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  The other cop was bent over the dashboard. He wasn’t moving and the windshield was red.

  What you did before doesn’t matter. Only what you do now.

  Two large, black gym bags were in the back of the van, and when I unzipped them I found stacks of hundred-dollar bills. I felt bile rise in my throat and knew that if I was sick I’d choke to death in this mask. We dragged the bags out and went through what was left. My Smith and Wesson bullet was boxed up, tossed around in the crash. I tore it open and pocketed the evidence, and then Joe was shouting at me and his hand was on my shoulder.

  “We need to go!” he yelled.

  So we gathered up the money, one bag each. I heard Joe grunting with the effort but I barely felt it. The officer I’d smacked was stirring as we passed him, and Joe put the bag down for a moment to kick him hard in the stomach.

  Chapter Ten

  We burned the car in a disused quarry on the outskirts of town. I stood at the edge and watched Joe douse it in gasoline. Inside were the masks and the shotguns. The bullet, too. All of it set ablaze in the falling snow. Even standing thirty yards back, I could feel the heat. Joe stood next to me and we watched it in silence, and when I turned to look at him he had fire in his eyes.

  “My gun,” I said, holding out my hand. “Shell casing, too.”

  Joe took a while to respond. Like he was mesmerized by the flames. Eventually he saw me, his face blank and unreadable. Dumbly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out my revolver. Passed it over along with the shell casing. The latter I tossed onto the fire.

  “I’m taking my cut,” I said, and I did. Counted out five bundles and stuffed them inside my coat. Joe didn’t say anything the entire time but I knew he was watching.

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I think maybe it had been a while since I had.

  When I got back it was still early. My entire body seemed to ache with the weight of the last few days. I ran the tub until it was nearly overflowing. Climbed in with a low moan, my muscles tight. The water was warm and when I sank below the surface it sloshed over the sides. I kept my eyes closed for as long as I could bear it; until I thought I felt her hand on my leg. Thin and light, like a child’s. Rachel had always hated her tiny hands. Too small to take a selfie without causing the camera to shake. We used to laugh about that.

  I’m kind of torn on the whole Rachel thing. How much of her I should tell you. How much I should keep for myself. Is she important to the story? Sure. Do you have to know everything about her? Every little detail? Honestly, who the hell knows.

  I guess I already told you how she died. Might as well tell you how she lived.

  Rachel was a brunette. Her hair short and choppy. She had her nose pierced; a ring. I didn’t like it. We met at a party, some friend of a friend. It was late July and she was wearing a summer dress.

  I’m not great at parties. It’s not that I’m shy, I don’t stand in the corner all night nursing a beer. I just can’t be bothered. I’m a bar-and-a-quiet-booth kind of guy. Give me a tiny apartment crammed full of people I don’t know and I’ll be looking for the earliest opportunity to go home.

  At some point I’d decided I’d had enough. Too early to leave, I pushed my way through the crowd of strangers and into the small, deserted backyard. Out here it was warm. A sticky sort of heat. I stood and listened to the muted sounds of the party. I dug around for the joint in my jacket pocket and lit up.

  A rustle from behind me. I turned to see her stumbling out from a large bush. She was smoothing her dress down and awkwardly stopped when she saw me staring.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry. I was just taking a piss.”

  I jerked my thumb toward the house. “There something wrong with the bathroom?”

  “Yeah, the line. Seriously, it was that or the kitchen sink.”

  I shrugged. Turned back to the house. She ambled up beside me.

  “You know, that thing was practically dying anyway.”

  I glanced down at her. She was short. Even in heels, she only reached my chin. “What?”

  “The cherry laurel. That bush back there? Your friend clearly needs to water his garden more. My piss probably just saved its life.”

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “Interesting that’s the part you have a problem with.”

  “I’m just saying. I barely know the guy.”

  She snorted and pointed to my joint. “May I?”

  “Sure. You wash your hands first.”

  “You think I pissed over my hands?”

  “I dunno. Maybe. I just don’t want to put this back in my mouth if it’s covered in your . . . you know.”

  “My piss?”

  “Your whatever. Wash your hands and come back and I’ll share.”

  She glared at me. “I’ll go wash my hands, but only because I need to get myself another beer, alright?”

  She marched off. I smiled and shook my head. When she returned she held her hands out for inspection, her eyebrows raised. I looked them over and nodded approvingly. They were damp, at least.

  “Here you go,” I said, and handed over the joint.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I’m Rachel, by the way.”

  “Thomas.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Huh?”

  Rachel blew smoke out slow. Handed me back my joint. “How come you’re standing out here by yourself?” She narrowed her eyes. “You just like to spy on women pissing?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t know you were out here, believe me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I just needed some fresh air.”

  “You’re not a party guy?”

  I shook my head. “Not really. Music’s too loud.”

  “Not enough Sinatra for you?”

  “Yeah, yeah. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You a party girl?”

  I passed her back the joint and she took it with a grin. “Sure,” she said. “I’m a party girl.”

