by John Hart
“Your father? No.”
Elizabeth looked out the window. “Has he talked about the shooting?”
“No, sweetheart. What could he possibly say?”
It was a good question, and Elizabeth knew the answer. He would blame her for the deaths, for being a cop in the first place. He would say she’d broken trust, and that everything bad flowed from that single poor decision: the basement, the dead brothers, her career. “He still can’t accept the life I’ve chosen.”
“Of course he can. He’s your father, though, and he pines.”
“For me?”
“For simpler times, perhaps. For what once was. No man wants to be hated by his own daughter.”
“I don’t hate him.”
“You’ve not forgiven, either.”
Elizabeth accepted the truth of that. She kept her distance, and even when they shared the same room, there was a frost. “How are you two so different?”
“We’re really not.”
“Laugh lines. Frown lines. Acceptance. Judgment. You’re so completely opposite I wonder how you’ve stayed together for so long. I marvel. I really do.”
“You’re being unfair to your father.”
“Am I?”
“What can I tell you, sweetheart?” Her mother sipped whiskey and smiled. “The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“Even after so many years?”
“Well, maybe it’s not so much the heart, anymore. He can be difficult, yes, but only because he sees the world so clearly. Good and evil, the one straight path. The older I become, the more comfort I find in that kind of certainty.”
“You studied philosophy, for God’s sake.”
“That was a different life.…”
“You lived in Paris. You wrote poetry.”
Her mother waved off the observation. “I was just a girl, and Paris just a place. You ask why we’ve stayed together, and in my heart I remember how it felt—the vision and the purpose, the determination every day to make the world better. Life with your father was like standing next to an open fire, just raw force and heat and purpose. He got out of bed driven and ended every day the same. He made me very happy for a lot of years.”
“And now?”
She smiled wistfully. “Let’s just say that as rigid as he may have grown, my home will always be between your father’s walls.”
Elizabeth appreciated the simple elegance of such commitment. The preacher. The preacher’s wife. She let a moment pass, thinking how it must have been for them: the passion and the cause, the early days and the great, stone church. “It’s not like the old place, is it?” She turned back to the window and stared out at rock-lined gardens and brown grass, at the poor, narrow church wrapped in sunbaked clapboards. “I think about it sometimes: the cool and the quiet, the long view from the front steps.”
“I thought you hated the old church.”
“Not always. And not with such passion.”
“Why are you here, sweetheart?” Her mother’s reflection appeared in the same pane of glass. “Really?”
Elizabeth sighed, knowing this was the reason she’d come. “Am I a good person?” Her mother started to smile, but Elizabeth stopped her. “I’m serious, Mom. It’s like now. It’s the middle of the night. Things in my life are troubled and uncertain, and here I am.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Am I a taker?”
“Elizabeth Frances Black, you’ve never taken anything in your whole life. Since you were a child I’ve watched you give, first to your father and the congregation, now to the whole city. How many medals have you won? How many lives have you saved? What’s this really about?”
Elizabeth sat again and stared into her drink, both shoulders lifting. “You know how well I shoot.”
“Ah. Now, I understand.” She took her daughter’s hand, and creases gathered at her eyes as she squeezed it once and took the seat across the table. “If you shot those men eighteen times, then you had good reason. Nothing anybody ever says will make me feel different about that.”
“You’ve read the papers?”
“Generalities.” She made a dismissive sound. “Distortion.”
“Two men are dead. What else is there to say?”
“Baby girl.” She refilled Elizabeth’s glass and poured more in hers. “That’s like using white to describe a full moon rising, or wet to capture the glory of the oceans. You saved an innocent girl. Everything else pales.”
“You know the state police are investigating?”
“I know only that you did what you felt was right, and that if you shot those men eighteen times, there was a good reason for doing so.”
“And if the state police disagree?”
“My goodness.” Her mother laughed again. “You can’t possibly doubt yourself that much. They’ll have their little investigation, and they’ll clear your name. Surely you see that.”
“Nothing seems clear right now. What happened. Why it happened. I haven’t really slept.”
Her mother sipped, then pointed with a finger. “Are you familiar with the word inspiration? The meaning of it? Where it comes from?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“In the Dark Ages, no one understood the things that made some people special, things like imagination or creativity or vision. People lived and died in the same small village. They had no idea why the sun rose or set or why winter came. They grubbed in the dirt and died young of disease. Every soul in that dark, difficult time faced the same limitations, every soul except a precious few who came rarely to the world and saw things differently, the poets and inventors, the artists and stonemasons. Regular folks didn’t understand people like that; they didn’t understand how a person could wake up one day and see the world differently. They thought it was a gift from God. Thus, the word inspiration. It means ‘breathed upon.’”
“I’m no artist. No visionary.”
“Yet, you have insights as rare as any poet’s gift. You see deeply and understand. You would not have killed those men unless you had to.”
