“He is not meant for this work,” Olaf said.
“He’s too soft for it,” Duke said.
“No,” I said, “it’s not soft, not like you mean. Newman isn’t a coward when the bullets are flying and the monsters are hunting us, but killing under fire is different from this.” I motioned at Bobby.
“How is it different?” Olaf asked.
I thought of several replies, but finally settled for “It would bother me more to kill someone who wasn’t a danger to me.”
Olaf nodded. “Why?”
Once I would have thought he was trying to be irritating, but now I realized he honestly didn’t understand the difference.
“I’m not sure I can explain it to you.”
“Try. I want to understand why it is important to you.”
“I’ll think on it and try to explain later. Right now I don’t really know how.”
Olaf thought about what I’d said and finally accepted it with a nod. “I look forward to the discussion.”
I was glad one of us did. I was not looking forward to trying to explain what it felt like to have a conscience to someone who didn’t. I’d tried with Nicky back home. He was tied to me metaphysically and could feel my emotions, so he behaved like he had them, but he didn’t. He was a sociopath, and even feeling my emotions, he didn’t understand all of them. It was like explaining the color red to someone who had been color-blind all their life. Where do you begin?
Frankie’s phone rang. It was Rico getting back to her on the deer hunt. Great. Maybe real police work would interfere with explaining feelings to sociopaths or hand-holding junior marshals.
42
I HEARD FRANKIE say, “Are you sure?” She made hmm sounds and then hit the button to end the phone call. Her face was serious, but I didn’t know her well enough to read that as positive or negative.
“What did Rico say?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“The deer was in the tree where I left it, right?” Bobby asked from the cell.
“No, Bobby. I’m sorry, but Rico couldn’t find a deer in the tree.”
“Did he check the tree just outside my bedroom window? It’s got a limb that was always great for sneaking out.”
“Rico says he checked all the trees near the house and didn’t find any dead animals in them.”
“That’s not possible. I remember the hunt. I remember the deer’s heartbeat fading under my jaws. I can still feel it struggling under my claws, the sensation of the hair in my mouth. It was too real to be a dream.”
Duke stepped back into sight. “Sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be, not the way they are, son. I’m sorry.”
“What does that mean? What are you trying to tell me, Duke?” Bobby’s hands were starting to mottle where he gripped the bars.
“Are you remembering a deer, Bobby, or something else under your claws and fangs?”
Bobby raised his face up, his blue eyes large and nearly perfectly round like whatever he was seeing or remembering was something awful. He started shaking his head. “No, no, I would remember the difference between a deer and . . . Uncle Ray.”
“If a memory is too terrible, we change it, edit it even in our own heads until the lie replaces the truth. You said so yourself,” Duke said to me.
“I remember what I said.”
“Do you edit your memories that way?” Olaf asked.
“No, but a lot of people do.”