Friendly Fire (9 page)

Jonathan appreciated the words, but he rejected them. “He killed the predator that I allowed to live,” he said. “I didn't finish the job I started. Are we done here?”

“I'm not,” Irene said. “One of the things I've always admired about you, Digger, is the line you draw in the sand about what you do. If I've heard it once, I've heard it five hundred times. You are not an assassin. Ring any bells?”

Of course it did, but Jonathan didn't acknowledge.

“Your mission with Ethan Falk was reunite the boy with his family. You did that. That's a victory. Don't you scoff at me.”

She'd read his response for exactly what it was.

“Some stories just don't have happy endings, Dig. Cut yourself a break.”

Jonathan appreciated her words. But in his world, justice often wasn't measured in what was reasonable. He preferred to measure it in terms of what was
right.

Jonathan pulled to a halt and offered his hand. “Wolfie, in a city that's full of shitheads, you're one of the finest people I know. I'll do what I can to get to the bottom of what Stepahin was up to.”

Irene cocked her head as she accepted his hand. “You're going to go jousting at windmills, aren't you?”

He winked and flashed his most charming smile.

Chapter Nine

W
endy Adams stood as she heard the lock turn in the heavy steel door—a bit of an effort since her chair, like the other three chairs and the steel table, was bolted to the concrete floor. A glance through the wire-reinforced window in the door revealed a frail-looking skinny young man in an orange jumpsuit. She could only assume that the unseen person with the key was one of the deputies.

The door opened outward into the dingy hallway of the Braddock County Adult Detention Center, and there stood her first head-to-toe vision of her newest patient. After only four days in custody, he'd already taken on the institutional pallor that was so common among incarcerated people. She'd noticed that the pale skin was more common among younger prisoners than older ones, and more prevalent among males than females. At first glance, she noticed that his hair appeared greasy and stringy, and that his fingernails were uncut and dirty. An array of zits dotted his forehead. They looked a little like the outline of Florida, but tipped over on its side.

“Go on in,” said a male voice from the hallway outside her view.

Wendy knew from the file that this prisoner was twenty-three years old, but he looked eighteen. She hoped that would play to his favor in the eventual trial. “Hello, Ethan,” she said. “My name is Dr. Wendy Adams. I believe that your attorney, Mr. Culligan, told you to expect me.” She stepped forward to shake his hand, then saw that his handcuffs were attached to a restraining belt around his waist. Another chain ran from the belt to the shackles around his ankles.

“Deputy?” Wendy said.

A middle-aged bald guy with a beer gut and a brown uniform stepped into view.

“Keep my patient's hands cuffed if you must, but I insist that you release them from the belt.”

The deputy started to argue.

“I've had this argument before with your supervisor,” she preempted. “Let's not do it again. I'm not asking you to set him free. I'm merely asking you to give him the ability to scratch his nose if he so desires.”

“Ah,” the deputy said, reaching for a key that he'd stuffed into his Sam Browne belt. “You're
that
one.” Ten seconds later, Ethan had use of his hands, though they were still bound together.

“Are the cuffs loose enough, Ethan?” Wendy asked.

The prisoner looked wary. “I suppose. You get used to them after a while.”

“We good?” the deputy asked.

Wendy nodded, and the deputy nudged Ethan farther into the room and pushed the door closed.

She tried the handshake thing again, and Ethan begrudgingly returned the gesture. “That thing with the handcuffs,” he said. “Was that you being the good cop?”

Wendy gestured to the chair opposite hers, and turned. “I'm not a cop at all,” she said. “I'm not an investigator, I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a federal agent, either. I'm a psychologist.” She sat, but Ethan hadn't moved. That was fine.

“So, I guess we're going for an insanity defense?” Ethan said.

“I have no idea. Like I said, I'm not a lawyer.”

The kid's eyes narrowed. “But Culligan told you to come.”

“He
asked
me,” Wendy corrected. At this stage of the doctor-patient tarantella, words mattered.

“Why would he do that if he wasn't trying to get me declared insane? I'm not, you know. Insane, I mean.”

Wendy sat erect in her seat, her hands folded on the gray steel table. “Okay,” she said.

“Okay, what?”

“Okay, we'll stipulate that you're not insane.”

“Then I guess you can go home now,” Ethan said. His posture read tough, but his eyes read terrified.

“You'd rather be locked in your cell?”

