The Drowning Child

56

Ren walked into the bullpen and shook off her jacket. Cliff James came over to her without saying a word and put his big-bear arms around her.

‘You and me against the world, sweetheart,’ he said, kissing her head.

‘God bless you.’ She pulled away gently and sat down at the edge of his desk. ‘What would I do without you, Clifford James?’

‘Ren, what you do without me is your business...’

She laughed. ‘If you only knew.’

‘I don’t want to. I mean it. How’s Oregon?’

Ren nodded. ‘Looks like we could be dealing with an Aquatic Sexual Sadist, drowning children for kicks.’

Cliff shook his head. ‘How long can I keep doing this job, I ask myself.’ He tilted his head toward the conference room. ‘Are you nervous?’

‘You bet.’

‘No reason to be,’ said Cliff. They locked eyes. ‘You just tell your story.’ There was weight in his words.

There were two people waiting for Ren in the conference room – a dark, bulky man with a big gut, an unreadable face, blank eyes. His gray suit was a little too tight. The female agent with him had blonde hair swept tightly back, a stern, masculine face, but compassionate eyes. They stood up when Ren walked in. The man reached out first.

‘Agent Bryce, I’m Inspector Neubig, this is Inspector Brinks.’

Whoa, whoa, whoa. They’re not the names Gary said would be here.

Ren clenched, unclenched her fists under the table when she sat down.

What is going on here? This doesn’t feel routine.

‘Thank you for meeting with us today, Agent Bryce,’ said Neubig. ‘I believe you’re working on the missing boy case Oregon. How is that going for you?’

‘Good, thank you,’ said Ren.

‘Well, we don’t want to hold you up,’ said Neubig. ‘We’ll get straight to the point. We’d just like to talk to you about why a meeting was convened by Gary Dettling in his office at Safe Streets on the evening of the shooting?’

Oh.

Fuck.

Ren’s heart started to pound.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

‘Gary wanted to go through elements of the investigation with the core team.’

‘That would be...’ Neubig looked at his notes, ‘Janine Hooks, Robbie Truax, Everett King—’

‘No,’ said Ren. ‘Not Everett King. He just happened to be there.’

‘But,’ said Neubig, ‘was he not involved in tracking down’ – he looked at his notes – ‘the suspect who was shot when you and Robbie Truax came under fire at his property? Would you not say that Agent King was a key player in the investigative team?’

‘Of course,’ said Ren, ‘but he was a newer member of Safe Streets, and perhaps Gary was – out of familiarity – choosing to—’

‘But,’ said Neubig, ‘was Agent Hooks not hired at the same time as Agent King?’

Fuuuck. ‘That’s correct,’ said Ren. ‘I’m sorry. It’s really not my place to offer up suggestions as to why Gary chose the team he chose to be there that evening.’ She paused. ‘Actually, I think Everett may have had a personal engagement that night.’ Phew.

‘Moving on to your – we’ll call him your boyfriend – Ben Rader,’ said Neubig. ‘Can you tell me again why he had flown in to Safe Streets?’

We’ll call him your boyfriend? Nice. ‘Well, he’d flown to Denver,’ said Ren.

They fucking know. How could they possibly know? ‘As I found out afterwards,’ said Ren, ‘Gary was considering Ben for an undercover assignment.’ Not, in fact, asking him to be part of an intervention for his crazy fucking girlfriend. ‘Ben wanted to surprise me, so he asked Gary not to mention it to me.’

‘And your brother, Matthew Bryce,’ said Neubig. ‘He flew in to Denver that day, and had had prior phone conversations with Agent Rader.’

She nodded. ‘They got along very well,’ said Ren. ‘Ben called Matthew to see if he would come—’

‘We have it that it was Matthew who called Ben,’ said Neubig.

Jesus Christ. I’m going to fuck this up so bad.

‘I didn’t mean that literally,’ said Ren. ‘I meant they were talking on the phone and when Matt heard that Ben was flying in, he decided to do the same thing. I hadn’t seen Matt in five months, he had to use up some annual leave in work... it all worked out...’ She paused. ‘… would have worked out... very well.’

The blood is draining from my body.

She remembered the night of the shooting, when Matt was waiting at her apartment, waiting to tell her that Ben had been shot dead, then Gary arriving out of the blue, well after midnight, and the confusion, the shock, and the snapping out of it. The abrupt change, the setting aside of the horror and grief to focus. To focus on concocting a story over coffee that no one wanted to drink, but everyone had to drink, to keep them awake, which they didn’t want to be, because they wanted to sleep through their nightmare.

I want to sleep through this nightmare.

Agent Brinks poured a glass of water, and passed it over to Ren.

‘Thank you,’ said Ren, turning to her, sensing she was rooting for her. People are so kind.

‘Would we be correct in saying,’ said Neubig, ‘that the people who were gathered in Safe Streets that evening were your closest friends?’

Don’t cry. Ren nodded. That’s the best I can do. I can nod.

That night, sitting in my apartment, Gary turning to Matt. ‘Matt, you’re the writer: I’ll give you the facts. We need a strong, convincing narrative that will dead-end a potential line of questioning for ever. Something that will hide the fact that Ren was off her meds, that I organized an intervention, that that’s why you and Ben were in Denver, that Rawlins was likely aware of Ren’s condition despite the fact that she told him otherwise.’

Looking at Matt, my heart breaking all over again. Matt was a journalist: an honest, thorough, fact-checking, morally upstanding, award-winning investigative journalist. Telling the truth was his vocation. But how quickly he stood up, and how Gary had looked at him like he thought he was leaving. But, how, instead, without a word spoken, Matt had walked over to the printer, slid out some pages and started to write notes.

They were up all night, they learned their lines.

Remember your fucking lines.

‘They were also my colleagues,’ said Ren.

‘You were late for the meeting,’ said Neubig.

‘Yes,’ said Ren.

‘Why was that?’

‘I was with Detective Joe Lucchesi investigating a building that I believed Duke Rawlins was holed up in.’

‘And Rawlins was not there,’ said Neubig.

‘No,’ said Ren. ‘But he had been. I told Detective Lucchesi that I would go to Safe Streets and bring the team back to the Ostler Building.’

‘You said in your original statement that you believed Duke Rawlins was watching Safe Streets from that building,’ said Neubig.

‘Yes,’ said Ren.

‘Yet you didn’t think that the purpose of that was, perhaps, to gain access to that building at some particular point?’

‘It wasn’t as simple as that,’ said Ren. ‘I believed that he was in pursuit of Detective Lucchesi... and possibly Gary Dettling. Yes. But I couldn’t have predicted what Duke Rawlins was going to do. It was unlike anything he had ever done before. I had studied him, Detective Lucchesi had, the profilers at Quantico had, even Detective Lucchesi’s son had studied him for his Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology. No one predicted this.’

‘OK, thank you, Agent Bryce. That’s all for now.’

For now? Jesus. No more. No more. No more.