Dinah grabbed his arm. “Hey, it’s just about raccoon time,” she said, nodding toward the wall clock.
The rec room was down the hallway.
Fewer people were there today; an older black man in a wheelchair whom Andrew had introduced as a Vietnam vet and the younger man pushing him were the only familiar faces. The raccoon entered as Segal came up. No one spoke as they watched the animal go through her paces, making a perfect hand-rolled cigarette. Again, as she raised it to her mouth to lick the glue on the paper, Segal thought he perceived a sense of pride. Or maybe he was falling into the trap of reading too much of his own ideas into the animal, as so many pet owners did. He watched with fascination as the raccoon twisted the ends, carefully placing the cigarette in the box, before pulling the lever for the bite-sized Snickers. It made much the same sound as a conventional vending machine.
A kid with red hair and freckles wheeled up in a chair. Segal remembered him from their previous visit; he couldn’t have been more than twenty.
“Damn, that looks good about now,” the kid said.
Segal smiled at him, not sure if he meant the candy or the cigarette.
“My turn today.” The kid wheeled up and removed the cigarette from the apparatus. “I’m heading outside,” he said, more to Dinah than Segal, then wheeled toward the door to the patio area. Dinah raised an eyebrow.
Outside, the kid took the cigarette and a Bic lighter from the pocket of his robe. He fired up.
“You’re a friend of Andrew Roche?” Dinah asked, sitting beside him in a lawn chair.
He took a shallow drag on the cigarette and slowly exhaled. “Yeah, I guess so. You get to know people pretty good, hanging around this place. I mean, you got nothing but time.” He paused. “That’s what I thought, anyway.”
“You talking about his redeployment?”
The young man answered with something between a snort and a laugh.
“Did he talk to you about it? Say anything about where they were sending him?” Dinah asked.
She’s good at this, Segal thought, getting people to tell her things. He remained standing in front of Dinah and the kid, his bad hip acting up.
The young man took another hit. “Didn’t have time. He came to my room last night and woke me up, said he was shipping out. Said it was a security assignment. Meaning he couldn’t say anything else.”
“How did he seem?” Segal asked.
The kid looked at him and exhaled some smoke. “How did he seem? He seemed scared as shit is how he seemed. He seemed shaken up. You saw him a couple of days ago. Did he seem like someone that needed to be heading back overseas? Besides, it was weird, them coming for him so late and helping him pack.”
“And this morning he was gone?” Segal asked.
“Like a turkey in the corn,” the kid said.
“I guess we can go through channels, find out what outfit he’s with. Do you remember his division?” Dinah asked.
The kid looked at them, surprised. “I thought you knew,” he said. “Andrew started out army, but then he signed with Cormorant after he came here. It was Cormorant that came for him.”
“The private contracting company?” Dinah asked.
The kid nodded.
“It didn’t seem like Andrew thought much of those guys,” Segal said. He was thinking of Andrew’s first conversation with him and Dinah.
“None of the guys do,” the kid said, “but there are certain realities to deal with when you get messed up over there.” He made the universal sign for money, rubbing his thumb over his fingertips.
“When you saw him last night, did he talk about anything else?” Dinah asked, leaning in.
“Not much, really. We talked about the raccoons. He said he stocked up the paper and tobacco and candy bars, but I should be the one to check it after he was gone. He said that a couple of times. I should be the one.”
Segal watched his face and waited for him to continue.
The kid smiled. “Tell you the truth, I was surprised. I mean, that he would ask me to do it. There’re guys been here longer than me who love those raccoons.”
Dinah stood immediately. In this kind of interview, this kind of situation, they were looking for anything that seemed out of place, and this qualified.
“You think we could check the apparatus now?” she asked. “If it’s not too much trouble.” She smiled at him, “I would really like to see it.”
That’s all it took. The kid said “Sure” and started to wheel inside.
Segal and Dinah followed as he swung by his room and picked up a small key, then proceeded to the lounge area. It was after breakfast, when most of the guys were off doing physical therapy or other tasks.
The kid strained to reach up and unlock a panel, then had to push the chair away to allow the panel to fold down. With this, the inner workings of the raccoon vending machine were exposed. They included drawers that could be released with a simple latch.
The kid unlatched the first drawer and pulled it out. Segal leaned over to see. It was nearly full of the little Snickers bars. The kid must have read something on Segal’s face because he said, “Go ahead, lieutenant, take a couple. There’s plenty here.”
Segal shrugged, took a couple, and tossed one to Dinah. “I guess I’ll owe the raccoons,” he said.
The second drawer held tobacco—four small, string-tie bags, to be exact. The third held several small packets of cigarette papers. Immediately though, Segal saw something else in there as well. A thick manila envelope was wedged against the rear wall of the drawer. “What’s that?” he asked.
The kid reached in and pulled it out. Written on the envelope was the name Andrew Roche. The kid looked at the envelope, uncertain what to do with it. Dinah reached for it. Segal helped the kid shut and lock the apparatus while Dinah took the envelope to where a couch and some easy chairs surrounded a coffee table. She spilled the contents—a number of camera prints—onto the coffee table and sat on the couch to sort through them. Segal sat beside her, and the kid wheeled his chair opposite them.
