Shards Read online

  • • •

  My addiction was taking me down hard and fast. I had become skilled at hiding it, but it got to the point when nothing would work. I looked sick. The ice was eating me from the inside out, and sooner or later everyone was going to find out.

  It was going to take a big lie to buy me a little more time.

  One morning Sergeant Wilkes called me into his office and said, “Moore, you look so thin, you look like you’re dying. Do you have cancer?”

  That was just his way of joking, but a new lie had presented itself, a ready-made lie invented by someone else.

  “Yes,” I said. “I do have cancer. That’s why I’m so thin.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Since November.”

  Wilkes nodded thoughtfully. “And when were you going to tell us?” he asked.

  “I honestly didn’t think you needed to know,” I said. “I know I can beat this thing. I don’t want everybody feeling sorry for me.”

  “You know there’s not a man in this department who wouldn’t be there for you if you needed us,” he said.

  “I know that, and I’ll ask for help if I need it, but for now I’m okay. I just don’t want anybody to know. Please don’t tell anybody.”

  “You don’t have to do this on your own,” he said. “We’re your brothers in blue.”

  “I know.”

  “What kind of cancer is it? What’s the”—he searched for the word—“prognosis?”

  “Ovarian,” I said. “The prognosis isn’t great long-term, but I’m doing fine now.”

  Where did I get this stuff? Things I had read, I guess, or heard on TV. I sounded utterly convincing.

  Understand that at this point, I would have done anything to keep my addiction alive. Anything. Wilkes just happened to be there, and the comment that slipped out of his mouth became my new best lie. If it hadn’t been Wilkes, it would have been another colleague, another lie.

  Although I pleaded with him not to tell anyone, I knew he eventually would, and before the news started to spread like wildfire I would have to tell Keawe.

  I told him the cancer wasn’t serious, that I would be okay.

  “You don’t look like you’re getting any better,” he said.

  “I am,” I said. “The treatments are working and it won’t be long.”

  As usual, Keawe didn’t have much to say, but he held me close and told me he loved me. I would have to settle for that.

  • • •

  Yes, I have cancer.

  When I started to face these people, to look them in the eye and tell them I had cancer, as I started to do that January, this was the moment my lies became deceit and my deceit became premeditated actions that I knew, knew would cause pain. Never mind all the horror that happened later, lying to the people who loved me held more pain than anything that would ever happen to me physically.

  You look terrible, Alli. Do you have cancer?

  Yes, I have cancer.

  That was beginning of the lie that would take me down, that would destroy the trust of a whole community on the island.

  14

  At first, the cancer lie was great. I now had permission to look as sick as I actually was, and if I didn’t want to make it into work, I could take a sick day.

  We were conducting a couple of really big investigations at the time, and one of them went federal. The FBI needed my report, but I just couldn’t get it done. I was in the bathroom smoking every thirty minutes. Even though a hit of meth lasts fifteen hours, I still wanted more. I would get higher and higher and higher at work, thinking that if I could just take one more hit I could sit down and do this report. I couldn’t. I kept telling everyone my cancer wasn’t serious, but I was clearly falling apart, so Wilkes suggested I take some time off.

  “Don’t you have some family to go visit?” he asked me. “I know your parents are gone, but isn’t there a sister in Oregon?”

  “Washington,” I corrected him.

  “Why don’t you go spend a couple of weeks with her?”

  “I’m working on this no-dope warrant with a CI,” I said. “I need to be here to—”

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “Bryant can fill in for you.”

  I opened my mouth to protest further, but then I started to think about it. My big case was pretty involved and included all nine vice officers. My CI Kal and I were narrowing in on the Kihei dealer. There was no undercover work—it was all done via surveillance and CI buys. A no-dope warrant. Kal had made three small buys for us from this dealer. I had done two of them, and now Bryant was ready to do the last one because I wasn’t capable. I just couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get any work done, and we were close to having the warrant ready to be executed.

  “There is this great oncologist in Seattle that my sister has been telling me about,” I told Wilkes.

  “Sounds good,” Wilkes said. “Visit your sister. Rest. See this cancer doctor. Get well.”

  Biggest case of my career, and I listened to Wilkes and left for Washington to visit my sister. Can you effing believe it?

  • • •

  Now the entire Maui Police Department thought I was on the mainland, getting treatment for my made-up ovarian cancer. Instead, I was at my sister’s house in Seattle, trying to buy dope online.

  I still had a little money but was about to run out of ice, so I got on Craigslist and used the key words for finding the dope I wanted. Cocaine users say, “Does anybody want to go skiing?” All I had to ask was, “Has anyone seen my friend Tina?”

  First I looked for gay guys. Much safer—they wouldn’t want sex from me. In the drug world, a girl’s money is no good. You can try to pay for it, but you’re not going to get very far. You might be able to pay half. The other half you’ve got to earn.

  I was lucky. I found a gay man named Evan who didn’t have any money but was willing to introduce me to his dealer if I would share with him.

  That night at eleven o’clock, after my sister, brother-in-law, and two little nieces had gone to sleep, I sneaked out of the house. Just like high school. Evan had told me to meet him in a warehouse parking lot, but when I pulled up in my sister’s Subaru there were no other cars there. I took a hit of ice and waited.

