“I did make you an appointment with a doctor, though.”
Before the funeral, I’d confessed to her about the constant pain that followed from my fall in the woods. Then she threatened to call a doctor, making me regret saying anything at all.
“I don’t need to see a doctor.”
“Yes, you do. If it’s nothing serious, he’ll give you a prescription and you’ll have some relief from the pain. And if it is serious, Roland, then the sooner you do something about it, the better. You’re not as young as you used to be.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, baby. Just stating the facts.”
Which is how I end up, a couple of hours later, perched on a blue vinyl examination table wearing nothing but a stiff cotton gown. X-rays of my lower spine glow on the light board across the room, placed there by a nurse with appliqué crystals on her fingernails. As she departs, she estimates the doctor’s arrival time at three minutes.
Twenty minutes later, a short, handsome Asian man in his mid-thirties appears, wearing mint scrubs and a modish pair of black plastic glasses. He launches into a speech about the mysteries and complexities of the human back. His tone sounds a little defensive, as if I’ve suggested there’s an easy fix. “Have you ever known anyone who’s had back surgery?”
“Not surgery,” I say. “Surgeries, yes.”
He laughs. “I’ll have to remember that one. There’s some truth to it, for sure. You don’t want to go down that path, assuming you don’t have to.”
The vertebrae could be compressed, he notes in a dubious tone, pinching the sciatic nerve, but there’s no herniation. “The symptoms you describe, though, sound consistent with a herniated disc.” He says a lot more, most of which I don’t catch. In my case, he says it’s possible we might do nothing and the pain will go away. Or we could take action and inadvertently make it worse. The thing to do is to wait and see.
“For now, I’m going to recommend rest,” he says. “And I’ll write you an anti-inflammatory prescription to bring the swelling down. No heavy lifting.”
In other words, no gun, no cuffs, no lugging that thick leather briefcase.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
When I get home, I swallow a couple of pills and start running a bath. Just as my toe touches the water, the doorbell rings. I slip on a terry cloth robe and grab my Browning before descending the stairs. Through the peephole I see Bascombe, his eyes hidden behind a pair of Ray-Bans.
“Open up, man.”
I welcome him inside. He smirks at the gun in my hand.
“Can’t be too careful,” I say.
We go through to the kitchen. He’s never been to the house before. He pauses to appreciate Charlotte’s marble counters and stainless appliances. Then he pulls out a barstool and sighs. “You didn’t make things easier on me this morning.”
“I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
“You and me, we’re the last of the old breed. If we don’t stick together. .”
“I hear you, Lieutenant. I guess I felt a little blindsided. I mean, with Hedges, I got shot in the leg and was back on the job within twenty-four hours. He knew when to bend the rules.”
“Well, he’s gone now.” He shakes his head. “You might think you and Mosser have some kind of relationship, but let me tell you, she’s ready to throw you to the wolves. There’s a lot of pressure being put on her, March. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Somewhere higher up, maybe even from outside the department. They want to come down on you for this shooting.”
“The guy murdered a cop.”
“You don’t have to tell me. But these IAD guys, they’re treating Lorenz’s death and your shooting as two separate events. To them, you might as well have walked up to the man at random and lit him up. And they didn’t come up with that on their own. Somebody’s telling them how to play this. Somebody with a lot of pull.”
“You’re freaking me out.”
“I hope so. Now tell me one thing: are you absolutely sure that the man you saw at the scene was the same one in the photo Bea Kuykendahl provided?”
“I’m not absolutely sure. How can I be? But it looked like him. When I saw him, the voice in my head went, That’s the guy.”
“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what to make of that at all.”
“It means the man the FBI says is on the mortuary slab is really alive and kicking. Which makes you wonder why they’d want us to think otherwise. There’s some kind of connection to Andrew Nesbitt’s death, too-the guy who claimed he was working for the CIA. That’s what all the stuff they took from the scene was about. Lorenz put it all together. That finger was pointing at something after all. It was pointing to the stretch of Allen Parkway where Nesbitt was shot. You may not know what to make of it, but to me it looks like some kind of cover-up.”
“A conspiracy,” he says. “You sound crazy.”
“Maybe. Do you have another explanation?”
He shakes his head.
“So what are we going to do about this?”
“We aren’t doing nothing. Wanda Mosser’s keeping tabs on me like nobody’s business. She barely let me leave her office for bathroom breaks. And you’re done. If she so much as suspects you’re working this case, she’ll come down on you like bricks. You were about to spill everything to her, too. If she’d found out about the file Agent Kuykendahl gave you, trust me, you wouldn’t have walked out with it.”
“What?”
“I’m not stupid, March. The point is, whatever your suspicions are, they’re just that: suspicions. You don’t know anything concrete, and you certainly can’t prove it. Right now, you’ve got to go with the flow. Stay under her radar, and she won’t feel like she has to do anything more to you for the time being.”
“So just rest,” I say. “Just relax. You sound like my doctor.”
“You should listen.”
The sound of a car outside. I glance through the kitchen blinds and see Charlotte pulling up to the garage. Bascombe rises, making for the front door.
“What about the ID on the guy who killed Lorenz? Have they gotten anything yet?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing on the prints, nothing on the DNA. He wasn’t carrying any identification, just cash, and it turns out you can buy those skull rings pretty much anywhere. It’s like he never existed.”
“Or his files were erased.”
“Man,” he says, “I’m getting out of here. Pretty soon you’ll have me believing it.”
He closes the front door just as Charlotte comes through the back. She drops her purse and keys on the side table.
“Was somebody here?” she asks.
I stand there, uncertain what to say. The conversation fills my head like so much cotton wadding, muffling the sound of her voice. Then I flip the switch. I take the fears and suspicions and I bury them.
“Bascombe,” I say. “He just left. And now my bathwater is probably cold.”
She kicks her shoes off. “A bath sounds good.”
It’s a pleasure just to be in the same room with her. To be able to reach out and touch her. To have more in my life than her disembodied voice.
“You can join me,” I say.
“Tempting.” She tilts her head to one side, her expression an alloy of mischief and concern. “I would, baby, but I’m afraid you might hurt yourself.”
Interlude: 1986
One morning, already late and breathing hard, a lather of sweat on my skin, I veered off the path of my usual run, cutting through a stretch of parkland on base. I passed through clusters of empty picnic tables set in clearings draped with camouflage netting. Going this way, I could slice five minutes off my time and avoid the hard glare from Sgt. Crewes.
Rounding a corner, I wiped my brow on the sleeve of my olive drab T-shirt. When I looked up, a group of men were staring my way. Magnum and his death squad trainees sat huddled at one of the picnic tables. My sudden appearance had interrupted some kind of lesson. Magnum said something in what sounded like fluent Spanish, eliciting a laugh from his men. I should have kept jogging, but instead I pounded to a halt, doubling over to catch my breath.