Stone Cold

by Dean Crawford

  Sometimes guys, especially proud guys like Griffin, found it easier to weave an imagined avenue of blame back to somebody or something else, anything else, than admit that they’d screwed up. It didn’t matter whether it was putting up a lop–sided picture or forgetting their wife’s birthday – when it came to trivia it was always somebody else’s fault.

  But present them with a major issue, a truly traumatic event for which they remained blameless, and wow did the chip hit the shoulder. Suddenly, all the burdens of the world were weighing down upon them and nothing short of a miracle could liberate them from their sorrows.

  ‘You tried something, didn’t you,’ Kathryn said.

  Griffin looked out of the window, anywhere but at her, and said nothing.

  ‘I’m right here detective.’

  ‘I know where you are,’ Griffin uttered.

  ‘You don’t want to be in this room with me, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ Kathryn said, ‘because it’s right where you’re staying.’

  ‘You’re an asshole,’ Griffin shot back. ‘I think that people like you do this job because you enjoy seeing other people suffer.’

  ‘I do this job because I enjoy seeing people overcome their suffering,’ Kathryn countered. ‘You going to tell me what happened?’

  Griffin bit his lip and looked away again.

  ‘Look, detective, what happened isn’t just going to vanish,’ Kathryn said. ‘I’m not going to vanish. You can’t just pretend we’re not sitting here. You have to go through this process to be able to get back to work properly. I know it, Captain Olsen knows it and I think you know it too.’

  ‘How very perceptive.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ Kathryn asked. ‘A few snippy lines, all lip and no balls?’

  ‘Just because I have to be here doesn’t mean I have to be here talking to you,’ Griffin snapped. ‘I could request a different counsellor.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Kathryn said. ‘You’ll just be sat here having the same conversation with somebody else. It doesn’t matter who you’re talking to, just that you talk. You get somebody else, all it means is they’ll have to start over with you, prolonging the suffering. You want this to be done with, right?’

  Griffin seethed and stared out of the shutter blinds as he spat out his response. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then talk. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘I did what you said. I went home, picked up some flowers and a bottle of wine on the way for my wife.’

  Kathryn nodded slowly. ‘So far, so good. Then what?’

  ‘Then what?’ Griffin echoed. ‘I took them to her, I apologised, and before I knew it she blew up in my face and stormed out of the house, that’s what fucking happened! So much for you and your goddamned master plan!’

  Kathryn took a breath. Always think before replying, her course principal had often said. Never say an unconsidered word.

  ‘I didn’t offer you a master plan, detective,’ she soothed. ‘I suggested going home and talking to your wife. Did you talk to her?’

  ‘Yes, I talked to her.’

  ‘So what happened between you apologising and her walking out?’

  Griffin kept his gaze off her as he replied.

  ‘It was going fine, but then she started picking holes, mentioned how miserable things had been, shit like that. Before I knew it we were shouting at each other.’

  Kathryn glanced down at her notes before she spoke.

  ‘Scott, you were doing the right things but a bottle of wine and a bouquet do not a life–changing event make. Angela probably was hoping that you would sit down with that bottle of wine and talk all night about what’s been happening.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Griffin blurted, ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘She wants reassurance,’ Kathryn went on, ‘she wants to know that you still care about her, that she’s not going through life on her own. She wants you, Scott. She wants the man that she married, the man that she fell in love with, and she hasn’t seen that man in a very long time.’ A silence descended upon the office as Kathryn became aware that she could just as easily have been describing herself. She shook herself free of the realisation. ‘Neither have you.’

  Griffin bit his lip again and Kathryn saw the first fractures cracking the detective’s armour, the first hint at untold oceans of grief seething behind an icy exterior.

  ‘That man is gone.’

  ‘No,’ Kathryn cut across. ‘That man is you. You’ve just forgotten how to show it. You’re holding inside all of the things that you need to let go of, and if you don’t do it before long you’ll wake up and realise that everybody you care about has given up on you and vanished. That’s how these things happen, Scott.’

