Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

So Robin wasn't surprised when the police came and took her dad away. The timing might have been better. It was Christmas Eve, after all, and this year they had a tree and presents and everything. Some of the relatives were thereAunt Mazie from Denver, her mom's parents from San Diego, an aunt and uncle who'd driven up from Tucsonand naturally they made a fuss when the cops snapped the handcuffs on. Well, most of them did, though her grandparents sat quietly and watched with sad, knowing faces. Her mom begged the cops not to take him tonight, but her begging had a hollow sound, as if it were a script she had memorized for the occasion. Nobody listened to her. Then the police car was gone, not even bothering to run its siren or flash its emergency lights, and the huddle of family was left behind in uncomfortable silence.

"It's hard for you," Aunt Mazie said to Robin at one point.

She shook her head and said with a child's bluntness, "What's hard is when he gets out."

They all told her she didn't mean that, and she agreed, but secretly everyone knew she had meant every word.

Her mother served the Christmas ham. Nobody looked at the empty chair at the head of the table as the ham was sliced and doled out on the best china.

When the meal was done and the presents were unwrapped, Robin retreated to her room, and there, alone, she cried. She knew she was crying for her father, but she didn't know why. He was a bad man and only got what he deserved. That was the hard logic she couldn't argue with. And yet amp;

Yet there was a deeper truth she sometimes sensed. Her father was not always mean and dangerous and crazy. She remembered how he'd read from Treasure Island all night long when she had the flu, how she'd fallen asleep to his voice and awakened to find him still in her bedroom, watching her, the book shut in his lap. There had been other moments like thata hug, a shared secret, a special gift perhaps purchased with stolen money, but purchased for hermoments when a different man had been her father, a man who did not carry her father's load of rage.

That man was real. He existed. But most of the time he was buried inside a shell of crazed violence. It was the shell of her father who did the bad things. It was the shell who deserved to be carted off to prison. And the prison could have that part of him. But why did it have to take the other part?

In her room that night, as on other nights, she pressed her palms together and prayed. Her prayer was simple. "Give him back to us," she whispered up at the moon hanging in her window. "Give him back."

The real man, she meant. The man trapped inside the shell.

But he never did come back. A week later, on New Year's Eve, her father was killed in a disturbance at the county jail, where he had been housed awaiting trial for armed robbery and auto theft. Some inmates had attacked a guard. Other guards had broken out shotguns. The details were unclear, but at the end of it, her father and two other prisoners were dead.

Robin had stopped praying after that. She hadn't prayed again for a long time.

"Robin Cameron?"

She looked up, startled out of her memories, and saw the man from the lobby who'd been watching her. A big man, tall and heavyset. "That's right."

"The psychiatrist, right?"

She stood, preferring to face him at eye level, but even standing, she was a head shorter than he was. "Yes," she said.

"Bill Tomlinson. Detective. I work the homicide table around here." He extended his hand, and she took it, feeling his strong grip.

"What can I do for you, Detective?"

"I saw you come in. Recognized you from that awards shindig a while back." The statement was innocuous enough, but she sensed an undertone of tension. "I wanted to talk to you, if you've got a minute."

"About?"

"Sergeant Brand."

"I can't discuss"

"Your patients. Right. I know. The privilege thing, like attorney-client. But Brand's not your patient yet, am I right?"

"I can't confirm anything about his status, even whether I am or am not treating him."

He chuckled. "You're like the White House. Can't confirm or deny. Got it. But you can listen while I talk, right?"

"I suppose so."

"Look, I don't know Brand real well, but I see him around, work with him. He's a good man, Doctor. He's been through a lot."

"I'm sure he has."

"Been treated like crap by the department, too. You know they gave him only two days off after the shooting? Two days of stress release; then he's back on the job. That seem fair to you?"

"No. But that's something you'd have to take up with the appropriate authorities."

"Oh, I'm just venting some steam. I could go on all day about the way they treat us." He shrugged away the topic. "But that's not the point. What you need to know is how they're treating you ."

"Me?"

"You want my opinion, Dr. Cameron, they're setting you up. I think you've gotten a raw deal here."

"How so?"

"Look. Brand is a good cop. But he's amp; unsociable, I suppose is the word. Not antisocial, you understand. Just unsociable. He's not somebody who opens up. He's not a talker, and he doesn't want anybody's help. He'll be fighting you every step of the way."

Robin said nothing.

"The higher-ups selected Brand," Tomlinson went on, "because they knew he would be uncooperative. They want you to fail. You hear what I'm saying?"

"I'm surprised you're so interested in my welfare."

"I just don't like the games they play. I don't like to see them screwing you over when you're just trying to help out. If I were you, I'd go back to the brass and tell them you want a better candidate. Somebody who'll work with you, not against you. Somebody you've got a chance with. Because with Brand, you've got no chance at all."

"Maybe I enjoy a challenge."

"He's not a challenge. He's a brick wall."

"I'll take it under advisement. Thank you for your concern."

"Just trying to be helpful. You keep in mind what I said. Don't let them play you. They will, if they think they can."

He pantomimed a tip of his hat to her, an old-fashioned gesture made more quaint by the fact that he was, of course, hatless.

She watched Tomlinson walk away, while wondering what that had been about. Perhaps he really was trying to help. Perhaps something else was going on.

Whatever his reasons, she wasn't going to be deterred. She would find Brand and she would work with him, whether anyone wanted her to or not.

Roy Wolper was having a bad day.

He sat at his desk in his uniform, ramrod stiff, his black hair brushed back from his high forehead. As always he felt strong and vigorous and vital and not at all like a dinosaur, which was what he was.

A dinosaur in the new LAPD, anyway. He jogged four miles every day, ate only lean meat and fresh vegetables. There was no flab on him. He was steel hard, his body a carefully tended machine.

Cindy, his wifeex-wifehad thought he was a fitness fanatic. She hadn't complained about it in bed, as he recalled, but at other times she seemed almost embarrassed by his dedication to health and strength. But then she had been unhappy with everything about him by the end. When they divorced two years ago, there had been nothing to hold them togetherexcept Zach, of course.

At first there had been no more than the usual conflict between ex-spouses, the usual wrangling over weekend custody. Then this attention deficit thing had started. Some doctor had decided that Zach's Cs and C-minuses were the result of a learning disability that required therapy and special schooling, both of which required extra money, which Wolper didn't have. For the past six months Cindy had been on his case nightly, at first requesting and then demanding more child support. Now she was talking about taking legal action.