Page 37 of Outsider

She shakes her head. “Never needed one.”

“You do now. A good one.”

Giving a final look at the whiteout conditions, she drops the window covering and faces me. “They’re going to bury me, Kate. They’re going to frame me for murdering Eddie Cysco. They’re going to produce or manipulate evidence to back up whatever story they decide to push and they’re going to make it convincing. They won’t stop there. They’re going to pile everything they can on me.”

I stare at her, part of me believing her and wanting to help. Another part resists the urge to shake her, shout at her, tell her she never should have compromised herself or gotten involved with cops she knew were corrupt.

“You haven’t exactly helped your cause,” I tell her.

“If I could take back what I did, I would.” With a dry laugh, she says, “We both know you don’t get a do-over.” She blows out a sound of anguish. “Jesus Christ, the thought of jail time gives me the shudders.”

Even if she manages to garner immunity in exchange for information or testimony, she will never be fully exonerated. She’ll never work as a cop again. The stain of her past deeds will follow her the rest of her life.

“I suspect in the coming days, the investigators at BCI will want to talk to you,” I tell her. “If the FBI is involved, they’ll want to talk to you, too.”

“Yeah, well, they’re going to have to make me some kind of deal,” she says. “Maybe I ought to just run.”

We fall silent, the words zinging, all the things that could happen in the coming days playing in my head like some movie trailer and a story that doesn’t have a happy ending.

“Your credibility is a problem,” I tell her.

“What’s really scary is that these cops have the power to lay a dozen more crimes on me. Crimes that I had nothing to do with. Things they themselves did. They have access to everything. The ability to manipulate evidence. Intimidate people. You name it.”

I think about that a moment. “Is there someone you trust who might come forward or corroborate any of this?”

“I’ve been racking my brain.” Her laugh is a humorless sound fraught with hopelessness. “Pretty sad when you can count the number of people you trust on one hand.”

I wait.

“There’s a patrol cop,” she says. “He’s a decent guy. Has a family. I don’t know him well, but we’ve talked. I don’t know how involved he is. But I do know he’s privy to some of what’s going on. I got the impression he doesn’t approve of what he’s been seeing. He’s a rookie. Doesn’t want to screw up his career.”

“Does Mr. Decent Guy have a name?”

“Jack Tyson.”

“Why didn’t you tell Tomasetti about him?”

“Tyson is a long shot.” She offers a crooked smile. “Now that I’ve had sufficient time to entertain the notion that this is the end of my life as I know it, I realized if there was ever a good time for desperate measures this is it.”

Pulling out my cell, I add the name to my notes. “I’ll let Tomasetti know.”

She tightens her mouth, her gaze holding mine. “Kate, I don’t know if he’ll talk. Even if he does, I don’t know if he’ll tell the truth. I have no idea how much he knows.”

“If he’s the best witness you’ve got, we don’t have a choice but to approach him.”

A dark heart sees the things that an honest one is blinded to by the nature of its own goodness.

I was fifteen years old the first time I heard those words. They were uttered by my datt, who was less philosophical than my mamm and rarely offered up the kind of admonition that didn’t involve the denial of a meal or, when I was younger, a couple of smacks with a switch. In this particular instance, I’d accused an Amish friend of stealing a tube of lipstick from me—an item I shouldn’t have had in my possession to begin with. My datt believed that I had seen in her what I myself was guilty of.

I didn’t like hearing those words, but I understood them and I knew he was right because I’d shoplifted that lipstick from the pharmacy just a week before. I never forgot the adage—or the way it worked on my fifteen-year-old conscience.

No cop ever wants to believe that their fellow officers are capable of breaking the same laws they’ve been sworn to uphold. That a member of the law enforcement community would stain the reputation of all cops is an affront. What Gina became involved in offends me. It grates against everything I believe about the institution to which I’ve devoted my life. Yet here I am, putting my own reputation at risk to help her. What does that say about me?

At five P.M., Gina and I share dinner with Adam and the children. The food is a uniquely Amish compilation of home-cured ham, fried potatoes, and canned beets. The children are curious about their English visitors. They’re too well behaved to ask all the questions I see on their faces. But their eyes are watchful, their ears wide open.

The routine of being in an Amish home—the sights and smells, the chores, the reciting of the Prayer before Meal—is achingly familiar. It’s not that I want to be Amish again. I made the decision to leave a long time ago and it was the right one for me. Still, being here brings with it a certain nostalgia, makes me miss the closeness I’d once shared with my family.

Gina’s presence adds yet another facet to the mix. She was a big part of my past, our relationship a time of rapid growth and profound change. Looking back, I can’t help but acknowledge the sense of things lost there, too.