WARNING: Death story. Double death story, in fact. If you don't think you can deal, don't read.
An AU, of course, set at some imaginary point of time before Bounty Hunter/CotW. Rating? Uh, R for language, I guess, and slashy implications. There are a few lines in here borrowed from Louise Bogan, but Fraser's words are his own, or as close as I can come. In a twisted sort of way, this could be a sequel to Roots Rain; just not the one anyone wanted, I suspect.
Characters are property of Alliance Atlantic and are being used here with no intention of profit.
Many, many thanks to AuKestrel, Lori Goldman, Destina, and Carol S., whose excellent editing made this much better than it otherwise would have been. (All remaining flaws are, of course, entirely my own responsibility.) I'm also very grateful to Erica for letting me borrow a cool idea she had about Ray and Welsh's past.
This is for AuKestrel, whom I'm proud to call my friend.
Executor
Kat Allison
ex·ec·u·tor (noun)
1: one who executes something [obsolete : EXECUTIONER]
2: the person appointed by a testator to execute a will
It's quiet in here for once, quiet like it never gets in this monkey house, even at this time of night. Not that I know what time it is. If it mattered, I could turn around and look at the clock, but I'm too damn tired and it doesn't matter anyway. Half-past way-too-late, one of those single-digit hours when anyone with the sense to work a normal job'd be home in bed.Of course, I've never had the sense to work a normal job, so here I am sitting in the office, with the blinds shut tight and the overhead lights off so no one comes in and bothers me. Just the desk lamp angled down onto the pile of paper in front of me. Nothing unusual here, I've sat up like this a whole lot of nights, pushing the papers, thinking my thoughts.
Nothing unusual. What the hell am I saying. There's not going to be anything usual in a station house the night after a cop funeral.
Funeral. Funerals. I don't know which it should be when you do two at once. Fraser would've known. Wish I could ask him.
You know something ... I'm getting too old for this shit. I've said that a hundred times, but now, sitting here at this desk in the small hours, it just hits me--I'm getting too damn old for this shit.
I don't mean the small hours, that comes with the job. And I don't mean the pile of papers, because that comes with the job too--hell, that is the job. You make lieutenant and you trade your gun in for a pencil, and you've got to make yourself believe it's a good trade. It is a good trade, make no mistake about that. Why the hell should I stick my head up to get blown off by some piece of scum, when I can just get shot down by the captain and the DA and the politicians instead? And that, hell, that's just like the video games the kids play, you pop up and come back the next day and sit down behind the desk and do it all over again. That I can handle.
Nah. What I'm getting too old for is the watching. Watching the kids come up, all bright-eyed and gung-ho, looking like they still believe in God and Rambo and the good guys win in the end. Watching them go sour and mean--go bad, sometimes, but not at the two-seven, not on my watch.
And sometimes, watching them go down. Down into the ground. Shovel some dirt on 'em and say a few words and then head on back to the station house and sit behind this desk, and keep getting older, the way they never will.
It's another part of the job, like the paperwork and the politics. Just not one you ever get used to. I've been through it enough times that I know how it goes, I know the reason it's so quiet here tonight is they're all still down at the bar, with all the guys from the other divisions. Got their dress jackets off, throwing down the drinks, telling stories and laughing too loud. Trying to shake off that heavy sick feeling you get when you hear the bagpipes and the guns firing off the salute.
I've been there, I know how it goes. Sooner or later they'll stagger on out, get themselves home, get to bed, and lie there in the dark thinking the thing you never say to anyone, no matter how drunk you get. Him and not me. Him and not me. I'm still here. And you feel good about it, and then you feel like shit for feeling good.
Not me. I don't drink like that any more, I got no stories I feel like telling anyone, I'm not home in bed, and I'm not feeling good about any part of anything whatsoever. Feel like I got blood on my hands, and him and not me ain't making me feel any better this time around.
And what I've got to do, instead of sitting here moping around like this, I've got to do something with this pile of paper. That's something I should know how to handle by now. Sort it out, file it away, send it to wherever old paperwork goes to die. Tomorrow's heading towards us right on schedule, and there'll be new dead guys and all-new paperwork to deal with, and I gotta tie this stuff off and let it go and move on.
So I take a breath and bang my hands a couple of times against the sides of the stack, square it up. Pick up the top papers and set 'em aside to start a new pile, the "legal crap" pile. Don't need to look at these, I read through 'em enough times already. The wills. Didn't have any trouble finding them, Fraser's was in the safe at the Consulate, just like you'd expect, along with his passport and Dief's papers, and some stuff of his dad's--old journals, and his death certificate. Ray's was where you'd expect too, shoved in the back of a desk drawer in his apartment, all crumpled up behind some car magazines. No surprise there.
Did get a surprise, though, the first one, when I found out they'd each named me executor. Just another one of those many things that neither of 'em saw fit to keep me apprised of, and if I'd known I would've knocked their heads together and told them to name a lawyer, for chrissakes, but when I found out--it wasn't funny exactly, nothing was going to be funny that day, but it came as close to being funny as anything was going to get. So damn typical.
