Bang (11 page)

“Yeah, well, he probably doesn't want us mucking around with each other, either,” she counters, popping up onto her tiptoes to kiss him with a cold ice cream mouth. “And here we are.”

“Here we are,” Jack echoes quietly and ducks his head to kiss her one more time.

Chapter Eight

With their one viable witness still in a coma the following morning, the best plan Mari can think of is almost embarrassingly old school—literally. She thinks there's a good chance their shooter might be in one of the last five yearbooks from Great Barrington High. Which is how they wind up hunched over a study carrel in the public library in between a middle-aged Somali guy searching the want ads and a greasy-looking thirty-something Mari thinks might be looking at porn on his phone.

“He's what, nineteen or twenty?” she murmurs, flipping through the glossy pages past the volleyball team and drama club. Mari did the lit mag when she was in high school. “So he should have been a junior or a senior.”

“If he even went to GBH,” Jack points out. He's surly again this morning, sulking out the window the whole ride over here. As they were leaving the station lot one of the cruisers backfired and he jumped about a mile in his seat. She needs to watch that, Mari knows, that day at the call center and how spooked he seems to get without warning. She wonders if this library has books about PTSD.

“Let's assume he did,” she says now, running her finger down the rows of pimply faces, searching. “And if we don't find him here, we'll try the Catholic schools.”

“Thou shalt not shoot at law enforcement,” Jackson mutters. “Nice.”

Mari picks up the 2012 book and shoves it at him, hard enough that Jackson oofs and she feels bad for half a second. Then he scowls at her, and she smiles sweetly in reply. “Write down the ones whose photos weren't available,” she instructs.

They scan pictures for a whole hour in silence, the sound of pages turning and the occasional burst of chatter over the radio. Twice Mari thinks she's found the kid before realizing something is off, ears in one picture, hairline in the other. Each time, something stops her from telling Jackson, her normal instinct to share everything tamped down by his sour expression. He's as wiggly as Sonya in the chair beside her, full of pen-clicking and knee-tapping energy, long fingers plucking impatiently at the glossy yearbook pages.

“This is fucking dumb,” he announces finally. “We're gonna be on grunt duty again if Leo finds us shirking.”

Mari looks up from perusing a two-page prom spread. They're supposed to be out by the highway, making ticket quota for the municipality, but she thought they were on the same page about that being a waste of time. “What's your problem?” she asks. “No one gives two craps about traffic.”

“Well, maybe I do,” Jackson says, shoving his chair back from the carrel hard enough that it knocks Mari's sideways. Her mouth drops open in shock. “Maybe I have a vested interest in flying under the radar three weeks after finally getting reinstated, did that ever occur to you?”

Mari blinks. “Okay,” she says slowly, using her pen as a bookmark and turning to face him fully. “I'm sorry. I thought we were under the radar.”

Jack laughs. “Yeah. Since I got back, we fucked up an undercover, fucked up a domestic and started fucking each other. I'd say we're doing real well.”

Fucking each other, Jesus. Just yesterday he was wiping barf off her kid's mouth. “Okay, first of all, we didn't ‘fuck up' that domestic yesterday, we identified a suspect,” Mari says, trying to keep her voice under control. The Somali man is already looking over at them with curiosity. “And now we're following up.”

Jackson's eyebrows jump. “Following up? Sure, if we were Encyclopedia Brown, maybe. This is a last-ditch effort, and you know it.” He gets to his feet, surly as you please.

Mari makes herself turn back to her yearbook. 2009 was a bad year for the GBH prom: Christmas in May. “Looking through these is important to me,” she says. “But if you wanna go write tickets to cover our asses, be my guest.”

Jackson doesn't sit back down. “You just want to make yourself feel better,” he says meanly. There are definitely at least three different civilians looking at them now.

Okay, that's it. Mari slams her book shut. “Take a walk, Officer Ford.” She's technically the officer with seniority, by virtue of being placed at GB exactly two weeks before he was. They used to joke about it when they were rookies. “Go write tickets. I'll meet you back here at four.”

“Best idea you've had all day,” Jack says, calling what Mari didn't realize was a bluff until after she'd said it. No way did she actually expect him to leave. There he is, though, all angry motion, grabbing his jacket off the back of the wooden chair. “I'll be back later.”

