Judging from the reviews and messages I got, the Tagman case hit a lot of people hard. I don't know if this will help, but I had to try.
Chapter 9: A Price to Pay
When Bobby and Alex returned to the bullpen, Patterson and his partner were gone. They had wisely chosen the calm of their murder investigation over another run-in with the raging bull known as Bobby. The other detectives looked up briefly but said nothing as the two partners settled in at their desks. Everyone quietly resumed doing paperwork, as if no one had been nearly strangled in their presence.
Ross stayed in his office, unwilling to add to Bobby's misery by calling him in and thus letting others think he might be getting chewed out. He had seen enough in Goren's posture to know the big detective was shaken by what he had done, and Ross felt that was punishment enough, barring further incidents. Still, he did need to let Bobby know what was at the root of Patterson's behavior.
A few minutes after 5, Ross strolled out of his office for the day. Taking a route to the elevators past Goren and Eames' desks, he paused, leaned over and rested his hands on the edge of Goren's desk. Meeting the detective's eyes, Ross said quietly, "Patterson is Claire Massey's uncle."
Bobby's eyebrows shot up, and his jaw went slack. He glanced at Alex, and she saw a flash of pain in his dark eyes. He looked down for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck, and then met Ross' gaze. "OK," he said softly. "I'll steer clear of him as much as possible."
Ross nodded and walked away.
Alex studied Bobby, keeping her face expressionless. She didn't want her feelings about the Tagman case to come between them. But despite her anger at Patterson, she had to admit she felt a twinge of sympathy. No one who had seen Claire Massey after Tagman finished with her could blame her relatives for hating anyone who helped him.
Alex had to admit to herself that Bobby's behavior in that case had been a stumbling block for her in their relationship. In her mind, she understood the logic of his position, but her heart was too caught up in the tragedy of Tagman's victims to have any sympathy left over for their tormentor. She had been careful not to call Bobby too harshly on what he did because she sensed that something about Tagman had struck him deeply. But she had kept a bit of emotional distance from him for a while after that. If he was on Tagman's wavelength, she wasn't about to join him there.
Tagman hadn't lasted long in prison, and frankly, she had felt relieved when she heard he was dead. She and Bobby were soon back to normal, and nothing more had been said about the case until today. But looking at Bobby's troubled face and assessing her own jumpy stomach, she realized that the wounds were reopening.
Suddenly, Bobby closed the folder in front of him, put it in a drawer and stood up. "I'm going to call it a day. See you tomorrow, Eames," he said quietly.
Startled, she replied, "Hey, this is awfully early for you. Got some big plans?"
He sighed. "No, I just think I need to take a long walk."
"I could use a good walk too. Mind if I go along?"
"I might not be very good company," he said in a tone that sounded matter-of-fact rather than annoyed. "I'm not sure I feel like talking much."
"That's OK," she replied, giving him a little smile. "We don't have to say anything. We can just walk."
He nodded, and they headed to the elevators.
As they rode in silence to the first floor, Alex felt a mixture of joy and apprehension. So many times Bobby had shut her out completely, even run from her, when he was struggling with powerful emotions, but this time at least he was allowing her to run with him. I guess that's progress, she thought, smiling sardonically.
They headed up Park Row and turned onto Avenue of the Finest, strolling toward the East River in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. He kept his pace just slow enough for her short strides to comfortably keep up with his long ones. Years of walking together made keeping in step as natural to them as breathing.
Turning south along the river bank, they continued walking silently for about 10 minutes. Finally Bobby paused at a bench. "Want to sit down for a few minutes?"
"Sure," she said, easing herself onto the wooden planks beside him. Elbows almost touching, they gazed out across the river and breathed in the cool, late afternoon air.
Alex was content just to sit with him, not even sure she wanted to talk about the subject that lurked in the background. But part of Bobby's healing process had been learning to talk out what was bothering him, and he bravely decided to tackle this problem too. Taking a deep breath, he turned and looked at Alex. "What I did to help Tagman – it troubled you."
She gave him a sideways glance and a slight nod. "Part of me – my head – understood it, the legal issue. My heart cried out against it."