So we read the wills, and there's the next surprise. They'd left everything to each other. OK, two good buddies, close friends, single guys, no kids, not big family people, I figured I could see that. And they'd each put in a clause about mutual demise, or if the other guy doesn't survive me--which even though it kind of gave me a chill, I give 'em points for smart, it's the way someone in their line of work should be thinking.
So Ray's money got split between his folks and Stella, and Fraser's, such as it was, between the RCMP Scholarship Fund and some do-gooder soup-kitchen outfit in his old neighborhood I'd never even heard of. No surprises there either. But it shook me up some when I got to the end and I realized--they'd been drawn up by the same lawyer. Same date. Same witnesses. They'd done 'em together. A guy leaving his stuff to his best buddy, OK, I can see it. But two guys going downtown and making out their wills together--that is not at the forefront of my own personal list of things you do with a good buddy. Have a beer, catch a Bulls game, maybe. Wills, no.
But what the hell, that's a done deal, set 'em aside, keep moving, and next up is all the other legal crap, money crap, insurance papers and bank statements and pension-fund stuff and Ray's god-damned electricity bill and all the rest of it. They had a lawyer, this kind of pencil-twiddling's in his job description, they couldn't have left all this up to him to sort out?
Hell no. Not them, they never had making my life easy on their list of priorities, god knows. Thank you kindly, Mountie. Thanks a lot, Kowalski. Just like the kid, to leave me with one last mess to clean up.
Kid. Even though the guy was pushing up against forty, I can't stop thinking about him that way. Partly because he used to act like one, I always had to ride herd on him more than on any other three guys put together.
Partly, I guess, because that's what he was when I first knew him, just a kid, and they say the first impressions are the ones that stay with you.
Skinny kid with glasses, all elbows and knees and attitude. I remember it real well, nineteen-seventy-six, the year I made detective, the year things started to tank with Brenda. I was working a lot of overtime, but it still wasn't enough to fill up all those hours, when the work was over and I sure as hell didn't want to go home and knew I needed to stay out of the bar. So I signed up to coach boxing. Golden Gloves. And my first week there, this kid comes through the door, bantamweight kid with a heavyweight attitude, running his mouth a mile a minute about how he was going to be a contender, he was going to make it all the way, he could give a guy thirty pounds and still put him on the mat.
He got the crap beat out of him a lot the first few months--I remember it got to be kind of a joke, "Oh, christ, Kowalski's here, better stock up the first aid kit." But he just kept coming back, kept getting knocked on his can and getting back up, kept mouthing off, although after a while he got better at dodging a punch and learning when to shut up.
And afterward, when we'd be sitting around, him trying to raise a can of pop up to his mouth and me putting on the butterfly bandages, we'd get to talking. Him and his dad were pretty much on the outs by then, and I knew what that was like. Boy, did I know that one, up one side and down the other. And he was...he was looking, the way kids'll do, looking for someone who could give him some clues about how to grow up and what to do with all that crazy energy he had running around in him. Someone who could maybe tell him how to be a man.
So we'd sit around and talk, after most of the other guys were gone and it was quiet in there, just like it is in here now. He knew I was a cop, they all did, and one day--one day he started talking about how he was thinking about maybe being a cop himself, getting the bad guys, doing good deeds, being a hero. The usual bullshit you think about when you're a kid. I told him fergeddaboudit, it's not like that, it's hard dirty work. I told him to get out of the streets and get to college and make a decent life for himself, but he didn't listen to what I was trying to tell him, the way kids never do.
Then this happened and that happened, Brenda put in the divorce papers, I crawled into a bottle for a few years, and when I crawled out again one day I found a note on my desk. Asking for a letter of recommendation for one Stanley Raymond Kowalski, in support of his application to the Academy.
I cursed him out for a while in my head, told him he was a stupid son of a bitch, and then I wrote the letter and sent it off. On his graduation day, I was there in the crowd--his parents didn't show, the jerks--and I shook his hand and told him I hoped he'd learned some sense since his glory days in the ring. He'd quit the boxing by then, he was married, and even though he was still so full of himself it was damn near spilling out his ears, I remember thinking maybe things would turn out OK for him after all, maybe he'd be one of the ones who can make this gig work and come out OK on the other side.
He sure believed it, back then. Bright-eyed and gung ho. So damn happy, that day.
And I can't sit here thinking this kind of stuff, it's not getting the job done. I got the legal papers sorted out, mostly, bills that still have to be paid over here, death certificates in that folder there. Next thing up in the pile is Ray's personnel file, which for some christforsaken senseless reason I pulled out and went through the other night. Not like I need it. I know his record. I kept tabs on him all those years he was working down at the Twelfth, doing his job, getting the bad guys, getting his commendations. I used to run into him every once in a while, and we'd have a beer and shoot the shit. He got scuffed up a little bit with time, the way we all do, got some of that shine knocked off of him, got some shadows around his eyes and an edge in his voice, but he was still a damn good cop, which is what counts, and I was--OK, I was proud of him.