“I don't want to be manipulated,” Ethan said. “I'm tired of people telling me what to do.”

“I'm not here to do that.”

“What, then?”

Wendy pointed to the chair opposite hers. “Have a seat and I'll tell you.” God, how she hated this place. In her heart, she didn't understand how any prisoners kept their sanity in here. The aromas of cleaning solvents and dirty feet combined in a toxic stench that never changed, and that never dulled for the duration of every visit, and there had been many. Fluorescent light tubes that had no doubt been purchased from a low bidder provided the only light, and it was at once glaring and dull, thanks in no part to the yellowed wire-reinforced glass that covered them.

Ethan's chains rattled as he shuffled to the chair and sat down. “Thanks,” he said. “For the hands, I mean.” He held up his cuffed wrists.

She bowed her head to acknowledge.

“Just so you know, whatever this is, I can't afford to pay you,” he said.

“Don't worry about that.”

“Is Culligan paying you?”

“Don't worry about that, either,” Wendy said. “And frankly—not to be unfriendly—that's none of your business.”

“I need to know who your allegiance is to,” Ethan said. “How do I know you're on my side if I'm not paying you?”

It was a savvy question, and not unreasonable. It just was not relevant in this case. “You are my patient,” Wendy said. “What you say to me cannot be reported outside of this room.”

“Suppose I threaten to murder someone?” Ethan asked through a deep scowl.

Wendy knew she was being tested. Clearly this kid had been around the block a few times, and had learned to trust no one. “Well, in that case, I'd be ethically bound to rat you out.”

He weighed her words for a few seconds. “Right answer,” he said.

“I knew that.”

Then he clammed up. He sat in his chair, shoulders slumped, elbows resting on the table, watching her with casual disinterest.

Wendy read his posture as a power play, a way to maintain control. If the circumstances were different, she might have just stared back at him, testing to see who would break first. Not this time, though. “I guess this is my meeting, isn't it?” she asked.

He looked at his hands. Couldn't care less.

“Have you read the police narrative of your incident in the parking lot?” Wendy asked.

“I've read it and retold the story a thousand times. You gonna ask me to do it again?

“I don't know. Is the report accurate?”

Another shrug. “More or less.”

“What's the less part?”

Another few seconds of silence, followed by a smirk. “Okay, you got me. It's accurate.”

Wendy tapped the table with her fingertips. “Very well, then. No need to recap it again here.”

Ethan started to stand. “Short meeting,” he said.

“Not done yet,” Wendy said, holding out a hand. “In fact, we haven't really begun. Have a seat.”

This time, he didn't resist. He just sat. And waited for the rest.

“I want you to tell me more about your previous encounter with the man you killed.”

“Nobody believes that part,” Ethan said.

“Because it's hard to believe,” Wendy countered. “I mean, think about it. A kidnapping that didn't happen, with a nameless kidnapper who just happened to be in the same spot as you, eleven years after the fact.”

Ethan locked up again. His posture said that he wanted to cross his arms, but of course that was not possible with cuffed hands.

“Don't misunderstand,” Wendy said. “I want to believe you.”

“So you can get me declared crazy when I stabbed the guy.”

“So German Culligan can get you exonerated of any wrongdoing,” she fired back.

He recoiled. Clearly, that wasn't what he was expecting.

“Ethan, you need to divorce yourself of this notion that everyone is your enemy. I don't know what all you've endured in the past, but I'm telling you that you have an ally in me, and in German.”

“Why?”

“Why should you trust us, or why are we your ally?”

“Both, I guess.”

“The simple answer is because that's our job,” Wendy said. She sensed that Ethan had a finely tuned bullshit meter, and she wanted to stay far away from any trip wires. “But that's not really it. I can't speak for German, but I
want
to believe you. It makes no sense to me that a young man such as yourself—no angel as far as the law is concerned, but no history of this kind of violence—would go all Rambo on a stranger. There has to be a reason for something like that to happen.”

“So, I'm your research project.”

Wendy sighed. “If it makes you feel better to be cynical, then yes, you're my research project. And if I do my job right, maybe—just maybe—we can put your life on the track that it's supposed to be on.”

“And if you're wrong?”

She fired straight from the shoulder. “Then this does not end well for you. I don't know what you've heard of J. Daniel Petrelli, but he's the most vicious prosecutor in the Commonwealth, perhaps in the nation. If you're convicted, he'll do everything he can to see you with a needle in your arm.”

