Graveland by Alan Glynn

Author:Alan Glynn [Glynn, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312621292
Amazon: 0312621299
Publisher: Picador
Published: 2013-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

11

WALKING FROM THE DOOR OF THE BUILDING OVER TOWARD FRANK, Detective Lenny Byron gives a quick shake of his head. He’s pale, and his eyes look hollowed out.

He mouths, “I’m sorry.”

Frank stares at him in disbelief, barely able to breathe now, his chest like a brick, his gut twisting into knots. He holds on to the barrier with both hands, squeezing so hard it feels as if either the metal or his bones should crack.

There is a moment when his voice comes close to making a sound, to releasing something, a scream or a howl, but the moment passes. And then it’s too late. Frank knows what this is, even if he can’t control it—his systems are shutting down, his emotions seizing up, grief and despair retreating, burrowing into dark, silent recesses.

Almost immediately, too, stuff begins to happen around him, distracting stuff, like the Rivington and Stanton Street barriers being pushed aside to make way for the extra personnel that are now appearing—technical units, crime scene, bomb disposal, paramedics—a whole security apparatus whose function, it seems, is to disassemble, to debrief.

To obliterate.

Frank and an openly howling Deb soon get swept up into a separate debriefing process that involves being talked to, or talked at, in various locations, at various times—and, most disconcertingly, in various tones—by a parade of uniformed officers, special agents, and PTSD counselors. What the process does not involve, however, is any kind of response to their repeated requests for information.

For confirmation.

For a chance to see their daughter’s body.

That—it soon becomes apparent, as they are drawn ever farther away from the scene—is simply not going to happen. And despite whatever armory of legalistic-sounding bullshit Lloyd Hackler is able to draw on, the firewall phrase “national security concerns” proves to be impenetrable.

But what strikes Frank about this—about the notion of juxtaposing that phrase with his daughter’s name—is just how preposterous it seems.

A part of him wants to laugh.

Which actually feels like something he might be able to do, in the absence of other, more appropriate responses—crying, say, howling, trembling uncontrollably, lashing out.

He doesn’t laugh, though, or do any of these things. Instead, he moves through the hours like a zombie, dealing with the authorities, with Deb and Lloyd, talking on the phone to John (after Deb calls him), accepting Deb’s invitation to stay with them tonight (because where else is he going to stay), and ending up in their apartment on Eighty-sixth Street, with people dropping by all the time, people he knows vaguely, people he doesn’t know at all, then watching Deb break down, watching her recover, and watching her break down again.

Unable to sleep that night, he stares at the ceiling for six hours.

At around noon the next day, he and Lloyd drive out to JFK to pick up John. This forty-minute car journey should be awkward and emotionally charged, as it’s actually the first time the two men have ever been alone together, but instead it’s nothing. It’s preceded by a testy encounter between Lloyd and

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