Aimpoint - Chapter Eight
Miljana knocked lightly at the door and stepped into the hospital room. Tim was making another attempt at his book. He looked up expecting Art and was surprised to see her instead. He was also surprised at the range of emotions she evoked in him. He really couldn't decide if he was happy to see her or not. He felt extremely vulnerable and made a clumsy attempt to cross his arms, fighting with the cast, an IV, sore ribs and bandages. He finally settled for drawing his knees up a little tighter.
She caught all the body language and stopped her approach.
"Do you mind if I come in?" she asked.
"I don't know," Tim answered, his expression guarded. "Did Art send you?"
"No, I came here without any prompting," she replied. "Though I did run into him in the hall – literally. He almost knocked me over. He's a big man."
"You should be more careful in hallways," he admonished.
"You should be more careful in alleyways," she retorted.
"Where I grew up there were no alleyways. I'm a babe in the woods," he said, relaxing a little.
"Oh, sure. 'Babe in the woods' – that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think of you," she mocked. She walked over and sat in Art's chair propping her feet up on the frame of the bed.
"What are you reading?" she asked holding out her hand for the book.
He passed it to her and she turned it over to read the back. It was a history of debt from the beginning of civilization. She made a disgusted sound and tossed it behind her onto the floor. She reached into her bag and pulled out a dog-eared book which she handed to him.
"I can't believe you're trying to read that on morphine," she scoffed. "Try this one. It's a true story about a wildlife warden in Eastern Russia who has to hunt a man-eating Siberian Tiger. Much more interesting."
He opened it to read the summary.
"How many people did you kill in Afghanistan?"
"Excuse me?" he lashed out, glaring at her. The question had blind-sided him and he sat gaping at her.
She looked steadily back at him.
"I didn't keep count," he stated angrily.
"Do you regret them?" she asked.
"Should I?" he snapped back.
"There is no should or shouldn't," Miljana replied firmly. "I'm just trying to find out what the memories are that you want so badly to avoid."
Ordinarily she would never have been so blunt, but he was at a disadvantage and she grabbed the opportunity. He looked like he was pacing behind the bars of a cage. Open the gate and he'd be gone. She watched him struggle.
"I've never had a problem pulling the trigger," he said eventually, looking at her in defiance.
"Look," she entreated. "Forget that I'm a psychologist for a minute and explain something to me because I have no experience in this. There are soldiers who can't pull the trigger, aren't there."
Damn her, he thought but he answered anyway. "I trained with a guy in sniper school – came to it, he couldn't pull. They took him off the front line pretty quick. You could never tell till you were in the shit who was going to panic, who was going to freeze."
"Do you regret that you weren't one of those guys?" she asked.
He stared at her for a moment, judging her. "No," he said firmly then reconsidered. "Well, maybe at one time. But I met up with that sniper later. It was eating at him that he couldn't be like me. That's fucked. I got over that thinking in a hurry." He paused and picked at his cast. "It's the shots I didn't take that get me. The IED we didn't spot. The Taliban sniper we didn't get to in time so he got to kill another one of our guys. Those are the faces I remember. That's the shit I think about. What if I'd done something different? What if I gone left instead of right? What if I'd taken a little more time, been a little more careful? I replay those scenarios till it drives me crazy. All the fucking 'what-ifs' with the huge fucking consequences."
She smiled kindly. Small victories, she thought.
"And that's why you like to keep busy," Miljana concluded.
"Yeah." He turned his head away from her and stared at the blank wall.
"You're a soldier, Tim. The world will always need soldiers." She let that sink in then added, "And if there's a zombie apocalypse, I'm hanging out with you."
He gave her a funny look.
"Double tap," she said, grinning at him.
He grinned back, getting the reference. "I loved that movie." And he loved her smile. She confused the hell out of him.
She looked up at him shyly. "Is it true that you snipers have to sometimes shit in your pants while you're out there for days at a time, sitting in a hole?"
He stared at her in disbelief. "Jesus, I can't believe you just asked me that."
She shrugged and grinned sheepishly. "You're the only sniper I know. Who else can I ask? I'm sure most people wonder…" she trailed off and brought her hand to her mouth, stifling a giggle.
"Most people are too polite to ask," he said shaking his head at her. "Fuck."
She tried to keep a straight face, but wasn't having much luck.
"You never heard of Imodium," he dead-panned.
She looked at him trying to gauge if he was serious. "Glad to see the bathroom when you got back to base?"
"We purposely didn't eat or drink much when we were out, but yeah," he rolled his eyes then started smirking and ducked his head. "I got to read a lot."
At that the two of them started laughing. Art chose that moment to walk back in.
"What's so funny?" he asked.
Art returned to the hospital regularly after his talk with Tim, checking up on him. Miljana was as good as her word and he would often run into her on her way to or from a visit with his most worrisome Deputy. Tim seemed less edgy now that he had something to occupy his time and he was more than halfway through the box of old evidence when Art arrived on Sunday afternoon. Phil had called to say he would release him and had suggested that Art come to hear his instructions, to ensure they would be followed.
Tim was sporting a new cast on his left arm. It was pink.
Art stared at it. "What the hell, Tim?" he asked perplexed. "Pink?"
Tim shrugged.
"Did they run out of blue?"
"It's October," Tim said enigmatically.
Art looked at him blankly.
"October – breast cancer month. Rachel dared me to get pink and charge people to sign it and give the money to charity." He raised his arm and held out a marker. "Ten bucks."
