Shadow Man (25 page)

That’s okay. I know now what I needed to know. I can hold a gun again. Loving it is unimportant.

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I pop out the magazine, grab my target, and turn to Bonnie. She is goggling at the target, and at me. Then she smiles. I ruffle her hair and we head out of the range, back into the shop. Jazz is sitting on a stool with his arms crossed. He has a faint smile on his face. His eyes now are all warm, no cold in sight.

“I knew it, Smoky. It’s in your blood, darlin’. In your blood.”

I look at him for a moment, and I nod. He’s right. My hand and a gun. We’re married again. While it may be a rocky re lationship, I realize that I missed it. It’s a part of me. Of course, the gun’s not youthful anymore either. It’s aged now, and scarred. That’s what it gets for picking me as its bride.

2

DREAMS AND CONSEQUENCES

22

B
ONNIE WAKES UP
in the middle of the night, screaming. This is not a child’s scream. It is the howl of someone locked in a room in hell. I hurry to snap on the light next to the bed. I see with a shock that her eyes are still closed. Me, I always wake when I start screaming. Bonnie is doing her screaming in her sleep. She is trapped in her dreams, able to put a voice to her fears but unable to wake from them.

I grab her and shake her hard. The screaming dies, her eyes open, she is silent again. I can still hear that sound in my head and she is shivering. I pull her close to me, not saying anything, stroking her hair. She clutches on to me. Soon, her shivering stops. Soon after that, she sleeps.

I disengage from her, as gently as I can. She looks peaceful now. I fall asleep watching her. And for the first time in the last six months, I dream of Alexa.

“Hi, Mommy,” she says to me, smiling.

“What’s up, chicken-butt?” I say. The first time I ever said this to her she had giggled so hard she got a headache, which made her cry. I’d been saying it ever since.

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She gives me her serious look. The one that both did and didn’t fit her. It didn’t fit her because she was too young for it. It did fit her because it was Alexa to the core. Her father’s soft brown eyes look out at me from a face stamped by both our genes, turned pixielike by dimples that were hers alone. Matt used to joke about how the mailman had dimples, and maybe he’d given me a
special delivery,
ha ha ha.

“I’m worried about you, Mommy.”

“Why, baby-love?”

Those eyes go sad. Too sad for her age, too sad for those dimples.

“Because you miss me so much.”

I glance at Bonnie, look back at Alexa. “What about her, babe? Are you okay with that?”

I wake up before she can reply. My eyes are dry, but my heart twists in my chest, making it hard to breathe. After a few moments, this subsides. I turn my head. Bonnie’s eyes are closed, her face untroubled. I fall asleep watching her again, but this time, I do not dream. It’s morning. I look at myself in the mirror while Bonnie looks on. I’ve put on my best black business suit. Matt used to call it my “killer’s suit.” It still looks good.

I have been ignoring my hair for months. When I paid any attention to it at all, it was to move it so that it hung over my scars. I used to wear it free and flowing. Now I have drawn it back tightly against my head. Bonnie helped me with the ponytail. Instead of hiding my scars from the world, I am accentuating them.

It’s funny, I think to myself as I look into my own eyes. Doesn’t really look that bad. Oh, it’s a disfigurement. And it’s shocking. But . . . taken as a whole, I don’t look like I belong in a freak show. I wonder why I never noticed that before, why it’s seemed so much uglier until now. I guess it was because I was holding so much ugliness inside. I like the way I look. I look tough. I look hard. I look formidable. All of this fits with my current view of life. I turn away from the mirror.

“What do you think? Good?”

Nod, smile.

“Let’s get going, then, honey. We’re going to make a few trips today.”

She takes my hand and we head out the door.

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*

*

*

First stop is Dr. Hillstead’s office. I’d called ahead and he is waiting for me. When we arrive at the office, I convince Bonnie to stay with Imelda, Dr. Hillstead’s receptionist. She’s a Latin woman with a no-nonsense way of caring for people, and Bonnie seems to respond to this mix of warmth and brusqueness. I understand. We walking wounded hate pity. We just want to be treated normally.

I enter and Dr. Hillstead comes to greet me. He looks devastated.

“Smoky. I want you to know how sorry I am about what happened. I never meant for you to find out that way.”

I shrug. “Yeah, well. He’s been inside my home. Watched me sleep. I guess he’s keeping pretty good tabs on me. Not something you could have planned for.”

He looks shocked. “He’s been inside . . . your house?”

“Yep.” I don’t correct his or my use of the word
he
. The fact that
he
is actually
they
remains confined to the team, our ace in the hole. Dr. Hillstead runs a hand through his hair. He looks shaken. “This is really disconcerting, Smoky. I deal with secondhand accounts of these kinds of things, but this is the first time it’s entered my life in reality.”

“This is how it goes sometimes.”

Perhaps it’s the calmness of my voice that gets his attention. For the first time since I entered his office, he really looks at me. He sees the change, and it seems to bring back the healer in him.

“Why don’t you sit down?”

I sit in one of the leather chairs facing his desk. He looks at me, musing. “Are you upset with me for withholding the ballistics report?”

I shake my head. “No. I mean—I was. But I understand what you were trying to do, and I think you were right to do it.”

“I didn’t want to tell you until I thought you were ready to deal with it.”

I give him a faint smile. “I don’t know if I was ready to deal with it or not. But I rose to the occasion.”

He nods. “Yes, I see a change in you. Tell me about it.”

“Not much to tell,” I say with a shrug. “It hit me hard. For a moment, I didn’t believe it. But then I remembered everything. Shooting
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Alexa. Trying to shoot Callie. It was like all the pain I’ve been feeling over the last six months hit me at once. I passed out.”

