I pull back and grin at her. “We’re some pair, huh?”
Her smile in return is genuine. I know it’s only momentary. I know that her true grief, when it hits her, is going to be a tidal wave. It’s still nice to see her smile.
“Listen, part of what I told you? About deciding whether or not I’m going to keep doing my job? There’s something I need to do tonight. Do you want to come with me?”
She nods. Oh yeah. I give her another smile, a chuck on the chin. “Well, let’s go, then.”
I drive to a gun range in the San Fernando Valley. I give it a once-over before getting out of the car, trying to work up my nerve. The building is all function, with peeling paint on the exterior walls and windows that have probably never been washed. Like a gun, I think. A gun can be scratched and battered, have lost its shine. All that matters, though, is the basic truth: Will it still fire a bullet? This worn-out building is no different. Some very serious gun owners come here. By serious, I don’t mean enthusiasts. I mean men (and women) who have spent their lives using guns to kill people or keep the peace.
People like me. I look over at Bonnie, give her a lopsided smile.
“Ready?” I ask.
She nods.
“Let’s go, then.”
I know the owner. He’s an ex–Marine sniper, with eyes that are warm up front but cold in the back. He sees me and his voice booms out:
“Smoky! Haven’t seen you in a while!”
I smile at him, gesture at the scars. “Had some bad luck, Jazz.”
He notices Bonnie and smiles at her. She doesn’t smile back. “And who’s this?”
“That’s Bonnie.”
Jazz has always been a good reader of people. He knows Bonnie is not all right and doesn’t bother with any “hey, honey, how are you” stuff. Just nods at her and looks at me, hands flat on the counter.
“What do you need tonight?”
“That Glock.” I point at it. “And just a single clip. And ear protection for both of us.”
“You bet, you bet.” He removes the gun from the case and lays a full clip beside it. He grabs some ear protectors off the wall.
My hands are sweating. “I, uh, need a favor, Jazz. I need you to take it into the range for me and load in the clip.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. I feel myself blushing with shame. My voice, when it comes out, is quiet. “Please, Jazz. This is a test. If I go in there and can’t pick up that gun, then I’ll probably never shoot again. I don’t want to touch it before then.”
I see those eyes, examining me, warm and cold at the same time. Warm wins out. “No problem at all, Smoky. Just give me a second.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.” I grab the ear protectors and kneel down in front of Bonnie. “We have to wear these inside the firing range, honey. It’s superloud when you fire a gun, and it’ll hurt your ears if you don’t.”
She nods, holding out her hand. I give her the ear protectors. She puts them on and I do the same.
“Follow me,” Jazz indicates with a gesture.
We go through the door into the range. Right away I smell that smell. The smell of smoke and metal. There’s nothing quite like it. I’m relieved to see that the range is empty right now.
I make it clear to Bonnie that she has to stay back against the wall. Jazz looks at me and slides the clip home. He lays the gun down on the small wooden counter that faces the range. The cold eyes this time, but then he smiles at me and turns and heads back into the main part of the shop. He knows I want to be alone.
I look back at Bonnie, give her a smile. She doesn’t return it. Instead, she looks at me, an intent look. She understands that I am doing something here, something important. She’s giving it the seriousness it deserves.
I pick up the human-shaped target and attach it to the clip that holds it. I hit the button, watching it sail away from me, down the range, farther, farther, farther. Until it seems the size of a playing card.
My heart thuds in my chest. I am shivering and sweating at the same time.
I look down at the Glock.
Sleek, black instrument of death. Some protest its existence, some think it’s a thing of beauty. For me, it’s always been an extension of myself. Until it betrayed me.
This is a Glock model 34. It has a 5.32-inch barrel and weighs just under thirty-three ounces with a fully loaded magazine. It fires nine-millimeter bullets and has a magazine capacity of seventeen. The trigger pull, unmodified, is a smooth 4.5 pounds. I know all of these mechanical things. I know them like I know my own height and weight. The question now is whether or not we can reconcile, this blackbird and I.
I move my hand toward it. I am sweating more profusely now. I feel light-headed. I grit my teeth, force myself to keep reaching. I see Alexa’s eyes, the O of her mouth as my bullet, from my gun, entered her chest and silenced her forever. This plays over and over again in my head, like film that has been looped. Bang and death, bang and death, bang and the end of the world.
“GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU GODDAMN YOU!” I don’t know if I am screaming at God, Joseph Sands, myself, or the gun.
I snatch up the Glock in a single fluid motion, and I am firing it; the black steel jerks in my hand, pow-pow-pow-pow-pow!
Then I hear the click of an empty chamber, a spent magazine. I am shaking, crying. But the Glock, it’s still there. And I have not passed out.
Welcome back, I think I can hear it whisper.
With a shaking hand, I push the button that will bring the target back to me. It arrives, and what I see fills me with a kind of exultation, tinged with sadness. Ten head shots, seven in the heart. I had hit everything I wanted to, where I wanted to. Just like always.
I look at the target, then at the Glock, and I feel that joy and sadness all over again. I know now that shooting will never be the simple joy it used to be. There’s been too much death behind it for me. Too much grief I can never forget.
That’s okay. I know now what I needed to know. I can hold a gun again. Loving it is unimportant.
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 relationship, 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
BONNIE 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.
She gives me her serious look. The one that both did and didn’t fit her. It didn’t fit her because she was t
oo 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.
***
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 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 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. 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.”