The Survivor

Chapter 9

Plan B: Nate would drive home and kill himself. Handful of Vicodin, some alcohol, a languid drift into the sweet hereafter. Given the press conference, news of his fake hero stint would spread quickly, complicating matters, making him answer questions he’d rather not. It would be best to handle business before opening up the whole can of worms with Janie and Cielle, especially since he’d managed to keep everything from them for this long.

After months with depression gnawing at his skull, he’d settled on a plan and had felt energized. Foot on the accelerator, a last burst of gas to take him over the cliff edge. He had to see it through now before he ran out of steam.

To fortify himself for what was to come, Nate stopped off at a diner for another last meal. The middle-aged waitress had tired eyes, crayon marks on the hem of her uniform, and a pale band of skin around her ring finger. “Triple-scoop hot-fudge sundae?” she asked. “That’s it?”

He smiled up at her. “That’s it.”

He savored each bite and left her a $207 tip-all the money in his wallet. Where he was going, he wouldn’t need it.

He was lurching between red lights on Wilshire on his way home when a dark Town Car pulled up beside him. It rolled forward, nosing dangerously into the intersection to bring a tinted back window even with him. He glanced across, sensing a presence behind it. Someone watching. A sheen of perspiration sprang up on his arms, the nape of his neck. He looked at the streetlight. Glanced back over. Menace emanating from that square of black glass. The tint was darker than standard, illegally so. The Town Car was too far forward for him to make out anything of the driver save a sliver of ear and an old-fashioned cap. He drifted up to get a better look, but the Town Car matched his movement precisely, pushing farther out into the red light, making a passing car honk and swerve.

He stopped. The Town Car stopped. That tinted rear window so close now he could reach across and knock on it. He rolled down his window and was proceeding to do just that when the tinted glass moved as well, lowering two inches. A hand emerged, a cigarette stub poking from between the index and middle fingers. A tattoo branded each knuckle, and yet the nails looked manicured, and three stripes showed at the wrist-pale flesh, cream French cuff, dark suit. The smoke reached Nate’s nostrils. The cigarette burned down, and the hand adjusted, a quick pulse, and pinched the cherry between the two knuckles. A wisp of black smoke-burning flesh-then the hand let the dead stub fall.

An echo from the bank vault played in Nate’s head, that accented voice: He will make you pay in ways you can’t imagine.

Numbness spread through his body, a stand-in for fear. Slowly he became aware of a cacophony of bleating behind him, the din of horns, and he realized that the light had changed to green sometime ago. He stood on the brake pedal, a game of chicken, the two vehicles blocking a corridor of traffic.

A sharp ring issued from his lap, startling him into a jolt, sending his old-fashioned clamshell cell phone to the floor. He chased it around, and when he straightened back up, the Town Car was gone from its spot beside him, already way up ahead, shrinking to nothing. But one detail grabbed his attention before it vanished: There was no back license plate.

Enduring curses from L.A. drivers all around, he accelerated, glanced at caller ID, then fought the phone open. Jen Brown, his tough-minded boss, calling from downtown. Probably caught wind of the robbery. He said, “I’m okay.”

“Good to know,” Jen said. “But I wasn’t asking.”

Maybe word of his fake hero stint wouldn’t spread quickly.

“I need you to pay a house call,” she continued. “Sean and Erica O’Doherty of Encino.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not been the easiest day.”

“Imagine what theirs is gonna look like.”

He took a deep breath. Considered those pills awaiting him, and how he’d do well to get to them before the man or his bank robbery cohorts caught up to him as promised. “I don’t think I can do it right now.”

“Okay. Then I’ll send Ken.”

“Ken? Not Ken. Last time he-”

“I know,” she said wearily. “He left a note pinned to the door. Let’s skip the outrage. We’re shorthanded, and you’re the only guy who does it right. Blah, blah, blah. Pretty much every time you say you can’t, you wind up doing it anyway. So let’s just pretend we already had this part of the conversation.”

He gritted his teeth. “You got the file?”

“Right in my pretty little hand.”

He sighed, turned onto the freeway. “You know how to manipulate people.”

“I’m not a cop for nuthin’.”

Nate triple-checked the address before ringing the doorbell. At the side of the porch was a teak bench, its base lined with shoes. Loafers and sneakers and a pair of worn Converse high-tops with peace symbols Magic Markered on the sides. The stab wound throbbed in his shoulder, and he hoped it wasn’t bleeding through the hospital-issue T-shirt.

Footsteps approached, and Nate closed his eyes, gathered himself. A pleasant woman in her forties answered, her husband behind her in gym clothes, a folded Wall Street Journal under his arm. The woman’s eyebrows rose with surprise. “Hi…?”

He took quick note of the marble floor of the entry. “I’m Nate Overbay. Are you Erica? Sean?”

“Yup.” Sean glanced at a runner’s watch with an angled face. He was a husky man, former athlete, with a wedge of dense copper hair. “What can we help you with?”

“I work with LAPD. May I come in?” Nate wanted to get them seated; Sean O’Doherty was a big guy, and it was a long fall to that hard marble floor if he fainted.

Erica nodded nervously. On their way to the couches, Sean let the newspaper drop. They sat, and Nate asked, “Just the two of you home?”

Sean said nervously, “Yeah, yeah, just us.”

Nate set his hands on his knees. He hated this moment most, the moment before the world flew apart.

