Rage Against the Dying

Fifty-two





Coleman had tried her best to act tough, but was too much in shock to speak much, which was just as well. I spent some hours with the investigators and, to give the devil his due, with Roger Morrison, who showed up and played nice with both the metro cops and the sheriff’s deputies. I agreed to come in on Monday for interviews with the officer-involved-shooting folks, though it was going to be a little dicey given the fact I was decommissioned.

But before any of the conversation, Coleman and Max were both brought out on stretchers. Both on oxygen. Good lord.

“Max?” I asked. “He didn’t have a pulse.”

The paramedic nodded. “Slight. He’s barely stable. But alive.”

There’s that nightmare where you’ve accidentally killed someone. You can’t bring them back to life and you know you’re going to have to spend the rest of your life with that on your conscience. Then you wake up and you realize they’re alive after all.

And they’re probably going to send your ass to jail. My sense of euphoria upon hearing that Max was alive was only slightly tempered by that realization. Probably later I would care more about going to prison for Peasil’s death and the subsequent cover-up, but in that moment I was one hundred percent glad that at least I had finally stopped the dying.

I went back to my conversation with Morrison, and when I finally thought to look at my watch I saw the time matched the darkness I was just beginning to notice. The paramedics urged me to get into the other ambulance for a ride to the hospital, but I only wanted to get back to Coleman’s place. Just when I thought it was all over but the shouting, I spotted Carlo’s Volvo parked well beyond the crime scene tape, lights off, his face leaning forward and peering intently through the windshield as if he was trying to watch a drive-in movie in the rain.

Despite having his hands full with keeping the media away from the scene, Morrison must have been keeping a close eye on me. “Are you okay?” he asked, probably meaning whether any of the carnage covering my body was my own.

I nodded without looking away from Carlo.

“Your husband,” he said. “I met him when he arrived and told him he could stay as long as he didn’t get out of the car.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“Yes,” Three-Piece said. Before answering further he took uncustomarily harsh care of a pushy reporter. “Sir! Please remove your f*cking camera from the agent’s face. She’s not going to say anything. Get this man out of here.” He gestured to a nearby patrolman to escort the reporter out of the scene. Then he looked at his watch. “It was about three hours ago.”

“He’s been sitting there for three hours? Just sitting there? How did he know I was here?”

Morrison shrugged, having spent his supply of nice guy. “How the f*ck should I know?” he snapped. “I’ve been a little busy.” Then, possibly recalling I’d been a little busy myself, he said, “I called him. You should go now,” Morrison said, sounding like letting me go was against his better judgment.

“No. Coleman,” I said. “I should stop by the hospital.”

“Don’t worry, she won’t be left alone tonight, and her brother is flying in tomorrow.”

“Nice. Family is nice. She’s a hero, Agent Morrison. I want you to know that.”

He made a kiss-kiss sound and shoved his thumb in the direction of the Volvo. “Get the hell out of here. Go on.”

Muttering “prick” softly and without any energy, I left the scene and approached Carlo’s car, weaving once or twice like a drunk. He got out, helped me into the passenger’s side without comment, and got back behind the wheel. The Pugs had been in the backseat and now tried to scramble through the space over the console to get to a lap, any lap. I blocked them with the towel one of the paramedics had given me.

“I probably shouldn’t have brought them,” Carlo said, and started to shoo them back, “I thought … I don’t know what I thought.”

“You thought right. I just don’t want to get … on them.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, meaning the same thing Morrison had meant.

I shifted my right shoulder tentatively to check on the rotator cuff, which I had wrenched a bit dragging the corpse of the homeless guy. I joked, of course. “Sure, just a hard day at the office.”

He didn’t smile, sitting there staring briefly at the real me for the first time. “I mean you should go to the hospital. I mean … is that your blood?”

I looked down at what was mostly everyone’s blood but my own. “No. And I’m not in shock and not hurt beyond maybe some torn cartilage.” I could hear my voice beginning to slur. “I’m just a little nauseous from the adrenaline drain.”

“I watched you moving around for a long time and it seemed you were so in control of yourself, but if you have any doubts we should go to the hospital.”

“Not tonight.”

“You’re sure?”

“Right now all I need to do is clean up.”

We pulled out of the packed dirt parking lot and into the street heading north, in the direction of his house while I sat quiet, with the horrible images of events just passed already playing in my head in preview of coming attractions. It was a twenty-mile drive to the subdivision in Catalina, but I don’t remember it. I came back into focus when he pulled the car into the garage, and I told myself I should get out and go inside but just sat there. He came around to the passenger side and opened the back door first, taking the Pugs one at a time and placing them on the garage floor because it was too high for them to jump. I had neglected to fasten my seat belt and he put a hand under my elbow to help me out, but I shrank from his touch so he backed away and I got myself out of the car.

