The sun comes through the slit of my cell window and I have not slept. I can hear the station manager bringing breakfast. Like I could eat.
I paced around my eight feet of space all night, going over everything that has fallen apart in the space of a week. Sometime after dawn, I had a revelation: I thought I loved Mason. I thought we had an honest relationship, kept in check by the lengths we had to go to just to see each other. But on the night Fred died, when the shoe girl asked how I made my relationship work, I didn’t have an answer. I had an opinion, I had an idea about how love should be, but it wasn’t complete. Just like my relationship with Mason.
I couldn’t explain how the relationship worked because it didn’t. I knew I’d never take Susan’s place, and at first I didn’t want to. Who would trade the mystery and the excitement that goes into an affair for an ordinary marriage? I thrived on our secrecy like it was intimacy. I believed our love was rooted in honesty and acceptance. I was right, but only because Mason was honest about being married, and because I accepted the situation.
The truth is, Mason’s been getting everything he wanted all along, and Susan and I have had to share. I’ve been settling for part of him. I thought it was the better part. Now I know he is a liar, and a coward, and all of him wouldn’t be enough.
I do have an idea about how love should be. And I deserve more.
“Samantha Mack,” O’Connor says, tapping on my cell bars. “You ready to talk, now that you’re not a moving target?”
“Not to you,” I say. “You can’t hold me in here anyway. I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s what they all say.”
He unlocks the cell door and lets himself inside. I can smell his aftershave, and I notice a few nicks on his neck where he slipped with the razor. He reminds me of a guy I met in college, a seemingly vulnerable guy whose steady girlfriend broke his heart once a week. He had girls lined up to commiserate, and I always wondered who was the bigger sucker.
“You’re not exactly innocent,” O’Connor says, and holds up a photograph of me in Fred’s backyard, spying on Mason and Deborah.
I resume pacing.
“What were you doing?” he asks.
“You think I’m gonna tell you? You’re probably the one who took it,” I say. “Following me around, waiting for me to slip up. You’re a jerk.”
“I hate to disappoint you, but I’m not the guy who’s out to get you,” he says.
O’Connor holds up another picture of me, this time behind the Weber on Mason’s back patio, looking in on him and Susan. I want to slap the picture out of his hand.
“I get it,” I say. “Where’d you get them?”
“Mason sent them over this morning. He says he hired some guy to follow you when he thought you were getting a little insistent about ending his marriage.”
“The yellow truck.” I thought it was Trovic. Then I thought it was O’Connor.
“Don’t know what he drives, but the guy followed you to Fred Maloney’s, and Mason’s, and to a bunch of bars. You know, you shouldn’t drink so much.”
Now he shows me a picture of me at O’Shea’s, drunk and leaning over the bar saying something to Marty. I’m wearing my uniform.
“Jesus, what are you, an AA sponsor? Did you come down here to intervene?”
“The thing about intervention, Sam, is that it doesn’t work unless the person is ready. I just came down here to let you know what’s going on. We’re not going to do anything about these photos until the case agent gets a look at your car. If there’s no damage, there’s no case against you. You’ll be released.”
“There is no damage to my car,” I tell him.
“Witness wasn’t even sure it was a Mustang. Most likely they’ll list it a hit-and-run.”
“An accident,” I say.
“They do happen.”
“Mason set me up,” I say. “You saw this coming all along.”
“I tried to tell you,” O’Connor says. “Like I said. Intervention.”
“How did you know?”
He sits down on the bench. “Mason and I go way back. He hasn’t changed. Doesn’t have to. There’s always someone he can get to. First it was me, and who knows how many in between. Now it’s you.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Put it this way: Jail would have been nice.” O’Connor hands me a pack of Camels and some matches, and this time I don’t care if he’s trying to persuade me. I pack them, unwrap them, and take one out.
“He never told me you two had a past,” I say.
“I’m surprised, I thought he was proud of it.”
“So . . . ?”
“So, I am the reason Mason is a cop. He is the reason I’m not.”
He stares ahead, at the wall, and he looks like a different person. Maybe because he isn’t in my face with questions. Maybe because now I’m ready to listen. I sit down next to him and light my smoke.
“We were in the Academy together,” he says. “We bonded because we both hated one of the instructors. This guy had it in for us; for Mason, mostly. Mason was a smart-ass with connections. I was just smart. We pooled our resources.
“We studied together, partnered for all the drills, looked out for each other. We were a team. Mason practically lived with my wife and me, since our apartment was so close to school. We spent as many nights telling stories as we did memorizing the manuals. My wife would cook dinner for us, quiz us before tests, drink beer with us on the porch.”
O’Connor runs his hands through his hair. He doesn’t like where this story is going.
“Long story short,” he says, “I worked my ass off while Mason bullshitted his way through the oral board, strong-armed his way through the PA test, and copied my answers on the exams. I didn’t care. I thought we were friends, and we were going to be cops.
