They didn't know what to make of the reference one of the men had made to the Blackberry and at first were skeptical that I also had no clue. But over time, their attitudes mellowed; softened, I assumed, by the consistency of my story and its concurrence with the other witnesses, my radio calls, the gunshots, flares, and their discovery of a militarystyle inflatable drifting west of the breakwater
They constructed a timeline and eventually wound things up by telling me I should be available at any time for more interviews. They also explained that releasing me was not an exoneration for my killing the men.
I finally grabbed my Windbreaker and walked from the interview room, toward the locker room and a quick shower. Trudging through a grinding fatigue where fluorescent lights glared way too bright and normal sounds hit my ears as too loud and brittle, I recognized the adrenaline hangover that always accompanied every life-or-death battle. I half-closed my eyes as I made my way down the familiar corridors, through a quick rinse in the shower, and back toward the main office, dressed in a ratty pair of old cargo shorts and Cafe Pacifico T-shirt that had been stuffed in the back of my locker.
I made my way through a mostly deserted warren of desks and offices and spotted Vince at the doorway leading to the visitors' reception area.
'How you feeling?' He searched my face.
'Okay, I suppose. Internal Affairs has a job to do.'
'Uh-uh.'
When he shook his head at my words, then nodded back toward the breakwater where the firefight had happened, I knew what he was trying to say.
'They started it, Sarge,' I said. 'Whoever they were, they deserved what they got. It was them or me. That part doesn't bother me a bit.' I paused. 'Having my boat sunk bothers me.'
Vince looked at me strangely, cocking his head and focusing on my eyes as if he could see something mysterious there. Unlike others, I never experienced guilt or remorse after killing an assailant.
As a neuroscientist, I cognitively understood why about 98 percent of the population had trouble with killing in self-defense, but I had never grasped the emotional sense of it. Decades ago, that combination of personal characteristics had once allowed me to keep effectively soldiering along while combat fatigue claimed people around me. But on this night, age and a lack of practice had taken their toll; fatigue hit me a lot harder than it would have twenty-five years before.
'Uh-huh,' Vince said doubtfully. 'Regardless of how you feel, you still look like shit, Doc, even if you don't smell like it anymore.'
'And you sound like an echo.'
'Well, you may want to perk up a little. You have a visitor.' Cocked his head toward the reception area.
'Who?'
He shook his head.
'See for yourself.'
I combed my fingers through my still-wet hair.
'Go on in,' Vince said impatiently 'The young lady has been waiting patiently.'
In the brightly lit reception area, a murmuring entourage of uniforms jammed the front: three or four khaki- clad sheriffs deputies, two LAPD partners in navy blue, and a CHP motorcycle cop in knee-length leather boots holding his helmet in his left hand. In the next moment they parted like a curtain, framing Jasmine Thompson, who made her entrance. She looked more like her mother than she sounded. The similarity took me by surprise and made me wonder if she had her mother's intellect and sense of humor as well. The whole package would be astonishing.
As Jasmine made her way to me, I got a collective glare from the assembled audience, equal parts displeasure and envy.
'Mr. Stone!' I picked up on the sly winks and nudges among the cops flanking her. Most were half my age and looked palpably relieved at her formal greeting.
As Jasmine drew near, she appeared to be Vanessa reincarnate. I felt the faint stir of old, faded memories. Jasmine had her mother's generous, almost Lane Bryant figure, which amply filled out her jeans and knit top in a way that guaranteed the undivided attention of the appreciative audience around her.
I recognized differences in Jasmine as she approached. Jasmine stood a head taller than Vanessa. She was nearly as tall as me, making it necessary for most of the cops to look up at her face. A wild halo of ringlet curls surrounded her face and cascaded nearly to her shoulders. Her intensely black hair dazzled with rainbows. And where her mother's skin reminded me of creamy mocha, Jasmine's glowed more warmly like maple sugar. Her lips were fashionably full even without makeup, and her nose looked more American Indian than African-American. Two small diamond studs on one of her ears dazzled intensely even under the fluorescent lights.
But her eyes dominated everything else: large, intense, with the pale luminescence of wisteria blooms accentuated by the warm, dusky hues of her high, aristocratic cheekbones. If these were the window to her soul, then I swear I could see Vanessa shining through.
I remembered Vanessa in the next minute and swallowed against the constriction in my throat. Jasmine held out her arms as she approached; I followed automatically, accepting a brief, polite, concerned family-variety hug.
For an instant the minor notes of Mississippi funerals played in my head. Then those dark, anxious emotions vanished as her scent, blissfully different from Vanessa's, made a direct connection with my innermost thoughts.
Jasmine's scent moved my heart before my mind could grasp it. In one instant, it made me sorry the hug was so chaste; then the next instant, guilt hit me for feeling that. The human mind is a strange amalgam of deep- seated, foundational Darwinian impulses and rational centers of higher control. The first govern basic animal survival and land people in prison when the second doesn't take control. Impulses happen physically, spontaneously. They are hormone-driven and totally without thought. Free will can either surrender or control the chemicals. In an instant, I knew then my reaction was physical, the impulse all wrong. I worked at thinking with my big head and not the small one.
'How are you?' she asked as she stood back a step, and I saw concern make its way across her face as she took in my face and head. 'Are you all right?'
'A scratch,' I said gently, touching the top of my ear. 'I got lucky.'
She frowned.
'You should see the other guy.' I smiled.
She shook her head.
I said, 'I thought you-how did you find me?'
'Television. Every local channel has a helicopter.'
I nodded slowly 'But you really shouldn't have-'
'Do you really think I'd miss the action this close to my hotel?'
'You really are your mother's child.'
A quick shadow of loss momentarily eclipsed the smile in her eyes and made me regret my words. Jasmine had had six months of getting on with life to ease her pain, but I knew that the loss of someone so close would leave a wound that would never quite heal. I also knew I had to be careful, because open psychological wounds leave us all emotionally vulnerable, irrational, apt to go with the flow of our natural steroids. I thought of people who get divorced and marry on the rebound, or Stockholm-syndrome hostages who fall in love with their captors.
'Awright, awright! Quit the gawking!' Vince Sloane's voice boomed as he made his way in front of us toward the assembly of law enforcement personnel. 'Don't you guys have a report to file or something?' When the clot of uniforms failed to give way, he bulled his way through and motioned Jasmine and me to follow. 'C'mon, c'mon! I hear your mother calling you. Step aside; there's nothing to see here; gimme some air,' he barked like the Marine gunnery sergeant he had once been.
We followed Vince out of the building and into a night that had turned crisp and clean with a light breeze off Santa Monica Bay. I followed Jasmine to a Mercedes twoseater glowing bright red under the streetlights. Vince gave a low whistle as he looked admiringly at the car's polished shine that reflected every streetlight in the vicinity back at us. The chrome dazzled, the top was down.
'I didn't know you could rent these,' I said.
