Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

Caroline writes down the names of both officers of the Fair Election Fund: Louis Carver and Eli Boyle.

The last news story is from the day after the election. Mason got more votes than anyone predicted, but he was never really close. The story has him planning to stay in Spokane, and to practice law and work on the computer game company, of which he was part-owner. The story goes on to say that he gave an emotional speech to a small room of supporters, and that he broke down twice. "You can be blinded by the glare from your own dreams," he is quoted as saying.

She jots down the names of the people quoted in the stories, although she isn't looking forward to a repeat of the pointless interviews with Pete Decker and Susan Diehl. When she is done, Caroline puts the news stories and election filings in a drawer in her desk and stares across the Major Crimes office to the door of the interview room. She thinks of Clark Mason sleeping in there, and realizes that she's tired, too.

She pulls a phone book from a drawer in her desk and opens it to the K's. There are three Kanes, Thomas, two Kanes, Tom, and one Tommy Kane. She tries that one.

"Hello."

"Tommy Kane?"

"Yes."

"I'm calling about Clark Mason."

"Look," he says, "I told the person who called last time. I'm not donating money to his goddamn campaign. I didn't vote for him last time and I don't care if he's running for treasurer of hell. I'm not voting for him. You understand? Take me off whatever list you've got there and leave me the hell alone."

Caroline considers correcting him, but she has gotten all the information she needs: Tommy Kane is not dead, and she doesn't really want to get bogged down in some twenty-year-old feud. "I'm sorry," she says. "We won't call again."

She checks her notes from the interview with Susan Diehl and looks for the name of the man she had an affair with – Richard Stanton. She tries the Seattle directory and comes up with six of them.

She looks back across the office, to the interview room. This is crazy. Maybe Susan is right; Clark couldn't kill anyone. After a moment she grabs the extra sandwich she bought, stands and walks to the door, opens it, and steps lightly inside. Clark Mason is breathing deeply; Caroline remembers the last time she watched another person sleep, five months ago, before her boyfriend moved out.

Clark Mason gulps air and shifts a bit. Caroline stands still. When he's breathing regularly again she edges forward and looks down at the third legal pad, open beneath his face. His handwriting is careful and neat, but he is covering most of it and she can only make out bits and pieces. Words are crossed out, entire sentences. She tries to figure out what he's writing about but can only make out that there are people in a hotel room, Clark and someone named Dana.

He stirs just then and Caroline steps back. Clark sits up, yawns, and rubs his hair. "Sorry," he says. "I fell asleep."

"It's okay."

"What time is it?"

"Almost three."

He nods. "Saturday afternoon," he says, not exactly a question. He seems sluggish, slightly disoriented from his short, powerful nap. "I'm sorry."

She shrugs. "You can't quit now. I think you're close to the world record."

He rubs his temples and then looks down at the legal pad. "I can't tell if I was just dreaming or if I'm remembering because of the writing." He looks back at the pages he's written. "It doesn't seem real."

"What you did?" Caroline asks.

"Any of it."

"People always say that," she says. "You'd be amazed how many times I hear that. The first time someone fires a gun they always say it didn't seem real. Watching the person fall. The blood. None of it seems real."

"The blood," he says, as if in agreement.

She waits for him to say more, but he doesn't. He just looks at the sandwich in her hand. He seems groggy.

She slides the sandwich over in front of him. "You like turkey?"

"Mmm. Thanks."

She thinks about just dropping everything she knows on him: his ex-wife, Pete Decker, Tommy Kane, the election. Maybe it would shake loose his confession and get him to abandon this insanity. But she's not really sure what it adds up to. She'd rather wait until she knows more. She watches him unwrap the sandwich. The bottom piece of bread falls in his lap, smearing mayonnaise and diced lettuce all over his pants. It's strangely endearing, watching him try to clean up his pants.

"I shot a guy once," she says.

He looks up. "And you killed him?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He was coming at me. I thought he had a knife."

"Did he?"

"No," she says. "It turned out he didn't."

"Oh." He looks down at his sandwich.

She waits, to see if her own confession brings out his. But he takes a bite of sandwich instead.

"The reason I bring it up is that I was just thinking about what you said, how the victim wasn't really important, that the action itself is the… what did you call it?"

"The ideal," he says.

"Yeah, yeah." She tries to remember what it was that she wanted to ask him, something about motivation and justification, but it slips away and all she can do is stare, trace him with her eyes, his sharp jawline, the tangle of dark hair, and the strap from his eye patch that drifts in and out of that hair like a boat swamped by waves. "What happened to your eye?"

He says, between bites of sandwich, "BB gun fight. When I was a kid."

She's disappointed, somehow. She'd imagined some great story, the horn of a bull in Pamplona, a spear in New Zealand, but that's the truth of a thing like this. Parents warn you about sticks and BB guns, and when a person loses an eye it's generally because of a stick or a BB gun. Things are entirely what they appear to be, and behind them -

"Can I see it?" she asks.

He hesitates and then lifts the patch. The eyelid leans heavily down on the socket, but she can't see anything else. He lets the patch fall back.

She watches him chew the sandwich and she feels tired all of a sudden, wonders if he'd mind if she laid her head down on the table and surrendered. The afternoon air is thick; it's difficult to hold her head up in it.

"The guy you shot?" he asks finally. "That's the only person you ever killed?"

"Yeah."

"But it's still with you? You still see it."

"Yes. But there are things I feel worse about." She pictures Rae-Lynn, the one she couldn't save, who spent her last six weeks fucking and doping and falling. Caroline bought Rae-Lynn a sandwich like this once; she can still see the tiny girl wolfing it down.

Clark nods. "There aren't even names for some of the crimes we commit."

It hits her like a kick to the side and she wonders for a moment if he can see right through her, to the bone. He is staring at her across the table, that one eye imploring. She would like to dismiss him, to let this whole thing go, pass it on to Sergeant Spivey to deal with Monday morning, and get some sleep. Sleep. But he says things like that and… Jesus. She puts her head down on the table and laughs bitterly.

"What's the matter?" he asks.

"I'm tired, Clark."

Then she feels his hand on the back of her neck, rubbing it, just underneath her hair. His hand is big and warm; the fingers find strands of tension in her neck and shoulders and he pushes, his hand constricting around the back of her neck. Caroline hears herself sigh. Then she pulls away, snaps upright, and stands.

He looks at his own hand, as if it has acted without his knowledge.

She's surprised to hear what's on her mind come out of her mouth. "Did you really kill someone, Clark?"

The question catches him. He looks down at the legal pads and runs his fingers along the pages, as if ordering the words, tidying them up. But sometimes there's nothing you can do. He gives up and his hands go back to his lap. He looks up at her and laughs. "If I hadn't, and if we had met some other way, do you think-?"