  We stayed there for a while, stretched out across the grass. Talking the sort of shit I’d be embarrassed to hear back now. Slow smiles, her fingers on mine each time we passed the joint. The rust sky had gone dark by the time we finished. I’d never tried to make a smoke last so long.

  At one point Rachel drew her hair up in one hand and rolled a cool bottle of beer against the back of her neck, and I swear it was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.

  At the end of the night we parted. She gave me her number but for whatever reason I never called. Maybe I lost it. I don’t really remember. Anyway, a month went by and our paths crossed again in a nightclub. I was in better form—a couple of pills had seen to that. Murky memories of strobe lighting, of packed bodies, of sweat. The music was loud, a bass line that made my teeth shiver. We stood by the bar and shouted in each other’s ears. Snatches of her sentences; her lips brushing against my cheek. After a while she smiled and shook her head, took my hand and led me outside. We took a cab back to her apartment. She had some coke in her purse and we shared it on the way. Now we’re equal, she told me.

  At first it was easy. I guess the beginning of a relationship always is. Later—when everything had well and truly turned to shit—I would return to these moments. The lazy morning; the unexpected laugh; the warm embrace. I’d fantasize about them. And I’d wonder about other couples, if it was different for them, if their beginning lasted longer, if they were somehow able to stretch it out. Or if they’d just worked harder at finding their way back when they got lost. I wondered if we would be able to find our way back.

  But all that came later.

  Rachel worked in a small bookstore. A little independent place down by the river. Stairs off the main street, a basement shop. She took me there once.

  “How great is this?” she asked me.

  “It’s quiet,” I said. She gave me a shrug.

  It was quaint and badly lit. Shelves stacked haphazardly. Cramped spaces and a musky smell. An actu
al bell that rang when you pushed open the door. Rachel showed me her desk near the entrance. She was so proud of it.

  “I like it,” I said afterward. “It’s got character.”

  “Exactly,” Rachel said.

  But I guess people didn’t want character. They didn’t want to have to hunt for a book in a dim store, or spend time leafing through hardback classics they’d never heard of. They were looking for internet orders and coffee stands, DVDs and board games. People didn’t want a bookstore to just sell books anymore.

  The store closed up about four months later. Rachel wasn’t prepared, even though the signs had been there for a while. The writing on the wall. Kind of ironic for a bookstore, right?

  Rachel was obviously pretty upset. I made the mistake of telling her Barnes and Noble was hiring.

  “I don’t want to work at Barnes and Noble,” she told me. Tearful by this point.

  “Then where do you want to work?”

  But she didn’t know. And no job meant no pay, which meant no rent. She lost her apartment and ended up moving in with me.

  And it was a lot of pressure. We’d only been dating a short while. I didn’t mind it, not at first. At first it was nice. It was easy, too. No more having to arrange dates to spend time with her, no more having to make our outings special. We saw each other all the time now. I guess we figured we didn’t need to try.

  By the time Rachel got a job (working the desk at the Georgetown Public Library), the question of her moving back into her own place just never came up.

  We were together a few years in that apartment. It was small and cramped, in a rough part of the city. Rachel was home a lot by herself. Alone at night, when I was working.

  “I don’t like being here by myself,” she told me. “The things I hear at night . . .”

  I knew the things she was talking about. Gunshots, mainly. The sharp crack echoing around the courtyard. Police sirens, wailing and wopping. High-pitched screams, women’s screams. I don’t know if she’d always felt like this or if me being a cop made it worse for her. I never bothered to ask. Regardless, it made her nervous. It made us fight.

  We’d fight about her job, about my working patterns. She’d see blood on my shirt. Bruising across my knuckles. I never told her what went on. What me and Isaac did. Was I ashamed? Maybe. But I brought home the stuff she liked and that counted for a lot. Weed, pills, booze. What was it she’d told me? I’m a party girl.

  So we’d argue and then we’d self-medicate and drift off to sleep. Wake up in the morning and move on like the fight never happened. No resolutions to anything. Our lives were like the first episode of a two-parter. Like when Picard got turned into a Borg on Star Trek. We just never bothered trying to turn him back.

  She wasn’t happy. I got that. But I wasn’t happy either. Truth was I wasn’t always working late. Often I would finish a shift and not want to come home. I’d spend a few hours in my squad car or at a bar. A selfishness I paid for, believe me.

  You know what happened next. You’ve already got my confession. Her eyes open and the water cool. There was nothing I could have done.

  And yeah, sometimes I climb into baths to see how long I can hold my breath before I have to break the surface. It’s stupid, I know, but there it is. Sometimes, if I’ve had enough to drink before I do it, I feel her in there with me, under the water. I swear once I even saw her.

  Only this time, in Cooper, after what Joe and I did, when I opened my eyes she wasn’t waiting for me, she wasn’t there with her sad smile and her pale skin. When I finally emerged, gasping for air, I was alone.

  It’s a long walk from my cell to the room where I tell my story. And I walk it every day now. Me and Rookie. There and back, nice and regular.

  At first I kept quiet, but then I got bored. Besides, I got more than one story to tell. I got history of my own. And Rookie seems like a nice kid. Figure he’s more deserving than the others.

