Deja New Read online

  They would say, “So humble, even though you’re of nobility,” to the son of an illiterate washerwoman.

  They would describe him as “A weaver of tales!” though it was nothing so profound (though in his youth he had apprenticed to an actual weaver).

  They would say “A born scholar!” about a man whose school years were the worst, most hateful years of his life.*

  And “A national treasure!” to a man whose works sold poorly until they were translated into other languages.

  And “You would have made a fine husband!” to a man who only ever fell in love with women he could never have.

  And “But such a gift with children! What a wonderful father you would make!” to a celibate.

  Nobody knows me. Nobody at all. This thought, this yearning to be known, remembered, had been with him as long as he could remember. But nothing he did made any difference. They read his stories and created their own vision of him in their minds, one that bore little resemblance to the actual man. Perhaps that was a blessing. Was it the worst thing in the world that he had been turned into a character in his own stories?

  Well. Yes. Because he wasn’t a fairy-tale creature, damn it all, and he had no interest in disappearing into the pages of his own books.

  The bright spot in the mess was that he made time to meet with the composer to discuss the music for his funeral. The composer had been surprised—usually people consulted him after the death—and a little taken aback at his calm practicality. “Most of the people who will walk after me will be children,” he’d told the bemused music teacher, “so make the beat keep time with little steps.”

  It seemed the least he could do, a phrase he normally detested (Nothing is the least one could do.). A last thing to do for children who were never his, honoring a life he never had.

  EIGHTEEN

  “Could you repeat that? You did what with his head?”

  “I stuffed his mouth with garlic. Pay attention.”

  Jason checked his notes. Yes. He’d heard her correctly. His boss would scream, but his conscience demanded the next question: “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a lawyer present?” Because you need one. In five years on the job, I have never seen a suspect more in need of legal assistance. And I am including the guy who killed his accountant with a harpoon.

  “No lawyer!” The witness/suspect sat bolt upright, though that might have been because the chairs in the interview room were designed by masochists who assumed everyone loved back cramps. “I’m guilty.”

  It certainly looked that way. He’d come upon the scene and taken it all in before he even had his ID out. The victim, naked and in pieces. The witness, gloved and wearing old clothes she wouldn’t care were ruined. The grave she’d been digging in the salsa garden. The blooming pink roses behind her, as well as the bright yellow boots on her feet (grave digging = muddy) had been the perfect surreal touch.

  The matter-of-fact neighbor who’d called 911 summed it up quite well: “Y’know how when people find out a killer lived in the neighborhood, they’re all ‘But they were so quiet and nice!’? Yeah, not these guys. They’re both fucking crazy. And loud. But mostly with the crazy.” Jason’d written it down verbatim. Too good to paraphrase.

  She’d certainly been chatty on the way to the station, waiving Miranda and bitching about the traffic. She was a petite brunette with hair that had been slicked back with so much product, he could almost see his reflection in the top of her head when he handcuffed her. Old jeans, faded paint-spattered T-shirt, no jacket, and those cheerful yellow boots. Hazel eyes, freckles. Small and wiry and she looked adorable, which made sense. Most murderers didn’t look dangerous until they’d gone ahead and taken a life. Sometimes not even then. He’d learned that two weeks into the job.

  “So there’s no point in calling a lawyer,” she finished.

  “There is, because—”

  “No lawyer, flatfoot!”

  “What year do you think it is? That is not sarcasm, by the way. That’s a legitimate question because I’m not sure you’re, ah, cognizant.”

  “I’m plenty cognizant. It’s 2017, which is just ridiculous given what I had to do this morning.”

  “Early this morning, in fact.” He’d gotten the call at 6:37 a.m.

  “Well, yeah. I couldn’t kill him at night, obviously.”

  I can hear the italics when she talks. “Is that why you drove a stake through his torso?”

  “No! I mean, I’m the one who staked him, but I was aiming for his heart. It wasn’t like in the movies,” she admitted.

  He sympathized. “Few things are.”

  “It was really hard to get it in there.”

  “I hear that a lot.”

  “I practiced on all those mannequins for nothing!”

  “That’s a new one, though.” Jason wasn’t a doctor, but he was pretty sure her blade caught on a rib, which was great news since protecting the heart is their job. But in the end, it made no difference. Despite the miss, the victim had rapidly bled out.

  “It was so fast! It was like his body was a garden hose and he was spraying his blood everywhere.”

  He checked his notes again. “And you did these things because you thought he was a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  “Despite the fact that he had never, not once, per your statement, tried to suck your blood or turn into a bat—”

  “Oh, please, that one’s just pure myth.”

  “—or burn in sunlight?”

  “I said he was a vampire, not that he is one.” She was all irritability and wrath in sunshine yellow boots. “Don’t you know anything?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “He drank all my blood in a past life.”

  “So this was payback?”

  “Yes.” This with the expression of “someone’s finally catching up” on her face.

  “Which you understand has been illegal since Darrow vs. Henry VIII?” he persisted for the record. “Back in 1964?”

