The Zone (3 page)

I know what I’m feeling is illogical, but there it is. Sitting in the park eating a burger and watching the kids, wandering around at all hours is what I do now. Pushups and situps and movies. No phone, the TV only connected to a DVD player and an old VHS unit. Ignore everything beyond line of vision. Take it one breath at a time. Never go near the PD buildings, do not think of the framed photos of my friends and team-mates hanging in the lobby alongside all the other officers who caught a violent end-of-shift.

My son is doing ten years in Huntsville, after a lengthy and ultimately futile legal battle; I made a few calls and insured that he was in a minimum security facility with first-timers rather than general population, as the son of a decorated police officer would have been in trouble in the yard. My ex lost her business to the expense and distraction of his legal defense, and is working for someone now. My daughter is pregnant and the father is not going to step up in terms of support. Can’t, really, being a teenager who majored in text-messaging.

That really doesn’t touch me much; his going to prison was a reality I had accepted long ago, just as my daughter’s chances of being a welfare mother were likewise pretty solid. That my ex would allow the two to destroy everything she had worked so hard to build wasn’t a terrible shock, either. My failings as a parent, and my children’s shortcomings were things that I had accepted a long time ago.

Maybe if I had
been more optimistic about my kids’ chances in life it might have made a difference in how they turned out, but I doubted it. The girl wasn’t dumb, but she had the same depth of personality as a mirror. Pretty and in-style was the limits of her ambition, and the insular world of school pecking orders were her horizons. Too careless to use birth control, too enamored of herself to weigh the sincerity of praise from others, too focused on the moment to think about tomorrow.

A fresh start- that was how someone suggested I look at it. It was true enough: I was stripped of home, career, family, wife; my team was dead, my body was impaired, and I was burdened with guilt about not dying with my officers, about not John-Wayne-ing our way out of the trap. About not simply telling Narcotics to
piss off and going home.

It was surreal; I could go by my ex-home and there it was, nothing really changed except the fact that I no longer had a key or the right to go inside. The PD was the same way: retired badge or not, I had to go in the lobby like everyone else, wait for an escort, intrude into the busy work day of others when once my arrival meant they had to pay attention. I could go in, but I never did. My team was gone, buried under a flag and volleys and the wail of bagpipes, with politicians solemnly praising attributes which didn’t really matter in those busy seconds in the House. Everything was changed, and all because we had done the job they hired us to do.

Cooper saved my life in the wrecked aftermath: the news of his suicide reached through the other crap and back-handed me hard. We had exchanged a few mumbled awkward phrases before the Grand Jury and at the award ceremony, but had not really spoken at all. I knew he was hurting bad: the deal was his brainchild, and he had the added burden of having gone down without getting a shot off. Police officers often envision death, but it is the heroic sort, going out blazing away. To be maimed without even firing back is an unspoken disgrace, even though it is usually unavoidable. Cooper was taken out fast based purely on where he had been standing-his role had put him in the epicenter of the kill zone.

His death had struck a spark of pride within me: it made me realize how close I was slipping off the cold gray edge. The shambles of my life was bad, terrible, but to let it drive me to suicide was too much. It would mean that the House killed me, and I was the last of the team still standing; if I went down, then we lost. That didn’t make sense even to me, but it was still true, down in the bone. Some things don’t have to make sense to have weight: I
had
to survive, because to do otherwise would let the others down. Cooper had had the advantage: he wasn’t the only survivor, but I was, and that closed the suicide option.

So I wander around, watch documentaries, read my history books, glower at the world, and speak to no one. It is a sham of an existence, but it deprives the House of a win, and that is reason enough.

Chapter Two

The strangeness started for me on a Thursday; ‘strangeness’ is an unwieldy term, but it was the best choice because I wasn’t completely sure if the world was getting strange, or I was. That’s a real danger after the emotional roller-coaster I had been through and the long gray glide through life that followed: too much time alone can take small problems and make them large.

