It’s not a big office. Just the four of us, desks and computer stations, a small acting conference room, phones. Corkboards covered with photos of death. It looks no different now than when I was here six months ago. But the way I feel, I might as well be walking on the moon.
Then I see them. Callie and Alan, backs to me, talking to each other as they point at one of the corkboards. James is there, focused with his usual cold intensity on a file that lays open on the desk in front of him. It’s Alan who turns and sees me first. He sees me, and his eyes open wide, his mouth drops, and I am bracing myself for a look of revulsion.
He laughs out loud.
“Smoky!”
It is a voice filled with joy, and in that moment, I am saved.
6
DAMN, HONEY-LOVE, you won’t have to dress up for Halloween anymore.” This is Callie. What she says is shocking, crass, and unfeeling. It fills me with an easy joy. If she’d done anything else, I probably would have burst into tears.
Callie is a tall, skinny, leggy redhead. She looks like a supermodel. She’s one of those beautiful people; staring at her too long is like looking into the sun. She’s in her late thirties, has a master’s in forensics with a minor in criminology, is brilliant, and lacks any social veneer at all. Most people find her intimidating. Many decide, on first blush, that she’s uncaring, maybe even cruel. This couldn’t be further from the truth. She is loyal to an extreme, and her integrity and character couldn’t be tortured out of her. She is blunt, forever truthful, brutal in her observations, and refuses to play games, political, PR, or otherwise. She would also put herself in front of a bullet for anyone she calls a friend.
One of Callie’s most admirable features is the one that’s easiest to miss—her simplicity. The face she shows to the world is the only one she has. She doesn’t believe in self-importance and has no patience with those who do. This is probably the crux of what confuses those who judge her harshly: If you can’t take her poking fun at you, she’s not going to lose any sleep over your discomfort. Lighten up or get left behind, because—as she likes to say—“If you can’t laugh at yourself, you’re of no use to me.”
It was Callie who found me in the aftermath of Joseph Sands. I was naked and bleeding, screaming and covered with vomit. She was dressed to kill, as always, but she didn’t hesitate to gather me in her arms and hold me while she waited for the ambulance. One of the last things I remember before I passed out was the sight of her beautiful tailored suit, ruined by my blood and tears.
“Callie…”
This reproval comes from Alan, quiet, serious, to the point. Alan’s way. Alan is a huge, scary-looking African-American. He’s not just big, he is gargantuan. He is a mountain with legs. His scowl has caused more than one suspect in an interrogation room to wet himself. The irony, of course, is that Alan is one of the kindest, gentlest people I have ever known. He has a tremendous patience I have always admired and aspire to, and he brings this to our cases. He never tires of going through the evidence, of examining the smallest thing. Nothing bores him when he is tracking a killer. And his eye for detail has broken more than one case. Alan is the oldest of us, in his mid-forties, and he brought ten years of experience as a Los Angeles homicide detective with him when he joined the FBI.
A new voice. “What are you doing here?” If displeasure was a musical instrument, this would be a symphony.
It’s said without preamble or apology; blunt, like Callie, but without her humor. This comes from James. We call him Damien behind his back, after the character in The Omen, the son of Satan. He’s the youngest of us all, only twenty-eight, and he’s one of the most irritating, unlikable people I’ve ever known. He grates on you, sets your teeth on edge, and infuriates. If I ever want to piss someone off, James is the gas to throw on the fire.
James is also brilliant. That off-the-charts, white-hot nova kind of brilliant. He graduated from high school at fifteen, got perfect scores on the SATs, and was wooed by every college worth a damn in the nation. He picked the one with the best criminology curriculum and proceeded to burn his way through to a PhD in four years. Then he joined the FBI, which had been his goal all along.
When he was twelve, James lost his older sister to a serial killer with a thing for blowtorches and screaming young women. He decided he was going to work in this office the day they buried her.
