Before I Wake (16 page)

Bruce glanced over at her. “I think I flipped from the anger to depression to emptiness in one particularly ugly weekend. Life just hurt.”

“I’m sorry.” There weren’t words for this hurt, and she didn’t try to find any.

“So am I.”

He looked across the street, thinking, then nodded to himself and went on. “I ended up sitting in church one day. A Wednesday, I think it was. I’d followed some good-looking lady inside. Don’t ask me what I was thinking or what I was wearing or what I thought I’d say to her if I caught up with her. Turns out a guy we both know was there. Remember old man Cayger? The guy that used to sell those blistering hot polish sausages from that street cart?”

“Sure. He was a fixture in the neighborhood.”

“There was some kind of weeknight prayer service happening. Anyway, we got to talking. And I got to deciding it was okay to think there was a God in charge of this world and of making things right, and it wasn’t Bruce.”

“You always knew that.”

“After so many years of Catholic school, I should have. But it started to mean something again that night, religion. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I do.” Faith could be set aside as a passing piece in life, but eventually it moved up in importance relative to everything else in life. Family, career, health, possessions—they all crashed as the years passed by—and at some point religion started to look like the one stable thing left in life.

“I bumped back into religion again. I didn’t go looking for it, but I was at least smart enough to see what it was I’d rediscovered. Substance, in the person of Jesus.” Bruce shifted in his seat, looking marginally embarrassed at the emotion in the history he was telling. He glanced over at her. “You know Jesus?”

“Not as well as I need to,” she replied, not minding the turn he’d taken in the conversation. She had a feeling if she didn’t hear the details tonight, he’d tuck the matter back into his past and she’d just be left with her questions.

“Same boat here—I’m learning.” Bruce sighed. “I don’t know if I can explain it, Rae. All that stuff in the Bible that Jesus said and did—it always ended with Jesus saying ‘Follow Me.’ As if that was the answer to the rest of the questions and decisions and confusion in life.

“That Wednesday night—I was a man seeing life as something to be endured, who suddenly encountered in Jesus someone who said life is special and there’s something more to be found—so follow me. And I did. I made the choice to say yes and mean it.

“I was too old to make it the partial kind of decision, the check-it-out-and-see-what-I-think-of-this, kind of toe-in-the-water approach. I’d had a lifetime messing up my life and I just wanted that whole swamp turned over to someone else to fix. I started going to church again, that prayer meeting gathering, and a Sunday service. I found an old copy of the Bible my cousin had left around and started reading it.

“I’m not sure God was particularly thrilled to get me in the sad shape I was in, but I’m walking around proof that people can change. You wouldn’t have liked me back then, Rae, in the months after I left the force. You’ve got a good heart, you’re kind, you were always willing to take a lot of grief from me after bad days on the job and never give it back—but even you would have walked away from me back then and had cause. It took about a year of God going after my insides before the anger of the past broke. It healed slowly, that hurt, that sense of having failed to make a difference, but the past finally started to go to rest.

“From there, in a very long roundabout way, I ended up here, in Justice, with a storefront detective agency, an old restored car, a big old house becoming a place that feels like home, and something to do with my days that occasionally feels useful again.”

His words ended and he rubbed the back of his neck before looking over at her. “A long story and not particularly interesting to someone other than me. I don’t expect you to understand the religion thing or the passion and relief I’m describing in what I found. I know what I got rescued from. I was in a pretty deep black hole and Jesus pulled me out of it. But it’s my own journey. I told you mainly because you’ll be brushing up against that past when you hang out with me and I don’t want you feeling surprised by it.”

She thought about what he had said. “I appreciate the fact you told me. The job and the career don’t last; we both know that. Religion is the one thing that does last. Personally, I’m no longer willing to say it’s a small part of my life either.” She thought about her last eleven years and her smile was sad as she shook her head. “Besides, I’ve got a few chapters in my own life much like yours.”

Bruce studied her. “I figured you might.”

