“For argument’s sake, let’s say that I would.”
“I don’t think I could hurt her.”
“Because you love her.”
“I suppose I do, if that’s what love means.”
“More than you loved your parents when you killed them?”
“I was a kid, I overreacted.”
“And if it were to happen again today, you wouldn’t hurt them?”
“No, I can control it now. I understand how it works. I rule my emotions, I don’t allow my emotions to rule me.”
“That’s good, David. Very insightful.”
“So I can see her, then?”
“After we make a phone call.”
“Okay.”
—Charter Observation Team – 309
1
“Have you been here all night?”
Detective Faustino Brier must have drifted off. He hadn’t heard Joy Fogel come in, hadn’t heard her get coffee, and didn’t notice when she planted herself at the desk facing his. She sat there now, a steaming mug of coffee resting between her hands, leaning back in her chair, her head tilted a little to the left. She tended to do that when she asked a question. Over time, Faustino noticed the tilt went left when she already knew the answer to her latest query, and to the right when she did not.
Faustino sat up straight in his own chair, looked at the empty coffee mug in front of him, and smacked his dry lips. “What time is it?”
“Four twenty-three in the morning,” she said, without missing a beat.
“That’s a neat trick. You just know that?”
“I can see the clock in interrogation room two from here.”
Faustino twisted his head around and glanced behind him. His neck let out a series of pops and creaks. He could make out a white blob hanging on the wall of the small interrogation room, but that was about it. His vision had gradually gotten worse in the past decade or so. Now forty-three, he had eleven years on his partner. Sometimes that mattered, most of the time it didn’t. This was apparently one of those times it did. Vision went with age, and he wasn’t getting any younger.
Considering the odd time, Fogel looked wide awake and together. She wore little makeup, just some eyeliner. Her blonde hair was pulled back in the usual ponytail, still damp.
She wasn’t a large woman. In fact, she was downright tiny, only about five-two , but she spent most of her free time in the department gym. Over the three years they’d been partners, Faustino had seen no less than five other officers comment on her petite size and had also seen her take down those same five officers with relative ease within hours of said comment. “Meet me in the gym after your shift,” was not something you wanted to hear from her, and it became a running joke in the department. As new officers cycled in, it was only a matter of time before they said something about her—a comment on her short stature or her looks—and the person would soon find themselves staring up at her from one of the mats in the gym, little birdies dancing around their head as they tried to piece together what just happened. Her father insisted she take Taekwondo beginning at eight years old, and at last check, she now had her third black belt. She also took jiu jitsu and yoga (to relax, she said).
There had been a time early on when Faustino thought the two of them might actually try dating, but they quickly moved past that. He found her to be attractive, same as the other guys. She had seen something in him, too, but they spent so much time together they quickly shifted from that mutual attraction to something more like a sibling relationship. In the few instances when Faustino had actually gone out on a date with other women (typically women he met through a dating service—homicide detectives rarely encountered live women through work), Fogel studied each one closely and offered her “unbiased” opinion—none were particularly right for him, but they were right for now. If Fogel dated, she didn’t talk about it, at least not with him. That was okay, too.
“I got in a little after midnight,” Faustino told her. “Couldn’t sleep. How about you? What are you doing here so early?”
She glanced up at the large bulletin board on wheels next to Faustino’s desk. “It’s August 8. I knew that would be coming out. Wouldn’t miss it.”
The bulletin board spent most of the year tucked in the far back corner of the Pittsburgh PD homicide division’s pen, gathering dust, the side with clippings, photographs, and notes turned to face the wall, the blank side out. Most of the detectives were too new to know much about it and left it as is. The older detectives had written it off long ago as Faustino’s personal project and also left it as is. At one point, someone had written, FAUST’S WALL OF WEIRD across the top in red chalk, but that had slowly faded away.
“Do you want to walk me through it?”
“Are you sure you want to hear it again?”
Fogel nodded. “A refresher is good. It’s been a year.”
