“I wanted to get through this and get back to work, if you don’t mind my being blunt.”
“Blunt works here. Honesty is even better. I’ll take both.” He took a quiet moment in the soft chair facing Nikki’s to study her intake questionnaire. She watched him for reactions but got none. His face had such a flat affect and natural calm she decided never to play poker with Dr. Lon King. Primarily, Heat considered herself fortunate to have been able to make an appointment on the same day as her stupid mandate from Irons. She hoped this meeting would be short because one of Detective Feller’s pals from the Taxi Squad had just come through and located the cab Don’s shooter had commandeered. It was parked under an entrance ramp to the Bruckner in the Bronx. Parts scavengers and vandals had picked it clean overnight, from medallion to copper wiring, but Forensics had it now, and she was eager to get back to see if it offered any clues to his identity. Like, did he take off his gloves and leave prints? It was then that Nikki realized King was asking her something.
“Pardon me?”
“I just asked if you have experienced any loss of concentration lately.”
“No,” she said, hoping the first question wasn’t pass/fail. “I feel sharp.”
“I deal with a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder, and I’m accustomed to police officers who are wired to prove they’re invulnerable. So please know that there’s no shame in anything you are experiencing or in what you share here.” Heat nodded and smiled enough to signal her acceptance of that, all the while worried this man could sideline her indefinitely with the stroke of a pen. “And, to be clear, I have no interest in keeping you in treatment,” he said, as if reading her mind. Or just knowing it. He continued to ask her questions, some of which she’d already covered in writing on the intake. About her sleep habits, alcohol consumption, whether she felt jumpy or frequently startled. If the shrink felt satisfied or troubled by her responses, Lon King displayed no tells.
He said, “I suppose we can stipulate the answer to one question is a yes—that you have, in your life, witnessed life-threatening events.”
“Homicide detective,” she answered, pointing at herself with both hands.
“What about personally, though? Outside the job?” She shared as briefly as she dared, without disrespecting the process, events of her mother’s murder. He paused when she finished, then, mellow as a smooth jazz announcer, said, “At nineteen, that can be formative. Do you ever experience things that make you feel you are revisiting or reliving that tragedy?”
Nikki wanted to laugh and say, “Only all the time,” but feared she might bury herself in months of off-duty shrinkage, so she said, “In the most positive way. My work puts me in contact with victims and their loved ones. Whatever intersection there is with my own life, I try to utilize to help them and my investigative work.”
King didn’t race over to slap a gold star on her crown. All she got was an “I see” before he asked, “And what about things that you associate with your mother’s murder? Do you ever find yourself avoiding people or things that remind you of it?”
“Huh …” Heat slumped back against the cushion and looked at the ceiling. A second hand ticked softly on a clock behind her, and through the closed window behind him, she could hear the reassuring flow of York Avenue twelve stories below. Nikki’s only answer was her avoidance of the piano in the living room. She told him that she couldn’t bring herself to play it and explained why while he just listened. Another aversion, one that hadn’t occurred to her until then, was the arm’s length relationship with her father. Nikki had always attributed that distance to him, but to raise it in that session could unseal Pandora’s box, and so she left it at the piano, and even asked if that was a bad thing.
“There’s no good or bad. We’ll just talk and let a whole picture emerge.”