Close up that personnel file, move along, nothing more to see here. Drop it on the floor, to give to Betty tomorrow to take down to the basement and file away. It won't see the light of day again.
The case files, two of 'em. Those are next. Kowalski, Stanley R., Fraser, Benton. Pretty thin, compared to a lot of the files I see. No big mystery to investigate, no long records of interviews or stakeouts or anything, just some photos and a few reports and the stuff from Mort. No loose ends. Case closed. We know how this one went down. But I open the file up, Ray's file, and I flip through it one more time.
Transcript of his call for backup, from his car. I'd listened to the tape, later. He'd sounded pretty normal, pissed off but no more than usual, not panicky or anything, like he had things under control. But then, at the end, he stops in the middle of what he's saying and you can hear him yelling "Fraser!" and then the tape cuts out.
The photos and the reports tell you the rest of the story, not that I need 'em. I can see it all in my head, as clear as if it was the Movie of the Week. Bad guy takes off into the flophouse, Fraser lights out after him, Ray ends up chasing the both of 'em, like it's the Keystone Kops. Up the stairs, out onto the roof, shots exchanged, Ray, dumb schmuck, empties out his clip, and then ... I can see it plain as day. I know just how it went down. Fraser stands up, like the stupid insane idiot he is--was--stands up, no gun, no vest, no nothing, and Ray sees what's about to happen.
It wasn't anything I hadn't seen before, that move of Fraser's. That "I'm a good guy so I'm just going to stand here like the broadside of a barn, and you're not going to shoot me because I got this big red S on my chest." The only surprise in the whole deal is that it worked as long as it did.
I knew someday he'd come up against some piece of scum who didn't give a shit that he helped old ladies across the street. Always figured this day would come for him. What I didn't figure...
I figured Ray would know better, OK? Thought he'd learned some sense. I'd seen him have the brains to stay down when that bald-headed guy started throwing knives around. He wasn't harboring a death wish, and he didn't have any illusions about appealing to the better side of the criminal element. He knew no one's bulletproof and even Superman died a while ago.
I should've remembered--that first case, the very first time those two go out together, and Ray comes back with a big dent in his Kevlar vest and a weird way of moving for the next few days that tells me he took a bad bruise. I finally asked Fraser point-blank what happened, and of course he coughed it up, and I called Ray in and chewed the hell out of him and let it go. Told him not to be such a damn idiot the next time. I should've known right then, if I'd had my brain in gear, should've known that I'd do better to split those two up, then and there, and screw the cover story.
So--it's right there in the photos, all you got to do is look at 'em, and you can tell. Scuff marks in the gravel--you can tell Ray jumped, fast, sideways. Gravel dug into the side of his face--you can tell he fell hard. He had his vest on. Too bad the bullet caught him in the neck. The bullet he knew was meant for Fraser, the one he took instead.
Not that it did any good. Fraser--top of the head, centered neat as you please. Not a mark on him anywhere else, you'd hardly know a thing was wrong, except for all the blood in his hair. He must've been bending over--bending over Ray, probably yelling his name, the way he always used to. He fell on top of him, kind of draped over, like he was trying to protect him, even though he was probably dead by the time he landed.
And that's how it ended for them, together, on that tenement roof. By the time the paramedics showed there was nothing left to do but load 'em up.
Nothing they could do for the shooter either, which is the one thing that makes me happy in the whole stinking mess. I don't know where the hell Dief was when things went down, getting a little older and slowing up maybe, which I can sure understand, but by the time backup got there he'd taken the guy's throat out. A better death than he deserved, for sure. They had to trank-dart Dief to get him out of there, and we've been hiding him out at a vet clinic in the 'burbs, ever since the jerkoffs from Animal Control started yapping about how they were going to have to have him put down as a dangerous animal. I told 'em they touch that wolf over my dead body, anyone takes out a cop killer should get a medal. Went down to visit him yesterday, feeling like an idiot, but he wouldn't even look at me. Just lay flattened out on the floor of his cage.
That Frobisher guy is going to take him along, thank god, when he heads back north tomorrow. Take the wolf, and take Fraser's ashes. I showed him the directions in the will, where Fraser wanted 'em scattered, and he studied it for a minute and said he knew the exact spot. Fine, good, better him than me, it's not like I've got time to go chasing off to the ass end of the arctic, I got enough to do here, and I'll be glad to get that Frobisher outta my hair, he's worse than Fraser ever was when it comes to the long pointless stories. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it, but I couldn't handle it, all the stuff about what Fraser was like when he was a kid, all the great Mountie stuff he did before he came down here, that's fine, that's wonderful, but I don't want to hear about it right now. So Fraser was Dudley Do-Right, I already knew that, and all I know right now is he got one of my men killed. Got Ray killed.
