The Heights Read online

  Killing that man in the alleyway. I take a deep breath and wait for Becker to begin.

  The whole weird, seemingly never-ending thing with the creep from Internal Affairs.

  There’s probably a mountain of paperwork in that file.

  Quite a few commendations sit in there, too, and promotions all the way up to detective-one, but that doesn’t matter now. What matters is that something just clicked inside my brain, and I look around and notice that the light is sharper, somehow, than it was before. I can’t wait to get out of here. I need to go to the gym. See my friends. Try to enjoy my weekend—

  Becker brings up the commendations. She asks several questions about what, exactly, I saw Patrol Officer John Grimes do at that scene and nothing about how I killed Arsalan before he could take out my partner and maybe me, not to mention the two civilians in the alleyway. There’s nothing about the nightmares, the guilt, the therapy, or the antidepressants, thank everything holy. She doesn’t ask me if I call what I did “murder.”

  I answer each question with the kind of smooth confidence that we practiced, and no one brings up the Reynolds murder weapon or the way Patrol botched the evidence handling at the scene. My answers seem to pacify everyone in the room other than Grimes and his attorney. Two of the women on the jury nod and make sympathetic noises when I describe Reynolds’s injuries as they see a picture of his face on the screen.

  On my way out, as my boss and my partner and the other guys surround me and murmur their support, Grimes turns to me and points. He mouths the words, “Don’t forget what I said,” and I stare at him until his sneering face becomes a blur, a flesh-colored smear in my otherwise-crisp field of vision. Goran steps toward the other man then stops and drops his big hand onto my shoulder, reassuring me instead.

  As the door to the courtroom swings closed, Becker calls her next witness, Patrol Officer Devon DuBois, a young black woman who put her ass on the line to complain about Grimes in the first place.

  What I did was murder. But it was justified. I had no choice, and I can’t let it define me anymore.

  BACK IN THE SQUAD AFTER lunch, I keep noticing how sharp everything still looks and how, if I stare at something long enough, it starts to look like it’s vibrating, so I pay attention to behaving like a normal person. We’re working a case involving a floater that washed up about a week ago in the Cuyahoga River. It’s the worst kind of body, because they get gross, bloated, and mushy in the water. I’m trying to run down social media leads and planning a trip to visit the victim’s parents in Akron when we receive word that Freddie Perkins is dead and that the videos—one shot by the man who called 911 in the first place when he saw Perkins with the toy gun at the park, and one surveillance video from the park people—show that the rookie jumped out of a still-moving cruiser and shot the kid in the belly before asking any questions.

  The video also shows that neither cop tried to administer first aid. In fact, they stopped Perkins’s older sister from doing just that by restraining her on the ground then arresting her. What the actual fuck? Who does that? I squeeze my eyes shut then let them pop open again.

  I look at my watch and see that it’s time to leave if I want to get to Akron and up to Cleveland to see Dr. Shue, my therapist, on time. I tell Fishner that I have to go, that I’ll tie up everything with the floater on Monday, and to have a nice weekend. Then I head down the stairs and out to my car, which starts up right away in spite of its age.

  AT SOME POINT, AS I’M giving my shrink the download about everything, right after I tell her that I still feel less-than, fragmented, the opposite of whole, she gazes at me over her chic glasses and asks, “Who told you that you should feel whole? Who ever told you that anything would be any way at all?”

  I stare at her, blink slowly a couple of times, then change the subject in the way that I do, and then time is up, and I leave, still ruminating. Nobody ever told me that anything would be any way at all.

  On my way home, I pull into the gas station and pop the tank open on the black Passat that I love even though it’s old now.

  As the gas whooshes into the tank, I answer the question and then laugh to—at?— myself.

  I told myself that things would be a certain way.

  After I shot—murdered—that guy, I went nuts, like really nuts, for a period of several months. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to go nuts again just because I had to think about it today.

