Shards (14 page)

“How?” he asked.

How?
Not
why?

“At the institution, I broke a glass and cut my arm.”

“They let you have glass in those places?” he asked. “You'd think it would be too dangerous.”

“I guess,” I said.

“But you're better now, right?” he asked, and what could I do but nod my head.

I was sick and I was looking for him to rescue me:
Leave your wife for me, I'm so miserable, I'm so ill
.

But he wasn't going to rescue me. When Keawe left that night, I had the small realization that he wasn't going to save me. Nobody was going to save me. I would have to save myself.

I swore to myself that I would quit. I would stop disappointing my family and become the me they used to know. I was done with ice. No more.

I put together two sober days before I was back to smoking ice. I couldn't survive without it.

Keawe was working on New Year's Eve, and the night before he asked me, “So what you doing for New Year's?”

I didn't want him to think that I would be home by myself doing nothing. I needed him to think that I had all sorts of friends and a social life.

“I've got a party to go to,” I said.

“Nice. Think of me stuck here working.”

“Too bad for you.”

“Come see me before you go,” he said, and smiled. “Please.”

And so I got dressed up for New Year's. I bought a new dress, put on lots of makeup, straightened my hair.

“Wow,” he said when I walked into the substation that night. “I'd like to be going to
that
party.”

“You wish,” said Maliko, who happened to be in the station.

I spent about a half hour talking to Keawe and then went back to my apartment. I had nowhere to go, absolutely nothing to do. I might have called my family to wish them a happy New Year, but it was too late in Albuquerque now. Still, I justified it to myself:
If Keawe believes I have a social life, it's enough for me.

Waiting for midnight, I sat around in my tiny black strapless dress, smoking meth, completely alone.

•  •  •

My addiction was taking me down hard and fast. I had become skilled at hiding it, but it got to the point when nothing would work. I looked sick. The ice was eating me from the inside out, and sooner or later everyone was going to find out.

It was going to take a big lie to buy me a little more time.

One morning Sergeant Wilkes called me into his office and said, “Moore, you look so thin, you look like you're dying. Do you have cancer?”

That was just his way of joking, but a new lie had presented itself, a ready-made lie invented by someone else.

“Yes,” I said. “I do have cancer. That's why I'm so thin.”

“How long have you known?”

“Since November.”

Wilkes nodded thoughtfully. “And when were you going to tell us?” he asked.

“I honestly didn't think you needed to know,” I said. “I know I
can beat this thing. I don't want everybody feeling sorry for me.”

“You know there's not a man in this department who wouldn't be there for you if you needed us,” he said.

“I know that, and I'll ask for help if I need it, but for now I'm okay. I just don't want anybody to know. Please don't tell anybody.”

“You don't have to do this on your own,” he said. “We're your brothers in blue.”

“I know.”

“What kind of cancer is it? What's the”—he searched for the word—“prognosis?”

“Ovarian,” I said. “The prognosis isn't great long-term, but I'm doing fine now.”

Where did I get this stuff? Things I had read, I guess, or heard on TV. I sounded utterly convincing.

Understand that at this point, I would have done anything to keep my addiction alive. Anything. Wilkes just happened to be there, and the comment that slipped out of his mouth became my new best lie. If it hadn't been Wilkes, it would have been another colleague, another lie.

Although I pleaded with him not to tell anyone, I knew he eventually would, and before the news started to spread like wildfire I would have to tell Keawe.

I told him the cancer wasn't serious, that I would be okay.

“You don't look like you're getting any better,” he said.

“I am,” I said. “The treatments are working and it won't be long.”

As usual, Keawe didn't have much to say, but he held me close and told me he loved me. I would have to settle for that.

•  •  •

Yes, I have cancer.

When I started to face these people, to look them in the eye
and tell them I had cancer, as I started to do that January, this was the moment my lies became deceit and my deceit became premeditated actions that I knew,
knew
would cause pain. Never mind all the horror that happened later, lying to the people who loved me held more pain than anything that would ever happen to me physically.

You look terrible, Alli. Do you have cancer?

Yes, I have cancer.

That was beginning of the lie that would take me down, that would destroy the trust of a whole community on the island.

At first, the cancer lie
was great. I now had permission to look as sick as I actually was, and if I didn't want to make it into work, I could take a sick day.

We were conducting a couple of really big investigations at the time, and one of them went federal. The FBI needed my report, but I just couldn't get it done. I was in the bathroom smoking every thirty minutes. Even though a hit of meth lasts fifteen hours, I still wanted more. I would get higher and higher and higher at work, thinking that if I could just take one more hit I could sit down and do this report. I couldn't. I kept telling everyone my cancer wasn't serious, but I was clearly falling apart, so Wilkes suggested I take some time off.

“Don't you have some family to go visit?” he asked me. “I know your parents are gone, but isn't there a sister in Oregon?”

“Washington,” I corrected him.

“Why don't you go spend a couple of weeks with her?”

“I'm working on this no-dope warrant with a CI,” I said. “I need to be here to—”

“No, you don't,” he said. “Bryant can fill in for you.”

I opened my mouth to protest further, but then I started to think about it. My big case was pretty involved and included all nine vice officers. My CI Kal and I were narrowing in on the Kihei dealer. There was no undercover work—it was all done via surveillance and CI buys. A no-dope warrant. Kal had made three small buys for us from this dealer. I had done two of them, and now Bryant was ready to do the last one because I wasn't capable. I just couldn't concentrate, couldn't get any work done, and we were close to having the warrant ready to be executed.

“There is this great oncologist in Seattle that my sister has been telling me about,” I told Wilkes.

“Sounds good,” Wilkes said. “Visit your sister. Rest. See this cancer doctor. Get well.”

