Close Encounters (4 page)

“When was the last time you had to see a shrink?”

Lee glanced toward the window. His eyes burned. He rubbed them briefly and shrugged. “Probably not since my second or third year.”

“What happened? Did you shoot someone? Kill someone?”

“No. My partner was shot. He was paralyzed after that.”

The man behind the desk slowly took a Hershey’s Kiss from a crystal dish on his bookcase and carefully peeled the paper. He chucked a second one across the desk to Lee, who deftly caught it.

“How did you feel about that?”

“That he took a bullet? Angry. He was a good cop. A good friend. The guy that brought him down was out of jail in under four years. He’s dead now. The shooter, I mean.”

“But it doesn’t make you feel any better, does it?”

“I got over it. Shit happens.”

The man behind the desk rocked gently in his executive-style chair. He made a tiny silver ball of the candy foil and tossed it into an ashtray that was already filled with similar balls. “Is that how you feel about what happened yesterday morning? It was just so much shit?”

Lee’s brows drew together and his jaw clenched. Once again he experienced that odd, tingling heat on his skin, just like he had for a few seconds after the shooting had stopped.

He shrugged; his voice was tired and hoarse. “Occupational hazard.”

Silence followed as Dr. Amos waited him out. Finally he asked, “Are you prepared to tell the woman who got shot that it was an occupational hazard? Do you think she and her family, or 99.9 percent of New York’s black population, are going to accept that? Can you handle the fallout?” He watched closely as Lee shifted restlessly in his chair. “How did you sleep last night?”

“Look, it could have been a white woman. It could have been someone old. No one was out to get
her
.”

“Well, as long as you’re satisfied with that…”

“Of course I’m not,” Lee cut in, incredulous. He stopped and clamped his mouth shut.

There was another long silence.

“How about guilt?” the doctor asked him. “Did you ever feel guilty when your first partner got shot?”

Lee stared at him. “What for? ’Cause it wasn’t me? No, never. I felt… helpless because I couldn’t do anything about what happened. Then I was pissed off because I knew I’d have to break in someone new.”

“Detective Peña?”

Lee shook his head. “There was someone else before her.”

“What happened to him? Her?”

“Him. He quit the force after about six… seven years.” A wry grin lifted the corner of his mouth. “And became a priest.” Dr. Amos chuckled in appreciation. Then both men sobered.

Lee was remembering all the times he’d seen people shot, all the times he’d felt the righteousness of being the good guy. None of those other incidents had mattered… except for when his former partner had been hit.

And except for Carol Taggart the morning before.

“Lieutenant?”

The voice shattered the peace Lee was trying to build for himself. He looked blankly at the doctor.

“Want to tell me what you’re thinking right now?”

Lee pulled himself together. He cleared his throat. He couldn’t say because he didn’t know. He only knew he was seriously confused. And angry. He shrugged. “Not much.” The doctor waited patiently. “I was just wondering… is this going to go on my record? That I was here to see you?”

“Worried about what others will think?”

“Worried about ruining my record.”

“Since this is a required visit, I don’t think that will be a problem. These sessions are confidential.” He glanced at a wall clock and stood up. “We’ll have to end here. Time’s up.”

Lee also stood and followed him to the door.

“Like I said, at least two days off is my recommendation,” Dr. Amos said. “You’re not sure what happened last night, but shots were fired in the line of duty. That doesn’t mean you’re not a little traumatized by how things went down. There could be a delayed response… maybe not. Give it a rest and let’s see, okay? And call me if you feel the need to. If anything changes.”

Like if she dies, Lee thought to himself.

He nodded politely. “Thanks, Dr. Amos,” he said, shaking the man’s hand.

“No problem. You did all the right things, Lieutenant. Go home. Get some sleep.”

Lee turned away with a brief nod of acceptance. He headed back to the reception desk, reviewing all the doctor’s questions about intent and control, reflexes and knee-jerk reactions. Shock, anger, doubt… guilt.

“How did it go?”