  Maybe that’s the medicine talking—the brain pills I fought taking until I sat on the edge of my bed and seriously considered suicide late one night a few months ago, even planning how I’d do it. Or maybe I’m just learning how to behave like a normal human being.

  MY DAYS OFF GO BY IN a blur. Friday night, I’m out with Cora and Josh and his partner, Jacob, and the next thing I know, I’m at Cora’s house, and it’s one in the morning, and I’m drunk, and she is, too, and we end up in bed somehow. Saturday, we wake up, and we’re both off work, so we go feed my cat and sift his box. Then we go to breakfast and to the grocery store before we hang out for a while in her nice backyard. It feels good, as if time hasn’t really passed, as if we’re the same as we always were.

  But we didn’t speak for a long time. We broke up a year and a half ago in a decidedly dramatic, depressing way, and our relationship will never be the same. I blew it.

  At one point, I say something about Heraclitus and his river—she’s always loved that guy and his weird aphorisms.

  She gathers her thick dark hair and pushes it over a shoulder. The wristband of her sweater slides back to reveal part of her full tattoo sleeve. “Everything flows.”

  I ask her to go to Tom’s with Christopher and me after the game tomorrow. She smiles her phosphorescent smile and tells me that it’ll be okay, and yeah, she would love to go to the barbecue. I want to know if last night meant anything or if this is still just a friends-with-benefits thing, but I’m too afraid to ask, because I already know the answer. We’ll just keep doing this until one of us gets into a relationship with someone else, and I suppose that’s okay. I give her a hug and leave and keep the dinner date I’ve had for a while with my now-sober mom.

  Mom and I talk about the creative writing class she’s taking and how awesome sobriety is and how great her life is now that she’s not drinking and eating painkillers all day, and she doesn’t ask about me—she never does—and I avoid reminding her of all the horrible bad things she did for the twenty-five years she was a fall-down drunk. I pay for dinner then go to the gym then home, where I play guitar for a while and surf the internet for longer while I drink a six-pack a little too quickly. Then I go to bed before I have time to think anymore about being called a murderer in open court. I need to get some sleep so that I can entertain Christopher tomorrow.

  CHAPTER 4

  Hardly anyone looks good in orange. That’s my thought at halftime.

  The call comes in as I’m waiting in line for the bathroom.

  The woman behind me, whom I’ve been imagining as somebody’s grandma even though she’s probably only Fishner’s age, fifty or so, sighs. “We’re gonna be here for hours!” she laments. I smell the beer on her breath when I turn to reply.

  “Looks that way.” I nod.

  She rolls her eyes.

  My younger brother leans on a railing about fifty feet away, waiting for me. Christopher said he was going to try to find a place to smoke, but I know that no such place exists here anymore.

  I catch his eye and flash him a grin.

  I hesitate before yanking the buzzing phone out of my pocket. Lt. Jane Fishner, it says on the screen. I flex my jaw. I’ve been on call for two months straight.

  It vibrates in my hand, again and again. I don’t answer it, but I don’t dismiss the call either, because Fishner knows how many rings it takes to get to voicemail. It stops, and I take a deep breath and gaze back at my brother, who shoots me a quizzical look. I wiggle my eyebrows at him, and he grins. He’s taller and bigger than I am—six two, two twenty o
r thereabouts, to my five nine, one sixty. He’s wearing a Browns baseball cap over his blond hair, and even under the hat, he looks like he’s just been to the barber. He’s growing back his reddish-blond beard. On the way here, he said it gets cold out there in the early mornings, and the beard will keep him warm.

  Christopher doesn’t mess around. He’ll say straight up that he’s a garbage man, sanitation worker, whatever. There’s no shame in that, because it’s the best job he’s ever had, and he seems to enjoy it most of the time. It beats doing dishes at a restaurant like he used to do, and we have the love of dawn in common.

  My phone starts buzzing again as soon as I get it back into my pocket.

  We end up with a lot of overtime. Fishner, who is right on track to be Captain Fishner one of these days, is right when she says we’re understaffed—we could use two, maybe three more detectives. Some report came out a couple of months ago that says violent crime is down citywide, but it’s never looked like that to me.

