The guilty one, p.1
The Guilty One, page 1
THE GUILTY ONE
A NOVEL
BILL SCHWEIGART
To Kate, my love, and Sidney, my world. I’m grateful for you every day.
CHAPTER
1
Six months ago
THE MASSIVE TWEAKER spun Patrol Officer Callum “Cal” Farrell round and round on Duke Street. It was like riding a frothing, tattooed carousel, thought Cal.
Then, I don’t belong here.
It was an odd thing to think, even for this situation, which was plenty odd already. Cal had been called to a convenience store on the long avenue that ran east–west toward Old Town Alexandria, where a large, shirtless vagrant called Tiny had posted by the front door to harass the owner, unnerve patrons, and generally make a nuisance of himself. It was hot—an unbearably sticky day for July in Northern Virginia, which was a harbinger of an unbearably hot and sticky summer ahead—and Cal’s mood was sour. The sun seemed to have leached the blue from the sky and the air was distorted around the tires and hoods of the cars idling along Duke, which Cal caught in flashes as Tiny whipped him around.
Up close, Tiny’s head was massive, made even more so by a wild mane of dirty—very dirty—blond hair that exploded from his head and chin, flowed outward, and pooled around his shoulders. It gave his head a triangular shape and put Cal in mind of an erupting volcano. Maybe it was the heat. But the eyes at the center of the volcano weren’t filled with rage, but rather fear and confusion. God knows what he really sees, thought Cal as he spun around. Beyond Tiny’s leonine head and impressive shoulders, Cal saw snatches of their surroundings. Convenience store. Takeout barbecue joint. Lines of cars. The supermarket across Duke. Used tire store. Convenience store again. Takeout barbecue …
This was not as fun as it looked.
Still, Cal enjoyed being a cop for the most part, which is why the stray I don’t belong here was so unbidden, like it was a signal from someone else that his brain’s Wi-Fi had intercepted. His father had been a cop, and Cal liked helping people, and patrolling a patch of territory to keep the peace, but he knew he would love being a detective, and this was the path to get there. Along the path there were obstacles and hazards: dragons, rolling boulders, raging rivers, or like today, a shirtless giant who smelled like boiling vinegar.
But the path was the path.
Cal had hoped to talk some sense into the giant—Cal was hot, Tiny was hot, all of Old Town was hot—so maybe he’d just buy a couple of slushies or ice cream sandwiches and talk Tiny into wandering off to find a nice patch of shade. Tiny was probably just loitering by the entrance to get the occasional blast of air conditioning. But as soon as he pulled into the small parking lot, he saw that Tiny was having an episode. Yelling at customers, yelling at no one, yelling at himself, then laughing uproariously at a joke for one. He knew Tiny was battling mental illness, and at the moment he was losing.
And he was drinking from a forty, so Cal added alcohol to the list of aggravating factors.
The man’s head was clearly in the clouds, teetering on a very rickety psychological ladder.
Tiny cursed Cal before he had fully exited his patrol car. Alexandria’s policy was one-officer units. There were pros and cons to this. Two-officer units meant you had backup sitting right next to you, but the administrators argued it cut the number of beats a shift could cover in half … and that it was paying two officers to do the job of one. As in most other domains, money won the day over safety. Most days, Cal just enjoyed the solitude.
Today was not most days.
The large man rushed him, thrusting his hands out toward Cal’s chest, but Cal managed to snag one of Tiny’s gigantic arms and twist it enough to get a single cuff on, but the man’s wrists were slick with perspiration and Cal’s maneuver was not the smooth and seamless one he’d executed time and time again, which is how he found himself clinging to one loop of his handcuffs while the other was clamped around the giant’s wrist, who now whirled Cal around as if the vagrant was Thor, and six-foot-tall Callum Farrell was nothing more than his enchanted mallet.
Then, unbidden: I don’t belong here.
