Joel Goldman - Shakedown

My re?ection in the window was a poker face.

“It’s your micro expressions, Jack. You can’t see them. They come and go in a?ash when you talk about the shaking. If it makes you feel any better, I’m probably the only one you know who can see them. How long have you been off work?”

“About twelve hours.”

“Your idea?”

I shook my head and told her about the murders, about my backyard breakdown, Troy’s suspicions about a leak on the squad, and my suspicions of Colby. I told her more than I would ever have told Joy and more than Troy would have wanted me to tell anyone. She listened closely, asking just enough questions to?esh out the details.

“What makes you suspicious about Colby Hudson?”

“Nothing solid. Just loose threads and gut feelings.”

“I thought you were the Dragnet version of FBI agents, the kind who only wants the facts and leaves the intuitive stuff to more sensitive types like me.”

“I believe in what I can prove-whose blood, whose fingerprints, what motive, means, and opportunity. That’s what puts criminals away. Not a wink and a nod that no one can see. But I’ve been cut off from the real evidence. Suspicion is all I’ve got left.”

“Why not let it go? Let Troy and the rest of your team work it out.”

“Two reasons. I can’t get that boy, Keyshon, out of my mind.”

“Don’t confuse him with your son. Nothing you do or don’t do will change what happened to either of them.”

“That doesn’t pay the debt.”

“Jack, you aren’t responsible for what happened to your son or that boy. The man who killed your son was a classic psychopath. No one, including me, could have seen him coming. It’s no different with Keyshon.”

“Kevin was my son. That makes me responsible.”

“Keyshon wasn’t your son. You didn’t even know him.”

“I knew enough. I knew that he was living in that house. I was watching it every day, putting my case ahead of him. I left him there to take his chances with people who’d buy, sell, or kill you for drugs, money, or sport. It’s like one of the neighbors said on the news.”

“What’s that?”

“Nobody takes care of a little boy, you see what happens.”

Kate folded her arms across her chest, grinning. “You’re a throwback, you know that? One man, standing up, alone. It’s brave, righteous, and sexy. But if you shoulder that much weight, you’ll shake yourself into a million little pieces.”

“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in putting me back together again?”

“Maybe,” she said with another smile. “I’ve never been big on jigsaw puzzles, but you might be worth the effort. You said there were two reasons. What’s the second one?”

“Wendy is pretty serious about Colby. If I’m right about him, she could get caught in the middle. Troy will feel bad if that happens, but he won’t let it get in his way.”

“And you will?”

I straightened, put my hands on the table, looking at her hard. “I already lost one child. I won’t lose another.”

Kate nodded. “What if you’re not the right one to save her? What if your dislike of Colby, your resentment at being forced out, and your anxiety about whatever is wrong with you makes you the wrong one? What if the best thing for Wendy is someone with a clear head?”

She had touched all the bases, just as Troy had. I gave her the same answer as I had about Kevin.

“I’m her father. It’s that simple.”

She reached across the table, taking my hand, her skin warm, melding with mine. “What can I do?”

“You’ve done a lot already. You drove out here and listened to me while letting a perfectly good waf?e turn cold. You warned me not to do what we both know I’m going to do anyway. And you told me who to see about my problem. I can’t think of anything else unless you want to pick up the check.”

She took a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and put it on the table.

“My pleasure. You’ve got enough on your plate. Your marriage is over and, even if that’s a good thing for us, you’ve got to deal with that before you can move on. You’re still blaming yourself for your son’s death and you’re scared for your daughter. Plus, you’ve got to find out what’s making you shake.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“At least you know what’s in front of you and, like G.I. Joe says, knowing is half the battle. Here’s the real kicker. You won’t have ballistics and forensics, DNA, wiretaps, and all the other bricks and mortar you’ve always surrounded yourself with. You’re in my world now. You want to get through this, you’ll have to work the people.”

I woke with mild, morning shakes. They rose from my belly into my throat as I rolled out of bed, an internal wake-up call. I’d gotten used to it, like they were as much a part of me as my arms, legs, and heart, their absence more notable than their presence.

I took Kate’s advice and called the movement disorder clinic at the Kansas University Hospital. It was a large teaching hospital located at Thirty-ninth and Rainbow, just inside the Kansas side of the state line with Missouri. I’d been in the ER and up on the?oors to talk with victims and suspects, but I hadn’t been a patient there or in any other hospital since I tried to catch a hockey puck with my chin when I was in high school. The receptionist transferred my call to the person handling new patient intakes, who questioned me for fifteen minutes before asking which doctor I wanted to see.

“The one who can make this go away,” I told her in a halting voice. I’d found that talking about my symptoms made them worse. It was a lesson in modesty my mother would have appreciated.

“We cannot promise that you will get better.” Her disclaimer had the?at, rote familiarity of being read from a script.

“Okay, then give me the one who won’t make it any worse.”

“We cannot promise that you will not get worse.”

I almost told her to give me the doctor with a sense of humor since she obviously didn’t have one, but didn’t want her to tell me that they couldn’t promise to laugh at my jokes.

“Okay. How about the doctor who can see me the soonest?”

“Dr. Fitzpatrick has an opening November twenty-fifth.”

“That’s not for two months.”

“It is our next available appointment. I can put you down for that date and add you to a waiting list in case we get a cancellation.”

“Do you get many cancellations?”

“No. Should I confirm your appointment and put you on our list?”

“No place I’d rather be.”

The prospect of waiting two months to see a doctor was a joke that didn’t make me laugh. It was one more thing I couldn’t control. The only thing I could control was how I dealt with it. I took a quick inventory.

Apart from the shakes, I felt fine. My appetite was good enough that I hadn’t lost the extra five pounds around my waist. When I jogged in the morning, my knees didn’t hurt any worse than they had when I turned fifty a few months ago. My dark hair was turning sandy but wasn’t falling out. And, I wasn’t having dizzy spells like other people I’d heard of who turned out to have brain tumors. I shook. That was it. How bad could it be? Not bad, I decided. I kept repeating that, waiting for it to sink in.

I thought about the case and what Kate had said, that I had to work the people. That had always been part of my job even if I didn’t trust my ability to read beneath the surface to decipher people’s inner demons. I relied on the facts, the evidence, to cross-check against what I guessed about human nature. That approach had served me well. I’d never repeated the mistake I’d made with Kevin. If I were going to live in Kate’s world without my tools, I’d need to learn how to use hers. I called to ask if I could borrow them.