“Someone did die.”
“I know. Don’t you think I know that?”
“Simbi had a gun.”
“Yes.”
“You told him to drop the gun. He didn’t.”
“That’s right.”
“Instead, he raised his hands.”
“Yes.”
“The gun was in his hand.”
“Yes.”
“You killed him.”
“Yes.”
“Was he trying to surrender?”
“Yes . . . I mean . . . I don’t know.”
Neither of us spoke for a long time. The silence was filled with the shouting in my head.
You didn’t know. You didn’t. He could have been raising his hands to surrender. Only you didn’t wait to find out. Instead, you shot him. You shot him because that was what you were taught to do. You shot him because those are the rules. A man has a gun. You tell him to drop it. He raises the gun, you don’t take that chance. You shoot him. Period. There’s no room for argument here. No discussion. You shoot first and ask questions later, because if you stop to ask questions first, you could be killed. Others—civilians, the people you’re paid to serve and protect—they could be killed, too. So you discharged your weapon. A righteous shoot. A textbook shoot. Everyone agreed. Everyone that mattered, anyway. But everyone wasn’t there, were they? You were there. And you don’t know. He could have been giving up. It only would have taken a second to find out for sure. Except you didn’t have a second. A second’s too long. A second is an eternity. It’s the difference between life and death. That’s how you were trained to think, and you were trained well. All sevens all the time. If only he had dropped the gun. You gave him a chance to drop the gun. No, not a chance. A choice. It’s stupid to give them a chance. They could kill you if you gave them a chance. So you say, “Drop the gun. Or die.” Simbi didn’t drop the gun. He raised his hands. And that was that. Except, what if. . . You never thought about that, did you? The great what if. You never considered the possibility. Not in all these years. The possibility that you were wrong. You only pretended to deal with it. Even when you first went to Jilly you were more interested in her intelligent eyes and athletic body than you were in dealing with the truth of that long moment in the convenience store parking lot. The truth that you might have made a mistake. An error in judgment. And when the dream went away, well, out of sight, out of mind, right? Only it wasn’t out of mind, was it? And now. . . .
“Fuck.”
I noticed for the first time that Jillian was on her phone.
“I’ll send his file right over . . . No . . . I appreciate this, Doctor. Thank you.”
She hung up the phone and wrote on a notepad printed with her name and address. After a few flourishes of pen against paper, she tore the top sheet off of the pad and gave it to me. I stared at it dumbly while she spoke to me.
“This guy is the best. Dr. John Ridge. You have an appointment with him at 10:00 A.M. next Tuesday. I’ll arrange to send your file over.”
“Jill—”
“Promise me that you’ll keep the appointment.”
“Jill—”
“Promise me, McKenzie.”
“I did the right thing when I shot Simbi, Jill. It was the right thing to do.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
A few minutes later, Jill was leading me to her door. My cell phone rang, and I paused to answer it.
“Got a pencil?” Bobby Dunston asked.
“Just a sec.” I took a pen from my pocket. “Go ‘head.”
Bobby recited Richard Nye’s current address. I wrote it down on the back of the sheet of paper that Jillian had given me.
“Thanks, Bobby,” I said.
Jill was staring at me when I deactivated the cell.
“Don’t forget,” she said. “Tuesday morning.”
“I’ve been such a prick to you, Jilly, yet twice now you’ve been there to help me. Why is that?”
“Don’t worry about it, McKenzie. You’ll be getting a bill.”
11
I took a deep breath, let half out, and began marching down a long corridor on red carpet that looked like it hadn’t been vacuumed since Bill was president. I halted at an apartment door, made sure it matched the address Bobby had given me, and took another deep breath, steeling myself, getting ready. I was nervous, but I was also happy—happy to be out and doing. I didn’t want to think about my conversation with Jillian. I didn’t want to linger over the experience at all.