She patted his hand and stood up to put her cup in the sink. He thought about what she said.
“Kate and I are done, I think,” he blurted out.
“Can’t say I’m sorry,” she said, her back to him. “Or surprised.”
“I wanted, hell I don’t know what I wanted,” he said. “But I’m not going to find it there.”
She turned to look at him. “You wanted a home and a family,” she said. “That’s normal, Mac. We all want that. You’ll find the right woman. One who likes you as you are, and isn’t waiting for you to convert and conform to their beliefs and standards.”
“You saw it. Shorty saw it. Even Janet,” Mac said. “Hell, I saw it. But I didn’t want to give up my dream of having a home like that.”
“You can have a home like that, Mac,” she said gently. “Just build one yourself, as yourself.”
She hugged him and left him sitting at the table.
Good advice, Mac thought. Too bad he didn’t have a clue what that would look like. His mother had dragged him across the country looking for her next man, her next adrenaline rush, hell he didn’t know what she was looking for. But at 12, he nearly killed one of her men who decided he liked her son better than her, and she’d shipped him off to Lindy’s ex-husband who had custody of their son Toby. When Toby and Mac started getting in deep with the gangs, they were sent to live with Lindy in Seattle — as if there weren’t gangs to be found here. Lindy tried. But two wild teenage boys weren’t interested in what she had to offer. Add in four years in the Marine Corps, then four years at Western Washington University. So here he was, 30 in a few months, living in the upstairs flat of his aunt’s home, and he still had no clue what a home looked like. He had a memory flash of the warmth of the Fairchild home with the smell of homemade brownies and Kate’s laughter. And now Lindy’s saying there’s more than one kind?
Fuck.
Chapter 14
(Seattle Examiner, Monday, May 5, 2014)
Monday morning, 6 a.m. and Mac hadn’t slept well. Nightmares again. Happened. Unfortunately, police blotter calls also happened regardless of how much sleep — or how little sleep — Mac had. So, he grimly plowed through them. Nothing hugely exciting, but given his current headache, lack of sleep and lingering nightmare — the ugly one of being left in a car by himself at age four or so and crying, hungry, terrified his mother wasn’t coming back — he was relieved to have the blotter done. He leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes for a moment, letting the stress and adrenaline of deadline seep away. Then he made a list of all the calls he wanted to make as follo’s to his trip to Mount Vernon. And a list of all the unanswered questions about Sheriff Pete Norton. A separate list of questions about the wilderness survival trips. And then a miscellaneous list about the rise of constitutional sheriffs, white supremacy in law enforcement, domestic violence and child custody battles, the National Park Service and oh what the hell, toss in the current stats on the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. He groaned.
He sent Janet a text saying he’d be across the street at the coffee shop. And he headed there, but then he heard Angie’s voice, and detoured through the photo department. “Hey,” he said. “How do the photos look?”
She smiled at him. A genuine, uncomplicated, I’m happy to see you smile. And Mac could have kissed her for it. He would kiss her someday, he decided.
“Hey, Mac,” she said. “Photos? Well let’s see. I have enough tulip photos that it sent the lifestyle desk into orgasms, I kid you not. The travel desk is thrilled with the photos I took for a to-be-named-later feature on visiting Mount Vernon for the weekend. Outdoors is, and I quote ‘very pleased’ with the photos I took of the Northern Cascades National Park, and my boss is happy with me.”
Mac was laughing by the time she got done with her list. “What did you do? Come in here last night and work?”
“Why yes, yes, I did,” she said, grinning. “And by the way I’ve got some great ones of Pete Norton.” She reached over to the printer and grabbed a few sheets. “Here, take a look,” she said.
Mac looked at the printouts she handed him. She’d captured Norton, he thought sobering up. Caught his intelligence and his cruelty when he thought no one was looking. When he wasn’t pretending. He looked at the photos of Norton for a long while.
“Mac?” Angie asked anxiously.
“They’re good, Angie,” he said. “Really good. He forgot you were shooting, didn’t he? And he let the real man peer through.”
She looked delighted. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly that. And it’s a scary man that hides behind that façade — all of the façades. It would be easy to think you’ve penetrated the John Wayne façade to the real façade of rural sheriff. But that’s just another façade.”
He nodded. “Can I have these? I’m going to debrief with Janet. I’d like her to see them.”
Then he grinned. “Makes me nervous, though,” he teased. “What do you see when you look at me through that lens of yours?”
She laughed. She pulled out another print from her camera bag and handed it to him. “This,” she said. “Lots of different Mac Davis’s to be honest. But this one? This is the one who can go up against Pete Norton.”
Mac looked at himself. Cold gray eyes looking off from the camera. Searching. “When we were shot at?” he asked. That was the man who had hunted down Howard Parker. Who had taken on Army of God. A stone-cold killer. The wolf who hid among