That fact in mind had moved me to develop habits in this broken-mirror retirement of mine, and lacking any outside structure for my days I created my own, a mix of self-discipline and inclination. Although by nature a night owl I was careful to remain mostly oriented to a daytime schedule, as I suspected that operating at night might be similar to drinking heavily: a comfort at first, but doom in the long run. Habits to control my day, lists to direct them, and a journal to serve as a point of perspective were the tools I employed in my sanity program. Some days they helped.

Being a night-owl was out, but I still didn’t get up until around eleven because I hated mornings, and slept best when in sunlight when I managed to sleep at all. One of my self-imposed rules was to use my entire place rather than just live on the surprisingly comfortable sofa in front of the TV, and so I woke up in my bedroom. My place, once my uncle’s pawn shop, was a cement-framed brick building built in 1920. According to the cornerstone with the date it had initially been a fine jewelers, and they built it like a safe, a two-story rectangle with a slightly pitched roof hidden behind brick ramparts (I’m not kidding, they even had the little notches, stylized archer fighting positions). The second story was an apartment, just a small bedroom, full bath, and kitchenette; my uncle had used it for storage, but the beer bash weekend had resulted in new insulation, new drywall, and a base coat of paint in ivory, ready to accept paneling, wallpaper, or paint. Still ready, because I had never bothered to decorate at any level; even in my bachelor days I hadn’t been one for nesting.

My bedroom had an Army cot with a pillow and poncho liner, a beige plastic clothes hamper, a particleboard dresser from Target and a beat-up student’s desk I had brought from home and which I used to set stuff on, mostly guns. There was a window centered in the long wall; I normally liked sunlight while I slept, but I had tacked a sheet over it because the bars made it feel like jail. The window had iron bars dating from the days as a fine jewelers, good solid metal set into brickwork. The bedroom and bath were separated by a short hallway which ended in a iron ladder bolted to the bare brick wall leading to a steel hatch in the ceiling that opened to the roof; I kept a gas grill up there along with a lawn chair, the sort that is aluminum tubes and green woven nylon. Next to the ladder was an alcove with a stacked washer/dryer, the kind they put in apartment closets.

Morning routine called for some basic exercises, shower, and clean clothes (tee shirt, running shorts); I shaved about every third day unless there was some reason to look clean-cut. For the first time in my adult life I had no regulations controlling my appearance, but I was too old a dog to learn new tricks-my hair was in the same buzz cut it had been since Basic Training.

My kitchen was small, tan wood-pattern counters and white cupboards, a stainless-steel fridge, and a built-in booth ‘breakfast nook’ with a processed wood table and maroon vinyl on the booths. I had a stove (my microwave and the grill on the roof did the real cooking), a double sink, and not much cupboard space, but that was all right because I ate off plastic and paper on the occasions I made meals that did not cook in their own container. A pop tart and a juice box made up breakfast, eaten leaning against the fridge, and I headed downstairs to start my day.

The ground level was wide open, divided into two parts by a load-bearing interior wall that split the floor space into two-thirds and one-third. The big area was now my living area with my sofa, milk-crate coffee table, big-screen TV, entertainment center, a small fridge, a multi-use gym, a treadmill, and a couple free-standing bookcases from Target that held my books, video collection, and a boom-box from my uncle’s leftover stock. The floor was bare concrete, the walls primed and undecorated.

The only window on the ground floor had been a big display window next to the front door, but it had been closed off with cinderblocks with internal rebar and concrete fill when my uncle opened his pawn shop. The front door was ballistic plastic between black sheets of expanded metal mesh in a strap-iron frame and hung on peg-and-loop hinges set deep enough into the concrete door frame to foil even the best man-portable ram-Uncle had not been interested in burglary. I had taped butcher paper to the inside for privacy, although the two sheets of mesh didn’t line up so there really wasn’t much visibility anyway.

