“If you had the person who killed your father in the room and he was tied to a chair, and you could do whatever you wanted to him, what would it be?”
I liked that he started in the middle. But it was an easy question. I had become a student of pain, of torture, of mutilation fantasies. Here’s one, Doc; a favorite of mine. It’s seventeenth-century, but way ahead of its time.
“I would copy the punishment dealt out to the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. They were condemned to be ‘put to death halfway between heaven and earth as unworthy of both.’ Their genitals were cut off and burned before their eyes, their hearts removed, then the still-beating organs shown to the victims as the last drops of blood spluttered through their veins like a shut-off garden hose. They were decapitated, and the dismembered parts of their bodies hung on poles so that they might become ‘prey for the fowls of the air.’”
Dr. Feldman said, “That sounds about right.” He gave me a prescription for Ambien. “You’ll sleep better but still wake up fucked and angry.”
The days after the murder of our father, we were put up in a Holiday Inn in Kingston. We never returned to the house in Grahamsville. Kind local women packed up everything of value, both emotional and useful, and stored it until we found a rental apartment a few miles away in Hurley. We kept the shades down, the curtains drawn, and we tried to be safe. Harry Dill, who used to plow our driveway, came over at night and sat in his pickup.
“Just to maintain a watch,” he said.
We really weren’t in danger, as an anonymous phone caller told us after we moved in. “You will not be harmed, as your father and husband will no longer commit the murder of innocent babies. Reflect on his evil and find redemption in Jesus Christ Our Lord.”
That was kind and considerate. I’ll keep it in mind, just before I shoot him.
Ernie doesn’t waste time on a telephone call from Maui with hello, how are you, what’s new, how’s the weather? He’s on a budget, won’t Skype or use FaceTime, and has important information for me.
“Nina, the Feds have a man in detention in Honolulu. He went down on a gun trafficking charge, a serious one, and he wants to make a deal. He’ll rat out everybody he can for a lesser sentence, says he has the name of a guy who bought a sniper rifle from him. He called it a baby saver. He said this to a US attorney who remembers your father’s case.”
Baby saver—in the more extreme edges of the anti-abortionist crowd, it’s the nickname for a Remington M24 sniper rifle that’s accurate to eight hundred meters, twice the distance from the edge of the woods to our kitchen window.
I’ve seen them in gun shows; they go for about a thousand dollars. For my father, they spared no expense. When I looked back at the death threats sent to him with photoshopped images of him framed in the rifle’s telescope sight, I wondered why they had ownership of fear. My parents lived it, and even though they did their best to hide it from their children, Sammy and I lived it, too.
Why did we have to live in fear while the people opposed to us didn’t? They marched safely on picket lines in front of women’s medical clinics, protected by the police, sometimes by me when I was a rookie cop. It was a duty I relished. I studied the faces of the protestors, listened for clues, random conversations. Would I hear something about the man who had murdered my father? I wondered why they are allowed to make us live in fear and not experience it themselves? What would it take? A few random killings: a .30-06 from eight hundred meters into the head of a Norman Rockwell grandmother holding a sign showing a fetus in a jar? That might give her life-affirming colleagues pause. Or that same sweet grandmother and her well-meaning husband who cross the country in their well-meaning Winnebago Minnie to picket women’s clinics as other retired couples visit minor-league baseball teams or national parks. What if I sent her a letter (no return address) with pictures of her grandchildren, their addresses, the names of their schools, innocent young faces framed in the crosshairs of a baby saver’s telescopic sight? Live with that, Grandma and Grandpa. My parents did.
They worried for us, for themselves. It was a part of their lives. It’s why they loved the Kapalua Beach Motel. Their children were out of range.
I realize these are the musings of revenge. They spring awake at three in the morning, erasing the Ambien, accompanied by despair and loss. These musings oppose justice, law, and civilization. I know that part of me. I know the desire for revenge is barbaric. It is also the rage of a teenager. I am glad I was sixteen when my father was murdered. If I had been older, more mature, I wouldn’t have that obsession; it wouldn’t be imprinted in me, made permanent, that desire to avenge him.
Now I am a police officer. My duty is to find and arrest people who break the law. I agree that it is up to the state to dispense justice in every case—except mine.
“Will the Feds make a deal?” I ask Ernie.
“I don’t know. I’m going to go to Honolulu and see. But I doubt it.”
“Can you squeeze him without a deal?”
“If I could I would dangle him off the roof of the Hyatt to get him to talk, but that’s not practical.”
“I can fly out in a minute.”
“I know you can, honey. Let me see if there’s anything to this first.”
Out of the blue.
Chapter 7
The Steevers house is standard: one-story brick and white wood. It occupies an eighth of an acre of flat suburban land in South Flushing, built after the war for returning GIs. The same contractor did all the houses, so they display no differences aside from the cars in the driveways, and the still-standing Christmas decorations. When the trees are in bloom, the owners may have some privacy, but right now, in these dead days of late winter, the Steevers house and those of their neighbors are exposed like white nuggets on a Monopoly board. If you part your curtains, you will have no secrets.
“Did you find him?” Mrs. Steevers asks.
“Did you find him?” Sammy asks. He speaks to me in the dayroom of Jericho Pines. It is how we begin our conversations.
“Did you find him?”
“Not yet, honey, but I will.”
Sammy, reassured, settles back into his chair, and we begin our game of gin rummy. I always deal first.
Sitting across from Mrs. Steevers, I am quiet. I sip the coffee she has given me and look out the picture window at the yellow, muddied lawns dotted with nubs of black snow. Spring is right around the corner. I will deal first.
“The problem is, Mrs. Steevers, Ronald is an adult. We have a protocol regarding missing persons. Children first—the younger they are, the more immediate. You’ve seen the Amber Alerts. Next, our priority is older people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, people who wander off. Adults are at the bottom of the list. I know Ronald was a police officer in Farmingdale. That makes him a brother officer, Mrs. Steevers. We take that kind of disappearance seriously. He goes to the top of the list—mine. Tell me, did Ronald have any enemies? Did he get any threats that might have related to his past work?”
“Ronald only had one enemy. His wife.”
She says it with a smile. I realize I am tired of playing amateur shrink, crafty cop, or trickster. I long for the simplicity of pulling someone over and asking politely for their license and registration while my partner runs the plates and signals to me the car is stolen. Please put your hands on the steering wheel; my gun is out of its holster behind my back while my partner comes to the other side of the car.