He'd overplayed his hand a bit. She looked at him sharply. "We didn't have much in common-but I still loved her. Love her."
But he didn't back down. The question floated between them.
"All right," she conceded. "I've been feeling out of sorts lately. Not sure that what I'm doing is what I really want out of life. It's thrown me off and made me doubt a lot of things-my job, my goals, even the two of us sometimes."
"Oh?"
Her hand remained in his but lay there unmoving. "Well, not that much, but still. . Somehow, seeing Laurie in the hospital kind of pulled the rug out from under me. It wasn't just that I felt guilty. It was also the waste of it all-the stupidity. I mean, what the hell is going on? It's crazy. Laurie from the lap of luxury; Debbie from a home not fit for a dog. And they end up in the same jam. Nobody's doing enough, Joe. This war on drugs is a total crock."
He kept silent. They didn't discuss politics much. Too many potential land mines. But he had his own reasons for agreeing with what she'd said. Virtually every drug cop he knew only worked the assignment for the juice or the promotion potential connected to it-not because any of them believed it would actually make a difference. Being a drug cop was a feather in one's professional cap, a chance to get out of the spit and polish, and allowed for an occasional stretching of the rules unavailable elsewhere on the job.
He was considering how to respond when she continued on her own. "Of all the therapists and counselors I know who deal with this, there are some things they all seem to agree about. One is that this whole thing about kids getting into trouble because they're bored is baloney. Kids have more available to them than ever before. So, I have some serious doubts about skateboard parks and more rec centers being the solution. And another thing is that with a huge percentage of young substance abusers, there's always a parental figure who sets the course-teenage drinkers and druggers are the children of drinkers and druggers. The numbers are like a neon sign. Getting more cops on the road and building more prison cells is not going to do one damn thing about that."
Gunther nodded sympathetically. Again, he didn't disagree with her. He'd seen the stats himself. But he was as shy about cutting back on law enforcement as he was about turning the country into a military state. Joe tended to the middle ground on topics like this, which generally meant he kept his mouth shut-a habit he'd learned after being hammered from both sides in the past, and something he shared with a great many police officers.
"We need to go deeper," she was saying as if he were no longer in the room. "We need for our leaders to stop going for the headline and the next vote and take responsibility for the future-to start acting not for themselves, but for future generations. Right now they all talk that line, but they do jack shit to back it up-all this 'three strikes and you're out' crap isn't doing fuck-all."
He laughed gently at that. "It was a perfect election speech till that last line. Is that where you're headed?"
She blinked and focused on him. "It's crossed my mind," she admitted slowly.
"For what office?"
She got up and walked to the double doors to gaze out upon the moonlit lawn, its canvas of lush green grass and verdant trees rendered a deep blue-gray in the lunar glow. Without actually seeing them, she watched the feeble flickerings of a few lightning bugs pirouetting in the near-darkness.
"I haven't decided yet, but I think it's time."
He rolled that over in his mind. She was an ambitious woman, and one used to success. He had no doubt she'd follow through on this. What he was less sure about was how it might affect them. But he took a more roundabout way to broach the subject.
"Gail, this thing with Debbie. I mean, I understand what you just said. To be honest, it's kind of surprised me you haven't run for office before-except for the selectboard, of course-so you know I wish you the best. But I just want to make sure that what happened here"-he waved his hand toward the pile of possessions by the door-"isn't left behind in the process. This was serious. You were hit pretty hard. And it had nothing to do with the fate of your youth or the merits of 'three strikes and you're out.'"
She turned back from the night and faced him, her expression cast in shadow from the lamplight directly beside her. "I'm not so sure," she answered quietly, thoughtfully. "After I was raped, I didn't know what might happen to me. Intellectually, I knew what to expect, and I had you and my friends and my family backing me up. I had things to occupy my brain-going back to law school, becoming a prosecutor for a while, then the lobbying job. On the outside, I knew I was doing okay-even better than okay. The paranoia lessened, my uneasiness being around men."
She moved to a straight-back chair by the wall and sat on its edge, her hands in her lap. "But on the inside-deep inside-I still had that fear, you know? Not just that some man might try again, but a larger fear about what I had left to deal with. You know what they say about the foundation of the Brooklyn Bridge?"
"No," he answered.
"That while the original plan was to dig deep enough to put the footings on granite bedrock, deep underwater, they could never reach it, so they finally gave up. The whole bridge sits on sand-all these years later."
"And you're feeling the same way?"
She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. "I don't know anymore. I did when I was dealing with Debbie and fighting with my sister-I wondered if I was losing it all over again. But in the end-when that little twerp started waving that knife around in front of me-I suddenly found a chance to test myself. And when I shoved that gun up his nose and knocked him on his ass, all I felt was determination. It was like a rebirth in a flash of light. I know you try to stick to the realities you can hold in your hand, Joe, but this was almost that real to me. There was an element to it of being given a second chance."
"Is that why you let Debbie go before you called 911?"
She rose and crossed over to sit next to him on the couch again. "I know. Probably still makes me look like a patsy to you."
"Maybe a little," he answered truthfully.
"But she wasn't the one responsible anymore. She may have even cooked up the idea to rip me off, but he was the ghost I needed to defeat. Involving her felt like missing the point. I'll deal with her later if I feel like it, or maybe he'll rat her out and I'll have to admit what I did, but that's a trade-off I can live with. Does any of that make sense?"
"Sure it does," he said supportively and kissed her. But in the back of his mind, he still wondered where it might lead.
* * *
Sam pulled into the driveway and killed the engine, still feeling the aftereffects of the drug Ralph Meiner had given her. More lucid now, she actually had no idea if it had been Ecstasy or something else, since her experience in that line had been purely academic until now. The real source of interest to her, however, was how enjoyable it had been. All her professional life, she'd viewed dopers as weak-minded losers, hell-bent on escaping reality. She was not disposed to change this view, of course, but she was surprised at herself for not having realized that part of a drug's attraction might be the pleasure it offered. It was a revelation so simple, she felt stupid even thinking of it.
The saving grace was that this discovery carried no yearning for a second exposure. Sam's nature was nothing if not self-denying, at least when it came to pleasant indulgences, and she was already looking back at this epiphany with a stern distaste.
She sat in the car and watched the house for a while, seeing shadows playing across the drawn shades as Manuel conducted business with Peter Bullis's crew of slowly escalating CIs and undercover cops, all posing as word-of-mouth, walk-in customers.