I staggered through the door into the house, where the Pugs danced around me, sniffing the blood on my jeans. That did it. Not wanting to further taint the place, without pause I kept going through the living room and out the back door, shutting it behind me so the dogs couldn’t follow, into the depths of the yard that by this time was lit by a full moon overhead.

Some people’s lives aren’t meant to include relationships. Innocent people can get hurt that way. I had always been right about this.

I was looking at all the rocks that Carlo and I had collected, and which I had laid out in meandering lines around the yard like a labyrinth. By some grisly serendipity known only on nights like this I spotted, of all the hundreds of rocks, the piece of rose quartz I had picked up the day I killed Peasil. I picked it up. I pitched it as hard as I could over the back fence. Because of the moonlight I could see it smack into a prickly pear and knock off one of its burgundy fruits.

“What are you doing?” Carlo asked.

I hadn’t been aware that he had followed me out back, and now I didn’t care that he could see I was crazy. It didn’t matter anymore and it was almost a relief that I didn’t have to pretend to be normal.

“I need to get rid of all these,” I said. “I have to get them all out of this space.” So I started throwing them. I picked up a small granite rock shot through with mica, and tossed it, too. Then I picked up a piece of gneiss and threw that. Then something I couldn’t name—something metamorphic. It wasn’t like I was angry or nuts or making a dramatic statement, just very methodically giving the place back to Jane. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I can’t tell you how long I was at it or how much of myself I’d gotten rid of over the back fence before Carlo figured it was time to stop me.

He took my wrist, uncurled my fingers, and made me drop what was in my hand. “There are so many rocks here,” he said, “and it’s late. You can do the rest tomorrow.”

I obeyed. Walking back to the house I stopped at the garden hose, trying to turn it on so I could hose myself down outside, but Carlo led me inside the house and straight into the bathroom, where he unbuttoned my stained blouse and tugged down my blood-dampened jeans that had tightened onto my skin. I let him, putting my hand on the edge of the counter for balance rather than touching his shoulders when I lifted my feet one by one. He put me into the shower and turned on the water. I stood there, my brain sending out messages that I should be washing myself, but the rest of my body wasn’t responding. Then the shower door opened and Carlo stepped in with me, his own clothes off.

I don’t know why I flinched.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, his eyes as glistening as the shower walls.

There was nothing of man and woman in the act of cleansing. While I stared at the floor of the shower he washed me very gently, two or three times over, horrified, I imagine, by the residue of blood on my body and yet obeying some greater call of servanthood. He rubbed more gently over the rose tattoo on my chest as if seeing it for the first time and afraid of smudging it. He tilted my head back just enough to wash my hair without the suds running into my eyes and only considered his job done when he looked down at our feet and saw that the water was no longer running pink.

He turned off the water, opened the shower door, and stepped out, returning quickly with a towel with which he dried me carefully while I stared at an unknown woman in the mirror over the sink. Carlo must have found places on my ankles where Emery had knicked them with the knife when he cut the tape off me. He got some antibiotic ointment and a couple of Band-Aids from under the sink and took care of the cuts. He didn’t realize how spent I was until my knees buckled. He held me up despite my feeble protest.

“It’s a warm night,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll mind your head being damp, yes?”

I didn’t answer. I let him move me like a mannequin to the bed, which he had turned down on my side, and help me in. He went away but returned with a little water. He opened my nightstand drawer where I hid my meds and rifled through the bottles as if familiar with them.

“I can’t find your sleeping pills,” he said.

It was not a time for denial. “I left them where I was staying,” I said, shivering a little as I felt the cool pillow against my wet scalp. “But I have some Valium in the top drawer hidden in an aspirin bottle.”

“I know.” He put one pill in my hand, then a second one when I didn’t lower my hand. For good measure he got an antihistamine out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and gave me that, too, like a sleeping cocktail.

The Valium started to kick in. He looked at me before he flicked off the light. Last thing I remember is looking back at him, feeling the satin of Jane’s pink bedspread under my fingertips and thinking, without knowing why, say my name. Not Honey, or O’Hari. Preferably not Jane. Even if you regret marrying me, at least please say my name so I know what woman I am.

He did not. He said something else. The light went off. He didn’t get into bed with me before I fell asleep and the next morning when I woke up I could tell from the straightened bedding on his side that he hadn’t slept with me.

You don’t get much of what you want. It’s surprising that there can be any happiness at all if it’s a matter of getting what you want.