Lee blinked at Barbara, keeping his expression blank. She held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and the early edition of the daily paper in the other. There was something so routine about her appearance that Lee felt disoriented. For him the last twenty-four hours had been anything but routine. Barbara obviously had not created any personal baggage of the episode. Lee didn’t understand why it mattered to him.

“Fine,” Lee responded succinctly. “This for me?” He took the cup of coffee from her and helped himself to a generous swallow. It was laced with too much sugar and he handed the cup back to her.

“What did he say?” she persisted.

“Probably the same things he said to you. You know… you were doing your job, this is what you’ve been trained for, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Well, this is the third time I’ve had to go in, and I still don’t see the point,” Barbara said as they turned to leave. “I mean, what are the options when someone is trying to kill you? Stop and think about whether you’ll feel bad in the morning ’cause you took some asshole out?”

Lee ran a hand restlessly over his bristled hair. They headed toward the elevators. “This was different, Barb. This was…” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Something went wrong.”

“Yeah. So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. The captain’s probably going to—”

“No, I mean right now.”

“Go home, like the doc said.”

Barbara finished the rest of her coffee and tossed the cup into a handy trash bin as they boarded the elevator. “I can’t. I’m too on.”

“Well, the coffee certainly isn’t going to help.”

“It’s too early for beer,” she quipped. “Look… let’s go get some breakfast and talk, okay? Then we gotta find Mario. Where the fuck is he?”

They got off the elevator and continued toward the ER exit, where their car was parked in the emergency bay. Lee was only half listening to Barbara’s complaints. He slowed his steps and finally stopped in the middle of the hallway. “Barb, slow down. We can’t do anything for at least another twenty-four hours. We’ve got a blown cover for one of our guys, suspects loose, and a gunshot victim we can’t explain. Even if you don’t care about any of that, we can’t get our Glocks back until the ballistics report is in.”

“We have to do something.”

“You want to do something? Go home and have breakfast with your kid. Walk her to school and help her with her homework. Tell her you love her, and don’t
ever
encourage her to become a cop.”

Lee stopped suddenly and patted his pockets. “You know, I think I left those department forms with the doc. I better go back.”

“I’ll wait here.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll hop a ride back to the station with one of the guys. I’ll check with you later.”

Without giving Barbara a chance to protest, Lee jogged back down the corridor to the elevators. It took just a few minutes to retrieve the claim forms from the receptionist.

Back on the first floor, he found himself at the ER duty station. He walked past it, then retraced his steps. He had changed his mind once again and started to walk away when one of the women behind the desk asked, “Can I help you?”

He showed his ID and badge. “I’d like to see a list of admissions for the past fifteen hours.”

There had been only two. One white male heart attack, and one black female gunshot.

He thanked the assistant and turned to take the elevator to the ninth floor and the critical-care ward. Lee didn’t have to ask which room Carol Taggart was in. At the extreme end of the ward a young uniformed officer was stationed outside the door. Lee again showed ID, this time to the staff at the nursing station.

As Lee began walking the length of the hallway, several hospital personnel left the patient’s room and came toward him, deep in conversation. He hurried to catch up to them.

“Doctor… you got a minute? I’m Lieutenant Grafton. You have a gunshot victim here…”

Two of the three staffers immediately deferred to the third, indicating that they would speak with him later. The remaining man was in his early thirties, slightly built and balding.

“Can’t you guys give it a rest? We’ve had cops in and out of here all morning.”

“This isn’t an official visit. I just wanted to find out—”

“There’s already someone with her. She needs to get some rest.”

“Okay, okay,” Lee conceded. “Can you at least tell me what you know? How bad was it?”

“The bullet passed through her upper chest. There was a lot of internal bleeding and she had a collapsed lung.”

“Is… is that serious?”

“Serious enough. Her chest cavity filled with liquid and she was having trouble breathing.”

Lee frowned thoughtfully, nodding.

“She was gone for about three minutes, but we don’t see any evidence of brain damage…”

“Wait… what do you mean, ‘she was gone’?”

“As in no pulse, no pressure, no life. She stopped breathing. Her blood pressure dropped very low. We had to put in a chest tube to suction her out. Look, I gotta go. Don’t worry, you guys will get a report when it’s done.”