He nodded slowly. "I don't expect you to agree with me for doing it. I don't expect anyone to. I know what I did was hard for good people to swallow, and I expect to pay a price for that."
"Bobby, I respect you for following your principles even when you know you stand alone. But I guess … what I don't understand is how you were able to shut out the horrible things he did and stick with the letter of the law. I just couldn't separate my revulsion from my duty. Deep down, my sense of right and wrong told me he deserved to die, no matter what the law said."
"Th-that makes sense. I-I guess that's how normal people would feel about it."
"Bobby, you are normal. I won't have you saying you're not."
He sighed. "I guess maybe I'm getting more normal. But there are still things I feel that make me different from most people. Even I think it's weird that I could separate my feelings about Tagman from my feelings about what he did."
Bobby rubbed the back of his neck and paused, trying to find the words to explain the inexplicable. "Have you ever heard the expression, 'Hate the sin; love the sinner'?"
"Yes, I have. But I've never heard, 'Love the murderous cannibal.'"
Bobby winced. "I was revolted too. When we found the evidence of his cannibalism, I almost threw up. But when I closed my eyes, I just kept seeing the loneliest man I had ever met. Way lonelier than I've ever been, lonelier than I could even fully comprehend. It felt like the pain was so deep it had a grip on his soul. And I could see all that in his eyes."
"But he still did unimaginably evil things."
"Yes, he did. But it was a sickness deep inside him. He was horrified by it too. Revolted by his own actions. And yet he couldn't keep himself from doing what he did … any more than my mom could keep herself from having delusions and striking out at me."
Suddenly Bobby got very quiet, staring at the ground a few feet in front of him. Impulsively, Alex reached out and touched his cheek, gently tugging his head up and around to face her. She ran her fingers through the soft stubble, caressing his cheek. He lifted haunted eyes to gaze at her.
"That's how you did it," she mused. "Years of practice. You loved your mom so much despite all the abuse she heaped on you. You had to learn to separate who she was from what she did to you, or you could not have loved her and taken care of her all those years."
His eyes widened in surprise at how quickly she had grasped what he felt he was stumbling to say. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "That's basically it. Some people have impulses so deep and strong that they are controlled by them and do horrible things, like damaging the people they love. They can't help themselves. As much as I hate what they do, I can't hate them. I want to have hope for them. I wanted to have hope for my mom, that someday she would overcome her demons and stop abusing me and love me fully."
He paused again. Looking her right in the eyes, he declared, "I didn't have hope that Tagman would get better. If there had been even a minute chance that he could have gotten paroled someday, I would have made sure his confession stopped short and he got the death penalty. To do anything else would have been to ensure that more victims got his death penalty, and I would not have let that happen. But if the rest of the population was safe from him forever anyway, I couldn't just agree to kill him."
She looked deep in his eyes and was touched by the honesty and the searing emotions she saw there.
He had one more thing to add. "Even though he was my biological father, I didn't feel the same way about Brady. He knew what he was doing, and he enjoyed it – being in control, inflicting pain, taking women's lives. I'm glad he's dead. I never would have given him a break. Tagman had remorse. Brady would have laughed in his victims' faces."
Alex nodded, and they both fell silent for several pensive moments. Finally Alex looked at him again and asked, "So what are you going to do about Patterson?"
"Nothing," Bobby replied. "I'm just going to keep my distance. No explanation from me can ever make this right for him. And I can't blame him for feeling that way. If someone I loved was hurt like that … well, you saw how I reacted when he insulted you, and that was just words."
Suddenly a deep blush shot up from Bobby's collar into his cheeks as he realized what he had just admitted. He glanced at her, terrified but knowing that he had to see her reaction. She was looking at him with a slight smile on her face. Did she understand what he had said? What would she do? He tried to think of a way to divert attention from the remark and hide his embarrassment, but his brain failed him miserably.
And then Alex reached out and gently covered the hand that was resting on his thigh next to her. Tentatively, with a schoolboy's shyness, he turned his palm up. She interlaced her fingers with his and smiled at him again. Then she laid her head against his shoulder and they both resumed gazing out over the water. After a few minutes, Bobby's heart stopped pounding, and he sighed contentedly. And for the first time in years … decades … he felt real hope for himself in his heart.