“The night we found out we’d made it through, we went out to celebrate. I got real drunk. My wife had to come pick us up. They dumped me on the couch and went out on the porch.” O’Connor looks at me, and I can guess what he doesn’t want to say. I take the cigarette out of my mouth and crush it with my shoe.
“I saw them with my own two eyes, out there, his hands . . .” His unemotional pitch wavers. “I saw how much she wanted him. I knew how much he enjoyed it.”
O’Connor stands up, the memory taking over. “I stormed out past them. ‘It’s not what you think,’ I heard my wife say. I got a good look at Mason, standing there like he had every right, like I was the pathetic one. I did the only thing I could do: I walked away. I got on my motorcycle, one of those CBR crotch rockets? I made it down the street and out of the neighborhood before I lost control. I wrecked the bike and shattered my tibia beyond repair. Next day I had a badge and no way to walk the beat. I was assigned to Admin. I could never patrol.”
O’Connor sits down again like he feels the pain in his leg.
“What hurt the most was that I let it happen. I had shared everything with him. Even my wife. And I walked away.”
“Did you stay married?”
“No. They both denied anything happened. But nothing was ever the same. My attitude was never the same. I thought I was going to be a detective and I wound up being a secretary. I don’t blame her for leaving. I turned out to be a real jerk.”
“Mason has that effect on people, doesn’t he.” I take out another cigarette and light it. O’Connor leans back and sticks his hands in his pockets.
“So you’re healed; I mean, you don’t limp or anything,” I say.
“It’s been ten years. I’m used to it.”
“But you’re not over it.”
“This isn’t revenge, Sam. This is my job.”
“Where is Mason now?”
“Hospital, last I heard.”
“Is Susan okay?” I don’t want to ask.
“Did you know she was pregnant?”
“She told me, yeah.”
“She lost the baby.”
“Oh my God.”
“Mason says that’s your motive. He’s sticking to his story, he thinks you’re responsible.”
“What about his motive? I could tell you details about our relationship. He told me he was going to leave Susan. Just last night he told me he asked her for a divorce . . .”
By the look on O’Connor’s face, I’m guessing I sound as crazy as everyone thinks.
“What about my case? Can you follow up? Mason said he put out a state warrant for Trovic. He said he had a connection at the state’s office . . .”
Same look.
“But you know we’ve been seeing each other,” I say.
“You both denied it.” O’Connor takes his hands out of his pockets and uses his right thumb to rub his left knuckle, just below where he might have worn a wedding ring. “Face it, Mack. He lied to you.”
I stamp out my smoke. The sick thing is, there’s a part of me that still thinks Mason has a good reason for all of this. I guess no matter how I add up the lies, I still don’t want to accept the big one: He said he loved me. And I believed it.
“How does he get away with all this shit?” O’Connor asks.
I look at the photos of myself that O’Connor left on the bench. I think about Mason’s perfect home, and Susan’s huge diamond ring. I am so stupid.
“He takes control,” I say. And I let him.
“That’s right,” O’Connor says, “it’s the control. That’s why he’s taxing. He gets to run the show. It’s a power trip.”
“Taxing?” I ask.
“He’s on the take. He’s been extorting money from drug dealers since he started at your district. Charging them to stay on the streets. He’s got a string of guys in your ward caught up in it.”
I’m trying to process this without emotion. He’s a bad guy. He’s a criminal. I didn’t know.
“If you know all this, why haven’t you arrested him?” I ask.
“He’s good at what he does. The jobs we could nail him for have been too small. He’d either get slapped on the hand by your captain and take his business elsewhere, or pass it off to one of his front men. We want him, and we’ve been waiting for him to go bigger.”
“Seems like everyone’s been waiting for him to do something,” I say. “Why don’t you do something?”
“You think I’ve been following you around because I want a date?” he asks.
“How was I supposed to know all this? You weren’t straight with me before.”
“I thought you were working with Mason.”
“I guess I was.” I kept our affair a secret. I looked the other way when I didn’t like what I saw. And I believed everything he said, because I thought he believed in me. I thought he loved me.
But I know I convinced Mason of at least one thing: He thinks I love him, too.
“You think I can get to him,” I say to O’Connor.
“Do you want me to say it again? I need your help.”
So this is it. I resisted IA to be loyal to my co-workers. I resisted my superiors because I wanted to be loyal to Fred. I almost forgot my duty as a police officer because I wanted to be loyal to Mason. And all along I’ve been resisting my intuition: Mason is a liar.
I point to O’Connor’s badge. “Gimme that for a minute. The snitch down the hall owes me.”
O’Connor doesn’t budge.
“You are a cop,” I say, “and you’re a better one than Mason. Trust me. We can get him.”
O’Connor studies me, maybe looking for a flicker of duplicity in my eyes, like the exhilaration we’ve both seen in Mason’s.
Then he takes his badge from his shirt pocket and hands it to me.