Page 38 of The Session

“That’s the trouble with heroes. The real ones are hard to buy. Let me know if you need any help,” Henley said.

“I will.”

Blaise was still watching the assistants’ excited reaction, shaking his head. “Jesus Christ, this fucking guy. Now I gotta go become an EMT or something.”

Handyman

Mark lifted the dumpster lid and carefully dropped the first bag of garbage into the smelly interior. He’d learned pretty quickly that Summer Breeze Elderly Care liked to cut costs on everything, including trash bags. All it took was one horrible experience with a load of adult diapers to teach him to handle each bag like a shipment of nitroglycerin.

Mark worked the late shift at the facility from midnight to 8:00 a.m. He didn’t get to interact much with the patients at this hour, except for one or two somnambulists who roamed in the middle of the night. Mark appreciated the quiet and used the time to listen to radio recordings of old football games on his AirPods. He and Holly had managed to make time for each other via video calls, but there was still no firm date for Mark to take a trip out to New Mexico. He was sure that could be arranged if he insisted, but he was waiting to be asked.

Mark had stayed clear of the fields and any official involvement with the Youth Athletic League, the name Devon was using for the new organization, but he had been able to help with scheduling and make sure there were enough volunteers to show up on activity days.

So far, there had been no civil legal action from either the bystander or the gunman who was shot by the police, although two days ago Mark saw a man in an SUV take photos of him when he left his apartment and later when he was doing the garbage drop, like he was at the moment. Vera said this was probably a private detective hired by an attorney to see whether Mark’s professed financial situation was actually true. He wished they’d been there to capture the moment the diaper bag ripped open on him, because he seriously doubted anyone would think he could go to that length to prove his poverty.

Mark had kept up the tradition of Sunday night dinners with his mother, but Byron was absent, each time with a convenient excuse relating to work or some other matter that required urgent attention. His mother was frustrated with the situation, but Mark did his best not to make Byron out to be the bad guy. He didn’t want to cause additional tension between them.

He had reached out to Officer Bettencourt to check on her condition, only to receive word from his lawyer that she preferred to be left alone to recuperate. Vera explained that this was her attorney and the police union acting in their own interests.

While Mark wasn’t facing any immediate legal problems other than Vera’s mounting fees, he wasn’t very hirable at the moment. And he wasn’t out of the woods yet, by any means.

His mother had casually mentioned that there might be some joint legal action between Byron and FirstMed against the insurance company, claiming their policy should have covered the incident. She also mentioned that the policy that was supposed to protect Mark and Devon had actually ended at midnight, and Byron had sent them out on duty knowing that.

Vera floated the idea again that Mark consider taking legal action against the city and county because of the lack of information provided by the dispatcher and the clusterfuck created by the responding officers.

He was uncomfortable with that too and told her he’d rather keep it as an option in the event that anyone from the city or state decided to go after him. It seemed like he was the only person not trying to sue somebody over the incident.

The public perception of what had happened hadn’t changed since the narrative put out by the police department the day it happened. And the attorneys for the gunmen had done their part to try to turn it into a story of police violence and make Mark one more component of that.

Vera told him that once the gunmen went to trial and the body-cam footage was made public, he would be freed from all accusations. That could be months to years from now, though, and there was a high probability the assailants would cut a deal before that happened. In that case—no public exposure of the footage—his best recourse was to hope everyone forgot it happened. He knew he wished he could.

Mark carefully lowered the second bag into the dumpster, then dropped the lid and wrapped the chain around the hasp to prevent any creatures from climbing inside and creating a toxic mess in the back alley.

“Is that as glamorous as it looks?” a female voice asked from behind him.

Mark turned to see Tru Feingold leaning on the employee picnic table as she took a hit from a vape pen.

Mark nodded toward the glowing blue stick. “You steal it off a middle-schooler?”

“I’ve had worse habits, much worse,” Tru replied. “I don’t suppose you have any.”

“I tried chewing tobacco once. Nowadays it’s down to beer and poor decisions,” Mark replied. “I take it this isn’t a random meeting.”

“I left you a couple voicemails,” Tru noted.

“I know, I’m sorry. I was going to get back to you. Things have been a bit hectic. You didn’t have to fly all the way up here, though,” Mark told her.

“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m on my way to New York,” Tru countered.

“Right,” Mark drawled skeptically.

“Well, I could be. I’m guessing the reason you’ve been slow in responding to me, besides your current situation, is that you did some googling of Summit Strategies.”

“You know how when there’s some controversy about a sports record, they put an asterisk by the person’s name? You guys have a lot of asterisks.”

“So I guess you know your mother used to work for us,” Tru probed.

“I’ve been able to infer that, but she’s still tight-lipped. I don’t know what you have on her, but it’s working.”