Alone (Detective D.D. Warren, #1)(37)

“More importantly, do you still believe that, Bobby?”

“A guy is dead. Is it really such a great excuse to say it's because I didn't know any better?”

“It's not an excuse, Bobby. It's a fact of life.”

“Yeah.” He crumpled the Coke can. “What a pisser.”

Elizabeth shuffled some papers on her desk. The silence dragged on. “Shall we talk about your family?” Elizabeth asked at last.

“No.”

“Well, then, shall we talk about the shooting?”

“Hell no.”

“All right. Let's discuss your job. Why policing?”

He shrugged. “I liked the uniform.”

“Any other family members who were law enforcement? Friends, associates, relatives?”

“Not really.”

“So you're the first? Starting a new family tradition?”

“That's me. I'm a wild child.” He was still feeling belligerent.

Elizabeth sighed and drummed her fingernails on the top of her desk. “What brought you to the badge, Bobby? Of all the jobs in the world, how did this one become yours?”

“I don't know. When I was a kid, I figured I'd either be an astronaut or a cop. The astronaut thing was a little harder to pull off, so I became a cop.”

“And your father?”

“What about my father? He's okay with it.”

“What did he do for a living?”

“Drove a front loader for Gillette.”

“And your mom?”

“Don't know.”

“Do you ever ask your father questions about your mother?”

“Not in a long time.” He set down the crumpled can and gazed at her pointedly. “Now you're asking questions about my family.”

“So I am. Okay, you became a cop because the astronaut gig seemed like a bit of a stretch. Why a tactical team?”

“The challenge.” He said it immediately.

“You wanted to become a sniper? Were you always into guns?”

“I'd never shot a rifle before.”

He'd finally surprised her. “You'd never fired a rifle? Before joining the STOP team?”

“Yeah. My father collects guns, does some custom work. But those are handguns, and frankly, my father's not big into shooting anyway, he just likes working on pistols. The machinery. The beauty of a really nice piece.”

“So how did you become a sniper?”

“I was good at it.”

“You were good at it?”

He sighed. “When qualifying for the tac team, you have to take proficiency exams in a variety of weaponry. I picked up the rifle and I was good at it. Little bit more practice here and there and I scored expert. So my lieutenant asked me about being a sniper.”

“You're a natural with guns?”

“I guess.” That thought made him uncomfortable though. He amended it immediately. “Being a sniper isn't just shooting. The official title is Sniper-Observer.”

“Explain.”

He leaned forward and spread his hands. “Okay, so once a month I'm on a shooting range, making sure my technical skills are up to par. But in actual field duty, chances of me being called upon to shoot my weapon are like one in a thousand—hell, maybe one in a million. You train to be prepared. But day in, day out, what I do on the job is observe. Snipers are recon. We use our scopes and/or binoculars to see what no one else can see. We identify how many people are at the scene, what they're wearing, what they're doing. We're the eyes for the entire team.”

“Do you train for that?”

“All the time. KIMS games, stuff like that.”

“KIMS games?”

“Yeah, KIMS. As in ‘Kims.' I don't remember what it stands for. It's a title of a Rudyard Kipling novel or something like that. It's about observing. You go out on the field, and the trainer gives you sixty seconds to spot ten things and describe them. You grab your binoculars and go.” He pointed at the Coke can. “I see what appears to be one crumpled soda can, looks new, red and white, probably Coke”—he tipped it on its side—“probably empty. Or, I see something that appears to be a length of wire, approximately eighteen inches long with green coating. It appears cut at one end and I can see the copper core, which is dirty. That sort of thing.”

She regarded him with a bemused expression. “So you're professionally trained to notice everything. Does that drive you batty in real life? To notice all the nitty-gritty details everyplace you go?”

He grimaced and shrugged again. “Susan would probably say I don't notice a thing. Last time she got her hair cut, it took me two days to figure it out.”

“And Susan is?”

“My girlfriend.” He caught himself. “My ex-girlfriend.”

“You mentioned her on Friday. I thought you said things were going well.”

“I lied.”

“You lied?”

“Yeah.”

“And that would be because?”

“Because I'd just met you. Because I was feeling uncomfortable. Because . . . hell, take your pick. I'm a guy. Sometimes we lie.”

The good doctor didn't seem amused by that statement. “So what happened with Susan?”