of the Glock as it spat its fire and took chunks out of the man in front of him. He found himself moving toward Lomax, every fiber of his being saturated with the necessity of wiping that motherfucker from the face of the planet. To Doyle, Lomax was not a man with thoughts and feelings; he was just a threat to his own existence.
Even when Lomax was on the floor, blood pumping from the holes already in his body, Doyle kept on firing, his eyes observing dispassionately as Lomax’s dying form jumped with each bullet. He tried to shoot long after the gun was empty, long after the sounds of its explosions had faded. His trigger finger just kept on twitching. And even when his subverted consciousness began to exert some kind of control, he still experienced an almost irresistible impulse to continue the devastation.
He understood then. He had never killed before, never come so near to being killed. And now he understood.
There have been numerous times that cops have been vilified by the media for being apparently trigger- happy. Even Doyle himself, despite being a police officer, had occasionally wondered whether such extensive lethal force had been necessary.
But here he was, holding his Glock 19, now empty of the fifteen rounds it held in the magazine and the additional one in the chamber, and still he felt the urge to ram its butt into the skull of the corpse beneath him.
Shoot the gun out of the man’s hands? In your dreams. A clinical and effective double-tap? Yeah, right. Fire three times and assess? Sure. Try standing here in my shoes and saying that afterwards.
Yes, he understood completely. And he would never be the same again.
It took some time before the world materialized around him once more, before he could tear his eyes away from the lifeless form of Lomax. He was that wired, it came almost as a surprise to him to see the second body in the room. He found it difficult to work out what he should do next. All of his police training seemed to have deserted him.
When he finally fished out his cellphone, he issued a garbled call for an ambulance, and then he went to his partner. She was showing faint signs of life, but she was a mess. The whole of her back was stained with her dark wet blood, and a puddle of it was growing next to her.
He didn’t know why, but he felt a need to gather her up in his arms. He sat in the warm wetness of her blood and held her close, rocking her gently.
And when the time finally came for her to leave, he told her how sorry he was.
It was only the beginning.
In the days, the interminable weeks that followed, truth became lies and lies became truth. Without Laura to retract them, her rumors became fact. To Doyle’s colleagues, to Internal Affairs, and even to Rachel.
He’d been having an affair, they concluded. It was becoming public knowledge and he wanted a way out, they surmised. He was responsible for Laura Marino’s death, they decided.
He knew they were all wrong. But when you believe one thing and everybody else believes another, you start to lose confidence. You start to have doubts. You start to wonder whether your own mind is deluding you.
And when that happens, you start to ask yourself whether, in fact, a tiny hidden part of you really did seize upon an opportunity to rid yourself of what was becoming a major problem.
And occasionally — in the dead of night when nobody else is listening — you ask yourself whether, in fact, that cream door with the cracked panel really was moving.
TWENTY-THREE
Doyle throws down the dregs of his drink and leaves the table. On the way past the bar, he feels he should say something apologetic to the girl with the legs-cleavage-smile combo, but she has already moved on from George and engaged another guy in conversation. The whiskey-drinking loser with the socialization problems is probably already a distant memory.
He goes back upstairs to a room that’s starting to feel the equivalent of a prison cell, except without even the company of a psychotic, tattoo-adorned Nazi to break the monotony. He picks up the phone again and makes another call.
‘Cal!’ Rachel says. ‘Just a minute. Amy wants to talk to you.’
There is a moment of confused fumblings and whispers of ‘Talk to Daddy,’ before Amy’s breathy voice comes on the line.
‘Daddy!’ she squeals. Her tone sounds several octaves higher than normal, its intense childish innocence punishing him more than he would like.
‘Hi, sweetie,’ he says. ‘How you doing? Are you being good for Mommy, like I asked you?’
‘Yes, Daddy, but, but, but. . I am a
‘Sad? Why’s that, honey?’
‘Because, because I have to go to bed soon, and I asked Mommy if you were coming home tonight, and she said she didn’t think so, and I said I wanted you to be here because of the burglars. And then Mommy said-’
‘Hold on, hon. What burglars?’
‘The burglars who come into people’s houses and take all your toys and stuff. My friend Ellie, who isn’t my friend anymore because she’s always nasty to me, she said that burglars break your windows and come into your house at night when everybody’s asleep, and they take all your things, even your best toys and Christmas presents, and I said they won’t come in our apartment because my Daddy’s a policeman and he’ll put them in jail, and she said yes they will because your Daddy’s not there anymore, and I said-’
‘Amy, listen to me. The burglars won’t come. You know why?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve told all the other policemen to watch our apartment from outside. At night, when you’re asleep, they sit outside and watch, and they make sure no burglars will come. And they’ll be there every night until I come home.’
‘Well, I want
‘You couldn’t sleep?’
‘No. I got scared, and I. . I. . I. . wet the bed a bit.’
There is a silence between them then. A few seconds that are devoid of sound but which, for Doyle, are bursting with barely contained anguish. As his vision blurs, he thinks about what he is doing to his family.
‘It was only a little bit,’ Amy adds hastily. ‘That’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sweetie, that’s okay. But there’s nothing to worry about. I’m coming home real soon. I promise.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. Maybe even tomorrow.’
Amy’s voice drops in volume then, but only because she has turned away from the receiver and is talking to her mother. ‘Yay!’ Doyle can hear her saying. ‘Daddy’s coming home! Daddy’s coming home!’
And then there is more fumbling with the phone, and when Rachel’s voice comes on the line there is an unexpected sternness to it.
‘Is that true, Cal? That you’re coming home? Because if it’s not, then you’re being so unfair to Amy.’
‘Rach. It’s true. There’s been a break in the case. All goes well, it’ll be over by the morning.’
There is another period of silence, and then comes an audible sigh of relief from Rachel.
‘Thank God!’ she says.
Well, thanks to someone, Doyle thinks. But God is probably the last one on the list on this occasion.
For the next few hours, he resumes his pastime of sitting and waiting and thinking. His mind hunts in desperation for alternatives to the decision he has made, but the only one it can find involves waiting some more, and he doesn’t think he can do that any longer. Not with the lack of progress the NYPD is making. Not with the pleading voice of Amy still ringing in his ears.
At two minutes before midnight, he picks up the phone and dials the number on the card that Sonny Rocca
