The Dark (A Detective Alice Madison Novel)(84)

There’s always more to an injury than the physical side of it. How has pain changed us? How has it changed the way we live inside our bodies and in the world at large?

Brown’s shots tore through the range. Her gaze had followed the line of his shoulders, his grip on the weapon—he favored a MI stance, as she did—and she saw his chest rise and fall with each breath.

They took turns for a while. Brown had taken the obligatory remedial lessons after his two fails.

Madison examined the target still in place: Brown’s score was on the narrow line between failure and success. If tonight he had barely made it, a hairsbreadth difference on test day would mean he failed again—no doubt about it.

“What do you think?” he asked her, the directness of the question almost startling.

This was not the time for the cosmetic version; Madison pressed the button that retrieved the target, and in the half gloom the paper cutout flowed toward them like an ungainly spirit.

“The technique is there,” she started. “And so is strength and breathing. However, just before you shoot, you lock your shoulders and become rigid.”

Brown nodded. “Go on.”

“There’s a small flinch there when you get locked, and sometimes it’s not so small, and it affects your aim.”

“It’s been improving but not fast enough.”

“Yes, I can see that. Also you peaked a couple of turns ago, and now you’re tired, and it’s getting worse.”

They both leaned against the wall, their ear mufflers around their necks and the eye-protectors back on the shelf. The smell of cordite was sharp in their nostrils.

“What do you suggest?” he asked.

Madison didn’t want to cheapen the moment with some half-assed psychobabble—she’d run away from that kind of thing herself—and yet the answer was not straightforward or merely physical.

“It’s not about how you’re holding the weapon or the angle of your feet,” she started. “You are controlling your breathing without holding it, and you’re doing everything right.”

“Except that . . .”

“You’re overthinking it. You’re not using your muscle-memory. Every shot you take, it’s like the first one you ever took, and it’s using up all your energy to make sure every single element is right. Which it is. But the tension is pulling your body apart, and you’re barely making the score.”

Madison took a breath. Their relationship had always been about honesty, and Brown would not have asked her the question if he didn’t want the answer. His eyes were still on the target trembling in the air-conditioning.

“What do you suggest?” he asked again after a moment.

“How good are you at mental math?”

Brown snorted. “Let’s just say I’ve never been to math camp.”

“Perfect. What you need to do, Sarge, is occupy your rather large and complex brain with some six-digit additions while letting your muscle-memory do the job it’s there for and hit the darn target.”

“Additions?”

“Multiplications, if you prefer. Anything that’s going to keep your mind from becoming too involved in shooting could work.”

“You ever use this trick?”

“All the time.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. When I was competing, I’d get very nervous, and J. B. suggested it.”

Neither needed to say that the reality of the street was different from a competition. Harry Salinger had not given them time to add or multiply anything when he had attacked them in near darkness.

Madison clicked the release, and the loader slipped out of her Glock—such a familiar gesture. They were working on a B-27 target—a human silhouette in black, with the elliptical target areas in white. In the past Madison had also trained on a G-64—a human silhouette with every organ clearly marked and assigned points for importance. She had done it a couple of times, then stopped and never used it again.

“I’ll come back tomorrow, fresh and full of numbers,” Brown said. “Do you have time for a beer?”

“Absolutely,” Madison replied.


Jimmy’s was a cop’s bar with a meat loaf that had had nourished and raised the cholesterol levels of generations of cops. It wasn’t meat-loaf night, but the cook found them two chicken salads and piled them high with extras, just to let them know how pleased he was to see them there after so long.

Brown and Madison sat in a booth a little off from the main area, eating their sandwiches and drinking chilled longnecks from a local microbrewery. It could have been the end of a normal shift.

Madison enjoyed their silences as much as their conversations. Brown wasn’t the chatty type, and she didn’t mind. On the Salinger case he had kept his thoughts close to his chest and had let her reach her own conclusions. In the end they had both arrived at the same theory— roughly fifteen minutes before Brown had been shot in the head.