She picks up a stack of files. I still don’t know what’s going on with her, but I do know that burying herself in paperwork won’t fix it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I have another appointment with Randy this afternoon at my office on Catalan Court. It’s been ten days since the shooting. We were to have met last Friday, but Rich called at the last minute and canceled, saying Randy was afraid to leave home. When I asked to talk with her, he said she was asleep and he didn’t want to wake her because she had been up all night again. I called later that evening and got a recorded message in Rich’s voice. “Hey, thanks for calling, we appreciate the support, hope you understand we can’t return all the calls we get. We’ll catch up with you later. Bye.”
It’s lunchtime and I’m starving. There’s a small break room in headquarters with vending machines. Former Chief Baxter’s dream for a new public safety building included a cafeteria with homemade food and a salad bar. Until we’re fully staffed and have enough patrol cars, KPD cops will need to choose between bringing their lunches and going out to eat. Kenilworth has a high-end restaurant serving every kind of cuisine known to man and dozens of coffee bars with gleaming espresso machines, outrageously priced pastries, and patrons with less-than-cop-friendly attitudes.
Which is why most officers feel a whole lot more comfortable going to Fran’s coffee shop for super-sized dinners served by the super-sized woman whom they all consider the patron saint of KPD. It’s been a while since I’ve had lunch at Fran’s, only because she insists on feeding me enough food for an army. I usually leave with the makings of two dinners at home. Still, it’s way better than soft drinks, sour coffee, fatty snacks, and plastic-wrapped cold sandwiches with mystery filling. When I get to Fran’s, the place is crowded with lunch patrons. Eddie Rimbauer is shuttling between the counter and the few tables in the back.
“Hey, crazy lady. Joint’s jumping, eh? There’s a seat at the end of the counter.” I squeeze in next to a man wearing jeans, a smudged t-shirt, and laced-up Red Wing boots like Frank wears. He doesn’t give me a second look. Eddie stops in front of me holding a ladle in one hand and a bowl in the other. His face is red and sweaty. He leans forward. “Give that little lady cop an atta boy from me when you see her, because I know you’re on her ass. Tell her not to listen to all the crap in the station. Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.”
The man next to me lifts his head and just as quickly bends back to his newspaper. Eddie gives me a conspiratorial wink. “I seen that extravaganza on the TV; Chester Allen is angling for a payday. I don’t believe that pro bono bullshit. Tell the little copper she did the right thing. No matter what happens, it’s better to be tried by twelve than carried by six.”
“Hey, Eddie,” a voice calls from the back. “I want my soup before it clots.”
Eddie starts sloshing soup into a bowl. “Fucking cops, always in a hurry. While you’re at it, Doc, take another message for me. Tell Chief Ray-Gun, or whatever her name is, I want my fucking job back. I can’t stay sober forever, waiting for it.”
* * *
By the time I get to my office on Catalan Court, I’m so full and so sleepy I think I’ll keel over unless I can grab a nap on my couch before my appointment with Randy. Forty winks as my father would say. I sneak past the open door to Gary’s office, hoping he won’t see me and usurp the few minutes I have to spare.
“Avoiding me, are you?”
“Hey.” I stick my head in the door. He’s seated at his desk, looking at his computer screen.
“What are you and Frank doing for Thanksgiving?” Frank remodeled Gary and Janice’s house. That’s how we met. Gary introduced us and now he takes an avuncular interest in how our romance is progressing.
“Frank’s going to Iowa to be with his family, and I’m having turkey with my mother and her so-called girls’ club.”
“Still afraid to meet Frank’s family? One of these days you are going to have to admit you’re a couple and couples spend holidays together.”