  “Yes. It’s why I had to take care of it myself.” The suspect crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a smile almost as cheery as her boots. “There’s not a jury in the world who’ll judge me for it.”

  “By definition, every jury judges the defendant, even if the outcome of that judgment is positive.”

  She waved away his summary of the American legal system. “They’ll get it.”

  “I have to say, you certainly have a positive attitude.”

  “Oh, yes.” She uncrossed her arms and leaned forward, resting her elbows on the table. “I’m generally a positive person. Things will work out and if they don’t, don’t give up! You can fix it, you just can’t be afraid of doing the work.”

  If she doesn’t go to prison, this woman has a real shot at being a Hollywood spin doctor.

  “You are by far the most cheerful person I have ever arrested.”

  The woman who had cut off her brother’s head and tried to drive a chair leg (which she’d whittled to a point over the last three months) through his heart beamed. “Thank you!”

  “Time to get photographed and fingerprinted,” he said kindly, and she jumped to her feet, clearly ready for the next phase of her adventure.

  “That’s okay, why else d’you think I got highlights?”

  “Why else, indeed?” he replied, and escorted her out.

  NINETEEN

  He was midway through his paperwork

  (should I put in the thing about her highlights?)

  when he saw Lassard making her way to his desk. Depending on what was in the folder in her hand, this could be terrific or terrible.

  Captain Marci Lassard greeted him with, “Nice catch.”

  “No.” This wasn’t false modesty, or even actual modesty. He hadn’t done any detecting, simply responded to a call and arrested the bad guy. That was fine.
Most police work was strictly custodial. That was fine, too.

  “But you could have shot yourself in the foot, Jason.”

  “Marci—”

  “It worked out for you, it usually does, but it’s not your job to repeatedly remind people arrested for homicide that ‘no, really, you can still have a lawyer, are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?’ When they turn you down—and thank God she did—you focus on your job: taking statements, building a case for the DA.”

  “She was pitiful.”

  “Irrelevant.”

  “Wonderful attitude, though.”

  “I’ll agree it’s nice when they don’t try to kill us, or worse, spit on us . . .” Marci Lassard, like most cops, had in her younger days been cried on, puked on, bled on, spit on, and shit on. Most of it barely made her blink, but she loathed saliva. She was a heavy hand-sanitizer user long before most people even knew there was such a thing. “But that’s still no reason to sabotage your own investigation. I don’t want to have this chat with you again, Jase.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Hilarious.” She slapped the folder on top of his copy of Dancing Cats and Neglected Murderess. Jason could actually feel himself getting pale. Not this. Not this again. No. “See this?”

  Nooooo! “Oh, God.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not the chart again, Marci.”

  “Take a look.”

  “I am begging, do you hear me? Begging you. Look at my face, observe the stress.”

  “I thought you looked a little constipated.”

  “Listen to my voice, my pleading and pathetic voice,” he whined. “Put the chart away. I see that thing in my dreams. I will obey you in all things. I will clean the lunchroom fridge every day for a month.”

  Too late. She slapped the Chicago Police Department—Organizational Overview Chart* in front of him. Her finger jabbed at a box about midway down. “I’m here. And I want to be . . .” The finger, having jabbed, moved on. “. . . up here.” Superintendent of Police. “By way of here.” Chief, Bureau of Detectives. “You want me to be somewhere down here.” Records Inquiry Section.

  “I promise I don’t.” He didn’t. His predecessor did, which is why Kline was his predecessor and not a partner.

  “I can’t move from here . . .” Point. “To here.” Poke. “Without the detectives under me making lots of arrests and closing lots of cases. Encouraging someone to call a lawyer when they’ve waived their rights is not helpful to either of our careers. And, sorry to sound heartless, neither are closed cold cases.”

  Thought so. “Has my productivity suffered since I took over the Drake case?”

  The captain plunked down in the chair beside his desk. “You know it hasn’t.” She brushed her short, reddish-brown bangs back from her face. The fluorescent light bounced off her wedding ring; she and her husband were the rare “met in high school and still in love twenty years later” couple. Other than Mr. Lassard’s belief that police work was exactly like what he saw on TV, and his insistence on using phrases like “we threw a real 415e last weekend!” around his wife’s colleagues, Lassard was a good enough guy.

  Certainly his wife adored him; she’d asked him to change his name to hers and he had, without hesitation. All her life, she knew she’d be a cop, just like Commandant Lassard from the Police Academy movies. “It was a calling, and not just because I was Charles Rowan* in a previous life!” she’d tell rookies, eyes shining with a near-fanatical light. “There I was, watching the movie and my name was exactly the same as the guy in the movie. The boss with all the goldfish! The Lassard name up on the big screen! It was fate! The only reason we even watched Police Academy: Mission to Moscow was because Blockbuster was out of Pulp Fiction!” (Woe to the rookie who asked, “What’s Blockbuster?”)

  “This really isn’t about your productivity,” his captain continued. “It’s about you not burning out.”

  “Really? I thought it was about the chart.”

