Dreams, fantasies, delusions—they generate from a different part of the brain than a present moment or even a memory. A memory can provoke a visceral response, good or bad. And by remembering we can grow less, or more, sensitive, depending on if the memory is of joy or trauma.
But a dream? A fantasy that’s never happened? A delusion about something that is never going to happen? The emotional reaction is imaginary, so we don’t recognize it when it becomes real. We can’t plan for it no matter how hard we try.
Which is why every single person in Nichols that day was surprised. And why I was surprised at how my training took over in spite of everything else. The training had given me muscle memory so I knew what to do. But it could not simulate the emotions. The terror. Nothing ever can.
Wade is feeling it now. The same reaction he had when Clay Lucas stood before him with that gun and, even before that, when he heard the shots and froze while others ran for safety.
I watch him now, knowing he’s surprised, and that his surprise was not part of the plan. This is an unstable situation. I watch carefully as it unfolds, and I see the wheels turning inside his head. He seems to get himself together. He takes out a zip tie and walks to the man. He drags him until he sits beside me, then locks him to the same pipe. It’s the only one in the room. The only way to keep him from moving.
Then he takes out a knife and cuts me away from the pipe, pulling me to my feet. My wrists are still bound in front of me.
He grabs hold of my arm and leads me across the room and into the hallway and then the main part of the structure. It has a door, benches that line the walls, and a counter with stools. It has been cleared out entirely. The windows are all closed. The air is stagnant. Putrid, really, as the smell of sweaty men and dead animals lingers.
I hear Nix struggling to break free, pulling on the pipes, trying to scream with the gag in his mouth. He is now a captured animal, waiting for the slaughter. But I can’t think about him. I have to stay focused.
“What’s the plan?” I ask.
Wade lets go of my arm and steps away. I don’t make a move. I can’t overpower him. I can’t open the door and try to run, and even if I could, I wouldn’t get far. I have to find another escape.
He looks at me like he did on that back road. With adoration and longing. Only this time, he’s nervous, sweating, so he removes his red jacket and hangs it on the back of the door where there are two empty hooks.
Then he wipes his brow with his hand and smiles. “Well, it’s simple. I’ve brought you the gift. The man who put the gun in Clay Lucas’s hand. The man who made you a killer.”
He walks slowly backward to the jacket and pulls out a plastic baggie with small balloons inside. Only, they’re not balloons. They’re latex sacs filled with drugs. It’s a common practice for mules, hiding drugs inside their bodies, coming across a border or through airport security. They also work well in drains and toilet basins because water and even human digestive chemicals won’t erode them.
“Nice, huh? Found these on him. He’s a real contributor to society. Oxy. Guns. You name it.”
I think I know what’s happening here. Do I? Yes. I convince myself.
I think about this structure. Things I can use. Things I learned three years ago on the case with the Kill Room.
“What am I supposed to do with this gift?” I buy time while I think.Think!
“Do you remember when we spoke about how much we hated them? The people who put that gun in Clay’s hands? You even said you wanted them dead.”
I remember thinking that many times, though I don’t remember everything we said that day. Everything we’ve texted since. It doesn’t matter. It’s true, and he knows it.
“Well, there can’t be justice here, Elise. Because the gun had no markings and this punk can’t be tied to it, even though I have his confession. They’ll say it was coerced. But how else are confessions made? You know that. Still, it won’t hold up. And then what? He’ll get a few years for something? Maybe they’ll find more drugs at his place over the border, in New York? And they’ll get jurisdiction, but those jurors won’t give a shit about our little department store shooting. Do I need to go on?”
I shake my head.
“So there can’t be justice. But there can be payback. Right here and right now.” He takes my gun from his pocket and looks at it again like it’s the key to the cage that imprisons him.
And while he does this, I remember the rifle under the counter from the case here, the execution three years before. I remember how the hunter from upstate left it on a mount—loaded perhaps, ready for the next season—because his wife wouldn’t allow it in the house and because he thought no one knew about it, and the ones who did would never touch it because that’s part of their code. Forensics removed it, cleared it, then returned the rifle to the owner. Our department issued a warning. But these guys do what they want. I pray that’s still true—that the hunters are creatures of habit with no regard for authority.
I didn’t write about the gun in my post to the students because it wasn’t public information.
“It would have been so different if you hadn’t turned on me that day we first met. But maybe all of this had to happen for you to finally understand.”
I slowly sweep my arms against the underside of the counter. I stop when I feel something metal—the edge of the gun mount. I trace it with my fingers and search for the hunting rifle. I can make out the shape. I find the barrel and the trigger. It’s there. The rifle is there!
I think now that zip ties can be broken. We learned this in our training because we use them in the field sometimes. We carry them because they’re lighter than handcuffs and there could be, even for me and Rowan, a situation where we had to make an arrest during an interview. So we got the training, just like I was taught to fire my weapon even though I hadn’t drawn it once in twelve years until that day that changed my life.
Wade tells me next about filming Rowan as he walked home last night. “If I’m being honest, your partner surprised me. He was so careless. I had underestimated the power of his dysfunction—the demons from the war. He lost himself so easily in those beers and that woman on the phone.”
He walks to the other side of the counter so we can standface-to-face. I am now flush against the edge, and just beneath it is the gun with the mount. I sit on a stool and let my arms slowly drift beneath the counter. I feel for the metal, then for an edge.
“And the girls. I would like to tell you that I was sorry about that, but they never knew a thing. They were running around and playing. I wasn’t going to hurt them. I was never going to do that. That would make me a monster. Did you think I would?”