It was about more than I could handle, at the funeral, everyone in the city must've been there and they all wanted to yap at me about the wonderful Benton Fraser, what a hell of a guy he was, how much he'd be missed. This one bozo, guy I didn't even know, he was going on and on and I told him to get the hell out of my face before I broke his face for him, and that's when Vecchio came over and hauled me out of there, put me in a car and drove me back to the station. He must've gotten smarter during his time away, because the only thing he said to me, the whole drive, was, "Benny really was the most annoying man on the planet, you know?" And we ended up laughing, kind of.
Vecchio wasn't supposed to be here at all, of course. It might've been a stupid career move, but I still think calling him up was the one smart thing I did that first day, that first afternoon, when the news came in.
I don't remember a lot about that afternoon. Which drives me crazy, I may be getting old and growing a gut but my head's still good. I remember I was going through some papers, some budget crap, just a normal day, had my door open, with all the usual brouhaha going on out in the big room, and then all of a sudden it got real quiet out there. And then I heard Frannie scream.
I figured someone was just pulling some shit on her, some stupid cop-type joke like bringing body parts up from the meat room, so I got up and started out, ready to bang heads, and there was Huey in the doorway, and he pushed me back inside and shut the door. He told me then. I remember seeing the tears running down his face, wondering why he didn't at least try to wipe them off. He kept saying Ray and Fraser, Fraser and Ray, they're dead, and I was thinking ... I remember I was thinking it had to be Vecchio, maybe Vecchio'd been back in town and Fraser'd run into him and said something dumb and gotten them both killed. Just the kind of thing Fraser would do. Bad luck, stupid luck, but at least it made sense.
I don't know what I was saying, but finally Huey popped me one in the chest, just, blam, with the heel of his hand, and yelled "Kowalski! You stupid son of a bitch, it was Kowalski got killed!" Then he stopped, and turned around and took off out of the room, like I was going to be pissed at him or something. Like that mattered.
I don't remember things too clearly after that. I remember thinking I had to get out to the scene, take a look at things, take charge, and I remember walking down that hallway, everyone stepping back to give me room. I was kind of dizzy, like I couldn't feel the ground very well, or maybe like the hallway was a lot longer than it usually was. I remember Elaine was there, in her uniform, down at the end of that hallway, just coming in after hearing the news, and she stopped me. Put her hands on my arm and told me there wouldn't be anything to see there, the forensics guys were taking care of it, and that I didn't want to go out front just now. I remember I went out anyway, just a few steps, and there was a big crowd out there. I remember some guy shoved a microphone in my face, and I shoved him into the wall, and then they pulled me back in, Elaine and Huey and someone else. Elaine was crying too, I remember that.
I went down to the meat room, a while later. Mort wasn't singing, for once. He looked even older than I felt. He didn't want to let me come in the room, and I was getting tired of people standing in my way.
"You cutting 'em up, Mort?" I was looking over his shoulder, I didn't want to but I couldn't stop myself. "That what you're up to?"
"I'm doing my job," he told me. "My job is with the dead. Yours is with the living, and I suggest that you return to it." He stopped a moment and looked at me, and then he said, "I will disfigure them no more than is absolutely necessary."
I don't know why I even went down there, I've seen plenty of dead guys in my lifetime, it's not like I need to see two more. I told him that, and he turned me around and took me back out into the hall. I was keeping it all pretty well together, told him I was sorry to interrupt his work, and he told me forget it. And then he told me to wait for a minute, and went back inside, and when he came out he had a ziplock bag in his hand.
"Constable Fraser's possessions will, I assume, be returned to the consulate," he said. "But I thought you might be the appropriate one to receive these."
He handed me the bag. I could see what was in it--Ray's billfold, his wristwatch. That stupid bracelet. His shield.
I think I lost it then for a little while. I remember Mort steering me into the bathroom, so I could throw up.
And then somehow I got back to my office, and shut the door, and ignored the ringing phone, and spent what seemed like an hour looking for that piece of paper, the one I'd put away real careful so I could find it again. Couldn't for the longest time remember where I'd put it.
When I finally found it, I dialed the number, the one I wasn't ever supposed to call, the red-button launch-the-missiles number. I talked some mumbo-jumbo code crap, and I left a message, and a few hours later Vecchio came in the door, looking about ten years older than the last time I'd seen him.
So I flushed our chance to take down the Bookman's buddies. Big fucking deal. You take them out, two days later there's fifty guys fighting to take their place. There's a never-ending supply of scum. I know that. Doesn't mean you don't keep doing your job, and if you have to lie and tap-dance and play party games to do it, then that's what you do.
But one thing I do know for sure, one thing you don't do, not ever, not in this world -- you don't bury a guy under another guy's name. You don't do that.
