A Voice from the Field

by Neal Griffin

  He sighed. This was as good a time as any to bring up the real issue.

  “You know, Tia never really bounced all the way back. She’s not the same.”

  “How so?” Alex said in a voice that told Ben she had her own misgivings.

  “Drinking. Maybe script meds. I’ve heard rumors she shows up to work late. Kind of disheveled. She hasn’t closed a major case in over a month.”

  “Did you talk to her about it?” Alex looked at him and Ben saw the hint of anger on her face. “Or are you just going to let Gage deal with that, too?”

  Ben’s first thought was that the low blow was unfair, but then he thought, Not so much. I kind of deserved that. He blew out a deep breath. “I want to talk to her, but it isn’t like it used to be between us. I don’t even know her anymore.”

  Alex reached out and took her husband’s hand. “Yes, you do. You know her better than anyone and you know right now she needs you. Not some damned shrink.”

  “I’m the chief of police, Alex. She doesn’t talk to me.”

  “Then stop being the chief for a while. Just talk to her.” She squeezed his hand. “You two were friends long before you became chief. If I remember right, you were pretty good friends.”

  “Good morning, Alex,” said a new voice. “That smells wonderful. What in the world is it?”

  Ben looked up to see a group of women in the doorway. He watched as Alex switched gears from concerned wife and friend to coffeehouse barista. She stood to greet her customers. “Fresh roasted, ladies. All the way from Indonesia.”

  Ben watched and listened as his wife engaged the group in the finer points of coffee roasting. Before she finished with them, three more customers walked in. Alex looked between her patrons at her husband and it was as though she were whispering in his ear.

  You know what to do, Benny. Be Tia’s friend.

  Ben stood from the table and mouthed, See you tonight. Alex smiled and waved. He left the coffeehouse, heading back to Newberg City Hall. He wished things with Tia were really that simple. Their friendship was one of the cornerstones of his life. But lately his relationship with Tia had faded, becoming a pleasant but disconnected part of his past. Like the scent of the fresh-roasted coffee, with every step he took the memories that he and Tia shared seemed to slip away on the breeze.

  ELEVEN

  Tia hustled along the sidewalk leading to the upscale office building, which was tucked back on a grassy hill of white-barked birch trees. She bolted the stairs two at a time to the second floor, then quickstepped down the open-air breezeway, mentally ticking off the familiar nameplates as she rushed by each door. Three CPAs. Two law offices. A dentist, a podiatrist, and finally her destination. Tia stopped and took a deep breath. She took one last look back toward the greenbelt landscape, dotted with parking lots and sidewalks that were empty of people. She opened the door and slipped into the small waiting room that had been designed for a single occupant.

  She assumed that the muted tones of the room, the bubbling fish tank built into the wall, and the quiet jazz music were intended to be soothing, but she always found herself on edge in this space. Large tropical fish stared at her, their expressions seeming to say, What, you again? There was only one chair in the room, a fabulous leather recliner-and-a-half that Tia figured put the good doctor back a couple of grand. She perched on the arm, knowing she wouldn’t be there long. One thing about Doctor Elliot Gage, he was always on time. Expected patients to be, too. No sooner had the exterior door closed than the door leading to the inner office swung open. The shrink glided in.

  “Tia.” It was amazing, how much judgmental crap he could communicate with a single word.

  Dr. Elliot Gage was the contract psychiatrist for a dozen law enforcement agencies throughout the region. When cops got involved in a shooting or other critical life-and-death event, they had to take a mandatory three days of administrative leave. Gage was the one who evaluated the officers and signed off on their clean bill of health, allowing a return to regular duty. A post-crisis psych eval was an industry formality that for cops amounted to a game of hide the ball. Avoid discussing anything too personal. Reveal nothing. Give the right answers—that is, the answers the shrink wanted to hear.

