I am calm, finally. Mason is here in bed next to me, resting, and not on his way somewhere else. I feel so close to him, my leg and arm draped over him, my head on his chest, his arm around me. His body jerks, fighting sleep, because he was exhausted and we still made love for hours. He hasn’t slept much these past few days. He hasn’t left the job. In fact, the captain made him go home tonight. He came here.
I want to let him sleep, but this is too important. The time I have with him is limited. I need to clear my conscience.
“I think I could have saved Fred.”
He turns to face me, registering what I said, pretending he didn’t doze off. He blinks and squeezes his lids closed. His eyes are bloodshot from being open too long.
“I’ve gone over it in my head a million times,” he says. “If I had called you back when I was supposed to, you wouldn’t have taken Wade’s shift that night. You wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“You couldn’t have known anything would happen.”
“Did you know what was going to happen?”
I guess I didn’t. “No.”
“You think if you waited for backup, or if you went up those steps faster, or if you had fired your gun one single second sooner, that Fred would have survived?”
“It’s possible.”
“What if you did all those things, and Fred still ended up dead?”
“I don’t know. I just wish I could make sense of it.”
“Me too.” He yawns. His brooding eyes remind me of my brother when he was a kid, mad at the world because he didn’t get what he wanted.
He pulls me close to him again, my head to his chest. I think it’s so he can shut his eyes. It’s okay; I know he’s listening.
“I know why I feel responsible, Mason. Fred said he shot Trovic dead. I believed him. I dropped my guard.”
“It was Fred’s call. He made the mistake. You did everything you could.”
“What if Trovic was hit?”
“I’ve gone over all the possibilities, Sam . . .”
“But I fired my gun until it was empty. I could have hit him.”
“You also could have hit Fred.”
I consider that possibility. For less than a second.
I try to push myself away from him but he holds me there, tight. I thrash around, I jam my knee into his legs, but he doesn’t let go.
“It was Trovic. It was fucking Trovic, and now you don’t even believe me!”
“Sam, stop. Stop it!”
I make another attempt to free myself with a kungfu move: a ridge hand aimed at his neck that could knock the air out of his windpipe. If Mason didn’t block me mid-strike.
“Sam, if you were a black belt I might entertain this. Stop!”
It’s no use. He’s got me pinned like an amateur wrestler. I cry out like he’s hurting me, but he knows he’s only hurting my feelings.
“Listen to me,” he says. “I’m on your side. I’m doing everything I can to put Trovic in the center of this. I don’t know what else I can say. I’m trying to do this right. You have to trust me.”
I’m panting, I’m out of breath, and I’m waiting for an opportunity to break free. He doesn’t budge. His arms are a vise.
“I don’t care if you shot Fred and you meant to do it. I don’t care if you had the whole thing planned like a cold-blooded killer. All I care about is getting you off the hook, and if that means finding Trovic, then that’s what I’m going to do. I don’t understand why you’re fighting me on this. I could lose my job, my money, everything we’ve planned for, and you’re acting like I’ve been spending my time trying to screw you over.”
“How am I supposed to know where you’re spending your time? You’re not here.”
“Damn it, Sam, these little stabs at the past aren’t getting us anywhere, and I’m not going to justify every single thing I do. Do you want me to solve your case, or do you want me to get a divorce? Pick something to argue about!”
I didn’t mean to turn this into a fight. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth.
“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. I rest my head on the bed to let him know I’m done fighting. “Tell me what to do.”
“You don’t listen to your boss, you don’t listen to me. You’re injured, emotional . . . you’re all over the place. You need help.”
He lets me out of his chokehold because he knows I’m ready to be reasonable. The fight is over as quickly as it began.
“You’re not going to tell me to see the shrink, are you?”
“You know I think those state-funded doctors are full of shit.”
“What are you suggesting, then?”
I reach over and pick up my pack of smokes. He turns my leg, inspecting my scabbed knee, and then he squeezes my thigh.
“Maybe you should talk to Deborah about Fred,” he says. “You two probably have more in common than you think.”
I hope he’s trying to make a joke. “What could we possibly have in common? Would she have sent him to his grave if I hadn’t?”
“I just think you’d feel better if you told her what you told me. About that night.”
“I’d rather see the shrink.” I stick a cigarette between my lips.
“All right, tough girl. I know you don’t need mental help.” Mason takes my lighter from the nightstand. He doesn’t smoke. As he lights the flame and the tobacco catches, he looks into my eyes, letting me know he accepts any decision I make, good or bad.
“You’re going to go crazy sitting around this place,” he says. “Why don’t you get out of here for a while? Go stay with Nikki in the burbs.”
The last place I can imagine myself is with my childhood pal and her kids. She left the city after high school. She left her spunk somewhere between here and Rolling Meadows. Her husband is nice enough; her kids are birth control. And there are four of them. The youngest one, Isabella, cries every time she sees me. The oldest one, Frank, Junior, thinks I’m cool because he wants to be a cop. He’s eight and he never shuts up. If I didn’t get stuck answering stupid questions about squad cars, I’d spend the whole time getting the third degree from Nikki about “carrying on” with a married man. And Bella would scream through it all.
“I want to stay here,” I say. “I’ll keep a low profile, I promise. Just tell me you’re making headway.”
“I’m working on something,” he tells me, reclining subtly to avoid my smoke. “Now that IA’s involved, Captain Jack’s going to be itching to shut down the case. If he does, I won’t even be able to look for Trovic. But I have a connection who owes me at the state’s office, and if he can drum up some charges to put out a state warrant for Trovic, it’ll put the search above IA’s reach.”
“You’re worried about O’Connor?”
Mason tenses at the name. “O’Connor is working his way up the ladder. He’d love to use you as a rung. He’ll use me, too. After you left O’Shea’s, he started grilling me about you. Implying that I know more than I should. Suggesting we’re together. He’ll blow this whole case open if he can prove it. This is his dream come true. You steer clear of him. No matter what.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling O’Connor anything, Mason.” I put out my smoke and snuggle up to him. He doesn’t respond; I’ve launched him into detective mode again.
“We have to be really careful, Sam. Being together is dangerous. I could claim it’s just part of the investigation, but O’Connor is suspicious. He could be outside right now, hoping I’m dumb enough to walk out the front door.”
“You think we shouldn’t see each other?” I want to offer a solution. I want to say something that will appease him. I don’t want him to get out of bed.
“I could quit the case,” he says. “I can have one of my guys take over. Say I was too close to Fred.”
Investigations take about as much time as their crimes these days, and my case will only stay active if Mason keeps it that way. Given the evidence, any other detective would probably be ready to move on.
“You’re the only one who can help me.” I cling to Mason, hoping to put our pending separation out of my head.
“I know this is tough, Sam. I know you want to be strong.”
“I don’t want to be strong,” I tell him. “I just want Fred to be alive again.”
Mason pulls me to him and strokes my hair. He’s careful around the stitches. He just stays there with me. We listen to each other breathe.
As we lie there, I want to keep talking, because I don’t know when I’ll see him again. I know he doesn’t want to give up on the case, but I’m afraid that means he has to give up on me. I want him to reassure me that everything will work out, and that we’ll be together again when the time is right. But then I think that this moment is the reassurance, and that words are redundant.
As I drift off to sleep, I think I hear him say he’s leaving Susan. But maybe he just said he was leaving.