by Jason Parent
The room fell silent. Sam shifted in her seat, her confidence wavering just a little as she tried to figure out the point of his tirade and how she was meant to respond to it. Deciding no response was probably the best response, she drove the conversation back to its genesis. “And the other thing?”
“Huh?”
“You said you were promoting me for two reasons.”
Detective Marklin glanced over her shoulder at the door, then leaned over his desk but without any of the hostility he’d shown earlier. “Yes. Yes, I did.” He puckered his lips and steepled his fingers like some B-movie criminal mastermind. Apparently catching her eyes on his hands, he cracked his knuckles one at a time before interlocking his fingers.
“We don’t,” he started, then scratched his chin and stared at the ceiling as if the words he wanted to say might be teleprompted up there. “To hell with it.” He sighed. “I don’t take kindly to cop killers, but especially not to one that murdered the best and brightest of us and kidnapped her little boy.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead before offering her the most empty, deadpan look she’d ever seen on anyone living. “I have every intention of bringing in her murderer or taking him out by any means at my disposal, legal or otherwise. Any means necessary. Am I clear?”
Sam felt a slight twitch in her cheek and struggled to keep her poker face. Detective Marklin had always been one of the good guys, the by-the-book guys, the guy who officers went to when they wanted to ensure their actions would hold up in court. What he was saying didn’t comport with the little she knew of him or the lots she’d heard about him. Her own philosophy had been that procedures were well and fine in a textbook setting but flew in the face of common sense when they blocked an officer from executing justice. Rules weren’t only meant to be broken but shitcanned entirely when it meant putting some piece of crap rapist or murderer behind bars where he belonged. She smoothed out her pants, nodded once, then said, “Crystal.”
Detective Marklin’s gaze narrowed. “Given your arrest record, I trust that won’t be a problem?”
Sam did her best not to smile. “No problem at all, sir.”
“Good.” Detective Marklin stood. “Congratulations on your promotion, detective. You’ll be in Major Crimes, but we’ll start you on vice, since with that Billings cocaine bust last month, you’ve already shown a nose for it. No pun intended. Still, I wonder if you have the stomach for it. Prove yourself there, and we’ll bump you up to homicide. Any questions?”
“I’m ready to prove my worth, sir, but...” Sam sighed, her body slumping and for the first time truly projecting something other than confidence. She hated herself for it.
Detective Marklin squinted. “What is it?” He glanced at his watch. “Spit it out.”
“Won’t the men out there see my promotion that way, even if it’s not the real reason? That I was promoted to replace a woman because I am one... sir?”
“Do you care?” Before she could answer, the detective rolled his eyes. “Look, do you want the promotion or not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then screw ‘em. You’re qualified, have taken all the necessary exams and training, and I can easily justify a bypass. Metcalf and Rogers, some of the others, might give you shit, but they suck, and you can tell them I said so.” He sneered. “For some reason, I get the feeling you’re no stranger to adversity. Suck it up.” He leaned forward onto his palms, instantly looking old and small again as if his body had just lost the fight against gravity. Sam could see he was doing his best to maintain his tough exterior, but its interior supports were crumbling.
Without a lash of anger or any trace of insincerity, he said, “Know this—you have some very big shoes to fill. Detective Beaudette was more than just a good detective. She was everything that was good and right about this department. And, she was my friend, which is why I don’t take her recommending you lightly. If she believed in you, then I believe in you.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Detective Marklin recovered his composure. He cleared his throat and offered his hand. “Congratulations again, Detective Reilly. Things will get a whole lot hairier for you from here on out.”
Sam shook his hand, noticing how bony and frail it looked before feeling the strength in its grip. “Thank you, sir.” She couldn’t stop herself from grinning anymore.
“Now, get out of my office. You’ll be notified and reassigned once everything’s official.” Detective Marklin returned to pouring over the files on his desk.
