"Sure," I said, trying to smile and mean it.
"Are you okay? You seem . . . off. Upset."
I didn't say anything. Apparently I wasn't as good as I thought I was at concealing my emotions, even on Skype.
"How's work going?" asked Colin. "You never really talk about it, aside from funny anecdotes. Are you actually okay?"
I couldn't just play it cool and give him the easy out. I had to go there. Words poured out of me, bitter and hurt, raw and angry. "You know, it's kinder to just break things off clean. You keep pretending you're coming to see me, that this is some kind of wonderful relationship and you care about me. Well, you don't. You've got a life, and why should you change it for me? You're so stuck on playing the nice guy that you keep trying to break it to me gently. Well, grow up and say what you mean. And no, I'm not happy here. It sucks. I wish I'd never taken the job."
He stared at me, openmouthed, gaping. "Peter—"
"Pete," I said quietly. Peter was almost too intimate over this awful distance. He'd called me Peter in such a gentle, sensuous voice when we were in bed together. Or out of it — but always together. Now I could hardly stand to hear his voice say my name this way.
His face went through a variety of expressions and then grew red and grim. "Pete. I had no idea you felt this way."
He spoke remonstratively, like he was giving me a restrained scolding. It made him sound rather superior, and I didn't like it — but I knew he was right.
"You should have said something sooner. You should've been letting me know what you were thinking. You've been so positive and upbeat in your communications up till now."
"I was trying to be," I admitted. "But it hasn't really been very easy."
"I'm sorry."
We looked at one another, assessing things. I was ashamed I'd lost my temper. I'd been harsh with him, and he'd only been kind.
"I keep expecting you to break up with me," I admitted. "Or just stop contacting me, or something." Actually, this had been a fairly long and successful relationship by my standards. I tried to smile, but it probably looked like a grimace. "I shouldn't be so insecure, huh?"
"You could try letting me know what's upsetting you. How can I help otherwise?"
How could he help? Even if he could, I'd just become even more dependent on him. It hurt enough already, thanks.
"Are you . . . thinking of looking for a different job?" he asked cautiously. "The bureau can help with that, of course. It's not my department, but I can get you the number for the people who help with job placement. If it's not a good match, it's just not. There's no shame in admitting that."
I gazed at him sadly through the distance and nearness of cyberspace. "But that's where we are, isn't it? Face it: we're just not a good match and we probably never will be."
He stared at me quite hard. "I really care about you, Peter — Pete." He shook his head slowly. "I wish you wouldn't break up with me without giving me a chance."
Was that what I was doing?
"Can you at least promise you'll give me a chance to get out to see you — and give yourself a chance to find a job that won't make you miserable?"
"Sure," I mumbled, highly ashamed. "Of course. I'll — um — talk to you when you have time, or whatever."
"Pete." He gazed at me hard through the screen, almost near enough to touch. "Give me a chance. I think we could be a good match — if you'll be honest with me about the things that are bothering you. I'm really making this a priority. I'll get some time off — whatever it takes. Don't give up on me before then."
We said our goodbyes and hung up. I was more shaken than I'd expected. Had I really almost ended a relationship with a decent, sexy, and warm-hearted guy because I was insecure?
Or was it something more than that? I still couldn't quite believe he actually wanted to be in a relationship with me, but on the other hand, he was a terrible liar. He clearly meant what he said — or thought he meant it.
I didn't know what to make of it, so I told myself I wouldn't try to figure it all out right now. Maybe things would look different if I could just be near him again, and if I could sort out the whole job situation.
There was nothing so terrible about working with the police, but the hostility and isolation were really getting to me. I could go out of my mind with that painful combination. I wasn't built to take it.
Did that make me a wimp? Maybe. But I'd done my share of difficult jobs, and so far none of them had left me as miserable as this one.
#
I got a wakeup call late at night from the captain. I was to report to the precinct immediately, even though it was two in the morning. Half awake, not sure if this was even real or a dream, I rubbed a hand over my face and mumbled, "Why?"
"A missing child. This can't wait, Durphy."
I managed to wake up a bit more, till it was safe enough to drive. On the way to the station, there was enough time for a bunch of scenarios to go through my head, and for me to get pretty scared. Obviously my skills were needed, but would they be up to the task? I didn't think I knew enough to help find a missing child. Maybe the questioning they could do would be enough, combined with my positives or negatives, but I didn't know. We'd have to see. It was a huge responsibility, either way, and I was starting to think that that would be the worst part of this job, worse than feeling like a pariah by far.
A life could hang in the balance. A kid's life.
After I rushed into the station, disheveled from sleep, in rapidly thrown-on clothes, my hair uncombed and my eyes a little wild, I was quickly filled in on the situation.
It was a bad one.
A one-year-old child was missing. Her mother — no father in the picture — had been dating and had recently started living with a new boyfriend. He was a big man, and he had a temper.
Sometimes he shook the baby.
I started feeling sick even before they whisked me into the room.
