'I guess I should tell the parents of those little girls that I don't have time to catch the guy who did it, huh? I'll tell you what, Matt, I'll get onto a nine-to-five schedule. But the next little girl who gets killed, you get to look at the photos, and you get to talk to the parents, and you get to try and balance that with doing right by our family.'
The words were cold, cruel, and horribly unfair. But that is the cruelty of what I do, I had thought in my rage, and at that moment I hated him for not understanding it. If I sit at home with my family, I leave a killer free to roam. If I devote myself to the pursuit of the killer, I leave my family angry and alone. It is a constant balancing act, forever draining. Matt's face got red, and he muttered, 'Fuck you, Smoky.' He shook his head. 'Soul like a diamond, that's what you have.'
'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' I asked, exasperated. He'd scowled at me. 'It means you have a beautiful soul, Smoky. Beautiful like a diamond. But it can also be hard and cold like one.'
These words were so hurtful and vicious that my anger rushed away from me. It was not like Matt to play the card of cruelty. That was always my specialty, and I found it devastating to receive. I also felt something deep inside me: fear that maybe, just maybe, he was right. I remember staring at him in open-mouthed shock. He had looked back at me, the smallest hint of shame beginning to dance across his face.
'Fuck this,' he'd said, stomping off upstairs, leaving me in the dark of our living room, heart aching.
We made up, of course. We got through it. That's what love is about. I came to understand this in the deepest recesses of self. Love is not about romance or passion. Love is about a state of grace. You experience it when you accept the absolute truth of the other person, both the cruel and the divine, and they accept these things in you, and you find that you still long to share a life with them. To know the worst in another and still want them with all your soul. To know that they feel the same.
It is a sense of security and power. And once you have arrived at this, the richness of romance and passion that appears is not blinding. Instead, it is invulnerable and forever. Forever, that is, unless they die.
I don't awake from the dream screaming. I just wake up. I feel the tears on my cheeks. I let them dry where they fell, and listen to my own breathing until sleep claims me again.
36
EVERYONE LOOKS LIKE I feel. Leo looks even worse.
'Didn't go home, did you?' I ask him.
He gives me a bleary-eyed look, and mumbles.
'Your own fault. So listen,' I address them all. 'Callie and Alan, you'll be with me in the parking lot. Leo and James, I want you to continue with what you're working on.'
They nod in reply.
'Let's go.'
The bomb tech holds up his badge. 'Reggie Gantz.' He appears to be in his late twenties. He has a bored look and steady eyes.
'Special Agent Barrett. Show me what you got.'
He walks me over to the back of the bomb-squad van and opens it up. He grabs a laptop and what looks like a large movie camera. 'First thing is this. It's a portable digital x-ray machine. Displays the contents of the package on the laptop screen. Since you said the box is being delivered by a third party, we don't have to worry about it being motionactivated. He wouldn't want it to go off on the way here.'
'Makes sense.'
'This'll take an x-ray. Then I'll use the Sniffer. I'll rub the package with some cotton swipes. They'll go into the Sniffer and it'll use spectrometry to detect trace elements, if they exist. Between the two, we should be pretty sure about it being a bomb or not.'
I nod in approval. 'We don't know when it's coming, so you'll need to settle in for a wait.'
He tips his fingers in a salute and walks back to his van without another word, Mr. Laconic. I run through things in my head. The driver would arrive to deliver the package and would be detained while we printed him. The package would be examined by Reggie, and once he gave it an all-clear, Alan and Callie and I would rush the package into the crime lab. They would search for prints on everything and use a vacuum to collect any and all trace evidence. Photographs would be taken. Only then would the contents be turned over to us. This insistence on process is one of our advantages and one of our disadvantages. Something it takes a perpetrator only minutes or hours to do can take us days to process. We are always slower. But we also find everything that the perpetrator leaves behind, down to a microscopic level. Our ability, in this day and age, to interpret even the smallest piece of evidence is truly frightening. Criminals would need to wear a spacesuit to ensure they left nothing behind for us to find. Even then, we might well figure out that they wore a spacesuit. Even the absence of evidence tells a tale. It tells us the perp has at least a passing knowledge of police and forensic procedure. It gives us insight into the methodology and psychology of the killer. Is he or she intelligent, composed, and patient, or frenzied, passionate, and insane?
Evidence or its absence tells this tale.
'Hey,' Alan says, pointing. 'I think that's it.'
I see a package delivery van moving toward us. The van pulls up in front of the building and stops. I can see the driver, a young man with blond hair and a peach-fuzz beard, looking at all of us with more than just a little bit of worry. I don't blame him. He's probably not used to seeing a contingent of serious-faced, somewhat scary-looking people waiting for him to arrive. I walk over to his side of the van, motioning for him to roll down his window.
'FBI,' I say, holding up my Bureau ID. 'You have a package for this address?'
'Uh, yeah. It's in the back. What's this about?'
'The package is evidence, sir. Mister . . . ?'
'Huh? Oh, Jed. Jedediah Patterson.'
'I need you to step out of the van, Mr. Patterson. That package was sent by a criminal we're pursuing.'
His mouth drops open. 'Really?'
'Yes. We need to fingerprint you, sir. Can you please step out of the van?'
'Fingerprint me? Why?'
I force myself to remain patient. 'We're going to be looking for prints on the package. We need to know which ones are yours and not the criminal's.'
Light dawns. 'Oh . . . yeah, I get it.'
'Can you please step out of the van?' My patience is waning. Rapidly. Perhaps he senses this, as now he opens the door and gets out.
'Thank you, Mr. Patterson. Please see Agent Washington; he'll print you.'
I point to Alan as I say this and watch as Jed Patterson gives him a wary look. 'Don't worry,' I say, amused. 'I know he's big, but he's only dangerous to the bad guys.'
He licks his lips, still looking at the man-mountain. 'If you say so.'
He walks over to Alan, who takes him inside for fingerprinting. Now I can focus on the package. Reggie Gantz is already standing near the delivery van, carrying his equipment. He still looks bored.
'Ready to roll?' he asks.
'Go ahead,' I tell him.
He moves toward the back of the van, opening the doors. We're in luck; there are only three packages back there. He finds the one we want immediately. It's addressed to me.
I watch as he starts up his laptop and powers up the mobile x-ray device. Moments later, we are looking at the contents of the package on his laptop screen.
'Looks like a bottle of something . . . and maybe a letter . . . and something else, flat and round. Could be a CD. And that's it. I need to fire up the Sniffer. Make sure that liquid isn't anything dangerous.'
'Is that likely?'
'Nah. Just about all liquid explosives are unstable. The package would probably have blown up on its way here.' He shrugs. 'But we don't assume anything in bomb tech.'
I'm glad Reggie is here, but I think he's crazy to do the job he does.
