Bang (17 page)

“Hey,” she says, feeling awkward and unsure in a way she hasn't since he got back to work. He looks terrible up close, his skin pale and almost waxy, these deep bluish-gray hollows carved under his eyes. Mari wants to take him home and give him tea, a Tylenol, her bed possibly. She also kind of wants to punch him in his face. “How you doing?”

Jackson lets out a breath, like she's stupid for asking. Mari's hands ball into fists at her side. “Super,” he mutters, brushing past her and sliding into the driver's seat of the cruiser. “Why wouldn't I be?”

So. They don't talk the whole drive over after that.

The department's not big enough to warrant its own gun range, and the state-owned facility they share with other Berkshire County municipalities is a low-slung building a couple of exits down Route 7 in Lee, not far from the outlets. Inside it smells like creosote and concrete. Zales and Gordy are screwing around as they fill out their paperwork, badge number and the usual waiver promising not to sue if they accidentally blow their own thumbs off. “Would love to get some practice in with that baby,” Punch says, nodding appreciatively at a massive semi-automatic locked behind glass above the counter. He's got a cabin up in New Hampshire, Mari knows, hunts deer on holidays.

“Can we just get this over with, please?” Jack snaps. His body is all rope and steel.

“Easy,” Mari says quietly. Jackson ignores her. “Let's go.”

The attendant, a grizzled-looking middle-aged guy with a ponytail and mutton chops, buzzes them through both sets of double doors and they set themselves up at the row of bays, adjusting their headphones and safety goggles. It's not crowded, just them and one Statie with a 9mm down at the far end of the row. Mari feels hugely, enormously uneasy, and she's not sure she could explain exactly why. She glances over at Jackson who's still loading, not looking back at her. Hits the button to adjust her paper target.

Mari's a decent shot, generally, when she can remember to keep her fucking hands on the grip; she fires off a dozen rounds, steady, hitting her vitals way more often than not. The headphones give the whole world a fishbowl quality, just the sound of her own blood pulsing inside her ears. After a few minutes she relaxes into the zone. Finally she stops to reload and that's when she finally notices him beside her: Jack holding his gun out, back straight, posture perfect.

He hasn't taken a single shot.

Mari slowly lays her gun down on the ledge, pulls off her headphones even though you're not supposed to do that in here because you could potentially split an eardrum. Tries to think what she's possibly going to do. He can't hear her, not with the headphones on. And she's honestly afraid to touch his arm.

She waves.

He's turning when he pulls the trigger, a full body twist Mari sees in slow motion, torso first, then arms. He's completely off balance, his body moving on instinct, something deep and primal and closer to a twitch than a conscious movement.

Then there's the boom.

The shot hits way off target, whizzing past the far corner of Mari's paper cutout. Everyone takes an extra second to turn to look thanks to the headphones, reacting to the sight and not the noise.

That extra second means no one notices Jackson was swinging around to aim at Mari.

“Shit,” he whispers, lowering his gun with shaky hands. Mari can't hear him because her ears are ringing.

Someone touches her shoulder and Mari turns around to see Zales's smiling face, laughing and gesturing at the target range.
Pathetic
, she makes out from his lips. Then he sees her headphones and frowns.
Put those back on.

Mari nods. She puts them back on.

Now Gordy is looking over too, worried. He asks a question Mari can't make out but is probably something like,
Are you okay?
No one is looking at Jackson.

“I got spooked,” Mari says. She can't hear herself speak, just feel the vibrations. She hopes her voice isn't too loud. “Ford, walk me out?”

Jackson takes the hint.

“Fuck,” Mari gasps as soon as they're through the double doors that lead to the parking lot. It's sunny and November cold outside, wind whipping at her stubby ponytail. There were paper turkeys in the windows when she dropped Sonya at school this morning.

Jackson shakes his head, pale as Christmas. He looks like he's died. “Mari—”

“Just,” she interrupts. Her mind is careening off in a million different directions, ricocheting off the walls of her skull like so many stray bullets. They both left their guns unattended inside the range, she realizes then, another huge no-no. Incompetent fucking police department, Jesus Christ. “Just don't talk for a minute, all right?” She rubs her hands over her chilly face, takes a deep breath. “Just don't say anything.”

Jackson ignores her. “I'm sorry,” he tells her, then says it again, over and over like a litany. “I'm sorry. Look, you startled me, I was in my own world there for a second, I just—”

“You were in your own world?” Mari explodes. “Don't try to bullshit me like that, Jackson, okay, that was not in your own world.” She shakes her head, ears still ringing. “What the hell is going on with you, huh? What was going on in your head?”