  “Hey, Doc.” Tia did her best to appear nonchalant but suspected Gage wouldn’t be fooled again. Tia knew Gage looked at her with equal parts of resentment and intrigue. He’d sent her back to work, months ago, only to have her suffer a major, on-duty relapse. He’d blown the call. That had to have him fuming, but Tia knew her case was too interesting to ignore or write off. She figured by the time he got done with her he’d publish an entire series of articles in Psychology Today. Maybe a book: How I Fixed a Broken Cop.

  Most cops who survived an encounter like Tia’s shooting happily accepted a high-dollar payout, a tax-free medical retirement, and a hero’s exit. Tia had discovered her fellow officers didn’t appreciate a daily hallway reminder that sometimes things go wrong, that cops die on the job. In fact, in the unforgiving, eat-their-own-young world of law enforcement there would always be one or two who figured Tia had screwed up and gotten a cop killed. That she walked away and a good man went in the ground. None of that had mattered to Tia. As soon as she’d been physically able, she’d met with Gage and given him all the right answers and gotten back to work. And now here they were again.

  “Good to see you, Tia. Come in.”

  “Thanks, Doc.”

  Gage offered his large mitt of a hand and Tia took it. His firm grip and calculated stare let her know he was conducting his initial assessment right then. Gage specialized in the treatment of PTSD, and to him words were the least significant form of human communication. Tia did her best not to lock eyes with him, instead moving quickly past him and into the office. She went straight for the stiff-backed upholstered armchair she knew was meant for her. In contrast to the recliner, this chair was solid and rigid—a chair that forced the occupant to pay attention. Tia hated “the chair.”

  Gage was only a few inches taller than Tia but twice as thick, with a muscular frame that reflected a dedicated workout regime. His skin was deeply tan from regular trips to Fiji, where Tia knew he kept a second home. Gage preferred crew-neck, short-sleeved knit shirts that Tia figured served the purpose of not only avoiding a necktie but also allowing a fortysomething man like Gage that one last opportunity to show off his physique. He kept his hair short enough for the military, but Tia had checked and knew he had never bothered to enlist.

  She sat down and crossed her legs at the knees. She put her elbows on the armrests, laced her fingers together, level with her stomach, and stared straight ahead. Hold this position, she thought. Avoid external movement. She waited for the games to begin.

  Dr. Gage took his seat directly in front of Tia, his chair set right at the edge of her personal space. He stared back, notepad and pen at the ready. “It’s been a while, Tia. How are things going for you?”

  “Great, Doc. Never better.” She was pleased that her voice was steady.

  “My records show you recently renewed your prescription for Librium. Went through the last batch kind of quick?”

  Tia pursed her lips and shrugged. “I talked with your receptionist, explained that I accidentally dropped a bunch of the pills, probably half of them, in the toilet. I would have fished them out but it seemed kind of silly to go through all that. I hardly ever take one.”

  Gage nodded. “I read the arrest report from your undercover detail. Chief Sawyer sent it over.” He paused as if he wanted to be sure Tia picked up on the alliance that existed between her shrink and her boss. She shrugged again. “I was surprised. I thought we agreed you would take it easy. A gradual return to full duty.”

  “The shooting was seven months ago, Doc. That’s pretty gradual.”

  “I’m not talking about the shooting, Tia.”

  More traps, she thought. She let the insinuation hang in the air, and after a few moments of silence Gage changed tactics and threw a new li
ne into the water.

  “I see you had another hallucination.”

  Reflexively, Tia took the bait. “You got that from my police report?”

  Gage began the slow process of setting the hook and reeling her in. “From the report and about a hundred hours of our therapy sessions.”

  “Funny, because in that police report I don’t mention hallucinating anything. I witnessed an abduction.”

  Gage studied her face for several seconds, then looked down to scribble on the notepad he kept in his lap. Like always, he kept his knee at just enough of an angle to prevent Tia from seeing what he wrote. After several seconds of writing, Gage looked up. His expression showed concern mixed with pity and draped over insincerity.

