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“Just try, John.”
“Sure, but Yoda won’t approve.”
“What?”
“There is no try, only do.”
“Then do.”
Still no fatigue in Nguyen’s voice but he yawned dramatically. “Okay?”
Milo said, “I can’t believe Montag’s gonna get off so easy.”
“Couple of years in jail is worse than it sounds,” said Nguyen. “Especially for someone who’s never been in the system.”
“She committed premeditatedmurder!”
“Of abadguy,” said Nguyen.
“Unbelievable. Talk to you later.”
“Hey,” said Nguyen. “Did I ever tell you about my sister in the bathroom?”
“Must’ve missed that one.”
“Then catch it now. Back when my folks were living in Hanoi and the commies took over the whole country, there was no currency. Literally. No money, everything was chits like in an arcade, you had to hoard them and wait hours to get food. People tried to raise their own food, we’re not talking gluten sensitivity, there was a serious risk ofstarvation. Anyway, my sister Anne, she’s the older one, she wants to play with a friend. We’re living in a shit-ass hovel but her friend’s father was a petty dignitary for the commies so she lives in one of those soulless commie high-rises. Anne goes there, eventually she has to use the john, there’s no electricity, it’s pitch dark. She gropes around, is about to squat over the hole when she hears this god-awful grunt then a squeal. Turns out they’re raising a pig in the john—not for fun, for pork chops—and Anne just sat on it and pigs are total wimps, they make noise about everything. The fucking piece of lard started butting her around. She was eight, almost died of shock.”
“Great story, John,” said Milo. “The point being?”
“She went back there, anyway. To play with her friend. And if she needed to pee, she went to the john knowing what was in there. And not knowing if more had been added to the farm. Like snakes or toads or scorpions, ’cause they were being raised for food, too. Everything that moved was. She’s a neurosurgeon now, raking it in big-time. She learned to live with uncertainty and unpleasantness and grew from it and so did the rest of us. So why not you?”
CHAPTER
33
I left Milo in his office, glum and silent but for a muttered, “Thanks. Onward. Wherever.”
Humans are programmed to detest uncertainty, and nothing ruins a detective’s life more than too many question marks. My friend was great at what he did, with a near-perfect close rate, but the murders of Cordi Gannett and Caspian Delage were looking like the exception.
I had nothing to offer him.
I drove home trying not to think about that and ready to focus on my ten o’clock the following morning.
—
Even with being abused as a child and spending a good deal of my life trying to patch up other people’s misery, I tend to be trusting and optimistic, willing to be disappointed rather than concede my life to suspicion and dread.
Why? Who knows? If I could claim some sort of psychological magic bullet, I’d write a book and get my own talk show. But I suspect it’s just good luck: the temperament I was born with. Maybe even something I got from my father. Unlike my mother who was invariablydour and pessimistic, when Dad wasn’t drunk and enraged and beating me, he could be a jolly guy.
Working as a child psychologist synced with my positive attitude, starting with a belief that people can change. That’s especially so for kids. They want to get better and don’t play resistance games the way adults do. If you know what you’re doing, you can guide them there.
Child psych’s a high-success endeavor. A friend who’s a pediatric psychiatrist once told me, “Let’s face it, Alex. We do it because we want to feel like heroes.”
Yet I’d given up doing therapy with kids long-term, substituting short-term consults and relying upon injury cases to bring quick, positive results. Why? In the beginning, it was burnout. Years later, I’m not sure.
Even working with Milo and seeing the worst of humanity meshed with my temperament. Homicide detectives speak for the voiceless and when everything falls into place, they achieve justice or something close to it. Playing a role in that process—seeing bad people held accountable—was immensely satisfying.
Then there was child custody work.
