Don't Ever Forget (Adler and Dwyer)

by Matthew Farrell

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Would you tell me if you weren’t?”

  “Probably not.”

  Crosby smiled. “Fair enough. I want to make sure you take care of your family. That comes before all of this. But I also want to make sure you’re taking care of you. What happened with your partner affects you as much as Beatrice and the kids. You can’t help them if you’re not helping you.”

  “I’m good,” Susan said. “Seriously. And thanks for the concern.”

  “I’ll see you when you get back from Philly.”

  “Yes, sir. And in the meantime, I’m a phone call away. If anything breaks, I want to know about it.”

  “Don’t worry,” Crosby said. “You will.”

  34

  The door swung open, and footsteps came down into the basement faster than James could react. He was sitting in front of the three windows that lined the top of the wall. By the time his mind registered that someone was approaching, the man was already on him, spinning his wheelchair around so they were face to face.

  “What did you do?” the man growled. He was angry. Enraged.

  James didn’t recognize this man. He tried to think of what he might’ve done or who he could be, but nothing came. The man jerked the chair back and forth as he spoke.

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know!” James yelled in response. He swallowed the lump in his throat, his eyes buried in the man’s.

  “You killed her!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You killed her, you son of a bitch!”

  The man punched him. James heard the slap of knuckles against bone before he felt any pain, but when the pain did come, it consumed the entire left side of his face. He began to shake from both fear and the adrenaline that was kicking in. His being in the wheelchair made him vulnerable.

  “Leave me alone!” James shouted, louder this time. He could hear the panic in his voice. “I didn’t do anything!”

  “You did! You killed her!”

  Another punch. Same spot. James saw stars, then felt his eye beginning to swell shut. His vision blurred.

  Somewhere in the background, another set of footsteps.

  “Stop it!”

  It was the woman.

  “I’ll kill him!”

  The man grabbed James by the throat and started squeezing.

  “Let go of him!”

  “Shut up.”

  “Let him go!”

  “He killed her, so I’m going to kill him. Eye for an eye. Stay out of my way, or you get some too.”

  “What about Hagen? What about your mom?”

  James couldn’t breathe. The pressure on his throat was making him light headed. His peripheral vision was starting to crystalize like ice on a windshield. He could hear the man and the woman arguing, but their voices were suddenly muffled, as if he had his hands over his ears.

  You’re dying. He’s killing you.

  “Get off of him! This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!”

  “I don’t care how it’s supposed to go. Things have changed, and he needs to pay.”

  “You don’t make the rules here! This isn’t how it’s supposed to go down!”

  Blackness was seeping in from the top of his sight line. James tried to pull the man’s hands away from his throat, but he wasn’t strong enough. He was passing out.

  “I don’t care about Hagen’s rules! This son of a bitch killed my sister, and now he pays!”

  Footsteps again. Coming? Going? He couldn’t tell. James fought to stay conscious. He looked to his right and could see the ghosts standing in the shadows, all of them, hand in hand, staring at him, waiting for him to die. He would die, and they would devour him. It was just a matter of time now. Just a matter of his heart stopping. Then the fun would begin.

  James closed his eyes and fell into the blackness. Somewhere in the void of his new world, he heard a shotgun cock.

  “Get off of him or I’ll kill you right here.”

  He somehow knew it was the man who helped him into bed at night. Trevor. His mind’s eye painted a picture of the scene: Trevor standing at the bottom of the stairs holding a double-barrel Winchester against his shoulder, aiming it at the other man’s back. The pressure released from his throat, and James took a deep, raspy breath that hurt.

  “You’re going to shoot me?”

  “You don’t get to hurt him and jeopardize my family’s safety. As long as my wife and son are in danger, we play by the rules.”

  “But he killed—”

  “I don’t care what he did. This isn’t about you.”

  “It is now.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s about all of us. My family. Your mom. Her truth. You follow the rules or I end you. Right here.”

  There was a long pause while James fought to open his eyes. He was coughing and spitting up onto his chest, but he was alive. As his vision refocused, he could see Trevor standing at the bottom of the stairs with a Remington twelve gauge tucked against his shoulder. He was aiming it at the man he didn’t know, who was still standing over him but slowly retreating. The woman was between them both, watching everything unfold.

  “Last chance,” Trevor said as his grip on the shotgun tightened. “Get out or die right here.”

  The other man turned back and looked at James. In a flash of movement, he lunged at him and punched him one final time, then walked up the stairs and out of the house. James fell unconscious as soon as he heard the front door slam shut and the woman ask him if he was okay.

  35

  Susan had become familiar with the psychiatric unit of Jefferson Hospital over the course of the last year. The sounds. The smells. The noises and erratic movements made by some of the other patients in the waiting area. She’d become used to the more extreme cases who came to see their doctors from neighboring institutions in Philadelphia and its suburbs. At first she’d felt a maternal instinct to protect her kids from the other patients, but as time rolled on, her visceral reaction waned until a visit there was no more monumental than a visit to the dentist. She longed for the day when they wouldn’t need this place or their psychiatrist, when things would go back to the way they were before. Until then, this was their routine, and she tried to make it seem as normal as possible.