  Griffin shook his head, his cold blue eyes glistening. He ducked his head, shook it again.

  ‘No, I’ve got this.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing,’ Kathryn said. ‘You’re losing your wife and you’re losing yourself.’

  ‘I tried!’ Griffin snarled. ‘There’s only so much that I can do!’

  ‘For whom?’ Kathryn asked. ‘Scott, you fired a shot that killed a nine–year old girl.’

  ‘I know what I did…’

  Griffin’s voice cracked, wrenched with grief as his features creased and then crumbled. The harsh sunlight beaming through the blinds cast his misery in deep shadows that he fought to conceal from her.

  ‘But you didn’t kill her,’ Kathryn said. ‘You, Detective Scott Griffin, did not kill that girl. She died because of where her abductors placed her. Had they not done so, you would not have been there and she would not have died. Had they surrendered, she would not have died. Had they been decent, upstanding and honourable men like you, she would not have died.’

  Griffin dragged an angry forearm across his eyes.

  ‘That shit’s easy to say from behind a desk,’ he growled back. ‘Try it when you’re holding that nine year old kid in your arms and trying to stop her head from falling apart.’

  Kathryn felt her guts surge in sympathy both for Griffin and the poor child whose life had been cut so brutally and horrifyingly short. She sucked in a breath.

  ‘I don’t know that I could, Scott,’ she replied. ‘If it happened to me, I’d need help too.’

  Griffin’s grief surged over again and he shielded his face with a hand, his elbow thumping down onto the desk as he leaned on it.

  ‘This isn’t an interrogation,’ Kathryn said softly. ‘There’s no wrong answer here.’

  ‘There’s no right answer either.’

  ‘But either way, you can’t keep hiding from this. You know how to spot a liar detective and so do I. You’ve just got to let it out.’

  ‘I don’t want to let it out!’ Griffin shouted out loud and shot to his feet. He hit the desk hard, spittle flying from his lips as he bellowed into her face. ‘I don’t want to ever let it out! You understand me?! Ever!’

  The door to the office flew open as Maietta and Olsen burst in.

  Kathryn, still sat in her chair, kept her eyes fixed on Griffin’s as they blazed rage before her.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Olsen asked.

  Kathryn swallowed once. ‘Everything’s fine,’ she replied, barely managing to keep the fear from her voice. ‘Detective Griffin was just leaving.’

  Griffin glared at her, every muscle in his body drawn like a tensed bow. In a flash he whirled and stormed out of the office as Olsen and Maietta twisted out of his way.

  ‘That’s enough Griffin,’ Olsen called after him. ‘You’re suspended until you get your shit under control, is that understood?’

  Griffin didn’t reply as he stormed away.

  ‘Hey,’ Maietta protested to the captain. ‘There’s no need for that. He’ll be fine.’

  ‘He’s off,’ Olsen insisted. ‘I’m not having him threatening staff. You got a problem with that?’

  Kathryn let out a blast of air and her shoulders sagged as she slumped back in her chair. Maie
tta shot her a dirty look.

  ‘How’s that gentle touch workin’ out for you there, Stone?’

  Maietta whirled and hurried away after her partner.

  Kathryn sighed as Olsen looked across at her. ‘You okay with this? I can get somebody else in to…’

  ‘No,’ Kathryn said. ‘I’ll be fine. I just didn’t know that…’

  ‘He could be violent?’ Olsen finished the sentence for her. ‘He’s a former soldier. What did you expect? The tearful type?’

  ***

  22

  Griffin burst out of the precinct doors and scattered two uniformed officers who had been making their way inside. They took one look at his face and slipped quietly past him and into the station.

  Griffin stormed down the steps and hauled in a lung full of air, blew it out as though trying to void himself of the dizzying rage seething through his veins.

