“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am, because you’ve disobeyed orders and turned a blind eye to everything else on your desk, and a kid’s in a coma as a result.”
Gelford then opened his desk drawer and pulled out a letter and handed it to Greg.
Greg felt his heart slump. He didn’t have to ask its contents. He was being suspended.
“I wish it didn’t have to come to this,” Gelford said. “But you were put on notice, you were given a verbal and written reprimand, and you chose to violate department policies.”
“How long?”
“One month with pay until a hearing on a determination of guilt.” Then Gelford added, “As corny as it may sound, we live by discipline in this department, and you pissed on it.”
Greg looked at the letter, aware that they probably viewed him as a crazy man on a mission, a cop who saw things that they discounted as patently foolish. It was possible that they even suspected that he had made it all up about the doctors and Nova Children’s Center.
Technically, Gelford was right: They were not bound to crimes in another jurisdiction, especially when it was questionable that a crime had been committed. His lone hunches weren’t enough. The long and the short of it was that he was no longer credible or reliable in their eyes. Possibly even psychotic.
“Sorry, Greg,” said Chief Adler. “You have a right to a hearing, of course, but in the meantime I must ask you to clean out your locker and turn in your badge and weapon.”
Greg got up. He unstrapped his weapon and his badge and laid them on the desk. He felt half-naked.
Gelford rose to his feet. “I think this might be for the best,” he said. “I think you need to decompress, maybe get away for a while. Get off this thing. Chill out.”
Greg nodded.
“And I think in the meantime you should see somebody—a professional. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Greg nodded again and headed for the door with his suspension letter in hand.
“One more thing,” Gelford said. “I need not tell you there are laws against impersonating a police officer. Furthermore, if you keep bothering those people up there, you could be arrested for harassment and disturbing the peace.”
Maybe that’s how it would end, Greg thought. He thanked them and left.
54
Brendan was thinking about love and death when the phone rang.
“I have to see you.” It was Nicole.
Brendan felt mildly shocked. The last time he saw her, she all but wished him to disappear. “What’s up?”
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” she said. Her voice was its familiar neutral.
“C-can’t it wait? I’m in the middle of something.”
“I’m going back to camp tomorrow. It’s about the stuff you told me last week. We have to talk.”
“Can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“No. It’s too important. Please.”
Please was not a Nicole word. Brendan felt his resolve slip. “W-w-where you want to meet?”
“In the parking lot on Shoreline Drive at eleven.”
That was just outside Hawthorne, about eighteen miles from Brendan’s house. He had no desire to jump in his truck and drive all that way. Maybe she had some information about all this. Maybe she remembered stuff. Maybe she had decided to fess up.
“Okay.”
He hung up and stared at his hands for a long moment.
“Death is the mother of beauty.” Wallace Stevens again. The line had hummed in his head all evening. Even before Richard had gone to bed.
Brendan got up and stepped out of his room to the second-floor landing. There was a wall mirror hanging between his room and Richard’s. In the overhead light he studied his face.
I’m going to kill my grandfather, he said to himself.
Nothing.
Time to get off the bus.
He pressed his face closer. No change of expression. No dilation of pupils. No look of horror. No shock. No fear. No pleasure. No pounding of his chest.
Nothing.
He had hoped to detect some shift in his features, some microexpression to betray the flat featureless landscape of his face. Yes, he had been prepping for this for weeks, so it was no surprise. But still. Murder.
God! I could be a terrorist, he thought. Except even terrorists have passion, misdirected as it is.
I’m half-dead. A zombie.
He had no intention of hurting Richard. This was not an act of cruelty. In fact, he knew he was not a cruel person. He never entertained fantasies of hurting anyone. He was not into torturing animals. He did not get off looking at pictures of train wrecks or dead people.
In fact, he liked Richard. And he knew murder was a morally wrong act, but Richard was near death anyway. Why prolong his misery, and he suffered daily debilitation and pain. Euthanasia is not murder. He’d be Richard’s own Jack Kevorkian.
An act of mercy. I’m a moral being.
Then another voice cut in: You’re twisting logic to arrive at a preordained conclusion.
No.
Brendan had worked out all the details, thought through the consequences of Richard’s death. Because he was a legal eighteen, Brendan would not have to contend with guardians or foster homes. And because he was sole beneficiary of Richard’s estate, he would inherit the house, the contents, the truck; the old man’s meager savings would be his; and he would collect on a small life insurance policy. With his job at the Dells, he could support himself just fine.
As for Richard’s death, there’d be no telltale signs. Richard had a long history of heart disease, so the coroner’s report would be pro forma: heart failure. Brendan had read someplace that unless there were suspicious circumstances, people who die over the age of seventy-five are almost never autopsied. And there would be no suspicious circumstances.
Besides, he had an alibi. He spent the evening with Nicole DaFoe.
He tilted the mirror to change angles.
Am I insane?
Richard was near death anyway. Why not wait?
Because he could linger for months. Wasn’t that more cruel?
Brendan knew full well why he was doing this: He simply hoped that Richard’s death would release the emotional blockage. To let him know love and sorrow.
And what if there’s nothing? a voice asked. What if you kill him and you’re still made of wood?
There’s the shotgun in the cellar.
Brendan took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He tensed his muscles into a tight crouch and squeezed with all his might against the maelstrom raging in his brain. He held firm and pressed until it swirled into a pinpoint and blinked itself out.
Silence.
Brendan straightened up and opened Richard’s door.
The hinges let out a rusty squeal, but Richard did not stir.
The interior of the room was very still. The hump of Richard was slashed with moonlight through the blinds. Because of the arthritis, Richard always slept flat on his back.
Brendan moved closer. Richard’s mouth was slightly open and a hand rested under his chin. His eyes looked fused.
A pillow had fallen to the floor. He picked it up. It was thick enough to do the job.
Without an autopsy, suffocation would pass as heart failure.
In his head, Brendan ran through the moves, almost feeling the old man’s bony frail frame under him. He wondered how much Richard would struggle. That would be the hardest part. He hoped not much. He might even die of fright.