“What’s up with the dreams? Is David the detective you shot?”
She nodded slowly. “David Martin. Dirty as they come. And I came this close to getting indicted for his murder. Murder, Baldwin. He breaks into my house, attacks me, and I’m the one who nearly takes the fall. I don’t know how he could do that to me. How he could put me in the position he put me in. Trying to bribe me to let him go on his happy little way.” She snorted in disgust, shaking her head.
“There’s more, isn’t there, Taylor?” Baldwin reached over and took her hand. She wanted to pull away, but resisted the urge. It was time to get it off her chest.
“Yeah, well, we were lovers, briefly. No one but Sam knows, though I think Fitz suspects.”
Baldwin felt a pang of jealousy and shoved it aside. The man was dead, for God’s sake. He had no business being jealous of a ghost. But this was a ghost who was haunting his woman’s dreams.
He understood, though. Ghosts visited him as well. Every night since the shooting, the three men who had been shot came and sat on the foot of his bed, watching him. He shook off the memory. “So you dream about him?”
“I dream about his death. Same dream every night since I shot him. He gets shot, goes down, and I go down with him. He’s decomposing, so am I. His skull turns to say something to me, and then I wake up. It’s expanded recently. All the victims I haven’t saved show up, too. This massive field of graves, and they’re all talking to me.”
“What do they say?”
“‘Help me. It’s your fault.’ I thought I heard something different this time. He said, ‘Go on.’ I don’t really know what that means.”
Baldwin sat next to her and took her other hand. “I think it means he’s telling you he doesn’t blame you for shooting him. Were you in love with him?”
Taylor shook her head. “That’s what’s so awful. I wasn’t. I was lonely, and he was there. It didn’t even last very long. It was a casual thing for me, but, yes, he loved me and wanted more. I broke it off, then he approached me to keep my mouth shut about his little venture, and I just snapped. I felt like he’d betrayed more than just my body, you know? He put my whole career on the line. If I turned him in to Internal Affairs, I might have taken the brunt of it. He could have said that I was in on it from the beginning, made it a ‘he said/she said.’ IA doesn’t like to see their cops embroiled in illegal doings, you know? Especially the female cops.
“But the worst of it was the satisfaction I felt when I saw him lying dead on the floor. I felt like he deserved it. And that’s just so wrong.”
“That’s a lot of guilt to be carrying around, Taylor. It wasn’t your fault you had to shoot him. He did attack you. These things happen.”
“‘These things happen,’” she echoed. “That’s what I just don’t get. I don’t know why these things ‘happen.’ Why do they happen?”
“If I could tell you that, Taylor, I would be God. And I’m not.”
She looked at him. “After all you’ve seen, you still believe in God?”
“I never said that. I just don’t understand. But I have a confession to make. Earlier tonight, when I kissed you, I thought I might have a glimmer. When I realized you understood what happened in Virginia, that you didn’t judge me, I felt like I had been forgiven. By whom, I’m not sure. I wasn’t looking for it, but it’s there. I don’t know what to do with it, and I don’t know if it changes anything, but it’s there.”
Taylor felt tears in her eyes. She had asked for forgiveness a million times, and she never felt as if she’d gotten it. But as she looked at Baldwin, she realized that it had happened a long time ago. She just wasn’t willing to forgive herself.
They both jumped as the phone rang. Taylor lunged for it. “Fitz?”
Baldwin could hear his voice booming through the phone. “How’d ya know it was me?”
“I was hoping. Did you get anything?”
“Yeah, I think we did. Are you coming in?”
She gave Baldwin a smile and squeezed his hand. “We’re on our way.”
THE
SIXTH
DAY
61
Sam walked out the main doors to the parking lot, only to see Dr. Gerald Peterson hailing her down.