“Why don’t you vow to stop your mouth from running?” Patti says to the screen.
“For this reason, I will be personally prosecuting the case against Detective William Harney,” says Margaret Olson.
Her words zap through my family room, a quick flash of lightning, and then there is nothing but silence for a palpable beat, even from the TV, as though she were talking directly to me and wanted the words to sink in. I’m coming for you, Harney. You’re mine.
“William,” Patti sneers, like that’s the most intriguing part of what she just heard. “Who the hell ever called you William?”
The press has taken to using my formal name, too. Even Kim Beans, whose career has rebounded nicely since the night of the sex-club raid, who now has a spot as a crime reporter on the local NBC station, whom I’ve known for several years and who has always called me Billy, now refers to me as Detective William Harney. Sometimes I prefer it that way, as if it’s happening to someone else, not me. William Harney? No, I’m Billy. That must be another guy who’s charged with killing four people and facing life in prison.
“Mom called me William,” I say. “When she was pissed.”
“At you? Mom was never pissed at you. You were her little angel.”
It was supposed to come out as a compliment, a supportive boost, but her comment turned sideways at the end. Patti always thought I spent my life gliding along a smooth, paved road, as if my feet barely touched the ground, while she struggled to traverse a path of potholes and sharp curves. I never really figured it. We had the same life. We did the same stuff.
“That’s not a good development,” says my father, just walking into my family room, leaning against the wall. Leave it to Pop to shoot straight, never to mince words.
Patti waves him off. “What does Margaret fucking Olson know from trying cases? She’s a politician. She’s not a trial lawyer.”
Pop doesn’t bother arguing. Quibbling with Patti can be exhausting. When she gets an idea in her head, she won’t let go. The more unreasonable her position, the tighter she clings to it.
And on one level, she’s right. Margaret Olson isn’t some veteran trial lawyer. She was an alderwoman who was elected the county’s top prosecutor. She’s no Clarence Darrow. But that’s not Pop’s point. His point is that if she’s putting herself out there front and center, she can’t lose the case. She can’t. She’ll be putting her entire candidacy for mayor on the line. If she loses my case, she’ll look like an amateur, not the trusted corruption buster who will “Save. This. City!”
Pop casts a look in Patti’s direction but can’t summon any anger or frustration. All of us are pretty beaten down. It’s been a rough seven weeks since I was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. I was released on a million-dollar bond, which was the only good news, because a lot of murder suspects are denied any bond at all. The best thing I had going for me, ironically, was my physical condition—the fact that I was still in recovery from a gunshot wound to the head. The county lockup ain’t exactly the Mayo Clinic, and one of my doctors told the judge that I still needed weekly therapy.
Anyway, Pop put up his house for bond and got me out. For the first couple of weeks afterward, I was hunkered down in my house or his, reporters waiting to pounce at any sight of me. Getting the mail every day was an exercise in stealth and misdirection.
Now, nearly two months since my arrest, things have died down a bit; they are on to their next set of stories: another weekend of double-digit homicides in the city, the city’s pension crisis threatening to strangle the government, and God knows the mayoral race is a daily headline—one candidate made a stupid comment, another candidate stepped in a pile of doo-doo. But they know that my trial isn’t far away, just a few short weeks, and soon they’ll have the chance to gorge on the feast once more.
“How’s it going with the shrink?” Pop asks me.
I shrug. “We’ve tried everything. No luck so far.”
Dr. Jill Jagoda and I have tried everything that could pop something loose, that might poke a hole in the wall that is blocking my memory. We’ve spent entire sessions breaking down my relationship with my father and mother and sister and brothers. An entire session about Kate. Multiple sessions dealing with Amy.
We even tried hypnosis. When it was over, when I came out of it, the look on Dr. Jill’s face was blank. She just shook her head briefly. She still thinks my emotions are repressing my memory.
If that’s true, then I must really, really not want to know what I did.
Pop mumbles something to himself as he leaves the room. Once he’s gone, Patti touches my leg. “Hey,” she whispers.
It feels like we’re kids again, whispering behind our parents’ backs, exchanging knowing glances and half comments, finishing each other’s sentences. Twin stuff.
The screen cuts away from Margaret Olson; the anchor is talking about a storm coming our way. I turn to Patti.
“Maybe it’s better you don’t remember,” she says.
“How so?”
“Well…who’s to say your memory didn’t come back?” she asks.
I don’t know what she means. And then I do.
She makes a face, like she wants me to try on the idea, wear it around a little and see if it fits, before saying no. “Nobody can read your mind. If you say you remember, you remember.”
I shift on the couch and face her. “And I suppose what I’m going to ‘remember’ is that I didn’t kill anybody?”
She runs her hand over the pillow behind me. Doesn’t make eye contact but keeps her eyebrows lifted, wanting me to consider it.
“It might be better than the truth,” she says.
Sixty-Four
I SIT forward in the leather seat of Dr. Jill Jagoda’s SUV, eyes outside, scanning the streets—daytime pedestrians, teenagers, moms with kids, dog walkers, some people getting a start on happy hour—soaking everything in, concentrating, eyes narrowed, focusing on everything and nothing at the same time.
