Crash & Burn

  “Heard about your arm,” Tessa said, gesturing to D.D.’s stiff posture. The detective had recently suffered an on-the-job injury to her left arm. Rumor mill was it was serious and ongoing. As in she might never again be fit for duty. The department had a heart about such things. Most likely, the detective would be offered a desk. Except D.D., like Tessa, wasn’t a woman meant for sitting.

  “Figured as much.” D.D. eyed her sharply. “Here to talk to me about my future employment opportunities?”

  “Never hurts to know,” Tessa responded mildly. “And it must not hurt to listen, given that you agreed to lunch.”

  D.D. gave a single-shouldered shrug, maybe not totally convinced, but not arguing either. “Do you like what you do?” she asked, clearly curious.

  “More than I thought I would. For example, working the Denbe case . . . an entire family gone missing, racing against all odds to find them. You and I, we do best in situations that provide a challenge, as well as a sense of purpose.”

  “Kind of an extreme case. Where you got a lot of help from the BPD, I might add.”

  “You’d be amazed how many extreme cases exist in corporate America. You have money, egos, and world domination at stake. People can get a little nuts.”

  “You like it.”

  “I do. Which, I’ll be the first to say, surprised me. And to be honest, the hours are better. My daughter knows that nine times out of ten, I’m coming home for dinner. And watching her game on the weekend. And getting four weeks’ paid vacation a year, while earning a salary that lets us spend that time someplace sunny.”

  “Now you’re just being mean.”

  “It’s true. My job is superior to yours in every way.”

  “Not every way.”

  “Highly challenging, incredibly lucrative, and family friendly. Tell me what working for a corporate security firm can’t offer you.”

  “Phil,” D.D. said simply. “And Neil. My squad mates. You’ve always been a lone wolf, Tessa. Whereas I’ve always loved my team.”

  * * *

  THEIR LUNCHES ARRIVED shortly. They made small talk, caught up on mutual acquaintances. Bobby Dodge, a state police detective, was doing well. Still married to Annabelle, now had three kids, just bought a fixer-upper out in the burbs. Big yard, D.D. reported. Kind of place perfect for a swimming pool, trampoline and summer barbecues. Oh, and they’d gotten a puppy, an Australian cattle dog. Most likely to herd the kids.

  Around and around she and D.D. went, exchanged stories on people they knew, cases they’d worked. Until lunch was done, Tessa had charged it to her corporate card and they were back to the matter at hand.

  “You’ll think about it?” Tessa said at last. “Maybe come in for a sit-down interview? Never hurts to know what’s out there.”

  D.D. nodded. Her love of her team aside, if she couldn’t pass the fitness-for-duty test, she was done as a cop. Tessa was offering her a lifeline by even considering her for Northledge Investigations, and they both knew it.

  “Speaking of dogs, state has a new development on an old case,” D.D. said as they rose to standing.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Guy was out playing with his dog,” D.D. said, “tossing a stick for him in a nearby stream, when he happened to notice a small black handgun beneath the water. He turned it in to the police; the lab matched the pistol to the bullet used to kill John Stephen Purcell. You know, that hit man murdered three years ago.”

  Tessa didn’t say anything.

  “Just got me thinking,” D.D. said casually. “There are still a lot of unanswered questions from that night—”

  “My daughter’s doing just fine,” Tessa interjected curtly.

  “I don’t begrudge that. I don’t.” D.D. shook her head. “But, Tessa, you and I . . . You’re right. We’re meant to be doing things. Hell, we’re meant to be wearing badges. And the kind of people who wear the shield are supposed to uphold the system, honor the law. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed. And you—”

  D.D. broke off. What she suspected, she could never prove, and they both knew it. While Tessa remained silent, because what she had done she was never going to say, and they both knew it.

  “I’m not trying to threaten you,” D.D. said at last.

  “Then what are you trying to do?”

  “Give you a heads-up. Rumor is, lab geeks recovered a print. No statute of limitations on homicide, right? Meaning if new evidence is recovered . . .”

