted figurines, and not a pressure cooker filled with nails and ball bearings. Joe exhales and only then realizes that he'd been holding his breath.

Tommy zips the bag and hands the evidence over to Joe. They share a quick, knowing look of relief.

“Those pearls a present for your girlfriend, Scotty?” asks Joe.

Scotty says nothing.

“I didn't think so. Let's go.”

Joe slings the backpack over his left shoulder and directs Scotty out of the condo with his left hand. As Joe walks Scotty to his cruiser, he's feeling satisfied that he, Tommy, and Sean did everything right and made two lawful arrests. He's relieved that the boys weren't armed, that he, Tommy, and Sean are all walking away in the same condition they were in when they got the call. He's happy for the owner of the condo, who has a real mess to clean but will get all of her things back. He's worried for Scotty's poor mother, imagining the phone call she's about to receive. But more than anything, he's pissed at Scotty for unnecessarily scaring the shit out of him with that backpack. Protecting the top of Scotty's head with his hand, Joe grabs hold of Scotty's skinny shoulder, squeezes it hard, then shoves him into the cruiser a little more roughly than necessary.

“Ow,” says Scotty.

Joe slams the door shut and smiles. That felt good.

JOE HAD ENTERED
the sally port at the station with his prisoner at around one o'clock. He searched Scotty two more times; took off his sneakers, socks, hat, and earring; logged his basic
information, including name and height and weight; took his prints; gave him his phone call; and tossed him into the juvi holding cell. It's now four o'clock, the end of Joe's shift, and he's still sitting at a computer, writing up the report.

Reports are a royal pain in the ass, but they're a necessary and critical part of the job. Joe knows he'll never write the great American novel, but he takes pride in the accuracy of his reports. His narratives tend to be long and thorough. He takes this shit seriously. A seemingly minor, inconsequential detail might turn out to be the crucial piece of evidence in court, the linchpin needed for nailing the guy, even years later. Look at the Whitey Bulger case. Those prosecutors are using specific language from police reports filed decades ago to convict this scumbag.

So getting all the facts down is imperative. Leave something out and there might just be enough crawl space for someone like Whitey to wiggle through, free on a technicality. And then all that work and time and money go down the drain, polluting the harbor with the rest of the sewage. When training young recruits, Joe can't stress this point enough. The reports need to be meticulous.

Even so, a straightforward B&E like this one should take no longer than an hour. But Joe's still not done. He was interrupted numerous times by guys wanting to hear all about the B&E bust, which Joe eagerly recounted. True to his Irish heritage, Joe loves to tell a good story, especially if it has a happy ending like this one. And he only received Sean Wallace's hospital notes on the other prisoner thirty minutes ago. But all distractions and delays aside, he's having a hard time concentrating and isn't at all confident that he's properly pieced together the precise sequence of events and every detail.

He has to incorporate the information from the detective, the photographs of the room, and the interview with the
neighbor who made the 911 call. He has to decipher Sean Wallace's friggin' chicken scratches about the kid in the hospital—the name of the attending doctor, the tests, the diagnosis, and the treatment. He has to capture every element in methodical order so that the suspects can be properly identified, so the arrest can be proven lawful.

He stares at the computer screen, at the sea of words in all caps with no paragraphs, and his brain swims. Think. What happened, and then what happened next? He can't think. He's tired. Why is he so tired? He looks at his watch. His shift ended five minutes ago, and there's no way he's getting the fuck out of here anytime soon.

A small voice inside his head urges him to give up.
It's good enough. Wrap it up and go home
. But Joe knows better. He's been trained to ignore that voice, to beat it into bloody submission if he needs to. He never gives up. Not on anything. Plus, he knows if the report isn't done properly, his supervisor won't approve it.

He rubs his eyes and focuses on the screen, pushing on. There's the list of property stolen, exceeding $250, making this a B&E daytime and a larceny. There are the digital photos showing the state of the kitchen and living room, the bedrooms, the bathrooms, and the home office. The hospital report. There's the cracked wood in the doorframe by the deadbolt lock, making this robbery a B&E. They found two boys on the balcony. He needs to describe exactly what they were wearing, what they were carrying. The tattoos on Scotty's arms. One jumped, one stayed. There's who responded to the scene and the neighbor who called it in. There's the owner of the unit who wasn't home.

This is a simple B&E. Joe stares at the screen, drumming his fingers on the desk as he reads and rereads his report. His report is a mess.

This is a simple B&E. Then why the hell isn't it simple?

