Chapter 36
Mitch had just poured a shot of the whiskey when Dylan emerged from the bedroom carrying a bundle of bedsheets, towels, plus the articles of clothing she had borrowed. Except for Beth’s sneakers, she was dressed in her own clothing, including the fantasy-making, memory-stirring silky blouse.
Seeing the liquor bottle on the table, she stopped in her tracks. When she looked at him, he raised his chin a half inch, as though daring her to challenge him. He picked up the glass he’d poured and extended it toward her. “Join me for a drink?”
She gave him a withering look. “Is there a washing machine?”
He pointed. “Outside that door, hook a right. Washing machine and dryer are in the enclosure on the back gallery.”
She headed that way, but before reaching the door, she dumped the laundry onto the floor and turned to face him. “What are you doing, Mitch?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Like you’re being an idiot.”
She was right, and he knew she was right, and that made him furious. He slammed the glass down onto the table and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
She said, “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong? Hell, I could alphabetize all that’s wrong.”
“Specifically, in this moment, what’s the wrongest of all that’s wrong?”
“Why can’t I get to Malone? Who is Oz? I’m smarter than this, dammit. I’m spinning my wheels, getting nowhere.” He lowered his hands from his eyes and looked at her with frustration. “Why the devil can’t I figure this out?”
“For one thing, you’re exhausted. Did you sleep at all?”
“Cat naps between trying to figure out what I’m missing and worrying about how I’m going to protect Andrew and you from Malone.”
“Andrew?”
“He let him live once. If he finds out my son is under my roof again, he may rethink that.”
He sat down in one of the dining chairs and pushed aside both the whiskey bottle and the glass he’d poured but hadn’t even tasted. He propped his elbows on the table and massaged his temples.
“I feel like there’s something I know, but it’s gotten lost up here somewhere.” He pressed his skull between his hands. “Two dots floating around inside my brain that I can’t connect no matter how hard I try. Something important that I’m supposed to remember.”
“Like what?”
He unlocked his elbows, and his forearms and fists dropped onto the table with a thud. “If I could remember what it was, I wouldn’t be pouring a neat Jack Daniel’s before the sun comes up, would I?”
Even he was offended by his rebuke. Turning his head away, he looked out the front windows. A ponderous rain was falling. Without gutters, it streamed off the sloping tin roof in sheets, obscuring everything beyond the overhang of the porch. “Not that the sun will shine today.”
When he turned back, he was surprised to see that Dylan had left the laundry where it had landed and had sat down at the table directly opposite him. He said, “I’m being a jerk. Sorry.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Yes. No. I’m more angry at myself, but taking it out on you.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“I asked for your help, Dylan. You said no.”
“Not that way,” she said, gesturing toward the card table and his laptop. She was searching his eyes, no longer with censure but with the concern and empathy of a clinician. “You’re striving to remember something, but the pressure you’re applying may actually be working against you.”
“So, what do I do? Stop striving?”
“In essence, yes. You know how when someone’s name, or a movie title, any fact that you know you know, but it’s escaped you. And when you strain to call it up, it’s not there. Later, when you’re not thinking about it at all—”
“It hits you.”
“Exactly.”
“I get what you’re saying. But the thing is, I don’t have time to wait for it, whatever it is, to hit me. We’re on borrowed time, because—and you can count on this—Malone will learn that you and I are in cahoots.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“No, but he will. And he’s not going to stand for it, because he doesn’t know that you’re sticking to patient privilege. I think he’ll strike, and he’ll strike like Thor’s hammer. I don’t want that to happen while I’m sitting idle, waiting for a cerebral cloud to part.”
“Then let me help you reconstruct.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We try to reconstruct the scene where that something that is escaping you caused a visceral reaction at the time. Something seen, said, or done either by you or someone you were with. It might not have seemed very important at the time, but, for whatever reason, your mind latched on to it, and it’s still there,” she said, pointing to his forehead.
“Let’s see if we can take you back to that time and place and allow it to reveal itself. ”
“Dylan, I—”
“Close your eyes.”
“This is a thing?”
“Yes.”
“John will pay for it?”
“I’ll charge him double. Now close your eyes.”
He sighed to let her know he thought this was hooey and a waste of time, but he closed his eyes anyway.
