The officer stopped working on the lock long enough to speak to his colleague.<\/p>\n
I could not hear the words.<\/p>\n
I watched the two of them exchange a brief look, then turn their attention back to the garage.<\/p>\n
I wanted to ask what they were discussing.<\/p>\n
I did not.<\/p>\n
There was a difference between needing information and needing reassurance, and I was no longer certain which one was driving me.<\/p>\n
My phone felt heavy in my pocket.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about Nolan's calls.<\/p>\n
Three times, he had tried to reach me.<\/p>\n
Three times, I had watched his name appear and disappear without answering.<\/p>\n
I had made that decision because the dispatcher told me to concentrate on the emergency.<\/p>\n
It had been the right decision.<\/p>\n
That did not mean I felt comfortable with it.<\/p>\n
I had spent years telling people that a reasonable decision could still leave you with an outcome you never wanted.<\/p>\n
I understood that principle better than I wished to.<\/p>\n
The officer returned to the lock.<\/p>\n
I watched him work.<\/p>\n
The door remained closed, and I remained outside.<\/p>\n
For a few seconds, I thought I heard something from within the garage.<\/p>\n
I could not identify the sound.<\/p>\n
It might have been movement.<\/p>\n
It might have been the rain.<\/p>\n
I waited for it to happen again.<\/p>\n
Nothing followed.<\/p>\n
I wanted to call Rachel's name, but I held back.<\/p>\n
I had already told the officers what I heard.<\/p>\n
If there was someone inside, I hoped they knew help had arrived.<\/p>\n
I tried to imagine what Rachel might be thinking.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she was frightened.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she was too weak to speak.<\/p>\n
Perhaps she had heard the officers and was waiting for them to open the door.<\/p>\n
Every possibility led me back to the same helpless place.<\/p>\n
I could not know.<\/p>\n
The officer shifted his position.<\/p>\n
His colleague remained close enough to assist.<\/p>\n
I looked at the padlock again.<\/p>\n
It was wet, dark, and ordinary.<\/p>\n
I had never paid much attention to locks before that day.<\/p>\n
Now I could not stop looking at one.<\/p>\n
I wondered who had put it there.<\/p>\n
I wondered when it had been secured.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether the person who had closed it had understood what might happen to the person left inside.<\/p>\n
Those were questions.<\/p>\n
They were not answers.<\/p>\n
I reminded myself of that.<\/p>\n
A prosecutor who began with an answer and searched for facts to support it was already in trouble.<\/p>\n
A mother could make the same mistake.<\/p>\n
I could not afford to do that now.<\/p>\n
The officers continued working.<\/p>\n
I stayed where I had been told to stand.<\/p>\n
My shoes made a faint sound when I shifted my weight on the wet concrete.<\/p>\n
I stopped moving.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear everything.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear Rachel.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear the lock give way.<\/p>\n
I wanted to hear something that would tell me the worst possibility had not come true.<\/p>\n
Instead, I heard the steady drip of water from the roof.<\/p>\n
I heard a car moving somewhere beyond the alley.<\/p>\n
I heard the officer say something to his colleague.<\/p>\n
Then I heard the metallic sound of equipment being repositioned.<\/p>\n
I looked at the door.<\/p>\n
The lock still held.<\/p>\n
I had prosecuted cases in which a few minutes had changed everything.<\/p>\n
I had also seen people assign meaning to a delay when the delay had an ordinary explanation.<\/p>\n
I knew that the officers had reasons for taking care.<\/p>\n
I knew that forcing a door was not simply a matter of pulling harder.<\/p>\n
I knew all of that.<\/p>\n
I still wanted them to hurry.<\/p>\n
I looked toward the alley entrance, then back at the garage.<\/p>\n
I could not decide which direction frightened me more.<\/p>\n
The entrance represented the possibility of someone arriving with an explanation.<\/p>\n
The garage represented the possibility of discovering what that explanation would have to account for.<\/p>\n
I thought about Rachel again.<\/p>\n
I tried to remember the last time we had spoken without either of us being distracted.<\/p>\n
The memory would not settle into a clear picture.<\/p>\n
I remembered conversations in pieces.<\/p>\n
A question asked while I was working.<\/p>\n
An answer given while one of us was on the way somewhere.<\/p>\n
A promise to talk later.<\/p>\n
I had always assumed that later would come.<\/p>\n
Now I found myself searching those ordinary moments for signs I might have missed.<\/p>\n
That was unfair to both of us.<\/p>\n
I knew it was unfair.<\/p>\n
I did it anyway.<\/p>\n
I had been trained to look backward and identify the point at which a situation began to go wrong.<\/p>\n
That skill could be useful in a courtroom.<\/p>\n
It could also become cruel when turned on your own life.<\/p>\n
I could not change what had already happened.<\/p>\n
I could only remain available for whatever came next.<\/p>\n
The officer looked in my direction.<\/p>\n
I straightened without meaning to.<\/p>\n
He did not speak.<\/p>\n
He simply returned his attention to the door.<\/p>\n
I let my shoulders drop.<\/p>\n
I felt foolish for reacting to a glance as though it might contain an answer.<\/p>\n
Then I remembered how many families I had seen waiting outside courtrooms, reading every movement from a person who might know something about their loved one.<\/p>\n
I had once believed their attention was excessive.<\/p>\n
I understood it now.<\/p>\n
When the truth is out of your reach, you begin looking for it in places where it may not exist.<\/p>\n
I took another breath.<\/p>\n
The rain had left my hands cold.<\/p>\n
I rubbed them together, then slipped them into my coat pockets.<\/p>\n
My phone was there.<\/p>\n
I did not take it out.<\/p>\n
I could still see Nolan's name in my mind.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he had left a voicemail.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether he would call again.<\/p>\n
I wondered whether I would have the strength to speak to him calmly when the time came.<\/p>\n
I had no answers.<\/p>\n
For the moment, the garage had to come first.<\/p>\n
The officers resumed their work.<\/p>\n
I watched them without moving.<\/p>\n
The padlock remained the one thing separating me from the answer I needed.<\/p>\n
I could not open it myself.<\/p>\n
I could not make the officers work faster by staring at them.<\/p>\n
And I could not turn fear into certainty just because uncertainty was unbearable.<\/p>\n
So I waited.<\/p>\n
The officer stopped working on the lock long enough to speak to his colleague. I could not hear the words. I watched the two of them exchange a brief look, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insightdrama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39346,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39326\/revisions\/39346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insightdrama.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}