"Do you do everything Rachel tells you?" Art asked incredulously.
"Yeah. Don't you?" Tim replied without a trace of sarcasm.
Fortunately Raylan walked in at that moment and saved Art from having to answer.
"Ready to get out of here?" Raylan asked. He had volunteered to get Tim home and stay with him until Rachel could take over later. He reached for the jar of donations on the table and waved it under Art's nose. "Pay up and sign."
"If I find out you're buying beer with that money," he threatened but grabbed the marker and wrote on the pink cast. When he was done he admired his work then fished through his wallet and stuffed a ten-dollar bill in the jar.
"What's that?" asked Tim checking out his cast. Art had scrawled a happy face in an obvious spot.
"It's art," he replied. "Get it. Art - art."
"That's just not funny," said Raylan.
Art left to find Phil, complaining about the lack of appreciation for his talents. Raylan wheeled Tim out to the car, helped him in and drove him home.
They pulled up to the curb and Tim tried to get himself out. Raylan watched him struggling to find a way to get up without putting stress on his wounds and laughed when Tim finally threw up his arms and huffed in frustration.
"Can I just sleep here in the car?" he asked dejectedly.
"C'mon invalid," Raylan said and hauled him out. Tim walked slowly up the steps to his house, staggered through the door and collapsed on the couch in the front room, exhausted by the effort. Raylan followed him in.
"Make yourself at home," Tim said.
Raylan looked around. The house was small, one in a row of three sandwiched between apartment blocks, holdouts from the contractors in the 1980's housing boom. Nothing matched, but it was clean.
"Reminds me of my granny's place," Raylan teased. "How old is this furniture?"
"I replace it when it wears out," Tim responded. "I did get a new couch. I think the old one was stuffed with horsehair."
"You're renting it furnished, I hope," said Raylan.
"I inherited it furnished," Tim replied.
Raylan did a tour of the main floor which took about ten seconds. "Have you considered redecorating?"
Tim looked at him with a bemused expression. "Seriously, can you see me decorating? Hillbilly meets army cammo. At least like this I can blame someone else for the lack of taste."
"You have a point," Raylan conceded as he wandered into the kitchen. "How about a table cloth at least? I know from first-hand experience just how useful they can be."
"I clean my guns on that table."
"I hope you draw the curtains first. The old lady behind you might get worried," said Raylan peering through the window to the back yard.
"She thinks I'm a psychopath. She hides in her house whenever I'm out back. I've taken to cleaning my rifle there on purpose," said Tim.
Raylan chuckled, picturing it. He opened the fridge and looked inside. "You want a beer?"
"No," Tim answered grumpily. "I'm on an elephant-sized dose of antibiotics. Is there anything else in there?"
"Rachel stocked it. There's everything in here."
"Shit, I'm going to owe her so much Call of Duty time."
Raylan pulled his head out of the fridge and looked over, surprised. "Rachel plays Call of Duty?"
"No, Nick does," Tim replied. "I feel like I've had this conversation before."
Raylan grabbed a beer and poured Tim some juice and they settled in the living room to watch some post-season baseball. Art joined them later, helping himself to a drink. When Rachel showed up, Tim was asleep and Art and Raylan were arguing over the value of a designated hitter in the batting line-up.
Tim's place had become the ad hoc sports bar for watching post-season baseball. Any of the Marshals who felt inclined would wander over with a case of beer to watch whoever was playing that day. But now the baseball season was over and Art sat at his desk staring out at the office a bit depressed. It's not that he cared who won the World Series, but the post-season play marked the time they had been chasing the two suspects in Tim's assault. It had been over a month and they had come up with nothing. It was clear the investigation had stalled. The leads were cold, the case was cold and Daryl Strong and Carl Finley were in the wind.
It was always frustrating to set a case aside but especially so when it involved an assault on a law enforcement officer, and one of their own at that. Every branch from the feds on down to the local sheriffs' offices was cooperative, and local, state-wide and national bulletins were issued but they had yet to turn up anything. Art caught Rachel's attention and waved her and Raylan into his office to tell them he couldn't justify the manpower any longer. Rachel was not happy about it.
"We can't just stop looking," she said.
"We're not going to stop looking, Rachel, you know that's not how it works," he replied. "But we've got a backlog of casework to handle and with Tim only coming back to light duty next week it's just going to get worse. Now don't argue with me on this one. I hate doing it but we've got to be realistic. They've likely left the state. They know we have Harold Lair in custody. They'll assume he named them."
"What about Raylan?" she asked. "What if they try again?"
"I don't think that's likely. I'm sure the word's already out that we've caught on to Dickie's involvement. With this added charge he's going away so long they'll never be able to cash in on his promises. The prosecuting attorney in his case is all over it," Art assured her.
He shuffled some papers around on his desk and tried to feel good about his decision. "Besides," he added, "there's always someone who wants to kill Raylan. He's used to it. Right, Raylan? You're awfully quiet over there."
"Getting Dickie Bennett was the main thing," Raylan said, taking Art's side.
Rachel was too practical to argue it further but too involved to let it go easily. As soon as she could she left work and stopped by Tim's place on the way home to give him the news and commiserate with him. To her surprise, he took it rather philosophically. You don't often get the chance for face-to-face retribution in war. It just wasn't part of his experience, so he didn't expect it or need it.
He just shrugged it off and offered her a drink. And happily poured himself one, too.
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