"I understand, sir." Keeping up the by-the-book, "I get your meaning" expression. Eddi said: "I know, at least I think I know what's going to be required for me to make the grade. I just hope I live up to it." Might as well have had her thumb on a page in a script.
"You have to be aware of the situation," Abernathy said. "Your post here is temporary. We get temporary posts. "We get them constantly. But when the arriving officer only looks at their post as temporary, circumstances can become problematic. Do you understand?"
"I do, sir."
"I'm sure you must have felt distance coming from some of the other officers." "A little."
"It's not personal," he said. Abernathy said: "Can't take it personally. DMI cops: Their life is about being suspicious."
"Appreciate that. I hope I get a chance to show while I'm at DMI, I am DMI." Looking Abernathy dead in the eye. Liars have shifty eyes. Liars look around a room when they're lying. Eddi was speaking from her heart. Or so she perpetrated. Eddi did not lose contact with Abernathy. Eddi would not be, wouldn't let herself be farmed out or shunted to one side. She needed to be in the heart of things. And compared to grinding a knee into a man's balls, amputating part of his body with her own teeth, what was a little rallying around the flag?
Slightly, Eddi smiled.
Eddi's welcome to DMI: paperwork. Sorting and filing, transferring from hard copy to digital file. What she got was a taste of the struggle against the freaks waged from the very bottom of the totem pole. The part that was stuck in the mud. And this is what Eddi got for being the «good» transfer, the obsequious MTac arriving to the brave new world. She could only imagine what Soledad, filterless Soledad, got handed. She couldn't imagine Soledad putting up with busywork. They were very crappy chores.
Also eye-opening. The numbers. The stats on the freak population. Eye-opening in the way your eyes spring wide in the bloody climax of a horror show. Eddi was giving consideration to the Idea that Abernathy was at least partially correct in his assessment of MTacs: They were nothing but grunts. Eddi'd never really thought about how many freaks might be in Greater LA, how much they might be communicating with each other. What those communications could be. Like, some kind of call to arms. DMI thought about that kind of stuff. Ran through all manner of threat matrixes. Worst-case scenarios.
Calculated for every sort of bloody encounter. All the thinking, the considering and predicting made Eddi long for MTac. Just point your gun, pull your trigger.
She felt comfortable in G Platoon. Eddi felt like she belonged. No matter that she was hiding her designs, her sense was to a person DMI had no trust of her.
And they shouldn't. They shouldn't trust her. But they didn't know they shouldn't. Or maybe they did. Maybe they were that good. They could suss the untrustworthy. Or maybe in their job it just paid to not trust strangers. Which was fine to a degree. Eddi was sure in time she could earn trust.
Despite lingering animosity, she'd earned Soledad's.
Just needed time.
But Eddi didn't have time. Really, she had time, but she didn't have patience. Didn't have the desire for her abhorrence to diminish. She had to get into Raddatz's sphere. But at the end of nineteen days of trying she'd gotten to file and sort. She'd gotten hit on by a double amputee. She gotten told "Don't worry about it" when she'd asked a couple of officers how exactly they postulated their threat assessments. She had not gotten anywhere close to knowing the truth about Raddatz. She had been unable to surreptitiously work her way close to him, and he certainly had not approached her. No reason. Unlike Soledad, Eddi brought no real celebrity with her.
Raddatz remained a distant, lonely cipher. A cop on the job going through recovery after the toss of fellow officers. The rest of DMI cut him a wide swath as he worked his way back to zero.
All the while Eddi was sure he wasn't going through shit. Was pretty sure he was only faking his remorse.
Unfortunately, pretty sure didn't cut it.
Waiting around wasn't working.
So forget subterfuge. Forget doing things on the sly. Navigate the situation, Eddi coached herself, like she'd handle a call. Straight ahead and in the open.
Tell me about Soledad."
In his chair, in his office. Tucker Raddatz turned from the window he was staring out of, looked over his desk,
across the room. Eddi was in the doorway.
"Tell me," she said again, "about Soledad O'Roark."
"You a friend of hers?"
"She didn't have friends. I operated with her on MTac."
"Then you know her good as me. Probably better."
"She had a way of-"
"You're Aoki, right? Just came on."
"Eddi Aoki."
"Tucker Raddatz. You were saying?" "She had a way of pushing people off. A habit more than a trait."
What Eddi was noticing: Raddatz wasn't paying any more attention to her than to whatever he'd been looking at out his window. He was slow, unfocused. A guy permanently waking up.
Sure he was.
He was weighted down. He was slogging around the burden of murder.
Eddi asked: "What happened?"
Raddatz went back to looking out the window.
"You all were surveying a freak. Then what happened?"
"I've been through all that with a review panel."
"I wasn't on the panel."
"You've been on calls that've gone south."
"Yeah."
"You want to spend your time rehashing the bad ones?"
Truth was, Eddi didn't.
"You tell me about her," Raddatz said, redirecting.
"Curious what kind of cop I lost."
I lost. Eddi considered that a queer way of putting things. Queer in the sense Raddatz sounded more like a man guilty of error rather than volition.
She said: "I told you, we weren't friends. Not in any real sense."
"Whatever you recall. Anything."
"I recall…" Eddi let herself into the office, took a seat. "I recall Soledad didn't want me on her element. She didn't… I gotta tell you, she didn't care for me."
"Didn't care for you how?"
"On the force, you're a woman, you're a minority, yeah it's hard, but you can stake your own territory. You work your way up to MTac, you can pretty much be a celebrity. I don't think she cared to share the spotlight."
"She didn't strike me that way; the kind that wanted attention."
"You're not a woman. Or a minority."
As if to say otherwise, Raddatz held up his missing hand.
"Yeah, well, around here that pretty much puts you in the majority. Look. I don't think Soledad wanted attention. I think deep down she wanted to make a point. The point gets muted when there's somebody like you doing the same thing."
Raddatz said: "What changed with you and Soledad?"
"What makes you think anything did?"
Raddatz's phone rang, rang, rang. It rang itself quiet.
Taking up the conversation where it'd been left, Raddatz: "I think, I thought. I thought she was the kind who could change. I hoped for it."
He was being cryptic. Eddi wondered If it was a dodge. Was he being veiled to get something out of her? Did he have something to say and wasn't sure in what way she would take it? "How did you hope she'd change?"
"She came with a mind-set. I hoped she'd see things another way."
"Yeah, but what way do you-"
"There is a line of thinking: In a republic only soldiers should have certain rights. Only people who've served their country should be allowed Ml and complete suffrage. It's, uh, extremist, you know. But I'd say I understand the philosophy. The philosophy being only those who've defended the republic can really appreciate the responsibilities that come with running it."
"If you want to enjoy freedom, you've got to pony up."
Sort of a nod, sort of a shrug from Raddatz. "Sounds kind of Spartan." "Look at our country. We're in a time of crisis. It's almost cliche to say we're in a state of war,