Dinah picked up the pictures one by one, examining each closely and passing it to the others, the way people did, Segal thought. Like going through a family album. “I recognize some of these,” Segal said. “They’re the ones from Afghanistan, the ones he showed us before.” He was looking at the face of the woman they had dubbed “the mystery lady.”
“Not all of them, though,” Dinah said. She held another picture that included Francis.
“Why do you think he left them like that in the box?” the kid asked.
“Good question,” Segal said. “Especially since he made it a point to wake you in the middle of the night and tell you to take care of the raccoons. That tells me a couple of things. One, he wanted it to be you who found the pictures.”
“And two, he especially wanted to make sure the guys picking him up did not see them,” Dinah threw in.
“It seems odd that they would help him pack up. Is that normal for transport guys to help like that?” Segal asked.
The kid shrugged. He started to say something, but Dinah interrupted before he could speak. “Check this out, Segal.” She pointed at the photo of Francis beside a group of four tough-looking guys in camouflage uniforms. “You recognize this guy right here?” she asked, tapping her finger on the one closest to Francis.
Segal nodded. He didn’t want to say it out loud. It was the same guy in the photos Richard had delivered to Dinah. No doubt. He took the photo from her, and the kid leaned in to see, too.
Segal pointed to the patch above the guy’s shirt pocket. It showed the silhouette of a bird with its wings spread and its head turned to one side. “Is that what I think it is?”
“That’s what I was telling you about. That’s a Cormorant patch,” the kid said.
CHAPTER 24
Again with Dr. Gold
Segal was inclined to skip his appointment with Dr. Gold, being so deep into their investigation, but Dinah insisted on dropping him o
ff downtown.
“Do you really want to explain to the captain why you skipped?” she asked. “Especially with people shooting and lobbing hand grenades at you?”
Segal agreed.
The door at the top of the stairs was open, and as he walked past the Colebrook painting, he had no problem noticing the robots or Jackie Kennedy. His eyes were open. He could not believe he hadn’t seen them before. What else had he missed these last months?
Dr. Gold’s hair was done in two long braids hanging down her shoulders today. Segal liked how she wore her hair like a young woman sometimes in spite of the gray in it. Likewise, the rich red and gold of her sweater seemed soft and relaxing.
She didn’t get up from her desk when he entered, just motioned him to the green couch under the window. He knew what this meant: a session of what Dr. Gold called “guided meditation.” He glanced at her before sitting down. She seemed different today, and there was a folder on the desk in front of her which he recognized. He lay down and began a pattern of three deep breaths with slow exhalations, followed by conscious relaxation of his limbs, one by one.
Dr. Gold waited a few minutes. “Good,” she said. “I want you to trace your steps to the back of your mind. It is two years ago today.”
Segal had not realized it until she said this. It was the anniversary of his shooting. This nearly jolted him out of his relaxed state. He took another deep, slow breath and remained calm.
He heard the sound of the folder opening. He knew it was the official police report of the incident. Although they had spoken about some aspects of that day before, Dr. Gold had never asked him to recount it in detail.
“You were called to a disturbance on Church Street,” she said.
Segal understood from the way she read that sentence that she wanted him to continue the story from there. “Not exactly called. We heard it on the scanner and my partner and I were pretty sure we knew who it was so we went to help.”
“And it says here the man causing the disturbance was your cousin?”
“Tommy was a distant cousin, like second cousin. A troubled soul. The rest of the family had pretty well written him off.” The memory was clearly difficult for Segal, and he had to take a couple deeper breaths.
“Yes, and you tried to take care of him?”
“Not as well as I should have, not really. I didn’t know how to help him and neither did anyone else. He got picked up a couple of times for public disturbance and his mom asked me to step in and keep him from getting locked up. Which I did. Talked him down, took him home, got him back on his meds, and he was OK for a while.”
“It says here this time, the last time, he was hanging out at the front entrance to one of the churches yelling out the same phrase over and over again,” Dr. Gold prompted.
Segal nodded. He declined to pick up on her cue to continue.
“It says the phrase he kept shouting was ‘On pain of death, all men depart.’”
“It’s from Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet. It’s what the Prince says when he’s breaking up a street brawl between the Capulets and the Montagues. He’s tired of them disturbing the peace and he reads them the riot act, and that’s what he says at the end of the speech. ‘On pain of death all men depart’.”
There was a moment’s silence. Segal was clearly out of his meditative state.
“Segal, why would your cousin be quoting from Romeo and Juliet? There’s nothing about that in the report.”
Her question seemed to come more from a place of pure curiosity than from part of a guided meditation. He opened his eyes and sat up. He looked at her, then sighed deeply. “It was my fault. One of the times I tried to help Tommy I promised him I would always do my best to answer any question he had and that I would always tell him the truth, unlike the other people in his life. A few days later I saw him downtown and he asked me the million-dollar question every guy wants the answer to.”
“Which is?”
