Skin Deep

19

Steve arrived home at ten that night with his head throbbing, his eyes burning, and a low-grade sense of unease, as it part of him were out of sync.

His apartment was on the fourth floor of a tenement on St. Botolph Street a few blocks from Copley Square. The place had two bedrooms and a recently renovated kitchen. But it looked monastic because he had moved in very little furniture—a chest of drawers, a hideaway sofa bed, two chairs, and a table. He kept it sparse so it would feel temporary.

After leaving the Mermaid Lounge, he and Neil had headed back to headquarters, where Steve wrote up his report. Because he was the lead on the case, he was conduit for all the data that came from the other officers on the case, pulling it together, organizing it, looking for threads.

(He uttered another prayer of thanks that nothing on file connected him to Terry Farina on the night of her death.)

Every interview had to be written up to ensure continuity and to determine leads and directions to pursue. They had a list of witnesses to interview but so far nothing hard. Nobody had seen anyone enter or leave the victim’s apartment. No useful latent prints. No physical evidence of an intruder. It was as if Terry Farina had been murdered by a ghost.

Or someone who knew what he was doing.

Except for the lights.

And the champagne.

Major screwup.

“It was an emotionally charged moment…. He’s scrambling to get away and also forgets stuff.”

“You can walk, you can talk, but you can’t think.”

He took a long shower to flush the rabble from his head. And the nightmare images of Terry Farina. They haunted him all day long, lurking in the shadows, popping up at the slightest reminder as if trip-wired. He could barely attain an objective distance on the case without feeling that he was pursuing himself. It was like being stuck in a tale by Edgar Allan Poe.

He put on a T-shirt and shorts and went into the living room.

A cold silence filled the space. He thought about making a fire except that fires were for wine and intimacy. He opened a bottle of Sam Adams and sat in the armchair and stared at the dead hearth, listing to the numbing silence. One of their hundred rituals was sitting by the fireplace with a bottle of wine to recap the day. On the mantel sat a photo of Dana and him at a pool bar in Jamaica from their honeymoon. For a long moment he stared at their beaming faces, thinking how the pain of her absence was what amputation must be like—phantom sensations where parts had been lopped off.

He closed his eyes. Maybe it was the beer or the stress or toxic blood sloshing through his brain, but he felt as if he were in the center of a bottomless vortex sucking him down. All he could think was how he just wanted to let go—an urge that made sense given his family heritage of contention, betrayal, divorce, and defeat. He could still hear the screaming matches, his father’s fireball accusations, his mother’s denial and spells of withering self-pity. He could still feel the tearing in his soul as he tried to defend his mother—a woman of Celtic beauty but an unstable constitution—against his father’s attacks. And while he tried to blot those years from his memory, he knew deep down that he had been imprinted with his temper and her urge to withdraw. No wonder he couldn’t commit to having kids. No wonder the booze and dumb dick-first impulse to violate everything that was important to him. And now Dana was making makeover plans that didn’t include him. Abandoned him as his parents had done. Left him flat when he needed her the most.

And the more he thought about that, the more resentment bubbled up like acid.

It was her fault, when you got right down to it. He couldn’t commit, so she decides to shut him off, leaving him even more depressed. “I don’t feel like it.” “I’m tired.” “Not in the mood.”

For a spell he hated her for that. He had even acted out, smashing a lamp the night she told him she wanted to separate. But unlike other husbands, he had never let loose his demons on his wife. Not at Dana. To some that would seem a lame victory to celebrate.

And yet, he carried resentment like a low-grade fever. He had read someplace that rejection actually registers in the area of the brain that responds to physical pain. That in the extreme, the reaction is the production of stress hormones that can give rise to blind and dangerous impulses.

“Did you ever kill anyone?”

The question shot up out of nowhere.

“Shit,” he said, and guzzled down the rest of the beer and returned to the kitchen.

His pistol sat in its holster on the counter. In his seventeen years on the force he had fired it on duty only three times, wounding two felons in critically dangerous incidents. The third he killed in self-defense. The rest of its use was at the range.

He picked it up.

The standard Boston P.D. issue, a Glock 23. He snapped it out of the holster and held it by the grip. For a moment he understood how people committed suicide: when nothing holds any appeal, when even onetime simple pleasures go flat. When you look forward to nothing. When you feel guilty for being alive.

So quick.

He tested the heft. The gun boasted an ergonomic design with a satisfying weight distribution to ensure a controlled shot even under the most adverse conditions. A grip angle that complemented the instinctive abilities of the shooter and a satisfying twenty-five ounces with full magazine, the gun was constructed out of a high-tech synthetic that was reportedly stronger than steel yet a lot lighter. It was the weapon of choice of law enforcement.

The grip was cool and comfortable in his hands, as if they’d grown up together.

So easy.

He raised the gun so that the end of the barrel rested squarely on the middle of his forehead. His finger curled around the trigger. Just five and a half pounds of finger pressure separated him from oblivion, from joining the grim statistics of police suicides.

And they’d say he did it because of the high stress of the job; because of the constant danger; because of the Kodak gallery of death scenes in a cop’s head; because a cop is a take-charge figure who’s supposed to fix problems whether in or out of uniform. Because a cop is a different species from the rest of society, an isolated being who is rendered “other” by the uniform, the badge, and the gun. Because cops are part of a quasi-military institution where emotions are to be kept hidden so as not to let others sense doubt or to burden family members. Because cops are tempered by cynicism and mistrust of outsiders. Because the hopelessness, despair, and disillusionment with the human animal create conditions that destroy. Because the only people outside the uniforms that cops trust are family, and when one of those relationships ends, the cop’s emotional support base is lost. And all that’s left is the abyss.

So easy.

The ultimate cleansing ritual.

He shook open his eyes and returned the weapon to the holster and put it in the closet of his bedroom where he stored it each night, thinking how for one brief moment his death made all the sense in the world.