  The sky was a bright blue, the air cold and crisp enough to crack with his knuckles. A thin sheet of frost glistened like diamond chips on the trees and on the roofs of cars parked in the lot. The cold air and blue sky reminded him briefly of Afghanistan, but something else seeped in there too – memories of his childhood, growing up in the woods and hills of Texas. Frosty mornings out hunting with his pa’, closing in on Christmas. The excitement of that time of year, the warmth of his family around him, the fresh air and the wilderness.

  Griffin felt his thumping heart ease inside his chest, felt some of the pain lanced from his festering soul.

  ‘You okay?’

  Maietta’s voice came from behind him, a little ways away. He guessed she figured he might turn around and throttle her to death if she came too close.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he replied, ‘just needed some air.’

  Maietta sauntered up to stand beside him, her hands shoved into her pockets. She surveyed the cold morning before them, watched a few cars drift by.

  ‘She got you pretty riled up there, soldier.’

  Griffin did not reply. He plucked a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, blowing a cloud of fumes out into the perfect blue sky.

  ‘Didn’t know you smoked again,’ she observed.

  Griffin nodded. He had been partnered with Maietta for three years and had never smoked a cigarette in that time. In fact, he hadn’t smoked one since joining the force. Becoming a police officer was meant to have been a new start, a new life. He’d stopped smoking and barely drank at all. Life had been better, back then.

  ‘Guess I dropped off that wagon too,’ he said finally.

  Maietta looked across at him. ‘You’re not quitting, are you?’

  ‘I only just started again.’

  ‘Not the smoking.’

  Griffin exhaled noisily, blue smoke drifting on the cold air. ‘No.’

  ‘Good,’ Maietta replied. ‘Because right now I get the feeling that you’re at the threshold of something and if you can just hang on a little longer you’ll pull through just fine.’

  ‘What, you the damned shrink now?’

  ‘I’m your partner,’ she shot back. ‘I’ve worked with you every day for the past three years. You think that what happens to you doesn’t affect me too? I was there with you Scott. I saw that kid die. You think I don’t wake up some nights and wish I could go back in time and do something different?’

  Griffin shook his head. ‘You didn’t fire the shot.’

  ‘I didn’t fire that shot!’ Maietta snapped. ‘I’m watching you go down the can Scott, a little bit further every day, and I don’t like it.’

  ‘Well what would you like?’

  ‘For you to stop blaming yourself and everybody else around you for something that nobody can change.’

  Griffin shook his head, Maietta’s words falling away like storm waves battering immoveable cliffs. His partner stepped in front of him, grabbed the collar of his jacket and yanked his face toward hers. A pair of sun–flecked green eyes glared into his.

  ‘You didn’t kill her, Scott,’ Maietta growled at him. ‘She was dragged into a dangerous situation by two coked–up bikers who are both now serving twenty–five to life. They killed her, Scott. They did. Get that into your thick head and stop fucking your life up over it.’

  Maietta pushed him away with an angry shove and turned for the precinct door. Griffin turned and watched her go for a moment before he spoke.

  ‘I can’t.’

  Maietta slowed and stood on the precinct steps. She looked over her shoulder at him, her long brown hair shielding her face as though it was something to hide behind.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Maietta turned back and walked to Griffin’s side. ‘You’ve got to get over this and start moving forward. That shrink in there, Stone. She’s there to help you do that.’

  ‘You’re doing a better job,’ Griffin said with a shrug.

  ‘But it’s not my job,’ Maietta pointed out. ‘It’s Stone’s. You need to figure out whether what she’s telling you is getting you riled up because it’s true and you just don’t want to hear it.’

  Griffin’s jaw tightened and he shook his head.

  ‘She’s just another shrink who thinks that she can lecture families when she doesn’t even have one.’

  Jane raised an eyebrow. ‘Well you do have one Griffin and right now you’re losing it, so whatever you’ve been doing up until now hasn’t worked.’

  ‘Angela walked out on me.’

