To Love a Cop (19 page)

For the moment, she took the pile to her bedroom. She was stymied over where she could successfully hide them. Somewhere in the garage, maybe, but she’d wait until she was sure he was asleep to slip out there. For now, she dumped them in the middle of her bed, then went to the kitchen where she grabbed a plastic trash bag she took back to her room. She was happier once she couldn’t see any of the covers.

Then she had a very quiet emotional breakdown as she remembered in graphic detail the past two times she’d seen a semi-automatic pistol that wasn’t in a holster, as Ethan had worn his.

To kill himself, Matt had apparently sat down on the kitchen floor with his back to a wall. Because he hadn’t liked the idea of falling off a chair? Or because this was the closest he could get to where Marco had died? She didn’t know. He hadn’t said in the brief note he’d left her. The gun had fallen away from Matt’s hand as he slumped sideways. Blood had dripped from gun and wall both.

And then, of course, there was the one she had snatched from the hand of her five-year-old, who had been frozen staring, stupefied, at what was left of his best friend and cousin’s head.

She sat on the edge of her bed and shook.

* * *

E
THAN CALLED
L
AURA
as soon as he said goodbye to the last of his students and their parents in the parking lot outside the range. A last “thank you” rang out just as he pulled his door closed and reached for his phone.

Laura answered immediately, as if she’d been waiting with her own phone clutched in her hands. “Ethan?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said. “You okay?”

“No. Yes, of course I am. Just...” She let that trail off.

“How’s Jake taking this?”

“He’s mad and freaked and...” She stopped again. “I don’t know. I used to be able to tell what he was thinking. Not being able to—” Her breathing was audible. “It freaks
me
out.”

“Yeah, I can see why.” Intensely focused on every tiny sound coming from the phone, Ethan stared straight ahead at the painted cinder-block wall of the range, a sickly mustard color under the sodium lamps. “Can I come over?” he asked.

“I think it might be better if you didn’t. I don’t want to antagonize him.”

What the—? Ethan went rigid before he could reason with himself.

She was right; hearing Ethan’s voice out in the living room or kitchen would cause the kid’s resentment to boil. He’d lie there in bed wondering what the two of them were saying about him.

So what?
was Ethan’s immediate reaction. Let the boy stew. There was something even more seriously wrong with him than Ethan had suspected if he was now sleeping like a baby and
not
filled with anxiety and rage and a whole lot else.

“You going to cater to him?” he asked, a fraction of a second before thinking better of it.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she fired back.

“It means Jake is in deep shit, and he needs to know it. It means you shouldn’t be tiptoeing around him.”

“I’m not tiptoeing! I took his magazines away from him and broke it to him that he’s going to start seeing a therapist Thursday. And that he isn’t getting his allowance until I’m convinced he won’t spend it on the next issue of
Gun Porno
.”

His mouth quirked. As tart as she was sounding, she’d be mad if she could see him smiling.

“Okay,” he said. “That sounds like a good start.”

“Gee, thanks. Any other advice on parenting from someone who has never tried it?”

He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Is that criticism for how I handled him?”

“No! But you don’t have to sound so condescending, either!”

“I didn’t mean to be—”

“Forget it.” Snappish, she said, “Can we not talk about it tonight?”

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. “I’m sorry. Are we still on for lunch tomorrow?”

The silence was long enough to crank up his tension. Then, “I guess so,” she said, sounding less than enthusiastic. “We do have to talk.”

That wasn’t what Ethan wanted to hear. Common sense told him not to jump on her words or tone right now, though. She was stressed, and had reason to be. What’s more, she was a mother. Jake’s problems and what to do about them had pressed on Ethan for the past two and a half hours, a weight he felt no matter what else he’d been doing or saying. They’d been pressing on her without relief for years. Plus, tonight she’d been left alone to face down the storm that was her son.

“Then I’ll call you in the morning,” he said, but knew that nothing was going to get in the way of him having lunch with her. Nothing. He swallowed, bumped his head a couple of times on the back of the seat, and said as gently as he could, “Go to bed, Laura. Get some sleep. We knew this was coming to a head. Nothing all that bad happened.”