“Callie told me.”

“The thing is, when I woke up, I didn’t want to die. That made me feel bad in a way. Guilty. But it was still true. I don’t want to die.”

“That’s good, Smoky,” he says in a quiet voice.

“And it’s not just that. You were right about my team. They are like my family. And they’re fucked up. Alan’s wife has cancer. Callie has something going on she won’t talk to anyone about. And I realize that I can’t just let that pass. I love them. I have to be there for them if they need me. Do you understand?”

He nods. “I do. And I’ll admit that I was hoping for that. Not that your team members would be in distress. But you’ve been living in a vacuum. I was hoping that getting back in touch with them would remind you of the one thing I know would give you a reason to go on living.”

“What’s that?”

“Duty. It’s a driving force for you. You have a duty to them. And to the victims.”

This idea catches me by surprise. Because I realize that it’s dead-on. I may never be fully healed. I might wake up screaming in the night till the day I die. But as long as my friends need me, as long as the monsters kill, I have to stick around. No choice about it. “It worked,” I say. He smiles a gentle smile. “I’m glad.”

“Yeah, well.” I sigh. “On the way home from San Francisco I had a lot of time to think. I knew there was one thing I had to try. If I couldn’t do it, then I was done. I would have gotten up today and handed in my resignation.”

“What was that?” he asks. I think he knows. He just wants me to say it.

“I went to a shooting range. Got a Glock and decided to see if I could still shoot. If I could even pick it up without passing out.”

“And?”

“It was all there. Like it had never been gone.”

He steeples his fingers, looks at me. “There’s more, isn’t there? Your entire appearance has changed.”

I look into his eyes, this man who has tried to help me through these
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months. I realize that his skill in helping people like me is an amazing dance, a mix of chaos and precision. Knowing when to back away, when to feint, when to attack. Putting a mind back together. I’d rather hunt serial killers. “I’m not a victim anymore, Dr. Hillstead. I can’t put it any more simply. It’s not something that needs a lot of words around it. It’s just true. The way it is.” I lean back. “You had a lot to do with that, and I want to thank you. I might be dead otherwise.”

Now he smiles. He shakes his head. “No, Smoky. I don’t think you’d be dead. I’m glad that you feel I’ve helped you, but you’re a born survivor. I don’t think you would have killed yourself, if it came to that.”

Maybe, maybe not, I think.

“So what now? Are you telling me you don’t need to see me anymore?” It’s a genuine question. I don’t get the sense that he has already decided what the correct answer would be.

“No, I’m not saying that.” I smile. “It’s funny, if you had asked me a year ago about seeing a shrink, I would have made some snide comment and felt superior to the people who think they need one.” I shake my head. “Not anymore. I still have things to work through. My friend dying . . .” I look at him. “You know I have her daughter with me?”

He nods, somber. “Callie filled me in on what happened to her. I’m glad you took her with you. She probably feels very alone right now.”

“She doesn’t talk. Just nods. Last night she screamed in her sleep.”

He winces. No one sane enjoys the pain of a child. “I would guess that she’s going to take a long time to heal, Smoky. She may not talk for years. The best thing to do for now is what you’re already doing—

just be there for her. Don’t try to approach what happened. She’s not ready for that. I doubt she’ll be ready for months.”

“Really?” My voice sounds bleak. His eyes are kind.

“Yes. Look, what she needs right now is to know that she’s safe and that you are there. That life is going to go on. Her trust in basic things for a child—her parents being there, the safety of a home—her trust in those fundamentals has been shattered. In a very personal, horrible way. It will take some time to rebuild that trust.” He gives me a measured look. “You should know that.”

I swallow once, nod.

“I would say, give it some time. Watch her, be there for her. I think you’ll know when it might be right for her to start talking about it.
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When that time comes . . .” He seems to hesitate, but only for a moment. “When that time comes, let me know. I’d be happy to recommend a therapist for her.”

“Thanks.” Another thought occurs to me. “What about school?”

“You should wait. Her mental health is the primary issue.” He grimaces. “It’s hard to say what will happen on that front. You’ve heard the cliché—and it’s true: Children are very resilient. She could bounce back and be ready for the complexity of social interaction that school provides, or”—he shrugs—“she might require homeschooling till she graduates. But I would say, at least for now, that that’s the least of your worries. The simple truth is, get her better. If I can help, I will.”

A certain relief comes over me. I have a path, and I didn’t have to make the decision on my own. “Thanks. Really.”

“What about you? How is taking her on affecting your state of mind?”

“Guilty. Happy. Guilty that I’m happy. Happy that I’m guilty.”

“Why so much conflict?” His voice is quiet.

He’s not saying that my being conflicted is wrong. He is saying,
Tell
me why
.

I run a hand across my forehead. “I think ‘why not’ is probably a better question, Doc. I’m scared. I miss Alexa. I worry about fucking it up. Take your pick.”

He leans forward, intent. He’s got ahold of something, and he won’t let it go. “Distill it down, Smoky. I understand there are many factors. Lots of reason for emotion. But break it down to something you can work with.”

And just like that, it comes to me. “It’s because she both
is
Alexa and
isn’t
Alexa,” I say.

And that
is
it, that simplicity. Bonnie is a second chance at Alexa, at having a daughter. But then, she isn’t Alexa, because Alexa is dead. Not all truths are good, on the surface. Some truths bring pain. Some are just the starting point for an uphill climb, for a lot of tortured work. This truth makes me feel empty. A bell being rung in a windless field.

If I can work through this truth, I know things will change. But the work is huge and ugly and it’s going to hurt me.