  Out of nowhere this guy knocked on the window.

  “Shit,” I said, thinking it was a cop.

  “Hey, Alli. I’m Evan.”

  “Where did you come from?” I asked. “Where’s your car?”

  “I kind of walked,” he said. “My parents usually don’t let me take the car.”

  “How old are you?” I asked, opening the door and letting him in.

  “Twenty-five.”

  I had a quick look at him before the door slammed shut and the car went dark again. He was dressed in a blue shirt and khakis. His brown hair was nicely cut. All-American Seattle boy. Handsome. Twenty-five, but he looked sixteen.

  “You live with your parents?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “They put me in rehab like a million times and it never worked. Now they won’t give me any money. They think that’s going to keep me from using.”

  We drove about fifteen minutes to a small brick house in a quiet neighborhood. Evan had me park a few houses away.

  “This your dealer?” I asked him.

  “Sure, he’s a dealer.”

  I was a little confused because online he made it sound like he had his own dealer, tried and tested. I gave him a hundred bucks, and he disappeared inside the house.

  After about ten minutes he came running out.

  “Drive,” he said. “Just drive.”

  “Don’t do that,” I said as we tore down the street. “Don’t steal from a dealer. You’ll get known.”

  “I saved you some money,” he said. “Now we’ve got enough for tomorrow night, too.”

  “Jesus,” I said. At work I had seen more than once what dealers did to buyers who tried to rip them off.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “God, you driv
e fast. Let’s go to my house.”

  He directed me to an upper-class neighborhood near my sister’s house in Snohomish. A really beautiful house. His parents’ house.

  And inside—his parents. June and Ward Cleaver. His mother in a dress. They were smiling, smiling. They seemed like they wanted to chat, but all we cared about was getting high. Evan said, “This is Alli,” and hurried me upstairs.

  “Will they kick me out?” I asked.

  “They never come up here,” he said. “This is my part of the house. They’re down there having orgasms over you. They’re pretending you’re my pretty blond girlfriend.”

  “They don’t know you’re gay?”

  “Oh they know, but they don’t accept it. They’re super fundamentalist Christians and they think I’m going to hell.” He smiled a sad sort of smile. “I probably am. Going to hell.”

  “So where’s the dope?”

  He pulled a baggie out of his pocket. “How do you use?” he asked me.

  “I have a pipe.”

  “Ever slam?”

  I shook my head no.

  “I slam. Want to try?”

  “No thanks.”

  We sat on his bedroom floor and I watched him shoot up while I smoked. Once we were high, he put on Sarah McLachlan.

  The whole second story of the house was his. His room was total ADD—some books were neatly shelved while others were open on the floor; a big mound of clothes sat in a corner but inside his open closet, pants and shirts and sweaters were grouped by color. There were no sheets on his mattress. It seemed that in typical tweaker fashion, he started a lot of projects but couldn’t concentrate enough to finish them.

  After Sarah McLachlan, he put on Fiona Apple. Then he took me across the hall to the computer room with a giant LCD monitor, Internet, and television.

  “This is where I really live,” he said, pointing to the computer.

  We played video games together and he started talking to me about women’s stockings.

  Turns out he was a cross-dresser. He had some women’s clothes in his closet but nothing really beautiful. He really, really loved pantyhose.

  “They must feel wonderful on your legs,” he said. “So soft and silky.”

  “I hardly ever wear them,” I said.

  “Do you have some? Could you bring some to me?”

  “I guess,” I said. “Sure.”

  “Do you think they’ll fit me, even though I’m a guy?”

  “Why not?”

  “What size do you think I’d wear?”

  “I don’t know, maybe medium tall?”

  “But not queen-size, right? I mean, I’m thin.”

  I nodded. He was desperately thin. As thin as I was.

  He wanted to talk about stockings all night. I could see it made him feel good, and I didn’t mind.

  “It’s not like I want to be a woman,” he said. “I just want to dress like one. I just want men to think I’m beautiful. You think that’s weird, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “You should do whatever makes you feel good.”

  “Nothing really makes me feel good. Except this.” He nodded his head toward the bag of meth.

  We talked all night, this tweaker Chatty Cathy stuff, and at dawn I drove back to my sister’s house, where everyone was still asleep. They never even knew I was gone.

  I had enough meth with me now to smoke all day while Carol and Tim were at work and Ella and Maya were at day care, but I knew I’d run out in a day or so. I looked around my sister’s house for things I could sell. Her golf clubs. Some of Tim’s tools. Things they might not miss, at least for a while. I put them on Craigslist to see if I would get any takers. I had a really expensive vice camera with me that had “County of Maui” engraved on it. A thousand-dollar camera, and I went out that afternoon and pawned it for a hundred.

  While I was driving back from the pawnshop, Keawe called.

  “Hey,” he said. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Doing some shopping for my sister.”

  “Are you up to that?” he asked. “What does the doctor say?”

  “There’s this terrific oncologist here,” I said. “She’s suggesting some new treatments. Really, I’m getting better.”

  “Babe, I hope so because I want you back now. I miss you so much.”