She waited for his question, but Bruce didn’t take the opening. “Not going to ask?”

Bruce shook his head. “No need. You keep secrets, Rae, but never about the important things. When you’ve figured out the words in those chapters of yours, when you’re ready, you’ll share what’s been happening.”

“It’s going to be a while, maybe a long while.”

Bruce smiled. “Time is the one thing we have going for this relationship. There’s nothing you’re going to say that will particularly surprise me, Rae. In the job I did, I literally saw it all.”

She thought in a way he was right. Hearing what had happened with Mark Rivers—Bruce would have already guessed part of it. He knew what a defensive knife wound looked like, he’d seen her house, and she wouldn’t attribute to him being unobservant. He’d put together the majority of the physical facts she would be describing—but the why—he wasn’t ready for the why. Some things no one should have to hear, and especially not a fellow cop.

She looked across the street. She thought about letting the conversation flow back toward less intense topics, of letting it rest for now, the weight of those chapters just shared. But when this topic closed, Rae didn’t think she’d have the courage to reopen it for some time, and questions stirred below the surface that she wished she could have answered. It was rare for Bruce to be so open about what she knew had to be an intensely private part of his life.

She risked the question she had; she risked trying to process what she had heard from him aloud and with him, knowing he would hear in her questions her own heart’s struggle with God. “Do you think it was part of some plan, that you got shot so you would end up in that church and rediscover religion?”

Bruce shook his head. “I got shot because someone was willing to exchange the name of an undercover cop for a lot of cash. Ending up in church—God was just kind enough to make something good come out of the disaster that hit my life.”

She flexed the sides of the soda can she held. “Do you think God always brings good out of the disasters in our lives?”

“I think He’s willing to if we’ll let Him.” Bruce smiled. “Isn’t it strange, Rae, how hard we struggle to believe that God loves us, that God will do the right thing? The Bible says God is good. It’s His personality, His nature. It’s impossible for Him to do bad; it’s outside His very character. And yet when we start to think about religion, about God, we spend most of our time trying to gather up the courage to trust and believe that God is actually going to be good to us and be willing to help us.”

“I know.” She risked an observation in return that he might think simplistic. “But maybe it’s expected. We live in a messy, painful, fallen world. We live surrounded by good people who turn out to be liars, by people we trust betraying us—we live in a place where evil continually shows up and destroys what is good. And from that past we’re supposed to look at God, and despite everything we’ve lived through, we’re supposed to not attribute to Him any of the failings that beset everyone else we know.”

She turned the soda can in her hands and could feel the remaining liquid in the bottom had long since warmed to undrinkable. She didn’t bare her heart easily, even with the one guy she trusted more than any other in her life, but she wanted someone she could be that honest with, and Bruce was listening and hearing her. She risked saying the rest of it. “I think trusting that God is good is one of the hardest steps there is to take. We get conditioned to expect to be let down. We get conditioned to not trust, because we trusted and we get burned. We get conditioned to be reserved and not take things at face value because we’ve learned nothing is ever at face value in life.

“We have no relationships that come close to the relationship we are called on to have with God. With God, one side is perfect. The other side, our side, is clinging on by a prayer, asking ‘forgive me; please let grace cover my sins.’ We can hold that relationship with God only because He’s reaching over and holding us up to His level, not because we can ever reach to His level.”

Bruce nodded. “Jesus pointed at the Father and said that’s life, to know that God who is absolutely perfect and good and loving; and it’s an abundant life to trust and obey Him. Jesus knew the Father was the one person we could have a relationship with who wouldn’t let us down. And that is the key thing necessary for having a good life: a relationship with Jesus and with God the Father.”

Rae thought about her own desperate search to find some peace again, to be content with life and settled again, and she ended up shaking her head. She wanted that relationship with God to work and it seemed she was just always reaching and never quite there. She was still sorting out the hurts of the last year to the point she didn’t know what to think even about God Himself anymore. “Is it this hard for everyone, Bruce? I seem to know and understand less about God the older I get. Do you think someone like Nathan ever walks this kind of path with religion? Wrestling with the basics of the relationship?”

