Clean Slate

Chapter 11

The deep porch was almost fully dark and deep in country silence except for the sound of crickets and the occasional whoosh-whoosh of a bat fly-by. Compared with downtown St. Marys, Mac reflected, this place was so peaceful, so quiet. He had not ever consciously wanted it, but this turn his life had taken, he thought, confirmed the truth of the maxim that while you may not always get what you want, you usually get what you need.

Scott, shadowy dim on the chair down from Mac, asked, "So how are you?"

Mac took a deep breath, released it. "At sixes and sevens."

"About Nicholas."

Amazing, Mac thought. Somebody actually utters his name. "Yes," he said, glad that the dark hid the rush of dampness to his eyes, the ache in his chest: both so familiar, yet so fresh.

"And Suzanne."

"Oh yeah."

"You're still struggling," Scott ventured, "with the idea she wasn't wholly honest with you about the nature of the Detroit trip?"

"Among other things."

"Such as?"

"Saw her Sunday, at Mom and Dad's. She was. . .all over the place. Claimed she loves me, but said a lot of mean rotten things. Insisted she wants me back, but admitted she's been having sex with somebody while I was overseas. Called me a liar when I told her I've been faithful."

"She's hurting," Scott commented. "As deeply as you, but she deals with it in different ways."

"I don't rip her up," Mac said. "I don't dog her down."

"And you need to stay on that high road, for there to be any chance of Suzanne getting there." And," Scott said, "you should think about letting go of these suspicions about Detroit."

"Can't. I've tried. But it sticks. Stronger still."

"Really?"

"Like tentacles around my heart. Squeezing harder and harder."

"Wow, man."

"Hard for me to breathe, sometimes."

"So what are you going to do?"

"That's the question."

Pause. "Can I suggest something?"

Choiceless, but dreading it, Mac said: "Fire away."

"How about just forgiving her?"

"For what?"

"For whatever."

"Anything?"

"Any and all."

"Without knowing?"

"Do you need to know?"

"Pretty sure I do."

"You could just let that go."

"You mean, like. . .give her, uh. . .blanket amnesty, then."

"Exactly. Forgive her, and love her."

"Just like that?"

"You can do it if you want."

"Oh, man."

"All you have to do is decide to."

"It's a tough one."

"No it's not. It's the simplest thing in the world. A decision."

"I don't know."

"What I know is, you know how to forgive. I've seen you do it."

"Yeah, but. . .not without knowing. This deal here, what you're telling me to do, it's a whole new step up."

"Sometimes the right thing to do turns out to be a big huge thing."

"But life is – at least my life – it happens in steps. Some of them baby steps. Two forward, one back. This one is --"

"A big one. I know."

Mac was silent.

"Just forgive her," Scott said. "And love her. And put it all behind you."

Before the sentence was finished, Mac realized he was shaking his head. Not voluntarily; as a result of something way deep down inside himself. "Can't. Sorry. I'm just not that highly evolved."

"Yet."

"Knowing things is what I do. It's a have-to for me."

Scott said, "I'm going to venture this again, and please don't bite my head off. You could try counseling. I know some excellent --"

"Sorry, pal. No can do. I'm just your typical go-it-alone type."

Scott sighed. "Well then," he said pensively, "as your friend, I hope you get to a truth you can accept. And when you get there, I pray that you'll be able to deal with whatever it is."

Out at Scott's car, the two men hugged awkwardly in the dark. Scott said, "Our lay minister team has some open slots. Care to re-up?"

"Oh, not right now," Mac answered. "Not with all this other going on, trying to get settled back in and all."

"Lucille still asks for you," Scott said.

"She's still around?" Mac asked, surprised, pleased. "Must be a hundred."

"Ninety-nine next week." Scott gave Mac's shoulder a playful punch. "See you Sunday?"

Tempted briefly to fog, Mac determined to play straight. "Doubt it. Fact is, I'm still a bit put out with God at the moment."