  I continued to throw all sorts of little lies at Keawe, but my heart always lifted when I spoke to him. For a while our relationship had been perfect for me because I could be a workaholic and not have to handle someone who wanted to take me away from work. I had been blindsided by the loneliness and guilt and disappointment that came from being in love with a married man. But even now, though I couldn’t speak to him without lying, my love for him was true.

  Carol came home from work with Maya and Ella and bags and bags of groceries. I helped her empty the bags onto the kitchen table. Boxes of organic granola and containers of yogurt, bags of fresh fruit.

  “You’re looking pretty thin, Alli,” Carol said. I froze, a loaf of brown bread in each hand. If she had noticed how thin I was, she had to suspect I was using. The cancer lie was for the department alone—for my family there would have to be another one.

  “Your pants are practically falling off you,” she continued. “Let’s go shopping tonight. Let’s get you some new jeans.”

  This was my big sister—take-charge, generous, always looking after me. “You know,” I said, “I would love to, but I’m watching my expenses now so I don’t want to buy anything new.”

  Carol waved her hand in my face. “My treat,” she said. “Let’s pick out something for your birthday.”

  My birthday was more than a month away.

  “Oh thanks, but really, I don’t need anything. I just didn’t pack the right clothes for this trip. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “One pair of jeans?” she said. “Please? Otherwise I don’t know what I’ll get you.”

  I could imagine what shopping with my sister would be like. My sister coming into the dressing room and seeing how thin I really was.

  “That sounds great,” I finally said. “But can we do it tomorrow? I’ve got a really bad stomachache. I think I’m going to lie down.”

  Carol was used to my stomachaches, my headaches. My sickliness. It had been there all my life, some ailment or another, more since my father had left. Carol was the strong one, the manager, the organizer, sometimes too much the taskmaster. Even losing her leg in the accident hadn’t changed her basic approach to life.

  I went into my room and took a hit, felt better. I kept the door closed, kept myself really high. I could hear my nieces running around laughing, shrieking, playing. I paced for hours while the household went through the motions of dinner, bath, bedtime. After a while I turned off the light so Carol wouldn’t knock on the door, and as soon as I knew everyone was asleep, I took off for Evan’s.

  Same thing, different dealer. I told him, “You give the guy the money this time or I’m not sharing with you.” My addict’s logic—I could steal from my sister, but I wasn’t going to rip off some drug dealer.

  I had brought Evan some stockings and a cute little outfit—a low-cut, ruffly purple top, a tight black miniskirt, something really provocative—and he loved it. I dressed him up like a girl and put some blush and eyeliner on him.

  “Look at us,” he said. “We’re like the homecoming queens.” I caught sight of us in the huge mirror he had over his dresser. He was right. I was way too thin and frail, but for better or for worse, I didn’t look like the meth addicts you see on posters all over Hawaii. My skin was okay. I’d avoided those horrible staph infections. I hadn’t become a picker. My teeth weren’t rotting. I was twenty-seven years old, but I still had the look of a teenager. And Evan, he was skinny too, but dressed up he didn’t look like the horrible addict he was. For tonight he was the gorgeous girl he wanted to be.

  After we got high, we walked around a deserted park near his house. It was two, three in the
morning. For him, this was the ultimate. In our crazy drug relationship he felt he could be himself around me. He told me he didn’t fit in anywhere. His parents refused to accept him, and his whole life was lived online, talking to other gay men. I was the first person who had told him it was okay to be a cross-dresser.

  My third night with Evan, I let him shoot me up. My first time. I had never used with anyone before and I had always been too scared to try it by myself.

  “I don’t know what I have, Alli,” Evan said. “Hep-C, HIV. I have no idea.” I waved his words away with my arm, then held it out for the needle.

  The drug felt strong and pure and scary. I loved it.

  I wanted more slamming.

  Worried that my sister would wake up one night—maybe Maya or Ella would have a nightmare and call out for her—I told her I’d received permission to work with the Everett Police Department on one of their narc ops. I’d be gone most nights. Of course my sister believed this. My family seemed to be in awe of my police work. I could tell them anything. This excuse explained my nighttime absences and also gave me permission to stay in my room all day, smoking meth while I pretended to sleep.

  For five more nights I went to Evan’s to share dope with him. Every time, his parents smiled. They didn’t seem to care that I was coming over at eleven at night and leaving at five in the morning. They pretended I was his pretty girlfriend. They knew about the meth and hated it, but they didn’t kick him out. He was their only child, and they were going to let him stay with them until he killed himself.

  When I was in rehab, people would associate all their good times, their partying times, with meth. For them, that was the hardest part of being sober—missing the drug life and the crazy drug friendships. I was such an isolated user that I never had that; this time with Evan was the closest I ever came. He told me he loved me, and I told him I loved him too. As messed up as it all was, I gave him a forum where he could talk about himself, where he wasn’t trapped in an Internet world. For a week we were each other’s best friend.

  Each morning when I left Evan’s, he made me take the dope-filled needles home with me. “I don’t want to steal from you,” he said, “but if I’m alone with the dope I will. I’ll use them if you don’t take them.”