Bang Page 6

  “Have a sec?” he asks, when Joe answers his rap with It’s open!

  Joe glances up from the mess of files in front of him, looking harassed. He and Robyn Birk are the only two detectives at GB and their caseload is always double the maximum the regs suggest. When he sees Jack, his face changes. “Hey, Ford. Yeah, come on in.”

  Jackson does, closing the door behind him. Joe has a look on his face like he knows what’s coming, but Jack asks anyway. “You caught my case, right? You and Birk?”

  “I mean, after Internal finished with it, yeah.” Joe frowns. “We have no new leads though, man, if that’s what you’re wondering. I would have told you.”

  Jack shoves his hands inside his pockets. “I know. I just want to look at the file.”

  Joe’s eyebrows jump. “Why? It’s just forensics on the slugs and a bunch of pictures of blood.”

  Jackson shrugs. He’s been putting off this encounter every day since he got back. Now, thinking about Leo and getting reinstated and all the ways his jumpy-ass broken body might fail his Sergeant—or anyone else—he needs to get it done. “Just to look.”

  Joe sighs. He leans down and yanks open his file drawer, flipping through until he gets to the right folder. He drops it in front of Jackson with a thunk. “You have five minutes. Don’t mess that shit up.”

  Jack takes the file to one of the unused interview rooms. It feels light in his hands, insubstantial. Not like a case that’s anywhere near being solved. His name is written on the tab in block letters, JACKSON FORD. Someone added a PRIORITY sticker and drew three stars next to it. Jack wonders if it was Joe or Birk.

  He flips the file open and sure enough, there are the pictures Joe mentioned, sticky pools of blood gleaming under the flash, evidence markers littered across the cement floor. There are a couple stills of the bullets too, the clean ones retrieved from the garage floor and the mangled bent ones the docs pulled out during surgery. Jackson flips past those and a description of his wounds until he finds what he’s looking for.

  De la Espada: I don’t know, white, brown hair? I didn’t see the guy’s face, he had a mask on until the very end. I just—I wasn’t looking.

  Mari’s statement.

  It’s by far the longest document in the whole file, question after question as Piper and then the detectives tried to extract everything Mari knew or could have known. Which, Jackson notes, skimming the statement, wasn’t much. And he knew that, he’d been told by the IAB detective who finally took his own statement, but it’s different to see it written out.

  De la Espada: That’s right, I ran up the south staircase when I heard the gunshots. Three shots, all in a row.

  De la Espada: Yes, Officer Ford was on the ground when I arrived on the scene.

  De la Espada: No, I didn’t—I didn’t pursue.

  Jackson slams the folder shut.

  He heads home that night with a sixer of beer and the intention to clean his place and not think about anything at all. He’s still in the same condo he’s lived in since he and Mari were rookies, two bedrooms and a mortgage he started paying back when everybody else was still blowing through their take-home on nachos and pitchers of beer. Even then he liked the idea of having a place that was his, no landlord to answer to or rent hikes to worry about. He likes things that are permanent, Jack does. He always has.

  He’s wiping down his kitchen counters when his phone rings in his pocket, HOME displayed in all caps accompanied by the world’s cheesiest ’90s picture of him and his siblings in colorful sweaters for a Christmas shoot at Sears. It makes Mari laugh every time she sees it. “Hi, Mom,” Jackson says as he picks up.

  “Hi, baby.” Jack can hear a dog barking in the background, Rocko, the newest yellow lab in the string of yellow labs his parents have had ever since he and Terry and Meredith were kids. “I’m just calling to see what time you thought you might come over tomorrow.”

  Fuck.

  Tomorrow, as in the nineteenth. As in, his dad’s birthday.

  “Uh.” Jack stalls, feeling like a piece of shit for forgetting. Birthdays are a big deal in the Ford house, your favorite dinner and a surplus of off-key singing. Meredith has been in the hospital for two of hers but Jack’s mom never let that stop them, the whole family parading through the corridors of the eating disorder clinic with an enormous chocolate-layer cake. “Could get to you around four, maybe?” Then, although he has no fucking idea if this is going to play or not, “Was thinking maybe I’d bring Mari.”

