J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“It’s just. .” His shoulders rise and his head starts shaking, physically disowning his own thoughts. “We were worried, you know? About how to tell Charlotte.” Not able to look me in the eyes. “You know,” he says. “Because of Jessica.”

“Oh.”

I’m not prepared to hear her name on his lips, not ready to talk like this about something I hold deep inside, cherishing it like a cancer. My mouth twists and I feel my whole body tensing up, which Carter sees and goes wide-eyed over, the way he would if he’d inadvertently knocked over a vase.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says. “I know we’ve never really talked about it. Theresa Cavallo said something, and then. .” His voice trails off. “I wouldn’t bring it up at all except that Charlotte said something about her in church. About Jessica.”

“Let’s. .” I begin, but my throat tightens. “She said something at church ?”

“During prayer time, she shared how she still struggles with what happened. How God could let it happen, you know-and also the way she misses her daughter, misses just having a daughter. It was really honest of her. . and it just made us worry that maybe we shouldn’t say anything yet.”

I’m moving my head. I’m clamping my hand over my mouth. Trying to look thoughtful while buying time. Trying to get control of what’s happening in my head.

She talked. She told these people. She shared.

The way she misses her daughter.

Even having a daughter.

Words I couldn’t bring myself to think, let alone broadcast, words I couldn’t whisper to Charlotte in the dark. She shared them. She was really honest .

“Tell her,” I say. “She’ll be fine. Or if you want, I’ll do it. But I know it would mean more coming from you two. Congratulations again-”

“I know you’ve gotta go.” He reaches for my arm but stops short of contact. “But I thought we should talk about this other thing, too. Charlotte and church, I mean. We’d really like to see you there, too, but I’m sensing that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Is it a problem for you, her coming with us?”

I throw my briefcase into the car and slump behind the wheel. “Carter, it’s a free country. She can do whatever she wants-” Pulling the door shut. “Obviously. She does what she wants already.”

He has more to say, but the engine drowns him out. I reverse down the driveway, smiling my heartfelt and skin-deep good wishes, leaving behind a household I’ve increasingly lost the ability to understand.

I know how Simone Walker must have felt, having a spouse turn religious on her. There’s not much chance of Charlotte cutting me open-not literally-but otherwise I can relate. The rules change in the middle of the game, and it’s not enough for you to stand by and let it happen, to pretend you’re okay with it. No, you have to bend with the rules. You have to go along. At first they’ll accept lip service and platitudes, but before long it’s sincerity or nothing. The line will be drawn and if you ignore that line it will be pointed out to you. Cross here, but do it with both feet and never think of crossing back.

As I drive, the memory comes to me, Charlotte apprehensive on the bedroom threshold, saying it was only polite to go to church since they’d asked her. Saying it would be interesting to go back.

“Do it if you want,” I’d said. “If it makes you happy.”

“I think it would make them happy.”

And I’d said: “Some people find comfort in the ritual,” or words to that effect, which earned a quizzical smile from her, like she was amused and surprised all at once that a thing so obvious would be inaccessible to me. We’d once laughed together about the cross-wearing Theresa Cavallo, a missing persons detective I’d worked with and grown to respect, who’d psychoanalyzed my professional faults as the result of my anger toward God.

Only Charlotte wasn’t laughing anymore and isn’t laughing now. Every Sunday she goes with the Robbs to their newfound church just inside the Loop, cloistered in the shell of a defunct electronics superstore. And every Sunday I find a reason not to go with them, excuses of a secondary order to keep me from having to address the real one, the obvious one.

I’ve been telling myself I’m fine with this, that I can live with it. There was a time not too long ago when Charlotte popped pills to sleep at night and we were at each other’s throats, and I am relieved finally to be through it-her low-wattage religiosity seemed like a small price to pay for peace on the home front. And I like Carter and Gina. Having them in our lives has been good for us, and I’d like to think the reverse is true, as well.

The thought of Charlotte opening up like that, though, baring her soul to these people. Not just her soul but ours, throwing out our shared tragedy like it’s nothing more than an issue in scare quotes that needs working out in therapy. That I can’t bear. We were three once and now we’re two, and if there’s anyone she needs to talk to, it should be me, the only person who shares the loss.

Giving it to them, not just Carter and Gina but whoever else was present for the spectacle, handing it over to strangers is like betrayal.

No, it is betrayal.

Everything’s public, of course, and always has been. Every reader of The Kingwood Killing reaches the part of the story where March, the intrepid detective, learns of the car crash that put his wife and daughter in the emergency room, on the very same day the Towers fell and his plane was grounded in New Orleans. Wilcox and March driving the wife-murderer Donald Fauk across the Atchafalaya River, capturing his confession on a handheld recorder.

There’s a reason my copy of the book appears unread. At least I’ve never had to sit there before as someone read the passage, never had to endure the reader’s prurient sympathy.

Fingerprints are old school, a technology I understand completely. I lifted my first set at age thirteen using a kit jury-rigged from instructions found in a library book, then eyeballed a match with the only subject who’d submit to ink, my long-suffering uncle. Without the aid of computer databases or trained crime scene technicians, I can still develop prints from a variety of challenging surfaces, and if push comes to shove make side-by-side comparisons with the aid of an honest-to-goodness magnifying glass.

“Which is why,” I tell Lt. Bascombe, “I cannot understand how the Houston Police Department, which the last time I checked does have computer databases and does have trained crime scene analysts, still can’t tell me after thirty-six hours whether the prints on that table are a match with my suspect or not.”

He glances up from a stack of overtime forms he’s been autographing, acting surprised to find me still in the room.

“What do you want me to do? I’m sure they can tell you if there’s a match. They just haven’t yet.” From a wad of newspaper on the credenza behind him, he withdraws a creased copy of the Chronicle from sometime last week. “You realize, don’t you-and I’m quoting here-that ‘a criminal investigation is under way into alleged wrongdoing at HPD’s fingerprinting comparison unit,’ end quote.”

“Yes, I know,” I say, snatching the paper from him. I skim the article and give up halfway through, slumping into a chair. “Can I just say one thing? Throughout all the closings and openings and re-closings of the DNA section, all the inquiries and panels and reshufflings, you know what I did? I did like the poster says: kept calm and carried on.”

Entertained, Bascombe allows himself a faint smile.

“When I had to, I pulled some strings and got my DNA work done through back channels, and when I couldn’t, I’d grin and bear it. Was it frustrating to farm out lab work? Check. Was it humiliating to work for the fourth largest city in America and be reduced to that? You bet. But I told myself this DNA thing was newfangled stuff. I told myself they were overwhelmed, they were still working out the kinks. Hey, listen, I don’t understand how it all works, but then I’m not a scientist. But you know what? I can dust for prints-”