Land Of The Blind

Across the street from the coffee shop the patrol officers have arrived. They carry the stolen TV from Pete Decker's apartment, along with plastic baggies filled with pipes and baking soda and allergy medicine and batteries and enough cooked methamphetamine to keep Pete and his young friends stoned until the real spring comes. A handful of people watch from the street. Dupree stands among them self-consciously.

Pete sits quietly on the sidewalk, hands cuffed behind his back, trying to reach the dried blood on his nose with his shoulder. When he sees two cops carrying the stolen TV through the front door, Pete tries to get Caroline's attention. 'I was gonna give that back just like you said. You didn't give me much time to finish your list.'

The father of the girl has arrived – a big man in work boots – and Caroline sees the girl cower in the lobby of the apartment building. Caroline pulls the father aside and points at Pete. 'He's facing assault charges for hitting your daughter,' she says, and then shakes her head. 'Make sure you keep her safe so she can testify. Okay?'

The father nods.

Caroline shakes her head. 'What kind of asshole would hit a girl?'

The father looks down. 'I don't know.'

'Yeah,' Caroline says. 'Me neither.'

The girl emerges from the building with a patrol cop, and the father opens his passenger door.

From the sidewalk, Pete cranes his neck and tries to laugh. 'We was just screwin' around, huh, Amber? Tell the cops we was just screwin' around. Amber?'

Caroline walks over and crouches next to Pete so that her body is between him and the girl. Pete pulls back a bit, but when he realizes she's not going to hit him, he smiles. 'You didn't give me very much time.'

'No,' Caroline says. She continues to fill out her report for the patrol cops.

'I could've used a little more time,' Pete says.

'Sorry,' she says, without looking up from her report.

Amber leaves with her father. Pete watches their car pull away.

The patrol cops come and stand Pete up. He rises easily; he's comfortable in custody, and the cuffs hang naturally on his wrists.

'Hey, I thought of something,' Pete says.

'Yeah?' On the report, Caroline checks boxes for assault, possession of drugs, possession with intent to deliver, possession of stolen goods, and resisting arrest.

'Yeah,' Pete says. 'You asked if Clark ever had a beef with anyone. There was this one guy when we were kids.'

'Tommy Kane?' Caroline asks without looking up.

'I don't know that guy. No, this guy was some kind of queer or something. He and Clark used to get into it at the bus stop. This kid named Eli Boyle.'

Caroline ignores him.

'I used to have to break up their fights.'

Two patrol cops grab Pete by his arms. 'Yeah, I hope that helps you,' he says. The patrol cops lead Pete away to the car. 'Maybe helps me out too?' They push his head down, but he's done this often enough himself, and he slides easily into the backseat. 'Maybe you tell my PO how I'm cooperating, okay? Okay?' The back passenger door closes and Caroline looks up to see Pete Decker settle back comfortably and nod to the cop in the front seat, as if he were Pete's driver. The car pulls away.

Dupree joins her on the sidewalk. 'You goin' home now?'

'Yeah,' she says. 'I'll go down and get what the guy's written so far and tell him we'll pick it up on Monday.'

'Good,' Dupree says, and he looks down at his shoes. A decade ago, when she first started dreaming the old stuff – running away with him, a small town by a lake, kids – Alan's bald spot was the size of a nickel. Now it is a cantaloupe. She wonders if she has aged as obviously, or with her, if it's mostly inside, if there's a hollow spot, an emptiness that was a nickel and then a cantaloupe, and now is a beach ball.

He looks up from his shoes. 'I was thinking about what you were saying. You know, about you and me? About that other world?'

'Forget it.' Maybe that's what she's imagining, a place where all her daydreams went, and the people she cared about – all the good things that seemed to be in the future but were now beyond her. She reaches out and squeezes his arm. 'I was just talking out of my ass, Alan. I'm just tired. Go home. See your family.'

'Yeah, okay.' He starts to go. 'So are you seeing someone?'

'Mm-hmm,' she says. 'As a matter of fact, I am.'

'That's great. What's his name?'

'Clark,' she says.

'What's he do?'

'Lawyer.'

Dupree smiles, a parent's reaction upon hearing that a misfit daughter has met a lawyer, a relief to see she's getting her life together. He seems genuinely happy for her. Or relieved that she's not his responsibility anymore.

'That's great, Caroline.'

'Yeah. We've been seeing a lot of each other. We talk. It's good.'

'Good,' he says. He shuffles his feet once, reaches out and gives her a hug that she doesn't return, and starts for his truck. She watches him drive away.

Then she walks to her own car and drives back to the cop shop. She parks in the turnout, figuring she'll send the guy home and be back to her car in ten minutes or so. Inside the cave, the desk sergeant gives her a quick wave. 'Good work down there. You can do the paper on Decker on Monday. You should go home. Get some rest.'

Dupree has called.

'Yeah,' she says. 'I'm gonna do that. I just need to get something.'

The thought of bed is overpowering. And yet, still, something is nagging at her, a name she keeps seeing and hearing. There is a point of fatigue that brings apathy, and if you can push beyond it, she thinks, another point that brings clarity.

She punches in the code to get into the hallway, and then uses her key card to get into the Major Crimes office. She looks in on Clark; he's still writing, of course, leaning back in his chair now, balancing the legal pad against the edge of the table. She goes to her desk, to straighten up before she kicks Clark out and goes home for what's left of the weekend. She takes the news stories and the list of contributors and is about to throw them in a desk drawer when clarity arrives.

She flips through the news stories until she finds it. The names of the two officers of the Fair Election Fund, the nonprofit PAC that laid out all that money on ads painting Clark Mason as a carpetbagger from Seattle. One of the officers is named Eli Boyle. She flips to the list of donors to Clark's campaign: five thousand dollars from Eli Boyle. So he's giving to the campaign and funding the ad campaign against it.

And what did Pete say: Some kid named Eli Boyle.

She goes to the reverse directory. Eli Boyle lives on Cliff Drive. She thinks of the grand old houses on Cliff Drive, overlooking downtown. The reverse directory also lists Eli Boyle's occupation. Founder, it reads, Empire Games.

That's listed, too, in the donations, for twenty thousand dollars and fifteen thousand dollars. And she finds Empire Games in her notes from the interview with Susan (… sold all the stock except Empire Games…) and in the news story (… he's on the board of directors of a Spokane high-tech company called Empire Games…). She looks up Empire Games in the reverse directory. Its address is the same as Eli Boyle's. She writes it on a sheet of notebook paper, tears it out, and stands. She walks across the room and opens the door to the interview room. 'How we doing, champ?'

'Great,' says Clark. 'I'm almost done.'

'Okay,' Caroline says.

'What time is it?' he asks.

'Almost eight,' she says.

He smiles, that easy smile, and she knows how Susan Diehl must've felt, seeing him after all those years. 'I can't tell you how much this means to me,' he says. 'Your having faith in me like this.'