James is a closed and faceless book. He seems to live for just one thing—what we do. He never jokes, never smiles, never does anything unnecessary to the job at hand. He doesn’t share his private life or anything else that would give a clue to his passions, likes, dislikes, or tastes. I don’t know what kind of music he enjoys, what movies he prefers to watch, or even if he does.
It would be too simple and neat to think of him as just efficient and logic-driven. No, there is a hostility to James that comes out in sharp bursts. His disapproval can be acrid, and his thoughtlessness is legendary. I can’t say that he takes joy in the discomfort of others; I would say instead that he just doesn’t care about it one way or the other. I think James is forever angry at a world where individuals like the one who killed his sister can exist. Even so, I long ago stopped forgiving him for himself. He’s too much of an ass.
But he is brilliant, a brilliance forever blinding those around him, like a permanent camera flash. And he shares an ability with me that ties us together, a gift that creates an umbilicus between us, that gives me an evil twin. He can get inside the mind of a killer. He can slide into the nooks and dark places, consider the shadows, understand the evil. I can do it too. It’s not uncommon for us to end up working together on certain parts of a case, in a very intimate sense. During those times, we get along like oil and ball bearings, smooth, flowing, unstoppable. All the rest of the time, being around him is about as pleasant as someone sanding me like a two-by-four.
“Nice to see you too,” I reply.
“Hey, asshole,” Alan purrs, a low chord of menace.
James folds his hands in front of him and gives Alan a cold, direct look. It’s a trait James has that I have to admire: Even though he’s only five foot seven and maybe 130 pounds soaking wet, he’s almost impossible to intimidate. Nothing seems to scare him. “It was just a question,” he replies.
“Well, how about you drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up?”
I place a hand on Alan’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”
They glare at each other for a moment longer. It’s Alan who breaks away with a sigh. James gives me one long, appraising look, then turns back to the file he was reading.
Alan shakes his head at me. “Sorry.”
I smile. How can I explain to him that even this, those Damien ways, is somehow a right thing right now? It is something that is still “the way things used to be.” James still pisses me off, and this is a comfort.
I decide to change the subject. “So what’s new around here?”
I walk all the way into the office, scanning the desks and the corkboards. Callie has been running things while I’ve been gone, and she takes the lead in responding.
“It’s been quiet for us, honey-love.” Callie calls everyone honey-love. As legend goes, she has an actual written reprimand on file for calling the Director honey-love. It’s a complete affectation, taken on to amuse herself. Callie isn’t Southern in the slightest. It annoys some people to no end; to me it’s just Callie. “Nothing serial, two abductions. We’ve been working on some of the older, colder cases.” She smiles. “Guess all the bad guys went on vacation with you.”
“How did the abductions turn out?” Child kidnappings are part of the butter on our bread, and are something dreaded by all decent men and women in law enforcement. They are rarely about money. They are about sex and pain and death.
“One recovered alive, one recovered dead.”
I stare at the corkboards, not really seeing them. “At least both were recovered,” I murmur. Far too often, this is not the case. Anyone who thinks no news is good news has never been t
he parent of a kidnapped child. In this case, no news is a cancer that does not kill but instead hollows out the soul. I have had parents coming to see me over the years, hopeful for news of their child, news I didn’t have. I have watched them get thinner, more bitter. Seen hope die in their eyes, and gray hairs cover their heads. In those cases, finding the body of their child would be a blessing. It would at least let them grieve with certainty.
I turn to Callie. “So how do you like being the boss?”
She gives me a patented, pretend-haughty Callie smile. “You know me, honey-love. I was born to be royalty, and now I have the crown.”
Alan snorts at this, followed by an actual guffaw.
“Don’t listen to this peasant, dear,” Callie says with disdain.
I laugh, and it’s a good laugh. A real one that catches you by surprise the way a laugh ought to. But then it continues a little longer than it should, and I’m horrified to feel tears welling up in my eyes.
“Oh, shit,” I mumble, wiping my face. “Sorry about that.” I look up at them and give them both a weak smile. “It’s just really good to see you guys. More than you know.”
