“You know. She never mentioned him to me. I mean, her private life is pretty mysterious, and I’m beginning to understand why.”
“I don’t know. They’ve got some kind of on-again, off-again thing.”
“There’s some kind of connection there. I can see it when she’s looking at him.”
Probably the topic was harmless, but Larison wasn’t comfortable discussing Dox’s love life. Maybe because of the danger it would lead to questions about his own. And while he’d gotten used to what Rain and Dox and company knew about him, that didn’t extend to the rest of the world. At least not yet.
“She’s complicated,” he said. “What about you? How’d you get into this line of work?”
She shrugged. “I hate bullies,” she said. “People who take advantage of other people just because they can.”
It felt like a PR statement, probably one she’d trotted out in every job interview she’d ever had. People claimed all sorts of high-minded motives for the shit they did. The truth was usually something else.
Still, there was a coldness in her eyes that made him wonder if there was something more to it. Just because she might deploy it as some kind of résumé mission statement didn’t mean it was only that. And maybe it was such an obvious bromide, so appealing an explanation for someone in her line of work, that she used the glittering public-relations aspect to distract from some darker foundation of truth.
“That ever happen to you?” he said.
She looked at him, and he could see she was put off by the question.
He smiled. “I don’t mean to pry. But hey, you brought it up.”
She looked away. A beat passed. Then she said quietly, “My stepfather. When my brother and I were small.”
It was obviously something she wouldn’t ordinarily share. He wondered why she was trusting him with it now. Probably the feeling of the everyday world in abeyance, the four of them, and now just the two, at sea together, adrift, detached. When Larison had been a soldier, he had hitchhiked a lot. And was frequently astonished at the personal stories people would share after picking him up. One guy, who had been having an affair with his own sister-in-law, had said to Larison, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Well, I guess, who are you going to tell, right?” The truth was, most people had a deep-seated need to unburden themselves. It was just a question of the right timing, and circumstances, and confessor.
“Where is he now?” Larison said.
“Dead.”
“That why you became a prosecutor? Because you couldn’t punish him?”
“What are you, my therapist? Anyway, what makes you think I didn’t punish him?”
Larison doubted it, but he said, “I hope you did.”
There was a pause. She said, “Well, I didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What about you? How did you get into . . . whatever it is you do?”
He swallowed a mouthful of chicken and rice. “Long story.”
“Are we going someplace?”
He smiled. He liked Diaz. She wasn’t as tough as she thought she was, but with a little luck, she would be.
“It started with the rah-rah stuff,” he said. “Flag and country and all that. But really, I just didn’t want anyone to ever be able to fuck with me. You know. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, ’cause I’m the baddest motherfucker in the valley.’ But it didn’t take long to figure out the rah-rah was just bullshit and marketing. A racket.”