Chapter 36 Chapter 36: Confrontation
Webb stood at the other end of the alley, the exact spot where three years earlier Sarah Walsh's body had been found. He was shorter than I'd envisioned, less distinctive, the kind of person you'd pass on the street and not notice twice. Still, there was something in the manner he stood, in the manner he held himself in the shadows, that conveyed menace.
"Detective Jenkins," he yelled as Alex and I moved in. "You came."
"I said I would."
"And brought an audience." He nodded in the direction of the rooftops and doorways where FBI agents were stationed. "Just like Harrison's arrest. All this firepower for one man."
"Webb, you know how this ends. You're surrounded, outgunned, outnumbered. Surrender now and no one else needs to get hurt."
He laughed, and it rebounded strangely from the brick walls. "Surrender? Detective, I'm not here to surrender. I'm here to make a point."
"What point?"
"That all your healing programs, all your community support, all your pretty stories about trauma survivors becoming helpers—it's all based on a lie."
Webb stepped into the light, and I saw that he was holding something in his right hand. Not a knife, not a gun, but a small remote control.
"What is it?" Alex ordered.
"Insurance. You see, while you've been going around activating your veteran network to protect your programs, I've been visiting those programs myself. Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Denver, Atlanta."
My blood ran cold. "What have you done?"
"I've placed devices. Tiny, hard to detect. There are bombs in five of the community centers where your veterans hold their healing circles as we speak."
Dr. Williams's voice was in my ear. "Rachel, we're getting reports of suspicious packages at veteran program locations in multiple cities. Bomb squad en route to all locations."
Webb smiled. "Your friends have thirty minutes to vacate those buildings before I press this button. Or you can end it all right now by confessing that all you've built is a lie."
"Webb, those buildings are full of people trying to heal from trauma. They've done nothing to you."
"They are everything Harrison fought against. The idea that people can overcome their damage, that trauma can be made into something positive. It is a dream, Detective, and dreams need to be broken."
Alex stepped forward. "Marcus—can I call you Marcus?—I know what it's like to lose someone you love. My sister Lisa was murdered by Harrison. I spent years thinking that the only way to honor her memory was to find her killer."
"Your sister was weak. Harrison proved it."
"My sister was an artist, a teacher, someone who helped children learn to find their own creativity. Harrison exposed her to nothing but his own disease."
"You're proving my point," Webb replied, his fist tightening on the remote. "Trauma breeds more trauma. Your sister's homicide turned you into someone obsessed with violence, pursuing killers instead of living your own life."
"For a time, yes. But then I met Rachel, and she showed me something different."
I knew Alex was stalling, trying to keep Webb talking while bomb teams scrambled to secure the veteran program locations. But I also sensed something genuine in his voice, a truth he was using to counter Webb's ideology.
"She taught me that trauma doesn't have to define us," Alex continued. "That we can survive terrible things and use that survival to help other people. That healing isn't a dream—it's a choice."
"Prettily spoken words. But look around you, Chen. This alley, this standoff, this whole situation. We're all here because of violence, because of trauma, because Harrison knew that some people are born to be killers and some people are born to be victims."
My earpiece crackled again. "Rachel, Chicago bomb squad has cleared their location. No device found. Repeat, no explosive device at Chicago community center."
I felt a surge of hope but did not wish to show it on my face. Either Webb was bluffing about the explosives, or his devices had not been planted as thoroughly as he thought.
"Webb," I said, "you talk about Harrison as though he were a kind of philosopher, but he was just a scared kid who never learned how to handle his pain in constructive ways."
"He was an artist—"
"He was a killer. And so are you. Nothing you do here tonight changes that."
"But it proves that your programs are founded on false hope. Watch what happens when I press this button, Detective. Watch your precious community destroy itself when they realize they can't keep each other safe."
"Boston location cleared," Dr. Williams's voice returned. "No device found."
Webb's resolve wavered, but he raised the remote higher. "It doesn't matter if they found some of them. One explosion will dispel the illusion of safety you've created."
"Marcus," a new voice called from behind us. I turned to see Tommy Chen entering the alley, hands visible, moving slowly and cautiously.