  So one day I started talking, and Rookie just hushed up and listened.

  I was born in a prison hospital in Burlington, Vermont, to a woman serving time for murdering her rapist boyfriend. Some opener, I know.

  My mother was raped in the front passenger seat of a silver Buick by a man named Robert. It was October fifth in Burlington, and they’d just been to see Clint Eastwood in Two Mules for Sister Sara at the Strong Theater on Winooski Avenue, and then for dinner at the York Steak House in the Burlington Mall (the film had apparently been excellent, the food decidedly less so).

  They hadn’t been going out long, my mother and Robert. A couple weeks, maybe a month. My mother’s name is Sandra, by the way. She was found the next morning by her mother (a great hulking beast of a woman whom I never had the pleasure of meeting) lying in a crumpled heap by the front door. I often wondered about her journey home that night. Cab, probably. Did he see her shuddering and heaving in the back seat? Maybe his mind was more concerned with his newly polished leather seats and whether or not this drunk bitch was going to puke all over them. Maybe that’s why he didn’t bother making sure she got inside.

  Anyway, we all know where this is going. Mom got raped, Mom got pregnant, Mom went out and bought herself a handgun and blew Robert’s brains so far up the wall of his apartment building the cleaners would need a crane to get it all off.

  She’d bought the gun from a shop on the corner of Bradley and Hungerford (God bless Vermont’s unconditional love of the Second Amendment) and had traveled halfway across town to wait three hours in a playground for Robert to finish work. It was the three hours that got her in the end. Turns out the courts don’t like killers waiting that long. Implies premeditation. Plus, you know, they weren’t wild about the whole ‘hanging out in a playground with a loaded weapon’ bit.

  Most of this stuff I got from the court records. It’s all there, packed in boxes in basements. Files of papers, all held together with staples and elastic bands. I’m sure nowadays they’ve got it all stored on hard drives and USB sticks. Everything saved up there in the cloud. You ever wonder why they called it that? The cloud. I never really gave it much thought before. Back when my mom shot my dad, clouds meant rain.

  I wasn’t sure if they’d let me see it. I was a teenager at this point. Nineteen and skinny as all hell. Slicked-back hair and dressed in my best suit, which believe me didn’t mean much. But it turns out anyone can read this stuff if they want to. Public records, the lady at the desk told me. How about that? The story of my conception available for everyone to enjoy. I felt a bit like Jesus when I found that out.

  I’d rented a motel room next to the courthouse, and I spent two days reading through everything. After I was done, I saw her in a whole new light. My mom. She wasn’t some weak-willed object that got used and abused. She was bad-ass. I remember reading and rereading some of the transcripts and she gave as good as she got. Gave it back better. Now, like I said, it was the playground that got her in the end, and the judge sure did make a show about that. Droning on about the children on the swings, about their mothers sitting on benches watching. The innocents, he kept calling them. Asked her what would have happened if something had gone wrong. Talked about the blood and the gore and how people didn’t need to see that sort of thing at four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon. At the end, when he was passing her sentence, he asked her if she had anything to say, and she said sure, she had something to say.

  And the transcripts—they’re good up to a point. They get the words all right, and they’re typed up nice and neat, but they don’t get the emotion of it all. You understand me? I read those words over and over and I imagined my mom standing there in that court, her voice steady or maybe just cracking a little. I imagined the quiet of the place, the reporters hanging on her every word. The still air in the room near stifling on a warm June day. I imagined her telling the judge exactly why she’d done what she’d done, how Robert had been sweet on her at first—flowers and chocolates and holding the door open for her and all that stuff. Hell, he’d even met her mot
her for afternoon tea, which had gotten her mother’s stamp of approval, and that might not mean a lot to the judge, but it meant a lot to her. She’d never been with anyone else but Robert, and now her first time was probably going to be her last, unless more men like him existed (which they surely did) and they happened to work at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility (which she couldn’t pass any comment on, but she wouldn’t be surprised given the state of the American justice system). She said she was sorry if she’d ruined anyone’s day by shooting Robert in the head but she wasn’t sorry she’d done it. Said she’d do it again if she had to. Said he might have been her first but she doubted she was his. It was a public service, she said. And if it made all the other Roberts out there think twice, then that was enough for her.

  I often wondered if he knew. Just before she pulled the trigger. If he turned to face her, even a little. Or if he was completely oblivious, if his last thought was what to have for dinner, or whether the new Planet of the Apes movie looked any good, or maybe who he should rape next.

  Apparently his right eye popped clean when it happened. Made an all-or-nothing leap to safety across the sidewalk.

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke on Thursday morning to the sound of my cell, buzzing on my nightstand. I fumbled for it. Knocked over something that clinked on its way down. Tried to read the screen but my eyes wouldn’t focus.

  “Hello?”

  Silence. Then, “Mr. Levine, did I wake you?”

  It was a woman.

  “No,” I said, rolling onto my back.

  The room was cold. The cool morning air tainted with the musk of sweat and the stink of bourbon. I cleared my throat, kicked off the sheets and tried to ignore the beads on my forehead. Maybe I was coming down with something. What time was it?