Page 27

“Where are you gonna go?” Jacob asked.

Faith zipped her suitcase and said, “I called my cousin in Missouri. He’s got a guest house I can stay in for a while.”

“Missouri, huh? Where at?”

“Sunrise Beach.”

“No idea where that is.”

“The Lake of the Ozarks. It’s a little resort town, but it’s a quiet one set a little bit away from the bigger towns.”

“Ah. Well, that sounds muggy and miserable.”

She laughed. “In the summer, maybe, but it’s actually snowing there right now.”

"Yeah, today it might be. The next day, it might be eighty degrees and humid as hell."

She grinned. “I guess I’ll have to suck it up.”

Jacob chuckled. “Yeah, I guess so.” His expression softened, at least as much as a twenty-seven-year veteran of the Marine Corps could soften. “It was good to see you, Staff Sergeant. I’m glad you’re doing well.”

She wrapped him in a bear hug. “You too, First Sergeant. I’ll keep in touch, okay?”

“You’d better. If I have to go to the swamplands of Missouri to talk to your ass, I’m going to make you regret it.”

“I believe you.”

She released him, and Jacob squatted down to say goodbye to Turk. “You be good, Marine. Take care of your squad leader, okay?”

Turk barked in agreement, and Jacob patted his head. "Good dog."

He escorted the two of them outside to Faith’s car. The city had salted the roads the night before, so driving was a far less terrifying prospect than it would have been otherwise. Not that it would have stopped Faith. She’d dealt with far more dangerous things than ice on the roads.

Jacob watched them as they pulled out of the driveway and headed south. She gave him one last wave goodbye, and he returned a crisp salute that would have warmed the heart of any drill instructor.

Then they were on the road again.

She drove for about three miles when a police cruiser pulled in behind her and put its lights on. She frowned for a second, but when she saw the officer grinning in the driver’s seat, she smiled and pulled over.

Slade came to her window, and she batted her eyes innocently. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?”

“Well, it occurred to me that a brief wave wasn’t enough of a goodbye for someone who saved my career, so I thought I’d buy you breakfast instead. Got time for a donut?”

Faith chuckled. If only Michael could have been here to meet the wisecracking detective. “There’s always time for a donut, right boy?”

Turk barked enthusiastically, his tail thumping against the dash as he thought of the sweet treat that awaited him.

“And me makes three,” Slade said. “Follow me.”

He led them to a donut shop a mile down the road. Faith got herself a chocolate ring. Slade got a Boston crème, and Turk got a plain glazed.

“Huh. I thought you’d get a maple bacon bar,” she remarked.

Slade grimaced. “Why would I eat that?”

She shrugged. “No reason.”

The donut shop was crowded for the early morning rush, so they ate in Faith’s car.

“I miss the old Crown Vics,” Slade said. “The new cars are slick, but the Crown Vics had a weight to them, you know? They felt like trucks.”

“They almost were. Body on frame, solid rear axle, recirculating ball steering until 2003: basically trucks with sedan bodies.”

“Yeah. Good old days. Glad to see someone’s still keeping the old ways alive.”

Faith laughed. “Yeah, that’s me. Old soul in a young body. Well, young-ish.”

He shrugged. “Eh, age is just a number.”

“I wish that were true.”

They fell silent for a moment. Inside the donut shop, a very elderly woman leaned on the arm of her daughter and mumbled something under her breath. The daughter helped her sit, and the woman frowned at her, confused for a moment, before smiling widely and patting her arm. The daughter smiled at her mother, but Faith could see the pain in her eyes.

“I hope I don’t live long enough to lose my mind,” Slade said. “I couldn’t imagine putting my wife and kids through that.”

“It’s not like she has a choice.”

“No, I know. I just… hope it doesn’t happen to me.”

“Me too.” Faith sipped her coffee and decided a change of subject was in order. “What’s going to happen to Meredith Sawyer, you think?”

“A lifetime in a padded room taking happy pills,” Slade replied. “A lot of people fake insanity, but hers isn’t fake.”

“Where is she now?”

“Still at the hospital. They have her in the secure ward in a private room. She keeps asking if someone’s taking care of Ralphie.”

“Damn. She went quick, huh.”

"I guess so. The doctor I talked to said it happens that way sometimes. They go a little bit at a time and then all at once. Her neighbors told us that she started showing signs of slipping after her dog died. That usually means they were slipping for years before that and just didn't look it."