Scott opened his car door, eased behind the wheel, looked up at Mac. "That's okay. He still thinks the world of you." Starting the motor, he backed around and eased away into the darkness of Old Kennesaw Road.

---

Darkness had completely fallen as Earl Bucaro escorted Carleton, carrying the last armload of notebooks and files, out the back door of Department of Sheriff. Brilliant orange-yellow halogen lights, perched high on stanchions that also held surveillance cameras piped by satellite to Homeland Security Desk, lit up the concrete loading dock and expansive parking lot, which was parked thick with shiny Department of Sheriff squad cars, unmarked surveillance vehicles, paddy wagons, and armored personnel carriers. Down the way Earl saw Fant standing in the bed of the black Ford pickup, guarding in some sense the piles of books and files. He looked, Earl thought glumly, as fiercely protective as a flattened hamster. Standing nearby on the concrete dock was a tall youngish woman whom Earl did not know. She turned toward them as they approached. She wore an ivory jacket and a matching skirt that was shorter than short, showing very good legs that went all the way from her ass all the way to the ground. Her stance was hip-shot, assertive; her red hair was shaggy and choppy; the gray eyes in her angular, freckled, and cute-pretty face were defiant, skeptical.

She's a dish, Earl thought, approaching. But way too old. Thirty easily.

"Are you Superintendent Bucaro?" the woman asked.

"At your service," Earl said genially, letting the puffing sweaty Carleton precede him to the truck. "And you are?"

"Libby Lewis. From The Blade."

That bitch, huh? "Oh, sure," Earl said, drawing up to her as Carleton handed the last armload to Fant. "Seen your little stories. Decent work."

That rolled right off her, which amused Earl; most writers he knew puckered and puddled and became shapeless sops at the sound of any praise for their work. "These are the hooker papers," she said, gesturing at the truck bed.

Earl glanced at Fant, who shot him a guilty look. You fucking shit-ass. "I'm really not at liberty to say," Earl told the reporter. "There's a court order, you know."

"I know. I've read it," she threw back. "It says nothing about withholding information from the press." She stepped closer to Earl; gutsy chick, this one. "You should know," Lewis went on, "that my newspaper has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for these documents. So you need to --"

"What I need to do," Earl cut in, "is carry out the order of Judge Scott. You, madam, are obstructing me."

She was unimpressed. "And you, sir, are acting with unseemly haste," she pointed out. "What are you helping them hide, Superintendent?"

"It's nothing like that," Earl said easily. "We're just the dutiful sort, over at the Bureau of the Bailiff."

"We're expecting a stay from the court in Sheffield at any moment," Lewis told him. "So it's in your interest to --"

"What's in my interest," Earl said, looking hard at her now, "and what I've been sworn by to do for thirty years now, is to enforce the lawful orders of the court here in St. Marys." She started to interrupt again but he kept right on, calmly, reasonably. "If a contravening order appears from a some other court" – his tone made it clear Earl would question the credibility of any court outside of St. Marys – "we'll take a look at it. In the meantime," he went on, thwarting another of her attempts to interrupt, "good evening, Miss Lewis."

---

So deeply absorbed was he in the study of a probationer's file, Mac did not realize his new cell phone was ringing till it had stopped. Flipping the lid, he checked the read-out. RACKMASTERS LLC. Oh, boy. Easing back from his desk, he hit the speed dial for SUZANNE -- WK and, at the prompt, keyed in his wife's extension.

This Wednesday morning, day three back on the job, Mac was well and truly into it. His dance card was jammed with probationer appointments, plus two court appearances later on. Having worked through about half his case load, Mac was sure that Clare had assigned him her section's most pesky and difficult offenders. Most were drunk drivers, many on their second or third trip through probation world. He also had several parolees fresh from felony drunk driving prison terms, living in halfway houses, attending intensive outpatient therapy, taking their court-prescribed steps back into the land of the law-abiding. Besides the drunks, Mac had an array of other typically intransigent offender types: spouse abusers, shoplifters, minors in possession, obscene phone callers, stalkers, indecent exposers.