That's what I told Vecchio, and that's what I told the asshole from the FBI who showed up later, steam coming out of his ears. He wanted to argue about it, and he wanted to make sure I knew just how much trouble I was in, and just who he was going to go to about it, and I finally told him to shut the fuck up and get the fuck out of my office. I'm sure he's got a piece of paper he's filed with the feds, with my name on it. Like I give a damn. What's one more piece of paper?
They can stick it right next to the letter I'm sure the Superintendent's written up on me, after we had our little dialogue about the funeral. They'd both left real clear instructions, cremation's what they wanted. Fraser, he had a whole paragraph in there about how the body's just a shell, and he didn't want the fragile terrain of the whatever, the permafrost or something, to be disturbed on his account, and so on and so forth, until I could almost picture the lawyer rolling his eyes. Ray skipped all the explanations, but I know what it was with him--the kid just didn't want to be nailed up in a box and have to lie still for all eternity. Fits. Made sense for the both of 'em, and even if it didn't, it's not my call, it's what they wanted, but you try telling that to the brass.
The Superintendent came down in person, like a state visit from the Pope or something, to talk to me about it, gave me a whole line about how a funeral's for the survivors, and a cop funeral's about ritual and solidarity and showing the colors, and how you need the march to the gravesite for symbolic reasons, and the emotional closure of putting someone in the ground, and on and on like he was reading a script from the goo-heads in Counseling. Like he could snow me with that crap. I just told him I was doing the job I'd been given, following orders, and a dead cop's orders trump a superintendent's.
So what we did, we had the service up at St. James, not that either of 'em was religious but I had to give in somewhere, and then the whole cortege headed down to the lake, and we stood there freezing our asses off while everybody made some more speeches, we had the guns and the bagpipes, and then his folks got in a boat and motored out a ways and tossed Ray's ashes in there. They thought that'd be nice, and I didn't have the heart to remind them that the kid fucking hated the water, the only way you ever got him out on that lake was when the Mountie'd dragged him out there. So I guess it fits, come to think of it.
Three thousand, the news guys said, that's how many were there. Closed down Lake Shore Drive for a while, and I guess we pissed off a lot of citizens. Screw 'em.
I'm almost through the pile in front of me. There's just one thing left, and it's the one thing I don't want to touch. A manila envelope, eleven by fourteen, taped shut. I know what's in there. I don't want to know what's in there, but I do. I don't want to look at it again, and I don't know what to do with it.
It'd been in the big box Stella Kowalski hauled over here, late last night--I guess she figured out where she could find me. She had a strange look on her face--not so much that she'd been crying, which she had, but--strange. That blank-eyed shocky look, the one the family members get when you show up at the door and give them the bad news.
She dropped the box on the floor, told me, "I've been cleaning out Ray's apartment and disposing of his belongings, with authorization from his parents. I came across some things that are--clearly not his, and thought as the executor you should decide on their disposition." She had her best Assistant State's Attorney attitude on, but her voice was a little shaky. Gave me a look like she was pissed off at me, not that that's anything new from that lady--I swear I don't know what he ever saw in her--and then she turned and headed out the door before I could say anything.
I opened up the box, and there at the top was a steel dog dish and some cans of Iams. What the hell. So the wolf had dinner over at Ray's sometimes, so what. Couldn't figure out why she'd haul that over.
Then a pile of clothes. They looked like just any guy's clothes to me, a pair of jeans folded up on top, then I pulled 'em out and realized they'd had the touch of an iron--crisp crease pressed into them. Underneath were a couple of white henleys that looked familiar, but it took me a minute to remember they were what Fraser always used to wear under his uniform jacket, the few times I'd seen him unbuttoned. I kept going--more jeans, a few shirts, some red long johns, underwear, and all of it, even the boxers, pressed to a sharp finish. Not really Ray's style, if you know what I mean.
Something was shaping up in my mind that I wasn't sure I wanted to look at, but hell, I'm a detective, used to be, and so I acted like one. I looked in the tags, and it struck me that the jeans were a couple inches bigger in the waist than Ray would ever wear. Dress shirt with a 16 neck, which Ray would've swum in. I guess, even apart from the ironing, a woman'd know the size clothing her ex would wear--hell, she probably used to shop for him. She'd know which ones weren't his.
There was more stuff under the clothes. A bunch of books. Melville. Kipling. Somebody named Bruce Chatwin. Herodotus, for christ's sake. In Latin. I opened the cover on the first one, and there was "Benton Fraser" written in a nice smooth script. Same name written in each of 'em. No big surprise there, it's not like I'd have thought Herodotus would be Ray's thing anyway, he was more a Tom Clancy kind of guy.
I set the books down on the floor, leaned back. So--OK, so they were sharing a place. So big deal. Rent's expensive in this town, it's not like either of 'em was making large money, and I told myself I was just glad Fraser'd finally gotten out of that broom closet at the consulate.
I went to pile everything back in the box, and then I saw that on the bottom there was a manila envelope. Nothing written on the outside, taped shut with lots and lots of tape, kind of lumpy and wrinkled up, like it was done fast.
