Q. Hey, Ray, tell me about yourself.
A. Okay. What do you want to know?
Q. What are you doing in this story? What’s your purpose here?
A. Well, I’m the hero, of course. My job is to catch that rascal Dan Roberge and put him behind bars where he belongs. I mean, I can understand jealousy and anger and all, but you gotta draw the line at homicide.
Q. So what makes your story worth writing? What’s the point?
A. Well, it’s going to be tricky with this time loop thing going on. Just as the guy was getting on the bus to come home, to come to justice, a frigging time loop erased all the evidence.
Q. Good thing he did the murders again, then. Fresh evidence for you.
A. Yeah, that’s true. But how am I going to prosecute that? Is that four murders, or two?
Q. So is that the big question? Whether it’s two murders or four? Seems to me if you prosecute the second two, that will be justice enough.
A. Yeah, yeah, I know. But something doesn’t seem right. I can’t put my finger on it.
Q. So justice is a big deal for you?
A. It’s everything. I mean, why else do this job? It’s a frigging slog. I know it looks glamorous on TV, but in real life it’s a lot of running around, a lot of scanning and rescanning teh same evidence, looking for some clue that you missed. And there’s no scriptwriter to do the job for you. You have to do it yourself. And then there’s the bureaucracy, the paperwork. The bonehead cops who step in the evidence or fumble the chain of custody. I tell you, it’s one frigging thing after another. And the only thing that makes it worthwhile is that every now and then we actually nab one of the bastards. They’re fucking scum. Every one of them.
Q. How did you become so passionate about justice? Were you always that way?
A. (laughs) No, not at all. I was an MP in the army. I served during Nam, but I never went into the field. I was stationed in Iowa. At first I was just a prison guard, but I had a knack for piecing together interesting puzzles, and crime investigations are all about solving puzzles, figuring out where the pieces fit.
Q. So you’re smarter than I’ve written you so far, at least in this book?
A. Yeah, sure. But there’s always a crime that beats you, that nags you. As a beat cop you can live with that, in a way. You hand it off to the detectives and go on to the next thing. You solve the puzzles you can, hand off the puzzles you can’t solve, and grab the next puzzle off the shelf. There’s always another one. It’s predictable in a way. After a while you get used to the solve rate. It becomes a numbers game. But there’s something deadening in that, too. It all starts to look the same. Yeah, something surprises you now and then, but even the surprises become a kind of pattern.
Q. Sounds like you want novelty, something new now and then.
A. (laughs) No, I want something new all the time. Like this fuck Dan Roberge. You know how many guys try to kill their cheating wives? Lots. Lots. And none of them spend more than twenty minutes figuring out how to do it. So they waltz in with a gun, catch their sweeties in flagrante delicto, shoot a bunch of times, and run. But they never plan their escape. It’s like they never thought about it until they see their life partner bleeding on the bed or the floor or in the car or wherever they did the deed. Then it’s “Oh, shit, I gotta get out of here.” They’ve been in a trance of jealousy (and boy, don’t I know that one) and haven’t thought clearly for weeks, if they’ve thought at all. I mean, what woman is worth the rest of your life in jail? But they didn’t think about that. They just wanted her dead. So now she’s dead, and what do you do? Uh, oh, didn’t plan that out. Dumbasses, every one.
Q. Sounds depressing.
A. Yeah, sort of. But I tell you what, being the last line of responsibility gets my juices flowing. Now that I’m a detective, I’m the guy that the beat cops hand the cases to. I’m the guy that figures out the last piece of the puzzle.
Q. So how does all of this relate to justice.
A. Simple: If justice is to be done, it’s up to me. I get the responsibility, and that’s what makes the slogging and bureaucracy worth it. And I get the pressure, which keeps my blood pumping, keeps me from retiring on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. So that’s it. If I solve the puzzle, justice is done. (laughs) I am justice!
Q. What’s it like working with Patty?
A. Oh, Patty is great. Man, she can tease evidence out of… I don’t know, a place where it’s hard to tease the evidence out of. (laughs) Yeah, she can spot a nicked shell casing at a thousand yards.
Q. She speaks highly of you.
A. Yeah. We’re a good team. A really good team.
Q. In what way?
A. We complement each other. She sets ‘em up, I knocks ‘em down, you know? I’m always looking for that last piece of the puzzle, and she’s finding not just that piece, but six new pieces to a whole new puzzle. She has some kinda sixth sense for out-of-place details. She’ll offer up some little bit of something, and say, “What do you suppose this means?” And it’s always the frigging key to the whole thing. It’s always that last puzzle piece I was looking for.
Q. So she’s good with the details.
A. Yeah. (pauses) Too good, sometimes. I mean, every bit of evidence matters, of course. There are lawyers out there paying off judges and swindling juries, playing on their emotions and prejudices. That shit just gets my goat. And as angry as it makes me, it sends Patty ’round the bend. She’s frigging paranoid about it. She just won’t stop. Even when we have the case solved three times over, she comes up with some new piece of evidence and spins everything into a new light, explains the dumbass’s motives or opportunity or means just that little bit more clearly. But enough is enough, you know? After some point it’s time to move on.
Q. Sounds as if that frustrates you.
A. Well, not frustrates, exactly, but more… I don’t know. (pauses) Maybe frustrates, yeah.
Q. What challenges you most at work?
A. (laughs) The search for a smarter dumbass! It’s all in vain, I suspect.
Q. That’s it? The sameness of it all?
A. Yeah. I mean, justice matters, you know? In the end, that’s the point of all of this. But I just wish it weren’t so fucking repetitious.
Q. Is there anything about those twenty nine hours and eleven minutes that gives you pause? Anything that you did that you might come to regret? Or anything you chose not to do? Even anything that happened that you wish you could do over?
A. Not sure. I mean, I’m sure there’s something. That’s what’s going to give my storyline meaning, after all. But I don’t have a good idea for you yet. Let me sleep on it.
Q. Okay. One last question: What else should I be asking you?
A. Nothing I can think of. Maybe that’s something else to sleep on.
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