He didn’t quite know what particular here his mind was referring to. Here, as in at the end of a pair of swinging cuffs, trying to hold onto this unmerry-go-round before the centrifugal force hurled him into busy Duke Street? Here, in uniform on such a punishingly humid day? Here, in the uniform at all? Cal didn’t have much time to ponder it, as a second patrol car arrived during one of his sweeps. He had to gain positive control of the situation quickly before one of two things happened: it escalated dangerously or he died of embarrassment.
Plus all of this spinning was beginning to make him sick.
Cal got his feet under him, slowing the man’s momentum. When the tweaker’s arm met with resistance after swinging freely, it threw him off balance for a moment. Cal planted his feet then, and with all of his strength jerked the man’s arm downward, pulling the giant toward him. At the same time, he drove his knee into the giant’s thigh, striking the long nerve that ran the length of his leg. As juiced as he was, Tiny still yelped and fell like a redwood, his leg numb. As he toppled, Cal launched himself onto the man-mountain, riding him all the way down. They had barely bounced off the pavement when Cal wrenched the man’s free arm into the waiting, empty cuff with a blessed click.
Christ, it wasn’t even ten AM yet.
Rivulets of sweat poured from them both, and after their brief wrestling match, Cal realized the man’s ripe body odor was now his ripe body odor. Even cuffed, the man rolled back and forth. Cal scrambled to stay on top and not get pinned. It was like some sweaty logrolling competition.
“Damn it, man,” Cal said through gritted teeth. “I was going to buy you an ice cream cone.”
Tiny stopped rolling. He stared up at Cal, blinking.
“Mint chocolate chip?” he muttered.
Cal exhaled. “Sure, big guy.”
With Tiny suddenly docile, Cal took a beat to look around. The steady stream of traffic on Duke had stopped to watch the show. Among the gawkers was Patrol Officer Jimmy Vance, who exited his patrol car at a leisurely pace. Vance wore a wolfish grin and a high and tight haircut. The July sun gleamed off the shorn sides of his head and the lenses of his wraparound shades.
Why did it have to be Vance?
Jimmy Vance, aka Super-Cop. With his hair and shades, he resembled Iceman from Top Gun, which likely would have pleased Vance to no end had Cal actually told him, which he would not. Invoking Top Gun would only make Vance stronger, thought Cal. The man was at the top of their class at the academy, was in peak physical condition, and sharp as a tack. He was also Axe Body Spray in human form. Worse, Cal got the uneasy feeling he was a little too locked on, which Cal sensed might become a problem down the line.
Vance offered a slow clap as he approached.
“I applaud your commitment.”
“What?” said Cal, exhausted and irritated. Tiny was now wavering on mint chocolate chip and muttering alternatives to himself.
“Pairs figure skating. Practicing in this heat?”
“Cute.”
“Oh no, it’s you two who are cute. But I think if he’s going to spin you around, he should get to put on the police officer costume. But you have a couple of years to work out the kinks before the next Winter Olympics …”
With Vance’s help, they lifted the man and folded him into the back of the cruiser. No sooner was the man-mountain secure than a long tone emanated from the radio. Tiny ranted over it, now adamant about black cherry.
Vance leaned into the passenger side window of Cal’s cruiser and smacked the clear plastic partition to the back seat with the flat of his hand.
“Shut up, you.”
This quieted Tiny down long enough for Cal and Vance to catch the tail end of the tone, which lasted several seconds and overrode any radio chatter. The long tone was designed to get everyone’s attention.
“… multiple gunshots heard in 1800 block of Duke Street. Three callers.”
“Three callers,” said Vance. Cal knew what he meant. One caller could be nothing. A car backfiring, an air-conditioning unit falling onto a sidewalk. Two callers was more serious. But three?
Even in the heat, Cal felt a sudden chill.
“Five callers,” added the dispatcher.
CHAPTER
2
Now
DETECTIVE CAL FARRELL saw the body dangling from the tree by chance on his early morning run. He didn’t realize what he saw at first. When it dawned on him, it was like a blow, knocking him backward. He scraped his palms on the cold asphalt trail before scrabbling back to his feet.
