Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  “Sorry, I know.”

  Hansen patted her shoulder. “No problem. We’re all in shock. She’s gonna need all her friends.”

  “You’ve been through this kind of thing personally?”

  “I’m empathizing. Don’t leave her alone.”

  “Not planning to.”

  “You picked her up at the crash site?”

  “Worst thing I’ve ever seen, Ed. I focused solely on her face and her eyes, nothing more, didn’t look at the rest of it, didn’t need to. I saw her eyes and knew I had to get her out of there.”

  “You get her weapons?”

  “First thing, radio too. Didn’t want her hearing radio chatter about it.”

  “She carries more than two weapons.”

  “I got all four.”

  “Talk to Dutch, get all the guns out of their house. There’s gonna be self-recrimination and it’s gonna settle in quick-fast. We don’t want her taking any stupid permanent solutions to temporary situations.”

  “It’s not temporary for the vick.”

  “Meghan, that old fella is beyond our reach. Now we have to take care of those still with us. That will be difficult enough.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Petryshen called her sister. “Chris, Alicin hit a pedestrian about two hours ago. I’m going to stay with her and Dutch for a while. Grab my go-kit and bring it over to their place.”

  Anybody hurt bad?” her sister asked.

  “Does dead count as bad?”

  “Oh my God,” Chris said. “I’ll bring your stuff.”

  •••

  A week later, Alicin Carmichael was in Green Bay. Her lieutenant from Marquette had come by the house, not liked what he’d seen and heard. And one of the local judges arrived one morning, cancelled court, spent the day with her, just to provide company. It was the judge’s idea for the counselor, and he told her “I know just the one.” Dutch had to work. He had his own pulping business. When he didn’t work, he didn’t make money, her fault this, her fault that, everything her fault. Nightmare, every breath and second.

  She drove to Green Bay alone.

  The counselor’s name was Ryderly, fiftyish, distinguished looking, pink skinned, veins in his nose, a voice like clicking gravel, an annoying kind of thing, yet unignorable. You had to deal with it. Him.

  “Weather okay coming down?”

  “That’s all you’ve got?”

  He smiled, held out his hands. “Okay, that was lame. Life sucks, right?”

  “Only when you kill some old man.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Not a problem. Want me to tell you about me?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “It’s your dime—or the state’s depending on how you look at it.”

  “My dime, no, state’s dime sure, go ahead. You a shrink?”

  “I am. My practice is almost all dealing with trauma cases, PTSD and such.”

  “That’s me, PTSD?”

  “I don’t know. Is it? You driving much yet?”

  “This is my first time in a vehicle to come down here. You know. Since?”

  “Comfortable?”

  “White-fucking knuckle every fucking mile. What’s wrong with us living up here in such shit weather, snow, fog, crap?”

  “These things also happen under blue skies and a bright sun. Don’t blame the weather.”

  “Who do I blame?”

  “Maybe nobody. I don’t know the answer to that. Any self-harm thoughts?”

  Carmichael made a puffing sound. “You mean like might I eat my gun? All the damn time.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “Look,” she said, “I had been up to Marquette for a trial the day before. I stayed with another CO that night, came home in the morning. Fog all the way. I’m driving along and the visbee is shitty but there’s nothing in front of me and then there was. Bang.”

  “That’s it, bang? Why that word?”

  “I killed the man, might as well have shot him. Bang. Dead as a doornail. You want to know if I was speeding?”

  “Would that bring the victim back to life?”

  “You know it wouldn’t.”

  He said, “My backstory is this: I’m a cop in Madison, snowstorm, bunch of kids crossing from school in the afternoon. Could see them, saw them for a long distance, but I locked up my brakes, turned the squad into a dumb bomb, whole damn thing in slow motion, I still see it happening, and nothing I can do. I know it’s coming and I can’t do anything. I’m gonna hit kids with my patrol vehicle and I can’t do anything and they aren’t even looking, they’re gonna get crushed and never even know what happens.”

  Carmichael looked over at the man. “You’re making that up.”

  “You think so?”

  She studied his eyes, could see pain. “No, I guess not. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it’s so fucking surreal nobody can take it on board first time they hear it.”

  “You hit them?”

  “Four of them, all seven and eight, all dead on impact, nothing I could do. Turned out the brakes were faulty, a manufacturer design problem, not our maintenance not the operator, there were lawsuits for years, the county and the manufacturers all paid.”

  She had to think about this one. His vehicle had failed, not him. In her case, it was her failure.

  “Visibility was bad,” she said, “for me.”

  “You think that explains it?”

  “No, I deal with bad weather all the time. We’re game wardens and pay no attention to weather. It’s totally irrelevant. We go and we do, no matter what, ever. It’s up to me to handle it.”

  “You thinking about hanging it up?”

  “Crossed my mind, I can tell you that.”