SAM HADN’T FAILED ANYONE. Well, no one except Bruce. He’d never let her close to the Wainwright case even as she got closer to him, to the point he’d become like a second father. He always said the Wainwright investigation had gone cold, that all leads had run dry, but Sam suspected he’d just been protecting her or maybe himself, afraid to lose another partner. Had she only been more compassionate back then, less concerned about her ambitions and more about the obvious fractured mind who’d promoted her and taken her under his wing, she might have been able to stop Bruce from going after Wainwright, broken him from his obsession.
“It’s not your fault,” she whispered as she pulled into the precinct, a tear running down her cheek. The dingy stone-gray building with a pale-green roof stood silent and gloomy. It reminded her of a mausoleum and added to her melancholy. It’s not your fault. Wainwright was his Moby Dick.
Enough of this. She parked her Toyota in her usual spot and got out. If she wanted to know about Wainwright, there was only one guy to talk to. Lately, he was always babbling about a mysterious killer club somehow connected to the Suarez gang. Could Wainwright be part of that club or connected to Hector Suarez? She walked through the front doors and through the precinct, grunting in response to the many greetings and welcome backs that dared disturb her thoughts. Not really his mo.
She hurried to her office, a desk sergeant blabbering something into her ear the whole way. So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll talk to him, get him on the line or go out to the Boston office to see him if I have to. If Wainwright is back and someone knows about it, that someone would be—
“Frank?” Sam gaped at the tall, graying federal agent standing in her office, flashing that cocksure smile that, once overconfident, had softened over the years.
“Sam!” Frank’s face brightened as he stepped closer, arms out for a hug. He reeled in his enthusiasm quickly, though, one arm falling and the other settling for a shake as the gap between them had nearly disintegrated. “Welcome back.”
The spark that had blossomed the last time they’d worked together, that undeniable chemistry, had not petered out. Though nothing had come of it, she could tell that he, too, felt it by the redness in his cheeks. Yet, neither of them had been brave enough to make the first move. She supposed it was the age difference holding him back. She couldn’t put a finger on her own reason—
“There’s someone from the FBI waiting for you in your office,” the desk sergeant blurted.
Sam snapped out of her stupor. “Yes, I can see that. Thank you.”
Slowly, the liveliness drained from Frank’s expression, leaving his cheeks sallow and mouth drawn. Any romantic inclinations he might have felt had once again been placed in check. “May I have a seat? We need to talk.”
CHAPTER 6
Michael scrambled into fourth-period English five minutes before the bell rang, hoping to claim a seat in the back. He’d had to sit in the front row in Algebra II thanks to his morning conversation with Robbie but had managed back row in Spanish and the second to last row in Biology, which had assigned seating.
Score! As he entered the room, he spotted only one other student, a girl with magnifying bifocals sitting in the front row probably because she had to. He smiled politely at her and headed for the desk in the back-left corner. He’d have the best seat in the house so long as the teacher didn’t assign them like Mr. Lukens. There, he would be dissecting frogs with a cute but shy girl he hadn’t the courage to speak to.
At least he’d gotten her name through roll call. Jasmine, like the... fruit? Flower? Whatever Jasmine was like, Michael had spent the entire class trying not to look at her.
She probably thinks you’re a freak. He sighed and dumped the textbooks from his overloaded backpack alongside his chair, sat down, then checked the underside of the desk for gum, happy to find none. Rumor had it that the janitors scraped it all off with putty knives every year, and at the end of last year, they’d had enough to jam the trash compactor in the garbage truck, but Michael had no idea if that was true. A smiley face had been carved into one corner of the desk, and he smiled back at it before arranging his notebook and pen at his desktop’s center.