He’d taken up running again since that Very Hot Day. That was how he and his counselor referred to it without saying it outright. His visits with Dr. Julia Mohr, the department’s psychologist, had been mandatory.
He would’ve gone anyway.
He had been relatively fine in the immediate aftermath of the Very Hot Day, but he had read enough to know that there was a grace period before the bill came due, so he knew to get ahead of it. But he couldn’t outrun it. And sure enough, all of the requisite emotions revealed themselves like clockwork, so much so that he thought it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Loss of interest in everything. Wanting nothing more than to sleep and being unable to. General fatigue, punctuated by adrenaline dumps and feelings of panic. The feeling of being underwater or living in a black-and-white movie with the sound turned down. An abject feeling of emptiness, and not having the energy or even the desire to wa nt to fill himself again.
His only persistent emotions were guilt, feelings of worthlessness, or a lack of emotion altogether.
Dr. Julia Mohr was a wry woman who actually went through the checklist with him. Oddly, he mustered more energy for their appointments than just about anything else. He even told her so. He was afraid he was performing and that she might think he was always this “up.”
“Like cleaning before a maid shows up,” said Julia with a laugh. “Happens all the time. Which reminds me, what’s the general state of your house these days?”
He lived alone in a small bungalow in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria, just north of Old Town.
“Untidy.”
“Was that a preexisting condition?”
“Negative.”
She made a notation in her pad.
“So predictable,” said Cal.
“That’s good.”
“The fact that you can set your watch by how fucked up I am is good?”
“God, yes. You’re what we refer to in the business as refreshingly fucked up,” said Julia, laughing. She was not at all what he had expected when he was ordered to meet with her following the Very Hot Day. He pictured a dour elder in a tweed jacket who reacted to Cal’s disclosures with a restrained “ah” or “hm.” But Dr. Julia was animated and her face was incredibly expressive. Her smile ranged from an impish smirk to a wide, toothy beam. The dark curls of her shag shook loose when she laughed, and she laughed a lot. Her eyes could go wide one moment and burrow into him the next. Her entire face was fluid and captivating.
She was also tough. She had to be if she cracked the shells of the hard cases in the department. She somehow managed to make him comfortable and keep him off guard.
“Thanks?” he said.
“Look, you’re one of the few guys here who have chosen to be proactive. Do you have any idea how many of your colleagues have to be brought here kicking and screaming? They wait until they become full-blown alcoholics or abuse their families or get so depressed their reaction time suffers and some dirtbag gets the drop on them on the street. And when they finally do come to my office, they consider it some sort of personal failure of their manhood. Most bristle or balk at the slightest personal question. Which reminds me, how’s your sex life?”
Cal balked at the personal question, but after her speech, he felt compelled to be transparent. Had she maneuvered him into that? Was she giving him a performance too? Even if she was, at least she was encouraging. In her own way. He decided to stick with transparency.
“Imaginary.”
“Sex drive?”
“Less in Drive, more like in Park.”
“Clever.”
“Thanks. I’ll need a nap after that.”
“Have you always used humor as a shield?”
“Only when questions feel like swords.”
She smirked and made a note. “Sleep still restless?”
He motioned as if making a check mark with an invisible pen.
“Come on,” she said.
“I’ll crash hard, then after a couple of hours I’ll just be up. I remember getting dumped once in high school and it was kind of like that.”
“Like being heartbroken,” said Julia, “minus the girl.”
There is a girl, thought Cal. But it wasn’t like that. Not exactly.
On and on went the checklist, with Dr. Julia naming indicators of depression and Cal confirming or denying them. She expressed her approval or incongruous delight at the timely emergence of a new manifestation. It was nice to know he wasn’t crazy, or was at least crazy in an obvious, predictable way.
She put her pad to the side and looked at him. It was near the end of their session. “The blackouts?”
