Time Release

by Martin J. Smith

  “Have you ever pegged it to anything physical—carpal tunnel syndrome, maybe some other repetitive stress injury?”

  “That’s what the doctors thought. First thing they checked, but that’s not it.”

  “You’ve tried physical therapy?” Christensen asked.

  “Helps control the numbness, but doesn’t prevent it.”

  Christensen suggested a few more possible physical causes, but none seemed likely. And Sonny was familiar with them all, making him think Sonny’s doctors had traveled this road before.

  “Tell you what,” Christensen said. “Can you stop by my office in the next few days—nothing formal. We’ll just talk, see if we can start figuring this thing out.”

  They set a time for Thursday, apparently one of Sonny’s rare free weeknights. Christensen told him how to find his private office on one of Oakland’s ambiguous side streets.

  “You must know Grady Downing pretty well,” Christensen said, feigning an afterthought.

  “I guess. Why?”

  “Just my impression. He and I were talking about your hands and he seemed to know so much about you.”

  “Like what?” Sonny said.

  “Nothing in particular. I forget how we even got on it now. But he told me about the time you got lost in Three Rivers Stadium during a Pirate game.”

  Sonny said nothing.

  “When you were about seven or so? You got separated from your parents for about an hour?”

  “I don’t remember,” Sonny said.

  Christensen tried to seem casual about forcing the conversation. “I don’t even know why Grady mentioned it. He said you told him about how you heard your name echo across the field and saw it on the center-field scoreboard. About how the stadium security guard had to pry your fingers from the upper-deck railing so he could take you to the lost-child area. That must have been the connection—we’d been talking about your hands.”

  No response.

  It wasn’t graceful, but at least the seed was planted. “So anyway,” Christensen said, “six p.m. Thursday?”

  Chapter 9

  Christensen stood up reflexively as the door to his private counseling office swung open, wondering too late if he should have been more casual.

  “Sonny?”

  The young man offered a noncommittal smile. He was tall, much taller than Christensen had imagined, with the unmistakable shoulders of an athlete. His oversized white oxford shirt tunneled down into the unstrained waistband of perfectly faded Levi’s. Frayed hole in the right knee. Docksiders, no socks. This was not the fragile boy Christensen had assembled from their phone conversation and the puzzle pieces in the juvenile records. This was someone who reminded Christensen of himself at that age—confident, almost cocky, as lean and tight as piano wire.

  His cheeks were bright pink, probably from the late fall winds. The color contrasted sharply with the dark crescents beneath his eyes. He looked like every frat boy on campus after cramming for spring finals, right down to the bare ankles.

  “I’m Jim Christensen, Sonny. Glad you could come. Did you leave your coat out in the reception area? I have a rack in here.”

  Sonny looked confused. “I didn’t bring one,” he said finally.

  Christensen remembered fighting the late November gale between his car and the office door an hour earlier. The temperature may have been in the 40s, but the wind felt like flying glass. He looked again at Sonny’s bare ankles. “I’m glad you could make it,” he said.

  Christensen walked over to the wing chairs beside his desk and took the one nearest the window, then gestured to the other. Sonny moved toward it, but stopped. For a moment, his confidence seemed to vanish.

  “I don’t have much money,” he said.

  Christensen smiled, again offering the chair. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  Sonny still hesitated.

  Christensen thought a moment, then asked, “You take any classes at the university?”

  The young man shook his head. “Just work there.”

  “Really? You’re staff, then. Students and staff have access to the University Counseling Center over in the student union. I volunteer there two days a week. Let’s just pretend we’re there and call it even. Deal?”

  Sonny sat down, moving again with a relaxed power Christensen found unsettling. Nothing in Sonny’s life should have added up this way. During the fifteen minutes they’d spent on the phone arranging this meeting, Christensen’s presumptions about Sonny Corbett remained intact. The rhythms of Sonny’s voice were slow and quiet, almost annoyingly so, like a dripping faucet. Christensen imagined him as withdrawn, distracted, and damaged by a childhood of apparently constant turmoil. But in person Sonny seemed a full-on alpha male, all calm power and controlled confidence.

  “What do you think it is?” Sonny said, almost without inflection. Then he added, “My hands.”

  “How do they feel now?” Christensen leaned back in his chair, hoping a relaxed body posture would encourage a more meandering conversation.

  “Fine. Just happens once in a while.”

  “Usually when you swim, you said.” Christensen laced his fingers together and clasped them behind his head. He tended to overuse his hands when nervous.

  Sonny looked away, then picked up the inflatable Wham-It from the coffee table that lay between them. It was an eighteen-inch version of the large stand-up punching bags that Christensen had enjoyed pummeling as a kid. Someone had taken that concept, reduced it to desktop size, and successfully marketed it as an executive stress-relief toy. Christensen kept the Wham-It within easy reach of all his private counseling patients as a focus for their anxieties. Everyone picked it up sooner or later.

  Sonny gave the Wham-It a slow once-over before putting it back on the table. “Usually,” he said.