  “You love the job?”

  “I guess,” Carmichael said. “Is this how this thing is supposed to go, the two of us jawing about nothing?”

  “Are we?”

  “I was hoping for results.”

  “Which results?”

  “I don’t know. This whole thing was unnerving. Scary, you know?”

  “Then how can you expect results?”

  “Okay, I guess I really want to forget the whole thing.”

  “Do you think that’s even possible?”

  “Is it?”

  “Hasn’t been for me, but you’re not me.”

  “Any of your patients able to forget terrible shit?”

  “They don’t forget, they work over it and through it, don’t let it control them.”

  “I don’t understand how they can do that. It’s right in my frontal lobe every second, awake or asleep. I have day-mares, is that even possible?”

  “You mean nightmares during the day?”

  “I don’t know if there’s a word for them.”

  “Does it happen as you’re trying to sleep or to wake up from sleep?”

  “No, not then, right in the middle of the day, doing something, a daydream, only awful.”

  The doctor looked at her, said nothing. “He talks to me,” she said.

  “He?”

  “He, him, are you not paying attention?”

  “I’m trying.”

  “The guy, the vick.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Can’t or don’t want to?”

  “Fellers, Charles James Fellers.”

  “Mister Fellers is talking to you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Not talk, not like a conversation. He’s yelling at me. He’s mad. You know?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know?”

  “He hasn’t said?”

  “Something about hi
s eyes, seeing his eyes.”

  “His eyes?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Did you see his eyes?”

  Carmichael stopped slumping in her chair and sat up. “I did.”

  “So you saw his eyes, the eyes of the man you killed.”

  “Yes, I saw them.”

  “And he’s talking to you now.”

  “Not right now, but a lot, you know?”

  “Telling you what.”

  “I saw his eyes and killed him.”

  “What vehicle were you driving?”

  Carmichael stared at the doctor. “What’s that got to do with anything? I was in my Silverado, my patrol truck.”

  “How big was the guy?”

  “I don’t know, not very. He was in his 90s, sort of bent over.”

  “You knew him?”

  “There was an accident at his place a couple of years back. He turned in front of a motorcycle, killed the driver, put the dead man’s wife in the hospital for six months. I came upon the situation on my way back into town, stopped to help the deputies with traffic that day.”

  “But didn’t really know him?”

  “No, not really. I only heard him say one thing.”

  “Which was?”

  “He was pissed at the motorcycle driver because of the damage to his van.”

  The doctor raised an eyebrow. “This is the guy you hit?”

  Carmichael nodded.

  “And you didn’t see him again until two weeks back?”

  “Right, wrong. I saw in the local paper his wife of sixty years had died and I heard at the cop house he was despondent.”

  “When was that?”

  “Earlier this fall, September?”

  “Are you seeing some puzzle pieces here?” the doctor asked.

  “Not really.”

  “What exactly does he say to you? When he talks?”

  “It’s mostly gibberish and about the only thing that comes through is that thing about his eyes.”

  “Is there a deer guard on your patrol truck?”

  “Yes, I had my own made of steel, not that tube crap the state buys.”

  “What happened when you hit him?”

  “I’m not sure I can go there,” she said.

  “Okay,” Ryderly said.

  “Foggy, sleety, one second it was clear, then thump.”

  “You drive over the body?”

  She looked at the doctor. “No, he came all the way through the windshield. Into my lap.” She looked down.

  “Over your deer guard, across your hood, through the window, and into your lap? How did he get over the deer guard?”

  “He just did.”

  “Have you hit deer, other animals?”

  “Once in a while.”

  “Any of them come over the guard?”

  “No.”

  “You ever think something might come over?”

  She had to think about this. “Only way is if it was up in the air, toward the top, something tall, like a moose maybe?”

  “But Mr. Fellers was small, right?”

  “Yes, real small.”

  “And you saw his eyes?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was looking at you when you hit him?”

  “I guess.”

  “Why. Was he crossing the road?”

  “We don’t know, he isn’t here to tell us.”

  “Why was he even out there?”

  “Getting his mail is what the investigators think.”

  “Assuming he was moving across, even if he darted out, wouldn’t you be seeing him from the side not facing him?”

  “I looked right into his eyes.”

  “That doesn’t strike you as a questionable eye witness fact?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  “Why?”

  “I took the liberty of talking to one of the investigators. Mr. Fellers is well known by neighbors for causing vehicles to lock up their brakes, several times a week. He just walks out in front of vehicles, a lot, most of this behavior since his wife died.”

  “I haven’t heard that.”

  “And you still haven’t until the full investigation is done, but you need to know this guy’s behavior was pretty odd and very questionable. The neighbors said he did this a lot, frequently, conclusion?”

  “He didn’t care what happened to him?”

  “Reasonable to assume, but he never got hit, not once.”

