Storytime
"I'm going to tell you a story. You don't have to respond, but you can if you want."
Carter looked across the grimy metal table at Reese to see if her words had landed. His eyes met hers for a brief moment to indicate he was with her.
"But I can't tell you the story until you give me your name. So what is it?"
"John. John Rooney."
"O.K. Good. Can I call you John?"
He nodded once and she plunged on.
"So. John. Do you know Iraq? Have you been there?"
She wanted him telling the truth as much as possible. Even if it was only one syllable at a time.
"Yes, I know it."
The Riker's prison interrogation room was larger than she had expected; their voices sounded tinny and alien as they echoed off the dull beige tiles lining the walls and the filthy linoleum under their feet.
Her back was to the blind expanse of the two-way mirror, so she felt she could use her eyes more freely than Reese could. His face was under scrutiny obviously; his every expression would be examined for minute proof of the guilt his captor assumed was there.
Her voice could give her away, she supposed, but she felt sure that Agent Donnelly wasn't paying attention to the timbre of her sentences. Any tremors escaping from her undisciplined vocal chords would surely go undetected in the intensity of the moment
Donnelly's presence just outside the room pressed down on her as she settled into her seat.
The man was so eager, so unabashed in his convictions, so fervent in his faith in her that she hoped he could be deceived by a truth she would shape.
She wanted Reese to look only at her, to never let his eyes flit to the mirror behind her head. She needed him to stay in the room with her throughout this ordeal.
"My story is about a cop who went to Iraq."
She saw Reese's eyes flicker in recognition and he shifted on the hard seat, leaning slightly towards her.
To her left she caught the quick movement of the guard who had been lounging in the corner. Black pants too short, white shirt too tight, she could see a sliver of his belly straining at the button hole just above his belt.
She wanted him to play a part in this charade too. She needed his honest reactions to attest that Reese was indeed a mortal threat to her. So she jerked back abruptly, as if she were afraid for her safety, despite the manacles which kept the prisoner's wrists shackled to the lip of the table.
She darted her eyes to the beefy guard and offered a wavering smile, implying that she was glad he was there to protect her. He nodded in smug affirmation and she let loose a small sigh.
Her relief was genuine. The bit player knew his part; the audience of one was attuned to her slightest gesture. Now she needed her co-star to take the stage.
She focused again on Reese.
His arms looked thin and slack in the orange jumpsuit, its color casting a sickly spotlight toward his face. The bones of his skull stood in high relief under the parchment skin; the cheeks and eye sockets sunken through a combination of dehydration and sleep-deprivation.
Just four days in a shadowy cell had leached the sun from his skin, leaving it pasty and creased. The tiny transparent flakes rising from his scalp caused her stomach to revolt in unimagined grief.
She recognized that the chain-gang shuffle was caused by the shackles around his ankles. But the hunched shoulders and concave chest suggested an abject submission to his predicament that surprised her.
She needed him to be alert, engaged, and ready to give his heart to this act.
She coughed to capture his attention and was reassured when the eyes he raised to her were clear and sharp.
She began her story.
"That cop was me, of course. I probably shouldn't have gone over there in the first place, leaving my little baby behind like that. But I thought I could be of service over there; help out my country and the people over there too."
She shrugged and raised her eyebrows, inviting a reply.
Reese stayed silent, but his gray eyes widened with curiosity, she thought, even a tiny portion of amusement.
"You ever heard of a sensory deprivation chamber? You know, where you lie in a tub of luke-warm water and they close the lid on you. And it's pitch black in there. Can't see a damned thing. Can't feel anything. And all you can hear is the sloshing of water at your elbows and your own breathing?"
She thought she might have thrown him off with this detour but he got what she was saying.
He spoke again, his unused voice spilling out of him like dry gravel on an abandoned road miles out of town.
"Iraq is like that after a while: everything flattens out, every village looks the same, everybody is the same. Every day the same as the next one." His tone was uninflected, his gaze piercing.
She kept on telling her story with an eagerness that was authentic. She wanted this connection.
"That's right. The same. Except for the day your buddy gets the side of his face blown off by an IED. That day was different."
She placed her arms on the table, stretching them across the narrow surface toward him. She rolled up the sleeves of her black shirt, inviting his examination of her bare flesh.
A short gray gash angled over her left bicep.
She knew he had seen the scar a thousand times, had kissed it a thousand times as he surged above her, in her, cleaving his body to hers in ecstasy, or in melancholy, or in a frenzied panic as the future receded before them.
But until now, she had never told him the story of the scar. She pointed at it now.
"I got this that same day. My buddy got dead that day and I got a Purple Heart and a trip home."
"Home."
He echoed the word and blinked twice, tears trembling at the edges of his eyelids now.
"Do you want to go home?" She drilled in, sensing the electricity pulsing from behind the spy mirror.
"If you talk with me, I can make that happen for you, John. I can get you out of here. I can get you home. Do you want that?"
She nodded her head, encouraging him like she would a small child caught with shards of the broken vase in his hand.
