Robert B. Parker’s Buried Secrets

Forty-Three

“You did everything you could,” Dix told Jesse.

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Jesse said.

Jesse had shown up at Dix’s office at the end of a long day. Dix was on his way out, but, seeing Jesse, he had turned around and opened the door again.

Jesse had told him about Peebles and Tate. He expected Dix to tell him he’d done everything right, to try to soften the blow of a man dying on Jesse’s watch.

But it didn’t help, because Jesse didn’t believe him.

“You think you didn’t do your job? You think you failed?”

“The kid is dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Dix said. “But are you telling me you didn’t do everything you possibly could to keep him safe?”

“Maybe you should ask Rita that question.”

“I’m asking you.”

“I think the results speak for themselves.”

Dix was quiet. Then he asked, “You remember that game where you busted your shoulder?”

“Only every day.”

“Right. It changed your life. Set you on a completely different path. I recall you once told me you thought your friend—”

“He wasn’t my friend.”

“—your teammate set you up with a bad throw. Made it so you had to leap to make the catch and that’s why you fell, and you landed badly.”

“Right.” Jesse didn’t know where this was going. But he knew he usually didn’t like the destination when Dix arrived at his point.

“Was that an important game?”

“Considering how it turned out, yeah, I’d say so.”

Dix chuckled. “You know what I mean. Was that game important to your team’s chances that season? Was it going to keep you in contention?”

“No,” Jesse said, still mystified.

“Was it a playoff? Or the championship?”

“No.”

“Anyone from the Dodgers organization in the stands watching?”

“No.”

“So, really, nothing was riding on this game.”

“I guess not.”

“Then why did you sacrifice your body and your career for a crap throw in a nothing game?”

Jesse felt like he’d just run smack into a brick wall. He couldn’t answer the question.

“Jesse?”

“I don’t know.” He was suddenly angry with Dix, and he couldn’t understand why. He knew enough about therapy and himself by now that this meant they’d touched something important. But it didn’t stop him from feeling the anger.

“Why would you throw yourself into harm’s way, Jesse?” Dix asked, his voice surprisingly gentle.

“Because you don’t let things go,” Jesse said. “You don’t give up when it’s tough. You don’t quit.”

“Lots of people quit,” Dix said. “Lots of people stop doing something when they could get hurt.”

“Not me,” Jesse said.

“No. Not you,” Dix said. “You never quit. You never do anything less than your best, even when you were flat-on-your-ass drunk. No matter what it costs you personally. So I’m going to say you did the best you could for Peebles, too.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Jesse, how many people would you say you’ve helped in your life?”

“I don’t keep count.”

“I’m not surprised. I’ve lost count myself. I try to keep track, just by following your career, and I think I stopped when I got into triple digits.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because by helping you, I like to think I helped those people, too. I help you keep your head together. I keep you in the fight. And I think you should give yourself more credit for the good you’ve done in the world.”

“Tell that to Peebles.”

Dix made one of his rare gestures of annoyance, waving away Jesse’s words like flies at a picnic. “Oh, don’t be an ass, Jesse. You’re a hero. And what’s more, you like being one. You and I know it. You try to save people. It’s what you do. And thank Christ you do. You can’t save everyone, but there are a lot of people who’d be dead without you. Why don’t they count? Why do you work so hard at punishing yourself?”

Jesse shrugged. He hated it when Dix didn’t give him the answers, but sometimes he hated it more when Dix led him with the questions.

“I don’t punish myself.”

“Really?” Dix began ticking counts off on his fingers. “You’ve tried to drink yourself to death several times. You run headlong into bullets and fights. And your relationships? In the past, you stuck with Jenn, even though you knew she was unavailable, both emotionally and physically. You stayed with Sunny when she was committed to someone else. Because you knew they would disappoint you, but they’d never surprise you.”

Jesse had to admit that made a lot of sense.

“And the one time you did let go of your fears and commit to someone—”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“Fair enough. We both know what happened. I understand how you’d be reluctant to relive that. Ever. And that’s a choice you can make.”

“I’m not making any choices. I’m just getting through the day. You make it sound like I plan this stuff out.”

“Jesse, refusing to choose is still choosing.”

“I think I saw that on a bumper sticker.”

“All right,” Dix said. “Let’s try this another way. You like Westerns.”

“Sure.” They were the only movies Jesse did like. It didn’t matter that they were set more than a century in the past. They were still about people facing hard moments and hard choices. Everything else, he couldn’t really see the point.

“What happens to the hero in most Westerns?”

Jesse thought about that for a second. “He rides off into the sunset.”

“Does he?”

“Well. Shane did.”

“Interesting choice. Wasn’t Shane dead at the end of the movie? Just stuck on his saddle as the horse took him away?”

Jesse shifted a little in his seat. “Some people think of it that way.”

“Do you?”

“I guess not.”

“But he is alone.”

Jesse thought about that. “Yeah. Yeah, he is.”

“He turns his back on a woman who could love him, a boy who could be his son, a town that could be his home.”

“Sounds like you like Westerns, too.”

“They should make more. But what does that tell you?”

Jesse shrugged again.

Dix asked another question, not letting him off the hook. “Does being a hero mean you’ve got to die alone, Jesse?”

Jesse felt that one all the way down to his gut. He’d taken punches that hadn’t landed that hard.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.

“I’m going to suggest you think it does. And that’s why you’ve been so angry — so enraged — since you saw Burton dead in that house.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. You can change the script, Jesse. You don’t have to ride off alone into the sunset. You can turn things around. But it’s got to be your choice. You have to let people into your life. You have to take chances, open yourself up.”

“I don’t think I can change who I am,” Jesse said.

Dix shrugged. “You have a good, noble place to put your anger. You stop bad guys. They deserve it. You have this duty you carry around. Like a knight with his armor. And you take the weight, Jesse, you really do. I don’t say things like this often, especially to a patient, but I admire you.”

That might have been the nicest thing Dix had ever said to him. It put Jesse on his guard. “I’m sensing there’s a ‘but’ coming.”

“But. Do you ever think about what carrying all that weight means?”

Jesse just looked at Dix, which was answer enough.

“Right,” Dix said. “So I’m asking: If this is your job, what’s it pay? All jobs have a paycheck. You must get something from yours. What is it?”

That stopped Jesse cold. He’d never thought about it. Not really.

“There has to be something more than the pain and the rage and the risk and the loss,” Dix said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”