  She didn’t have to say the rest. Tessa understood.

  D.D. stepped away from the table. “The Purcell case isn’t the BPD’s,” she remarked, as they headed through the restaurant, toward the front doors. “State assigned it to a new guy, Detective Rick Stein. Word on the street is he’s a supercop, the kind of guy who hates open cases and unanswered questions. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from him soon enough.”

  “Fair enough,” Tessa said.

  “You could come forward, volunteer information now,” the detective suggested.

  Tessa merely shot her a look.

  “You’re still a lone wolf, Tessa,” D.D. remarked softly, as they pushed through the doors.

  “I never got to work with your squad mates,” Tessa answered.

  D.D. merely smiled. “Thanks for lunch. I’ll think about it.”

  They went their separate ways.

  Chapter 10

  THOMAS HAS RETURNED. He had left, telling me I needed to rest, though we could both tell he was the one who was exhausted. Now he’s back and I’m pleasantly surprised that I both remember his name and feel almost happy to see him. He has brought me a change of clothes. Black yoga pants, an oversize cable-knit sweater the color of cinnamon. The clothes don’t appear instantly recognizable to me. And yet, when I hold them to my nose and inhale . . .

  A flash of memory. I am curled up on a chocolate-brown leather sofa. A book is in my hands, a cup of tea on the glass coffee table near my feet. While across from me, Thomas sits in a matching chair, deeply engrossed in the morning crossword puzzle.

  I’m suddenly hungry for oatmeal, but I don’t know if that makes any sense.

  Dr. Celik appears in the doorway, carrying a brown paper bag. She glances at me absently, then focuses her attention on Thomas. They resume their low-voiced huddle across the room. Like intimates, I think again. I wonder if I’m the jealous type. Or if Thomas has ever strayed. Did I know? Did I care?

  I don’t know if I’m a good wife. Apparently, I’m a high-maintenance one. And, given the bruise on Thomas’s jaw, one capable of lashing out. But am I sweet, nurturing, tender? Or bossy, domineering, a real shrew?

  Mixed-up memory or not, it feels like I should know that much about myself. Basic personality traits, dynamics of a marriage, emotional snapshots of a life.

  Maybe I’m simply too tired, because I can’t bring anything to mind. The feeling of sinking underwater, isn’t that what the doctor had described to Thomas? Because that’s how I feel. As if I’m partially submerged, just floating along, the world drifting farther and farther away.

  Dr. Celik’s voice rises sharply. I don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand she doesn’t want me to go. Most likely I require observation, further tests, and a bunch more poking and prodding by the nurses who show up hourly to read my stats and otherwise terrorize me.

  Under water or not, I haven’t lost my resolve. I can’t stay here. The machines are too loud, the lights too bright, the sound of footsteps too echoey down the linoleum hall. A hospital is no place to recover from a concussion. It’s way too everything for a woman who requires significant R & R.

  More debate, another sharp exchange.

  “You understand you are signing her out AMA—against medical advice? That it’s my expert opinion your wife should remain in the hospital at least another twenty-four hours. That she remains at risk for cerebral swelli
ng, not to mention a brain bleed. As in, you take her home, and she could die there.”

  Will I recognize my house? I try to picture it. A gray-painted Colonial with black shutters comes immediately to mind. Maybe a vision from a magazine or maybe my actual home; I’ll find out soon enough. I try to imagine a cat or dog but come up empty. Apparently, my husband and I are content with our own company. We work together; Thomas told me that. He designs props, set pieces, and I help finish them. Live together, work together, sleep together.

  We must love each other very much, or it’s no wonder I bruised his jaw.

  Then . . . another memory: myself, sitting in a brightly lit sunroom. Green tendrils of hanging plants softening the oversize bank of windows. Tile floor, eclectic colors on the wall. Myself, sitting in the middle, painting. And smiling. I can actually feel it on my face. I am happy.

  Thomas’s voice, booming from the doorway behind me: Hey, honey, wanna grab lunch?

  My smile growing. Happier.

  “Nicky.”

