A few minutes later, a wad of sunflower seeds in his cheek and a hot cup of coffee steaming in his cup holder, he pulled out of the station and accelerated down the highway.
If Beth Williams asked, he was going to tell her, he decided. Perhaps he could tell Beth and Susan and Frank about his daughter, and Linda Doran, and what happened thirty years ago. Maybe they could help him decide what to do. The one thing he wasn’t going to do, he knew, was lose his daughter again.
Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado
“I checked on the stocks of water in Rapid City,” Mitchell’s administrative assistant said, her face tired and resentful. She’d been there much later than usual, and she was on salary and didn’t get overtime.
“Sorry about this, Greta,” Mitchell said. He knew his own face mirrored hers, with sympathetic lines of tiredness and impatience. “I want to be home with my family just like you do. But we have to make sure we’re prepared.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. She lifted a piece of paper from the stack she carried in her arms. “We’re fully stocked with food and clothing for a major Colorado earthquake reaching into Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and Idaho. We have tents, first-aid supplies, names and numbers of doctors and nurses from the entire FEMA area. We also have National Guard Armory locations and access codes for call-up from each governor. The governors prefer to call up their own guard and then pass it on to the FEMA director, but since our area has never had to call up the guard for a natural disaster, they were willing to pass on the codes. We won’t need them, probably?”
“Probably not,” Mitchell said warmly. She was the administrative assistant for his FEMA directorship. With a staff of close to fifty, her responsibilities were enormous, and after the earthquake she’d been working nonstop. He had to force his face away from a smile. Fifty people, and only three of them knew what was going to happen. The others would believe, and follow, and adore the man who saved them all. “After all this preparation, the Colorado earthquake illustrates the importance of the work we’re doing.”
“Mr. Mitchell,” Bennett said from the doorway, a half-chewed stir stick in his mouth. That spelled some sort of trouble.
“Thank you, Greta,” Mitchell said. Greta disappeared through his office door like smoke, deftly managing to avoid touching Bennett as she went. She’d never liked Bennett and he knew it. He contrived to bump into her constantly, lightly, and never quite offensively. Mitchell didn’t care, as long as Bennett didn’t tease her into quitting.
“We may have a problem,” Bennett said as soon as he’d closed the door. “We traced a call into the Alamosa sheriff’s office from the Colorado Springs Police Department, Special Investigations.”
“Krista Lewis,” Mitchell said immediately. He could feel his face darkening with rage. His teeth clenched together. “This is terrible. How?”
“My guess is the homicide detectives,” Bennett said reluctantly. He moved his stir stick from one side of his mouth to the other. “The Indian and the girl. There’s a guy down in Alamosa, named Alan Baxter, identified the dead girl. He took a trip up here and now they’ve connected Leetsdale and Krista Lewis.”
“Get a picture of Alan Baxter. Then you know what to do,” Mitchell said, relaxing back in his chair.
“Sir, Alan Baxter is no problem, but the detectives? I still don’t think we should kill cops, sir—”
“My decision, Bennett,” Mitchell said. “My responsibility. Do you have a plan for it?”
“Of course, sir,” Bennett said.
Special Investigations Bureau, Colorado Springs, Colorado
“Murdered,” Rosen said without expression.
“Murder,” Eileen said, taking a deep sip of her double-shot mocha latte. Despite her evening with Joe, she hadn’t slept well. Her dreams had been tangled and full of desperation. She’d slept at her own apartment because Betty needed to be fed and she was afraid of what she might say while she was sleeping. Joe wanted to know about her, parts of her that would drive him away. She couldn’t bear to lose him. Not him, too, whispered a part of her mind.
“We should contact this sheriff,” Rosen said. “Is Alan Baxter still in town?”
“No, he had to go back to the valley. He’s not a suspect but he knew the victim, so Gonzalez wanted him to stick around.”
“Is Baxter a potential suspect?”
The question hung in the air a lot longer than it should have. Eileen knew the answer but it still took an eternity to force it out of her mouth.
