Hocus (12 page)

“Hank,” Cassidy said, “start making calls to the other CIT members. Let them know where things stand — start by giving Captain Bredloe a call.”

Hank nodded.

“CIT?” I asked

Cassidy turned back to me. “Critical Incident Team. I’ll give you the rundown on it later — for now, think about the voices on the calls. Anything recognizable? Maybe someone who used to work with you in Bakersfield?”

I shook my head. “No. Too young. Everyone I worked with would be older. I haven’t worked there since I first graduated from college.”

“What can we do to help, Irene?” Rachel asked before Pete or Cassidy could ask another question.

“Call Bea and Cassie and Jack, let them know he’s alive.” Alive. I held on to the word. “I’m going to take a quick shower and change clothes. I’ve got to get on the road.”

“I’ll drive,” Cassidy said.

“I don’t know if they’ll—”

“Don’t go alone,” Pete said. “It could be a trap. Maybe they want to take you as a hostage, too.”

“They know I’m involved,” Cassidy said. “They don’t seem especially concerned about it. I’m sure my ego will recover eventually, but in the meantime, I’m thinking that Pete’s absolutely right — you shouldn’t go alone. Besides, I’d follow you out there anyway. No reason to take two cars. And I think it’d be easier to get my frail little old granny to climb Mount Everest than it would be to get that old car of yours over the Tejon Pass.”

“I hope your granny has fewer miles on her,” I said, and heard Pete laugh for the first time all day. I started to leave the room. I stopped and looked back at Cassidy. He was grinning. “Okay, you can drive me out there. Can you make a strong cup of coffee?”

“If we put my coffee in the tank of that Karmann Ghia, it just might make it over the pass after all.”

“Thermos is in the cabinet over the refrigerator,” I said. “I’ll be ready in about twenty minutes.”

“And they say Texans lie,” he said, but I was on my way to prove him wrong.

I
DIDN’T DRINK ANY
of Cassidy’s java-flavored rocket fuel until the trip was more than halfway over, after I awoke with a start while we were somewhere on I-5 between Castaic and Pyramid Lakes. At his suggestion I held off on the coffee before that, sleeping from Torrance to the Tehachapis. I had argued with him at first, insisting on trying to stay awake, but he does, after all, earn part of his living by negotiating, and he won that round. I’m still not sure how it happened.

My awakening was abrupt, but to a pleasant view. The previous winter’s rains had been heavy, so the mountainsides were softly covered in a hundred shades of green. Cassidy had turned off his air conditioner — a wise precaution on the steep grades leading up to the pass — and his window was rolled down. I rolled mine down, too. The air was cool and clean, the sky a deep, dark blue. L.A. was out of sight, out of mind.

I stretched, took in the scenery, and shook off the dream that had awakened me. Cassidy glanced over at me. I was startled to see him looking worried. Mr. Calm, worried? In the next moment I knew what had happened.

I uncapped the thermos, avoiding his eyes. Inhaled the aroma of the coffee, poured it, praying he wasn’t glancing at my hands. “What was it this time?” I asked. “Just talking, or did I yell and scream?”

“You didn’t scream,” he said. Calm again.

“Oh, so just yelling, then. Well! Not bad under the circumstances.”

“No need to be embarrassed,” he said.

“Who’s embarrassed?” I took a sip of the coffee. Strong. Very strong.

“You are. But you needn’t be. Fact of the matter is, I’d forgotten your history.”

“My history,” I said flatly. Held both hands around the cup, held it up close to my lips, felt the steam warm my face. “Now, that’s a term used for patients and parolees, isn’t it? People who can’t be trusted to behave themselves. ‘Subject has a history of — ’ ”

“Is that what you think I’m implying?”

I didn’t answer.

“By ‘your history,’ ” he said, “I was simply referring to what has happened to you in the past. The fact that you were once held captive.”

“I had forgotten that you’d have access to that information. No photos, of course. Did they do a pretty good job of describing it in the police files? The bruises, the dislocated shoulder?”

“More than that,” he said quietly.

“Oh, yes,” I said, looking out the window. “More than that.”

“You have any permanent physical problems?”

I shook my head, not caring if he could see my response.