Jack doesn't answer the question, shaking his head and looking away from her, out at the parking lot, the two cruisers parked neatly side by side like partners on the concrete. It was one of the things that attracted Mari to being a cop in the first place, that order, the certainty of a plan in place and someone by your side to help you execute it.

“Are you going to tell anyone?” Jack asks instead.

“I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do!” Mari snaps.

Jack blanches. “Are you serious?” he asks, sounding honestly shocked by the idea, and that's when Mari realizes the implication—that he covered for her, with Leo and even with his family, so now she owes him. She feels all the blood drain out of her limbs.

That's different, she wants to tell him. That was not the same thing. She's in over her head here, both of them are. Mari takes a deep breath, starts over. “Okay,” she says, holding her hands up. “Easy.” She sits down on the curb, too tired to hold herself up all of a sudden. After a moment, Jackson sits down too.

“Are you really all right?” he asks her quietly. He puts his hand on her shoulder, heavy, and she lets him. “Hey. It's me, I spooked is all. It's me.”

Mari nods. “I know,” she promises. “I'm fine. Are you okay?”

Jackson nods back. “Yeah,” he says.

They sit there for a moment, cold seeping up through the seats of their uniform pants. They breathe. The birds have all mostly flown south for the winter but Mari spies one straggler up in the pine trees, a dark outline against the cool blue sky.

This is good, Mari thinks. This is them calming down.

At last it feels like they've cooled off enough that she says it. “Look,” she tells him, a deep breath in, her voice the only sound in the silence, save the drag of some papery leaves across the road. “I've been reading a little about PTSD.”

Oh, that's the wrong thing to say to him. Just like that Jackson's recoiling as if she'd called him a racist or a pedophile, scrambling up to his feet. “What, you think I'm fucking crazy now?” he demands, barking out an angry laugh. “That's perfect, Mari. That's really great.”

“Of course not!” Mari protests, getting up herself, putting a hand out. “Hey hey hey, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying, I just want to talk about—”

“You do,” Jack says, and he sounds so, so pissed. “Is that what you're going to tell Leo? Have him take me off active duty, stick me behind a desk until I'm eligible for my pension?”

“Of course not,” Mari says, although it's becoming clearer by the second that she needs to tell somebody. “Come on, hey. I just think if there's a way for you to be feeling better than how you're feeling, then—”

“Has it ever occurred to you that however it is you think I'm feeling, I wouldn't be feeling that if you'd followed me up the stairs in the parking garage to begin with?”

Mari squeezes her eyes shut to keep from screaming at the top of her lungs, if only because she thinks she might never, ever stop. “Yeah, Jackson,” she tells him, forcing her voice to stay even. “Every day.”

But Jack's hardly listening. “Tell you what,” he says, shoving his hands in his pocket and heading back toward the entrance to the range. “You don't want to work with me, you think it's too risky, you don't have to. I'll ask Leo for a new partner when we get back.”

For a moment, Mari thinks she's misheard him—she hallucinated, she must have. That's the nuclear option, mutually assured destruction for them both. When she looks at Jack's face, though, she sees he's serious. “A—a new partner?” she repeats, standing there stupidly on the concrete.

But Jackson's already headed back inside.

Mari drifts through the rest of the day feeling like she's wrapped in thick, heavy blankets; how much of that is the shock of Jack's declaration and how much of that is just the ringing in her head remains unclear. At home she talks Sonya into another Girl Party, but even that old failsafe doesn't manage to make her feel better.

“Mama, it's hot,” Sonya whines, struggling against the hold Mari's got on her as they're watching
Frozen
on the laptop. Mari lets her go right away.

“Sorry, baby,” she says, feeling her own cheeks flame in humiliation. Comforting herself with a stranglehold on her four-year-old, perfect. She's winning at life all over these days. Watch Sonya petition Leo for a new mom.

Once Sone's down for the count—“I want to sleep in my big-girl bed,” she announces, and Mari doesn't know whether to laugh or cry—Mari sits at her kitchen table for what feels like it might be hours, trying to figure out what the hell she's going to do. She can't talk to Leo, whether or not that's what Back to Basics Training would advise her. She needs to protect Jack at all costs.

The problem is, she's pretty sure the person she needs to protect him from is himself.

Patty comes in as she's sitting there blankly, takes one look at her and puts on the kettle. “Tell me,” she says, setting the mug of tea down on the table. The creases in her soft brown face deepen with worry.