  “Oh?” There’s a clatter, and Rocko woofing again. “Of course, we’d love to have her.”

  Jack tries to read her tone for something beyond mild surprise, but can’t. “Yeah.” He scratches at a piece of stuck-on grime beside the sink with a thumbnail. Then, like he and Mari have already discussed this, “She’s just gotta make sure someone can take Sone.” He’s good at lying about Mari now. All through his hospital stay he made up bullshit stories about why she wasn’t at his bedside, lied to his parents and his brother and sister and any other cops that happened to show up. He kept figuring she’d make an honest man out of him eventually, show up with apologies and explanations.

  Obviously that didn’t happen.

  His mom shushes the dog. “Well, we’ve still got the baby seats from Aunt Krissy’s twins kicking around somewhere, plus the high chair. Tell Mari we’d love to have her daughter visit again.”

  Again, as in only once before. The last time Mari got down to Jack’s parents’ place was right after the baby was born, a double date with her and Andre and whoever Jack’s girlfriend was at the time, a blonde named Susie. Jack remembers Susie thought it was weird. “Sonya’s too big for that chair now, Mom,” he says. Then, “Sure, I’ll pass it along.” Back when they were rookies, Mari used to come all the time. Once the Fords even threw her a birthday party. Then Andre happened, and Sonya. Jack guesses at some point he stopped extending invites.

  He chats with his mom for another five minutes, Rocko’s new fear of the step-ladder and how his dad is convinced this is the year for the Bruins. Then his dad comes on to discuss his convictions himself. Meredith grabs the phone away for a second to whisper noisily that she can include Jackson on her card if he needs. Jack tells her to go screw.

  “Just get the beer he likes,” Mer says, lowering her voice for real. “Easy.” Jack huffs.

  After everyone hangs up, he puts the phone back in his pocket and stands staring at his half-cleaned kitchen, the wine he’d planned to serve Mari tomorrow. Then he grabs his keys. On the way out the door he shoots a text to Terry, why the hell didn’t you remind me it was dad’s birthday?

  So you’d fuck up and make me look good, is the reply. Jackson rolls his eyes.

  The liquor store is yet another place in GB where everyone knows his face, both because he’s a frequent customer and because he and Mari get called out here a lot, homeless guys trying to pocket loose beer cans. Jackson buys the faintly girly craft stuff his dad can’t get enough of and does a round of hellos. Everyone asks about the shooting—how it felt, how he’s healing, if they’ve caught the guy yet. The kid from the stockroom even asks to see the scars.

  “You wanna see my dick too?” Jackson asks, handing over a twenty. By the time he hits the parking lot, he’s dying for a cigarette.

  He lights up outside the SUV, not wanting to ruin the interior. He keeps telling himself he hasn’t really started smoking again, is just sneaking one or two as a pick-me-up, but so far he’s averaged three packs a week since he’s been back on active duty. It takes him about a half-dozen drags before he’s calm enough to call Mari. Her statement is still swimming around his head. He was banking on having a night to forget about it before he had to talk to her.

  “I’m sorry to blow off our thing,” he tells her once he’s explained about his father. “I just—didn’t think.”

  “You’re just also a really shitty son,” Ma
ri supplies. She agreed to tag along the second he suggested it, which was unexpected. Jackson guesses the choice to stop hanging out with his family hadn’t really been hers. “It’s cool, I understand.”

  “Fuck off.” Jackson laughs. He pushes her witness statement out of his mind.

  When he swings by to pick her up the next afternoon, though, she’s the one who looks like she could use a nicotine fix, or possibly a stiff drink and a Klonopin. “I baked,” she informs him, holding up a Tupperware filled with wafer-thin chocolate cookies as she opens the car door. “Or that’s a lie, my mother baked, but.”

  “Still counts,” Jackson assures her, hooking a hand around her headrest as he backs out of the driveway. He feels himself softening toward her all of a sudden. With not a little self-loathing, he realizes he expected her to be too ashamed to come.