  “Everything leads back to the chart,” she said solemnly, then grinned. “But enough on that for now—”

  He nodded. “I’ve been punished enough.”

  “Hilarious. So you and the family went to visit Dennis Drake yesterday.”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t give you shit.”

  “Not even the smallest trace of shit.”

  “So your next step . . . ?” Marci’s delicately arched eyebrows were more for form’s sake; she’d worked homicide longer than he had. She knew perfectly well what the next steps were. And weren’t.

  “The next steps. Right.” Ah. Well. The Drake file’s Closed status was problematic. The CC Division had their own budget, equipment, and staff, and as a detective with another bureau, he wasn’t entitled to any of it. His captain, who wanted her detectives happily challenged because such people brought results, had given him some room to run. But nothing had changed in the month he’d had the file; the missing witnesses were still missing, Dennis Drake was as recalcitrant yesterday as he’d been ten years ago, Kline was still gone (“You grinning shiteaters can go fuck yourselves sideways.”) and thrilled to be gone, and Leah Nazir hadn’t been able to come up with a magic fix. He wasn’t surprised by any of it; he’d expected all of it.

  “You’re my steadiest, least excitable guy,” his captain was saying. “Not just in my division; you’ve got some of the lowest affection of anyone I’ve met who isn’t a sociopath.”

  “Thanks.” That was the appropriate response, right? Even if it wasn’t necessarily a compliment?

  “You’re also methodical and you don’t rattle. But that doesn’t mean you’re invulnerable. It doesn’t mean you can’t burn out, or snap.”

  “Because it’s always the quiet ones?”

  “Because I’ve seen you almost every day for years and I’ve never even heard you raise your voice.”

  Yep. Sounded right. Sounded like the feedback he’d been receiving since he was nine. He’d been tested for the spectrum, and had no idea if the negative results were a relief to his parents or bad news.

  “What I’m saying is, there’s laid-back, and there’s comatose.” Long, delicate pause. “Are the meds for your depression working out?”

  There it is.

  “Dysthymia.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Normally he’d find this line of questioning irritating or, at best, pointless. But Captain Lassard never lobbed “So how’re you feeling?” questions for the sake of small talk.

  “Dysthymia is much like depression, the same general symptoms present for treatment, but they’re not as severe and they last longer.”

  “Depression Lite.”

  “Close enough.” Not as severe = the good news. Lasting longer = the catch. A lot of sufferers—himself included—would go years without seeking professional help, because they assumed being low, being sad, was just part of their character, and could not be fixed.

  Jason thought the ancient Greeks had it right: The literal translation of dysthymia was “a bad state of mind.”

  “I’m on Paroxetine now. Sixteen weeks in.” Citalopram had been a disaster. He didn’t mind the decreased sex drive so much—he wasn’t seeing anyone and the Angela Drake fantasies were exactly that: fantasies. Not being able to get it up or, when he got it up, not being able to finish wasn’t too bad: It wasn’t as though his penis’s dance card was full. Nor was the insomnia the problem; he had always been able to function on four hours a night. But the shakes, the sweats, the having to take a piss every hour, and the explosive diarrhea had been deal breakers. “Copy that, dispatch, I’m en route as soon as I find a public bathroom and destroy their toilet.”

  Pass.

  But the Paroxetine seemed to be working, and the side effects were nothing he hadn’t dealt with when he wasn’t medicated. The problem with any SSRI* was
that it usually took more than a month, sometimes two months, for any change to be noticeable. You could diet down (or up) a couple of sizes before the meds kicked in, that was how long it took. You could get through half of a football season. You could put your house on the market, sell it, find a new home, pack, move. You could walk halfway across the country.*

  “So the Paroxetine plus therapy equals life isn’t terrible all the time,” he finished, hoping Marci was going to get to it soon.

  “Oh, yeah?” she asked. “You saw a professional?”

  “Sure.” You know I did. “Like you did.” Insighter screening was standard for anyone in the academy; all recruits were required to take two sessions, on the second day and at graduation. Depending on your department, you could also be required to see one whenever you were up for a promotion, if you’d had to fire your weapon, and (most puzzling) for off-the-job injuries. “All my past lives had some form of it or another.”

  “Didn’t you head up to ICC with what’s-her-face? The head kahuna of Insighters?”

  “Leah Nazir.”

  “The one who killed her mom?”

  “No, she killed the man who killed h—”

  But Marci was already shaking her head, annoyed with herself as always when she got a detail wrong. “Right, right, I knew that, it was all over the news . . . I saw her on TV a few times. The Brenner case, and Lane v. Hitler. What was she like?”

  “Quiet and pointed. No wasted words.”

  “A soul mate!”

  Jason smiled and shook his head.

  (not in the cards for me . . . or my soul)

  Marci continued, “She touch you?”

  “Sure. We shook hands.”

  “She give you the rundown on your past lives?”

  “No, of course not. That’d be like a doctor running into someone with a broken arm, examining them, and setting the bone on the spot.”

  “You’re saying a doctor wouldn’t do that?”