“I guess so. We’ll have to check his alibis for Leetsdale’s murder. Evidently he’s solid for Lewis’s murder. According to Sheriff Gonzalez, which is according to Alan Baxter.”
“So we’ll check him out,” Rosen said.
“Of course,” Eileen said, taking another sip of her coffee. “We’ll start with—”
“With your appointment,” Harben interrupted. He had appeared, as always, with no warning whatsoever.
“Damn, sir!” Eileen yelped. “I just about dumped my coffee.”
“That’s not coffee, that’s some sort of government conspiracy,” Harben said grimly. “You’ve got an appointment with Gerri Matthews this morning.”
“I don’t have time for that,” Eileen said. “I’ve got—”
“You’ve got to tender your badge and your gun if you don’t go,” Harben said. “That’s policy, Detective.”
“Oh, jeez,” Eileen mumbled.
“I’ll follow up on Alan Baxter. Don’t let her shrink you too much,” Rosen said. He hardly ever made jokes. Peter O’Brien, already at his computer console, overheard and laughed far too loudly for Eileen’s taste.
“That’s a great one, Dave!” he roared.
“Ha, ha,” Eileen said, and punched the keys on her computer to lock up her machine. She gathered her car keys and jacket and left, refusing to feel anything but numb. Refusing to feel at all.
Gerri was as relaxed and shapeless as ever when she opened the door to her office. She was wearing pottery-red pants and a baggy shirt of a no-color beige. She looked terrific, of course. She smelled of fresh rose soap. Her hair was shiny, and the whites of her eyes had the clarity of a child. Eileen had finished her latte on the way over and carried a glass of water from the small service area off the waiting room, an area that had originally been the family kitchen in the old Victorian house. Eileen knew her own eyes were bleary and tired. She felt exhausted just being among the battered women and the stiff unhappy couples waiting their turn with one of the six therapists who worked there.
“Hey, Eileen, come on in,” Gerri said, opening her office door and dimpling into a smile that was as fresh as her eyes. Eileen walked past her and dropped into one of the comfortable armchairs Gerri kept in her office. Gerri’s office breathed comfort, from the quiet prints on the walls to the plants that grew happily around the windows. A thick wool rug covered the glow of a pine floor. Gerri settled into the other chair and picked up a clipboard. It was stacked with papers.
“Okay, I’m here,” Eileen said, trying to sound neutral instead of grumpy.
“Nick told you he’d take your badge, didn’t he?” Gerri laughed. “That’s usually how I get officers for their second appointment. Nick uses threats. Intimidation. What a guy.”
“Nick?”
“Nick Harben. Nick to me, and to you, in this office,” Gerri said. “He wouldn’t send his people to me until he’d talked with me and made sure I was acceptable. He’s a good boss, your captain.”
“He’s a great boss,” Eileen said absently. His name was Nick? The image was almost unthinkable, the emotionless Harben sitting in this very armchair, talking with Gerri Matthews. Harben, drinking tea? “Did he drink tea when he came here?”
“That is a secret between Nick and myself,” Gerri said serenely. “Just as I will never reveal that you drink Red Zinger with honey. It’s all confidential.”
“Right,” Eileen sighed. “So what do you want to know about today? Do you want to hear a
bout Teddy Shaw again?”
“Nope,” Gerri said, consulting her clipboard. “Let’s get really Freud and talk about your childhood.”
Eileen clutched the chair arms convulsively. Her stomach squeezed into a ball of ice. For a moment, she could see nothing but the face of Alan Baxter.
“Okay,” she said, forcing calm. “What do you want to know? I grew up on a ranch in Wyoming. My parents love me, they’re still married, I had a great childhood.”
Gerri looked up from her clipboard. “Funny,” she said. “Because your personal records show you were adopted at the age of four. Plenty old enough to remember what happened before.”
Eileen was up and at the doorway in four quick strides, fumbling at the door handle with trembling hands.
“You know department rules, Eileen. You’ll lose your badge and your job,” Gerri said mournfully, not moving from her armchair. “You’ll never work in law enforcement again. Is this what you want?”
