She’d had a boyfriend once who’d been a swimmer. She hadn’t quite believed him when he’d talked about the sedative effects the sounds and smells of the pool, any pool, had on him and how they eased his mind, the sharp tang of chlorine in the air, the thumping splash of a flip turn, the whistle of a swim coach. Sitting in the Sixth District locker room, she now knew exactly what that boy had meant.
She studied her blue uniform hanging on her locker door, cleaned and pressed, the plastic covering from the dry cleaner’s now torn off and crumpled on the floor like a shed skin. Her gun belt rested at her side on the bench. She stood, rubbed her thumb over the yellow police department patch with the blue crescent sewn onto one sleeve of her uniform shirt. She touched the plastic name tag that read M. COUGHLIN pinned onto the pocket.
Her plan had been to return to work recharged and ready for anything. She’d wanted to rest while she didn’t have to work. That was why she’d rented a cottage on the beach those first two weeks of her suspension. She wanted to come back to the job and the city strong and clearheaded. Calm. Instead, standing there, the day she’d longed for finally arrived, she felt raw and hollowed out inside. The free time had revealed a pit at her core that was bottomless and lightless, smooth and cold to the touch. It was more than sleepless nights and whiskey that ate at her. She felt like a parasite had burrowed through her. She feared that maybe it remained inside her, chewing. Was that the noise she heard when the house was quiet? The gnawing away of her insides? She couldn’t figure out who or what she was afraid of anymore. The past? The future?
She folded her hands over her badge and closed her eyes. She promised herself again she was safe now. She was being ridiculous. Her life was different now than it had been a year ago. She was different now. The evidence was everywhere around her. Ironclad evidence. Be a good cop, a smart cop, she told herself. Trust the evidence. The silver-haired man was not coming to get her. There had been nothing supernatural about Frank Sebastian. Nothing.
Maureen knew that the power to haunt her was power she gave him. His specter was her creation. She was being silly, a child who missed her night-light. Frank Sebastian wasn’t under her bed. He wasn’t out there on the streets. He wasn’t in a big house on the park. He was dead. He was staying dead, and she had run so far and changed so much that his ghost, should it ever manage to sneak out of hell, could never find her. Would never recognize her. She would stop going out at night looking for him. She wouldn’t take so much into her own hands anymore. That would be a start. She’d let the devil out, like Preacher had said. Now leave him out there, she thought. Leave him out there in the dark. He didn’t need her help with his work. And she didn’t need his help with hers.
She touched her shoulder. With her fingertips, under the collar of her T-shirt, she could feel the lingering bruised and tender indentations Patrick’s teeth had left in her skin.
*
She’d called Patrick and asked him over to her house two nights ago, after her conversation with Preacher about the FBI agent, too wired to sleep after three whiskeys. She’d paced the house for an hour, feeling like she’d burst. She needed a respite, a release from her own head.
Patrick had brought her more pills, though she hadn’t asked for them when she’d called him. Stepping through the front door, he’d held out the plastic bag to her as if it were a bouquet of flowers. She’d accepted his gift with an embarrassed grin, whisking it away, swallowing one pill dry as she walked to the bathroom. She knew his bringing these pills to her without her asking for them first constituted a bad sign, and maybe a bad turn in their relationship, but she decided at the time that she’d worry about that later. She had other things on her mind for the immediate future.
In the bathroom, she’d put the pills with the others in an old orange prescription bottle. She took one more with a handful of water. She heard the door open and the bottles clink as Patrick got a beer from her fridge. She hardly drank beer. She realized she kept it in the house for him. She’d looked away from the mirror as she closed the medicine cabinet.
*