Dammit. Mari shakes her head as she watches him go over the top of the carrel, stalking across the dingy carpet with a chip on his shoulder the size of a log. He doesn't look back at her even once. Something that feels dangerously like tears is pushing at the back of her mouth and no way, no way is Mari about to cry in public in her uniform, so she leaves the stack of books and heads to the ladies' room, wetting a stack of rough paper towels and using them to blot her flushed cheeks.

God, this is all such a fucking mess.

She knows he blames her for everything, even if he wouldn't ever admit it, even if he'll cover for her with everybody from Leo to his own mother. What she doesn't know is how they're ever going to make this work.

And she wants it to, Mari realizes, looking at herself in the mirror. She wants it to work so, so badly, more than she's wanted anything other than for Jack to survive after the shooting.

More than she ever wanted to save her marriage, that's for sure.

She takes a deep breath and smooths her hair down, ignoring the curious stare she gets from the librarian behind the desk and heading back out to her stack of yearbooks. The carrels are all empty now. Mari picks up the one Jack was looking through last, skimming past the faculty portraits and talent-show snapshots.

And there, on page one hundred seventy, is the face she's been desperate to see.

The bizarre part is how nice he looks, smiling into the camera like he's pleased as punch to be having his picture taken, no sullen drug-addict scowl or that blank school-shooter stare. He looks, Mari thinks vaguely, the blood roaring in her head and her vision getting a little hazy around the edges, like a sweet boy.

Brandon Carlson. Class of two thousand fucking ten.

Tried to kill her partner.

Mari's first scrambled instinct is to radio for backup. Instead she digs her cell phone out of her pocket with one shaking hand.

He doesn't answer, of course, the asshole. “Jack,” Mari tells him after the beep. Her whole body is shaking. “Get back in here right now. I found him.” He was on the soccer team, their Brandon Carlson. He quotes Homer Simpson in his graduation note.

When she looks up Jackson's already standing at the end of the carrels, frozen between the squat picture-book stacks like he's been hit by a thunderbolt. For a second Mari thinks he overheard or maybe just plain read her mind, a supernatural step up from their normal partner rhythm. Then she sees the cell phone in his hand.

But it turns out he isn't listening to her message. “Kid's woken up,” he says, holding up his phone and waggling it weakly. “Piper's gonna work on getting a name on our shooter.” He sounds stiff and sheepish all at once, like a kid who got halfway through pitching a fit before realizing he was already getting his way.

Mari laughs. “Actually,” she says, waving him over to look at Brandon Carlson's beaming face. “I think we might be a step ahead on that front.”

By the time they're back at the precinct, Sarge is in the process of organizing an honest-to-God manhunt, complete with extra manpower from Lee, a twenty-block search radius, tactical teams and one over-the-hill police dog named Joe. The last time Mari saw the GB officers organize on such a large scale was six years ago, when a little boy went missing from Stockbridge. Turns out it was a custody battle thing.

“I want you far away from this,” Leo tells them. They're standing in the hallway outside the big room where he normally takes roll. Mari can see Gordy Punch circling different areas on a blown-up screenshot from Google Maps, Robyn Birk writing out the members of each tactical team beside him. Mari gets the distinct sense everyone's been waiting their whole careers for this kind of excitement. “I mean it. Go home.”

Mari waits for Jackson to protest—God knows she wants to protest herself, to be the first one through the door, to click the cuffs around Brandon Carlson's skinny wrists and to look him in his coward face while she does it—but to her surprise all Jack does is nod. “Yessir.” He doesn't meet her eyes and for a moment Mari thinks of the morning in the call center, if maybe there's a reason he doesn't want to be part of this, but as he follows Mari toward the locker rooms, he leans over and whispers, “Is it possible they're taking this too seriously?” At Mari's blank expression, he adds, “They're calling it Operation Armageddon.”

Mari bursts out laughing. “Oh my God.”

“I mean, it's one tweaker kid who weighs about one hundred pounds soaking wet.” Jack laughs, rubbing at the back of his neck. The fact that they're back to “kid” now that an arrest is imminent is not lost on Mari. “You wanna go get blasted?”