Looking to his right, he gasped. Someone had materialized in the seat beside him. The boy, who Michael had never seen before, dressed like he was trying to impress his grandmother—wrinkle-free button-down, green sweater vest, dress pants, and suede boat shoes. His hair was light brown, combed to the side and shaved on the other where the part would have been. He looked clean and neat; Sam would have said he belonged in an Old Spice commercial, not at Carnegie High. Too perfect, too preened, a lot like Tessa’s stepfather had been. He must have been new to the school and had no idea who Michael was, or he probably would have avoided sitting next to him.
His prettiness made him stand out in a school where everyone expected conformity. Sure, some of the girls might take a liking, but that would only make him more of a target for the boys. Michael instantly took a liking to him for that. The boy was different, like him. Alone.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” the boy said, flashing a smile full of metal.
So he isn’t perfect after all. Michael laughed. “Not scared, just surprised. Damn, you’re quiet.”
The boy shrugged. “Sometimes it’s nice to go unnoticed, don’t you think?”
“Dressed like that?” Michael scoffed. “I think you’re going to be noticed.”
The boy frowned. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”
Michael’s cheeks flushed. “I... I didn’t mean...”
“Relax!” The boy laughed and slapped Michael on the arm. “Yeah, I know, I’m a bit overdressed. First day, new school—I never know what to wear.” He stuck out his hand, which Michael found an oddly fitting greeting from his prim and proper new classmate. “I’m Dylan.”
Michael stared at the hand uncertainly, then slowly took it. “Michael. Most of my friends call me Mike.” He had, at most, three or four friends he could think of, stretching the definition of the word to its boundaries, and they rarely called him Mike. He wasn’t sure why he’d lied. It had just spilled from his lips.
As they shook hands, Michael watched Dylan’s gaze lower to his glove briefly before he let go. If he thought anything strange about Michael’s fashion accessories, he was kind enough not to say anything.
“So, you’re new here?” Michael shook his head. “Stupid question. You just said that. Were you at Durfee before this?”
“What’s Durfee?”
“Another Fall River school. I’ll take that as a no.” Michael clicked his teeth. “Okay, where did you come from?”
“A little place called Barranco. It’s in Peru. We go where Dad’s business takes us, you know?”
“Wow, Peru. Really? I only left the country for the first time—just got back, actually.” The classroom filled as they talked, all the seats taken but the one next to the quiet girl with the bifocals.
“My...” Michael tilted his head, wondering how best to describe Sam to a stranger. “My foster mother and I just got back from a cruise to the Caribbean. It was pretty amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it, except on TV. So when we’re all done with this,” he said, nodding to the class, “and I start making my millions, I think I want to travel ‘just about everywhere.’”
“Well, traveling is fun, but take it from someone who really hasn’t had a home—it’s nice to have a place where you fit in.”
Michael flinched. Being a foster kid, he’d never had a place he fit in. The Plummers had been nice enough, good foster parents, but not real parents. Tessa’s stepdad had ended all that. Sam tried to make him feel like her apartment was his, but often he felt like he was just a freeloader or in the way. He wasn’t so dumb as to not know the apartment had been hers alone before he’d taken over one of the spare rooms. She liked things her way, and he noticed her masked sighs or the twitch of a frown when he left his shoes by the door or carried food into his room. She was kind and patient enough not to say anything, but a thousand words laid in her expressions, and he was beginning to know how to read all of them.
Sam never invited anyone over the whole time he’d lived there, not a friend or boyfriend or girlfriend. He knew she cared for him, but sometimes he felt like he must be the biggest inconvenience in the world.
I mean, what did she have two spare bedrooms for anyway? He stared down at his long black gloves as an awkward silence settled between him and the new kid despite the hum of chatter and laughter of his classmates.
When he looked up, Dylan appeared to be watching him. Michael sighed. “So... aren’t you going to ask me about the gloves?”
Dylan snickered, showing off his braces, a flaw Michael thought made him easier to talk to. “That’s none of my business. I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to tell me.”