I picked it up and turned it around for a while and looked at it. Nothing written on the outside. Not much inside, I could tell by feeling it, just some papers. Something in my gut was telling me to leave it alone, toss it out. Something Ray'd probably have called intuition, or instinct, some horseshit like that. Me, I'm just a dumb cop, I call it my gut, and usually, dumb or not, I'm smart enough to pay attention to it. But I wasn't hitting on all cylinders just then, and all I could think was, well hey, it's an envelope, let's open 'er up. Which is what I did, took out my pocketknife and cut the tape open and slid out a stack of paper.
The top sheet was just a plain piece of bond with a bunch of writing on it--Fraser's handwriting, I recognized that clear enough. It looked like a poem he'd copied out or something, lots of short lines. I didn't read it at first, I was more curious about the pages underneath. They felt different to my fingers--that kind of thick rough paper artists use, like I remember from way back when Brenda was taking art classes. I lifted off the top sheet, set it aside, and there, looking up at me, was a drawing.
I knew Fraser could draw, sure. I never knew he could draw like that. I laid the papers out, side by side, until I had a little gallery there on my desk.
They were all the same thing, basically, done with a soft pencil, or charcoal maybe. What the art guys call figure studies, I guess, not that I know art, and what they call figure studies are what I'd call naked women, all the ones I'd seen, at least, but these weren't of women. Naked, though. A naked guy. A specific naked guy. Ray Kowalski.
They were pretty similar, all of them. Ray lying on a bed. The bed was kind of sketchy, but you could see that it was messed up and rumpled. Ray was on his side sometimes, or on his back, or lying on his stomach. You could tell he was asleep in each of them, all sprawled out, with that relaxed look people have when they're sleeping. And you could tell it was Ray for sure, Fraser had a knack for getting a face, not that he was a slouch depicting any other body regions, as I discovered.
My brain was pretty much in shock, but I remember I kept thinking Fraser must've been to art school sometime. Not just because they were that good, but also I was thinking they teach you in school to sign your work. He'd put his initials at the bottom of each one, "BF," just like he was Pablo fucking Picasso or something, and then the date. First one was from several months ago. Last one--I stared at that one for a while--was a week, to the day, before the shooting. It was kind of a close-up, Ray lying on his side, asleep, one arm folded down across his chest so you could see that stupid tattoo. He looked relaxed. He looked happy.
Finally I picked them all up again and stacked them together. My hands were shaking. I knew, as clear and hard as I'd ever known anything in my life, that I shouldn't have seen these, that they weren't my business, not anyone's business, no one's but theirs.
I'd forgotten about the other paper, the one with the writing on it, but when I finally got the drawings shuffled together and shoved back in the envelope, fast and hard, there it was, staring up at me. I really didn't want to read it--I really didn't want to--but once you open a case you have to close it, and that means looking at everything that comes across your path, like it or not. I smoothed it out, and put on my glasses, and read it, all the way through.
Ray:I turned from side to side, from image to image, to put you down,
All to no purpose; for you the rhymes would not ring--I started to copy this out for you, a justification for my cowardice, and then I thought--no. At last, let me have courage. This once, my own words and no one else's.
My father taught me how to build a fire
by leaving me to learn it on my own.
I was a boy of six; he was a hero.
He turned and walked away, and left me holding
A piece of flint, wet tinder, and a stone.
I know it took me hours to get it going.
I learned to make a fire out of stone.
But to this day, I don't recall the fire;
Just dark, and cold, and being all alone.He died, and I went south to be a hero,
and found I couldn't do it on my own.
I found a friend, who helped me bear the city,
who tried to make me feel I had a home;
I almost lost us both in the wildfire
I built to keep from turning into stone.
I learned, with pain, that passion is a liar,
and love a cheat I couldn't let outwit me--
I learned those lessons in the dark, alone.And when my house burned down, and I discovered
my friend was gone, and I was left alone
I couldn't grieve. It's what my father taught me--
he'd turned and walked away to be a hero,
and heroes have to travel on their own.
I couldn't see the gift that loss had brought me;
I thought I'd learned from every loss I'd suffered
That I'd do best to turn myself to stone.
And I, a rock, and you, a flinty stranger,
Could travel side by side, though each alone.But you taught me a lesson I'd forgotten:
when flint strikes rock, the spark can make a fire--
a fire I didn't have to build alone.
I tried to live the lesson life had brought me,
to turn my back and walk away from fire.
I tried to walk away from my desire.
So hard to learn instead the things you taught me,
The opposite of everything I'd known--
You didn't walk away. You wouldn't leave me.
You wouldn't let me do it on my own.
You taught me heroes travel best together,
And fire, when hot enough, can shatter stone.
And sometimes I'm not sure that I can stand it,
this fire of joy, this blaze I've never known --
to lie in darkness, warm, and not alone--I thought that I had turned my heart to granite.