Ethan looked stunned.

“Young man, if you're looking for someone to sugarcoat your situation, I'm the wrong person. And unfortunately, you're stuck with me. I want this to be the beginning of a relationship that is blunt, direct, and truthful. You impress me as someone who would appreciate that. Am I right?”

He took his time answering. “It would be a refreshing change from the bullshit artists in this place.”

“That was too easy,” Wendy said. She kept her tone dead serious. “I want a real answer from you. Are you willing to do your best to work with me? To help me help you?”

“I don't have much choice, do I?”

“You certainly do,” Wendy said. “Drop that victim crap when you're dealing with me, or we'll be done before we start. You may have no choice where you live at present, but you have infinite choices on
how
you live. This is one of them. Do you promise to work with me, or not?”

Ethan's head bobbed.

“Say it.”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I—”

“Without the eye roll and without the attitude.”

His scowl deepened as he weighed what was happening. His eyes reddened. “I promise to work with you.”

Wendy gave the tabletop a triumphant pat with both palms. “Excellent. Let's get started.”

* * *

Ethan had spent a decade trying to forget the events of that afternoon. At times, he thought maybe he'd even been successful, and at other times, when the memories sneaked in anyway, the self-medication could help. Until it didn't. Often those were the worst times of all. It seemed that the drugs worked both ways. When they were helpful, they kept the memories at bay. But then there were the times when they made it impossible for him to turn them off.

The doctor's question wasn't really a question at all, but rather an opening—the same shit that shrinks pulled all the time.
Tell me about what happened eleven years ago.

“It's got to be in that report you read,” Ethan said.

The doctor did a weird thing with her face. Half smiling and half pained, she cocked her head to the left and seemed to look straight through him—all the way to his spine. “The report says you claimed to have been kidnapped eleven years ago. That's the exact language—you
claimed
to have been kidnapped.”

Translation: They don't believe me.
“Well, there you go,” he said.

“You know better,” the doctor said. “Even dismissing the conditional language—the poisonous
claimed
—saying that you were kidnapped is like saying of World War Two that the Nazis and the allies had a spat. I need to know the details.”

“I have no idea what happened in World War Two.”

Her eyes flashed anger. “Really? Is that how you're going to honor our agreement that is not yet five minutes old? Passive-aggressiveness is the strategy of cowards. And trust me, you are nowhere as good at it as other patients I've dealt with.”

Ethan felt heat rising in his face. “What do you want from me?” he said, louder than he'd intended. “I don't know who the hell you are. You say you're a doctor—a shrink. Well, okay, I'll tell you that I'm an astrophysicist. Are you ready for me to map the universe for you? I don't even remember your name!”

“Dr. Wendy Adams,” she said. She'd made her voice quieter, an old standard in shrink strategies to get him to lower his own. “You can call me Wendy. And the fact of the matter, young man, is that I am likely your last hope. Even if I made all of that up, tell me where the downside is for you trusting me.”

Ethan had lost count of the number of shrinks who had tried to drill into his brain over the years.
Hey, crazy boy. Do you have nightmares? Do you have violent fantasies? Can we trust you not to bring a bazooka into your school and blow everybody away?
While those might not have been the actual questions, they were always the subtext, and the easiest route to be excused from the exercise was to lie. Tell them that you sleep like a baby every night, that your only thoughts were about roses and springtime, and that your life's ambition was to save whales or children—or both—and they scribble good things in your chart and you get your life back. The last thing any psychiatrist wanted was to deal with a problem that needed to be fixed. They wanted to give you a handful of pills and call it a closed case.

Something about this shrink, though, felt different. For one, she didn't talk to him in that singsongy pitiful voice that the others used. And she didn't bow to his bullshit. She didn't close the file and say,
if you want to be that way, fine. I'm done
. Plus, she didn't
look
like a shrink. Instead of some precious professional business suit, she wore blue jeans, a pink top and a sport coat—or whatever the hell ladies called a sport coat. She looked both athletic and feminine, a combination that was difficult to pull off. Maybe forty-five years old, he didn't believe that the platinum blond hair was natural, but she wore it well, cropped close to her head without looking butch. Maybe it was time for him to roll the dice. Like she said, there wasn't a lot to lose at this point.