I pursed my lips and nodded slowly. “That’s me.”
“Holy shit! Mac, this is Kevin Swanson, man! From Burlington! He’s that guy we were talking about the other day!”
McAdoo’s dark brow wrinkled. “Get out of here!”
“I am who I am,” I said. My nose began to itch. I decided I would plead guilty to three counts of first-degree murder if only they’d let me scratch it.
The other two officers reappeared from in between the two houses. One helped the staggering young woman towards the nearest patrol car while the other, a black man just as tall as McAdoo but only half the width, came over waving his hands.
“Cut him loose,” he said. “Girl says this guy saved her ass. He’s a hero, man, uncuff him.”
And McAdoo did.
The girl—legally a woman, but at nineteen I’d still call her a girl—worked at a service station four blocks away in the opposite direction from Ryan’s News & Video. She attended North Carolina Central University during the day and worked the gas station full-time at night to earn money to support herself and her three-year-old son. She’d seen the three men sitting on the front steps of the bungalow and had considered crossing the street so as to not pass so close to them, but as she debated this with herself, they suddenly leapt off the porch and dragged her into the alleyway between the houses. They showed her the gun and told her if she screamed, they’d use it. She could cry or moan, but she couldn’t scream. So she had started to cry, she started to cry a lot, because when they started unbuttoning her pants, she understood what was about to happen to her and she could do nothing else.
And then a strange man in a business suit appeared out of nowhere. He talked trash and a minute later, all three assailants lay dead.
“Three guys?” Bradsher marveled. “You took out three guys all by yourself?”
After I related the story of how I’d saved the girl, I regaled them with the tale of my mugging in the parking lot of Carwood, Allison and the night I had shot Pinnix and Ramseur. By the time Craig Montero arrived on the scene, we were talking like old friends. I didn’t need a lawyer anymore; I needed a bartender.
“I have a question for you guys, now,” I said as Craig’s Audi pulled up on the curb two houses up, away from the flashing lights. “Those three shitbags I just wasted—they have any ID on them?”
And Bradsher shook his head.
“No,” he said. “At this point, we don’t have any idea who they are.”
25.
“Three men,” Dr. Koenig said. “You killed three men this time.”
“Body count’s up to six,” I replied.
Thanksgiving had come and gone. It was late afternoon now, close to quitting time for normal people, and the sky had taken on the overcast hue that dominates the end of the day in early winter. No leaves remained on the dogwoods beside the bench outside. I hadn’t seen anyone in the courtyard in a very long time.
In my hands, Southern Rifleman had become a tube, a runner’s baton, a small sword. I laid it down on the couch beside me and sighed.
“It sounds like you’re a hero yet again.”
“I’m a lawyer who’s killed six people in less than a year. I’m more a circus freak than a hero.” I looked down at the hardwood floor. “Honestly, I feel… distant.”
“Distant?”
“Everyone’s kissing my ass,” I said. “And Bobby said this would happen. He said it in February, after I hosed Pinnix and Ramseur. He said: you’re a man apart now. You’re going to get your ass kissed like it’s never been kissed before. Because you’re going to make everybody feel small.”
“Small?”
“Bobby has a unique perspective on this,” I said. “He’s killed a lot more than six people. What he says is, we’ve done the things that other men dream about doing. Not like everybody sits there jonesing to pop somebody, but it’s like… everybody likes to think they’d be a superhero if they ever had to be. They say, I can kill. I can fight. I can do all that. But then they run into a guy who actually did what they like to tell themselves they could do in the same situation, and they compare themselves to this man and they think, could I? They’re not so sure.”
I shrugged.
“So they kiss our asses. Praise us, buy us beers, shake our hands and thank us for our service. They’ve never been tested. We have. And while all these Walter Mittys sit there on the bus or at their desks or in their cars in traffic jams and daydream about what total Billy Bad-Asses they’d be in the right situation, we’ve actually done that.”
Dr. Koenig stared at me. I stared back.
“What does Bobby think about what you did?” He asked. “This most recent incident, I mean. The one in Durham.”
I shrugged again.
“About what you’d think. The first thing he said was whoa, then he said, holy shit, and then he said good job. We got on Skype and I showed him how I took the gun away from that first asshole. He said, congratulations, man, I’m glad for you. He said, you did the only thing you could do. If you’d just let that girl get raped, you’d have never forgiven yourself. If you’d just stood there and let it happen, or if you’d run away…”
All of a sudden, a lump rose up in my throat and blocked further speech. It came on suddenly—one minute I spoke in a normal voice, the kind of tone that follows a shrug like the one I just gave, and the next my voice broke in two. My chest gave a pronounced shudder. My jaw trembled.
“Take your time,” Dr. Koenig said.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
I got myself under control and finished.
“A man’s got to do certain things when he’s called,” I said. “Kate—my sister-in-law—saw it as an act of God. Like God sent me there to intervene, like it was my whole purpose at that particular moment in time. I listened. Because I had to.”
“Did she congratulate you, too?”
“Of course.”
“What about your wife? The conspicuously absent Allie? What was her take on this thing you did?”
Allie; her reaction had been different. On the phone on the way home, I explained to her what had happened, and she’d said you did what—like she didn’t believe me. As soon as I got through the door, she unloaded on me: I’d risked my life, risked it stupidly, I didn’t care about her or Abby or anybody else, I didn’t care what would happen to my family if I got myself killed, blah, blah, blah, I’m an asshole.
Dr. Koenig stared at me again. He’d stared a lot today; it made me wonder if I’d forgotten to shave one side of my face, or I’d suddenly grown a giant mole that looked like the Blessed Virgin.
“And did you guys make up?”
I blinked. She had cursed me, she had hissed my stupidity and my recklessness and my utter lack of sense, but when I pulled her close and kissed her, she kissed me back; kissed me, in fact, with passion. She went after my zipper. And although we had a thirteen-year-old daughter upstairs who may or may not have decided to come downstairs to raid the cookie jar or get a glass of water at some point, we laid down on the floor and made love right there in the living room.
Dr. Koenig studied my face, trying to read the details of my answer. I said, “You could say that.”
He opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it with a finger to the lips. He looked down at his notepad, nostrils flaring slightly with his breath. I couldn’t read his thoughts—but then again, I never could.
“You’re the only lawyer in Burlington with a body count,” he remarked.
I sighed, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. “I know. Believe me.”