  My mind zooms back to the present. Stark hospital room. Me, lying on the bed, my husband now standing beside me. “Doctor Celik is willing to let you go,” he tells me, which immediately strikes me as odd, because that’s not how their exchange had sounded to me at all. “But you have to promise to rest, and we’ll need to return in a few days for a follow-up.”

  I nod. It hurts my head, but not terribly. Then I promptly crinkle my nose. Thomas is now carrying the paper sack once held by the doctor. I smell blood, earthy and strong. But also . . . scotch. The good stuff. I don’t know whether to roll away in disgust or lean forward in longing.

  “Your clothes,” Thomas says, holding up the bag, marked with the symbol for biohazard.

  It takes me a moment; then I get it. From last night, he means. From the accident.

  I can’t help myself. “We can take them? I thought, the police . . . You said there would be questions.”

  “Your blood alcohol reading measured .06,” my husband tells me. “Legal limit in New Hampshire is .08. At this time, they have no grounds to charge you, let alone seize personal property.”

  I nod. I wonder if I should be impressed my husband knows legal statutes so well. Or worried.

  “But the items are bloody . . . destroyed.” I’m still confused. Why does he have my shredded clothes? Why does he care?

  He doesn’t answer the question, but gestures to the fresh garments he’d stacked at the foot of my hospital bed.

  “Think you can get dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I’m going to run down to the pharmacy to fill your prescriptions; then I’ll be back. Give me twenty minutes.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five thirty.”

  “It’s dark outside.”

  “Yes.”

  “Vero’s not afraid of the dark,” I inform him.

  Thomas sighs and leaves the room.

  * * *

  OUR HOUSE IS a two-story Colonial. I can’t tell the color given that it’s night. But after driving forty minutes along quaint back roads and winding side streets, Thomas pulls into a driveway, kills the engine. Both of us sit there for a moment. Not talking. Just alone in the dark.

  Then Thomas pops open his door, comes around and assists me.

  My ribs still ache. My chest, if I try to inhale too deep. But I find if I keep my movements simple, my pacing slow, I can manage well enough. There are four steps up to a covered front patio. A lone porch light illuminates the door, which appears to be painted the color of wine. Or is it blood? Didn’t we laugh about that once?

  Thomas unlocks the door, gestures for me to enter.

  My house has a vaulted foyer. Slate tile below, black wrought-iron chandelier above, switchback staircase straight ahead. I move to the cherrywood side table without even thinking. Two framed pictures. One appears to be us, younger, happier, laughing on a beach. The frame features broken pottery tiles and I immediately think of Mexico. Good trip. We’d breakfasted on tequila and spent the afternoons racing WaveRunners through crashing surf. We’d been dangerous and silly and madly, passionately in love.

  I miss Mexico. Still do.

  Next up, a black-and-white portrait. Not a couples shot at all. Just me, backlit by something, maybe a table lamp. You can’t see my expression, only my profile, wisps of dark hair curling provocatively. There is something pensive about the photo, and I set it down reflexively.

  “I always liked that picture of you,” Thomas says. He throws his keys in a basket on the table, trying to watch me while not appearing to be watching me.

  I know without asking that he took that photo and I’d been crying right beforehand. A raw, eyes-streaming, nose-running, throat-hiccupping jag that had concerned him so much he’d gotten out his camera in order to distract me.

  Sometimes I cry for no reason.

  See, I remember something about myself after all.

  I follow Thomas deeper into the home, coming face-to-face with the chocolate leather sofa, the glass coffee table. The kitchen is off the family room. Lighter, maple-wood cabinets, because I didn’t want the room to feel too dark. A backsplash of seafoam-green glass tiles because they reminded me of the ocean. A parlor table for two, wrought-iron base, butterfly mosaic inlay because I always yearned to fly.

  This is my room. As well as the sunroom directly off of it, with its crazy alternating lime-green and pink-magenta walls. Thomas had groaned the second he saw the colors. Don’t make me do it, he’d dramatized in mock horror. But it was my room, my space, and I could have it any way I wanted, so I’d gone with lime green and pink magenta.