Faith’s brow furrowed. “So she was showing signs of mental decline and no one did anything about it?”

“People don’t want to step into a situation that isn’t their business,” Slade opined. “They probably assumed she had family or friends to help. And no one could have predicted she’d decline the way she did. How many people do you know start getting dementia and end up going on a killing spree where they try to absolve people’s sins by murdering them and laying them to rest using a warped modification of a Celtic ritual?”

“Still, they could have helped her. Even if she was harmless to others, she wasn’t harmless to herself. They could have called for a welfare check or taken her to the hospital. They could have gotten her the care she needed before it was too late.”

Slade smiled with a hint of bitterness. “Welfare checks don’t do as much as people think they do. All we would have done was show up, ask if she was okay, and then make sure she wasn’t injured and could tell us basic things like what day it was, who was the President, what her name and age were… Traffic stop questions, basically. We value individual privacy and freedom in America. It takes a lot to have someone removed involuntarily from their home.”

“Even still,” Faith insisted, “some sort of intervention would have been better than nothing. We could have protected the victims. Even if Meredith was destined for a psychiatric hospital no matter what, we could have sent her there without the blood of four innocent people on her hands.”

“Maybe.”

Slade’s pessimism was beginning to irritate Faith. She turned to him and asked, “Do you really think there was no chance? We should just throw our hands up in the air, say, ‘That’s the way it is,’ and just deal with it?”

To her surprise, Slade didn’t respond by apologizing or by defending his position. He cocked his head and thought for a while. Then he said, “I think that there need to be people who can accept things the way they are and people who can’t.”

“But how does anything change if people don’t believe they can change?”

“Slowly, painfully, and over a very long period of time. Just like things always change.”

Faith pressed her lips together and looked away. She understood the point Slade was making, but she really couldn’t accept it. “You don’t think they’d change faster if everyone could agree that they need to change and act on that?”

“That’s a huge if, Faith. Change requires sacrifice. For some people, change requires great sacrifice. I don’t know if it’s fair to expect others to sacrifice greatly so that the species as a whole improves. Maybe it is. Maybe people should be willing to make that sacrifice. Maybe it would be better to let go of a little personal freedom so that people like Meredith Sawyer aren’t allowed to rot until all that remains is the worst parts of themselves. I think there should be people like you who are fighting to say they shouldn’t be because it will raise awareness of these circumstances and maybe inspire people to take the initiative that governments won’t. I also think there should be people who can handle it when things don’t change the way they should because we can find ways to help people with the resources we have instead of ramming our heads into the wall and demanding resources we don’t have. It’s not a fun way to look at things, I guess. We don’t ever have everything we want. But a lot more people have enough.”

He finished the last of his coffee. "Anyway, I waxed philosophical and went on a tangent that only partly has to do with the case. I guess I've just been thinking about the reasons my captain gave me for why I need to let the case go and about why I didn't let the case go anyway. I've been trying to reconcile how he can be right and I can still be right. That's the closest I could come to an answer."

He leaned over and gave Faith a half hug. "Either way, I'm damned glad you came to visit us. If it helps, think about all the people who didn't die because we caught Meredith. Think of Dr. Carpenter, who got to go home to her children."

She smiled. “That’s the goal, right?”

“Always. Goodbye, Special Agent.”

“See you on the other side, Detective.”

Slade walked to his car and pulled out of the parking lot. Faith gave him a wave before starting the engine and pulling out in the opposite direction.

The other shoe would drop soon enough. The people who wanted things to stay the way they were would be very unhappy with Faith’s refusal to accept things the way they were, and that would result in consequences, possibly severe ones. Tabitha was confident that they had prevented Faith’s psych evaluation from becoming a thorn in their side, but there was that slim chance that things could go very wrong and Faith’s greatest adversary could be released to plague her again.

But for now, Faith was content. More importantly, she was proud of herself. Once more, she faced adversity that seemed insurmountable, and once more, she overcame that adversity and did the right thing regardless of the risk. As long as she could do that, she’d be all right. And if West did rear his ugly head again, she’d be ready to put it right back where it belonged.

Turk laid his head on the center console, and Faith scratched him behind his ears. “On to new adventures. You ready boy?”

Turk barked, and Faith laughed and looked toward the horizon and whatever lay on the other side.