around the city again by a wing nut he was worried some cabal of
"powerful people" would target me for annihilation. As long as I've
known him, Dad has had an almost delusional distrust of those who find
themselves at the top of the hierarchy of influence. I typically find
this characteristic endearing, but occasionally it makes me crazy. Like
at my rehearsal dinner in Manhattan, when he was so cold to my now
ex-husband's "blue-blood" parents that I was afraid Roger was going to
call off the wedding. OK, in retrospect, that wouldn't have been so
bad. But now he was letting his paranoia get in the way of his pride
in my career.
I shook my head in disbelief. Part of me wanted to unleash to tell him
how much I resented the guilt I'd felt all day about last night, to
tell him he could keep his supposed apology. It only served to raise
the issue again in a whole new light. But I didn't want to say
anything that I'd regret.
Instead, I kept a measured voice. "Dad, I told you before that the MCU
is where I want to be. That means I'll be dealing with bad guys, and
if some of them happen to be important and influential, so be it. In
fact, I would think that you'd prefer me to prosecute the
privileged."
"I obviously didn't do very well getting my point across. I was trying
to explain what my worries had been, but that I know that you're going
to be better than I was at handling the pressures that might come with
a case like this."
"Oh, come on, Dad. You know that's not true."
"No," he said, "you said it last night I hung up OSP."
"You were in a different situation. You had a wife, a child." He
shook his head, and I could tell he wanted me to drop the pep talk. "I
was old enough to remember what it was like. Mom was pressuring you
"
I stopped mid-sentence when I saw the look on his face. It was clear
I'd said something wrong.
"I'm not sure what you think you remember, sweetheart, but your mother
never pressured me."
"Dad, it's OK. It doesn't make me think any less of her. She was
worried about you getting hurt."
"Sam, just stop it. You don't know what you're talking about."
"Then why did you leave OSP?" I asked. Once again, this conversation
was getting us nowhere.
"I don't want to talk about it. Let's get dinner started."
Everyone close to me Grace, Chuck, Roger (back in the day) has always
complained that I change the subject when the going gets rough. I
guess it runs in the family.
"Not yet. I want to know what this is about. You're upset, and it
apparently has something to do with why you moved over to the forest
service."
"I promised I would support you in your job, and I'm going to keep my
promise. Let's just leave it at that."
"Dad, I remember you and Mom arguing right around when you changed
jobs. It was the only time you did argue, in fact. You tried to keep
it from me, but I'd hear you in your room "
He laughed. "If you think we didn't argue over the years, we kept it
from you better than we thought."
"Thick walls," I said, knocking on the one behind me. He was changing
the subject again, and not very convincingly either. My parents'
marriage had been as solid as they come. Even before I made the
mistake of walking down the aisle of doom with Roger, I'd known that
we'd never come close.
Whatever was going on now, I could prod Dad all night and he would
still never budge. So I grabbed a bag of vegetables from the counter
and began chopping.
By the time Chuck arrived, the salad was tossed and the salmon was
broiled. After pumping palms, slapping backs, and a few other male
welcoming rituals, he found me in the kitchen, took one look at the
pink fish, and whispered in my ear, "If I swear you're not fat, can we
please have some steak?"
The man knew me so well. "I'm in no condition to run after this
evening, so the least we can do is eat something healthy."
"What was this evening?" Dad called out from the living room. "Must
have been big to keep you from running."
Chuck winked and mouthed the word big at me.
I rolled my eyes. "No more work talk tonight." I put dinner on the
table, and for the next two hours we talked about Hawaii, my dad's
computer, movies, and politics. We made it through the conversation
with no shootings, no bodies, no demons from the past just three normal
people sharing a meal.
As ten o'clock approached, Dad clicked on the local news, and I moved
to the kitchen to take on the dishes.
As the familiar staccato theme song faded out, I heard an anchor
report: "In our top story tonight, new developments in the
investigation into the death of Judge Clarissa Easterbrook. Find out
why her husband is railing against the Portland Police Bureau." I ran
into the living room just in time to catch: "But first, Morley
Rutherford's going to tell us what we can expect in the way of weather
tomorrow. Morley?"
I resisted the urge to throw my sudsy sponge at Morley Rutherford's fat
freckled head while he droned on with his entirely predictable
springtime weather report. Why not kick off the news with an
announcement that the earths going to rotate tomorrow?
Once Morley wrapped up with his seven-day graphic of clouds and
showers, the camera finally cut back to the anchor. "At a surprise
news conference held just moments ago, the husband of slain judge
Clarissa Easterbrook accused the Portland Police Bureau of focusing the
investigation on him rather than looking for the real killer."
The footage cut to Townsend at a podium in front of his house. "When I
learned yesterday that some monster had killed my beloved Clarissa" his
voice broke and his hands trembled, but he continued to read from the
statement in front of him "I thought that nothing in the world could
ever be worse than at that moment. But the course of the Portland
Police Bureaus investigation has convinced me that there is a more
horrific possibility, and that would be if the person or people
responsible for her death were not brought to justice. The police tell
me they have no suspects in my wife's death, but they spent hours in
our home with a search warrant, interrogated our friends looking for
problems that did not exist in our marriage, and asked me to take a
polygraph examination, suggesting that they would not be able to
investigate other suspects fully until I proved my innocence. So that
is why I am standing here tonight.
"I have not even buried my wife" he wiped away a tear and swallowed but
kept his eyes on his notes "and I am here in front of cameras, forced
to deny something that is inconceivable to me. I did not and could not