  “I thought we had worked through all this, Tia. I thought we both understood that because of your shooting, you would probably have episodes. Recurrences of a sort, especially when you’re under a lot of stress. Doesn’t this sound very much like the episode you experienced in the courtroom?” Reaching to his desk, the doctor retrieved a manila folder that was nearly two inches thick. He opened it and turned several pages. “That was just three months ago.”

  “That was a reaction to the meds. You told me that yourself.”

  His smile exposed a small, neat row of whitened teeth. “What I told you was that you experienced a significant psychological breakdown manifested through visual and auditory hallucinations and that the episode was likely to have stemmed from abuse of the medications I prescribed for you. I believe we determined you were mixing the pills with alcohol.” Gage made sure he had eye contact before saying, “Is that something we need to talk about again?”

  Tia looked away and immediately regretted it. She tried to reestablish eye contact but knew Gage had picked up on the sign of avoidance. He made a note while she chastised herself for the rookie mistake.

  Squaring her shoulders, Tia decided to ignore the question and get back to the issue at hand.

  “There was a girl tied up in the back of the van Gunther Kane was trying to force me into. I didn’t hallucinate anything.”

  Gage gave a condescending nod. “And why do you think it is that no one else saw any of this? That there are no missing person reports? No evidence of any sort? Not to mention that this Mr…” Gage made an issue of pulling the Milwaukee PD arrest report from his file and Tia knew he wanted her to react. This time she was like a rock and gave him nothing.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. Kane. He tells a much different story. Something about you attacking him while he was trying to—well, when he was trying to complete the transaction, so to speak.”

  “Got some news for you, Doc.” Tia nodded toward Gage’s notepad. “You might want to write this down. When it comes to the truth, crooks make like rugs.”

  Gage’s pen stopped and he looked up, confused. Tia smiled, amused that the man with three diplomas on his wall couldn’t follow the simple humor. She helped him out. “They lie.”

  The psychiatrist smiled thinly, then pressed harder. “Tell me why this is different, Tia. Why is this girl so real to you?”

  She noted the “to you” but replied honestly anyway.

  “Because I know. I was there. I saw her. I touched her, for God’s sake.”

  “You touched her?” Gage leaned forward and his interest seemed to peak. “That wasn’t in your report. Tell me about that.”

  “I tried to pull her out. I grabbed her by the ankle, but then…” Tia paused, hearing the van door slam shut in her mind. She shook the image away, knowing Gage was watching every breath she took. “Kane got back in the fight. Slammed the door shut. You can read the rest.”

  “What did she feel like?”

  Tia couldn’t hide her frustration anymore. “Excuse me?”

  “The girl. You said you touched her. What did she feel like?”

  Tia wasn’t going to let him drag her in. “Like a human being. A real, live human being.”

  “Describe the texture of her skin. Was she wet? Dry? Hot? Cold? Describe it.”

  “Rough. Her skin was rough.”

  “I see. Fascinating.”

  Gage began a furious scribble and Tia shook her head. She’d reached her limit and didn’t care if the doctor knew it. “There you go. You push and push until I give you an answer, trying to satisfy you; then you act like there’s been a big revelation.”

  “Indeed, there has been, Tia.”

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” she said dryly.

  Gage leaned in. “Tia, you had actual contact. Physical contact that involved tactile stimulation. You’re even able to describe the sensation. This is very serious.”

  Tia looked to the ceiling, shaking her head. She didn’t try to hide her irritation. “No, it’s not. I touched a person, like I might touch anyone else I happened to come in contact with.”

  Gage shook his head dismissively and Tia knew he wouldn’t stop until he made his point.

  “What did she look like? This girl you saw in the van?”

  A face flashed across her mind as if Tia were driving at high speed past a billboard: there for a few seconds, then gone. But in that flash of a moment, the terrified image of desperation was seared into her mind. Tia shrugged and did her best to sound unaffected. “Teenager. Dark hair. Probably Latina.”

  “So, an older version of the girl we both agree wasn’t really in the courtroom?”