“Don’t press,” says Dr. Jill. “Make it come to you.”
This is the neighborhood where Amy Lentini lived, though I only know that because people have told me. I don’t remember ever going to her apartment. Don’t even remember the building.
Amy, looming like a specter, her image so thin it’s transparent, vanishing when I reach for it. Did we fall in love? Did we have sex?
It feels like the answer to both of those questions is yes. But those last two weeks before the shooting are still a black void. I know that I was found naked in bed with Amy when I was shot, so there’s no denying that we were together, but that’s nothing more to me than something I don’t really know, something I have to take the word of other people for. There is an ozone layer, but I can’t touch it or smell it. There are other galaxies out there, but I can’t see them. Amy and I were lovers, but I don’t remember it.
But those flashes keep returning, that longing, that deep sense of loss and ache. That much I can feel. It’s like a mysterious illness, some amorphous pain for which doctors cannot find a source.
“I want to ask you something,” Dr. Jill says.
“Shoot.”
“Why are you demanding a speedy trial? I mean, some defendants delay their trials for months or years. You could do that. You’re out on bond. It’s not like you’re in a hurry.”
“You sound like my lawyer.” My attorney has argued constantly that we should delay this trial, wait until Margaret Olson is elected mayor, let the media buzz die down—and give me time to regain my memory.
It makes sense. I know it. But I can’t live like this. I’m out on bond, but I’m trapped, locked behind bars I can’t see, full of questions I can’t answer. It’s worse than pure terror. Pure terror is something I’ve experienced—breaking through a door, expecting someone on the other side with a shotgun. Racing through an alley, chasing an armed suspect, knowing you’re about to corner him and that it will come down to you or him. Looking into the eyes of a sus
pect you know has killed with premeditation, the suspect knowing that you know, the sides of his mouth curving upward, those eyes boring into you, telling you, Yeah, I’m a killer. I have taken life, and it doesn’t mean a damn thing to me.
That I can handle. Not this. Not the constant uncertainty, the ever-present shadow, the grief gurgling through my stomach, the lingering suspicion that I did something truly bad and just can’t, won’t, allow myself to remember it; the hope that I’m wrong, that there is another explanation.
The fear that I’m reaching frantically for an answer I will not like, that I’m trying to break down a wall, but that when I do a scalding fire will engulf me.
“There.” Dr. Jagoda curbs her Lexus and nods her head.
I look around me. “Where?”
“That condo building right there. The awning.”
I look at the building. This is where Amy lived. This is where Amy and Kate were murdered.
Nothing. The black void. Just another building to me, one of a thousand condominium buildings in our city.
I stare at the awning, up at the windows overlooking us, trying to will the building to speak to me. You walked through this door. You went up this elevator. You walked down this hall. You entered this apartment.
I’ve seen plenty of photos of the interior of Amy’s apartment; it was the crime scene. But it looked like they all do—the kitchenette, the single bedroom, the well-kept living room.
You went into this apartment. You and Amy…
Amy and I what? I don’t remember even being in the apartment.
“Easy,” says Dr. Jill. “Don’t press.”
I shake my head. “Let’s go.”
“Why don’t we walk around? It’s a nice—”
“I want to leave.”
“Billy, this is about all we have left. We’ve talked about feelings and emotions and your childhood and your relationships. We’ve talked about your daughter and your wife and your hopes and fears—”
“Believe me, Doc, I know.”
“Okay, so you need to use your other senses. Your mind is struggling. You need to touch and smell and hear. You need to put yourself back in this place. You need to try to reconstruct the events. It’s our last chance to unlock the door.”
“Let’s leave,” I say.
She pauses. I stare at the awning until it seems as if it’s moving, waving at me, taunting me.
“It’s okay to be afraid.”
I turn to her. “I don’t need a shrink to tell me it’s okay to be afraid. I get that part. Afraid is about the only emotion I have anymore. I’m just—I give up. Okay?” I throw up my hands. “I fucking surrender.”
“No. We have four weeks until your trial. I’m not letting you give up.”
“You’re not letting me? This is your choice all of a sudden?”
Her eyebrows move together. Without her horn-rimmed glasses, which she took off while driving, she seems younger, more innocent.
“I don’t think you killed anybody,” she says.
“Then I hope you’re on the jury.”
She doesn’t think that’s funny.
“Let’s re-create it,” she says. “It’s all we have left.”
“How far do we take it? Should I shoot you? Are you gonna shoot me?”
“It’s tempting, the way you’re behaving.”
I look back at the building, at the awning, up at the windows. It could possibly work, a reenactment. She seems to think so, and she’s the expert.
But I remember what Patti said to me.
Maybe it’s better you don’t remember.
Who’s to say your memory didn’t come back? Nobody can read your mind. If you say you remember, you remember.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe my only chance is to say whatever I have to say to save my ass. Make something up. Something good. I can do that, right? Sure I can. I’m the best liar I know.
It might be better than the truth.
“Thank you for everything,” I say to Dr. Jill. “But I’ll take it from here.”