“Look, Mom—”
“Inspiration.” Her mother drank, and her eyes watered. “Breathed upon by God himself.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth drove back into the heart of downtown. The city was of a decent size for North Carolina, with a hundred thousand people inside the limits and twice as many spread across the county. It was still rich in places, but ten years into the downturn the cracks were starting to show. Storefronts were shuttered where none had ever been shuttered before. Broken windows went unfixed, buildings unpainted. She passed a place that used to be her favorite restaurant and saw a group of teenagers arguing on the street corner. There was more of that now, too: anger, discontent. Unemployment was twice the national average, and every year it got harder to pretend the best times weren’t in the past. That didn’t mean parts of the city weren’t beautiful—they were: the old houses and picket fences, the bronze statues that spoke of certainty and war and sacrifice. Pockets of pride remained, but even the most dignified people seemed cautious in expressing it, as if it might be dangerous, somehow, as if it might be best to keep one’s head down and wait for clearer skies.
Parking in front of the police station, Elizabeth stared out through the glass. The building was three stories tall and built of the same stone and marble as the courthouse. A Chinese restaurant filled a narrow lot on the side street to her right. The Confederate cemetery was a block farther, and beyond that was the train depot, with the tracks running north to south. When she was a kid, she’d follow those tracks into town, walking with her friends on a Saturday morning to see a movie or watch boys in the park. She couldn’t imagine such a thing, now. Kids on the tracks. Loose in the city. Elizabeth rolled down the window, smelled pavement and hot rubber. Lighting a cigarette, she watched the station.
Thirteen years …
She tried to imagine it gone: the job, the relationships, the sense of purpose. Since she was seventeen, al
l she’d wanted was to be a cop because cops didn’t fear the things normal people feared. Cops were strong. They had authority and purpose. They were the good guys.
Did she still believe that?
Elizabeth closed her eyes, thinking about it. When she opened them, she saw Francis Dyer walking down the wide stairs that stretched across the front of the station. He made a beeline across the street, his face familiar and frustrated and sad. They’d argued a lot since the shooting, but there was no bitterness between them. He was older and soft and genuinely worried for her.
“Hello, Captain. I didn’t expect to see you here this late.”
He stopped at the open window, studied her face and the car’s interior. His eyes moved over cigarette packs and Red Bull cans and a half dozen balled-up newspapers filling the backseat. Eventually, the gaze landed on the cell phone beside her. “I’ve left six messages.”
“I’m sorry. I turned it off.”
“Why?”
“Most calls I get are from reporters. Would you prefer I speak to them?”
Her attitude made him angry. Part of it was anxiety, and part was the whole cop-control thing. She was a detective, but suspended, a friend but not close enough to justify the kind of frustration he was feeling. The emotion was in his face, in the pinched eyes and soft lips, in the sudden flush that stained his skin. “What are you doing here, Liz? It’s the middle of the night.”
She shrugged.
“I’ve told you about this. Until your case is cleared…”
“I wasn’t going to come inside.”
He waited a few beats, the same angles in his face, same worry in his eyes. “Your follow-up with the state police is tomorrow. You remember that, right?”
“Of course.”
“Have you met with your attorney?”
“Yes,” she lied. “All set.”
“Then, you should be with family or friends, people who love you.”
“I was. Dinner with friends.”
“Really? What did you eat?” Her mouth opened, and he said, “Forget it. I don’t want you to lie to me.” He looked across the top of narrow glasses, then up and down the street. “My office. Five minutes.”
He walked off and Elizabeth took a minute to pull herself together. When she felt ready, she crossed the street and trotted up the stairs to where double glass doors reflected light from streetlamps and stars. At the desk inside, she forced a smile and made a hands-up gesture to the sergeant behind the bulletproof glass.
“Yeah, yeah,” the sergeant said. “Dyer told me to let you through. You look different.”
“Different, how?”
He shook his head. “I’m too old for that shit.”
“What shit?”
“Women. Opinions.”
He hit the buzzer, and the sound followed her into the stairwell and upstairs to the long, open space used by the detective squad. It was nearly empty, most of the desks pooled in shadow. For bittersweet seconds, no one noticed her; then the door clanked shut and a massive cop in a rumpled suit looked up from his desk. “Yo, yo. Black in the house.”
“Yo, yo?” Elizabeth stepped into the room.
“What?” He leaned back in his chair. “I can’t do street?”
“I’d stick with what you’ve got.”
“And what’s that?”
She stopped at his desk. “A mortgage, kids. Thirty extra pounds and a wife of what, nine years?”
“Ten.”
“Well, there you go. A loving family, thick arteries, and twenty years to retirement.”
“Funny. Thanks for that.”
Elizabeth took a sour ball from a glass jar, cocked a hip, and looked down at Charlie Beckett’s round face. He was six foot three and running to fat, but she’d seen him throw a two-hundred-pound suspect across the top of a parked car without once touching paint. “Nice hair,” he said.
She touched it, felt how short it was, the spiky bangs. “Seriously?”
“Sarcasm, woman. Why did you do that to yourself?”
“Maybe, I wanted something different in the mirror.”