Eileen stopped trying to turn the doorknob. She leaned her forehead against the wood panels, smelling a clear odor of Lemon Pledge. She couldn’t leave this room. She couldn’t give up the career that she loved with all her heart. She felt like she was being torn in two. Weren’t adoption records sealed?
“Sealed as to content, but not the fact of adoption itself,” Gerri said calmly. Eileen didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud.
“Fine,” she said, rolling the hotness of her forehead across the smoothly polished wood of the door. “I’ll talk to you about what I remember, Gerri. If that’s what it takes, I guess I can do that.”
“I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again, Eileen. Nothing that goes on in this room goes outside. Have you noticed my filing cabinets are all made of metal?”
Eileen shook her head, still leaning against the door, still struggling not to tear open the door and run.
“They’re metal because if somebody decides to violate the Constitution and grab my records, I can burn them without burning down this beautiful house.” Behind her, Eileen heard a click and the unmistakable sound of a lighter. “I don’t smoke, Eileen.” There was a click as the lighter went off. “Does this convince you?”
“Sure,” Eileen said. Her stomach was lurching inside of her. She wondered if she were going to throw up. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know why you think adoption is such a horrible thing. Do you think if people knew you were adopted they would stone you in the streets? Laugh at you? What?”
“My mother didn’t love me,” Eileen said, and grinned a mirthless grin at the door. “Isn’t that clear enough?”
“She loved you enough not to abort you, Eileen,” Gerri said, implacable as a field of snow sliding downhill. “She loved you enough to bear you, which I hear is pretty difficult and painful to do. She loved you enough to give you up for adoption—”
Eileen laughed wildly at this, and turned around. She didn’t know if she were going to throw up or try to kill Gerri, and she didn’t care.
“She didn’t give me up for adoption, Gerri,” she snarled. “The last thing she did was try to unbuckle my seat belt, after she picked a long straight road and a bridge to hit. After she’d downed enough alcohol to drown a horse, after she had a little bonfire at a campground where she burned every piece of identification we had, she floored the car and aimed at the bridge and tried to unbuckle my seat belt. She missed, and lost control, and flipped the car before she hit the bridge, and I stayed buckled and I lived. That’s how much my mother loved me, Gerri.”
Eileen covered her face with her hands and sank to the floor, her shoulders quivering. She did not cry. Tears had been burned out of her a long time ago, perhaps even before she was three years old. But she curled up in a ball and wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face into her knees, and she shook. She wished she were dead. Anywhere but here.
A hand touched her shoulder, a hand as light and soft as a dandelion seed.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked into her knees. “Don’t look at me!” She hunched away, trying to curl herself tighter. Her ankle gun pressed painfully into her thigh.
“Well,” Gerri’s voice said from right next to her. “Aren’t I a great big turd.”
There was a long silence.
“Yes, you are,” Eileen said. There was more silence, and the sense of Gerri’s body sitting right next to hers. Gerri wasn’t touching her, but she could smell the light scent of the soap Gerri used. Eileen started giggling. She couldn’t help it. The image of Gerri, a great big turd, sitting on the floor next to her. She giggled harder, unable to stop, her face pressed into her knees.
“I’m sorry, Eileen,” Gerri said sadly. “I’ve got this—blind spot, I guess, about adoption. I had an abortion when I was twenty-two, just out of school. I was married, but my husband and I weren’t ready. He was in law school and I was starting my master’s degree in counseling work.”
Eileen’s giggles trailed off. She scrubbed her face against her knees and was surprised to see dampness there. Gerri continued, her voice calm.
“So it turned out I had a condition called endometriosis. It’s a fibrous growth in the uterus and fallopian tubes. Sometimes it causes very painful periods; sometimes it’s absolutely silent. In my case, it was silent. But by the time my husband and I decided to have children, my tubes were scarred shut and my uterus too damaged to bear a child.”
“Oh no,” Eileen said.
