Snapshot

He forced himself to let go. Hal sighed, then ran off to show the nickel to one of his friends. Davis sat and pulled his shoes and socks back on, then trudged across the road toward Chaz.

It twisted him up inside. That hour had been wonderful, but the harsh reality was that this wasn’t his son. The real Hal wouldn’t remember this event, or the other dozen times that Davis had come to visit in the Snapshot. The real Hal would instead go on thinking that his father never visited.

“Not fair,” Chaz said, hands in pockets. “You should be able to see him whenever you want, Davis.”

“It’s only temporary,” Davis said.

“Temporary for six months now.”

“We’ll figure out custody soon. My wife—”

“Your ex-wife.”

“—Molly is just protective. She’s always been like that. Doesn’t want Hal getting caught between us.”

“It’s still a raw deal,” Chaz said. Then he sighed. “Food?”

“Sure.” Time to deal with his memories of Hal would be welcome. Davis needed to recover, it seemed, from his break to recover.

They chose Fong’s, a place around the corner that Davis had always liked. On the way in he froze, turning to look over his shoulder at someone who had just passed. Had that been . . . the woman from the diner?

No. Different clothing. Still, it left him thinking, clutching the number in his pocket. They went inside and were seated in a little booth by the window.

“Do you ever wish,” Chaz said, “that we could just live in here? You know, in a Snapshot?”

“You’re the one who’s always reminding me it isn’t real.”

“Yeah,” Chaz said, sipping the water the waitress brought. “But . . . I mean, do you ever wonder?”

“If it’s exactly like the outside world,” Davis said, “then what would be the point?”

“Confidence,” Chaz said, staring out the window. “In here . . . I just, I can do things. I don’t worry as much. I’d like to be able to take that with me to the outside, you know? Or stay in here, let days pass, instead of switching the place off.”

Davis grunted, taking a sip of his own water. “I’d like that.”

“You would? I’m surprised.”

Davis nodded. “I’d like to see what kind of difference I make,” he said softly. “You know, we call them Deviations. Problems that we introduce into the system. But there’s another way to look at them. Everything that changes in here, everything different, happens because we cause it. I’d like to see that run for a week. A month. A year.”

“Huh. You think it would be better or worse than the real world in a year? Because of us.”

“I don’t know that I care,” Davis said. “So long as it’s different. Then I’d know I meant something.” He fished in his pocket, got out the woman’s number. “We don’t let them live long enough in here to develop into distinct people.”

“They’re just dupes though.”

They ordered. Davis got his favorite, cashew chicken. Chaz asked the waitress what the spiciest thing on the menu was, and ordered that. Then he asked for mustard to come with it.

Davis smiled, watching out the window. He’d hoped to catch a glimpse of Molly as she came to get Hal, but he couldn’t spot the boy in the park. She’d fetched him already.

“Is it . . . always like this?” Chaz asked softly. “Police work. The things we saw back there.”

“You weren’t on any murder cases in Mexico City?”

Chaz shook his head. “I was a traffic cop there too. Never even saw a real car wreck; Mexico City had already outlawed manual-driving cars. Spent my time yelling at kids for jaywalking. That’s why I kept pushing for transfers. I wanted to land somewhere I could actually be a cop.”

Davis broke his chopsticks apart and rolled them together to clear the splinters. “Well,” he said softly, “yes. Real police work was a lot like this. Except for the times when it wasn’t, which was most days.”

“There you go again,” Chaz said, grinning. “Not making sense. Contradicting yourself.”

“It always makes sense when I explain it, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“Being a cop, a detective on real cases, is mostly about boredom. Sitting around doing nothing, pushing paper, talking to people. Waiting. It’s about waiting for something to go wrong. And when we get called, when we have something to do, it means that by definition we’re too late.

“I always imagined serving justice, fixing problems. But most of the time we aren’t saviors. We arrive in time to see someone dead, and maybe we catch the person who did it. But that doesn’t matter to the people who were killed. For them we’re really just . . . witnesses.” He looked down. “I tell myself that at least someone was there.”

They ate in silence. The cashew chicken wasn’t as good as Davis remembered it being. Too salty. He spent the time staring at the woman’s number.

I need something like this, he thought, turning it over in his fingers. Her number on one side. Death on the other—the address of the school. He flipped it back over. I need a new start, in real life.

He had to get over Molly. He knew he had to get over Molly. See other people. Even though he’d held out hope through the divorce.

But this number itself . . . it was a trap. He couldn’t call a woman and lie to her, pretending he’d met her for real. It was a crutch. He just needed to change his life.

You’re planning a change. Warsaw Street. He wouldn’t have much time to get there after spying on the Photographer at 19:30.

“You going to call that?” Chaz asked as they finished up.

Davis turned it over again, then balled it up. “What’s the point?” Davis said. “Let’s go catch a bad guy.”

He left the little slip of paper on the table beside his uneaten fortune cookie.





Eight