He cleared his throat. “At two-thirty today, your son Aiden was driving from his dorm room to guitar practice. He was struck by another car and brought into the USC Medical Center with severe injuries to his head and chest. He was unconscious. The medical staff did everything they could to revive him, but they failed, and he died.”

A cry flew out of Erica. Her face turned red, and she leaned back into the cushions. Sean was standing; he’d moved so fast that Nate had missed the transition from couch to feet, and the man wobbled a moment and then sat down again. He was breathing hard, nostrils flaring. Nate gave them maybe ten seconds, which stretched longer than ten seconds seemed like they could.

“I am so sorry to be here,” Nate said. “But I will help in any way I can and answer any questions.”

The first reaction was often an unexpected one. Sean’s mouth tightened. “Who did you say you are again?”

“Nate Overbay. I’m a Professional Crisis Responder.”

The overblown title served to make up for the fact that he was not a social worker, a chaplain, or a paramedic. Though deployed by LAPD, he didn’t carry a badge and was not a sworn officer. When he first started nearly five years ago, a social-services team was supposed to go out every time, but budget cuts had whittled down the cast until he was the last man standing. Now, when he wasn’t available, death-notification service fell to whichever patrol officer drew the short straw. So Nate had done his best to be available for every call. To strive to better himself, to find one more way to diminish, however slightly, a family’s pain the next time around. He was not so dumb as to be unaware that he was trying again and again for personal redemption but not so smart as to figure out how to break the cycle.

Erica’s voice fluttered, so fragile that Nate could barely make out the words: “This is a mistake. How can you be sure there wasn’t some mistake?”

Nate had pulled the incident report, gone to the morgue to talk with the coroner, sat with Aiden and held his cold hand. To make sure he didn’t terrorize the wrong family, Nate had checked the driver’s license in Aiden’s wallet against the database in case the nineteen-year-old boy had been carrying a fake ID.

“I’m certain,” Nate said. “Aiden was identified and pronounced dead at the hospital.”

Experience had taught him that to overpower denial he needed to say to the bereaved, frequently and boldly, that the person had died. It had also taught him not to say that time heals all wounds, that he knew how they felt, that there was a reason for everything. He had learned when to pause, to let them breathe, when to lead and when to follow. But mostly he had learned to ignore everything he had learned, at a moment’s notice.

Erica withdrew into herself, shoulders curling, chin dipping. Sean looked at her, his mouth downturning violently, almost a sob. “You’re the cops,” Sean said, his voice high, adrenalized. “He’s a kid. You couldn’t protect him from some idiot driver?”

Nate said gently, “No.”

Sean was standing again, jabbing a finger down at Nate. “You should’ve done something. Someone needs to fix this. This is your fault. Your fault.”

Nate rose. “Okay.” He kept his hands out and his voice soft.

“I’m gonna sue the fucking shit out of you, this city. I’m gonna…” Sean’s finger, inches from Nate’s face, began trembling violently. His face flushed, and then he was sobbing, rent-open cries, loose on his feet. Nate lifted an arm, and Sean grabbed him and sobbed into his shoulder, and Nate held him for five minutes and then ten, until Erica rose and led her husband with great care back to the couch. Sean sat, holding her hand, tears streaming as Nate answered their questions and told them what to do next, writing everything down since recollection would be foggy-directions to the morgue, police case number, direct line to the coroner’s office. He did all that, and then he shut up.

Erica broke the silence. “But it’s so unfair. He’s our only child.” Finally she came apart, fist pressed to her mouth so hard that the skin went white.

Heat swelled in Nate’s chest, and he looked down, the carpet blurring at his feet. Some responders believed they always had to be strong for the relatives, but Nate had found that the times his voice hitched or his eyes watered, family members had looked at him not with disdain but appreciation.

Erica caught her breath again, blew her nose. “What a stupid thing to say.”

“No,” Nate said.

“Life isn’t fair, is it? Who gets to live. Who dies.”

No.

“I want to see him,” Erica said. “I want to see my boy. Where is he?”

Sean lifted the printout that Nate had brought-the route from their front door to the morgue. He raised his red-rimmed eyes to Nate and said, “Thank you.”

Nate nodded. “Is there anything you’d like to ask me? Anything you want me to do?”

Shaking their heads, they rose to see him out.

He always made the second-day call himself, since the last thing a family in crisis needed to see the morning after was a new face. When a piece of jewelry or a watch was released, he’d take it home and scrub off the dried blood before delivering it. He’d be one call away, their guide through the rough terrain. So he started to say what he always said next-that he’d check in with them again tomorrow.

But then he remembered: For him there wouldn’t be a tomorrow.

He paused on the porch, looking back at Erica and Sean, feeling that nagging sense of remorse. His mind moved to his best friend’s body outlined against a brilliant blast of white. His failure of will in the car outside Charles’s mother’s house. That night in the house, his daughter trying to hide beneath the bed, his wife looking on, a bruise rising on her cheek. So much unfinished business. So much he still owed.

Since his diagnosis he’d done everything to spare Janie and Cielle any more trouble on his behalf. But maybe he owed them a final explanation before he punched out.

“He was just here last week,” Erica said. “Standing where you’re standing right now. He was tying his shoes, and the phone rang.…” She gestured toward the teak bench, at that row of sneakers, Aiden’s beat-up Chuck Taylors waiting, one on its side. “I went to answer. Could be important, you know. A nail appointment.” She gave a disgusted little laugh. “You know the worst part?”

Nate shook his head.

“I never got to say good-bye.”