local public-radio stations, when I couldn’t sleep. There was something I found relaxing about the British voices reporting stories that were vaguely interesting. It had just the right balance. If my insomnia was particularly bad, I could focus and pay attention, and that would distract me from the thoughts running incessantly through my head. If it was a calmer night, though, I could let my attention drift and the voices became a kind of white noise that was just strong enough to hold the silence at bay and lull me into a kind of sleepless relaxation. I’d often find myself struggling to maintain that state at two a.m., when the programming transitioned from the BBC to Morning Edition. The American voices were never quite as calming.
More recently, I’d taken to listening to podcasts. I got sucked in quickly and before I knew it had subscribed to more than a dozen. Mystery Show had become a particular favorite. It was kind of a parody of our cultural obsession with the mystery genre, undertaking a new and admittedly minor investigation with each episode. How did a book written by an author friend of the host, Starlee Kine, wind up being photographed in the hands of Britney Spears? Could she find the owner of an unusual belt buckle that had been at the bottom of a friend’s junk drawer for years? How tall was Jake Gyllenhaal, really? What struck me about Mystery Show was the way Kine would follow the threads and loose ends that inevitably arose as she looked for clues and doggedly pursued lead after lead to the people whose stories, while not directly connected to the main narrative, imbued the case with genuine humanity. Julia and Harlan had both come into my life the same way.
But that night I’d tried listening for a while and found myself unable to summon the small degree of focus and concentration needed to pay attention. I’d keep zoning out and realizing I’d missed thirty seconds or a minute or more. I’d hit the little counterclockwise-circular-arrow icon to back up again and again until I found something I remembered. The fourth time I went all the way back to the Stamps pitch, I decided to give up.
It was long past midnight. If I’d been home I would have gotten dressed and gone out for a walk. Of course, I knew walking around Long Beach alone in the middle of the night, even in a neighborhood as nice as Jen’s, wasn’t the wisest of moves, but in terms of self-destructive cop behavior, it ranked pretty low on the scale.
I kept thinking about that afternoon in the parking lot. Something so simple, walking a block up the street to the Potholder, something I’d done so many times before. But I froze. Or at least I would have if Stan hadn’t come along. What would I have done if he hadn’t showed up when he did? Would I have a taken a few deep breaths, gotten a hold of myself, and strolled off to lunch? Or would the anxiety have gripped me so tightly that I wouldn’t have been able to overcome it? What would I have done? Could I have even made it back up to the squad room, or would I have humiliated myself by losing my shit right there in front of everybody?
I’d been in dangerous and life-threatening situations before without being rattled at all. When I’d been in uniform, I’d faced bigger and more tangible dangers on practically a weekly basis. Where was this fear coming from? It was true that I’d never had to deal with so direct and sustained a threat as the one the bombing represented, but how could I be afraid of walking alone to lunch?
The photos of my car were working their way into my mental feedback loop, too. There was no way I would have survived if I’d been in the car. What would it have been like? It’s standard procedure for homicide detectives to tell victims’ families that their loved ones had died instantly. That’s one of the many lies that we’re not only allowed, but often encouraged, to tell. And it’s a good lie. It brings comfort. No one wants to know that their loved one was in excruciating pain and very likely aware that they were dying for seconds or even minutes before they expired. My death from the explosion probably would really have been instantaneous. That didn’t make it any less disturbing.