Alan, the man-mountain, moves to me, and without warning, wraps me in those tree-trunk arms. I resist for only a moment before hugging him back, my head against his chest.
“Oh, we know, Smoky,” he says. “We know.”
He lets me go, and Callie steps forward, pushing him aside.
“Enough touchy-feely,” she snaps. She turns her head to me. “Let me take you to lunch. And don’t bother trying to say no.”
I feel tears coming again, and all I can manage is a nod. Callie grabs her purse, then grabs my arm, and hustles me toward the door. “Be back in an hour,” she calls over her shoulder. She shoves me out the door, and once it closes, the tears begin to flow freely.
Callie gives me a little sideways hug.
“Knew you wouldn’t want to start bawling in front of Damien, honey-love.”
I laugh through my tears and just nod, taking the tissue she gives me, and letting her strength lead me in my moment of weakness.
7
WE’RE SITTING INSIDE a Subway sandwich store, and I’m watching in fascination as Callie fills her apparently hollow leg with a foot-long meatball sandwich. I’ve always wondered how she does it. She can pack away more food than a linebacker, and yet she never gains a pound. I smile, thinking maybe it’s those five-mile jogs she does, every morning, seven days a week. She licks her fingers loudly, smacking her lips with such enthusiasm that two older ladies shoot us a look of disapproval. Satisfied, she sighs and settles back, sipping on her Mountain Dew through a straw. It strikes me that this, right here, is the essence of Callie. She does not just watch life go by, she devours it. She gulps it down without chewing, and always goes back for more. I smile to myself, and she frowns, shaking a finger at me.
“You know, I brought you to lunch because I wanted to tell you how pissed off I am at you, honey-love. No returning my calls, not even an e-mail. Not acceptable, Smoky. I don’t care how fucked up you are.”
“I know, Callie. And I’m sorry. I mean it—I’m really, truly sorry.”
She stares at me for a moment, an intense stare. I’ve seen her give it to a criminal or two, and I feel I deserve it. It passes and she smiles one of those radiant smiles, waving her hand. “Apology accepted. Now for the real question: How are you? I mean, really. And don’t lie to me.”
I stare off for a moment, stare at my sandwich. Look at her. “Until today? Bad. Real bad. I have nightmares, every night. I’ve been depressed, and it’s only been getting worse, not better.”
“Been thinking about killing yourself, haven’t you?”
I feel the same jolt, at a lower frequency, that I felt in Dr. Hillstead’s office. Here, I somehow feel more ashamed. Callie and I have always been close, and whether spoken or expressed, there is a love there. But it’s been a love based on strength, not weeping on each other’s shoulders. I am afraid that this love would lessen or disappear if Callie had to pity me. But I answer.
“I thought about it, yes.”
She nods and then is silent, looking off to something or somewhere I can’t see. I feel a prick of déjà vu; she looks as Dr. Hillstead looked, trying to decide which fork in the road to take. “Smoky, there’s nothing weak about that, honey-love. Weakness would be actually pulling the trigger. Crying, having nightmares, being depressed, thinking about killing yourself, those things don’t make you weak. They just mean you hurt. And anyone can hurt, even Superman.”
I stare at her and am at a loss for words. One hundred percent lost, I can’t think of a thing to say. This is just not what Callie does, and it has caught me by surprise. She gives me a soft smile.
“You know, you have to beat it, Smoky. Not just for you. For me.” She sips her drink. “You and I, we’re alike. We’ve always been golden. Things have always gone our way. We’re good at what we do—hell, we’ve always been able to be good at anything we put our minds to, you know?”
I nod, still speechless.
“I’m going to tell you something, honey-love, something philosophical. Note it on your calendar, because I’m not one to get deep in public.” She puts down her drink. “A lot of people paint that same, tired old picture: We start out innocent and bright-eyed, and then we become jaded. Nothing’s ever quite as good again, blah, blah, blah. I’ve always thought that was a pile of poop. Not all lives start out innocent and Norman Rockwell, now, do they? Ask any child in Watts. I’ve always thought it’s not so much that we learn that life is shit. It’s that we learn that life can hurt. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” I’m mesmerized.
