can’t even work his part-time security position. Anything that might require him to use a gun is off-limits. But, he thinks with a bitterness that swells his heart near to bursting, because he’s still a cop, he couldn’t leave district headquarters without a weapon.
Carson stands up and sees the blinking red light on the answering machine. He’d heard the call as he lay in bed, unable to sleep, unable to rise, an hour ago. It was Matthew Frey calling to ask if he was okay, if he needed anything, telling him that he would have his secretary call him to set up an appointment for next week. Telling him to call him anytime before then if he has questions or just wants to talk. “If you need a mental health professional to talk to, I can provide you with some names. It’ll be confidential. No one in the department will have to know,” he assures Carson in the slow, melodious baritone that schooled Carson last night on what to do now that he is on the other side of the law.
In the twelve hours since the shooting, he’s been seized by the desire to end
once and for all
the guilt he feels, guilt undiminished by the sanctuary he found in his wife’s arms. Surely he’s damned, but he’s not crazy. Not yet. He’s not ready to eat his gun after a bad shooting, like Boone, James, and Tremont, their names whispered like a shameful taboo, three police officers in the state of Maryland
that he knows of,
since he joined the force, who took their own lives. Carson stands looking at the answering machine, off-balance, dizzy, longing to conceal and to confess.
On a normal day he’d wash a load of clothes for Bunny, pick up grocery items on the running list on a pad held to the refrigerator by a duck-shaped magnet. But this isn’t like any other day, so after Carson has showered and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt he stands in front of the open refrigerator, enveloped in a cocoon of cool air, sickened by the sight of shelves bulging with food, and in the end makes a cup of instant coffee. The house is too quiet. If this were a normal day he’d have relished the quiet of the neighborhood of prosperous retirees who spend as much time on jazz cruises or volunteering at the nearby schools as they do at home, and the busy two-income professional couples who don’t pull into Paradise Glen until six or six-thirty in the evening. But this day he’s cloistered by the silence intermittently broken by the sound in his head of bullets discharged from a gun. Imprisoned by a sound that erupts relentlessly, that he cannot stifle or escape.
Even the daytime court shows, which he flips through after settling on the sofa in front of the television in the family room—
Judge Hatchett, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judy
—don’t muffle the intermittent flashbacks. The sight of the hapless adulterers, embezzlers, and con artists standing before the TV judges intensifies the trembling of his hands, the painful galloping of his heartbeat, the hallucinatory image of the mask of awful surprise on the face of the young man he shot.
Carson sees the
Washington Post
tossed by Bunny near the fireplace before she left. He rarely reads newspapers anymore, and even when he does he barely trusts the veracity of what’s in them. Yet when he turns, his fingers slick with sweat and shivering with a chill, to page 2 of the Metro section and sees the brief account under “Crime & Justice: Maryland,” Carson knows what he’s reading is the truth.
----
OFFICER INVOLVED IN FATAL SHOOTING
A man was fatally wounded last night by a Prince George’s County police officer, who stopped the man for speeding and driving with no headlights. The shooting occurred shortly before midnight in the parking lot of the Watkins Glen Mall on Central Avenue and Watkins Park Road. It was not immediately clear last night what prompted the officer to open fire. It could not be learned if any weapons were found at the scene. None of the people involved in the incident were
Carson stands up and sees the blinking red light on the answering machine. He’d heard the call as he lay in bed, unable to sleep, unable to rise, an hour ago. It was Matthew Frey calling to ask if he was okay, if he needed anything, telling him that he would have his secretary call him to set up an appointment for next week. Telling him to call him anytime before then if he has questions or just wants to talk. “If you need a mental health professional to talk to, I can provide you with some names. It’ll be confidential. No one in the department will have to know,” he assures Carson in the slow, melodious baritone that schooled Carson last night on what to do now that he is on the other side of the law.
In the twelve hours since the shooting, he’s been seized by the desire to end
once and for all
the guilt he feels, guilt undiminished by the sanctuary he found in his wife’s arms. Surely he’s damned, but he’s not crazy. Not yet. He’s not ready to eat his gun after a bad shooting, like Boone, James, and Tremont, their names whispered like a shameful taboo, three police officers in the state of Maryland
that he knows of,
since he joined the force, who took their own lives. Carson stands looking at the answering machine, off-balance, dizzy, longing to conceal and to confess.
On a normal day he’d wash a load of clothes for Bunny, pick up grocery items on the running list on a pad held to the refrigerator by a duck-shaped magnet. But this isn’t like any other day, so after Carson has showered and dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt he stands in front of the open refrigerator, enveloped in a cocoon of cool air, sickened by the sight of shelves bulging with food, and in the end makes a cup of instant coffee. The house is too quiet. If this were a normal day he’d have relished the quiet of the neighborhood of prosperous retirees who spend as much time on jazz cruises or volunteering at the nearby schools as they do at home, and the busy two-income professional couples who don’t pull into Paradise Glen until six or six-thirty in the evening. But this day he’s cloistered by the silence intermittently broken by the sound in his head of bullets discharged from a gun. Imprisoned by a sound that erupts relentlessly, that he cannot stifle or escape.
Even the daytime court shows, which he flips through after settling on the sofa in front of the television in the family room—
Judge Hatchett, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judy
—don’t muffle the intermittent flashbacks. The sight of the hapless adulterers, embezzlers, and con artists standing before the TV judges intensifies the trembling of his hands, the painful galloping of his heartbeat, the hallucinatory image of the mask of awful surprise on the face of the young man he shot.
Carson sees the
Washington Post
tossed by Bunny near the fireplace before she left. He rarely reads newspapers anymore, and even when he does he barely trusts the veracity of what’s in them. Yet when he turns, his fingers slick with sweat and shivering with a chill, to page 2 of the Metro section and sees the brief account under “Crime & Justice: Maryland,” Carson knows what he’s reading is the truth.
----
OFFICER INVOLVED IN FATAL SHOOTING
A man was fatally wounded last night by a Prince George’s County police officer, who stopped the man for speeding and driving with no headlights. The shooting occurred shortly before midnight in the parking lot of the Watkins Glen Mall on Central Avenue and Watkins Park Road. It was not immediately clear last night what prompted the officer to open fire. It could not be learned if any weapons were found at the scene. None of the people involved in the incident were
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