  Susan sat with Casey on a love seat overlooking Sansom Street. She ignored the magazine that was spread on her lap and stroked her daughter’s hair while Casey played a puzzle game. It had begun to rain around exit 6 on the New Jersey Turnpike and hadn’t stopped since. The streets of Philadelphia glistened as the gray sky cast a gloom over the entire city. The streetlights were on even though it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. The clouds were too thick for the daylight to make a difference.

  They came to see Dr. Radcliffe every two weeks and had a short conference call with him on the weeks they didn’t make the drive. Tim had been making great strides in terms of his interactions with his friends and classmates and had been improving his communications with others. It was only recently, with the incident at the park, that he seemed to have relapsed. She knew Tim was being triggered as they approached the one-year anniversary of the night the bad man came. She hoped Dr. Radcliffe could figure out how to make the day pass with as little pain as possible.

  “Mommy, is Tim almost done?”

  Susan looked down to see that Casey had flipped from the puzzle game on her iPad to one of their Disney Channel shows. “Yes, honey. Shouldn’t be much longer now.”

  “And then we have lunch?”

  “Yup.”

  “And see Liam?”

  “Yup.”

  “Good.”

  Casey popped her earbuds in and watched her show. Susan continued stroking her hair while her thoughts drifted from her son to Rebecca Hill, the fallen trooper, and the still-missing James Darville.

  The double doors to the back offices opened, and Susan turned to se
e Tim skipping across the waiting area. She opened her arms, and he fell into them, a smile on his face that seemed more obligatory than natural.

  “Hey, bud. How’d it go?”

  “Good.”

  Casey didn’t look up from her show but took one earbud out. “How’s your brain?”

  Tim didn’t bat an eye. “Okay.”

  Dr. Radcliffe followed Tim into the waiting area. He was young, maybe midthirties, with a face that made him look like he was still in high school. Susan figured that was one of the reasons why Tim felt comfortable with him. His doctors in New York had been older and were a bit more intimidating. Dr. Radcliffe’s rail-thin body, wide toothy smile, freckled face, and midlength black hair made him seem more like a peer than an authority figure. That had been the first breakthrough. The second had been the natural charm and ease with which the psychiatrist spoke to children.

  “We’re all set,” the doctor said, clapping his hands and smiling at the three of them.

  Casey popped her second earbud out and waved. “Hi, Dr. Radcliffe!”

  “Hi, Casey. How are you doing today?”

  “I’m good. We’re going to lunch now. You wanna come?”

  “I’d love to, but I have more patients to see. How about a rain check?”

  Casey pointed at the window. “It’s raining. There, I checked!”

  He laughed and turned his attention to Susan. “She’s too young to be that sharp.”

  “You call it sharp. I call it adolescent sarcasm.”

  “Brought on by an acute immersion of adult sarcasm in the house?”

  “Diagnosis confirmed.”

  Susan got up from the love seat. Tim slid in and took her place next to his sister, the two of them sharing the iPad and one earbud each.

  “You ready?” Dr. Radcliffe asked.

  Susan nodded. “Lead the way.”

  Other than the framed degrees that hung on the wall behind his desk, Dr. Radcliffe’s office was anything but stereotypical. The wallpaper was illustrations of the four major sports from floor to ceiling: football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. The rug was bright green with white lines and numbers painted on it to look like you were sitting on the fifty-yard line. Two giant bookcases took up the entire back wall with toys, dolls, video games, and a huge flat-screen TV. Beanbag chairs lined another wall, each one a different fluorescent color. Model airplanes and spaceships hung from the ceiling, spinning in the hot breeze blowing from the vents.

  Susan sat in the same seat she’d been sitting in since the day she finally met a doctor who could help her son. Dr. Radcliffe took his spot behind his LEGO desk and opened Tim’s file. The twins remained in the hall, the receptionist keeping an eye on them.

  “I think we had a great conversation today,” he began. “And I think Tim continues to make progress.”

  “Did he tell you about the fight he had on the playground?”

  “He did.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “I think it was a visceral reaction to him thinking he was seeing his sister being chased. He defended her. The adrenaline coursing through him at the time was likely driven by a combination of his fight-or-flight response as well as the trauma he suffered. The combination was too powerful for such a young person to know how to control, so animal instincts took over. It’s all completely normal.”

  Susan thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. What I’m hearing is he flew into an uncontrollable rage and lashed out. I can’t have that. He needs to control himself.”

  “He will. And he knows that. This was a lesson. A teaching moment for him. He doesn’t like what he did and feels remorse. He apologized to the child, and the child forgave him. This is something Tim will put in the back of his mind, and if a similar situation comes up again, we hope he uses this lesson and reacts differently. I’m confident he will.”

  “He seems sadder lately. We’re getting close to the anniversary of when everything happened. We don’t talk about it, but he knows. We were making such good progress.”

  Dr. Radcliffe closed his file. “We are making good progress.”

  “He still goes out of his way to avoid the spot in our foyer. Every time I watch him, I hold my breath, thinking he’ll forget and walk through it and that’ll be our breakthrough. But he goes to the other room to avoid it every time.”

