Chapter 4
Eames and Goren returned to Goren's apartment. They both looked at the kitchen and then at each other.
"I'm thinking potstickers and mooshoo vegetables," said Eames.
"Second," said Goren.
"Motion carried."
When their meal was over and all of the white cartons safely stowed in Goren's refrigerator, they both looked over at the box on his desk. Goren limped over and took the diary out of the box. Eames had seated herself on the sofa, and he sort of fell onto the sofa beside her. He began to read aloud.
June 10, 1944.
This has been my first chance to write since the invasion. I'm surprised I remember how to write. Whatever I say simply will not be able to capture what I have seen. The blood, the bodies. Half of my company, including my sergeant, are dead. I have been given five more men from Gelhart's company. He died on Omaha. I had just had dinner with him the night before, and now I will never speak to him again. I had to step over Gelhart's body to get to our firing position. By nightfall, it seemed normal to step over the bodies of people I know, or knew, I guess.
July 15, 1944. We stopped in a small town tonight. I must remember to thank Nana for making me take French at Choate. It is always hard to find fresh food, but I am usually able to barter with the townspeople or people in farmhouses. Tonight, as we camped, I could hear a young woman singing in the local restaurant. Most of the men in the village ran away to join the Resistance, and no one knows whether they were alive or not. The Germans took much of the food with them when they fled. The children have no shoes. But this young woman was singing so happily.
August 22, 1944
At last, we reach Paris. We took back several blocks on the outskirts, or what was left of several blocks. We just surrounded each building in turn. Every third one or so had some Germans in it. My men acquitted themselves well. They just keep doing what I ask them to do. I'm not sure what I've done to deserve this kind of loyalty. In college, I liked my roommates well enough, but if someone liked the other's girl, he didn't hold back on trying to woo her away. Somehow, these people are better than the ones I knew.
Goren stopped. They were silent for a moment. No wonder this man had been changed.
"I, uh, I sometimes feel that way about you, the Captain, Logan."
"That we'll take your girl?"
"That you're better people. Better than the ones I knew before, and better than the ones around us."
"You probably don't know what you've done to deserve this kind of loyalty either."
Goren was quiet again. He was wiped out. He put the diary on his coffee table and leaned back against the sofa.
"I guess I don't. I'm not easy."
"No," she said, reaching up to stroke his hair, "you get loyalty because you give it. Not complicated." His eyes began to close. Eames picked up her purse to go. She hesitated, and then leaned down to kiss his cheek, before walking out the door.
The next day, Eames and her sister Christina had promised to take their parents to lunch, so Goren was on his own. He read more of the diary. It read like a history of the last year of the war. The Battle of the Bulge had lasted so long. Walcott sounded more discouraged, lost more men. Finally, the Allies broke through. Goren could hear the relief in Walcott's writing.
Eames pulled into her driveway on Sunday evening. She sighed. Her day yesterday with Bobby had been such a relief, like having him back in the office again, and her day with her family today had been so restful. She wasn't looking forward to going back to the office the next day. What she hadn't told Bobby about the new guy was that, in addition to not liking Van Buren, he was also giving Eames the eye, and not in a respectful way. She didn't worry about being able to handle him, but the fact that she had to made her weary. She realized that she was having one of those days when being single seemed to be a gigantic liability, and she made a conscious effort not to fade into self pity. She did, however, dig into the Ben and Jerry's. To fortify myself for the battle ahead, she thought.
The next morning, Eames went in a little early. When the new guy came in, he lingered pointedly at her desk.
"Hey, Eames," he said, giving her the kind of leer that one would ordinarily expect from the guy sitting on the back of the bus to middle school. "Exciting weekend?" She didn't look up.
"Very relaxing, thank you, Barrett."
"Not so much action, huh? I –" Eames got up in the middle of his sentence and headed to the Captain's office for a signature. Step 1, she thought.
Step 2 required her to loiter around the Captain's office until she got the information she needed. It came at 10:45.
"Barrett," said Ross, "your requalifying drill at the range is at 15:00."
Eames walked into the ladies room and on her cellphone, she scheduled herself a time slot at the firing range at 3:15. When she came out, she noticed the sergeant from the Property Room at Barrett's desk. He had also been there twice on Friday and once on Thursday. This was one of the things that had nagged at Eames. She couldn't quite put her finger on why it bothered her, but why did these guys know each other?
Eames spent the next few hours typing up witness statements. At 2:55, she went over to the firing range. She noted where Barrett was standing with the range inspector and positioned her self two firing lanes away. She fired two full clips. Fate was on her side, and Barrett walked by her and stopped, just as her target was sailing toward her with ten holes in its little paper heart. He swallowed involuntarily when he saw her target. Eames suppressed a smile. From her brief view of his shooting, he didn't seem to have anything like her proficiency. Not that she felt that her marksmanship was some kind of virtue; while she did work at it, other people put in as much time as she did without ever obtaining her good results. It was something she had a knack for, and she had beaten her brothers at darts all during her childhood.
"That's some shooting there, Eames. Of course," Barrett said with a swagger, "it really is pretty controlled in here. I mean, not like you've taken some perp down on the streets is it?"
Eames didn't look up as she reloaded. She had hoped he wouldn't ask that question, but it probably served her purpose.
"Actually, I have." More involuntary swallowing by Barrett.
Step 2, thought Eames
"Your partner, is he a good shot?"
"A fair one," she said.
"Your partner is out a lot."
"Goren's recovering from wounds he got chasing a perp."
"You're partners with Goren?
Eames hadn't expected Step 3 to come so quickly.
"Seven years and counting."
"I hear he's weird."
"Weird gets us a decent case clearance rate, so I'll take weird. He's also always got my back."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. He's like a pit bull when I'm in danger." Eames then underscored her sentence by emptying another clip into the heart of a paper target. When she looked up, Barrett was gone. Yep, the lack of interest, the intimidatingly good shooting skills, and the unstable protective partner. The trifecta had done the job. Any one of them on its own might not have been sufficient to get rid of him, but together, their effects were exponentially magnified.
She left the range with an air of satisfaction.