Mari lays her head down on the table like she's in junior high all over again, despondent at some lunchroom unfairness. “I can't,” she says.

“Tonterías,” Patty says, not unkindly. Nonsense. “You can't tell your family, who can you tell?”

Mari doesn't answer, but when Patty puts a palm on her shoulder Mari leans into it. She kisses the back of her hand to say goodnight.

She thinks of the first day they were partners. She thinks of the first time they ever kissed. She thinks of how red his blood was on the pavement, and she swallows down a small, self-pitying sob.

She knows who she has to call, she realizes. And she really, really doesn't want to call him.

She sits there for a while longer. Finally she picks up the phone.

“Terry?” she says, squeezing her eyes shut when he answers. “It's Mari. I need to talk to you about Jack.”

Chapter Eleven

I'll ask Leo for a new partner when we get back.

Jack knows he's made a mistake of pretty unimaginable proportions as soon as the words come out of his mouth. But he also knows that it's a no-take-backs kind of situation, that he's crossed this line and now they'll both be planted firmly on either side of it no matter what happens next.

What happens next: Jack goes back to work and double-checks every single report he's filed since he was cleared for active duty, making sure his Ts are crossed and his Is are dotted. PTSD, Jesus Christ. If she's going to throw that kind of horseshit at him—he's tired, okay, he's been off his game, maybe, but he's not crazy—there's no way he's about to leave her anything to point to.

Once he's satisfied he hasn't, he goes and talks to Leo.

The Sarge rolls his eyes to heaven at first, dropping his pen on the desk like the universe is testing him. “What'd you, have a lover's quarrel?” he asks. Then he shakes his head. “Fuck, forget I said that. It's the kind of thing that could get me tossed out on my ass, the climate we've got ourselves around here right now.” His heavy brow is furrowed, and he rubs at it with one hand like he's got an ache there. Jack resists the urge to rub at his own.

Leo sighs. “You and de la Espada, really? I thought for sure you two would ride together until the day you retired. You can't try to work it out for a little while, just until things calm down around here?”

“No, sir,” Jackson tells him evenly. “I don't think we can.”

So, by roll the next morning, he's riding with Punch.

Punch is about as happy about it as the Sarge was. “What the hell, Ford?” he says as soon as they're buckled into the cruiser. “Me and Zales got pulled right out of the locker room this morning. For a second I thought my aim was so bad at the range yesterday they were taking me off duty.”

Punch rides with Zales normally, has ever since Mike came up out of the academy six years ago. Jackson shrugs. “Lucky for you it wasn't then, huh.”

Punch frowns. He's in the passenger seat with a Big Gulp that's too big for the cupholders wedged between his thighs, looking skeptical and sweaty and very much not like Mari. Jackson realizes that he's inadvertently continued the tradition of who drives.

“Sorry,” he tells Punch. “That was—sorry.”

“Yeah. Listen, all due respect, but don't joke around with me right now, Ford.” Punch takes a sip of his Gulp, tipping the cup toward Jackson. “You owe me a fucking explanation.”

Jack flips on his turn signal as the GPS chimes at him to turn left. They're on duty at the Juvenile Resource Center over in Pittsfield today, watching over the truants and the short-term suspensions and the kids who are too hostile to mainstream. It's one of Jackson's favorite assignments, normally. He likes working with teenagers. “I don't really have an explanation,” he says finally.

“Of course you don't.” Punch frowns harder. “Then look, at least tell me one thing. Is this permanent?”

Jackson deflates. He imagines how it would have felt if someone's personal drama had taken him off assignment with Mari, two, three years ago. When they first got partnered together he lived in constant fear that a routine rotation shuffle would whisk her away from him, like she was a shiny new penny he found on the ground. “I don't know,” he tells Punch honestly. All at once he feels like a dickhead, and he doesn't know how to stop.

Punch thinks about that. “I like the sub shop on Huntington for lunch,” he announces after a minute. Jack nods.

It should be an easy-enough shift. Before they head to the Center, Jack drives the cruiser past the alleyway on First between Office Interiors and Maria's European Delights, flipping on the siren and slowing to a crawl. A handful of kids scatter like pigeons taking flight, pouring out from under the brick archway and breaking into a run.

“Yo, is that Emile?” asks a boy in a Bruins cap, peering into the cruiser on his way past. When he sees Punch his hands come up, palms out. “Shit man, my bad. I need glasses.”