IT'S SIX O'CLOCK,
and Joe should be home with Rosie. He should be sitting in his living room chair with his ugly feet up on the coffee table in front of the window air conditioner with a cold beer in his hand, getting ready to watch the Sox. But instead he's standing in the middle of the street, at the intersection of Beacon and Charles, between the Common and the Public Garden, directing rush-hour traffic. He finally finished that damn B&E report at five o'clock, a whole hour after his shift ended. Then, probably because he was still hanging around and the duty supervisor needed bodies, Joe was ordered to work traffic detail at the Concert on the Common from five thirty until midnight.

The temperature is still hugging a muggy ninety degrees, and he's standing on black pavement—wearing a navy-blue uniform topped with a fetching lime-green vest, surrounded by bumper-to-bumper traffic emitting foul-smelling exhaust and even more heat—exactly where he was grateful not to be earlier. Murphy's Fuckin' Law. He should've knocked on wood.

It's a gnarly intersection at this time of day even without the attraction of the free outdoor concert. There are too many cars trying to leave the city all at once, too many walking commuters, twelve separate locations where pedestrians can step off a curb. The men are in suits and ties and the women are in heels, and they're all pissed off because it's too hot, and there are too many sweaty people standing too close to each other all waiting to cross the street, and the wait is taking too long, and they've just worked eight hours and want to get home already. Lucky them. At least they're on their way. Although Joe is here to help them in their cause, no one appreciates it, and in fact, by the time he waves them across the street, most of the pedestrians, if they bother to look at him at all, shoot him a poison
ous glare as if he's personally to blame for all this misery. It's a friggin' thankless task.

And because of this, poor Rosie is home alone tonight. Again. She knows this drill all too well. Such is the life of a cop's wife. If he thinks about how many nights he's missed with Rosie, if he actually does the math, a task that would require a calculator because the number is so large, he might weep right here in the middle of Boston. So he doesn't think about it. He only thinks about getting through tonight and getting home to her when it's over.

At least they didn't have any special plans. It's bad enough to come home at the end of a sixteen-hour day to a lonely or disappointed wife, but if he misses a wedding or a christening or a holiday, then he faces resentment, and that's much harder for Joe to make good on. When they don't have plans, Joe can erase Rosie's loneliness or disappointment with a heartfelt hug and a kiss. Chocolate and wine also help. She knows it wasn't his fault he got ordered to overtime, and in his arms, she remembers to be grateful that he made it home alive. But if he misses a planned event, there's nothing other than time that can melt Rosie's hostility, as if he would ever choose to stand alone in the middle of the street for seven hours after working a full-day tour, directing angry pedestrians and motorists nearly running him down in ninety-degree heat.

IT'S NOW EIGHT
o'clock, and the concert doesn't end for another two hours. Then, hundreds of people will be leaving the Common, and Joe will be busy again, but for now, he's mostly hanging around, waiting. Other than directing the two sets of tourists who asked him how to get to Cheers, he's had little to do since rush hour. He's been on his feet for two and a half hours, and he can feel every ounce of the thirteen-pound gun belt around his waist. He's exhausted, his back and feet are kill
ing him, and his very soul is aching to sit on that bench he can see beneath the weeping willow tree in the Public Garden. It might as well be in California.

He continues to stand and tries to listen to the music. It's jazz, but too far in the distance to hear fully. A brassy note floats by here and there, but Joe's ears can't string enough of them together to decipher a melody, nothing he can whistle along to, and the effort only frustrates him.

He notices a percussion sound, like a maraca shaking, in addition to the jazz notes, but the sound is separate, out of sync, closer. He tunes in to the noise and discovers that it's coming from him. It's the handful of coins, change from the crappy day-old ham-and-cheese sandwich he bought at 7-Eleven for dinner, jingling in his side pants pocket. The cause of the jingling has Joe curiously stumped until it finally registers. He's hopping back and forth on his feet as if he were standing barefoot on hot coals.

He didn't even realize he was moving. He thought he was standing perfectly still.

Maybe he has to take a piss. He checks. He doesn't. He's too dehydrated from sweating in this hideous heat.

It must be an adrenaline hangover from the B&E bust. Of course the perceived threat is long over, but Joe knows from experience that those powerful juices can still be hitting every
GO
button in his body hours later. Anytime he has to take out his gun, his body floods with adrenaline, a visceral rush that feels a lot like chugging three Red Bulls. He can be twitching and vibrating, muscles ready to pounce into action for the rest of the day. It must be that.

He imagines the people on the Common, couples drinking wine out of plastic cups, kids dancing barefoot in the grass, everyone enjoying the live music. He wishes he and Rosie could be there among them, sitting on a blanket, eating a picnic dinner, relaxing together. Then he pictures Fenway, only a couple
of miles up the road, and wonders how the Sox are doing. He pivots on his restless feet, turning away from the concert he can't quite hear or attend, away from the bench he can't sit on, away from the baseball team he loves, toward the direction of Bunker Hill, near where Rosie is waiting for him, and imagines getting home to her.