Ch. 15 / Pt. 4 : When They Wear the Mask

“Indefinite suspension—with pay, pending review.”

In the nightmare that was also halfway a memory, the Captain stood behind a tombstone slab of desk, his body a hazy stormcloud. Booker sat across from him, jaw tight, heart thrumming, and clasped the arms of his chair.

“I’m sorry, John…” the Captain didn’t look at him. “But your duty is to apprehend.”

Bullshit.

Bullshit.

A cop killed somebody every day in the United States. Every single day. Police killed people at traffic stops, during drug arrests, and just walking down the street. John Bowman Booker had killed a man he’d caught raping a young boy. Surely the circumstances meant something…

But he didn’t say that.

In the nightmare that was also halfway a memory, John Bowman Booker just stood up and left the office.

The doorway opened into fog. Booker stood at the helm of a ship floating through mist and darkness. He sat in the cockpit of a ship rocketing through blur and darkness. He stood at the helm, the Atlantic sloshing bleakly beneath. Did the cold, lightless depths of the salty sea mirror the cold, lightless heights of the cosmic dark above? 

(was every ascent also a descent?)

The ship drifted (spun/orbited) aimlessly. Booker felt lost. The waves bore him onward. Fog surrounded him. He’d always felt ironically grounded by the ocean, but now it sloshed him unanchored from parts unknown toward parts unknown.

Part Irish, part Haitian, and partially lost to stolen history, John Bowman Booker had spent his early youth in Canarsie before his family had moved to South Boston. He’d lived in South Boston from the age of nine until the age of twenty-nine. 

A rocky coast breached the mists. A woman stood on the shores, familiar and unfamiliar. 

She asked him a question but he forgot it as she burned into light.

Night had fallen when Booker awoke, and the overhead fluorescent lights reflected themselves against the darkened windows. Virgil stood at his bedside, facing the glass, hands folded behind him. The older man looked harried, usually-neat hair rumpled and tossed, his visage scruffed by more than a single day’s five-o’clock shadow, and a slouch that aged him into antiquity.

“Chief?” Booker croaked, dry-throated again despite the alleged hydration.

Virgil turned toward him. “Book. It’s good to see you awake.”

Booker picked up the water bottle Castellanos had left him and uncapped it. He sipped, sitting up as little as possible. Replacing the cap, he set it down again. “The guy stabbed me. I turned my back for half a second and the guy fucking stabbed me.”

“A’yeah. You were in bad shape for a little while there.”

“Mm.”

“But they stabilized you pretty fast.”

“Mm.”

“A’yeah.”

Booker chuckled. Was it the drugs? He couldn’t be sure.

“So…how do you feel?” Virgil asked.

“I hurt. Kinda. And I’m high. Kinda.”

Virgil bobbed his head. “Suppose so, a’yeah.”

“A’yeah,” Booker parroted.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Virgil sighed. “Look, Book…John…”

Booker’s brow trenched. Virgil virtually never used his first name.

Virgil sighed again. “There’s no easy way to tell you this. The doctors say you’ll have to be here another twenty-four hours at least, probably forty-eight. They say you’ll need two, three weeks physical therapy before you get back to work.”

“Uh-huhh?”

“I have to put someone else on the case.”

“You talk to Alejandra about that?”

“Castellanos? She’s—has nobody else told you?”

“Told me what?”

“She’s—John, she’s been missing since our guys found you at the house.”

Booker glanced down at his water bottle. “No. She was just here.”

“She’s not on the sign-in sheet.”

“But she was…” he trailed off.

“We’re looking for her. We are. But we can’t afford to miss time on this. I hate to ask, but…do you have all your files at the office? Your case notes? We think Castellanos kept hers on her and she’s, well...you know.”

“I…” what the hell was happening? Booker swallowed, already thirsty again. “I think, yeah. Most of ‘em.”

“Thanks. And thanks for all your work. You’re one of the best Detectives this city’s seen.”

Booker squinted at Virgil. Why had the older man suddenly started calling him ‘John?’ He didn’t ask. He nodded. “Thanks,” he said. Virgil returned the nod. Booker rested back in bed and picked up the water bottle. He stared at it until he forgot why he’d starting staring to begin with. After Virgil left, he took a few more sips, replaced the cap, and fell asleep.

He did not remember his dreams. Or, at least, he did not remember how they began.

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