“Maybe you should hire somebody that knows what they’re doing. When did that happen? I saw you two days ago.”
She had vague memories of cutting it: four in the morning and drunk; lights off in the bathroom. She’d been laughing about something, but it was more like crying. “What are you doing here, Charlie? It’s after midnight.”
“There was a shooting at the college,” Beckett said.
“Jesus, not another one.”
“No, not like that. Some locals tried to beat the crap out of a freshman kid they thought was gay. Gay or not, it turns out he’s a big fan of concealed-carry laws. They chased him into the alley by the barbershop at the edge of campus. Four on one, and he drew down with a .380.”
“Did he kill anybody?”
“Shot one through the arm. The others split when it happened. We’ve got the names, though. We’re looking for them.”
“Any charges on the student?”
“Four on one. A college kid with no priors.” Beckett shook his head. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s just paperwork, now.”
“There’s that, I guess.”
“Guess so.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“Yeah, the captain said you were coming in. He didn’t look happy.”
“He caught me lurking outside.”
“You are suspended. You remember that, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re not exactly helping your cause.”
She knew what he meant. There’d been questions about the basement, and she’d been short on answers. Pressure was mounting. State cops. Attorney general. “Let’s talk about something else. How’s Carol?”
Beckett leaned back in his chair, shrugged. “Working late.”
“Some kind of hair-salon emergency?”
“There are such things, believe it or not. A wedding, I think. Or a divorce party. Deep conditioning tonight. Cut and style in the morning.”
“Wow.”
“I know. She still wants to set you up, by the way.”
“With who, the orthodontist?”
“Dentist.”
“Is there a difference?”
“One makes more money, I think.”
Elizabeth hooked a finger over her shoulder. “I think he’s waiting.”
“Listen, Liz.” Beckett leaned in, lowered his voice. “I’ve tried to give you space on the shooting. Right? I’ve tried to be a partner and a friend and understanding. But state cops are tomorrow—”
“They have my statement. Asking the same questions won’t get them different answers.”
“They’ve had four days to look for witnesses, talk to Channing, work the crime scene. They won’t ask the same questions. You know that.”
She shrugged. “The story’s the story.”
“It’s political, Liz. You get that, right? White cop, black victims…”
“They’re not victims.”
“Look.” Beckett studied her face, worried. “They want to nail a cop they think is racist, unstable, or both. As far as they’re concerned, that’s you. Elections are coming up, and the AG wants an in with the black community. He thinks this is it.”
“I don’t care about any of that.”
“You shot them eighteen times.”
“They raped that child for over a day.”
“I know, but listen.”
“Wired her wrists so tight it cut to the bone.”
“Liz—”
“Don’t Liz me, goddamn it! They told her they were going to smother her when they were done with her, then toss her body in the quarry. They had a plastic bag and duct tape all ready. One of them wanted to screw her while she died. He called it a white-girl rodeo.”
“I know all that,” Beckett said.
“Then this conversation should not be happening.”
“But it is, isn’t it? Channing’s father
is rich and white. The men you shot were poor and black. It’s politics. Media. It’s already started. You’ve seen the papers.” He held up a thumb and forefinger. “It’s this close to going national. People want an indictment.”
She knew whom he meant. Politicians. Agitators. Some who thought the system was genuinely corrupt. “I can’t talk about this.”
“Can you talk to the lawyer?”
“I already have.”
“No, you haven’t.” Beckett leaned back, watching her. “He calls here, looking for you. He says you haven’t taken a meeting and won’t return his calls. State cops want you for double homicide, and you’re screwing around like you didn’t empty your magazine into two unarmed men.”
“I had a good reason.”
“I don’t doubt you did, but that’s not the issue, is it? Cops go to prison, too. You know that better than most.”
His gaze was as pointed as his words. Elizabeth didn’t care. Even after thirteen years. “I’m not going to talk about him, Charlie. Not tonight. Not with you.”
“He gets out of prison tomorrow. I assume you see the irony.” Beckett crossed his hands behind his head as if challenging her to argue the basic facts.
Cops go to prison.
Sometimes they get out.
“I’d better go see the captain.”
“Liz, wait.”
She didn’t. She left Beckett and knocked twice before opening the captain’s door. Inside, Dyer was sitting behind the desk. Even this late, the suit was crisp, the tie drawn tight. “Are you okay?”
She waved a hand, but couldn’t hide the anger and disappointment. “Partners. Opinions.”
“Beckett only wants what’s best for you. It’s all any of us want.”
“Then, put me back to work.”
“Do you really think that’s the right thing for you?”
She looked away because his question hit so close to the mark “The job is what I do best.”
“I won’t reinstate you until this thing runs its course.”
She dropped into a chair. “How much longer will that be?”
“That’s not the right question.”
Elizabeth stared at her reflection in the window. She’d lost weight. Her hair was a mess. “What is the right question?”
“Seriously?” Dyer lifted both palms. “Do you even remember the last time you ate?”