Marilyn asks the other question. The one we're all terrified of. "And the spinal cord swelling . . . ?"
"The best bet, in my opinion, is that she'll be fine. The swelling should go down, with no lasting paralysis or damage. But . . ." He sighs.
"We can't be sure, not one hundred percent. There's always the worstcase scenario of permanent paralysis."
Marilyn's hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes are all whites. I speak into the silence. "Thanks, Doctor."
He gives all of us a tired nod and walks off.
"Oh no, oh Jesus . . ." Marilyn moans. "Not now. I just got to meet her, I . . ."
And the tears start. I move to her and hug her tight as she begins to weep in earnest.
My own eyes are dry. I'm too busy bending, bending but not breaking.
48
WE'RE BACK IN the office, a battered bunch. Elaina and Bonnie are at my house, since Alan's place has become a crime scene. Marilyn stayed at the hospital to wait for news of Callie. She wasn't put off a bit by our leaving.
"Get him" was all she'd said.
James is standing, looking out the window. He won't meet my eyes. I want to go crawl into a hole, curl up, and sleep for a year. But I can't do that.
"You know what the thing is about stress, James?" I say, musing. He remains silent. I wait him out. "What?" he asks finally, still looking out the window.
"Stress creates little hairline fractures. They start small, and they spread, and then they get big, and eventually the result is that something shatters." I keep my voice careful, nonaccusative. "Is that what you want, James? For me to shatter? To just break up and--blow away?"
His head whips around at this. "What? No. I--" He sounds like he's strangling. "I just, with Callie . . ." He clenches his fists, unclenches them, takes a deep breath. Steadies himself. Now he looks at me directly. "I'm not afraid for myself, Smoky. I'm afraid for Callie. You understand?"
"Of course I do," I reply in a soft voice. "I was afraid for my family too. Every day. I had nightmares about something happening to them exactly like what did happen." I shrug. "But Matt told me the truth once. He said that I was doing what I loved. And he was right. I hate chasing these fuckers, but I love catching them, you know?"
He looks at me for a moment, then nods.
"And I thought a lot about exactly what you said in there, long before you said it. I agonized over it. Did Sands come after us, did he kill my family, because I goaded him? For a long time, I thought the answer was yes. But I realized later that that was bullshit. He came after us because I was coming after him. Because I do what I do. He was going to do it whether I talked trash about him or not. You follow?"
He doesn't reply.
"The point, James, is that it doesn't matter what I say or don't say to Jack Jr. He is coming after us, period. We're his prey now. You want to know his victim type?" I gesture around the room. "They're all right here."
He looks at me for a long time before responding. When he does, his response is to close his eyes once, and nod.
I smile. "Apology accepted," I murmur.
He looks off for a moment, clears his throat. Everyone else has been silent and watching. Tense. It's like we're all on a hot plate, just waiting to pop and sizzle and burn. The fine machine that is my team is grinding its gears, ready to fracture and explode. I know the real source of this anger is Jack Jr. But I worry that we're going to start taking that anger out on one another. I've always thought of myself as the spindle around which the spokes of the wheel turn. If I'm the spindle, Callie is the motion. The thing that makes the wheel move over whatever terrain, however rough. Her jibes and jokes, her teasing and relentless humor, it keeps us sane. Its absence is like the void of space, and we're ready to fill that void by lunging for one another's throats.
"You know what the first thing Callie ever said to me was?" I say without preamble. "She said, 'Thank heavens! You're not a midget, after all.' " I smile at the memory. "She told me that she'd heard I was four foot ten and just couldn't get a picture of how tall that was in her mind. She kept imagining me as a dwarf."
Alan laughs at this, a quiet, sad laugh. "You know what she said when she saw me? She said, 'Oh dear, it's a giant Negro!' "
"She did not!" I exclaim.
"She did, I promise."
We all stop talking as Alan's cell phone rings, and watch as he answers it and listens. "Yeah. No kidding? Thanks, Gene." He hangs up, looking at me. "The prints from our suspect in custody match the prints taken off the bed in Annie's apartment. We also have some of his DNA for comparison--"
"How did we pull that off?" I interrupt.
"He cut his lip as a result of that mix-up you guys had taking him down. Barry offered him a handkerchief to clean himself up with."
I smile, grim. "Smart."
Alan leans forward, looking at me. "He's one of the guys, Smoky. For sure, one hundred percent. Maybe not provable yet, but close enough. What do you want to do?"
They are all looking at me, the same question in their eyes. What do you want to do? The answer is simple.
We kill him and eat him? the dragon asks.
In a way, I think.
"One of us is going to do the interrogation of our lives and crack him wide, wide open, Alan."
49
WE'RE STANDING IN the observation room with Barry, looking through the one-way glass at Robert Street. He's seated at a table, cuffed at the wrists and ankles.
He's nondescript, which surprises me on some level. He has brown hair, and a hard face made up of planes and edges. His eyes are hot and angry, while the rest of him is relaxed. He's staring back at us through the mirror.
"Pretty cool cucumber," Alan says. "We know anything about this guy yet?"
"Not much," Barry says. "Name is Robert Street. Thirty-eight years old, single, never been married, no kids. Works as a martial-arts instructor in the Valley." He looks at me, nodding to indicate my swollen lips.
"But you already found that out."
"Do you have an address on him yet?" I ask.
"Yeah. He lives in an apartment in Burbank. With the match to the prints found in your friend's place, we'll be able to get a warrant. I have someone on that now."
"Who should do the interview?" Alan asks. "You said 'one of us'--so who's it going to be? You or me?"
"You. No question." It's a no-brainer for me. Alan is the best, and the man inside that room holds the key to finding the real Jack Jr. To ending all of this. He gives me a long look and nods, turning to watch Robert Street through the glass. He watches him for long moments. Barry and I are patient, we wait him out; we know that we are disappearing for Alan, that he is fixing himself firmly into the zone, studying Street like a hunter studies game.
Getting ready to crack him like a walnut.
We need to break him, for all kinds of reasons. The truth is, we don't have him, not yet. The fingerprints at Annie's apartment could be explained away. A good defense attorney might argue that the prints got there when he moved the bed doing his whole pest-control thing. Which, while fraudulent and compelling in its own right, doesn't add up to murder, per se. We have his DNA but no results back yet. What if it's Jack's DNA under Charlotte Ross's fingernail and not Street's?
More than all of this, we need him to lead us to Jack Jr. Alan looks at Barry. "Can you let me in?"
Barry takes him outside and, not long after that, I watch Alan enter the interview room. Robert Street looks up at him. Cocks his head, examining. And smiles.