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Susanna Baum considered herself to be excellent at her job. She was clever and meticulous and took little shit, her nose had been pressed against the glass ceiling too damn long for that. She remembered when she stood in front of a lecture desk at Quantico, the finger of Instructor Alistair Reeps in her face, telling her to buck up her ideas or get out of the Academy.
She did buck up. She bucked up and she came out on top, feeling her badge for the first time and smiling proudly in front of the camera, seeing Reeps in the crowd and and flashing him eyes that said, 'look at me now'. In the years she did her job she climbed, she climbed slowly but she got there. Nobody in the force could say that Susanna Baum had not earned her place.
What she did find herself lousy in, was motherhood. Her son, born silent into the world with a swarm of mask-faced doctors coaxing his lungs. Her William, who had almost died the day he should've begun to live. He didn't remember the fear then, but she did. Laying with her belly cut open on that bed and calling for her baby, crying only when she heard his first squawk. She hasn't cried since, and she doubt she will again. Nothing would phase her like that did, nothing on the job has ever come close.
She once worked a case in Nevada, bodies found close to a desert highway. Amongst them was a young boy, tied naked to a rock with animal skulls at his feet. He had been killed on the rock, strangled by the rope and by the time they found him, his eyes had been taken by birds, dead skin cooking in the sun. She thought of the mother who had lost her son, and all she could think then was thank God it wasn't William. Thank God she was working a job that protected more women from losing their children.
It was the second case she worked with Agent Jamie O'Driscoll. A sombre, soft-spoken man that you didn't realise was behind you until he tapped you on the shoulder. Stuck in Nevada with him, she once found him outside their motel at 4 am. She had woken up thirsty and wanting something cold and sugary to drink, she spotted him sitting on the curb of the road in nothing but sweatpants and a shirt and she had to squint through the darkness to see what he was doing. He was arranging pebbles around himself, the same way the skulls had been found around the boy. Then he stood and he stepped back to look down and admire the semi-circle, stretching his arms out as if to hold hands with people standing next to him.
Susanna pressed herself to the shadows and watched as he dropped his arms, nodding to himself and kicking away the pebbles with his untied shoes. When he walked back up to his room, he didn't see her and she made no move to get his attention. In the end she bought a cola from the vending machine and when she walked past Jamie's door, tilted her ear and heard nothing.
Barley two days later, there was a breakthrough in the investigation and they arrested five people camping out at a gas station touching the outskirts of Henderson. In their interviews, they claimed that they had all met Gerard Sall in separate drug dens. He had convinced them that he saw nefarious spirits following each of them and high and terrified, they believed him. The two women and the boy that they had killed were meant to ease the spirits. "It was them or us," said Roma Whittler, staring hard at the wall with red-rimmed eyes. "He told us that the Native Gods would protect us."
