The Face of Death

I gaze into those rage-filled eyes. I remember what Alan said. Don't lie, I think. Truth. Only truth. She'll smell a lie from a thousand yards away right now and then it's game over. My words come from somewhere effortless, almost extemporaneous. 'I'll tell you what I care about right now, Sarah,' I say, my voice strong. 'I care about you. I know you didn't do what happened here. I know that you're very close to killing yourself. I know you asked for me, and that means that maybe I have something to give you, something to tell you, that will keep you from pulling that trigger.' I lean forward. 'Honey, I don't know enough about anything going on here to humor you, I promise. All I'm trying to do is understand. Help me understand. Please. You asked for me. Why? Why did you ask for me, Sarah?' I wish I could reach out and shake her. I plead instead. 'Please tell me.'

Don't die, I think. Not here, not like this.

'Please, Sarah. Talk to me. Make me understand.'

The words work: The anger leaves her eyes. Her trigger finger relaxes and she looks away. Thank God, I think, fighting down a bubble of semi-hysteria, a bout of the clangy-jitters

When she looks back, anguish has replaced the rage.

'You're my last hope,' she says. Her voice is small and hollow.

'I'm listening, Sarah,' I urge her. 'Tell me. Last hope for what?'

'Last hope . . .' She sighs, and it rattles in her throat. 'Of finding someone that'll believe I'm not just bad luck,' she whispers. 'That'll believe The Stranger is real.'

I stare at her, incredulous.

'Believe you?' I blurt. I yank a thumb behind me, indicating the bedroom and what's inside. 'Sarah, I know something happened here that you didn't have anything to do with. And I'm willing to listen to whatever you have to say.'

I think she's caught off guard by the fact that my response comes as such a reflex action and that I seem so genuinely astonished at the idea of not taking her seriously. Hope lights up her eyes and wars with that terrible cynicism. Her face twists, her mouth wrenches. She looks like a fish drowning in the air.

'Really?' she asks in an agonized whisper.

'Really.' I pause. 'Sarah, I don't understand what's happened to you up to this point. But from what I've seen so far, the person responsible for this had to be strong. Stronger than you. Or me, for that matter.'

A kind of fearful wonder runs through her eyes. 'Did he . . .' Her lower lip trembles. 'Do you mean that you can tell he was here?'

'Yep.'

Is that so?

But there's another possibility, yes? Maybe she made the father do all the heavy lifting at gunpoint. She could still be the one. I dismiss the thought with an imaginary wave of my hand. Too advanced, too dark. She's too young to have honed her tastes to that degree.

'Maybe,' Sarah whispers, more to herself than me. 'Maybe he screwed up this time.'

Her face crumples, then smoothes back out, crumples, then smoothes back out. Hope and despair battle for the steering wheel. She drops the gun. She brings her hands to her face. A moment later, that raw, naked anguish again. It bursts from her, piercing, primal, terrible, pure. The sound of a rabbit in the jaws of a wolf. I grab the gun from the carpet, say 'Thank God' to myself once, safety it, and stuff it into the waist of my jeans. I grab Sarah as she shrieks, and stuff her into the space between my arms and my chest. Her grief is a hurricane. It pounds against me.

I hold her tight, and we ride out the storm.

I rock and croon and say wordless things and feel helpless and miserable and yet relieved.

Better crying than dead.

When it's over, I'm soaked with tears. Sarah clings to me, semiboneless. She's exhausted. In spite of this, she struggles and pushes away from me. Her face is swollen from crying, and pale.

'Smoky?' she says. Her voice is faint.

'Yes, Sarah?'

She looks at me, and I'm surprised at the strength I see, swimming up through the exhaustion that's pulling her down.

'I need you to promise me you'll do something.'

'What?'

She points down the hall. 'My bedroom is back there. In a drawer by the bed is my diary. Everything is in it, everything about The Stranger.' She grips my arms. 'Promise me you'll read it. You--not someone else.' Her voice is fierce. 'Promise me.'

'I promise,' I say without hesitation.

At this point, you couldn't keep me from it.

'Thanks,' she whispers.

Her eyes roll up into her head and she passes out in my arms. I shiver once, an after-reaction. I unclip the radio from my belt and turn it on.

'All clear in here,' I say into it, my voice steadier than I feel. 'Send in a medic for the girl.'

10

NIGHT HAS OFFICIALLY FALLEN IN CANOGA PARK. THE HOUSE IS lit up by patrol cars and streetlamps, but SWAT is getting ready to leave and the helicopter has gone. The neighborhood is quiet again, though I can hear the sounds of the city just a few blocks away. Windows are lit up along the street, families are inside, every curtain is drawn. I imagine if I checked them, I'd find every door locked too.

'Good work,' Dawes said to me as we watched the EMTs load an unconscious Sarah into the back of an ambulance. They were moving fast; she'd started to turn gray and her teeth were chattering. Signs of shock.

'Thanks.'

'I mean it, Agent Barrett. This could have turned out a lot worse.'

He pauses. 'We had a hostage situation six months ago. A meth-freak dad with a gun. He'd beat up his wife, but what really worried us was the fact that he was waving that gun around with one hand while he cradled his five-month-old daughter in his free arm.'

'Bad,' I say.

'Real bad. Add to it that he was high, I mean flying. You ever see a meth-freak when they're wigging out? It's a combination of hallucinations and paranoia. Not much for a hostage negotiator to work with.'

'So what happened?'

Dawes looks away for a moment, but not before I catch a glimpse of the grief in his eyes.

'He shot the wife. Without warning. He was jabbering away and then he just stopped talking mid-sentence, pointed the gun at her, and . . . blew . . . her . . . away.' He shakes his head. 'You could have heard a pin drop in the command van. Suffice to say, it forced our hand.'

'If he could shoot the wife without preamble . . .'

Dawes nods. 'Then he could do the same with the baby. Our sniper already had a shot lined up, and he got the green light and he took it. It was righteously accurate, dead in the forehead, no fuss, no muss. Perfect.' He sighs. 'Problem is, Dad dropped the baby girl and she landed on her head and died. That sniper shot himself a week later.' His look is more piercing this time. 'So, like I said, it could have turned out a lot worse here, Agent Barrett.'

'Call me Smoky.'

He smiles. 'All right, I will. Do you believe in God, Smoky?'

The question startles me. I give him my most honest answer.

'I don't know.'

'Yeah. Me neither.'

He shakes my hand, gives me a sad smile and a slight nod, and he's gone. His story remains behind, echoing inside me, a tale of impossible choices. Thanks for sharing, Dawes.

I sit down on the curb in front of the house and try to gather myself. Callie and Alan are both on their cell