Sixty-Five
I WALK the streets, my stride improving every day, less of a limp, my stamina increasing, too. The weekly therapy and my daily walks have helped. It feels good out here, the feel of late summer and early autumn, a crispness in the air as darkness begins its slow creep.
Fuck my memory. It feels liberating to be freed from that locked room. I don’t need to remember what happened to win my case. I just need a convincing story.
By the time I hit Southport north of Addison, darkness has settled in comfortably. The crowd up here isn’t as thick as it is downtown, but I find myself in a steady stream of people. I don’t do much other than walk and just exist. Just existing is a gift, I realize; I easily could have died from that gunshot wound—in fact, I was clinically dead for several minutes. So anything after that experience is just gravy, right?
That’s what I tell myself, that I’m lucky I’m still breathing, even if one day soon I may find myself living and breathing and existing in the Stateville penitentiary.
I glance over at a storefront and do a double take, sure, absolutely certain for just that moment, that I saw Amy staring back at me. Instead it’s just a mannequin with short jet-black hair wearing a designer suit.
That happens to me sometimes, little triggers like that. I’m not seeing ghosts. It’s not time for séances or exorcisms. But on occasion I will look this way or that and swear that I saw her.
And it’s not the only thing I feel at this moment. I also feel something behind me, a shift in the pressure. Like some movement behind me ceased at just the time I did.
I whip my head around. Nothing but a jumble of people moving in my direction. Nobody dropping back, ducking down, averting his eyes.
Nobody following me.
Still, it sweeps through me like a chill.
So tired of looking over my shoulder.
So sick of playing defense, clawing for my memory and feeling helpless. Time to stop playing defense and start playing offense.
I hail a cab and head north.
The Hole in the Wall. I haven’t been there for ages. Once upon a time it was the first instinct: you were thirsty and had an hour to kill, you went to the Hole.
I get out of the cab, the sound of the train passing overhead on the Brown Line, raining down some rust. I reach for the door of the bar and pause. Then I open it.
The place dies down when I walk in. Something out of a movie: the music stopping, conversations braking to a halt in midsentence, like the abrupt screech of the needle lifting off a turntable.
All eyes on me, none friendly. Nearly a hundred faces I recognize, people I’ve known and worked with on the job. At the bar, Patti has a bottle of beer hoisted to her lips, frozen in midair as she stares at me.
“This is a bar for cops,” someone shouts. “Not cop killers.”
My fists in balls, my jaw set, I cut an angle toward the corner that I once owned, where people once watched and laughed, where people once chanted my name. I step up on the stage and grab the microphone, click it on, pat it for good measure.
“We don’t wanna hear your jokes,” someone yells.
“This isn’t a joke. I didn’t kill any cops,” I say into the mike. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
“What happened to ‘I don’t remember anything?’” someone shouts.
I scan the room again, my heart pounding, my stomach doing gymnastics.
“Well, I remember now,” I say. “I remember, and I didn’t do it.”
I drop the mike, sending a booming clang across the room, and step off the stage.
“Hey!”
I turn on my way out. It’s Wizniewski’s chubby face coming my way. “You’re not welcome here. You know what you did, and we know what you did.”
“And I know what you did,” I say, doubling down on my lie. I pivot and move toward him. He’s ready for me, hands raised. On a good day, I might have a better response, but I’m still moving slowly, and before
I can bat them away, Wizniewski’s fingers wrap around my throat. He pushes me backwards against a table, my back arched, my eyes up at the ceiling. My head fills with a rush of anger and desperation as the crowd comes alive with a roar, as the Wiz’s chubby face peers into mine, as I struggle to loosen his grip, but I can’t, I just—
Bam. The table over which I’m bent backwards rocks violently, glass shattering. The Wiz releases me and steps back. For a moment I don’t know what happened. It was like an earthquake of great magnitude, but limited to the small table.
Patti, holding a baseball bat she must have grabbed behind the bar. Letting it rest against her shoulder, but elbow out, like she’s ready to take a swing. Her mouth set evenly, like she’s cool as ice, but her eyes on fire.
“You like picking on people with medical conditions?” she says to the Wiz, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Wanna try someone who didn’t take a bullet to the brain?”
Wizniewski, chest heaving, face tomato-red, glares at Patti. “Hey, bitch on wheels, you really wanna bring a baseball bat to a gunfight?”
Patti takes the bat in both hands, holding it horizontally, and tosses it at Wizniewski’s chest. He puts out his hands defensively, not trying to catch it, so it hits his palms and clangs to the floor at our feet.
Before I know it, Patti has drawn her gun and has it within an inch of Wizniewski’s nose, her legs spread, in the pose.
“Who needs a bat?” she says. Like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Like it wouldn’t bother her in the slightest if she pulled the trigger.
The crowd isn’t sure how to react. A crowd of cops, most of them off duty, most of them wearing their pieces. Most retreat or crouch. Some reach for their waists. This could go a lot of different ways. Some of them bad.
“The fuck you doing? C’mon, Patti,” Wizniewski says, not really believing she’ll use it. But still, she’s an itchy trigger finger away from splattering his brains on the ceiling. It does something to a fella’s attitude.