  Griffin’s abrupt and unexpected statement caught Maietta unawares. She took a moment to digest what he had said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ was all that she could manage in response.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

  ‘She comin’ back?’ Griffin shrugged, and Maietta shook her head.

  ‘You wanna talk about it?’

  ‘Not so much. I don’t even know how it happened.’

  ‘I guess we don’t really know people until they’re forced to reveal how they really feel.’

  Griffin looked at her. ‘Are you talking about me or Angela?’

  ‘Maybe both. It’s what Stone’s trying to get through to you. You don’t tell people stuff, how the hell can they help you?’

  ‘Who says I want any help?’

  ‘You think that Angela did?’

  Griffin flicked his cigarette away and exhaled noisily. ‘The hell with it all.’

  Griffin stormed away toward his car.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Anywhere but here. I’m suspended, right? I can do what I like.’

  Griffin got into his car, fired up the engine and pulled out of the lot and away down the street.

  The precinct seemed quiet as Maietta walked back inside in the aftermath of Griffin’s temper. He had a reputation for it. Maietta sat down at her desk and stared out of a window, wondering whether or not she was about to do the right thing.

  Trust was everything in law–enforcement. For cops, detectives, attorneys, judges: those for whom upholding the law was a job were themselves required to be the pillars and the foundations of that law. A betrayal of that trust, of any kind, was the rot that could bring the whole house tumbling down.

  The world ain’t built for you to like, honey, her dad used to tell her back in the day. Immigrants always had it tougher, even when sheltered in their own communities. Hard knocks and tough breaks were a way of life for Maietta, but this wasn’t the usual run–of–the–mill disappointment, like a missed grade at college or a dumb–ass mistake on the job. No, this was something that she had to do and the aftermath might be with her for the rest of her career.

  She turned the problem over in her mind for a few more moments and then stood up and strode to Captain Olsen’s office door. Maietta hesitated, wondering if this really was something she shouldn’t just drop for now.

  ‘What is it, Jane?’ Captain Olsen asked. ‘Or do you just want to stand there and fantasise about me?’

  Maietta cursed herself and opened the captain’s office door, striding in and closi
ng it behind her.

  ‘Sorry to bother you,’ she said.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ Olsen asked her, raising his eyebrows. ‘Last I heard, Jane Maietta hasn’t apologised to anybody since 1986. What gives?’

  ‘Got something on my mind.’

  ‘No shit.’ Olsen gestured to a chair. ‘Park your ass and unload.’

  Maietta slumped into the chair and stared at Olsen. ‘It’s a difficult one.’

  ‘You going to propose to me, Maietta?’

  Maietta let out a long sigh. ‘I think Griffin might be looking to skip town.’

  Olsen’s studied humour slipped and his enormous moustache twitched. ‘You might want to elaborate on that, detective.’

  Maietta nodded. Having said one thing, she may as well say it all. ‘His wife walked out on him.’

  ‘Hardly a chapter of Revelations, detective. Get to the point.’

  ‘He’s depressed, angry and confused. Last I spoke to him just now he sounded like he didn’t really want to be on the job anymore.’

  Olsen raised an eyebrow. ‘You gonna keep tugging my fly or are you going to get those lips working? Spit it out.’

  ‘I think he’s off the wagon again.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He needs help,’ Maietta said. ‘I can’t be with him when he’s suspended, and I don’t know what he’ll go and do without the job to keep him occupied.’

  ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘Only because you don’t want to,’ Maietta said.

  Olsen’s icy eyes fixed like lasers onto Maietta’s. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’

  ‘I want a tail on Griffin,’ Maietta said finally. ‘Even if it’s me. He’s not himself and I don’t know how far he’ll take this.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Olsen said. ‘You really think Griffin’s likely to take his own life and…?’

  ‘You any idea how many vets have offed themselves after returning home from war zones?’ Maietta cut across Olsen.

  Olsen rubbed his temples. ‘It’s a long shot Maietta and frankly it makes no sense at all. Griffin’s been through hell lately but he’s straight as an arrow.’