  I guess the brass figure we’re happy for the OT money or something, but today, I’d rather spend time with my brother then go to Goran’s barbecue.

  It’s not lost on them that Goran, Roberts, Martinez, Sims, and I are good at what we do, individually and as a squad. Goran and I both got promoted to first-grade detective at the beginning of September, in spite of my little run of misbehavior last year. Nothing changed except our pay grade, though Fishner has joked that the next step is sergeant and we should both think about it, because she could use a detective sergeant, and if one of us gets it, they might hire more guys for the unit.

  Sergeant comes with a lot of time at the desk, and being a detective these days is already too much desk work for my liking. There are too many screens and not enough people, too much sitting and not enough moving.

  When she calls a third time, I figure I have to answer. She wouldn’t blow my phone up like this unless it was a big deal.

  “Boyle,” I say out of habit.

  “I need you at Lake View.” She sounds out of breath.

  “What, the cemetery?” I squeeze my eyes shut then let them pop open. The bathroom line is finally moving forward.

  “How soon can you get there?”

  I map the route in my head. “Little under an hour.”

  “Quickly,” she says. “This is really, really bad.”

  “Isn’t that sort of outside our jurisdiction? And bad how?” At least half of Lake View Cemetery is technically Cleveland Heights, and I don’t want to get into some turf war right now, today, this week, or ever again, especially given that Cora is a Heights detective and the last thing I need right now is some kind of jurisdiction complication.

  “Nope. Our side. Really. This is bad. I’m sorry, but I need you and Goran on this—unless you want me to hand it to the sheriff’s department.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour,” I reply. Nothing against the sheriff’s department, but no way.

  She hangs up, and I put my phone away.

  About six months ago, a few people were held up at knifepoint in the same cemetery by “gang members,” or so the media called them. They turned out to be a couple of dumb kids looking for weed money. Everyone got freaked out and started saying that the Cleveland-Cleveland Heights border was getting scary again, like it was in the eighties. It’s not a bad neighborhood, though. Some would call it nice. I call it gentrified.

  At least none of my dead relatives are buried at Lake View. Not that I’ve visited them in fifteen years, anyway. Maybe twenty. And probably never again.

  I remove my hat and rake my fingers through my hair. I step out of line just as my turn to pee looks imminent. The beery grandmother turns to me. “Go get ’em!” she says, and I’m not sure if she means the Browns or me.

  People start to filter back to their seats. A big LCD screen at the end of the concourse tells me the second half starts in four minutes. I watch the seconds tick by instead of looking at Christopher, who isn’t going to like that I have to leave.

  I walk toward him, appreciating both his physical presence and the fact that he seems to be doing okay these days.

  “Look,” I begin, “I’m sorry.”

  He crosses his arms, and I meet his eyes. They’re pretty in the sun, light blue with a ring of gold around the pupils. They look like our dad’s eyes did, not like my mom’s and my creepy silvery-gray ones.

  He flexes his jaw.

  “That was Fish—my boss,” I say, squaring my posture to mimic his. “It’s bad.” As if that will make a difference to him. As if it isn’t always bad.

  He looks at me in the way I’ve looked at him in the past, with the slow Boyle blink and a pouty set to his full mouth. A combination of anger and disappointment flashes behind his eyes, then he shoves it away. He jams his hands into his pockets.

  “I have to go,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  Another minute ticks by. People push past us to get down to their seats—it’s two minutes to kickoff. “You care too much about murders,” he says in a matter-of-fact way. “What about the rest of us?”

  I don’t have time to argue with him, so I sigh and gaze over at the bathroom line, where the grandmotherly type is finally through the door.

  “At some point, Liz? You’re gonna have to stop this shit,” my brother says.

