Total Victim Theory (50 page)

The room is a big rectangle with a line of green booths where the inmates sit opposite their visitors, separated by a long, bulletproof window. About half the booths are filled with jailbirds in orange jumpsuits talking to their abused spouses, disappointed family members, or unconvicted accomplices. In one of the booths, the first of the line running from left to right, sits a girl, unpaired with any inmate.

To my surprise, the guard directs me to her booth. After a perplexed wrinkling of my brow, I step forward and take a skeptical gander at my supposed visitor—a woman with black hair and sunglasses who I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before.

“She’s here for me?” I turn to the guard and whisper.

The guard double-checks something on his clipboard and nods.

I approach the girl and give a shrug, as if to suggest she should
explain herself. Does she have me confused with an incarcerated uncle of the same name? Or did the guard slip up, intending to bring out someone else?

The girl—who’s about twenty-two and wears a pink T-shirt that falls flatteringly on an attractive figure—either has poor vision and doesn't realize the mistake or is so laid-back she accepts me as a substitute for whomever she’d intended to meet. She smiles, takes off her glasses, and looks at me. It’s a look that’s inexplicably fraught with emotion, as if she’d just laid eyes on her long lost soul mate.

She gestures for me to pick up the phone.

The features of her face are basically perfect—though something’s off about one of her eyes. Or perhaps it's the tissue around her eye. It doesn't seem to move properly. Maybe she's had nerve damage or a stroke or something. I remember there was a girl in my law school class whose face got half-paralyzed—either because of stress or because she fell asleep with her face on a desk—I can't remember exactly. Anyway, this girl's face reminds me of that.

But there’s something more. In her demeanor—a haunted, damaged quality. The gun-shy look of someone who's endured a beatings or two. It's a look that lingers in the eyes of a lot of the victims I've interviewed. I've talked to other agents about it. There's a debate about whether they just always have it or whether it shows up after—about whether it’s the cause or the effect of whatever really bad thing happened to them.

“Hey,” she says, once I've got the receiver to my ear. The pleasantness of her voice surprises me. It’s melodic. Somehow it conveys a hopefulness I wasn't expecting.

“Hey,” I say. “Do we know one another?” I try not to smile, though I find myself immediately wanting to do so.

“I’m Nicole,” she says.

As soon as she says her name, it clicks.

Holy shit. I feel my heart accelerate a bit. “Oh, wow,” I mutter. It's Nicole Copeland. I recognize her now from pictures in the news.

She gives a nervous laugh and draws her hair back from her face. “I've wanted to meet you for a long time,” she says. “You know, because of what we have in common.”

“How did you even know—”

“About you? From the FBI. After everything happened. Your name came up quite a few times when the agents were interviewing me.”

I'm silent for a moment, unsure what I want to say to her. When I look down, I notice I'm scratching my scar. Thought I'd stopped doing that a while back.

Feeling anxious now. Don’t like talking about what happened, and if she's here just to rehash things or commiserate with me, don't think I'm up for that. But I'm not going to be rude either. “And how are you doing?” are the words that finally come out of my mouth.

“Doing good. Doing as best I can,” she says. “How about you?”

I give a shrug. “I'm here.”

“They say you might be getting out soon,” she says.

“Maybe in a couple of months,” I say. Evidence from the Morrison cabin proves that Silva was Tad. It also largely clears me of the crimes with which I’m charged. Nonetheless, it may take several months to get my case before a judge. But I’m not bitter about still being here. Not with all the more pressing things there are to be bitter about.

“It must be nice that all this is ending. To put it behind you,” she says.

I bite my upper lip, thinking how I want to respond. I was intending to just be cordial and humor her, but I feel this flourish of emotion and regret sweep over me. I just can’t bring myself to pretend or to profess something I don’t feel. “To be honest, Nicole, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to put what happened behind me.”

She takes off her sunglasses and folds them up. “Well maybe not put it behind you . . .” Her face flushes. “But at least move on.”

I'm silent for a while. “Have you
moved on
?” I ask.

“I accept that it happened . . . that's about all I can claim.”

Already, I'm rattled. Should just tell her to get lost, whatever she looks like. “Well, I don’t accept what happened.” There's a deep bitterness in my voice. “Everything that ever meant anything to me . . . that man took away.”

She looks away for a moment. She probably expected me to react very differently than this. She probably thought it would be some kind of relief because in some narrow, shallow sense we went
through the same things.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I didn't mean I'd accepted the things Tad did. I just meant I've acknowledged that it happened so I can start trying to pick up the pieces.”

A tiny huff of laughter. “I wish you could teach me how to pick up the pieces. Tell me how you do that, Nicole.”

She looks away. “You just do it. Because what’s the other option?”

“There are always other options,” I mutter, and it strikes me how hateful this sounds.

She looks into my eyes. She wants to say something
hopeful
. That will inspire me. But she doesn't get how far gone I am—how many circles of hell I am beneath the reach of self-help books. It's not her fault, but that's just the way it is.

And yet, I don't need to upset her. I don't need to show her the place where I'm at or pull her down with me. “Look, Nicole, I'm really glad you came out here. I think you're a strong person for all you've been though. I really admire that. But there are things we have in common and there are other things we don’t.”

She just nods, but in an uncomprehending way. I really wish things wouldn't have gotten off on the wrong foot like this. Trying to think of something that will undo this. Because there's something about her, I don't know what it is—

“Well, I appreciate you taking the time to meet me. I really wish you the best of luck with everything.” She flashes a smile, but it’s just a polite smile. Not like the real one when she first appeared. “I guess I had better be going.”

She’s hung up her phone before I've had time to respond. I was tempted to saying something slightly encouraging, but the moment’s passed.

As she stands, we share a look. There's a hesitation. On both sides. I see my face in the glass. Inscribed right on top of hers. I look so full of despair. It's almost ghastly. What I'm becoming. What I am.

She turns away. But the second after she does, I realize there's something I want to say to her. Not want, but need to say. “Nicole,” I shout, but, of course she can’t hear me because of the glass. She’s almost out the door.

Turn back. Turn back and look at me—as if I had some
telepathy that would go to her.

But no, she’s already receding through the doorway.

Disappearing.

I pick up the phone and bang it against the glass. But she's gone. Rounded the corner.

A sudden and unbearable sadness overcomes me. It’s almost as intense as those other two worst times. Like I might shatter a mirror and stab a shard of glass into my throat just to make it stop.

Why am I feeling this?

Staring forlornly after her, I realize the guard on the other side of the glass has perceived my plight. He sticks his head through the doorway where she just vanished and calls to her. Makes a beckoning gesture to the other side.

My heart does a strange flip-flop.

And a moment later, she reappears in the doorway. We just look at each other through the window. Awkwardly . . . of course it's awkwardly. She doesn't know what I want.

She’s still holding her sunglasses in her hand. That's the moment I realize that one of her eyes isn’t real. It looks different than the other one. The way it sparkles. Like it's glass.

She picks up her phone first, and then I pick up mine.

“What’s up?” she asks, skeptically.

Neither of us sits down. We just stare at each other like two gunfighters, poised with their hands on their weapons.

Her face is inscribed within mine in the glass. It’s like we’re fused together or like she’s snuck herself inside me and is staring out through my eyes—or, maybe, vice versa.

I hesitate for a moment, biting my lip. My mind's gone blank. “That's weird,” I say, feeling a pink blush come into my face. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

She smiles. Her third smile, this one the best of the three.

“Well, do you want me to just stand here and wait for you to remember?” she asks.

I see my face in the glass.

And I realize that I'm smiling too.