Certainly Clare had cherry-picked an irksome crowd for him. But rather than feel annoyed by this, Mac took it as an honor. To him it was a sign of Clare's faith in his abilities: to enforce with diligence, in each case, the court's orders; to keep these wayward folks on something like a straight-and-narrow, and maybe – in admittedly rare cases – to be part of, and perhaps to some degree influence, an offender's genuine transition from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.

Suzanne answered: "So where are you?"

Mac leaned back in his chair. "Work. Sorry I didn't pick up before; I didn't hear it ringing. How are you?"

"I'm all right," she came back, sounding anything but. "Thanks for giving me your cell number."

"Glad to." In Mac's short time back, he'd become astonished at the extent to which the cell phone had become part of the fabric of his job. From Clare on down, more court people called him on his cell than on his Fannie Annie desk line. The computer network, too, had become central to court operations. Though probationer files were still kept on paper – paperwork, Mac thought, would never completely go away – much record-keeping was electronic, and other functions were computer-based now, too. Especially communication. The thought prompted Mac to check his screen. Sure enough, a red box had appeared above the news scroll, an instant message from the DPP reception desk: EDDIE FANT D38-08-90.

Right on time, Mac thought. Good old Eddie. Clicking the "OK" box, he rose, holding the cell phone to his ear. "What's up?" he asked Suzanne.

"Well, I was chatting with Lon, and he told me you called him."

"Right," Mac said, walking out into the hallway.

"So I guess," she said, tone brittle, "you're gumshoeing around my life now."

"Wish it weren't necessary." As he walked toward the reception area, he waved and smiled to passing co-workers.

"It's not necessary. In fact it's totally uncalled for."

"I disagree," Mac said easily. "And anyway, strictly speaking, it's not just your life I'm gumshoeing around. March 15 was very much about our life."

"I didn't do anything wrong!"

"And I'm not saying you did. But you won't tell me what really happened. So I have to find out for myself." Mac reached the glass doors to the waiting area. Out there, among the half dozen waiting offenders, he spotted Eddie Fant, hollow-eyed and gaunt, slouched in a chair. Mac waved at him and Eddie gestured back; Mac held up an index finger, and Eddie nodded.

"So," Suzanne said in his ear, tone bitter, "when you promised to ‘work on us?' This is what you meant?"

"Those were your words," Mac said, leaning against the wall. "Not mine. And this situation is entirely within your power to fix. Come clean, today, right now. And we'll take it from there."

"I have done that. What do you want me to do, go ahead and make something up?"

"No, I don't," he said, and then, addressing her prior statement, added gently, "and no, you haven't."

Long pause, cracking of the ozone, and then she cried, "I wish you hadn't come back! I was better off with you gone!"

"Suze --"

"I wish you had died over there! I wish you'd been blown to smithereens!"

Stung, disheartened, Mac took a deep breath. Waited till he felt sure of a calm tone. "So this is how it ends, Suze?"

As quick as it had come, her ferocity went. "No, no," she said, voice small. "I take it back." A pause, as she gathered herself. "Just don't give up on us. Please."

"I haven't," he assured her. "And you just, please, be patient. While I do what I have to do."

"Oh God," she said softly. "It's so hard."

"I love you, Suzanne."

A sigh, and then the connection broke.

Closing his eyes, Mac took a deep breath, then another one. Clicking his phone shut, he slipped it back into his pocket, then opened the glass door. "Eddie," he beckoned, holding the door open. In days gone by he'd have gone out to the offender and greeted him with a handshake. But now, many interior Fannie Annie doors, including this one to the waiting area, were equipped with automatic door locks, activated (at least in theory) by employee ID badges, and Mac didn't trust his ID badge to readmit them. Just yesterday, during lunch, the whole system had glitched and locked every door in the place, imprisoning people inside, barring those outside, for over an hour.