“How do I get a girl to like me? He was madly in love with a girl and that’s what he asked. How do I get a girl to like me? I hemmed and hawed and fumbled around and I finally told him guys have been trying to figure that one out since the time of the cavemen and no one really seemed to have the answer. Then I thought of Romeo and Juliet.”
“A copy of which you just happened to have on your person,” Dr. Gold filled in.
“In the back seat of my car. Next time I saw him he had it down, the whole plot, scene by scene, characters, everything. Amazing. And this was a guy who supposedly had learning problems. He worked in a quote about every other sentence he spoke. Who knew it would take over his mind like that? That’s the power of the written word.”
“And what exactly was the outcome you were hoping for?”
Segal seemed surprised by the question. “I guess I hadn’t really thought that one through in any detail. He asked about love so I gave him one of the most famous love stories of all time and hoped for the best. I figured he just needed to work it out the way everyone does. Only Tommy wasn’t so good at working things out.”
Dr. Gold’s face relaxed. She seemed to let that sink in for a moment, then said, “OK, Segal, I want you to lie back down and relax, and once you are relaxed just simply tell me what happened after you arrived on Church Street. Tell it in the present tense as if it’s happening right now. I won’t interrupt.”
Segal did as he was told. This time it took a few minutes to calm his breathing. Then he began. “It’s early evening. We roll up on Church Street. There are a couple of cruisers blocking off part of the street, no tape or anything. It’s not a very busy street anyway. I see one of the officers I know well and he seems relieved to see me. I ask him if it’s Tommy and he nods and says he thinks so. At first, I don’t see anyone at the church, then Tommy sticks his head out from behind one of the pillars between the arches and yells, ‘On pain of death all men depart.’
“It’s Tommy alright. One of the officers tells me that’s all he’s been saying since they got there. I call to him and he just says it again, ‘On pain of death all men depart.’ Then I tell him I’m coming up to talk to him. He doesn’t say anything, and I start walking up slowly. I’m talking to him as I come and when I’m about halfway there he peeks out a little and yells, ‘No Segal! On pain of death, all men depart. I mean it Segal. On pain of death, all men depart.’ He sounded upset, even more than usual. More desperate.
“I take a couple more steps toward him and he peeks out again. Then he steps out in full view and he’s got a gun. I stop. I can’t believe it. How could Tommy get a gun? Who would give it to him? That’s what I thought in that instant.”
Segal stopped.
“That instant?” the doctor asked.
“That instant before he shot me.”
“And the instant after?”
“All kinds of things all at once. I went down. I knew I had been hit, but it’s like I knew it on an intellectual level. I knew it but I didn’t feel it. And I kept looking at Tommy standing there with the gun in his hand, and I knew if he didn’t drop it immediately … I knew what would happen next. And you know what comes into my mind next? Another line from the same play: ‘Stand not amazed.’ It’s what Benvolio says to Romeo after Romeo kills Tybalt. Stand not amazed. And I think I tried to say it to him but I don’t know if any sound came out.”
And then Segal paused.
“And after that, you passed out,” Dr. Gold said.
Segal nodded. The meditative state was gone. He sat up and looked at the doctor. She looked down at the open file.
“It says here two of the officers shot him and he died on the scene.”
“That’s what I heard. They had no choice. A man with a gun just shot a fellow officer. That much makes sense. I just can’t make sense of the rest of it.”
“And you are the person who makes sense of things other people can’t figure out.”
Segal stared at the doctor. “You think I need to make sense of this before I can move forward?”
“No, you think you need to make sense of it before you can move forward.”
“And what do you think I need…to move forward?” he asked.
Dr. Gold gave him her best shrug and smile. “Sometimes, you don’t need anything. Sometimes, you need to leave behind everything you don’t need.”
CHAPTER 25
Foreign Correspondent
Someone once asked Segal what his favorite brewery was. There were many to choose from in Asheville. He said he was spreading himself around.
That evening, he was spreading himself around Wicked Weed. More precisely, he sat with Dinah at the bar, and more precisely still, the upstairs bar, sipping on a glass of their Rick’s Pilsner. Dinah was considering the possibility of squeezing lime juice into her Sweet Talker Ale. Between them, it was a split decision on whether or not this was advisable.
Earlier Dinah had asked him what he talked about with Dr. Gold. He just said “Romeo and Juliet.” Now he tried with her, to sort out what they had learned since that morning. Segal felt there was yet something more they could do before they gave the captain an update in the morning. The police station did not feel like the place to be.
The TV above the bar was on, the sound turned down so low he couldn’t hear much above the background noise of people coming and going and talking. It was a news talk show, and he looked up when a new guest came on. The guest was charismatic on camera, the kind of guy who got people’s attention. He was middle-aged with a full head of long, dark, wavy hair. His face was smooth. His eyes seemed heavy, and Segal thought that perhaps they were eyes that had seen too much.
Segal sipped his drink. He thought, It’s the eyes that make people listen to him.
“I’ve seen this guy before,” Dinah said.
Segal had reached the same conclusion a second or so earlier. He motioned for the bartender to turn up the sound.
The host of the program introduced the guest: “He’s the only journalist allowed into the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed a few days ago in a nighttime raid by navy SEALs. Please welcome Peter Olson.”
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