  A gust of wind rattled the wide office window, drawing their attention. The sky was the color of a bruise, promising more rain. The only thing worse than Pittsburgh now, in early winter, was Pittsburgh during winter’s last gasps. Both offered the same ground-zero landscape apparent through the window, but at least now the streets weren’t coated with the brackish sludge of melting snow.

  “Human beings are pretty complex creatures,” Christensen said. “I don’t know how familiar you are with it, but a lot of studies have been done on the interrelationship of the body and mind. But I’m guessing you know that, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  Sonny said nothing, clearly at full attention.

  “Say you break your nose,” Christensen said. “Not only is the pain intense, but you’re also dealing with a lot of issues that have nothing to do with physical healing. Self-image. Confidence. Mental injuries, if you will. I’m not saying that’s the case with your hands, but one theory goes that if a physical injury can affect your mind, why can’t a mental injury affect your body?”

  “Psychosomatic,” Sonny said.

  “No fair reading ahead.”

  Sonny leaned forward and absently flicked the Wham-It with his finger. It fell backward onto the tabletop, then slowly rose again. “Sounds pretty bogus.”

  “Some people think it’s bogus, some don’t,” Christensen said. “Smart people sometimes disagree. But the human brain has a pretty remarkable defense system. It’s nothing but a big filing cabinet, and sometimes it files the things that hurt or frighten us way in the back so we don’t have to deal with them as often, or ever.”

  “Like the baseball game thing?” Sonny asked.

  Bingo.

  “Like the baseball game thing. You remembered it then?” Christensen tried not to seem pleased. He had expected Sonny to absorb and repackage the story as a memory, but not this quickly. “The other day you sounded like it didn’t ring a bell.”

  Sonny shook his head. “Still doesn’t,” he said. �
�We weren’t much for family outings. I’d remember if we ever went to a Pirate game.”

  Christensen picked up the Wham-It, then put it back down. “Not at all?”

  “Sorry. Maybe Detective Downing was thinking of somebody else.”

  Christensen stood and walked to the window, stalling, wondering what to do next. Sonny had passed his first test. If he continued to resist suggestion, his memories probably would be credible. And God knows a young man capable of denying his brother’s suicide was capable of wholesale memory repression. What if Downing’s last-ditch scenario was right? If the young man before him was the missing piece to the city’s biggest crime puzzle, how could he turn away?

  “I’d like to start meeting here twice a week, Sonny,” Christensen heard himself say. He turned and leaned back against the window. “How free are your evenings?”

  “I told you, I work nights except Thursdays,” Sonny said.

  “Any day-shift openings?”

  “I like working nights,” Sonny said. “I’m the only one in the whole chem department, and it leaves my days free to train.”

  “But that doesn’t solve the numbness problem with your hands,” Christensen said. “No promises, mind you, but maybe we can find a way to stop that. That’s got to affect your swimming.”

  Sonny said nothing for a few long moments. Finally, he stood. “I’d have to think about it.”

  “Tell you what,” Christensen said. “You off any days during the week?”

  “Thursdays, like I said.”

  “Then let’s get together next Thursday evening to talk, about six again. We’ll just take it one day at a time. And if you don’t get anything out of it, we’ll stop. That seem fair?”

  Sonny started for the office door, then paused only long enough to say, “I’ll let you know.”

  Chapter 10

  Five-thirty and nearly dark. Headlights from oncom­ing cars along Fifth Avenue played across the stray water drops on the Explorer’s windshield. Cleared by the wipers, they pooled at the edges and began their windblown wiggle. Annie, his five-year-old poet, called them dancing water worms.

  “What?” Melissa snarled, lifting the earphone from her Discman. Her head kept pace with the music’s insistent cadence.

  “Nothing,” Christensen said, flustered. He’d nearly forgotten she was in the car. “Didn’t realize I was talking out loud.”

  His older daughter rolled her eyes, then shut him out again. She clamped the headphones back on and tapped out a beat on her knees with the fat drumsticks she’d brought from band practice. He wished he knew more about her musical tastes. The CD case read “Nine Inch Nails,” but the band name meant nothing to him.

  He touched his daughter’s shoulder, and she lifted the earpiece again. “I need to stop at the Giant Eagle to get stuff for dinner,” he said. “It’ll just take a few minutes, and we’ve got time. As long as we pick up Annie from Mrs. Taubman’s by six.”

  “Whatever.”

  “We also need to talk about something,” he said, trying to seem upbeat.

  Melissa stabbed the Discman’s stop button with her middle finger, then pulled the headphones off, clearly unhappy with the prospect of having to conduct a conversation. She stared straight ahead. “What?”

  “Something came up at work that may keep me pretty busy for a while. One night a week for now, a couple evenings a week if it works out. So we’re going to have to figure a way to get Annie home from day care, you home from school on band practice days, and then how to get your dinners on the nights when I can’t be there.”

  “I’ll just stay at Jerilyn’s after practice,” she said. “I can eat there, too. Her mom’s cool.”

  “No, see, that doesn’t solve the problem. Someone needs to walk Annie home from day care and get her fed. And I’m going to need your help on that.”

  Melissa finally turned toward him, if only to glare. “You need me to do it, in other words.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “That means I have to ride the bus with all the dorks.”