"Tommy, back off," I cautioned.
"It's okay, Rachel." Tommy looked at Webb with something besides fear or anger, a kind of sympathetic recognition. "Marcus, I understand what you're experiencing."
"You don't know anything about me."
"I do know what it's like to feel abandoned, to believe the world is more or less shattered, to believe violence is the only honest response to harm." Tommy took another step forward. "Three years ago, I was robbing banks because I didn't believe there was another way to feel alive after war."
"Then you see why this is necessary."
"I understand why it feels like we need to. But Marcus, I've learned something you haven't learned yet."
"What's that?"
"That being broken doesn't mean we have to break other people."
Other voices joined the conversation. Captain Morrison appeared in the opening of the alley, accompanied by Kevin Martinez and several other veterans. They were unarmed, unthreatening, but their presence changed the fundamental nature of the conflict.
"We're not here to hurt you, Marcus," Captain Morrison said. "We're here because we recognize the pain you're in."
"This doesn't have anything to do with pain," Webb snarled. "This has to do with truth."
"The truth is you lost the one person who ever knew you," Kevin stated. "I do understand that feeling. I lost three brothers in Afghanistan, and for years I thought the only way to keep them alive was to join them in death."
"Your brothers were soldiers. They volunteered to serve. Harrison was—"
"Harrison was a lost kid who never got on his path to recovery," Tommy interrupted. "Just like you're a lost grown-up who's convinced himself that devastation is the only honest response to devastation."
My earpiece crackled with more reports. "Los Angeles location cleared. Denver location cleared. Atlanta location cleared. No explosive devices found at any veteran program sites."
Webb's hand shook as he held the remote. "You're lying. I planted them myself."
"Perhaps you did," I whispered. "Or perhaps you merely wanted to believe you had that kind of power. Marcus, it's over. The programs are safe, the vets are safe, and you don't have to kill anyone else to prove your point."
"My point is that healing is a lie!"
"Why are you shaking?" Captain Morrison asked. "Why are you in an alley at midnight threatening to blow up buildings with people in them who've never hurt you? If trauma only creates monsters, why do you have to work so hard to be one?"
Webb looked around the alley, at the vets who'd come not to attack him but to see him suffer, at the FBI agents who were holding firm instead of moving in for arrest, at Alex and me standing in the place where all this began.
"This isn't how it's supposed to end," he whispered.
"How is it supposed to end?" I said.
"With proof that Harrison was right. With your programs in shambles, your community scattered, your hope revealed as illusion."
"Marcus," Tommy said, stepping forward, "what if there's another way this could play out?"
"Like what?"
"With you getting the help you never got as a kid. With you discovering what Harrison never discovered—that trauma can be transmuted, that community can be forged out of shared suffering, that healing really is possible."
Webb looked at Tommy for a long while, and I saw something crack in his face. Not defeat, exactly, but recognition. The recognition of a man who'd existed for years in isolation encountering people who'd found their way from isolation to community.
"It's too late for me," he breathed.
"It's never too late," Kevin Martinez said. "Three years ago, I was on a bridge, ready to jump. Today, I'm here trying to talk you down from a different kind of ledge."
Webb looked down at the remote in his hand, then at the faces surrounding him. Veterans who had seen combat, trauma, loss, and despair. Men who had learned to convert pain into purpose.
Slowly, oh so slowly, he set down the remote.
"I planted dummy devices," he admitted. "I wanted to scare you, wanted to demonstrate that your community was vulnerable, that people would panic and abandon one another in the face of danger."
"They didn't," I said.
"No. They came here instead. To protect programs that help people like." He looked around the alley again. "Like me."
As FBI officers moved in to take Webb into custody, he looked directly at me. "Detective, was Harrison wrong?"
I thought about the question, everything that had happened since that first morning in this alley, the community that had coalesced around shared trauma and recovery.
"Harrison was sick, Marcus. And so are you. But being sick doesn't make you evil, and it doesn't mean you can't get better."
As they led him away, Webb cried out, "What now becomes of me?"
"Now you learn whether healing is possible or not," Tommy Chen said. "And you need not learn alone."