“Still,” I said, letting out a deep breath, “I’d like to turn up a murder weapon. And I want to nail him to the second crime.”
“When I’m through with him,” Jill tugged at her beer and said, “you won’t have to worry about him serving time for the second crime.”
“You see Jill chop down his lawyer’s bail request?” Cindy said with admiration. “You see the look on his face?” She made her fingers into a scissors. “Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip. Straight for the testicles. That man was left standing there in his suit with a two-inch dick.”
We all laughed. Cindy’s cherubic nose twisted as she said, Snip, snip, snip.
“Still,” I said, “without a weapon, his motive still needs work.”
“Damn his motive, child!” Claire exclaimed. “Let well enough alone.”
Jill agreed. “Why can’t his motive simply be that he’s a sick bastard? He’s had a history of sexual sadism for years. He’s brutalized three women that we know of. I’m sure more will come out as the trial moves on.
“You saw the bastard, Lindsay,” she went on. “He’s crazed. His little perfect world gets rocked, he goes insane. This morning, he looked like he was about to plant a death grip on your throat.” She grinned toward the group. “Lindsay just sort of glares up at him like, Get the fuck out of my face.”
They were about to raise a glass to me — the tough hero cop who would always carry the tag that she was the one who nailed Jenks — when the realization shot through me that I could never have done it without them. It wasn’t my steel nerves that had taken over in the interrogation room, but the grip of my disease squeezing my energy. I had kept it concealed — never shared — even with the ones who had become my closest friends.
“That wasn’t about Jenks,” I said.
“Sure seemed like it.”
“I don’t mean the confrontation. I mean what happened after.” I paused. “When I almost collapsed. That wasn’t about Jenks.”
They were still smiling, except Claire, but one by one the gravity in my eyes alerted them.
I looked around the table and told them about the Pac Man–like disease that was eating my red blood cells, and that I’d been fighting it for three weeks now. Packed–red cell transfusions. My blood count was deteriorating. I was getting worse.
I started strong, my voice firm, because it’d been part of my life for several weeks now, but when I finished, I was speaking in a hushed, scared tone. I was blinking back tears.
Jill and Cindy just sat there, rocked in disbelieving silence.
Then, there were three hands reaching out for me. Cindy’s, Jill’s, then last and warmest, Claire’s. For a long time no one said anything. They didn’t have to.
Finally, I smiled, choking back tears. “Isn’t it just like a cop to go and shut down a party just when it’s going good.”
It broke the tension, cut through the sudden pall.
They never said, We’re with you. They never told me, You’re gonna be all right. They didn’t have to.
“We’re supposed to be celebrating,” I said.
Then I heard Jill’s voice, out of the blue, solemn, confessing.
“When I was a little girl, I was real sick. I was in a brace and hospitals between the ages of four and seven. It broke my parents, their marriage. They split up as soon as I got better. I guess that’s why I always felt I had to be stronger and better than anyone else. Why I always had to win.
“It started in high school,” Jill went on.
I wasn’t sure what she was referring to.
“I didn’t know if I would be good enough. I used to…” She unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse, rolled the sleeves up over her elbows. “I’ve never showed these to anybody except Steve.”
Her arms were marked with scars. I knew what they were — self-inflicted slashes. Jill had been a cutter.
“What I meant to say was, you just have to fight it. You fight it, and fight it, and fight it…and every time you feel it getting stronger, you fight it some more.”
“I’m trying,” I whispered, my voice choking. “I really am trying.” Now I knew what propelled her, what was behind that icy gaze. “But how?”
Jill’s hands were holding mine. There were tears in both our eyes.