  “I hit him.”

  “Bad visibility, same behavior from him.”

  “Suicide?”

  “Alicin, you saw his eyes. The report says he was diminutive in size. He moved into your line so fast that you didn’t see him coming, yet you did see his eyes,” the psychiatrist said and paused. “He jumped up, Al, he came at you and jumped up and impact put him through your windshield. If he had been going sideways it would have been different. He had to have come at you.”

  “You’re saying he charged me?”

  “I guess that’s an adequate description. It’s the only one that seems to fit the facts.”

  “Why? I don’t understand.”

  “Go back to the dreams, what did he tell you?”

  “I don’t know, like I said, ranting, gibberish.” She closed her eyes. “Something about gun being not good.”

  “He was despondent, maybe he tried to end it with a gun, couldn’t do it.”

  “God. How could I know that?”

  Dr. Ryderly shrugged. “We know almost nothing about death, how a conscious mind shuts down, what happens to the soul, what a soul is, if there is one. We just don’t know. But telling you about the eyes I think he was trying to tell you this was on him, not on you.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It’s supposed to make you try to take apart the experience with some of that objectivity and observation you use every day in your work.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that. This is different.”

  “No, it’s not. Life is life.”

  “This is death.”

  “Which is part of life.”

  Omaha! Blue!

  Colonel Joe Romano had noticed her competence during her first tour and had her transferred from her guard unit to Speck Op HARAM FREYA, Haram meaning forbidden and Freya for Freya Stark, an eccentric Brit Arabist who had traveled alone all through the Arab world, speaking Arabic and Persian. Her last expedition had taken her into Afghanistan. One of a kind was Miss Stark, hugely simpatico to the plight of women in the Muslim world.

  This was Major Meta Toucan’s fifth deployment in ten years, two full one-year deals, two more six-monthers and this one of unspecified length, which unlike the others, had dropped out of the blue. The bosses in Lansing were not happy. They could barely tolerate National Guard service as part-time, but not as full-time, and ever since Rumsfeld had been running the Pentagon, all troops were treated as full-time Army. What could you do about it? Nothing.

  And it was the same this time: Ten days after a call from Washington, here she was in Kabul, in Joe Romano’s tiny office in a fortified building at the city’s airport.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked the colonel. “Do you ever rotate home?”

  “Home is where my boots are,” Romano said. “No wife, no kids and all I own fits in two duffle bags. Sorry about the hurry-up on this deal. I know it ruffled some feathers.”

  “It always ruffles feathers, no biggie.” Toucan was a conservation officer in Hillsdale County, a job she truly loved. For the last year she had been trying to get into the Wildlife Resource Protection Unit, an undercover operation, to no avail. Her friends thought it was because she was a woman, but she was sure it
was all the war deployments. Being a woman could be a barrier, but not to all things. She was a woman here and the Army showed no qualms of any kind about using her skills and knowledge. “Why such a yank this time, Colonel?”

  Romano handed her a small manila envelope. She cupped it open, dumped the contents into her hand. She saw an 18-carat gold button, decorated with a half moon. She felt her heart race. “Where is she?”

  “Not Kabul,” the colonel said.

  “How’d you find her?”

  “Pure chance, a Goatsucker op in Kandahar.”

  She doubted it was pure chance. Sima Firoozi operated far outside the laws of chance. Goatsucker was the term for snatch-and-grab missions targeting enemy leadership and potential high value intelligence sources. Special Ops were going all the time, every night, all year long.

  “Was she the target?”

  “We didn’t even know she was there. The team made entry and she popped up with an AK, whacking ECs. Our team killed three other men. She dropped the weapon, held up her hands and yelled ‘Omaha! Blue!’ The team nearly shit their pants,” Romano said with a smirk.

  Omaha was a signal some professional football quarterbacks used to tell teammates the play clock was nearly out. Blue meant extreme emergency and I can’t talk. Toucan had adopted the OB code for her agents and operatives. It was rarely used.

  “What happened after they snatched her up?”

  “Everything by the book. They treated her as an EC detainee, hogtied her, hooded her, threw her on the chopper. Treated her as an enemy combatant all the way, disappeared into the Kandahar night and checked her into IC Hugh.”

  IC stood for interview/interrogation center. Hugh was the facility’s name, one she’d never heard before, meaning it was new since she’d last been in the country. “New?”

  “Very.”

  “Anyone talk to her?”

  “No ma’am, we all went by the book you wrote on agents. She important?”

  Romano was West Point lite, hated arbitrary procedures, red tape, ring-knockers, spit-and-polish, ass-lickers and vain-glorious office soldiers. His code was simple: Know the job you’re gonna do and do the job you know. He was the best leader she had ever known.

  “Could be huge, Joe.”

  The bearded, long-haired man nodded. “Say when you want to flip the switch.”