and end up with all new wiring, too?”
“I told you,” he said patiently, “only if you use any of what you know to engage in something illegal. And you won’t.”
“What makes you so goddam sure about that?” she demanded.
Forehead creasing with concern, Pasco looked into her face. She was about to say something else when something happened.
All at once, her mind opened up and she found that she was looking at an enormous panorama—all the lost possibilities, the missed opportunities, the bad calls; a lifetime of uncorrected mistakes, missteps, and fumbles. All those things were a single big picture—perhaps the proverbial big picture, the proverbial forest you sometimes couldn’t see for the proverbial trees. But she was seeing it now and seeing it all at once.
It was too much. She would never be able to recall it as an image, to look at it again in the future. Concentrating, she struggled to focus on portions of it instead:
Jake’s father, going back to his wife, unaware that she was pregnant—she had always been sure that had been no mistake but now she knew there was a world where he had known and stayed with her, and one where he had known and left anyway—
Jake, growing up interested in music not computers; getting mixed up with drugs with Ricky Carstairs; helping Ricky Carstairs straighten out; coming out to her at sixteen and introducing his boyfriend; marrying his college sweetheart instead of Lita; adopting children with his husband Dennis; getting the Rhodes Scholarship instead of someone else; moving to California instead of Boston—
The mammogram and the biopsy results; the tests left too late—
Wounding the suspect in the Martinez case instead of killing him; missing her shot and taking a bullet instead while someone else killed him; having the decision by the shooting board go against her; retiring after twenty years instead of staying on; getting fed up and quitting after ten; going to night school to finish her degree—
Jury verdicts, convictions instead of acquittals and vice versa; catching Darren Hightower after the first victim instead of after the seventh—
Or going into a different line of work altogether—
Or finding out about all of this before now, long before now when she was still young and full of energy, looking for an edge and glad to find it. Convincing herself that she was using it not for her own personal gain but as a force for good. Something that would save lives, literally and figuratively, expose the corrupt and reward the good and the worthy. One person
Government with a conscience instead of agendas; schools and hospitals instead of wars; no riots, no assassinations, no terror, no Lee Harvey Oswald, no James Earl Ray, no Sirhan Sirhan, no 9/11—
And maybe even no nine-year-old boy found naked and dead in a dumpster—
Abruptly she found herself leaning heavily against the side of the Mura house, straining to keep from falling down while the Dread tried to turn her inside out.
Rafe Pasco cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”
She looked at him, miserable.
“That’s what makes me so certain,” he went on. “Your, uh, allergic reaction. If there’s any sort of disruption here, no matter how large or small, you’ll feel it. And it won’t feel good. And if you tried to do something yourself—” He made a small gesture at her. “Well, you see what happened when you only thought about it.”
“Great,” she said shakily. “What do I do now, spend the rest of my life trying not to think impure thoughts?”
Pasco’s expression turned sheepish. “That’s not what I meant. You feel this way because of the current circumstances. Once the alien elements have been removed from your world—” he glanced at the SUV “—you’ll start to feel better. The bad feeling will fade away.”
“And how long is that going to take?” she asked him.
“You’ll be all right.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I think I’ve given you enough answers already.” He started for his car and she caught his arm.
“Just one more thing,” she said. “Really. Just one.”
Pasco looked as if he were deciding whether to shake her off or not. “What,” he said finally.
“This so-called allergic reaction of mine. Is there any reason for it or is it just one of those things? Like hayfever or some kind of weakness.”
“Some kind of weakness.” Pasco chuckled without humour. “Sometimes when there’s been a divergence in one’s own line, there’s a certain…sensitivity.”
Ruby nodded with resignation. “Is that another way of saying that you’ve given me enough answers already?”
Pasco hesitated. “All those could-have-beens, those might-have-dones and if-I-knew-thens you were thinking.”
The words were out of her mouth before she even knew what she was going to say. “They all happened.”
“I know you won’t do anything,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning toward her slightly, “because you have. And the conscience that bothers you still bothers you, even at long distance. Even in the hypothetical.”
Ruby made a face. “My guilty conscience? Is that really what it is?”
“I don’t know how else to put it.”
“Well.” She took a breath, feeling a little bit steadier. “I guess that’ll teach me to screw around with the way things should be.”
Pasco frowned impatiently. “It’s not should or shouldn’t. It’s just what
“With no second chances.”
“With second chances, third chances, hundredth chances, millionth chances,” Pasco corrected her. “All the chances you want. But not a second chance to have a first chance.”
Ruby didn’t say anything.
“This is what poisons the system and makes everything go wrong. You live within the system, within the mechanism. It’s not meant to be used or manipulated by an individual. To be taken personally. It’s a system, a process. It’s nothing personal.”
“Hey, I thought it was time to go,” the man in the SUV called impatiently.
Pasco waved at him and then turned to Ruby again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“You will?” she said, surprised. But he was already getting into his car and she had no idea whether he had heard her or not. And he had given her enough answers already anyway, she thought, watching all three vehicles drive away. He had given her enough answers already and he would see her tomorrow.
And how would that go, she wondered, now that she knew what she knew? How would it be working with him? Would the Dread really fade away if she saw him every day, knowing and remembering?
Would she be living the rest of her life or was she just stuck with it?
Pasco had given her enough answers already and there was no one else to ask.
Ruby walked across the Mura’s front lawn to her car, thinking that it felt as if the Dread had already begun to lift a little. That was something, at least. Her guilty conscience; she gave a small, humourless laugh. Now that was something she had never suspected would creep up on her. Time marched on and one day you woke up to find you were a somewhat dumpy, greying, middle-aged homicide detective with twenty-five years on the job and a hefty lump of guilty conscience and regret. And if you wanted to know why, to understand, well, that was just too bad because you had already been given too many answers already. Nothing personal.
She started the car and drove away from the empty house, through the meandering streets, and did no better finding her way out of the West Side than she had finding her way in.
THE ROSE WALL
JOYCE CAROL OATES
