Vega tossed off a laugh. “More like avoiding them.” “Why is that?”
“I’m not allowed to talk about the shooting. And all their shit—stuff, sorry—it sort of gets under my skin. I’ve been yelling at my teenage daughter a lot and she doesn’t deserve it. Everything sets me off.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?”
“I did. We’re sort of on the outs at the moment. She runs an immigrant center—”
“Oh my.”
“Yeah, ‘oh my’ is right,” said Vega. “This whole situation has hurt her professionally. She’s hearing stuff that makes me sound like a mafia hit man.”
“Such as?”
“There’s this witness. A neighbor who claims I executed the suspect—shot him at point-blank range. My girlfriend wants me to tell her it’s not true. But I can’t.”
“Is it true?”
“Of course not!” His vehemence seemed to startle Cantor. Vega realized belatedly that the woman wouldn’t know what was true and what wasn’t.
“You can’t tell your girlfriend what you just told me?” asked Cantor.
“It’s not that simple,” Vega explained. “If I tell her what’s not true, then, in effect, I’m also telling her what is. My lawyer ordered me not to say anything. I’m already in trouble for some stupid comments I made at the scene. I can’t risk another mistake.”
“Have you told her that?”
“It wouldn’t make any difference.”
“Why is that?”
“Because she’s gotta deliver this keynote address to a bunch of immigrant groups this evening at Fordham University. She’s supposed to go up on stage and call for the district attorney to convene a grand jury against me.”
“And how do you feel about that?”
“How do you think I feel? Like she’s knifing me in the back.” Vega heard the anger in his voice and shook his head. “She’s got the clout to make it happen, too.”
“You must feel deeply betrayed.”
Vega sighed. “I do, of course. But in another way, I sort of get it. If you asked me to protect someone who did something very wrong, no matter how much I loved them, I couldn’t go against my conscience. That’s sort of what I’m asking of her.”
“And when you tell her that, what does she say?”
“I can’t tell her,” said Vega. “I can’t talk about any of this stuff without exploding.”
“And you’re exploding a lot, I gather.”
“Kind of.” He crossed and uncrossed his legs.
“Hmmm,” said Cantor. Vega didn’t like the sound of that. “Tell me,” she said. “Are you having a lot of dreams?”
Vega closed his eyes. He saw the woods. Shadows moving in the darkness. A noise like cannon fire. Four shots. Four punctuation marks that signaled the end of life as he knew it. His stomach roiled. Sweat gathered at the back of his neck. His mouth tasted like old pennies.
“I guess—I’m sort of getting these uh—physical reactions.”
“Post-traumatic stress.”
Vega made a face. “That’s for soldiers and rape victims and people who’ve survived atrocities. I’m a cop. Cops carry guns. Guns kill people. If I can’t handle the basics of my job, what kind of cop am I? Hell, what kind of man am I?”
“Is that what you’re worried about? That if you admit you’re having a hard time processing this, you’re less of a man?”
“Look”—Vega ran a hand through his hair—“I know I made a mistake. I know that. But Jesus—I should be doing better than I’m doing.”
“So that image of a police officer you had as a little boy—you’re afraid you’re not living up to the dream?”
“It was never my dream,” said Vega. “Maybe that’s the problem. Being a police officer was not a lifelong ambition for me. I wanted to be a guitarist in a rock band.”
“What happened?”
Vega shrugged. “Life got in the way I suppose. I had college loans to pay off. My girlfriend got pregnant. I became a cop for all the wrong reasons.” Vega ticked them off on his fingers now. “Security. A pension. Health insurance—”
“Oh come now, Jimmy.” Cantor regarded him over the tops of her glasses. “You’ve been a police officer for eighteen years. I very much doubt medical benefits kept you on the job.”
“No. I like the work,” he admitted. “I like making people feel safe and protected. I like the adrenaline rush of a good collar.” He closed his eyes and tried to put something into words he never had before. “I feel like—what I do matters. And when I’m doing it, I matter.”
“Then those are good reasons for why you stayed.”
“So how come I look in the mirror and feel like a fraud? All these other guys I work with—they wouldn’t be falling apart the way I am. What the hell is wrong with me?”