“Oh, yes,” Gerri said. Eileen looked at Gerri and saw a flood of tears down Gerri’s pretty face. She was sitting right next to Eileen with her back against the door. Her eyes were red and her cheeks were flushed, but her voice never changed. “That baby I aborted was a miracle child, the only one we would ever have. And we never knew it, until it was too late.”
“I’m so sorry,” Eileen said. She reached out a hand and touched Gerri’s hand, which lay limply on her knee. Gerri squeezed back. Gerri’s hand felt like a little bird, all lightness and fragile bones.
“I’m okay,” Gerri said. “I’m a therapist, after all. My husband and I, we love each other very much. We didn’t know what we were doing. But I’ve got this wad of scar tissue in my heart, and it makes me make bad mistakes sometimes.”
“So I guess you’re pro-life, right?” Eileen asked.
“Not always,” Gerri said. “I believe abortion is the only answer in very rare situations. But I counsel waiting, and thinking, and understanding your options. Nobody told me that pregnancy is a miracle, that stopping this baby was stopping the potential for an entire life. Abortion is such a fiercely protected right they don’t bother to tell you what could be the result. This abortion meant more than a life.” Gerri blew out a breath in a resigned sigh. “The cure for endometriosis, you see, is a baby.”
“Oh, no,” Eileen said, and realized she was gripping Gerri’s little hand far too hard.
“Oh, yes,” Gerri said. “I’ve told this story lots of times, Eileen. The pain does go away, mostly. If you carry a baby to term, endometriosis is cut back, in many cases never to return. So if I’d carried this baby and given it up for adoption, I could have had more children, when I was ready.”
“That’s why you talked about my mother loving me enough to have me.”
“That’s right. But I had the adoption hat on, instead of the abused child hat on, and I made a great big turd out of myself. Not for the first time, as you now know,” Gerri said, grinning a little girl grin at Eileen. Eileen smiled back, still holding Gerri’s hand.
“Now we have to get back to me, don’t we?” she said, and Gerri dimpled into a smile.
“You are a very, very intelligent woman, Eileen Reed,” she said. “Yes, I do have to earn my pennies. If we keep talking about me, I’ll end up paying you. Let’s get up, and sit back down, and start all over. Okay?”
“Okay,” Eileen said. “But I don’t think I can tell you my story the same way you told me yours.”
“You haven’t had the practice I’ve had,
” Gerri said grimly. She scrambled to her feet and dusted off her narrow bottom and held a hand out to Eileen. “Let’s get to it, shall we?”
“Right,” Eileen said, taking Gerri’s hand. She unfolded from her crouch and stood up. It was harder than it should have been, to stand straight as though she were unafraid. She walked to the armchair and sat down and took a sip of water as Gerri settled into her own seat. Gerri took a tissue and blew her nose with a very unladylike honk. She wiped her eyes and took up her clipboard and grinned a one-sided grin at Eileen.
“This job sucks sometimes, eh? Tell me about what happened after the accident. You survived? Where was this? Take a deep breath first, then—just tell me.”
Eileen took a deep breath and held on to Gerri’s courage as though it were her own. She knew that Gerri had told her the story of her aborted baby so that Eileen would feel that she could open up, too. But it still took incredible guts to use your own horrible mistake as a way to help your patient. If Gerri could talk, so could she, no matter how much it hurt. And it hurt plenty bad.
Eileen took a deep breath, and told her.
“I was about three and a half, I think. I remember my mom packing me up and putting me in the car late at night when we first left. She woke me up when she buckled me in the car. She forgot my Raggedy Ann doll and I cried the whole next day. But she wouldn’t go back.”
“You were on the run because of your father?” Gerri asked.
“I guess,” Eileen said doubtfully. “I don’t remember him ever hitting her, or anything like that. I was only three, hardly old enough to remember anything but the way he—the way he smelled and sounded, and I remember him rocking me in a big rocking chair. So I had good memories of him. But something made my mom take off. I wish I knew what it was.” Eileen blinked hard, realizing that maybe she could find out now, if she wished. Her stomach gave another huge lurch, and she gulped some water. Gerri didn’t seem to notice her hesitation.
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