Frank has been wanting me to meet his family for nearly a year, and they have been equally eager to meet me, too. But the thought of traveling during the heaviest travel season of the year to a snowbound state where people think green Jell-O is a vegetable has little appeal to me. So far, all our contacts have been via telephone or Skype. His sisters are warm and friendly and love to “visit.” From what I can tell, visiting is a Midwestern form of conversation entirely devoid of abstract ideas. I’m not good at visiting. I don’t cook much, have no hobbies other than work, no children, no livestock, and someone else repairs my car. The truth of the matter is I’m not ready. Meeting Frank’s family is a de facto declaration that we are a serious couple. I don’t know what is holding me back. My girlfriends think I’m nuts. Anyone of them would love to meet someone like Frank.
“So, Gary. When did you switch from psych assessment to premarital counseling?”
“Premarital is it?” he says. “That’s progress.”
* * *
I unlock the door to my office. I have four voice mail messages, one from an officer’s wife wanting to make an appointment. It’s the wife who usually makes that first call for help, rarely the husband. I can hear the stifled tears, even as she tries to disguise her distress with a brittle cheerfulness, laughing nervously at the end of every sentence. When I hang up, Randy is standing in the door dressed as always in jeans and a t-shirt. She flops on the couch and looks at me.
“You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”
“I’ll do the diagnosing, thank you. I do need a cup of coffee. Want one?”
She shakes her head. “Help yourself. I got nowhere to go.”
The coffee in the staff room needs warming and there is no milk, only little packets of powdered creamer that I absolutely detest. But I need the caffeine. I turn around, coffee in hand. Randy is standing in the doorway.
“Not a lot better than the break room at HQ. I thought psychologists made a ton of money.”
“We do. Only we spend it on leather couches, not coffee rooms.” We walk back to my office and sit. “So, how was the weekend? I missed seeing you on Friday.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I fell asleep. Rich didn’t want to wake me up.”
“And the weekend?”
“Terrible, like every other day. I can’t go out. I can’t stay home. I’m uncomfortable in my own skin.”
“Tell me.”
“I just did.” She splays her legs, puts her elbows on her knees and cups her hands across the back of her neck, her face turned to the floor. “I feel like I’m going crazy. I have these dreams where people are coming out of the ground. Dead people. Buried people. I can’t read. I can’t concentrate. I can’t do anything. I finally got Rich to go back to work because I thought it would be better than having him sit around the house staring at me, jumping up every time I move. But I can’t stand it. I check the windows and the doors. Every time there’s a noise I want to jump out of my skin. Talking about it only makes it worse.”
“Are you doing perimeter checks? Making sure all the doors are locked?”
“About a million times a day.”
“This is PTSD. Your brain is on overdrive, churning out chemicals from your alarm system. I have a model of the brain. Let me show you how it works.”
“I don’t care how my brain works, Doc, just make this stop. Please.” She grips her head in her hands, her bony little shoulders poking through the seams of her shirt.
“Most cops never have to shoot their guns in the line of duty unless they’re on the range. You took a life because you thought you were going to die. Your brain has to absorb what has happened, give it some meaning, learn from it, and then get rid of all the toxic stuff it doesn’t need.”
“What stuff?”
“The if-onlys and what-ifs. The idea that things could have turned out differently if only. You fill in the blanks.”
She leans forward. “That’s it. I keep thinking if only I ha
d let someone else take the call. If only I had waited another second, just one more second, and made sure she had a gun.”
“If you had waited, and she did have a gun, you’d be dead. It takes three-quarters of a second to move your gun from the holster to a cocked position.” I can’t remember where on earth I learned this or why I can remember it when I can’t remember what I just had for lunch.
“Maybe that would have been better.” A sudden torrent of tears washes down her cheeks. “I’m a cop because I want to help people, not kill them.”
“Randy, I’m concerned that you’re not sleeping. No one can function or get better without sleep. There’s medication that can help people with PTSD.”
“Uh-uh. No medication. That Ativan stuff the doctor gave me? Made me nuts. I felt like I’d been run over by an eighteen-wheeler.”
“The medication I’m talking about is for sleep and to stop the nightmares.”
“No. They won’t let me back to work if I’m on meds.”