  She takes a long time to get settled, fidgeting around like she can’t quite get comfortable, setting the cookies on the floor and then her lap and then the floor again. She reaches down to adjust the passenger seat, something he’s never seen her do in his car before—probably, he realizes, because she used to be the one who sat in it most.

  It’s an hour and a half to his folks’ house in Worcester, and Jack explicitly promised himself he wouldn’t let them spend the whole goddamn trip in silence. “Mer’s excited to see you,” he says.

  “Oh yeah?” Mari asks. She looks pretty as all hell today, her short hair blown out so it’s thick and shiny, these dark dark jeans that follow her every curve. He knows she’s self-conscious about it since the baby but Jack loves her body, her heavy breasts and her round hips and ass and belly. There’s a deep V to the neckline of her slouchy, stripey sweater. “Mer, not Ter?”

  “Didn’t talk to Ter about it,” Jackson says carefully, pulling onto the highway. “Doubt if he’s even excited to see me.”

  “Liar,” Mari accuses. “You’re his favorite.” She reaches over and turns on the radio, hunting around through the presets before finally settling on the shitty easy listening station she always picks. Jackson likes having her back in his car.

  Mari picks the Tupperware up off the floor again, looking agitated. “Does anyone know that you and I, like—” She makes a helpless motion with her hands. “You know?”

  Jackson turns full sideways in his seat to look at her. “Does anyone know we—” He laughs harshly. “Yeah, Mari, I called my parents right after I pulled out, they were thrilled.”

  Mari shrugs, drumming her nails on the Tupperware. “Not your parents, Jack, I mean like Mer or Ter. I want to know what I’m walking into.” She’s doing that thing with her voice, I’m-reasonable-and-you’re-the-asshole. Jackson grits his teeth.

  “No one knows anything,” he promises her. “Not a single thing.”

  Mari sets the wafers back on the floor and runs both hands through her hair. “Okay. Okay.” She looks tired, Jack thinks. She looks beaten down. “I got my period today,” she adds out of the blue. “I was trying to figure out if I should text you or not.”

  “I—” Jack swallows. “Okay.” Now’s not the time to parse how he feels about that too closely, he doesn’t think, if he’s relieved or a little disappointed, or maybe a mixture of both. The summer she was pregnant with Sonya he caught himself staring at her constantly, to the point where he was almost glad when she had to switch over to desk duty five months in. “Okay,” he repeats.

  “I’m glad you invited me,” Mari tells him in the voice she uses for lies. Outside the window the leaves are turning for real now, explosive reds and oranges and yellows all along the side of 90. “It’s, you know. It’s been awhile since I saw them.”

  “Yeah,” Jack agrees. He just barely resists adding a sour No kidding, which is dumb because it was his own fault. “I swear, Mari, I wouldn’t have invited you if—” He breaks off, frustrated. She’s ashamed clearly, but Jackson can’t tell if it’s because of these past four months or because she’s worried what his family will think of their screwing around. “No one knows anything about anything.” Terry was the only one who called him out on it, how Jackson constantly had an excuse for Mari not being at the hospital. Jack told him to go screw.

  “Rocko still loves me, at least,” Mari says, picking the cookies back up off the floor and setting them resolutely in her lap. “Rocko forgives and forgets.” And that’s how Jackson knows she’s ashamed for not visiting him in the hospital, not for the sex.

  Jack swallows. He feels warmer toward Mari, but thinking about the hospital makes him think about what came before it, and now he can practically feel the weight of the Glock, the jerk of the kickback once he started firing. “Well, Rocko loves bird shit, so.”

  “Me and Rocko both,” Mari announces. Jack tells himself to watch the road.

  The rest of the drive does pass in silence, more or less, but it’s companionable. At around an hour in Mari opens up her Tupperware and hands him a chocolate wafer before taking one for herself.

  “Thanks,” Jack tells her quietly. Mari reaches across the gearshift, wipes a crumb off his chin.

  Jack grew up in a house straight out of a cheery romantic comedy, a big white farm number with red shutters and a porch with a rickety swing. There’s a basketball hoop in the driveway that Mari always likes to imagine him practicing at. She used to love coming over here before she got married, Sunday dinners or barbecues in summer, all of them drinking sweaty bottles of Harpoon and playing Cornhole. His dad and mom are both principals, middle and high school respectively.