Bruce thought about it. “For those who got the luxury of hearing the Good News early in their life, who accepted it when they were young—maybe the questions are just different for them. Once you’re an adult—it’s hard to believe any relationship, no matter how long it has lasted so far, isn’t going to sometime in the future fail. It is always a struggle to trust and not hold something back. It’s easy to doubt, and it’s hard to trust. But I need to trust, which is why I keep coming back to it. I need to trust that God is good, and from that, find hope again that life can be good.”

Rae knew there was wisdom in that. “We used to talk philosophy and about being cops back in the days we were dating. Now we talk religion. I can’t say I mind the change.”

Bruce smiled. “We’ve had these stakeout conversations before, Rae. We both end up saying more than we thought we would or go into corners with subjects we didn’t plan, because the topics flow around in eddies on us.”

“I am glad you told me about what happened. I know it’s not easy to peel back layers and relive the history of being shot again. But hearing the story does help me to understand. You have changed, Bruce. And I like the new you.”

“I’m beginning to like this new me too.”

She shifted around on the seat to find a more comfortable place. “Was there any particular reason you chose Justice as the place to open the agency? A dart tossed at the map? Something more definite?”

“I’d met Nathan’s dad at one point in the past and liked him. I’d been through the area before and remembered it. It wasn’t anything more than that. The town is close enough to Chicago I figured if I changed my mind about being in a small town, I could always take an apartment back in the city and commute occasionally to the place here for my vacations. But I got here, and I settled remarkably easy.

“Like any small town, there is a variety of stories regarding who I am and how I ended up opening a detective agency in this town of all places. Some have me as still doing deep undercover work for the county narcotics task force, others have me escaping disciplinary action by resigning, others think I’m just another one of the out-of-towners who want to shift assets from big city to small town so I can take huge tax write-offs with the business while not doing any particular work.”

Rae smiled. “I’m sure that habit of yours of never explaining has led to a few of those rumors starting.”

“I’m sure it did.”

“This town has been a good fit for you, I think. I’m glad you invited me to come join you.”

“I’m glad you came. You’ll find it grows on you too, Rae, and starts to feel like home.”

“I hope it does. That would be nice, Bruce, to feel settled again.”

16

Rae shifted her jacket to create a better headrest. She was drifting on Bruce, and that wasn’t a good thing. He was patiently watching for Bob Teal to reappear. She reached for a new soda and opened it. “Talk to me some more, about anything. I want to stay awake a bit longer.”

Bruce smiled, but he complied. He gestured toward the union hall. “Did you realize this case is something of a milestone? My fiftieth case as a private investigator. Sam thought I’d fold up shop after the first half dozen.”

“What was the first case?”

He didn’t answer her. She looked over and thought this might be interesting. He was trying not to look entirely embarrassed. “What? Give. I can see it’s a good story.”

“A lost dog,” he said so quietly she barely heard him.

She choked on her soda. “You’re kidding me, right?”

He looked over at her and his embarrassment shifted toward remembered amusement. “Rae, I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die, absolute truth. My first case was a lost dog.”

“Give. I want the story. And don’t leave out any details.”

“It was a Pekinese. The lady was traveling to a dog show; she’d stopped overnight at the Hilton Hotel and they let her have her dog in her room. She gets up in the morning, gets ready to go down to breakfast, goes to put him back in his travel cage, and her precious dog is gone. I thought Tony was an actual person for the first couple minutes of the phone call. I’d said yes, I had time to help her that day, before I realized she was talking about a dog.”

“Give me a napkin. I’ve got to wipe my eyes here. Bruce Chapel, detective extraordinaire, looking for a little mutt.”

“Please, it was a purebred dog, not a mutt.”

“Hands and knees looking under the cars? Showing the photo around? Getting flyers ready to put out?”