“No.” An odd sound might have been a hitch of breath, or a suppressed sob. “No, you’re right. Thank you, Ethan. Good night.”

He said good-night, too, and then she was gone, leaving him more unsettled than he’d been in a long time.

* * *

L
AURA TALKED TO
him over lunch the next day, but something was different. Off. She was reserved in a way he had yet to see, Ethan finally decided. Not unfriendly, but treating him more like an acquaintance than a man she’d passionately kissed. One she was supposed to be introducing to her son as her boyfriend.

He almost snorted at the word, even though he’d suggested it. He hadn’t been a boy in a long time.

“Thank goodness I already had the appointment,” she said. “I think I’d go nuts if I had to wait a week to get him in to see someone.”

“The doctor who recommended this guy understands what the issue is?”

“Yes, apparently he—his name is Randall Lang, by the way—specializes in working with kids who’ve suffered a trauma. I haven’t met him yet, but we have an hour and a half long appointment. The first half hour is just me and him.” She made a face. “Jake won’t like that, but tough. Then he talks to the two of us together, then with Jake alone.”

She’d told him all this last night after dinner, before his early warning system had kicked in and he’d started wondering what Jake was up to. Ethan didn’t say anything, though; she needed to talk, and he was glad to listen.

“Does Jake seem open to this?” he asked.

Momentarily, her expression revealed worry and despair. “I don’t know. He sort of nodded when I asked if he understood this compulsion he has is worrisome.”

Ethan hoped she knew that “sort of nodding” did not translate to agreement. “I still think at heart he’s a good kid.”

She flashed him a grateful look. “I do, too. But...I’m still scared.”

“I don’t blame you.” He reached across the table and took her hand in his. “But you’re doing what you can.” He hesitated. “What did you do with his stash?”

“I sneaked out into the garage in the middle of the night and hid it in a box of Christmas ornaments.”

“Do you have enough clutter in the garage that he won’t find it right away?”

She made a tiny sound. “He’s going to my sister’s after school this week. I don’t want him home alone.”

Ethan waited.

“No. There aren’t that many good hidey-holes out there, but I couldn’t think of a great place in the house, either.”

“Do you want me to take them?”

Hope dawned in her eyes, but she shut it down fast, shaking her head. “I promised him I wouldn’t throw any of it away. That...we’d talk to the therapist and see what he thinks.”

He grunted. “Boys do like guns and shooting things, and violence has an appeal. Has it occurred to you that some of his friends may share his interests?”

Laura looked aghast. “No! Oh, my God. How do I find out?”

“Do you let him play any of those shooter video games? Halo, say?”

“No!”

“He may be playing them at friends’ houses.”

“But...aren’t they rated Mature?”

“Sure. That doesn’t mean some of his buddies don’t have big brothers who own games like that, or the parents don’t pay any attention to ratings. You know that, Laura.”

She appeared shell-shocked. Ethan didn’t see her as naive, but she’d definitely been practicing denial.

“Oh, my God,” she said again, sounding short of breath. “I need to call his friends’ parents and make sure.”

“Normally, I’d say it’s not that big a deal for a boy.” He ignored her glare. “Jake’s case is different. I don’t like the idea of him having the illusion of firing a lethal weapon. At his age, I don’t know how he’d integrate what he’s seeing on the screen with his memory of the real thing.”

She exhaled as if someone—
he
—had punched her and bent forward slightly, crossing her arms as if to protect her vulnerable midsection.

“I’m sorry, Laura.” He wanted to touch her, but he couldn’t draw her out of her chair in the middle of a restaurant the way he could at home, and her body language didn’t suggest she wanted to be touched anyway. That stung a little, but he pushed the knowledge away. “These are things you might want to talk to this counselor about. I don’t know if you even want to isolate Jake from what’s normal for other boys. I’m damn sure you can’t succeed a hundred percent.”

“No.” Her whole face looked pinched. “I need to get back to work. I know this hasn’t been fun, but thank you for listening.”

“I’m available any time you need to talk.” He made sure she could tell he meant it. “Middle-of-the-night panic attack, call me.” Then he signaled the waitress and took out his credit card.