Jack had been reaching for his belt. He tells himself he was just reaching for the radio, in case they needed to call for backup. “Who's Emile?” He can taste the fear like he's sucking on a mouthful of nails.

The kid smiles. His ears are the only young-looking thing about him, red with cold and sticking straight out from his scalp. “My buddy made uniform last week, thought he was fucking with me. You officers have a nice day.” He waves.

“Didn't know they hung out here,” Punch says. “Good thinking.”

Jack forces himself to swallow. “Yeah. Sometimes they go to class after a drive-by. Mostly not.”

The Center is a big brick building with white trim. From the outside it looks like a house or a mansion, but inside it's institution gray. It used to house the old Berkshire County Jail. Jack's been here a hundred times before, knows the guards and the admin staff all by name. There's literally zero to get worked up about, but by the time he parks the cruiser his heart's hammering away inside his chest again, sweaty palms slipping on the steering wheel. Jack swallows thickly, pulling in a breath that's louder than he means.

“You all right, Ford?” Punch asks, glancing at him sidelong with a look on his face like he's wondering what the hell he's managed to get himself into. Jack nods and mumbles something about heartburn.

A new partner was supposed to rectify his fucking problems, wasn't it?

So why the hell does he still feel like this?

He gets through the afternoon somehow, playing a game of pickup basketball with a couple of mouthy repeat shoplifters and managing to break up a fight that erupts on the landing before it escalates to violence. “Use your brain right now,” Jackson urges one of them quietly, the same low calm voice he's heard Mari use with Sonya when she's melting down, and it must translate cause the same kid throws Jack a high five before he and Punch leave the Center at five.

That last bit feels like a little victory, at least, something he can wrap his hands around and hold onto. He wants to tell Mari about it, but he doesn't know what he'd say. Still, by the time he clocks out at the end of shift there's a strange, welcome looseness in his chest and his shoulders; he thinks he'll open a beer and grill a steak, maybe, see what he's got in the freezer.

When he pulls the Volks up to the curb in front of his building, though, he finds his brother sitting on the front steps.

“Fucking freezing,” Terry tells him, standing up as Jack approaches and jamming his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Jack hasn't seen him since the night of their father's birthday. “Was wondering when you were going to show.”

“Was at work,” Jack says, though he gets the feeling Terry already knows that. He's back on his guard all of a sudden, though he couldn't say exactly why. “Everything okay?”

Terry nods. “Everything's fine,” he says. “Was in the neighborhood, is all. Was going to text you, but figured I'd just come over. You gonna invite me in?”

“In the neighborhood,” Jack repeats dubiously. He unlocks his front door and waves Terry ahead of him into the lobby. “All right, what did Meredith say?”

“That you were a giant fucking weirdo on the phone.” Terry clomps up the stairs to the third floor. “Plus Mom's worried. Did you know she had to hear about that kid from one of her staff? Some fucking ninth-grade science teacher was listening to the news over his lunch break. Comes right up to her and says, ‘Mrs. Ford, I think you might want to call your son.'” He stands aside for Jackson to unlock the condo door. “Scared her shitless, Jack.”

Jackson grimaces, juggling his keys and his bag. “Like I told Mer, I wasn't even there when it happened.” He flicks on the lights. “Can I grab you a beer?”

Terry follows him into the kitchen, picking up the Mounds bar Mari brought over on Halloween and juggling it in one hand. “You could have called,” he says. He's two years younger and right now Jack can see him actively trying to shoulder the big-brother persona, pulling on Meredith's bossy voice, shrugging into their dad's crossed-arm pose. “It would have made everything a lot easier.”

Jack plunks a beer down on the counter in front of him. “Well jeez, Terry, I guess I'm just not that interested in making things easier for other people right now.” He rubs at his bristly neck. “Seriously, who sent you, Meredith or Mom? Because if it's Mom, I'll come up next weekend, but if it's Mer, tell her to fuck off and talk to me herself.”

Terry sets down the Mounds bar. “Marisol called me,” he says.

Jack's hand slips while opening his beer, the bottle opener jamming into his thumb. “What the fuck?” he asks, sucking at the cut as it starts to bleed. His tongue tastes like copper blood and panic.

Terry raises his hands. “No, I'm glad she did. I'm glad she kept me in the loop on this.” Like Mari is Jack's first-grade teacher or his pediatrician, like she's one of the adults who gets together to talk about Jack's performance in homeroom or his growth chart. “She's fucking worried about you, man.”