“Your physical recovery isn’t what’s remarkable, you know.”

“Let’s just drop it, okay?”

“You’re doing very well. Most people—”

“How well I’m doing isn’t what’s really important right now,” I said. “Do you want any of this coffee?”

“Every hostage has dreams.”

“Thank you, Dr. Freud. Mine are of large bananas, snakes, tunnels, and pomegranates. What do you suppose it all means?”

He smiled but didn’t reply.

The silence stretched out. “Sorry,” I said after a while. “I just don’t like to talk about it.”

“I didn’t get the information from a department file,” he said, as if I had invited him to take up where he left off. “Frank talked to me after you came home.”

“What?”

“Oh, not very directly, ’least not at first. Stopped by my desk one day, started asking about posttraumatic syndrome in hostages. What was typical, how long did it last, and such.”

I just stared at him in disbelief.

“Frank’s a quiet man,” he went on. “I didn’t figure it was too easy on him to bring the subject up. I knew you had been home for a few days. Everyone else was patting him on the back, saying how glad they were that you had been found alive. He was glad, too, but he looked tired.”

“Exhausted,” I said. “We were both exhausted. For weeks afterward, I rarely slept through a night.”

“And now?”

“Better. Much better, for the most part. I wouldn’t leave the house at first.”

He waited.

“It takes more to trigger a nightmare,” I said, giving in. “Some things still bother me — I still can’t stand to be in confined spaces for very long. Sometimes, I’ll think, Oh, it’s all behind me, and then I’ll find myself standing in line in a grocery store, and someone is saying, ‘Lady? Lady? Are you okay?’ because I’ve let my mind wander, and it’s wandered to that time, and I’m remembering.”

“But it isn’t like a memory.”

“No. It’s as if I’m there.”

“You think about being hurt?”

“No, not usually. If I’m thinking about myself, I think about being scared, afraid of what would come next. Other times….”

“Other times?” he prompted.

“I killed someone,” I said. “I think about him. About ending his life.”

“What happened?”

“I thought you said Frank talked to you.”

“You tell me.”

I almost balked again, but there he was, relaxed as ever, and I wanted to shake his complacency. At first, that’s what I wanted. But by the time we were over the Tejon Pass and looking down into the San Joaquin Valley, I had confided in him to a degree that I had confided in few others. Usually, recalling those events is an invitation to a certain amount of emotional upheaval, and I found myself wondering not only why I had spoken so freely, but also why I felt relieved rather than devastated. I began to realize that in some way Cassidy’s quiet calm had been extended to me, and I had grabbed on to it. It had slowed my reactions, protected me from all the emotions usually so easily aroused when I thought of the time of my captivity.

Cassidy was silent, but there was no uneasiness in it.

He stopped at a gas station in Grapevine even though he still had half a tank, paying an extortionist’s price for a few gallons of regular while I went into the rest room and washed my face.

When I came out he had pulled the car away from the pumps and parked it on the side of the station. He was leaning against the car, arms folded, watching the other customers. The wind was gusty, and I had to use both hands to hold my skirt down as I crossed the pavement. When I had dressed that morning I had considered wearing jeans, but when I’d remembered that he was wearing a suit, I’d decided to wear work clothes. I didn’t know who else might be hanging around at the
Californian
on a Saturday, but it would be best not to attract too much attention. Now, walking awkwardly to the car, I wished I had remembered about the wind and worn slacks. Cassidy saw me and grinned before he turned to open the passenger door for me.

“You doing okay?” he asked once we were both inside. He hadn’t put the key in the ignition yet.

“Yes,” I said, self-conscious again.

“Thanks for talking to me about it,” he said, starting the car.

“I surprised myself,” I admitted. “Frank and Jack are the only other people who’ve heard the whole story. Unless Frank already told you most of this?”

“No,” he said. “No, he hasn’t. He really didn’t give me too many particulars.”

“Are you friends?”

“With Frank?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Well, not exactly. We’re friendly, but not close. I do like Frank. Probably because he is one of two people in the whole damned department who never thought it would be a hilarious and original joke to call me ‘Hopalong.’ ”

“Who’s the other one?”

“Me.”