“Most people get hurt early. You and I—we’ve been lucky. Very, very lucky. We see the hurt, doing what we do, but it’s never been us. Not really. Look at you—you found the love of your life, had a beautiful child, and you were an ass-kicking FBI agent, a woman no less, all on the rise like a bright, shooting star. And me? I haven’t done so bad either.” She shakes her head. “I’ve managed not to get too full of myself, but the truth is, I’ve always had my pick of the guys, and I was lucky enough to have a brain to go with the bod. And I’m good at what I do at the Bureau. Real good.”
“You are,” I agree.
“But, see, that’s just it, honey-love. You and I have never really experienced tragedy. We’re alike in that way. Then all of sudden, the bullets stopped bouncing off of you.” She shakes her head. “The moment that happened, I couldn’t be fearless, not anymore. I was afraid, really afraid, for the first time in my life. Ever. And I’ve been afraid ever since. Because you are better than me, Smoky. You always have been. And if it can happen to you, it can damn sure happen to me.” She sits back, puts her hands flat on the table. “End of speech.”
I have known Callie for some time. I have always known that she has depths uncharted. The mystery of those depths, glimpsed but not revealed, has always been a part of her charm for me, her strength. Now the curtain has parted for a moment. It’s like the first time someone lets you see them naked. It is the essence of trust, and I am touched in a way that makes me weak at the knees. I reach over and grab her hand.
“I’ll do my best, Callie. That’s all I can promise. But I do promise that.”
She squeezes my hand back, and then pulls it away. The curtain has been closed. “Well, hurry it up, will you, please? I enjoy being arrogant and untouchable, and I blame you for the lack thereof.”
I smile and look at my friend. Dr. Hillstead had told me earlier that I was strong. But for me, it is Callie who has always been my private hero when it comes to strength. My crass-talking patron saint of irreverence. I shake my head. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I say. “I have to use the restroom.”
“Don’t forget to put the lid down,” she says.
I see it when I exit the bathroom, and what I see tells me to stop.
Callie isn’t aware of me yet. Her attention is focused on something in her ha
nd. I step to the side, so that the doorway blocks her view of me a little, and stare.
Callie looks sad. Not just sad—bereft.
I have seen Callie be scornful, gentle, angry, vengeful, witty—any number of things. I have never seen her sad. Not like this. And I know, somehow, that it has nothing to do with me.
Whatever she holds in her hand is bringing my hero to something just short of grief, and I am shocked.
I am also certain that this is a private thing. Callie will not want to know that I have seen her this way. She may only have one face to show the world, but she chooses what parts of it to show. She hasn’t chosen to show me this, whatever this is. I go back into the bathroom. To my surprise, one of the older women is there, washing her hands, and she glances at me in the mirror. I look back, biting a thumbnail as I think. Come to a decision.
“Ma’am,” I say, “can you please do me a favor?”
“What’s that, dear?” she asks, not missing a beat.
“I have a friend outside…”
“The rude one with the awful eating habits?”
Gulp.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What about her?”
I hesitate. “She…I think she’s having a private moment right now. Because I’m in here, and she’s alone…. I—”
“You don’t want to surprise her in that moment, is that it?”
Her instant and perfect understanding makes me pause. I stare at her. Stereotypes, I think again. So useless. I had seen an uptight, judgmental crone. Now I see kind eyes, wisdom, and a well-honed appreciation of the ridiculous. “Yes, ma’am,” I say, quiet. “She—well…she’ll always be crass, but she’s got the biggest heart I know.”
The woman’s eyes soften and her smile is beautiful. “Many great people have eaten with their hands, dear. Leave it to me. Wait thirty seconds and then come out.”
“Thank you.” I mean it; she knows it.
She leaves the bathroom without another word. I wait for a little more than thirty seconds and follow. I peek around the corner and now my eyebrows raise. The woman is standing by our table, shaking a finger at Callie. I walk toward them.
Shadow Man Page 4