Play dead

THIRTY-THREE

Jessica glanced at the speedometer. she was twenty over. She backed off, but not too much. The day was closing in on her and she wasn't doing a very good job of shutting it out. She usually could.

She remembered when she was small, her father coming home after a tough day, a Philly-cop day. In those days, the days when her mother had already passed and her father, still a patrolman, was juggling his career and two small children, he would drop his cap on the kitchen table, lock his service weapon in the desk in the living room, and circle the Jameson in the hutch.

He always waited until the sun went down. Tough to do in summer. Daylight savings time, and all. Even harder to do in Lent, when he gave it up all together. Once, during Lent, when Jessica was four, and her family was still intact, her father made it all the way to Easter Saturday on the wagon. After dinner he walked down to the corner bar and got tanked. When he got home, and Maria Giovanni saw his condition, she proclaimed that her husband-probably the whole family-was hell- bound. She marched Jessica and her brother Michael down to St. Paul's, banged on the rectory door until their pastor came out and blessed them. Somehow, that Easter came and went without the Giovanni family bursting into redemptive flame.

Jessica wanted to call her father, but stopped herself. He'd think something was wrong. He would be right. SHE GOT IN just after eleven. The house was quiet, save for the sound of the central air, save for her husband Vincent's world-class snoring upstairs. It sounded like a lumberjack competition on ESPN2.

She made herself a sandwich, wrapped more than half of it and put it in the fridge. She cruised the cable channels, twice, then shut off the TV, padded upstairs, looked in on Sophie. Her daughter was awake, staring at the ceiling.

Jessica left the hall light on, the door open slightly. A wedge of gold light spilled across the bedroom. She sat gently on the edge of the bed, smoothed her daughter's hair. It was getting so long.

"Hi, sweetie," Jessica said.

"Hi, Mom." Her daughter's voice was tiny, distant, sleep-thick. She yawned.

"Did I wake you up?"

Sophie shook her head.

"How was school today?"

It was Sophie's third day at school. When Jessica was her daughter's age she recalled starting the new school year well after Labor Day. That was a thing of the past.

"We had a drill."

It took Jessica a moment to realize what she meant. Then it clicked. Grade schools had recently begun to run through lockdown drills with their students. Jessica read about it in one of the school bulletins. She had called the school principal and was told that, for the little ones, they couched the idea in nonthreatening hypothetical terms like, Suppose a mean dog got loose in the school, and we needed a way to make everyone safe.

The principal said the kindergarteners usually thought the idea of a dog running through the halls was kind of funny. Parents rarely did.

"We did triangles, too."

"Triangles?"

Sophie nodded. "Eca-laterals and sossalees."

Jessica smiled. "Sounds like fun."

"It was. I like the sossalees best."

"Me too," Jessica said. Her little girl's face was bright and scrubbed. She looked older somehow, like Jessica hadn't seen her in a few months, instead of only about sixteen hours. "How come you're not asleep?"

Sophie shrugged. She was at the phase in her life where she considered every answer very carefully, a stage twice removed from the three- year-old's programmed responses to every question, the juncture where all children are all like miniature witnesses for the prosecution.

We don't want to go into that store, do we?

No.

Big girls always bring their dishes to the sink, don't they?

Yes.

Jessica missed that phase. On one hand she wanted her daughter to be the smartest girl ever born, to be clever, inquisitive, resourceful, and successful. On the other hand, she wanted Sophie to remain that sweet, innocent little child who needed help buttoning her cardigans. "Want me to read something?" Jessica asked.

The Junie B. Jones series of novels were Sophie's current rave. On a few nights in the recent past Jessica had caught Sophie reading a Junie B. in bed with a flashlight. She wasn't zipping through the pages yet, but she was definitely ahead of most of the kids in her class when it came to reading and comprehension. In the books, Junie B. was a maverick six-year-old. To Jessica, it seemed like just yesterday that her daughter was into Curious George and Dr. Seuss.