  “It’s only Thursdays, for now. And if it’s on a band practice day, you can always get a ride home with somebody. So it shouldn’t be that bad.”

  Christensen splashed the Explorer through a flooded gutter and into the supermarket parking lot. Though he’d maintained an even calm in his voice, he realized his stress level had risen when a speed bump rocked them back in their seats. He slowed to a more reasonable parking-lot speed.

  “It’s not something I can help. And I’m not sure how long it’ll last.”

  She turned away again and stared out the windshield. “You just want me to watch Annie so you can go out with Brenna,” she said. “Why don’t you just keep doing it in Mom’s loft so I don’t get screwed, too.”

  Christensen wheeled into a parking space, tires squealing, and crushed a shopping cart against the concrete base of a light pole. He backed off two feet, but said nothing. He thought he saw his daughter smiling as he shoved the gearshift into park and yanked the emergency brake. She knew exactly where his buttons were, and exactly how hard to push them. He turned the engine off and sat, knowing he’d explode if he tried to talk.

  He reached for Melissa’s arm as she lifted the earphones to her head. She looked down at his shaking hand, then directly at him. Her smirk disappeared, and he saw real fear in her eyes. Maybe she knew she’d gone too far. He took a deep breath. Another. And another, until he felt back in control.

  “I’d like an apology,” he said.

  “Sorry.” She shrugged. “You really wasted that cart.”

  “No, a real apology. You don’t need to assault me like that. And this has nothing to do with Brenna. There’s a special client I need to see, someone the police asked me to work with. Evenings are the best time for him.”

  She pulled her arm away. “I’m sorry, okay?”

  With the wipers stilled, the wet windshield began to twinkle with reflected lights, reds and whites, from cars moving around the lot. Christensen unbuckled his seat belt. Maybe now was the time to talk about their real problem.

  “I miss your mom,” he said.

  Melissa sniffed indifferently and unbuckled her own seat belt. He wanted to talk, to confront the thing that for two years had stood between them like a wall. But he felt the opportunity disappearing as she pulled her arm away and reached for the door latch.

  “I did what Mom wanted, what she needed me to do at that point. And you’re still punishing me for it.”

  “Yeah, well,” Melissa said. “You made your choice.”

  The car door slammed, and he watched her jump puddles until she stood in the fluorescent frame of the grocery store door waiting, oddly, for him to catch up. His hands still shook, less from rage now than from an overwhelming sense of frustration. He was losing his oldest daughter because, in her mind, he had killed her mother. Forget the mercy of that decision. Forget the shades of gray that even the district attorney had been forced to acknowledge. Forget his own emotional devastation in the wake of Molly’s death. He had killed her mother. And he was now involved with the woman who’d entered their lives on the very day that Molly died. So, in purely clinical terms, Christensen understood his daughter’s reaction: Her mother was gone, and her father was trying too soon to fill the hole in their lives. But understanding it didn’t make the gulf between them any less terrifying.

  He stepped down into a puddle, slammed the door, and checked the Explorer’s unscathed front bumper. The shopping cart hadn’t fared as well. It was standing but unstable, its wheelbase radically compressed. He tipped it over and leaned it against the base of the light pole.

  “Need a fresh cart?” Melissa asked as he approached. Her smile seemed less hostile than mischievous, so he smiled back.

  “I really crushed it.”

  “No
heroic measures,” she said, then turned and pushed through the automatic doors into the store.

  The aisles were empty, surprisingly so for this time of day. Christensen had never got the hang of the sort of leisurely weekend shopping that Molly used to do. She’d spend hours among Strip District produce vendors every Saturday morning, looking for deals, buying in bulk, enjoy­ing the sensory experience of the city’s chaotic warehouse marketplace. He, by contrast, was always fighting predinner crowds at the supermarket, scavenging for that evening’s meal.

  Melissa stopped at the dairy case. She loaded a half-gallon of 1 percent milk and a brick of cheddar cheese, then started pulling yogurt containers from an upper shelf. Christensen absently chose one from the cart and looked it over. The brand name, Yo-ssert, triggered something visceral.

  “Wasn’t this stuff recalled?” he said.

  Melissa stopped, but offered only a blank stare until interrupted by a short young man who was stocking the shelves.

  “New shipment,” he said, carving open another Yo-ssert carton and stowing his retractable knife in a back pocket of his jeans. “Check the date. We took all the others off the shelf a few weeks ago.”

  Melissa resumed her selections, unconcerned, clearly partial toward blueberry. Christensen set the container down, then picked it back up. He rolled it in his hand, initially to check the expiration date. But he found himself trying to imagine it as an instrument of death. What had Downing said about the Greene County case? The killer injected cyanide through the lid? He turned the container right side up and examined its colored foil top. A puncture in the black lines of the printed Yo-ssert corporate logo would be invisible to all but the most discerning eye.

  The chill Christensen felt didn’t come from the refrigerated display case. It was a Bambi-in-the-meadow feeling, a sudden and palpable sense of danger that surged through him like an electric current. He looked around, wondering if someone was watching, but he was alone in the dairy aisle. Melissa had moved on to baked goods.