“It’s only temporary, until you start sleeping again.”
“What don’t you understand about no?” She stands up. “I’m out of here.”
I stand up, ready to stop her. “Okay, I got it. No medication. Let’s talk about some other alternatives.”
“Such as?”
“Cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing…”
“Give me something I can pronounce, something that works for cops. You know, plain talk, no psychobabble.”
“Okay. How about talking to another cop? Someone with a lot of experience?”
“One of those peer-counselor types?”
“KPD doesn’t have a peer support program yet. I’m supposed to be setting one up this year.”
“So who left a flyer under my door? Some stuff about we know what you’re going through—we can help, we’ve been through it ourselves.” She pulls a crumpled piece of florescent pink paper from her pocket and hands it to me. “Keep it, it’s yours.”
“The person I’m thinking about is Eddie Rimbauer.”
“Him? He’s more of a joke than I am.”
“Eddie’s been through some hard times in his life, on the job and off, and he hasn’t always made the best choices. I know he’s a diamond in the rough, but only today he was asking about you, wanting me to tell you to keep your head up.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to anyone in the department about the shooting until the chief or the DA says I can.”
I hate this policy. When a cop’s in trouble they’re forbidden to talk to the very people who could support them. Although, given the turmoil in the department, only half the people are standing behind Randy and, from her point of view, for all the wrong reasons.
“Eddie’s like you, on leave and facing an uncertain future, meaning he doesn’t know if he’s going to be reinstated. You two actually have some things in common, hard as that may be to imagine.”
“Whatever. If you think it will help me.”
“I do think it would help, and it might just help Eddie, too.” Now all I have to do is get him to agree.
* * *
After Randy leaves I unfold the flyer she gave me and smooth it out on my desk. It announces the formation of a county-wide multidisciplinary peer support and crisis intervention team composed of volunteer cops, fire fighters, EMTs, dispatchers, chaplains, and therapists. Given the fact that someone found out where Randy lived and had the temerity to put a flyer under her door suggests that there are some ambulance chasers on the team as well. There are testimonials about how much the team’s free services have already helped various consumers, identified only by their initials. At the bottom of the page is a studio portrait of a smiling young blond, blue-eyed woman, Dr. Marvel Johnson. She has a string of letters after her name indicating that she is a psychologist, a certified trauma specialist, an alcohol counselor, and the totally-thrilled-to-be-helping-the-brave-men-and-women-of-public-safety founder of the team. I aim the flyer toward my wastebasket and miss.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Meeting at Fran’s was Eddie’s idea. “She can’t talk in a shrink’s office,” he told me on the phone. “Probably thinks the place is wired with a microphone that goes right to the chief’s office. My place is out of the question—it’d take me a month to clean it up and haul off the old beer cans.” There is a break in the conversation. “Old beer cans, Doc. Not new ones. I’m still on the wagon. And we can’t go to your place ‘cause I know how you feel about clients coming to your house. You try to bean ‘em in the head with a ten-pound weight.”
Poor Eddie. He was only trying to help me after Ben’s suicide. He came to my house, saw an open window, thought I was being burglarized and snuck in, trying to catch the thief. I heard him on the steps and freaked out. When he came into my bedroom, I jumped out of a closet and attacked him with a ten-pound hand weight. I missed, but just thinking about it today makes my cheeks burn.
“I thought you were a burglar, remember?”
“Yeah, well, whatever. Let’s meet at Fran’s. Out in back, in the garden. Fran never lets anyone but the worker bees use it. Tell Randy to come through the back gate, not the restaurant, that way she won’t run into any coppers.”
* * *
The garden behind Fran’s is no bigger than two parking spaces mashed together. We’re sitting on bent metal lawn chairs surrounded by old coffee cans filled with scraggly succulents reaching for the late afternoon sun. Eddie is dressed for the occasion, wearing a clean apron over his stained t-shirt.