Michael soured. He looked down at his hands. “I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough.” He sighed again, then inhaled, recalling the taunts some of the jocks had made about his gloves before Robbie had put a stop to it. “I-I-I’m not gay if that’s what you’re thinking.” Warmth rose in his cheeks. “I mean, it’s cool if you are.”
Entirely deadpan, Dylan said, “That’s too bad.”
They stared at each other for a few seconds as a giant smile slowly crept up Dylan’s cheeks.
“You dick!” Michael shouted, and they both busted out in what Michael thought might have been the best laugh he’d had in a long time. Sam was great and all, but humor was not one of her gifts.
They were still laughing as the bell rang, and a surly middle-aged woman wearing ugly beige pantyhose—the kind that Helen Plummer used to wear and came in an egg—entered and closed the door behind her. Her presence was undoubtedly commanding. The entire class quieted, all eyes on their new teacher.
“Hello, all, and welcome to English II. For those of you who didn’t have me last year, I’m Ms. Alvarez. I hope you like your seats because you’ll be sitting there for the rest of the year unless I have to move you. Believe me when I say that you won’t like it if I do.” She held up a copy of a paperback book with what looked like an old ship on the cover. “Your first day is going to be easy. You’re all going to begin reading Herman Melville’s classic, Moby Dick.”
A few of the kids in the class snickered, and Ms. Alvarez rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, and I suppose I should tell you now that Moby Dick is a white sperm whale.”
A few more kids laughed, and Michael thought he saw the trace of a smile on Ms. Alvarez’s lips. “Get it out now because we are going to be saying Moby’s name a lot over the next month. Your assignment today is to go pick up a copy from the library. Ms. Armstrong has a stack ready and waiting for all twenty-four of you. Read the first four chapters and be ready to discuss for tomorrow. You may use the rest of the period to begin reading.”
When no one moved, the teacher flapped her arms. “Well? What are you waiting for? Get moving.”
Dylan stood, rolled his eyes at Michael, then giggled. “Shall we?” he asked with a slight bow and wave.
Michael smirked, finding Dylan’s formal mannerisms quirky but in a good way. He rose, grabbed his backpack, then curtsied. “Yes, I do believe we shall.”
CHAPTER 7
Eight years ago.
Sam chewed on her nail as she answered the call. “Bruce? Where are you?” She lowered the volume on her television, the screen depicting all sorts of carnage in Presidio, a Texas border town whose small population had just ta
ken a serious hit—and that wasn’t counting the dozens of federal agents and officers from adjoining communities who’d been killed.
“Bruce!” she yelled again, briefly leaning her elbows on her counter before resuming her steady pacing the length of her kitchen floor. She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked down at her cell phone to check if she still had a connection when a voice came over the line.
“We’ve found him, Sam!”
She let out a breath, relaxing just a little as she heard her partner’s voice, alive, still alive, thank God. “Bruce! Where are you? Tell me, and I’ll get on a plane right now.” She glanced over at the little boy sitting at her kitchen table, a hand propping up his cheek and pouty lips on his face. Sam had promised to take him to the trampoline park that had just opened for one of their monthly playdates, but as so often happened, work took precedence.
He’ll understand when he’s older, she told herself, turning away from the boy and wasting no more thoughts on him.
“It’s an absolute disaster down here, Sam.” Bruce sounded exhausted, his voice lacking the confidence that had made him a terror in the department but also the recent alcoholic slur.
“I know. It’s all over the news.” Sam gaped at her television screen again. Bodies in uniforms and ATF bulletproof vests, which either hadn’t fulfilled their original purpose or hadn’t provided enough cover, lay lifeless over dried and cracking earth. Across from them, in the compound’s courtyard, zealots in white bathrobes were equally dead beside their assault rifles and IEDs, larger components of their military-grade arsenal strewn about like kids’ toys in a sandbox. The scene looked like something out of the war on terror with a touch of Hugh Hefner. A news camera zoomed in on what appeared to be stinger missiles.
“We’re in El Paso now,” Bruce said.