I laughed. “I’d think the two of you would get along well.”

“We do get along. We just don’t usually end up handling the same cases. Once or twice he’s caught one of the ones that didn’t turn out the way I had hoped.”

“What does that mean?”

“The CIT — our team — gets called out to negotiate all sorts of critical incidents — suicide threats, kidnappings, hostage takings, and barricade situations — bank robberies, domestic violence, you name it. Much as I’d like to say we’re one hundred percent successful, we’re not. Over the years, Frank’s caught a couple of cases where someone threatening suicide went ahead and did it before I could talk them out of it. Had a domestic barricade situation go bad last year.”

“The one where the man was holding his wife and three kids at gunpoint?”

“Yes.”

“But you got the kids out.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t say anything more.

“I think I remember the story — something about one of the wife’s relatives?”

“Her brother. The brother was with an intelligence negotiator, giving us information on the husband and weapons he might have, and so forth.”

“What’s an intelligence negotiator?”

“Part of the team — person who gathers as much information as possible on the suspect and anything else relevant to the situation. Ideally, there’s a separate, secured area where this person interviews anyone who has information that may be of some use.”

“And this time there wasn’t?”

“There was, but the intelligence officer got distracted when the kids were released. While the officer was trying to talk to the kids about the situation in the house, the brother decided to play the hero. Snuck off and tried to break through the perimeter we had set up, but didn’t make it. We caught him. All the same, there was scuffling and he started shouting. Husband heard the noise and decided we were sending the SWAT team in. He just lost it. Shot her, shot himself.”

I stared out the window for a moment. “How old are you, Cassidy?”

“I’m forty-two.” He smiled. “Now you know why I’m gray headed — sure as hell ain’t the years.”

Now I know why you understand people who have nightmares, I thought, but didn’t say it.

“I probably shouldn’t be talking to you about failures,” he said after a minute. “I don’t suppose I’ve inspired your confidence.”

“You’re wrong.” I looked over at him. “You know what? I think you
know
you’re wrong. I think one of the first things you learn about anyone is how to inspire his or her confidence.”

He laughed. “Hell, Irene, sometimes I really do just talk.”

“Sure, Cassidy. Sure.”

After miles of hills and mountain grades, we came to the highways that cross the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley, which are flat and waste no time with curves. They practically beg for speed. We took the Highway 99 turnoff and flew past exits for Mettler and Pumpkin Center and Weed Patch. Tumbleweeds skipped across the highway.

“Lordy,” Cassidy said, “if it weren’t for the palm trees lining that road over there, I’d be afraid I’d died and gone to Amarillo to pay for my sins.”

“I like it out here,” I told him. “Makes me think of my grandmother’s farm in Kansas. Look — there’s a windmill.” I pointed to one that stood just east of the road. “She had one like that.”

“Excited over a windmill, are you? Things must be slow in the Las Piernas newsroom.”

I ignored that. “You can see for miles. Crops are growing. There are cattle and—”

“You see a couple of cows and a pumpkin patch, and you get all romantic about it, thinking of your grandma. I see backbreaking work. I moved from our family farm to Austin just so I could keep the bottom of my boots clean.”

“Did it work?”

“Nope. Got into law enforcement and I’ve been stepping in somebody else’s BS every day since.”

“At least you’ll enjoy the music out here. Bakersfield bills itself as the C and W capital of California.”

He grimaced. “Did I ever tell you how I came to live on the West Coast?”

What the hell. “No, Cassidy, even though I’ve known you for about a dozen hours now, I’m afraid you’ve never told me.”

“Well, I was in Texas, and I had my radio on. All I could tune in was Jesus men and country-western music. So I started driving, trying to get to where I could hear something different. Next thing I knew, I was in California.”

I laughed. “And I suppose you had to go to work in Las Piernas just so you could earn gas money to get back home.”

“Oh, no. Once I learned I could live some place that had something else on the radio, I never wanted to leave.”

“We’d better keep the radio off here, then, and plan on amusing ourselves with conversation.”

“A cinch.”

“Cassidy?”

“Hmm.”

“I’ve been to Texas — including Austin. I’d swear I heard all kinds of music there.”