  Which could, Mari guesses, explain why she feels overwhelmingly like she just got called to the office.

  “Quit stalling,” Jack says mildly, nudging her ahead of him on the flagstone path to the back door. It’s not quite late afternoon but the autumn sun is already fading, this pretty golden cast to the light. Jack’s skin looks healthy again, Mari notices. He finally got most of his color back.

  Barb spies them through the kitchen window, her round face breaking into a smile. “Kids are here!” she yells. Before Mari can even slide the door open all the way, Rocko comes careening down the front hallway, leaping up on his hind paws. The weight knocks Mari back into Jackson.

  “Down, boy,” she instructs, holding the cookies out of reach and kneeing Rocko gently in the chest. She’s better with dogs now. The Fords’ last lab, an elderly lady dog named Duck, scared the living crap out of her when she first started coming over. Jackson teased her mercilessly. “Dogs are a white people thing,” she remembers telling him once, embarrassed and annoyed. “She’s just an animal, Jack. She eats her own barf, for God’s sakes.” She regretted it later, when Duck was finally put down. That day to this, it’s the only time she’s seen Jack cry.

  “Hey, Rocko,” Jackson says now, dropping down onto his knees. “Hey, man.” Rocko whines.

  “Mari!” That’s Meredith, coming down the stairs at a run. “Oh my God, hi!”

  It’s been over a year, Mari realizes, looking at Meredith’s glowing, happy face. A full year since she saw any of these people, at a GB police fundraiser last fall. Even longer since she’s been to this house. “Hi, you,” she tells Mer, swallowing her unease and holding out her arms. “Missed you.”

  “Missed you, stranger,” Meredith says, taking the Tupperware. Meredith is as tall as her brothers and boney-wide, like hugging a boy. She’s maybe a little thinner than last time Mari saw her, maybe not. “Ooh, are these from Patty?”

  “Yup,” Mari tells her. The whole house converges then, Terry coming in with his girlfriend Arielle and Jack’s dad Bruce at their heels, everybody talking at once and Rocko going bananas, running around in a circle so tight he’s basically chasing his tail. Mari tells Bruce happy birthday and gets a kiss on the cheek for her trouble. But Terry barely looks at her, just a tip of his chin and a “Hey”. Mari swallows. She used to be so totally at home in this family. She used to feel like they were at home with her too.
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  “You want wine, Mari?” Barb asks her, appearing from the kitchen just in time to hand a plate of cheese and crackers off to Meredith as they all head to the den. Barb’s got a smart gray pageboy haircut and a curious expression on her face, like possibly whatever’s going on here she can smell it.

  “Sure.” Mari slings her jacket over the back of a chair. Jack’s chatting with Arielle about her job at the Palladium downtown, friendly. When Rocko pushed Mari into him his body felt warm and safe and solid against hers, like something she wanted to grab onto and hold. Despite everything, she’s always liked watching him at home. “Can I help with anything?”

  Barb shakes her head. “Already in the oven,” she says cheerfully.

  Mari follows her into the kitchen anyway, ducking away from the bustle and noise. She likes the house itself almost as much as watching Jack in it, how old and lived-in it is. Bruce and Barb are always threatening to move, complaining about the ugly cracked linoleum and peeling beadboard, the chipped apron sink, but in the decade since Mari’s known them, they’ve never so much as spoken to a realtor.

  Then again, they could have by now. Mari guesses she really doesn’t know anymore.

  Barb pours her a glass of white without asking, well over the standard serving size. “It’s not chilled,” she warns, handing over an ice cube tray.

  They love you, Jack had said. Mari pops out two cubes and makes herself breathe. “Thanks.” She could stay in here with Barb the entire time. That would be okay, maybe. “So how have you guys been? How’s your school?” Barb’s high school is huge, this multi-floored brick building down near the highway Mari and Jack have spoken at a couple times. It’s way outside their precinct, but Barb says they do a better job than the local cops, so they always come when she asks. All the Ford kids attended back in the day. Jackson tells a great story about the year Meredith tried to change her last name to deny any association.