She'd called the police in tears after leaving the house just a little while ago. The baby had been there when she went to her job, and he'd promised to watch the kid, but when she got home from work, the baby wasn't there, and he wouldn't answer her questions. At some point between when she left the apartment and returned, he'd started drinking heavily. He was clearly upset.
She told him she was going out to get takeout, and instead went to the police station and tried to talk to someone. It was late; by the time she got heard and the officers had taken the information from her, the baby had been missing for an indeterminate number of hours.
The boyfriend was brought in for questioning. He was proving uncooperative. The child was not on the premises. Relatives and friends had been called. No one knew the baby's whereabouts.
Forensic evidence would be collected, was even now being collected. But they needed me to help find out if he'd killed the baby and where she was.
I had never felt less qualified for anything in my entire life.
The captain caught my shoulder and gave me a look in the eyes. I felt like I was the twelve-year-old kid he'd given a pass to so far, and now he was telling me it was time to grow up. "It's not going to be pretty. I need you to keep your head on straight. Can you do that? I need to be able to rely on you right now. This is very important. If there's a chance the kid is alive somewhere, she won't have long."
I nodded hard, but I couldn't speak.
And then hell broke loose.
#
It's safe to say that I'm glad I couldn't read thoughts. But the ugly washes of emotions and the festering lies I got off the guy were terrible things.
When he said he didn't know where Eileen was, he was lying. When he said he hadn't hurt her, he was lying.
When I had to tell them this, he lunged across the table at me, shouting and trying to strangle me with his bare hands. There were handcuffs after that.
Ideally, I would be behind glass for an interrogation like this, one so fraught with emotion. It would be less distracting, for one thing, and I wouldn
't have to be so close. But there was just no time to waste, and the captain wanted me there, not behind glass so they had to check back and forth to see what was true. They needed to know right away.
He lied about not shaking her — about almost everything. Then he got confused and began to change his story. I sat in on the whole questioning, even when he lost his temper and the questioning officers bit back their own emotions to keep from doing the same.
It was a long ordeal.
In the end, his lies narrowed things down a bit more till we had a good idea where to look for Eileen. Officers were sent out. The questioning continued. I had to pee pretty badly by this point, but I wasn't going to call a halt if nobody else was.
They might be close. There might be something important we'd miss if I wasn't here. I stayed. I kept giving the officers information about whether he was telling the truth or lying. He hated me so much; I think he wanted to kill me.
An officer burst into the room, her face gray and looking like she'd been crying or was about to. She cast the suspect a look of revulsion and hate.
After that, he was charged. I was allowed to go home, if I was able to drive.
"Someone can drive you, if you need it," said the captain, not unkindly, but very distractedly. He was upset. Cases with kids get to everyone, and he was a family man.
The baby hadn't survived. The suspect had been drinking, had shaken her to shut her up, and then when he came back later and saw she wasn't doing well, he hadn't taken her to the emergency room. Her life might have been saved if he hadn't decided to cover his crime up, to hide the dying body of a little girl who'd never had a chance.
The mother would probably be charged in some way, even though she'd tried to find her baby and had come to the cops right away. After all, she'd left the baby in his care.
It was ugly all around. And no, I was in no way fit to drive myself home. Crimes like this took place all around the world, no doubt, far too often. But it was so much more real, so much more terrible than I'd ever expected.
I didn't see any of the pictures of the young victim, then or later — I couldn't make myself look, no matter how much I thought I ought to — and I couldn't make sense of it. It was evil, pure evil — and more than that, stupid.
There was no sense in it. A child shouldn't die because a man's had too much to drink and goes into a rage. A child shouldn't die, period. I know death strikes unfairly all around the world, at every age. But it was more than I could bear.
#
I began to come into work late. I had trouble sleeping. I wasn't functioning very well, kept forgetting things, staring into space, doing stupid things to distract myself from life. Things like drinking too much so my brain would just shut up. It never worked entirely, but it helped a little.
I knew it wasn't the world's best way to deal with things, but I felt so broken, I almost didn't care. It hit me hard.
And come on, tell me there weren't a lot of other cops at the precinct who ended up reacting in much the same way. I'll never believe it. I had to feel their emotions whenever I was near them. They felt the same.
In one sense, this experience created more of a place for me at the precinct than I'd ever had up till now. I'd gone through the fire with the rest of them, even when it wasn't easy.
But I wasn't quite here anymore, either. I'd been struggling before then, with the job and my personal life, and trying to fit myself into a new way of being, this new ability, job, life, and maybe even relationship.
Now I could barely care. If people despised me, or if they didn't — it barely touched me. Instead of feeling banished, I didn't want to see anyone anyway. I answered in monosyllables when addressed, did my job, went home, and tried to survive the night.
It wasn't fair for me to make this about me. I knew that. It made me feel like a shitty person. Oh, one child happens to die near me, so I let it throw me into a spiral. Well, it didn't help her, did it? And it ignored all the other suffering of kids here and around the world. All so I could feel sorry for myself.
But these harsh thoughts about my selfishness didn't actually pull me out of the spiral; they just made me feel more hopeless and helpless and awful.