While they waited for it to be run, Laura perched on the edge of her seat, all but quivering with her readiness to get out of there. Worried, he watched her, not liking the way she evaded his gaze or the fact that she hadn’t said, “Better be ready for your phone to start ringing at 2:00 a.m.” In fact, he realized, she hadn’t responded at all to the last thing he’d said.

There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation of any kind as they left the restaurant or during the short drive back to her store. He kissed her, but briefly, gently, knowing she wasn’t up to anything more...and suffering from an uneasy feeling she’d reject more. Him.

“You’ll let me know how the counseling session goes?” he said as she reached for the door handle.

Her eyes fleetingly met his. “Oh! Yes, of course. I might wait until after Jake has gone to bed.”

“Okay.”

She hurried to the door, unlocked it and disappeared inside without so much as a glance back.

No invitation to dinner, either.

Maybe he was the one who had to make that move. Show up Saturday and say to Jake, “Let’s work on those layups.” Or maybe they needed to talk first.

Either option, he’d need to clear first with Laura.
Tomorrow night
, he told himself. He couldn’t do anything until then.

Didn’t mean getting his head back into his job was easy.

* * *

“
I
CAN SEE
why you’re alarmed,” Dr. Randall Lang told her, his expression kind. “Jake obviously has some issues we need to work on, but from what you’re telling me you’ve kept him well grounded, too. I’d be more concerned if he were having angry outbursts at school, getting into fights, even assaulting you when you insist on limits. We’d be facing a bigger challenge if you’d waited until he got into the teenage years. Taking action now is absolutely the right thing to do.”

She had liked him immediately. He was young, maybe mid-thirties, wore chinos and a rumpled sports shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and had the lean athleticism of a runner or biker. A baseball sat on his cluttered desk. He’d insisted she call him Randall, and said he’d ask the same of Jake. She’d felt immediate relief, knowing Jake would respond best to someone young and “cool.” What’s more, along with an engaging smile and a relaxed style, Randall Lang projected calm, as if his aura had washed over hers.

Ethan could do that, too, except...his aura was different. Maybe it was the fact that she could never forget his capacity for violence. He wouldn’t be able to do his job if he lacked the ability to switch gears in a millisecond from seemingly relaxed ease to intense mental and physical preparedness. She shivered every time she remembered how he’d exploded out of the house when he realized what Jake was up to.

Then, she’d been glad, but in retrospect she was scared by that glimpse of the man he was on the job.

Not now.

Jake had to be her focus.

“Do you deal with angry, violent teenage boys?” she asked.

Randall smiled. “Sure.”

“Have you ever worked with a child who accidentally killed another one?”

His eyes held hers. “Yes. Accidents of all sorts can result in similar feelings of responsibility and guilt. And with the prevalence in gun ownership, tragedies like his are inevitable. I’m currently seeing one other boy who also shot and killed someone else by accident, and I’ve had other clients like Jake in the past.”

They talked about Jake’s magazine collection, and he advised holding off on shredding it for now. “We don’t want to damage his sense of trust in you, and our goal is to reach a point where he’ll either lose interest in those magazines or will conclude himself that they aren’t healthy for him.”

Eventually he went out and called Jake back to join them. No surprise, Jake slouched into a chair, hung his head and, in response to questions, mumbled monosyllabic replies. When Laura opened her mouth to say something to him, Randall gave her a slight head shake and she subsided. Of course he was right. Jake was shy and scared.

Liking the way Randall interacted with Jake, she ended up going out to the waiting room early, giving the two of them something like forty-five minutes alone together. She pretended to flip through a magazine, her tension level climbing, one nail-biting inch at a time. Part of her wanted desperately to be a fly on the wall. What if Jake was in there blaming her for his problems? Maybe she’d only deceived herself that they had a good relationship. His current resentment might have been simmering for ages and she’d been blind to it. She had this awful picture of herself dressed in a cheerleader uniform, bouncing and kicking and waving pom-poms, Ms. Perky oblivious to the debacle happening on the field behind her.