But you can make a fire out of stone.Well, that's fairly dreadful, isn't it, Ray, and I'm sure you'll conclude, justly, that I'm as wooden a poet as I am a backup singer. Wordy as ever, and still the words say nothing of what I need to say. Perhaps, after all, I shouldn't have tried; perhaps you're right, there's nothing that really needs to be said.
And it is my virtue that I cannot give you out,
That you are absorbed into my strength, my mettle,
That in me you are matched, and that it is silence which comes from us.
Silence. I finished reading it, and I sat staring at it, and all I could think was--for a minute it'd almost been like I could hear Fraser's voice talking again, saying stuff I never knew he had in him. But when I shut my eyes all there was was silence.Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. That was not anything I wanted to be seeing, nothing I wanted to know about. I know I signed on for a lot of shit when I took this job, but this was nowhere on the list.
And yeah, you're right about one thing, Fraser, it is a crappy poem, and yeah, you shouldn't have said any of it. Any of it. Shouldn't have let any of it happen. Should've just let things be. But shutting up and letting things be was never your strong point.
I'm still staring down at that envelope, and I don't know what to do about it, don't know what to think about any of it, but the one thing I do know, I know that if Benton fucking Fraser walked in that door this minute, big as life and twice as red, I'd come around this desk and take him by the neck and just slam his head into the wall until he shut up forever. Selfish, selfish son of a bitch.
But getting pissed off at a dead man's a waste of time. Be a rock, Welsh. That's what my old lieu used to tell me, Trautmann, back when I was a rookie and things'd get to me. Back before he took a heart attack one night, sitting at his desk, and keeled over, which is probably how I'll go out one of these nights. Be a rock.
It's something I learned. It's something I tried to teach the kid, something that would've been more help to him than all the stuff I tried to teach him about dodging a left hook.
I remember we went out for a drink one time, right after Stella dumped him. He was a mess. He was doing that hard-guy thing, on the outside, and it was just like when he was a kid and I used to watch him in the ring, he'd get knocked on his ass and he'd climb back up again, giving the other guy the eye-fuck and talking trash at him, and you knew the whole time his legs were barely holding him up.
So he's trying to show me what a tough guy he is, telling me he's fine, doing fine, probably better off without her, talking real hard and real fast and pounding down the beers, and finally I grabbed his arm and told him to shut up, and then once he shut up he just sat there shaking. I kept ahold of his arm and I told him--I told him it's the price of the ticket on this ride, that it's hard to be a cop and have anyone in your life, that doing this job makes you different from other people. You don't get to be like the rest of 'em any more, it sets you apart. I told him that's the way it is, and that he'd learn to deal with it, and it'd get better.
I was talking out my ass, of course. Ray Kowalski was never going to learn to deal with it. He wasn't a guy to handle the idea of being alone the rest of his life. But I wasn't thinking about it too clear at the time, I just figured he'd fight it a while and then he'd finally deal, just like I did. What the hell was I thinking--that maybe he'd grow up to be like me?
So I was stupid about it, hell, I've been stupid about plenty of things. Fraser. I even managed to be stupid about him. If there was ever anyone you'd figure had a grip on that concept of learning to deal with being alone ... after the psycho-bitch got through with him, I figured he had that one forward, backward, by heart, carved in stone.
I'm a good lieutenant, but it doesn't make me smart about people. What I should've told Ray then, that night in the bar ... he was talking about getting out. Telling me he didn't have any idea why the fuck he'd wanted to be a cop in the first place, the job sucked, he was fed up with it, he didn't give a shit any more. And I could've told him then--I could've said you go for it, kid, get the hell out while you can, while you're still young enough to make some kind of a real life for yourself. Before you're like me, too old for anything else, too old to do anything but sit in front of a desk at 2 a.m. looking at a pile of papers and thinking about dead guys.
I don't know why I didn't. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I wasn't thinking, is what it comes down to, I was--OK, I was scared. Don't ask me why. It scared me, the way he was talking, that's the way a cop talks who's setting himself up to get in trouble. Get himself killed.
So what I told him instead ... I said there was an opening coming up at the two-seven. Undercover. Told him he'd want to think it over and it'd have to go through channels but if he wanted it I'd grease it. And that it'd make a change, give him a chance to start over fresh. Start over. Yeah. I was thinking I could keep an eye on him. Thinking maybe working with the Mountie'd remind him why he got into this in the first place, that it'd maybe straighten him out. Oh yeah.
I should've known something was weird, as time went on, my gut was telling me there was something hinky there, but I didn't do anything. Hell, I went along with it, even after I found out he'd gone hareing off to Sault Ste. Marie and gotten dunked in the middle of Lake Superior, even after he'd dropped through that skylight and jumped that motorcycle through a window like he was freakin' Steve McQueen instead of skinny-ass Ray Kowalski--all those damn stupid things he did, all because the Mountie was following the gleam and steering the train off a cliff and Ray wouldn't let him take the dive on his own.
