victim’s perspective.”
“Up to the case agent.”
It was a soft toss, meant to ease my humiliation. Working like this is intimate. You throw out ideas, you have to trust. Alone, his irritation about not yet having Juliana’s statement would have been part of the normal give and take; but there was Kelsey, making notes.
“I think it’s a bad idea. Juliana has already formed a bond with me.”
“A bond,” objected Kelsey, “is not the same as an empathetic relationship.”
“I am not her shrink and neither are you, and if you think that’s what it’s about, you’ve got the wrong idea of what it means to be a federal agent.”
“That’s a somewhat dated view.”
It hung there like spit on a window.
Rick: “Is the victim seeing a counselor at the Rape Treatment Center?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He snapped the briefcase. “I hope this was useful, Kelsey. I’ve got to get to the Iranian consulate.”
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Kelsey said when he had gone. “I thought we could work together. I’m only trying to share my expertise.”
We were standing in the outer office.
“Share
I didn’t say it softly enough or turn away fast enough for Kelsey not to see that I had (unconsciously) made an obscene gesture indicating that if I had been endowed with a penis, it would right now be (symbolically) jerking off in her face.
She saw it, and I saw that she saw it.
“It’s okay,” Kelsey said, subdued. “It’s been a long, hard week and everybody’s—” She touched my arm. “I won’t bug you anymore.”
Juliana could not leave the house. She would follow into the same rooms as her mother, who, for her part, was grateful to be given her baby back, to stay home and bake cookies together and lie in bed watching videos as they had when Juliana came down with pertussis in fourth grade. She sent the nanny to Laurel West for the homework assignments — because Juliana would sob uncontrollably if Lynn were out of her sight — gently reminding her daughter that she still had to keep up in her work because colleges didn’t want to see slipping grades.
Juliana was having trouble swallowing. The family would sit down to dinner, expectant, and Lynn would put a plate of homemade lasagna airy with fresh oregano, just for Juliana’s pleasure, just to make it special, in front of the girl who would gag, push away from the table in a fit of red-faced choking, rush to stick her head out the back door and suck cool air, panicking her mom and dad as if she did have the whooping cough, ruining their hope.
The bruising had reduced to traces of ocher and the scans of her neck had come back negative for swelling or fracture. Soon she was being served just broth or a protein shake, and then she didn’t want to come to the table at all; and nobody mentioned her when she wasn’t there, the little sister not unhappy to have the parents all to herself, detailing the ins and outs of nine-year-old friendships with indignant amazement. And maybe it was a relief not to have to extend one’s patience throughout dinner, too, have a little break, a glass of wine — but why, reasoned Lynn, continue to cook these elaborate dinners at all if Juliana wasn’t able to participate? Spending the whole day in the kitchen wasn’t helping one iota, so they began to let the younger sister eat hot dogs and macaroni in front of the TV while Mom and Dad did takeout chicken, whenever, sometimes ten o’clock at night, wondering if there would always be this numbness, it had to be from sleep deprivation, their fifteen-year-old having nightmares, climbing into their bed in the dead zone of the night.
I offered family counseling at the Bureau’s expense. They said maybe.
I had to sit with Rick’s frustration because there was just no way in.
Kelsey Owen is going to have your ass,” Mike Donnato warned.
“What is she?” asked Barbara Sullivan, “his new flavor of the week?”
“Oh, he’s not sleeping with her,” Mike said wisely. “You know, Galloway’s in psychoanalysis—”
“No way.”
“That’s what I heard. Six in the morning. Four days a week.”
“How come he’s still depressed?”
“Wouldn’t you be, if you had his job? He’s a new convert to psychotherapy and I think, at the moment, he really believes it’s the Holy Grail. Kelsey’s an opportunist, and Ana is one big happy dope—”
“The golden retriever of agents.”
“Right, so it all works out. At least do something smart, Ana. When you’re close to an arrest, call the deputy DA, Mark Rauch, bring him in the loop.”
“The guy’s a vampire.”
“He’s ambitious. He can help,” said Mike. “You leave him out, he’ll suck your blood.”
These were my buddies, trying to cheer me up.
We were lounging around Barbara’s office. The place had not improved since the baby shower. Everything was curlicue cute — juvenile picture frames with snaps of infant Deirdre, figurines of angels (Barbara collected angels, I collected trolls — what does that tell you?), a haystack of pillows needlepointed by Grandma
Luckily the walls were still covered with surveillance photos of bank robberies in progress, a reminder that this remained the bank robbery coordinator’s office, even if she did pump her breasts with a monstrous machine every four hours. Now there was no more sale hopping during lunch, no three-hankie “girl movies” on a weekday night, since Barbara went home to her hungry daughter on the dot of five. Although she had not lost her baby weight, Barbara still wore prim pastel suits with a single pearl on a chain around her neck; oldest of a sprawling Irish family in Chicago, she had been like a big sister until she became a mom. Gradually our lives had grown incomprehensible, and even uninteresting, to each other.
I did not realize how much I would give up by leaving the bank robbery squad and pushing over to C-1. In the old days, before the matrix, we used to have potlucks in the conference room and Mike Donnato and I would flirt outrageously, just because we knew it could never go anywhere. He was still as attractive and elegantly turned out as when he had been my senior partner and mentor. He had a law degree from Yale and wore three-piece suits and a well-barbered graying beard, even though he lived in Simi Valley. He and Rochelle moved the family out there because they were afraid of raising kids in the city. Donnato and I had a special claim to each other. We had put in a lot of miles in a crap brown Chevrolet. Barbara and I had a special claim to each other, too. Those claims do not expire. That’s the way it is in the Bureau family.
“You’re just fried because the case isn’t moving,” Mike said.
“I haven’t had time to go swimming,” I complained. “I don’t eat lunch until four in the afternoon. Everybody’s always on me, every minute of the day.
“Fritzy.”
“I don’t know!” I was suddenly stupid with laughter, sliding off Barbara’s couch in a spasm.
They shook their heads.
“How about Ditzy?” Mike suggested, and that really put me away.
“Oh my God.” I was slumped on the floor, wiping my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m laughing. I don’t have enough to profile the offender so my criminal investigative analysis is basically nowhere, and Rick is upset.”