Biggest case of my career, and I listened to Wilkes and left for Washington to visit my sister. Can you effing believe it?

•  •  •

Now the entire Maui Police Department thought I was on the mainland, getting treatment for my made-up ovarian cancer. Instead, I was at my sister's house in Seattle, trying to buy dope online.

I still had a little money but was about to run out of ice, so I got on Craigslist and used the key words for finding the dope I wanted. Cocaine users say, “Does anybody want to go skiing?” All I had to ask was, “Has anyone seen my friend Tina?”

First I looked for gay guys. Much safer—they wouldn't want sex from me. In the drug world, a girl's money is no good. You can try to
pay for it, but you're not going to get very far. You might be able to pay half. The other half you've got to earn.

I was lucky. I found a gay man named Evan who didn't have any money but was willing to introduce me to his dealer if I would share with him.

That night at eleven o'clock, after my sister, brother-in-law, and two little nieces had gone to sleep, I sneaked out of the house. Just like high school. Evan had told me to meet him in a warehouse parking lot, but when I pulled up in my sister's Subaru there were no other cars there. I took a hit of ice and waited.

Out of nowhere this guy knocked on the window.

“Shit,” I said, thinking it was a cop.

“Hey, Alli. I'm Evan.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked. “Where's your car?”

“I kind of walked,” he said. “My parents usually don't let me take the car.”

“How old are you?” I asked, opening the door and letting him in.

“Twenty-five.”

I had a quick look at him before the door slammed shut and the car went dark again. He was dressed in a blue shirt and khakis. His brown hair was nicely cut. All-American Seattle boy. Handsome. Twenty-five, but he looked sixteen.

“You live with your parents?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They put me in rehab like a million times and it never worked. Now they won't give me any money. They think that's going to keep me from using.”

We drove about fifteen minutes to a small brick house in a quiet neighborhood. Evan had me park a few houses away.

“This your dealer?” I asked him.

“Sure, he's a dealer.”

I was a little confused because online he made it sound like he had his own dealer, tried and tested. I gave him a hundred bucks, and he disappeared inside the house.

After about ten minutes he came running out.

“Drive,” he said. “Just drive.”

“Don't do that,” I said as we tore down the street. “Don't steal from a dealer. You'll get known.”

“I saved you some money,” he said. “Now we've got enough for tomorrow night, too.”

“Jesus,” I said. At work I had seen more than once what dealers did to buyers who tried to rip them off.

“It's okay,” he said. “God, you drive fast. Let's go to my house.”

He directed me to an upper-class neighborhood near my sister's house in Snohomish. A really beautiful house. His parents' house.

And inside—his parents. June and Ward Cleaver. His mother in a dress. They were smiling, smiling. They seemed like they wanted to chat, but all we cared about was getting high. Evan said, “This is Alli,” and hurried me upstairs.

“Will they kick me out?” I asked.

“They never come up here,” he said. “This is my part of the house. They're down there having orgasms over you. They're pretending you're my pretty blond girlfriend.”

“They don't know you're gay?”

“Oh they know, but they don't accept it. They're super fundamentalist Christians and they think I'm going to hell.” He smiled a sad sort of smile. “I probably am. Going to hell.”

“So where's the dope?”

He pulled a baggie out of his pocket. “How do you use?” he asked me.

“I have a pipe.”

“Ever slam?”

I shook my head no.

“I slam. Want to try?”

“No thanks.”

We sat on his bedroom floor and I watched him shoot up while I smoked. Once we were high, he put on Sarah McLachlan.

The whole second story of the house was his. His room was total ADD—some books were neatly shelved while others were open on the floor; a big mound of clothes sat in a corner but inside his open closet, pants and shirts and sweaters were grouped by color. There were no sheets on his mattress. It seemed that in typical tweaker fashion, he started a lot of projects but couldn't concentrate enough to finish them.

After Sarah McLachlan, he put on Fiona Apple. Then he took me across the hall to the computer room with a giant LCD monitor, Internet, and television.

“This is where I really live,” he said, pointing to the computer.

We played video games together and he started talking to me about women's stockings.

Turns out he was a cross-dresser. He had some women's clothes in his closet but nothing really beautiful. He really, really loved pantyhose.

“They must feel wonderful on your legs,” he said. “So soft and silky.”

“I hardly ever wear them,” I said.

“Do you have some? Could you bring some to me?”

“I guess,” I said. “Sure.”

“Do you think they'll fit me, even though I'm a guy?”

“Why not?”

“What size do you think I'd wear?”

“I don't know, maybe medium tall?”

“But not queen-size, right? I mean, I'm thin.”

I nodded. He was desperately thin. As thin as I was.

He wanted to talk about stockings all night. I could see it made him feel good, and I didn't mind.

“It's not like I want to be a woman,” he said. “I just want to dress like one. I just want men to think I'm beautiful. You think that's weird, don't you?”

“No,” I said. “You should do whatever makes you feel good.”

“Nothing really makes me feel good. Except this.” He nodded his head toward the bag of meth.

We talked all night, this tweaker Chatty Cathy stuff, and at dawn I drove back to my sister's house, where everyone was still asleep. They never even knew I was gone.

I had enough meth with me now to smoke all day while Carol and Tim were at work and Ella and Maya were at day care, but I knew I'd run out in a day or so. I looked around my sister's house for things I could sell. Her golf clubs. Some of Tim's tools. Things they might not miss, at least for a while. I put them on Craigslist to see if I would get any takers. I had a really expensive vice camera with me that had “County of Maui” engraved on it. A thousand-dollar camera, and I went out that afternoon and pawned it for a hundred.

While I was driving back from the pawnshop, Keawe called.

“Hey,” he said. “Whatcha doing?”