“Is it a blackout if it happens when you’re asleep?”
“Very philosophical. How about we stick to life’s answerable questions.”
Cal shook his head. “No incidents in a good long while.”
Dr. Julia nodded sagely, made a note. “The feelings of worthlessness? That you don’t belong here?”
He met her eye. “We both know medication isn’t going to change that.”
That high school heartbreak was a bit of a revelation, though. He thought about it more that night. It seemed so silly and trivial now that he had once gotten himself twisted into such knots over a girl. He remembered how he turned the corner then: running. He’d been on the soccer team, but the breakup was during the off-season, so he hadn’t been exercising as he should have been. It had been the perfect storm, everything set up to allow for maximum wallowing. But he laced up his running shoes, put one foot in front of the other, and began to sweat the heartache out with forward motion.
He vowed to do the same again. The morning after that session with Dr. Julia, he went for an early morning run before work. Waking before dawn was easy when you weren’t sleeping anyway, and the Mount Vernon Trail paralleled the Potomac River, offering scenic vistas. It felt good to move. But after a half mile, tears welled unexpectedly in his eyes. Fortunately, it was still dark and none of the other predawn runners saw him swiping at his face. He felt feverish, as if his muscles were sapped of strength, so he walked the rest of the way. The next day, he promised himself he’d try to work up to a full mile. As the medication accumulated in his system, he accumulated more sleep and more miles. After a few weeks, he felt as if he was pulling out of a downward spiral and leveling off.
The pre-shift runs became a ritual, which is how he came to be on the Mount Vernon Trail at dawn on a Tuesday morning, running south toward Old Town. To the east, a wooded bluff sloped down to the Potomac. To the west, there was a sliver of green with a copse of oak trees, where in the largest tree hung a dead body.
Hallucination had never been a symptom Cal had ticked off on Dr. Julia’s checklist. Was he still ahead of the curve?
He stared up into the tree’s canopy and blinked twice.
He realized with a guilty relief that the body was real.
CHAPTER
3
Then
THEY WERE THE first on scene.
Cal followed Vance east on Duke Street, their lights flashing and sirens blaring, parting the sea of cars in front of them. He tried to listen to new information from the dispatcher, but his passenger in the back seat thrashed and yelled, suddenly coherent, and Cal missed most of it.
“Man, let me out! Come on, man, let me out!”
Tiny may have missed most of the content, but the tension in the dispatcher’s normally detached voice made the vagrant more nervous than any words he may have actually heard. It unsettled Cal too. The dispatcher’s voice was usually low and even, a fixed, stationary presence on the radio, but now it sounded a little faster, a little higher, as if the voice itself was becoming unmoored and floating away. Cal pictured the dispatcher holding a huge bouquet of black balloons, being slowly lifted off the ground.
“… repeat, multiple gunshots. Possible active shooter situation. Twelve calls.”
Suddenly, he heard Vance’s voice boom on the radio. “Units 232 and 235 responding. Hold Vance and Farrell en route!”
It was official. Even though he had responded without hesitation, not even pausing long enough to release Tiny, and was now speeding down the center lane of Duke Street toward the source of the shots, it was hearing his own name spoken aloud that made it real. It was a kind of roll call, and his name was now inextricably linked to whatever was unfolding blocks away. And whatever it was he was hurtling toward already felt big. Large enough to have its own gravity, drawing him in before he was fully aware of it. Large enough to become a tentpole in his life, an event by which he would measure other events, by where it fell on his personal chronology, before and after. His first kiss. Getting sworn into the Navy. Graduating from the police academy. The death of his father.
This very hot day, whatever it may bring.
“This is Officer Farrell. I have a mental health crisis in the back seat.”
“Kick them loose,” said the dispatcher. There was a pause, then “Twenty callers.”
He did not have time to dwell on his thoughts, and couldn’t articulate them until later, because Vance screeched to a halt in front of him. They had arrived in less than a minute.
