Free The Pain Scale by Tyler Dilts Page A

when the edge of my father’s saw catches on the bone of my shoulder and sends a violent jolt down my spine, I continue.
    It goes on and on and on.
    Finally, my arm falls to the floor. It’s only then as I look down at it, flopping and twitching on the cold concrete, that I see how much blood I’ve lost. A huge deep-red pool. I fall into it, splashing, fully aware that I am bleeding to death. My gaze drifts up into the rafters, and I begin to fade.
    And then the most horrific moment of the entire dream comes upon me.
    The saw has worked.
    The pain is gone.

Six
    T HE NEXT MORNING , a little before seven, I called Goodman. Something told me he’d be awake. “Can I buy you breakfast?”
    I was at The Potholder waiting for him a few minutes after they unlocked the front door. I sat at the small table in the back corner of the front room and started reviewing my notes. When the waitress came, I told her I was waiting for someone but went ahead and ordered an omelet with corned beef and bacon that they called “The Rancher” and a cup of coffee.
    The walls of the place were hung with hundreds of pictures taken of people all over the world holding up handwritten signs that said,
Eat at The Potholder
. Years ago, when I’d first been promoted to Homicide, I was assisting on a domestic murder on which Dave Zepeda was the principal. He was taking photos of the vic—a middle-aged woman who had been beaten to death by her husband—and he told me to squat next to her. It was one of my earliest cases with the detail, and I’d been as anxious to please the vets as an adopted Jack Russell on his first day out of the pound. Once I was down on my haunches, he handed me a piece of cardboard and told me to hold it up to the camera. At the time, I didn’t realize how careful he had been to let me see only one side of it. He snapped several pictures and told me I’d done a good job. I didn’t think any more about it until a new eight-by-ten showed up on the squad room wall of me kneeling downnext to the bloody and bruised woman, holding up an
Eat at The Potholder
sign.
    I’d never seen Dave as disappointed as he was when The Potholder refused to hang it on the wall even long enough to “get” me with it. Every time I took it down off the wall of the squad room where it had found a final resting place, a day or two later a new copy would appear. Eventually, when I had developed a sense of gallows humor strong enough to win the old-timers’ approval, I gave up and it disappeared, leaving me grateful that the Homicide crew thought that was hazing enough for a new D3.
    I considered sharing that story with Goodman. We’d only spent a few minutes together, but my instincts told me he’d see it as a tactic deployed to ingratiate myself to him. Which, of course, was what the whole breakfast meeting was. The only question was how obvious I should be about it.
    When he came in, I waved him over to the table. He looked sharp and alert. His suit was either freshly cleaned and pressed or an identical match to the one he’d been wearing when we’d met at the station.
    “What’s good here?”
    “Anything with grease.”
    He ordered an omelet, too. “The Irisher.” Potatoes, cheddar cheese, and bacon. Another of my favorites. It made me want to trust him. Yogurt and berries or egg whites would have concerned me.
    “I’m sorry I was kind of a dick at the squad.”
    He let the stern facade he’d been projecting ease and raised an eyebrow. “Your partner tell you to do this, or your lieutenant?”
    “Neither one. This is all me.”
    He wasn’t buying it.
    “But I am trying to head them both off at the pass.”
    That satisfied him enough for us to ease into a few minutes of small talk about Long Beach. He’d worked a joint task forceinvestigating harbor smuggling a few years before but hadn’t met anyone from Homicide until this case.
    When the food came, I said, “Now, there’s some apparent aesthetic value.”
    He took the