Ridley Pearson - The Body of David Hayes

Lou winced, stung perhaps by her sincerity. “We’re going to make it through this.”

“You think?”

“Taking him into custody humanized him for me.” There was no asking about whom he was speaking. He went on for a moment, talking himself out of any feelings of superiority that his abducting Hayes accounted for, discrediting any moral supremacy-that he worked the side of good and David the side of evil. He was telling her that he’d overcome some hurdle, and she was listening.

She wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t risk his career by pulling a sting on his own people, but in many ways it seemed too late for that. If the tape was released, his career and his family would suffer; but if he were caught tricking his own people, he might lose his pension as well. With her actions she had put him squarely into unworkable options, and now she forced him to look for some way out. She told him as much, expressing her remorse as sincerely as possible. She said, “I don’t think this kind of thing can be undone using legal pads.”

“You’d be surprised. Legal pads come in very handy.”

“We’re going to joke about this?”

“What choice do we have?”

“A woman is going to take my place out there. You realize the danger we put her in?” she asked, allowing her real anger to surface now. “Never mind all the secret codes that I can use to leave crumbs for your people to follow. What about her? What codes is she going to use when these people-very nasty people according to you and yours-realize they’ve got the wrong Liz Boldt?”

Lou held up the pad of legal paper. She saw inked handwriting and boxes and arrows-a complicated diagram resulting from a conflicted mind. He said, “The best defense is a good offense.”

“You can’t be oblique right now. I’m not up to it.”

“It never gets that far.”

“Never gets how far?”

“Your surrogate. I agree. We can’t let that happen.”

“You can stop it?”

“Timing,” he said.

“But they’re ready right now. They’ve got some stand-in ready around the clock to take my place. That’s what they said, right? Did I miss something?”

“They’re expecting you to receive a call. Everything hinges on them listening in to our land line and both our mobiles. You get the call and a clock starts. A substitution is planned-here at the house, if possible; in the field, if not.”

“But how has that changed?” she asked, still puzzled.

“You arranged for the costume to be delivered to my office, did you not?”

“I did.” It took her a moment to realize he intended that as his explanation, not a question for her to answer. “The costume,” she said.

Lou pointed to the top of his yellow pad and a box there so heavily outlined the ink had smeared. “It all starts with the costume.”

She didn’t know what that meant, not exactly, but resolved herself to the fact he was now calling the shots. He saw some way out of this, however dim. No matter that she struggled to have faith in him and his yellow pad, she was bound to him body and soul. He ran the early part of the show, and she committed herself to doing exactly as he instructed, even if it struck her as an exercise in futility, which it currently did. The later part of the show, inside the bank, was all hers.

“I’m never going to sleep tonight,” she said.

“Yeah,” Lou agreed. “I know.”

LIZ WENT TO CHURCH SUNDAYmorning, and Boldt went with her both out of a longing to be near her and a desire to protect her. Over her objection, she carried her mobile phone, set to vibrate if called, and the two sat on the aisle so that she could jump up if it rang. Boldt didn’t mind the services, appreciated that there were two readers instead of a minister, that the sermon derived from the Bible and an interpretive work, not the pulpit and preaching. The hymns, sung robustly, often ran gooseflesh down his arms, praising love and promising hope. Of all things dear to Boldt, hope was perhaps the greatest. He reflected on his motivations for becoming a cop all those years ago, aware that hope factored into it, a belief in a moral code and the knowledge that someone had to uphold that code. Other cops had brothers who had been shot, sisters raped, homes vandalized, all valid reasons for signing up. But for Boldt it had amounted to something far less visceral: a cause, a calling. The church and its parishioners represented the community he felt he was there to protect. And so the service was filled with irony for him, as the person who needed the most protection was his own wife, and for reasons of adultery and what the church would call sin. In the past few days he had worked his way to a form of understanding that made their time together tolerable. He felt forgiveness a long way off, a firefly at the end of a very long tunnel, but a necessary step toward a full healing between them. Whether he and Liz made it fully back to sharing love or not, there was no abandoning the family.

“What if I’d gotten the call last night?” she asked over a salad at a sandwich shop after church.

“You didn’t.”

“But if I had?”

He shrugged off the question. “You roll the dice, you take your chances.”

“We weren’t ready.”

“The costume was delivered to my office late Friday,” he said. “I checked,” he said, when she gave him an inquisitive look. “After we talked last night, I thought I’d better check.”

“So why’s it so important?” she asked. “The costume? Or aren’t you going to tell me?”

“You have enough on your mind.”

“That’s a lousy excuse.”

He stabbed his salad. A little salty for his palate. “Too much anchovy in the dressing.”

She eyed him across the table, annoyed by his avoidance. “So we were ready,” she asked, adding, “if I’d gotten the call?”

He said, “The complication was no delivery on Sunday. I had to find a way around that. John’s gone to help us out. Then again, maybe it won’t be you at all. Maybe you’re a diversion, nothing more. Maybe Phillip is inside the bank at this very moment making the wire transfer.”

“You’d have heard, wouldn’t you?” She sounded deeply concerned, and he realized that she was already exhibiting some hostage traits, involving herself emotionally to the point that if someone took her place it registered as disappointment instead of relief.

“I would have,” he confirmed, worried about her once again. His concern came in waves, but he noticed a tendency for the troughs to run lower as the minutes ticked on. “If the call had come early, my plan wouldn’t have flown,” he admitted. By prior arrangement, they both knew what came next. Liz was to throw herself into it, while Special Ops looked on in befuddled confusion. If all went well, for a brief few minutes Daphne Matthews would play his wife. There had been a time when he would have welcomed that thought. He now understood far better the pain such fantasy represented.

“What are you thinking?” she asked. “You’ve gone silent over there.”

For over six years he had kept a secret, and now it seemed there was no room for such artifice. Her past had been stripped off her without choice, dogs tearing at the hem of her clothing until exposed. The process had allowed Boldt to remain sanctimonious, when in fact he had his secrets too. “The woman I slept with… the one-night stand when we were separated-”

“I don’t begrudge you that,” she said, interrupting. “I was running around with David. You were hurt. We’ve been through this.”

“It was Daphne,” he said, identifying his partner for the first time. Crushing Liz, judging by the surprised look on her face. She gently placed her fork down onto the edge of her plate, some salad still attached, the dressing now dripping onto the table. Too salty, he thought, as she quietly excused herself from the table and walked toward the rest rooms.