  “It’s—”

  “‘It’s my job.’” He mocks me. “I know it’s your job. But at some point? You’re gonna have to stop this shit.” His gaze is unwavering. “I’m gonna go back to my seat and watch the rest of the game. I guess I’ll take the bus home.” He says this in a calm, even voice. He turns to walk away.

  I grab his sleeve. “I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you. We’ll get dinner this week, okay? We can invite Mom too.” I attempt a smile.

  “Whatever you have to tell yourself.”

  I let go of his sleeve. You never step in the same river twice.

  “Be careful,” he calls over his shoulder.

  I lean on the railing and watch him stand in line for a couple of minutes. He comes away with a hot dog and a beer. He applies ketchup and mustard to his dog then disappears down the stairs and to his seat. He doesn’t look at me.

  I push off the railing and trot down the concrete ramp. It’s all but deserted now. The crowd cheers from above, below, and to the side of me. I glance over, trying to get a visual on the scoreboard. A big steel beam blocks my view, so I listen to the announcer, who says that Cleveland has returned the kick and is now on the other team’s thirty-yard line.

  It figures I’ll miss the one game they win. “Back in the Saddle Again” starts blaring through the loudspeakers. By the time I get to the bottom level of the stadium, the only people in the concourse are workers. I smile at the one who makes eye contact with me.

  A gust of wind blows down off the lake and against the right side of my face. I slow to a fast walk and turn into it. All right, Boyle. Refocus. Put your cop hat on.

  As if you ever take it off.

  On my jog to the car, which I’d paid twenty-five bucks to park, I wonder what I’m going to encounter at Lake View. It’s not like Fishner to be cryptic on the phone.

  I fire up my car and tune the radio to the game. The first thing I hear: fumble, recovered by the other team and returned for a touchdown.

  Welcome to Cleveland.

  CHAPTER 5

  I swing by my apartment for my cop gear.

  I keep the jeans but ditch the hat, run some water through my wavy auburn mop, and don my Garrison belt, holster, service Glock, and handcuffs in their leather case. I slip the shield into its belt clip and trade the orange Chuck Taylors for a newish pair of tactical boots that I need to finish breaking in, the denim jacket and Browns hoodie for a nicer shirt and my leather blazer. I brush my teeth to erase the smell of beer. I only had two, but I can’t show up at a crime scene reeking of booze. Not anymore.

  My place in Coventry is close to the cemetery, and even if I’d rather be at the game, the fact that it’s gorgeous o
utside isn’t lost on me. At least I’m not chasing some domestic-violence-committing, wife-murdering lunatic through the woods in the sleet or the snow or whatever Northeast Ohio might have to offer in late October.

  By the time I get there, about forty minutes after my brother walked away from me, the light outside is starting to change. It’s got this hue that one of my college literature professors used to talk about. I don’t remember the context now, but I do remember that he was generally pretty excited about boring seventeenth-century chronicles of people’s lives. He’d said that this time of day is called “the golden hour,” when poets write nature poems and photographers like to take landscape pictures. Even the gritty urban decay in much of the city looks pretty in the right light: the concrete, the steel, the belching factories all take on a slightly different cast. Even the graffiti glows.

  I glance at the clock on the dash as I ease past a couple of news vans and through the iron front gates of the cemetery. A white marble Virgin Mary holding an infant Jesus gives me a placid gaze on my left. They’re both wearing crowns. Statues like this used to fascinate me when I was a kid. I would stand there and stare at them until I thought I could see them breathing—they’re scattered all around here and most other cemeteries—until my mom would call for me to hurry up, saying don’t disrespect the dead and let’s get over to visit your sister and your father.

  The service area, which someone has blocked off with yellow crime scene tape, consists of a small gravel parking area and three outbuildings. The first thing I notice, other than the obvious cemetery maintenance stuff—riding lawn mower, rake, wheelbarrow, some empty urns for flowers—is the nervous little man hovering outside the yellow line, wringing his hands next to a uniform.

  Someone has drawn the tape around the buildings and the parking area, all the way back beyond the largest of the three buildings to a place I can’t see from here.