“Beats me why the Doc here thinks I can help. Maybe because I made more mistakes in my life than you could ever dream of. I don’t believe in shrinks. I don’t believe in all that psychobabble kumbaya-you-tell-me-yours-I’ll-tell-you-mine bullshit.” Randy smiles the tiniest of smiles, hardly more than a twitch at the ends of her mouth. “Unfortunately, what I did believe in”—he makes a gesture with his hand, thumb to his mouth, miming downing a drink—”almost killed me. What you can learn from me is how not to do things.”
“I don’t drink. Never have. Hate the taste.” Randy is curled up in her chair with her legs tucked under her, only the tips of her sneakers sticking out from under her knees.
“So, how can I help?”
Randy scoots forward in her chair, stretches her legs out, and puts her hands over her cap, pulling the bill down over her face. I can see the tomboy in her, imagine her as a little girl, rough housing with her brothers, willing herself not to cry.
“You know what I did, right? I killed a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl because I thought she had a gun. It was a cell phone. I want to apologize to her mother, to her whole family. Nobody thinks this is a good idea. What do you think?”
“Bad idea. Never piss in your own canteen.”
Randy’s eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“An apology is the same as admitting you screwed up.”
“I did screw up, big time.”
“Let me tell you something,” Eddie leans in. “You’re a cop. It’s inevitable. You’re going to hurt somebody and somebody’s going to hurt you. Part of the job. You tell someone what to do and sometimes they don’t like it. And when they don’t like it, they fight back.” He leans back, hands folded over his belly. “Which would you rather have, a gold watch or a gold casket? You did the right thing. It was a good shoot.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What’s done is done. These people are coming after you. For Christ’s sake, don’t give them any help. You did the right thing. Don’t apologize.”
Randy’s face reddens. “I hate what I did. I’ll hate it all my life. That’s what I want to tell the mother. How is that admitting fault?”
“Because it is. I can’t explain it. It just is.” Eddie shifts around in his chair.
“That’s all anybody tells me. I heard it in the academy. I heard it from my brothers and my father and my husband. ‘Keep your mouth shut. Don’t admit anything. Don’t ever say you’re so
rry.’ My union rep? Same thing. Even my shrink agrees.” She pushes her chair back. The metal legs scrape over the concrete pad. “I made a mistake. Everyone tells me to man up and keep my mouth shut. I want to own up and admit it.” She crosses her arms over her chest, daring us to disagree.
Eddie looks at me. “I don’t know what else to say. Been there, done that. Beat myself up over shit I did and was a miserable son-of-a-bitch to everyone around me. It’s your choice.”
“I killed a pregnant girl who was trying to call her mother. What did you do?”
“Treated a sick addict like she was a piece of shit. My own wife, I’m talking about. Let me tell you something. In ten years nobody’s going to remember who you shot, why you shot her, or if you followed tactics. They’ll remember that you were the one who lived.”
Randy points to the back fence. “There are people out there walking around with my picture on a poster, demanding I go to jail. And why shouldn’t I? People who kill people should go to jail. I had a gun, she had a phone. It wasn’t fair.”
“The only unfair fight is the one you lose. If you’re in a fair fight, your tactics suck. I was an FTO. Know what I told my recruits? Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.” Now his face is scarlet. He swipes at his forehead and wipes his sweaty hands on his apron.
“Know your mistake? You think that kid was a victim. Let me tell you, there are no victims, only volunteers. She walked right into trouble. A cop tells you ‘get out of the car, put your hands where I can see ‘em,’ that’s what you’re supposed to do. Then you get to tell your bullshit story and whine for your mommy.”
Randy looks at me and back at Eddie. Her hands are in the air as though she’s about to clap them over her ears.
“Let me tell you something. You’re making your own trouble. Misery is optional. Try being happy for six months. If you don’t like it, I’ll refund your misery.” Eddie gets up, knocking his chair over. “Fucking A,” he says. “I need a drink,” and storms back into the restaurant.
The Right Wrong Thing Page 9