“And the bullet?”

The doctor shook his head. “No bullet. Just two small holes.”

“Is she going to live?”

“Oh, yeah, she’ll pull through.”

Lee watched him walk away, feeling a rush of unexpected relief.

Carol reached out her hand to Matt. “The flowers are beautiful. But they look so expensive. A plant would have been fine, you know.”

Matt squeezed her fingers. “Sorry but a plant don’t cut it. That would be like giving you a head of lettuce in a pot or something.”

Carol grimaced. “I can’t laugh, Matt. It hurts.”

“Sorry.”

She rested her head back on the pillows. Actually it didn’t hurt nearly as much as when she’d been brought in the previous morning. The doctor had given her something so she could sleep. She wanted to sleep, but without the nightmares she’d been having. Or the memories that had catapulted her back to her childhood. It wasn’t like her life flashing before her eyes. It was more like… a visitation. It was all somehow connected to that extraordinary moment when she was about to see her mother again, even though she had absolutely no conscious recollection of her. Odder still was her strong sense that something had changed. As if she had given birth to herself.

She wanted to go home to her family.

Family.

Whenever someone said “family” to Carol the picture she got never seemed quite right. The requisite number of people materialized, but they were mismatched. A patchwork of people made up of leftovers, she used to think. Lost and found souls.

“Do you remember what happened?” Matt’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Not really. It’s all confused. It happened so fast,” Carol murmured. She shook her head. “I’m not sure how much really happened and how much I dreamed.”

“So you don’t know who shot you?”

“No.” At first she hadn’t realized she’d been shot. Later, she’d learned how close she’d come to dying. And Max was gone.

Carol pushed the thought away before grief could overwhelm her.

It was more than just losing Max, who’d been a gift from her brother. It was as if his death had in some way triggered the dissolution of her past. She felt lost. She felt the choking threat of tears but was afraid that if she began to cry, the spilling and purging might never stop.

Carol forced her eyes open. The room was bare and institutional. Not her own. Nearly a dozen large and small floral displays brightened the otherwise spartan room. She wanted to go home. But home, where?

She pointed to a basket of fruit that had been delivered during the doctor’s visit. “Who is that from?”

“Wes,” Matt finally responded.

Carol frowned at him. “How did he know? Did you call?”

“I had no choice. The hospital needed next of kin. I’m not it anymore, remember? Besides, I did what I thought was right. I called your parents, too. I thought it was better if they heard it from me than from the police.”

Carol had distinctly mixed feelings about that news. Of course her family had a right to know.

“You don’t even like my parents,” she said reflectively.

“It’s not that I don’t like them.” Matt shook his head. “But they had no business trying to raise a black child.”

“It’s always bothered you that they’re white.”

“About as much as it bothers you.”

Carol was about to deny it automatically when she realized she couldn’t. She had spent a lot of her adolescence being conflicted about her family, but did the fact that her parents were white really matter, considering that they’d wanted her, had fought to keep her… and loved her?

Lee approached the young officer posted outside the door, restlessly pacing. He heard a low conversation between two people coming from Carol Taggart’s room a few feet away.

“How long have you been here?” Lee asked the officer.

“
Forever
,” the young man said, then caught himself. “Ah, sorry, sir,” he corrected. “Since about midnight. I was sent to replace one of the undercover guys. You here to take over?”

Lee shook his head. “Sorry. You’ll have to wait for your relief. I’m Lieutenant Grafton.” He glanced toward the door. “How’s it going?”

“Okay. Kind of quiet. Couple of brass came to talk to the woman, but they didn’t stay long. Doctors and nurses. Some black guy. Maybe a boyfriend. He’s with her now.”

Lee nodded. “I’ll spot you for fifteen minutes. Go take a walk or get some coffee.”

“Thanks,” the officer said gratefully and rushed off.

Lee leaned against the wall and half listened to what was being said inside the room. Carol Taggart’s parents were mentioned. The man’s relationship to them. Hers as well. Lee was confused about the references to race.