Mari glances at the clock on the wall—just past three thirty. Patricia's got her card game after dinner. Sonya, who slept through the night and felt just fine for school this morning, is with her dad.

“Yeah,” Mari says, feeling the smile spread across her face, wide and unfamiliar. “I really, really do.”

She takes a little extra time changing out of her uniform, brushing the ponytail bump out of her hair and slicking on some mostly dried lipstick she finds at the back of her shelf. She's glad she wore her dark jeans and good boots. Her top is a soft gray sweater Patty got her last Christmas, sleeves long enough to pull down over her hands and fuss with if she's feeling nervous.

Which, God help her, at this particular moment she sort of is.

Jack's waiting for her in the hallway in jeans and a thermal, car keys dangling lazily from two long fingers. His gaze flicks up and down her body, overt. Mari feels her stomach flip. “You look nice,” is all he says.

Mari makes a face and bumps his shoulder with hers on their way to the exit, relieved by how solid he is, the sturdiness of his body. It's just Jack after all. “Oh, now you like me, huh?” she can't resist saying.

“I always like you,” Jackson mutters, head tipped down toward hers as they cross the parking lot. He looks embarrassed. It rained this morning and there's a slippery layer of yellow leaves pasted to the asphalt, wind rattling the damp trees that ring the parking lot.

“You do, huh?” Mari smirks. He's full of shit, but she doesn't want to ruin whatever this is right now, the sudden lightness, a feeling like getting out early from school. They're going to catch the kid, he's going to go to prison. Maybe that'll be enough to fix the two of them for good.

They go to the Perfect Pint, which Jackson hates because he says it's a firefighter bar and Mari loves because they have really delicious potato skins. He's the one that suggests it, though, then orders the app without her mentioning it. Mari hooks her ankle with his underneath the bar. “Hi,” she says.

Jack hands her a beer. “Hi,” he echoes, and oh, he's grinning, and it's like she's seeing her Jackson, the real Jackson, for the first time since the shooting. Mari feels herself grinning back.

“Do you remember the first night we came here?” she asks him once they've clinked and swallowed, the chilly beer tasting way better than any four-dollar draft has a right to. The place is pretty empty, which she guesses makes sense for this hour on a weekday, just a couple of older guys nursing beers down the far end of the bar. The walls are a deep maroon, hung with big mirrors bearing whiskey logos. A chalkboard advertises Monday night trivia and a corn chowder special. “The end of our rookie year?”

“After we got our ties clipped, sure,” Jack says. “You sang Journey songs at the top of your lungs all the way home.”

“I did not!” Mari protests, although she absolutely one hundred percent did, which is why she brought it up to begin with—it's one of her favorite memories, and she wants to be sure he remembers it too. Jack carried her back to her apartment slung over his shoulder, improbably strong despite the taut, economical build of him. It feels like it happened in another lifetime, to people way younger than they ever were.

“Uh-huh,” Jack says now, eyes crinkling up at the edges. “I thought you were real fucking cute.”

Mari's lips twist. That's another conversation they're going to have to have at some point, probably: sorry I got married when I kind of knew you liked me, but it's not like you didn't have a million tiny white girlfriends all the time. Now definitely doesn't feel like the moment, though, so, “Well, obviously,” she tells him, brassy. “I was.”

Jack reaches down and squeezes her thigh through the denim. Mari shivers. It's kind of luxurious, to flirt with him like this, to have permission to. For years she was so careful never to cross that line. He's mine, she wants to shout, like some ridiculous teenager or the lyrics to a country song, stupid. He's my boyfriend, he's my partner, he's mine. Never mind that that's not her style, not even a little. Lots of things weren't her style before now.

The bartender sets the potato skins down in front of them; she warns them that the plate is hot but Mari takes a big bite anyway, pulling at the long strings of melted cheese. Jack plucks a strand of it off her bottom lip. “Thanks,” Mari says. “I eat like Sonya, I swear to Christ.”

Jack grins. “How's she feeling?”

“Oh, she's fine,” Mari says. She called Andre this afternoon to check in, though she doesn't mention that to Jackson. She's not sure how she's supposed to navigate the both of them yet. “Twenty-four-hour bug, was all. She and George the biter were back to terrorizing each other first thing this morning.”