  “All part of his healing.” Dr. Radcliffe snatched a red stress ball from his desk and squeezed it as he spoke. “And what you’re seeing in Tim is correct. He is feeling down lately, and he does know the anniversary is approaching.”

  “How?”

  “He said when it got colder after Halloween it started reminding him of how it was cold when the bad man came to the house. Then he remembered how there were Christmas decorations up at the time. Your mother helped them decorate.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So, as we’re getting closer to Thanksgiving, he knows Christmas is next, which triggers the memories, and the emotions they prompt.”

  Susan fell back in her seat and closed her eyes. She could see the scene in the foyer as if it had happened only hours earlier. The crying. The pleas for help. The screaming. The gunfire.

  “What Tim’s going through is normal,” Dr. Radcliffe continued. “He needs to get through this first anniversary and come out on the other side. Then, I believe, we’ll see real progress.”

  “Eric thinks I should sell the house,” Susan said. “He thinks it’s a constant reminder to Tim about what happened and that he’s not going to get better until he’s removed from it forever.”

  Dr. Radcliffe’s expression remained neutral. “What do you think?”

  “On the one hand, I think kids are resilient and he’d get over it eventually. On the other hand, I have to ask myself what kind of a mother am I to make my kid live in that house every day and be reminded of what happened?”

  “Do you want to sell and move?”

  “It’s not about me.”

  “It is. It’s about you and Casey as much as it is about Tim. Have you asked Tim about it?”

  “Not really. I don’t want to push him either way.”

  Dr. Radcliffe dropped the stress ball and watched it roll toward his computer screen. “Tim’s going to be fine, whatever you decide. Kids are resilient. He’ll get past this, and over time the spot won’t mean anything anymore. If you leave, it could speed up his recovery. But it might not. The real question here is, What do you think? Do you think moving would help your son or disrupt your family’s lives?”

  Susan shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Dr. Radcliffe smiled his toothy grin. “You figure that out, and you’ll have your answer.”

  36

  Philadelphia had some of the best restaurants and cafés in the Northeast, and since they’d been coming down every other week, Susan and the twins had tried most of them. There had been the fancy places by the water and the upscale-but-casual eateries in Center City. They tried Pat’s and Geno’s in South Philly, and she’d even caved on McDonald’s on more than one occasion. But nothing seemed to hit the spot like a slice of Marco’s Pizza. It was simple and always fresh, and had the exact right ratio of cheese to their incredible homemade sauce. It wasn’t as good as Zavaglia’s back home, but it was a close second, to say the least, and the twins couldn’t get enough.

  Marco’s Pizza Restaurant sat on the corner of 12th Street and Spruce. It was quaint with only a handful of tables in the back, each one covered in the cliché red-and-white-checkered tablecloth, an array of garlic powder, parmesan cheese, oregano, and pepper flanking the napkin dispenser. Marco and his son, Dominic, worked the counter as their customers came in for a quick slice or to pick up a pie and go. Susan and the kids had the sitting area to themselves.

  Throughout the first month of Tim’s sessions with Dr. Radcliffe, Susan had run into Liam Dwyer three times. In the beginning, Tim was seeing the doctor weekly, so the trips to Philadelphia w
ere more frequent, and her son’s appointments always seemed to coincide with either the beginning or end of Liam’s. Initially, there was only small talk and superficial conversation about the job, but after one rather brutal session with Tim, where Susan had had to recount, in detail, what had happened at her house, she’d emerged shaken and upset. Liam, an ex-forensics specialist with the Philadelphia Police Department, had just been getting out of his own appointment with his doctor, and he’d stayed with her in that waiting room for another hour, talking through what happened. It was then that Liam spoke about his own experience with betrayal. He’d been on the job when he was accused of something monstrous and had almost died fighting to clear his name. Even now he knew there were people within the department who questioned his innocence and his true relationship with his family. He’d been wronged like she had. Maybe even worse. And that was the moment their casual greetings became a friendship. Numbers were exchanged, and their own unique support group was formed.

  The bell above the door rang, and the twins spun around. Susan smiled when she saw Liam walking swiftly with his cane, shaking the rain from his jacket.

  “Liam!” Tim cried, his face lighting up.

  Casey waved. “We’re over here!”

  “Hey, guys!”

  He was great with the kids, a true natural. His kindness was effortless, and the ease at which he put Tim was always something Susan was a little jealous of. She watched as he made his way past the counter and around the maze of empty tables. He looked good. Jeans, a wool sweater, a raincoat covering his thin but somewhat athletic frame. He’d let his hair grow out a bit, and she liked the way it was bushier and covered his ears. His eyes were fixed on hers as he approached.

  “Good afternoon, Investigator Adler,” he said, plopping down in a seat next to her and leaning his cane against the table.

  Susan raised her glass of water. “Mr. Dwyer.”

  The twins hopped off their chairs and hugged Liam, a kid on each side of him.

  “I see you rascals are full of energy as usual.”

  “Tim did good at the doctor’s today,” Casey reported. “His brain is getting better.”