The Day He Left by Frederick Weisel

Author:Frederick Weisel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2022-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

(i)

(Thursday, 10:30 a.m.)

Coyle thought about the VCI team’s caseload and what awaited them once the Behrens homicide was resolved. On any given day, the team had dozens of cases—stabbings, assaults, robberies, occasional shootings. There was never a slow season. Holidays. Storms. Blue skies. Bad economy. Good economy. Nothing made a dent in the reports. In the VCI bullpen, it was possible to believe violence was as natural as breathing or the beating of a heart.

Coyle’s car was parked behind a building in Medical Row, a section of downtown Santa Rosa known for its successive blocks of physician suites. The vantage gave him a clear view of cars entering and leaving a one-story brick complex that housed the office of Dr. Gregory Winter. So far, he hadn’t seen the doctor’s five-year-old white Corolla.

To distract himself from his dark thoughts, he scrolled through his texts. A message from Rivas identified the girls in Behrens’s photos as Julia Guerro and Zoe McFarland. A text from Frames documented his lack of progress in a canvass of houses near the coastal Salmon Creek site where Paul Behrens’s body was found.

Coyle’s mind returned to his work and his thoughts in the courtroom the day before. What was his own purpose in the midst of the baseness of the VCI caseload? Was it the merest sorting of puzzle pieces to know what happened? Was that worth what he saw day to day?

“According to Dogen Zenji,” Adrienne told him, “the reason we exist is to allow God to experience the universe. We provide the eyes and ears for God.”

“So, in this case, I’m helping God to know what it’s like for a man to beat another with a hammer?” Coyle had tried for a tone of skepticism, not sarcasm, but wasn’t sure he achieved it. He guessed there was more to it.

“There’s more to it,” Adrienne said. “Everything around us—buildings, sky, cars, people—is constantly expressing the truth of the universe. Therefore, Dogen says, it’s our sacred responsibility to hear and see so that the ineffable reality of the world can be revealed.”

Coyle stretched his arms and tried to feel himself open to ineffable reality. He was more likely, he thought, to experience f-ing reality.

The building’s tenant list identified the doctors who shared the office building. The sign held six names and the doctors’ specialties—four family practice, two orthopedics. Beneath the names were two dark bars on the sun-faded panel where other names had been removed. An hour earlier, the lobby receptionist had greeted Coyle with a smile that disappeared when he mentioned Dr. Winter’s name. She told him the doctor was not in but was expected soon. She said it all with the pinched, warning expression that you got from servers in a restaurant when you ordered the calamari, and their eyes said you’d be better off with the wings.

Coyle had once believed all physicians to be equally on top of the social pyramid due to their expertise and income, and to the public’s dependence on doctors to repair bodies and save lives.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.