Now it was renegade first-graders.

"I could get out one of the Junie B. books. Want me to do that?" Jessica asked. "Or maybe some Magic Tree House?"

Sophie shrugged again. In the moonlight coming in the window her eyes were fathomless pools. Her lids began to close.

"Maybe tomorrow?"

Sophie Balzano nodded. " 'Kay."

Tomorrow, Jessica thought. You always think there is going to be a tomorrow. Caitlin O'Riordan and Monica Renzi thought there would be a tomorrow.

So did Eve Galvez.

"Okay, my love," Jessica said. "Sleep good." She kissed her daughter on the forehead. In seconds, Sophie closed her eyes. Moments later, she was sound asleep. If there was a more beautiful sight in all the world, Jessica couldn't imagine what it might be. She took a quick shower, emerged from the bathroom in a towel. She took a jar of moisturizer from the nightstand. She sat on the edge of the bed. Vincent was still fast asleep, dead to the world.

Jessica tried to rid her mind of the events of the day. She failed utterly.

Three boxes.

Was the number significant? Were the colors important? What about the way the boxes were aligned?

She knew that Dino and Eric had met with the victim's parents, and the parents were on their way to Philly to try and make a positive ID, but there was little doubt in Jessica's mind who the victim was: Monica Louise Renzi, late of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

But there was a bigger question.

If they were being led to these crime scenes, what was coming next?

"Hey."

Jessica jumped a foot. She hadn't heard Vincent stop snoring.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's okay," she lied. Her heart was now lodged somewhere around her upper esophagus.

"Bad day?" Vincent sat up, massaged her shoulders. He knew every knot, every muscle. He gently kissed them all.

"Bad day," Jessica replied. "Yours?"

"Just another day at Black Rock."

Vincent was on an undercover buy-and-bust sting and that scared the hell out of Jessica. A week earlier his team had taken a casualty.

"Let me ask you something," Vincent said.

"Okay."

"Did you get shot today?"

"No," Jessica said. "You?"

"No."

"Then it couldn't have been that bad."

Jessica nodded. Such was the world of a two-badge marriage. You were both allowed to have bad days, but not at the same time. And every day a bullet or a knife didn't enter your body was a good day on the PPD.

"So tell me. Where does it hurt?" Vincent asked.

Jessica put a finger to her forehead, then slowly pointed at her toes.

"So, we're talking the whole robot."

"Yeah," she said.

"Hmmm. Well, then." Vincent gently rolled his wife onto her back. He slipped out of his drawstring scrubs, peeled off her towel, dropped them both on the floor. "As official head of customer service, it looks like my work is cut out for me."

Jessica nodded again.

"Please pay attention to the following five options," Vincent said. "Because our menu has recently changed."

"Okay."

Vincent held up his left hand, fingers spread. "If you like deep, passionate kisses, press one."

Jessica pressed one.

It was the right choice.

In her dream she sat at the back corner table at the Embers, an old tavern in the Northeast. She was dressed in a tight red dress and black heels, a thin strand of pearls. The clothes were not her own. In front of her was a small tumbler of what looked like Wild Turkey on the rocks.

She glanced down.

In her lap was her wedding album. She hadn't had it out in years. Even before she flipped the cover, she knew what she was going to see. She was going to see herself in the wedding gown that belonged to her mother. She was going to see her aunts and uncles and nieces and friends. She was going to see a hundred drunk cops. She was going to see her aunt Lorrie who had stood up for her at her wedding.

The jukebox at the bar played an old song by Bobby Darin. It sounded like the band at her wedding reception. Pete Simonetta, her sixth-grade crush, sang lead.

She glanced down again. Now the cover of the book was cherry red. In her dream, Jessica flipped open the album.

The woman inside wasn't her. It was someone else wearing her wedding dress, her crucifix, her veil. It was someone else holding her flowers.

It was Eve Galvez.