And I went along with it. Could've split 'em up, and I didn't. Told myself it was because they had a good solve rate, made a helluva good team, real productive together, all kinds of BS like that, but--you come down to it, it was because Ray was looking happy, for the first time since things went in the crapper with Stella. And I liked seeing him happy.
As if anyone with sense believes you get to be happy in this life. That's the kind of garbage the civilians believe, the ones who go through life like a bunch of sheep, thinking nothing's going to hurt them, thinking the Constitution guarantees them some right to happiness. Maybe they're stupid enough to believe it. Maybe I was stupid enough to want Ray to have it. Stupid enough to lose my grip on the fact that trying for happy just slows you down, dumbs you down, puts a big hole in the wall. Big enough for something to come through and take your head off.
When you're a cop, when you get your shield, they tell you your job's to protect the citizens. But you learn soon enough that what comes first is, you take care of each other. You hang together, you watch the other guy's back, you go to the wall for another cop. And when you make lieutenant, your job is to take care of your men. Whether they're getting shot at by scum or hammered by the brass, you do what you have to do to keep 'em alive and keep 'em working, and if that means swallowing enough crap to fill Comiskey Park, you do it. If it means making 'em unhappy sometimes, you do it. And mostly, I did it, swallowed the crap and covered their backs. Thought I was doing it right. Told my gut to shut up, and thought everything was aces, and now I'm sitting here with blood on my hands.
That's the thing that's killing me, I could've stopped this train wreck anywhere back up the line. I mean--OK, Fraser, write that one off. I liked the guy, sure. I respected him. A helluva good man. But even I could tell, I'm no Jeanne Dixon but even I could've told the RCMP not to waste any money on his pension fund, cause he'd never collect on it. Guy had a death wish the size of the fucking dominion of Canada, that's the only way I can make sense of it, he should've been killed fifty times over before this. I was never able to do a thing to knock sense into him, and no way you could watch his back 24-7.
But Ray ... god damn it all to hell. I could've kept him out of this.
Maybe I should've talked to his dad, way back when, way back at the beginning. But I had my own shit going on and I was all too ready to believe the old man was just an asshole. Kills me to say it, but he was right all along.
I could've written a letter that would have kept him out of the Academy for sure. Thought about it. But all the time, the whole time I was cursing him out for a stupid idiot in my head, I was getting a kick out of it. Made me feel good, just like it did when he came over to the two-seven. I never had a kid, never will now, and Ray ... I wanted him to learn some stuff, wanted to have him around and teach him a few things. Wanted him to--grow up like me, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, Harding fucking Welsh, who's the real selfish son of a bitch here?
And I'll have plenty of time for this later, plenty of small hours to chew that one over before the coronary puts me in the ground, and meanwhile none of this is getting me any further on what I need to do right now, which is figuring out what to do with this god-damned envelope full of paper. I set it down on the desk and push my chair back, try to wipe some of the grit out of my eyes, and all of a sudden I get an idea. I dump out the wastebasket on the floor, and then I open up the envelope, being careful to pull out the papers upside-down so I don't have to look at 'em again. Tear them up into little strips, drop 'em in the wastebasket. Then I get my desk drawer open, shove stuff around, and way at the back--yeah, it's still there, the gold lighter Brenda gave me on our anniversary, back when I thought I was going to be a happy man, the one I never got around to throwing out even after I quit smoking. Flick it a few times. It still fires up, just like new. Imagine that.
Fight with the window for a while before I can get it to move--probably hasn't been opened in twenty years. When I finally get it all the way open, I put my hands on the sill and lean out for a minute, smelling the fresh air. Cold night, wind coming in off the lake and some snow along with it.
I'm not sure this'll work, but once I get the stuff lit and tilt the wastebasket out the window, the wind does its job, carries the smoke out of my office and away. Doesn't take long until all that's left is a pile of ashes. I wait a while until my hands start getting cold and I'm pretty sure the ashes are cool, and then I pound 'em around with my fist until they're dust, nothing left that even the brightest bulb of a document examiner could figure out. Yeah, it's just ash I got on my hand now, not blood, and I wipe it off on my pants.
So that's the last of the paper taken care of, my work here is done, and just for a minute--as much of a pain in the ass as this job's been, for a minute I feel good that they gave it to me. Pain in the ass, yeah, but they figured I'd do right by them. And as much as I might have fucked up some things, I gave it my best shot.
But that's getting sentimental, and I'm not a sentimental kind of guy. If I was, I'd probably hang on to the ashes and scatter them somewhere, maybe over the lake. Maybe give 'em to that wacko Frobisher to mix in with Fraser's and haul back north--god knows he wouldn't see anything weird about it. But I'm just a cop, and the streets are as good a place to me as any, and that's where I send them. Tip the basket, watch the wind mix them up with the snow and carry 'em off over the city. Where it started, where it ended.
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