White Sister

Chapter 28.

I LAY BACK on the stained red bedspread in the Skid Row hotel and tried to come to grips with it. All of the e-mails had been written over the last few months. Had I been too busy with my caseload to give Alexa what she needed? The enormity of her betrayal swept in on me like a black tide, washing pieces of my well-being away with each violent surge. I tried to examine the past two months, going back to late May, when the e-mails started. Had I sensed anything different between us? Had there been a distance there that might have hinted at this affair with David Slade? And why him? Why some bad seed cop, some unstable psycho who pulled guns on people over lane changes? It just didn't add up. But one of the things I'd learned as a homicide cop was that human behavior often didn't add up and that the hardest condition to understand is the human condition. I'd seen murders committed over gardening tools; children shaken to death because they wouldn't eat their vegetables. The unpredictability of human behavior was a tragic constant in the criminal justice system. But despite this, there were some things that I had come to take for granted. Areas where I had finally let my guard down and been at peace. My relationship with Chooch was one, my marriage to Alexa another. I never dreamed of something like this happening. I continued to search for a framework that made sense. I couldn't find one. But one of the hard lessons all young cops quickly learn is that truth is always subjective. It is colored by point of view and the way we choose to see things. At the bottom line, truth is just opinion and can be viewed differently depending on bias. I was a big loser here, and I didn't know how to deal with that. Worse still, I couldn't scream my anger or disappointment at Alexa. I couldn't demand an explanation or grant forgiveness. She was lying in a coma that she might never come back from. Time ticked slowly on the old-style digital clock that was bolted to the bedside table in the dingy hotel room. I could hear the little metal numbers flipping over every sixty seconds, changing the readout on the display. What should I do about this? How do I handle it? How does it change me? Then I remembered something that had happened when I was twelve and living at the Huntington House group home. I was a point guard on our elementary school basketball team, a ragtag group of orphans in mismatched uniforms. One afternoon, we were playing a game against a rich, private school. We were way behind, getting our asses kicked, and being fouled like crazy under the basket. We were on their home court, with their fathers refereeing, and none of the fouls under the basket were getting called. At halftime, our dejected Huntington House team was sitting on benches in the guest locker room of this expensive private school gym, complaining about how unfair it was and how we'd never win with them cheating like that. Our coach was a tough old duck, and he used to scream a lot when the team was losing. But that afternoon he taught me a great lesson. "All you guys are doing is bitching about stuff you can't change," our crusty old coach said. "Bitching how this guy's fouling you, or how the refs aren't making the calls. Well, welcome to the real world, boys. If you fret about stuff you can't control, I guarantee you'll always lose." Then he'd told us that we could only play our game, not the other guy's. It was such a simple concept that it was often overlooked. We went out in the second half and played our game on their court and won. Alexa was who she was, and whatever choices in her life led her to this, they were hers, not mine. It was out of my hands. It wasn't my game. Despite the overpowering evidence to the contrary, some part of me still prayed it was wrong. Some inkling deep inside still told me that it was. All of it the murder, the attempted suicide, the answering machine confession, and now the e-mails with the damning blackmail note. But it really didn't matter, because I knew I still loved her. The thought that she was lying in a coma and might never recover still devastated me. I knew in that instant that whatever the reasons for all of this, I couldn't let them beat me. I was getting fouled, but if I didn't want to lose, I had to ignore the bad calls and play my own game. I sat up and looked at the computer. The damning e-mails were still up on the screen. David Slade was dead. Alexa was in a desperate fight for her life. She might have had an affair with him, but I just couldn't believe she would put him in her cuffs and execute him gangland style. Not Alexa. Not the woman who turned my life around and taught me how to love. In accounting, they teach if your balance is off by only a few cents, those few cents might be hiding a much larger error. This balance was off, and that's what I was hoping for. Broken-hearted, I packed up Alexa's computer. I took one last look back at the faded decor before closing the door. I knew I would carry this ugliness to my grave. I walked out of the hotel and back to the parking lot. As I unlocked my car door, I was sure of only one thing. This wasn't over.