Clyde opened one eye.
“Yeah, I know. That bomb kinda blew my shit apart, too. Okay, it totally blew my shit apart. My therapist would tell me to spend a month binge-watching Netflix before I reengage.” I rubbed my palms on my pants to wipe away the sudden sweat. “But we can hold it together until she’s found.”
Clyde looked like he was having no trouble whatsoever holding it all together.
“Right,” I said. “I’m the weak link. Thanks for the reminder.”
I crushed out the cigarette, stood, and went inside to take a shower.
At work an hour later, I dropped my duffel at my desk and went hunting for my boss.
Clyde and I found Captain Mauer one floor up, staring forlornly at a coffee vending machine. The overhead fluorescents turned his gray hair yellow and carved canyons into his cheeks. He’d once had a gut you could rest a plate on. But lately his uniform was approaching baggy, draping over his six-foot-four frame and held in place with a belt and a prayer.
I’d asked him about the weight loss; he said that after his last visit to the doctor, his wife had put him on a diet. No processed foods. No sugar. Effing vegetables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Said he figured it was for the best, not having so much dead weight to haul around. But with all those damned vegetables, he did wonder how rabbits found the energy to hop.
As I watched, he reached out and smacked a fist against the side of the vending machine. The machine rattled into compliance, dropping a paper cup into the chute. Nothing wrong with his right hook.
He looked up when he heard us coming and his expression went soft. I was Mauer’s youngest cop and the only female, and the paternalism he showed toward me was just a slightly weightier version of the one he extended to all his officers. After the pileup of bodies during the last murder investigation I’d been involved in, Mauer had accepted my side of things without reservation. He’d had my back in the follow-up investigation by the Colorado Bureau of Investigations and the DA’s office and had never once lost confidence in me or my story.
Now as I approached, I worked to summon an expression that conveyed both a reasonable level of concern over what had happened and a quiet confidence that I was handling things just fine, so he’d let me keep handling them. Chin up. Shoulders squared.
His eyes narrowed as I approached. “You’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Putting on your Marine face.”
“Au contraire. This is my coolly competent face.”
“Well, it looks like crap. And you didn’t tell me you’d been hurt.”
I waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve been hurt worse shaving my legs.”
The machine stuttered and fell quiet. He stared at the empty cup, then grabbed the machine and shook it.
“People have died doing that,” I offered.
“They’re amateurs.” A sudden spurt of coffee poured into the cup. He nodded with satisfaction and raised an eyebrow at me. “You look like you stepped into a wasp’s nest and are mighty pissed off about it.”
“Day in the life, right?”
“It would be normal to be angry.”
Deep breath. Calm expression. “Might be I’m a little angry.”
“Hm.”
“The guy did try to blow us up.”
“You got that going. What else you hiding behind that Marine facade?”
The best way to lie was to stick as close to the truth as possible. “What happened today was nothing more than a regular day in Iraq. Been there, done that, got the medal. It’s not a problem for me. I want to stay on the case.”
Mauer folded his arms. “Parnell—”
“Beyond this weekend, I mean. If we haven’t found her by then.”
“Patrolling getting a little dull for you? Look, Sydney, you have to understand my position. My first duty is to DPC. My second duty is to you. I’m not sure keeping you on the case is good for either of those.”
“I’m already in. Let me help bring it home. Bring her home.”
He scratched at his cheek. “You’ve already done more for your country than ninety-nine percent of us. It’s okay to take a break and let others pick up some of the slack.”
“Fobbit,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Didn’t your counselor say you’re supposed to avoid stressful situations and focus on healing?”
I folded my arms. “I’m a good dog for this fight.”
“Uh-huh. ’Cause the Feds and Denver PD and Thornton PD and the Adams County Sheriff and the Colorado bureau, not to mention TSA and Homeland Security—all those guys, they ain’t enough. They need a railroad cop, of all damn things.”
“It’s just for a few days. And if you sideline me and things go down badly, it will make me certifiable.”
He closed his eyes and heaved a sigh. “You’re already certifiable.”
I waited.
He turned back to the machine. “Coffee? Black, right?”
I forced my shoulders down. “Yes.”
He handed me the newly filled paper cup and fed more coins into the machine.
“What I wish,” he said, “is that you’d take some time for yourself. A vacation, or something. Give yourself a chance to heal. You told me you took this job so you could get some distance from things.”
“I am healed. And I don’t like vacations. I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“You thought of getting a hobby?”
“I have one. Marksmanship.”
He rolled his eyes at me. A cup dropped into place. The machine whirred. Apparently it had learned not to argue with John Mauer.
“Therapy has been good.” I resisted the urge to cross my fingers and hide them behind my back. “I’m not saying it’s all marshmallows and lite beer. But the therapist did tell me that I need to stay engaged. That I shouldn’t back down from what upsets me.” Now I did cross my fingers. “If you take me off this case, it could actually be a bad thing.”
He handed me the coffee. “That sounds like a bunch of bullshit.”
“A lot of psychotherapy sounds like bullshit. Doesn’t make it wrong. And why insist I get counseling if you won’t let me follow their advice?”
“Because I might have a better idea even than your counselor what price you’ll pay if things go seriously south.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I worked the railway bombing in Madrid,” he said. “Back in 2004. A hundred and ninety-two dead. Nearly two thousand injured.”
“That’s not going to happen here.”
“We hope it’s not,” he said. “But the point I want to make is that after I arrived, they were still cleaning up corpses. Still trying to figure out which heads went with which bodies. I was so shaken up those first days, I couldn’t sleep. Every time I ate, I threw it back up.”
“John,” I said softly. He looked at me, his eyes both wary and tender. “It’s not like this body was my first. Not the bomb, either.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes, opened them again. “I know that. Damn it, I know that. And I keep asking myself if that makes things better for you, or worse.”