“And you listened to her?” Jesus, Jack was worried she'd go to Sarge, but his brother is even worse. “Since when do you care what she says?”

“Since it's stuff about you!” Terry explodes. “Jesus Christ, Jack, what happened at the range the other day, huh? She said you totally freaked out on her. Did you actually ask your boss for a new partner?”

“What'd she do, fucking tattle on me?” Jack demands, his whole body going hot and red. His hand is still bleeding—he caught the fleshy part, and it stings.

“She thinks you need help, buddy,” Terry tells him, taking a step closer. “And honestly, I'm starting to think she's right. Look, I don't know what's going to between you guys, but—”

“She tell you about that too?” Jack snaps.

“No!” Terry says. It's a weird reversal of their last conversation, Terry defending Mari while Jack goes on the attack. “God, Jack, calm the fuck down.” He nods in Jack's direction, how he still doesn't have the beer cracked. “Your hand okay? You want me to do that?”

“You calm the fuck down,” Jack tells him. “And no, thanks, I can open a damn beer bottle.” He's having a hell of a time of it though, actually, the way the damn thing keeps slipping. There's blood on the glass from his hand. “Shit.”

“Listen,” Terry says, “let's start this over, I already messed it up. I'm not like Mom or Mer, I suck at feelings talk.” He laughs a little. “All right? I just wanna make sure you're okay.”

“I'm fine,” Jack tells him, but he knows there's an edge in his voice. What he can't seem to do is get it under control. “We don't need to have a feelings talk. Mari doesn't know what she's talking about. She has no business going to you guys behind my back, although frankly it just fits, and Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck is wrong with this thing?” The opener clatters into the sink.

“Easy,” Terry tells him, taking another step in Jack's direction. “You're acting a little nuts, bro.”

“I got shot three fucking times!” Jack shouts, and throws his beer bottle clear across the room. It shatters against the far wall beside the window. For a moment the room is absolutely graveyard silent.

“Okay,” Terry says. He has his hands up. “Let's just—sit down, bud.”

“Don't call me bud,” Jack spits. “You aren't Dad.”

Terry just stares at him. His hands are still raised, like Jack pulled a weapon on him.

Jack sits.

It's the fear in Ter's face more than anything that shakes him out of it. His hand is still bleeding, thin, watery blood that streams down his wrist to stain the cuff of his henley, but Jack makes himself look away from it. He hasn't cut himself since the shooting. He didn't realize it would feel like this.

“Jack.” Terry sits down across from him and it's exactly like two nights ago with Mari,
I've been reading a little about PTSD
. Jack Googled the symptoms after she left. Depression and intense guilt were two of them, but Jack doesn't feel guilty at all.

“Okay,” Terry says, more to himself than Jack. He picks up his beer and he takes a long pull, practically a chug. Then he pulls out a pack of cigs. “I don't get it,” he tells Jack, lighting up. “Isn't it better now that he's dead?”

Jack shrugs. Because it's not, of course, it's worse, and he doesn't know why. Lately he spends a lot of time picturing blowing Carlson's head off and feeling disgusted with himself. The story was picked up by a few national news stations earlier today, officer-involved shooting, unarmed victim. He reckons the rookie is lucky no one has mentioned the word revenge yet.

“Didn't they have you talk to someone?” Terry fumbles over the words, a pained look on his face like he's embarrassed for both of them. “Like, to get recertified or whatever.”

“Yeah.” GB shares a police-specific shrink with a couple of the other local departments, a nice woman named Monique who sat Jack down and said
Well, this is a first for both of us, I bet
. She asked him how he was feeling and had him talk through what he remembered of the shooting. It turned out to be easy. Her office was calm and bright with a bubbling fish tank, and Jack told her all the bits and pieces he could grab hold of. She pronounced him remarkably grounded and told him to call if anything changed.

Jack hasn't called.

“Here,” he says, holding out his hand to Terry. “Wrap this for me, okay? I can't look at the blood.”

Terry nods. “Sure thing.” He goes into the bathroom, comes out with an ancient box of Band-Aids and a wet wad of toilet paper. Jack looks at the puddle of beer on the floor instead of at his hand. “C'mere,” Terry says like he's a school nurse and Jack's a clumsy third-grader who hurt himself at recess, wiping the blood off, ripping open the wrapper and peeling the backing off the strip. “I'm gonna ask Arielle to marry me,” Terry says conversationally, pressing the thing onto Jack's palm with surprising gentleness. It's the closest they've been to each other in a long time. “This probably isn't the best time to tell you that, but.”