  Just as long as it didn’t have a painted rosebush, climbing up the walls.

  “Work shed is out the back,” he says now, gesturing to the door off the sunroom. “Here is where you work. There is where I work.”

  “Not side by side?”

  “Not too often. I build; you paint. And between the two of us, the work gets done.”

  He leads me upstairs. No pictures on the wall and for some reason this surprises me, as if I’d been expecting them. The second floor has three bedrooms, including a master with its own bath. That room has a tray ceiling and a truly massive four-poster cherrywood bed.

  My first thought is there is no way I picked out that formal monstrosity. Thomas must have done it, because I already hate it.

  He doesn’t say anything, just completes the short, guided tour.

  “Why such a big house for just the two of us?” I ask. “Do we entertain often, host many guests?”

  “We liked this house, even though it was bigger than we needed. And, given that we do work together, sometimes it’s nice to have extra space.”

  I walk into the smaller of the two extra bedrooms. It features a lovely white-painted wrought-iron daybed, covered in a quilt of butter yellow.

  “I like this room.”

  He doesn’t say anything.

  I touch one corner of the quilt, finger it in my hand. It is hand-stitched, handcrafted. But not by me, I think instantly. The skill demonstrated here is well beyond my pay grade. And yet . . .

  I know who made this quilt. I miss her.

  And just for a moment, I feel it again. That sense of hollowness deep inside my chest. Yearning.

  “You can sleep here if you want,” Thomas says quietly.

  “Okay.” I don’t even look at him. This room is mine; the master is his. He can tell me whatever he wants. I know better.

  Thomas wonders if I’m hungry. Actually, I am. We return downstairs, where he whips up two cheese omelets. I slice up a cantaloupe, admiring the fine edge on the knife’s blade. If this kitchen is my domain, clearly I take my equipment seriously.

  We sit at the parlor table and I realize I’m moving automatically, already following rhythms that must have developed over the pa
st six months we’ve lived here. A party of two, banging around twenty-four hundred square feet, with cozy taste in furniture and surprisingly few pictures, knickknacks or personal decorations on the wall.

  I wonder if we finished unpacking all the moving boxes. Or if we’re simply people who prefer a very clean approach to home décor.

  After dinner, Thomas suggests we watch a movie. But I can tell he’s fading again, clearly dead on his feet. In contrast, I finally feel awake, curiously wired, as if the fog is lifting and if I just focus long enough, try hard enough, all the secrets of the universe will be mine.

  I tell Thomas he should go to bed. He tries to protest. I shoo him away, and finally, with a frown, he takes the hint.

  As he disappears upstairs, I pick up the remote and determine I have no problem running the system or finding all my favorite channels. As long as I don’t think too much, just act, I have no problems at all.

  I tune in to TV Land. Watch old episodes of Gilligan’s Island, which seems a safe enough show for a woman with multiple head injuries. Not too exciting, no threat of violence. Well, other than the Skipper smacking Gilligan with his hat time and time again. I draw the line at Golden Girls, though. I’m not that desperate.

  I turn off the TV, roam the family room. I discover a pile of books, mostly paperbacks. Apparently I like to read Nora Roberts, while Thomas favors Ken Follett. I reenter the kitchen, and then, because I simply have to know, I go through all the cabinets and then the pantry.

  Sure enough, no alcohol. Not a single can of beer, not a single bottle of wine. Let alone a decent bottle of scotch.

  For a moment, I’m disappointed. Terribly, dreadfully. Because wouldn’t a nice glass of single malt be perfect right about now?

  I leave the kitchen, head upstairs. My breath grows ragged in my chest, but I survive the hike. Back to the little room with the lovely butter-yellow quilt.

  There, I lie down fully clothed, my legs straight, my hands folded on my chest. Like a girl in a coffin.

  And then, I inhale.

  Vero.

  She is little again. Small and bubbly with chubby cheeks and fat fists. Airplane noises as she runs around the tiny room, leaping over pillows, willing her body into flight.