“Good,” she said. “Now relax your shoulders.” He did. “Now free your mind. Let it drift. Retrace the places you’ve been.”
“The birth canal.” He opened one eye, and, sure enough, she was rolling hers.
“Won’t you at least try this?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be swinging a pocket watch while I count down from ten?”
“This isn’t hypnotism. If you’re not going to cooperate, I’ll do the laundry.”
He gave another sigh and closed his eyes.
She started again, speaking in a low, velvety voice that, in other circumstances, he could make love to for hours.
“More recently than your birth,” she said, “where did you experience a strong emotion? Like anxiety or fear. Not necessarily fear of being harmed, but of being rejected or misunderstood. Did something raise your hackles recently? A conflict or—”
He opened his eyes. “That would be everywhere. Starting with the barroom brawl last Saturday night and jail on Sunday morning. Every place I’ve been since then, I’ve been in a conflict of one kind or another.”
She gestured for him to close his eyes again. He did. “Then let’s narrow it down to the places you’ve been this week. My office? Was it during our initial encounter?”
“No, my reaction to you was a little bit south of visceral.”
He heard her sniff of disapproval.
He couldn’t help but grin. “Just sayin’. But no, it wasn’t—” He stopped.
“Wasn’t what?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t about you. It was work.” His eyes popped open. “John and me. I was in his office.”
“Keep your eyes closed and mentally reconstruct the scene.” She waited until he complied. “Were the two of you sitting or standing? Were you having a pleasant conversation or quarreling? What were you feeling, Mitch? Resentment and anger toward him or—”
“Futility.”
“Futility?”
“That’s what I was feeling. I remember now,” he said, opening his eyes. “It was during that meeting.”
“Meeting. So there were other people in the room. Who?”
“John, me, and the officers on the task force.”
“Task force for what? The Bayou Coeur case?”
“No. John put me in charge of a task force that’s training school guards on how to handle active shooter incidents.”
“Your feelings of futility stemmed from the fear of that happening in Auclair?”
“Yes, but that’s not… not quite it.”
“Take a moment.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I remember thinking that these are nice, genial, well-meaning people who are committed to protecting schoolchildren. And… and… fearing that no matter how well we trained them, and despite their earnestness, they still wouldn’t be prepared, because they wouldn’t see past… ”
He got up from his chair, rounded it, and braced himself on its ladderback.
He lowered his head and looked down at the floor, but what he was envisioning was himself in John’s office.
John and the other officers appearing to be confident that they were making strides with the program, while he was feeling doubt and futility.
Remembering how he’d been reluctant to speak his mind, he said to Dylan, “I didn’t express my pessimism because I didn’t want to end the meeting on a downer. John, especially, wanted to give the superintendent a positive progress report.
“The others left, but John knew something was bothering me. He made me stay and told me to spit out whatever was on my mind. So I did. I told him I didn’t believe that our instinct could be instilled. That he and I had been born with it, that you either had it or you didn’t.”
“Your instinct for what, Mitch?”
“For… for…” He was now rocking the chair back and forth on its back legs.
Dylan said, “Visualize John’s expression. How did he react to what you were saying? Did he disagree?”
“No, no he understood exactly what I was talking about.”
“He knew exactly what you were talking about when you said…”
“When I said… when I said that he and I had an instinct for looking past the obvious and spotting what isn’t.”
As he spoke the words aloud, he got chill bumps. He raised his head and looked straight into Dylan’s calm, clear, incredibly beautiful and intelligent eyes. “That’s it,” he said gruffly. “That’s it. That’s what I’ve been trying to remember.”
She scooted forward in her seat. “Why was it significant in that moment and worth remembering now?”
“Because the school guards were picking the stereotypical hardened criminals from the pictures I’d showed them and missing the ones who looked least likely to shoot up a school, but who actually had.
Dylan, this is the it. Who’s the least likely person you would expect to be the head of a drug cartel? ”
He began snapping his fingers in rhythm with his rapidly tumbling thoughts.
“Yesterday in the hospital, Mary said, ‘Turn that off. He’s obnoxious.’ And I said, ‘You can’t escape that jerk.
’ And in EATS, the diner across from your office, Dodi—the waitress.
Been there a million years. She commented on him, said he was a loudmouth. ”