If he would confess now, all would be forgiven, she wanted to say.
He nodded, mimicking her movements.
"I – I want to go home!" He was wailing now, not crying really since the tears never fell, but wrenching something from the depths of his soul nonetheless.
She lowered her voice to a whisper.
"Then tell me. Tell me your story and I will make it all right."
"O.K., I will."
His voice was faint, directed toward the table rather than at her. He bent his forehead to the hard surface and rested it there for over a minute.
When he raised his eyes to hers they were dry again, but the light shining from them filled her with a kind of bright hope that she had not felt since he had been arrested and locked away from her four days ago.
"Tell me your story, John, the parts you want me to understand about you."
He spoke fluidly now, flinging his words at her rapidly and with childish eagerness.
"When I came back from Iraq, I didn't know what to do with myself. Booze seemed like a pretty good option, so I tried it out for a while. My dad got tired of seeing me lying on his sofa sleeping off another drunk at two in the afternoon so he enrolled me in some courses at the community college, really just to keep me out of the bars and out of his hair."
Reese paused, waiting for her questions, but she only nodded to urge him to continue with his story.
"Funny thing was, I was lousy at math in high school. But somehow these college courses just clicked for me, especially the ones in accounting. Keeping track of numbers, adding them up, making them tell a story that was true and fair. It all just made so much sense to me."
He paused as if he wanted to make her understand.
"No arguments from the numbers, no disputing what they meant, no negotiating with the bottom line. No bullshit. Just the plain truth. I liked that. After Iraq, you know."
He looked at her with his soft mouth slightly open, seemingly eager for her approval.
She wanted to appear to draw him out further, so she threw in a question.
"Did you pursue a career in this finance stuff? Sounds like it appealed to you."
He smiled for the first time at her.
"Yeah, I did. I don't know exactly why, but it really fit me. I was good at it and people trusted me. When I moved here, I just slid into a good job that used all my skills and kept me on my toes."
She wanted to lead him to the confession now.
"So tell me what you were doing in the basement of the bank when you were arrested."
"Well, I don't really want to admit this part."
"Yeah, I know that, John. But you need to, if we're going to get through this."
She was pleading with him now, her voice quavering enough that she knew Donnelly could detect the level of her urgency.
So he wove for her a complicated story of chicanery and deceit that involved dubious real estate, corrupt lenders, unsophisticated investors, negligent city and state regulatory agencies and duped clients.
At each turn in the account, as he hesitated, she gently prodded. When he paused, she pushed him on.
Once, when he evaded a direct question, she raised her voice, her tones swelling to a scream before she regained control. The passionate tirade that escaped her lips frightened her. And Reese seemed shaken as well.
The whites glinted around his pupils like those of a cornered animal. So she bit her lip to convey an apology; she knew Donnelly wouldn't see the gesture, but Reese could.
That tongue-lashing seemed to spur him and the next torrent of words continued for several more minutes without stopping.
She was prepared to pound the table if he halted again, but he never gave her an opening for that bit of theatrics.
As he explained it his part in the schemes was negligible. Not criminal, he wanted her to see. But his role was certainly ill-considered and immoral. He was hurting innocent people and he felt the guilt of that violation.
She marveled at the way his cheeks colored with the shame of these imagined actions. His lilac-tinted lids fluttered as he tried to hide his eyes from her unmasking stare.
The misdeeds he was guilty of were bad, sinful, repugnant. He wanted to atone, he told her.
When he said he was afraid of how his father would react once the truth was revealed, she felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
She swiped her fingers across her cheeks so that Donnelly would witness the proof of her emotional investment in the story Reese had told.
When he finished, he exhaled as if a huge burden had been lifted from his chest.
The pure light of confession shone in his startling eyes, which were bluer than she had ever seen them.
At that moment, she wanted to enfold him in her arms. And that was God's truth.
As Reese's prolonged gaze darkened to a warning glare, Donnelly burst into the room.
"I've heard enough here. This is over."
No verdict yet on their performance. But the impatience in Donnelly's voice rang out clearly.
"Get him out now."
The burly guard, her champion through the ordeal, released the cuffs from the hook on the table and with a rough hand under the elbow dragged Reese upright.
Donnelly filled the space with his blustery eagerness.
"Carter, you did a good job. Great job really. But I know how wrenching a session like this can be for even the most seasoned interrogator."
His voice softened as he bent low over her.
"You need to get out of here, take a break. I told the warden to set up some sandwiches and coffee in the conference room next to his office. I'll catch up with you there in five."
Two guards bookended Reese and hustled him from the room.
Donnelly clapped her on the shoulder as she rolled down the sleeves of her black shirt.
"If you break the next one too, we'll make real headway by the end of the day."
She smiled vaguely at the compliment to indicate that she was just doing her job. And she was damned good at it.
Then she shrugged to feign nonchalance. And to get his leaden hand off her shoulder.
She was exhausted and hungry. Even prison sandwiches and coffee sounded good now.
And she needed these few moments of respite to plan her story for the next interrogation.