In Too Deep(53)

"Carl did a good enough job," Cam said. "It's fine."

I blinked, surprised. "Carl? You don't mean Carl Washington?"

"Yeah," Cam said. I shook my head in exasperation. Carl Washington wasn't a doctor, he wasn't even a physician's assistant or nurse. He was a veterinarian. "He worked as a medic when he was in the Marines long ago, but the State Police wouldn't let him help out since he's not a medical professional. So when I asked if he could look me over, he was more than happy to do so."

"And probably gave you a dose of antibiotics big enough for a damn horse," I said. Carl was one both one of the pharmacy's clients and people with prescription rights. In a weird system that I still didn't understand, he could call in prescriptions for his animal patients, their owners picking them up just like normal scripts. "Cam, he stitched you about the same way he'd stitch a cow."

"It holds, and I don't care about the scar," Cam said simply.

I sighed and nodded in agreement. "I understand. Well, it isn't infected, I guess that’s one thing he did right. But at least let me put some Neosporin on it and rewrap it, that should minimize some of the scarring."

"That's fine," Cam said, holding still on the couch while I went into the back. In the medicine cabinet, I found the tube of Neosporin. I took it back out and smeared the messy goop over the stitches before rewrapping it. I used a safety pin to hold the bandage in place and gave it a once over. "It looks good."

We kissed at the door, and he gave me a smile, this one both happy and sad. I tilted my head, confused and concerned. "What is it?"

"I'm glad that I found someone so noble," he said gently, stroking my hair. "It just saddens me that I have to find it out this way." He shook his head and kissed me on the temple. "Go on, go do the right thing, and I'll be here when you get home."

I gave Cam a kiss on the cheek, thinking about his last words as I drove to the pharmacy. Was I really being noble by doing this? I mean, just a day before I was wanting to unleash the power of the most dangerous weapon outside of perhaps nuclear bombs on someone over the shooting. That didn't seem very noble to me.

Then again, why did I want to do it? Was it merely for revenge? I didn't think so. If it was just for simple revenge, my feelings would have subsided with time, or I would have been angry. Instead, I felt just as saddened and horrified as I did the day before, but because of that, I was more resolved than ever to see that Albertine was unleashed on those who had set Pinzetti on his path.

There's a time and a place for violence. Some people, with the noblest of intentions, seem to screw that up, thinking that violence is never the answer. Sadly, while that may have been the case at some point, it didn’t seem to make sense to me now. That said, there are those who just engage in violence willy-nilly. Both sides are wrong, I thought as I drove. There is a time and a place for violence. If there was anything that lent an air of nobility to that fact, it was that I was willing to unleash violence not for myself, but in the defense and with the intention of the long term good of others.

That was good enough for me, I thought, as I parked my car. Getting out, I smoothed my shirt over my chest and walked in. It was good enough for me.





Chapter 32





Cam




Two days later was the memorial service for Tawny Shaw. It was raw, being just two days after the actual incident. The students and the community needed to purge the grief and horror inside of them. While it was clear that Pinzetti had set out primarily to draw me out, an innocent bystander had lost her life.

It was fitting, I guess, that for the first time in two months, the sky was cloudy and threatened rain. Tawny worked at the school for two years more than I had, and from everything I saw, was loved by her students. Teaching special education is damned difficult, because each student has their own challenges and their own unique makeup, even more so than a normal teenager. Yet somehow Tawny handled it all with an insufficient budget and not a lot of thanks, both from the system that only wanted to make sure the students weren't an embarrassment and from families that more often than not saw their children as a burden more than a blessing.

The entire school and a lot of the community turned out for the memorial service, which had been quickly put together at the football stadium. It was the only place in town large enough for everyone to attend. Her husband, a nice guy I'd met at school events and the staff Christmas party the year before, shook hands with as many people as he could before taking his seat.

I was dressed in my most somber suit, a navy blue thing that I'd last worn for my job interview with the school board. I wished I had a black suit, but there just wasn't enough time. Looking at the stands, I saw that I wasn't the only one and that most of the crowd were dressed in a mixed array of colors ranging from browns through the blues to the blacks. Melina was wearing a black skirt and dark blue blouse that she'd picked up the day before. We both felt ragtag and unprepared, and in a lot of ways, we were.

After the invocation by the minister, the speakers began. The first, the mayor of T or C, was pretty standard. He didn't know Tawny, except perhaps as a face when he would come around the schools on visits every once in a while. His speech was heartfelt, but you could tell he had put it together from a file assembled by the School Board's HR department. Thankfully he kept it short.