look at each other for a moment. He lifts his eyebrows as if to say, well?
* * *
Doctor Kari Stephens sits down in her well-worn burgundy leather chair, and I take my usual place at the end of a matching sofa.
“You look great, Sam,” she says over the rim of her coffee mug, on which there is an image of John Wayne and the words A man’s gotta have a creed to live by. “How was Saigon?”
Doc Kari, as all the cops call her, is a plain looking fifty-year-old Chinese woman, no makeup, fit, leaning towards muscular, with gun-silver hair a tad longer than a Marine’s. A framed photograph on the windowsill shows her with her longtime partner, an attractive blond-haired woman of the same age, standing near a waterfall. They’re both wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts.
“One for the memory books,” I say. “Connected more with my father, met his wife, and fell harder for Mai.”
“Sounds wonderful,” she says, studying my face, looking for the truth. I hate when she does it because she has a way of picking up on the slightest nuances, like a flicker in my eye or the way I hold my mouth. I told her once she should be a detective and she said she was. Got that right. She leans toward me a little. “Something else happened, didn’t it? And don’t say no.”
I chuckle. “You’re amazing.”
“Why I get the big bucks. Something terrible happened over there.”
I sigh. “Yes. But it’s not why I’m here today.”
“I see. How about you tell me in as few words as you can then we’ll talk about why you’re here. Sam, everything matters. So please tell me.”
“My father, Mai and I, with some old but oh so incredible Vietnamese vets raided a warehouse to free twenty-seven little girls about to be shipped off to Cambodia to work as prostitutes. Sex trafficking. We were successful but several people died in the process. A few hours later, a teenage boy and I had a death match with a man, in a tunnel that threatened to bury us.”
As is her norm, Kari doesn’t bat an eye. “You directly involved in the deaths?”
I shake my head. “I was present but no one died by my hand.”
“How are you dealing with it?”
I look past her and out the window at Portland’s skyline. “I don’t think I’ve processed it all yet. Things were pretty fast-paced from the moment I got there until a few days before I flew out. I know you’re going to say I need to think it out, and I agree. I just need a moment, or several, to do so.”
Kari jots on her pad, then, “This strikes me as huge, Sam, yet you want to talk about something else today?”
“I do. It’s because I’m back to where I was before I left for Vietnam. Actually, I’m where I was in the weeks following the shooting, although I may have moved a little in my thinking.”
Kari lifts her eyebrows. “I’m good, but you’re going to have to explain that.”
“After the shootings, I knew I could never pick up a gun again. I told myself this over and over. I knew it in Saigon too. I had opportunities there to carry one, but I refused to do it. Knowing I won’t do it again, can’t do it again, I’ve been thinking I have no choice but to leave police work.” A cop who won’t carry a gun or who can’t use one to defend himself or others has no business in law enforcement.
I look down at my hands folded in my lap. Out of the corner of my eyes, I see Kari uncross her legs and then cross them again. A minute passes, maybe two. She’s giving me space to continue but I have nothing else, or maybe I do.
“Sam, I hear a ‘but’ in your voice?” I look up at her. When Kari gets her look, the same one a hawk gives a field mouse, there’s no escaping.
“It’s driving me nuts. I just came from Deputy Chief Rodriguez’s office.”
“Uh oh.”
“Hey, he wasn’t as bad as I expected. In fact, the experience wasn’t bad at all. The rumors of him being an asshole are overdone.”
“I know,” Kari says, as if she knows it to be a fact. Might he be a patient?
“He offered me a job working hate crimes in the Intelligence Unit.”
“Ah yes. Been a series of bad incidents. A black man was hung down in Old Town. Are they saying it’s racially motivated yet?”
“They are as of today. Anyway, he stroked me a little and said the job would keep me out of the public eye and out of trouble. I know a guy who’s been there for four years so I know it’s true. Most of the time he keeps his weapon in his desk.”
“Sounds like a job where there would be little to no opportunity to get yourself into trouble.”
“No opportunity, unless the Taliban repelled down from the roof and crashed through the windows on the twelfth floor.”
“Any history of it happening?”
I smile. “None. But you know how I attract trouble.”
“So Rodriguez has you questioning your declaration.”
I tell her about what happened to Mark. “Among the many things bouncing around in my head is maybe this job could be a way of doing something good. My father says while we can’t always fix bad things that happened in the past, we can strive to do good now.”
“Samuel, wasn’t it? You’re calling him Father now?”
“Yes, and I’m comfortable with it.” No need to tell her all that led up to it.
“Good. So your concern right now is what to do about your job. You know I can’t release you until you can tell me you could use your weapon should a situation require it. And you’ve been pretty adamant to me and to yourself that you’re incapable of doing it again.”
“Incapable.”
“This word bothers you? It means powerless, unable, helpless.”
“I know what it means,” I snap.
“Why are you irritated?”
I look at Kari. She’d probably call it a glare. “Because I’m a protector—a protector and a fixer—it’s what I do. Words like ‘incapable,’ ‘powerless,’ ‘unable’ … they don’t fit into that picture.”
Doc Kari chews on the end of her pen, silently, those eyes watching me.
“I know your tricks, Doc.” She lifts her eyebrows. “You’re letting me weigh my ‘I won’t pick up a gun’ with my need to protect, aren’t you?”
“Those internal battles are the best, aren’t they?”
“How do you determine the winner?”
She shrugs. “Only you can determine it. Fill out pro and con columns and see which one wins? Or you wait until the battle dust settles between
