He glanced at her salmon again. She ate a big mouthful, along with some bok choy and cabbage.
He smiled appreciatively and drank some of his beer. “Right, but here’s the thing. All bad guys know something. A street dealer who’s rumored to have killed someone. The scuttlebutt on who really raped that girl in the projects. Where the Brown Pride Sureños are getting their guns. Something. And if they really don’t know anything, which never happens anyway, they make something up. Because hey, why not, right? Facing twenty years in the can, what have you got to lose?”
“So then why didn’t Weed offer anything? Or make something up?”
“There’s only one reason someone dummies up the way Weed did. What do you think it is?”
Livia remembered to eat while she considered. After a moment, she said, “Fear.”
“Bingo. Because when a defendant is scared, he doesn’t want anyone to think he’s talking about anything.”
“But scared of what?”
“Scared of getting killed. By anyone the bad guy might hurt testifying. So when you get someone who refuses to say even a word, that’s what you’re dealing with. Someone whose silence is a message to the people who could have him killed: ‘I’m not talking, so please don’t kill me.’”
“So what it does it mean that Weed was scared?”
Rick sipped his beer. “You tell me.”
She considered again. “It means he knows who hired him and his brother. And the third guy. And that whoever hired them is… dangerous.”
“Exactly. Now the thing is, Weed is part of a white supremacist gang, affiliated with a prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood. That would give him automatic AB protection in prison.”
“Aryan Brotherhood?”
“Yeah. The US prison population is dominated by three gangs-black, Latino, and white. It’s a little more complex than that, but you get the idea. Anyway, the Aryan Brotherhood is the white gang. Numerically they’re the smallest, but they’re feared because they’re so ruthless. So Weed was either afraid that if he testified, he’d get no protection from AB, or that AB would turn on him, or-”
“Or that even if the Aryan Brotherhood wanted to protect him, they wouldn’t be able to.”
Rick nodded, clearly pleased with the way she was thinking it through. “And what would that mean?”
“It would mean… whoever Weed is afraid of, they’re stronger than the Aryan Brotherhood. Because they could kill him even if the Aryan Brotherhood tried to protect him.”
“Exactly. So it’s a reasonable inference that whoever hired Weed and his gang has a lot of juice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t dramatically narrow the list of possibilities.”
Livia hated it, but she had to admit that for the time being, Weed was… dormant. She would find another way to keep looking.
Rick did mention, though, that with time off for good behavior, Weed could be released before his twenty years were up. Livia decided she would keep track of that. And track Weed down when he got out of prison. Maybe at that point, he’d have a new reason to talk.
Or she could find him one.
42-THEN
She hadn’t expected Rick to be any kind of parent figure-she knew he was single, with a busy job, and besides, after what she’d been through, just a safe place to stay while she finished high school would have been more than enough. But he seemed to enjoy the kinds of things parents do. He was a really good cook-he knew how to make lots of dishes, including his special salmon, and chicken tandoori, and bouillabaisse, Livia’s favorite. He went to PTA meetings. He helped her research colleges. But she wasn’t sure college made sense for her, and one night, at the dinner table, she told him of her doubts.
He paused with a spoonful of lentil soup halfway to his mouth. “I’m not pushing back,” he said, “but do you mind if I ask why? Because college would create more options. And that’s as important in life as it is on the mat, right?”
She hesitated, then said, “I think… I think I want to be a cop. Like you.”
She was afraid he would belittle the idea, or otherwise try to talk her out of it. But instead, he looked down for a moment, then said, “The first thing I want to say, and it’s the least important, is thank you.”
“For what?”
“For saying you want to be a cop like me. And if you wind up going that route, you’ll see one day how much that means.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant, but the way he’d said “if,” acknowledging at least the possibility, made her smile.
He set down his spoon. “And for what it’s worth, Livia, I think you’d make a great cop. One of the best.”
Suddenly, she had to blink back tears. “Really?”
“Really. You’re smart. And compassionate. You know how to sift through evidence, piecing together what makes sense, picking apart what doesn’t.”
He paused. “But that’s not even the half of it. You know what would really make you such a great cop?”
She shook her head, afraid to speak.
“Your personality. You know, most people are like sheep. Nice, harmless creatures who want nothing more than to be left alone so they can graze. But then of course there are wolves. Who want nothing more than to eat the sheep.”
He looked at his soup, then back to her. “But there’s a third kind of person. The sheepdog. Sheepdogs have fangs like wolves. But their instinct isn’t predation. It’s protection. All they want, what they live for, is to protect the flock.”
Livia blinked, but the tears got past her. Rick smiled. He knew she wouldn’t want to be touched. But he handed her his napkin. And that was enough.
“Look,” he said. “In the end, I just hope you find your thing, the thing you’re passionate about, the thing you’re best at, and do that. I don’t want you to feel I’m invested in anything more than that. I don’t want you to feel any… I don’t know. Pressure from me.”
She shook her head. “I don’t.”
He smiled. “Okay, good. Then I can say without worrying about any undue influence that when I look at you-all that strength, all that compassion-if you decide you want to spend your life protecting the flock, I think you’d be great at it.”
She wiped her face with the napkin. She felt he had seen so clearly inside her. Like he had X-ray vision. Not for the first time, she wondered how much else he might know, or at least suspect.
Rick went back to his soup, giving her a moment. And when she felt a little more in control, she said, “Thank you, Rick.”
He smiled again. “No, thank you, Livia. But don’t rule out college, okay? Remember, it’s about options. And it might even make you a better cop. All I’d ask is, keep it in mind.”
She promised him she would.
Sean sent her letters, mostly news about Llewellyn High. She wrote back, telling him about her new life in Portland, but it was awkward. He explained he had an email account now, and asked if she could get one, too. She could have-unlike sick Mr. Lone, Rick let her use his computer whenever she liked-but she didn’t want to make it too easy to be in touch. What she and Sean had in common, she didn’t know how to express in writing. So they stuck with snail mail. His letters started to arrive less frequently, and she took longer to respond because being reminded of him made her sad. Eventually, the hiatus from his last letter grew so long that she sensed there might not be another. She told herself she could always write back, but the days passed and she didn’t.
Rick had a motorcycle-a 1999 Kawasaki Ninja ZXR that Livia loved the second she saw it-and he taught her how to ride it. He was a member of a machine shop, where he brought the bike to do all the maintenance and repairs himself, and he taught her how to do all that, too. She liked using tools, and working with her hands. It seemed to reconnect her with who she was before all the terrible things happened, to a time when she had caught and butchered and cooked her own food, when she was more self-reliant and felt so much more free.