I began thinking dark thoughts.
Colin came to visit me. It began inauspiciously.
I had been drinking, slept late, and stumbled to answer the door in a foul and unshaven mood.
Colin, who was used to seeing my happy side, my talkative nature and attempts at being charming — maybe even my sexy side — seemed taken aback.
"Peter — er, Pete?" he asked cautiously.
"Yep." I held the door open. "Come into my lair."
He actually took a step back, hesitation on his sensitive face, written clearly across his features.
It went downhill from there.
He moved cautiously inside, tried to make me coffee and then talk to me. I was a mess, but the wrong sort of mess. If I'd confided in him, shared the pain, cried in his arms and let him caress and try to fix me, he'd have forgiven anything — I'm sure of it, now, afterwards.
Instead, I was caustic, even rude. I was cold, dismissive, and refused to talk about it. I couldn't talk about it; it was all still too raw and painful. I'd gotten through a little mandatory counseling, but it was so difficult, even going through the motions there, that I mentally ran screaming from the idea of rehashing things for Colin's sympathy and help and caring.
He would be such a good boyfriend to me if I let him. But I couldn't — I couldn't.
Soon his face was frozen. He was trying not to be hurt and disgusted, not knowing what was wrong or why I had become such a savage, drunken asshole — and very clearly wondering what he'd gotten himself into. On top of that, wounded pride made him feel that I'd cheated him, lied about my essential self. I wasn't a fun, cheerful guy who came bouncing back from hard times, as he'd thought of me before. I wasn't someone to admire, to want.
"Tell me, did you even call the number to find out about getting a different job?" he asked, his lips pressed thin, his eyes judging me.
I shook my head. "Haven't gotten around to it yet."
He looked away for a long moment, his mouth tight, frustrated, angry, with hurt feelings roiling inside him. I didn't have to read them to sense their direction pretty clearly.
"I see," he said softly.
And I could feel more, the bubbling pain of it inside him. He'd thought he'd found someone to keep and love and cherish, someone who —
I turned away, wanting distance, not wanting to feel his disappointment with me, the way I always did from people, the way I could never get away from — and yet knowing it would go down deep inside me and dig further into the pit of my despair and unworthiness if I did feel it all.
It was kind of hellish, being certified, because by now, I knew which of my impressions and feelings were based on fact. If I was around someone and started feeling really shitty about myself, feeling really judged and unworthy for no particular reason, it really was because they were judging me harshly.
And there was a lot to judge.
The phone number for reassignment had been sitting on my phone for two weeks already. Each time I saw it — even thought about it — I scrolled past quickly or thought of something else. I couldn't face it at all — I couldn't face anything. I was too numb to do anything, and a task as small as calling a phone number to ask for help seemed like a climbing-Everest-like task I could never even try to tackle.
It didn't go well after that.
We didn't even kiss each other or embrace before he found an excuse to go and stay at a hotel, and I said, "Yeah, see ya," very sarcastically, with a twist to my mouth and a little hateful salute.
I'm ashamed of my behavior. But it had the desired effect. He stopped expecting anything from me. He didn't text again, except for one brief, short note, in which he was clearly trying to be objective and impersonal.
I don't think we should date anymore right now. I'm not sure how compatible we ar
e. I hope you'll stay in touch and let me know if I can help in some way.
I didn't reply.
What was the use? He wanted to fix me, wanted to be the perfect boyfriend — wanted me to be all right, and ready to start a life, and to love him.
How could I love anyone? There was nothing inside me right now, and I didn't know when there would be again.
As awful as it was to lose him, it was also a great relief. Losing him had been hanging over my head for so long, a waiting thing, ready to pounce but holding off like some sick joke or twisted game. Now, the worst had come; the crisis was past. I had only to get over him, if I could.
It hadn't been terrible, as breakups go. I hadn't run after him begging him to stay. He hadn't curled his lip in disgust and called me a miserable excuse for a human being.
But his disappointment and hurt were as bad as that, in a different way. Because I had been a miserable failure; I'd let him down and wounded him, the man I'd cared for so much and had wanted to share a fairy tale ending with.
There were no fairy tales right now for me, only darkness, bitterness, and pain. And deadness inside.
I really wasn't cut out for this job — for any job. For anything. I wanted to disappear, to not be here anymore, to not have anyone need me. To not exist at all.
I saw no way out, unless I did the truly cowardly thing.
#
One night at the bar where I'd stopped to have a drink, if only so I wouldn't be alone the whole night, I saw Jeff — Damon — across the room, eyeing me with the kind of sexy eyes that weigh you up and decide they're in the mood for a taste.
I'd been weighed up with eyes like that often enough to know what it was. Sometimes women gave me those looks, and managed to drape themselves against me, or touch my hair or arm lightly, tender little foreplay touches of hopefulness. I was immune to that, despite being flattered. But give me a hot guy looking across the room at me that way and I'm much more likely to be putty in his hands.
KEEP (Men of the ESRB Book 2) Page 6