The door to the back third was strap iron and bars, propped open by an Army-surplus ammo can; I didn’t use the area much; there was an alcove with a toilet and a sink, my gun safe from home, and some boxes of stuff gathering dust from my divorce. The double doors that led to the alley were original to the building, cast-iron panels on hinges you could lift a bridge section with to let ships pass by, held closed by both a central bar, and top & bottom latches that went four inches into concrete

The whiteboard on the wall near the TV displayed the chores and duties currently outstanding, but none required immediate attention. I had a couple paperbacks to read and plenty of unwatched video to hand, so my options were numerous. After some poking around I settled down with a VHS collection on the Civil War that my uncle had taken in during the last days, a History Channel special.

A couple hours learning about Lincoln and his generals (which was a lot more interesting than it sounds-history has always been a major interest of mine) passed pleasantly enough, until my stomach reminded me that half-a bag of stale stick pretzels wasn’t enough to hold the line. I made it a habit to get out of my place a couple days a week, and the white board indicated it had been four days since my last foray
(I kept track), so I decided to head out for a bite to eat and a stroll about the city.

In my closet I have a collection of knee supports, braces, crutches, half-crutches and canes, but my knee was responding very well to exercise and use so long as I didn’t try to move faster than ninety steps a minute. I put on one of the ace bandage tube supports you can buy anyplace just to be safe. The medics had assured me that my surgery and therapy had gone amazingly well and that I could expect the use of my leg for life, but I was very careful. What they considered ‘use of’ was not my definition. I wasn’t happy with my condition, and I wanted to insure it got no worse.

Jeans, a navy tee shirt with the local radio station logo (they were giving them away at the mall one rainy day while I was walking laps), polished tactical boots, and a multi-pocketed khaki vest of the sort that photographers used to wear made up my outfit.

I added some money from the desk, and strapped on my hardware: a Glock 21C with a combo laser sight/tactical flashlight on its rail in a pancake holster on my right hip, a .38 Colt Diamondback in a shoulder rig under my left arm, butt-down so I could draw with either hand, and a Spyderco lock blade clipped to the pocket of my jeans. Two Berretta Model 21As were tucked into pockets in my vest, along with a spare mag for the Glock and loose rounds for the Colt. I knew it was far too much firepower-I had always carried off-duty, but never like this. Since the House I never left home with less than three guns for reasons I never bothered to examine. The unexamined life is a lot easier to deal with, in my opinion.

Firearms were always an interest of mine, and I had kept my collection in the divorce, plus a variety from my Uncles residual stock, the latter mostly low-value stuff. Since moving I had done a lot of selling and trading of firearms; my wife hadn’t approved of my hobby, and one positive aspect of being family-free was that I was able to indulge myself. With ample trading goods and plenty of time, I had built an impressive collection into something more impressive. Exceptional, maybe.

Money was one of the areas where I had no problems, as fifty percent of Lieutenant’s pay, with reduced taxes due to being retired & disabled in a state which wisely had no income tax was not a bad sum of money; add in that I owned my new home free and clear, had no car and no credit card debt, and the result was a dearth of money worries. It didn’t hurt that I preferred a bare-bones existence, without cable, landline phone, or Net fees.

The neighborhood I lived in was an old one, once the main street of a town long since absorbed by urban sprawl; built immediately post WW1, it had seen a lot of ups and downs over the decades, but ten years ago they had punched a circular eight-lane highway project around the urban mess to cope with increasing traffic; it passed about two blocks east of my street and although we were technically outside the ring it had revitalized the area a bit, besides ripping down a wide swath of decaying neighborhoods. Over half the original buildings were gone, mostly to create parking space; the rest were office space for low-to-moderate-priced lawyers, chiropractors, people who said they could help you get a green card, a few close-to-trendy art galleries and a couple places to eat. At night I was the only person on this street for a couple blocks in either direction unless somebody worked late. My place was on a corner, facing west; the north side was a parking lot for a building that housed a lawyer; to the east an alley separated me from a similar building that used to be an insurance office but currently was empty.