  Tia shot back, “Yeah, Doc. Exactly. All us brown folks look alike.”

  “That is not what I’m saying, Tia, and I think you know that. Let’s go back.”

  Tia rolled her eyes. The last thing in the world she wanted was to go back. She just wanted to go.

  “When you were shot in the café that day, bleeding on the floor, you saw a girl. She came to you, protected you. You described that girl as very young. Dark skinned. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  And I’ve regretted it ever since, she thought to herself. She flashed back to that day in the Danville café. “Yes. I know, but that has nothing to do with this.”

  “Oh, but it does, Tia,” Gage said. “We both agreed that the little girl was a hallucination … and that your breakdown in the courtroom was directly related to that hallucination. Remember? You and I decided that the girl in the courtroom was the same as the girl in the café.”

  Tia’s pulse began to pick up and she knew her chest was rising and falling more than it should. It didn’t matter how many times she had been through it; whenever she thought of that day in the courtroom the same mixture of anxiety and humiliation descended on her.

  It had been a child abuse case. The victim, a five-year-old girl who only spoke Spanish, had been molested over a period of months by her thirty-five-year-old stepfather. Tia, who had interviewed the child at length, knew all the hideous details. To avoid making the child testify, Tia relayed the story to the jury. An ugly story for sure, but one that had to be told.

  At some point—Tia couldn’t say when—she stopped talking about the events and began experiencing them. Stopped reporting and started to live it. To see it. She was in the room, night after night, when the stepfather would come in. When he touched the girl. When he pushed himself inside her and put the pillow over the child’s face to stifle her cries. Tia listened to the monster whisper that bad girls who let such things happen to them didn’t get to keep their families. She saw his hulking figure, hunched over a little girl who whimpered and cried, begging for someone to make it stop.

  It wasn’t until Tia stood up from the witness chair, her hand going to her gun, that the prosecutor finally broke in. When he said, “Detective Suarez?” in a voice that sounded both frightened and angry, the images disappeared and Tia found herself standing up, her hand on her weapon and tears streaming down her face. Twelve confused jurors stared at her, terrified but captivated by what they had witnessed.

  Tia had told herself that no matter what she carried inside, she would never allow such a public display to occur again.

  She had to be careful, now, not to
let Gage take her down that road. “Yes, we worked through it, Doc. And that was an isolated event. I’d been back on duty for less than two weeks when it happened. It’s over and done with.”

  “Are you sure of that, Tia? There haven’t been other occasions where you imagined something? Heard something?” He looked directly at her. “Are you sure there is nothing else you and I need to work through?”

  “No.” The lies were becoming complicated and Tia grew flustered.

  “No, you’re not sure?”

  “I mean, yes.” Her frustration turned to anger. “I’m sure there isn’t.”

  Gage smiled. “Well, which is it?”

  Tia clamped down hard on herself. There was no way she was ever going to let Gage drag that out of her.

  No one knew that since she had returned from Mexico she had had almost nightly visits from … something. That in some way she welcomed the contact. That she somehow needed the feelings of warmth and affection that accompanied the strange experiences. Tia knew if she ever spoke of it her days as a cop were over.

  “Look, Doc,” she said, leaning forward and smiling, trying to project competence and sanity. “I’m here on Chief Sawyer’s orders. I got into a pretty dicey situation with a crook; we tussled a bit.

  “I know what I saw, but if the DA and everyone else want to blow it off, then so be it.” She shrugged as casually as possible. “It’s not the first time I’ve had a case I thought should be prosecuted get kicked to the curb. I say we all just move on.”

  “Yes. I heard about your problem with the prosecuting attorney. It sounds like the conversation got pretty heated. Again, doesn’t that strike you as reminiscent of your earlier breakdown?”

  Only Ben could have given up that detail—TJ would never throw another cop under the bus—and Tia felt the sting of disloyalty. She quashed it and managed to reply in a normal tone of voice.

  “I argued my case. I lost. That’s all. Now I just need you to sign off on my fitness for duty.”