The Thin Edge

by Peggy Townsend

  Aloa knew that while Bon Tae’s hatred of Kyle Williams could have tainted his story, the fact that Corrine Davenport may have been planning to fire the assistant opened up another possible motive for her murder.

  Just how solid was Kyle’s alibi?

  She left the house, threw her leg over her motorcycle, and pulled into the street.

  The fog was like a malevolent tide. It rose and fell, giving hope for sun, then taking it away. By the time she was halfway to the downtown bar where she was to meet Quinn, the fog had descended again. It turned the city vaporous and sinister, sending frigid air slicing through her jeans. She tried to concentrate on the road, but her mind kept returning to the story of Kyle and the little boy.

  She remembered how Kyle never met her eyes when she visited, his almost ferocious protectiveness of Christian Davenport. An image came of Kyle making tea and a mental light bulb clicked on. The cranky witness across the street had told Aloa she’d seen the late-night caller lift a hand to knock on the Davenports’ door and knew he was up to no good. “He was a lefty,” she’d sniffed.

  At the time, the comment hadn’t registered amid the litany of the woman’s complaints about the deterioration of the neighborhood, but now it did. Kyle had prepared the tea and handed it to her with his left hand. He was a “lefty.”

  Burns Hamlin was not.

  “Omigod,” Aloa thought, just as a barefoot man in a ragged coat stumbled from the curb into the path of her bike.

  Aloa sucked in her breath and squeezed the brakes hard. The bike’s back tire broke loose on the damp pavement and she put her foot down to steady the machine. It came to a halt inches from the man, who lurched backward onto the sidewalk.

  “Watch it,” she started to yell, but before she could finish there was a squeal of brakes and suddenly she was flying.

  She saw gray sky, blue metal, and a pair of panicked eyes behind windshield glass. Her body crashed into hard asphalt, sending a bone-rattling vibration through her. She heard a scream, an engine roar, and, before she could figure out what was happening, something smacked against her shoulder. An arrow of pain pierced her forearm and she was dragged a few feet along the pavement. Another scream sounded and her head thudded against the pavement. Blackness descended.

  She came to with her helmet gone and a pair of hands holding her shoulders against the pavement. “Lie still, miss,” said a voice that seemed to belong to the hands. Or maybe not. “The paramedics should be here any minute,” the voice said. “You’re going to be all right.”

  Her ears rang and her limbs seemed to be separate from her, as if they had decided to take a long rest instead of doing their job and getting her to her feet. She groaned.

  From the distance came the sound of sirens and, later, other sets of hands.

  A man’s face appeared in her vision. He had kind brown eyes and a calm voice. “Hi, my name is Bryce and I’m a paramedic. Can you tell me your name and where you live?” he asked.

  “Aloa Snow,” she said and gave her address. Her vision swam and she closed her eyes. The world took a slow spin around her.

  “And how many quarters in a dollar, Aloa?” the paramedic asked.

  She let the dizziness pass and opened her eyes.

  Why was he asking about money?

  “How many quarters?” he repeated.

  “Four,” she said. “Where’s my bike?”

  “Don’t worry about your bike. Can you wiggle your fingers and toes for me, Aloa?”

  She did what he requested as the ringing in her ears cleared and the world grew more solid.

  “Somebody hit me,” she said.

  “That’s right. It was a truck, a small pickup,” said the paramedic. “The guy left but the cops will find him. Don’t worry.”

  He pressed his hands on her abdomen, her sides, her legs.

  Aloa lifted her arm and sighed. Her leather jacket looked as if a herd of cats had decided to sharpen their claws on the sleeve.

  “Everything looks good, Aloa,” the paramedic said, “but we need to get you to a hospital to make sure.”

  “No hospital.” Aloa groaned. Her mom’s weeklong stay in the hospital before she died, with its smells and hurried doctors and beeping machines, had made Aloa want to never set foot in one again.

  “You may have a TBI, a traumatic brain injury. Those can be serious,” said the paramedic. “Your helmet was cracked. That means you took a pretty good hit.”

  Aloa tried to push herself into a sitting position but the paramedic held her down. “I don’t care. I’m not going to the hospital,” she said.

  “The ambulance is almost here,” said the paramedic.

  “I can’t afford an ambulance.” Aloa’s voice rose and an unexplained panic surged through her. “I know my rights. You can’t make me go to the hospital.”

  “You really need to see a doctor,” said the paramedic in the same calm voice.

  “I’ll go to a clinic,” Aloa insisted. “You said yourself everything looks good.”

  The paramedic sighed and sat back on his heels. “Do you have someone who can drive you?”

  “I’ll call an Uber.”

  “That’s not what an Uber is for,” the paramedic began.

  “I’ll take her,” said a voice.

  Aloa looked up the dark pair of slacks to a white shirt and a face she knew.

  “Quinn?” she said.

  Three hours later, Aloa was perched on an exam table with Quinn leaning against the wall in one corner of the room and a bespectacled doctor explaining that besides a couple of nasty bruises and a cut on her arm, she’d also suffered a concussion.

  “You’re one lucky girl,” he said when he’d finished.

  “In case you didn’t notice, I’m a full-grown woman,” Aloa snapped. A strange and powerful anger had risen inside her. Like PMS times three.

  Quinn grinned from the corner. He’d heard the hit-and-run call on the radio, thought the description of the victim and her motorcycle sounded a lot like Aloa and her bike, and decided to check it out on his way to the bar. He’d helped her into his car and taken her to the clinic where she now sat.

  The doctor looked at Quinn and crossed his arms. “She doesn’t realize how close she came to a drawer in the morgue instead of an exam table in the clinic.”

  “Hey, I can hear you,” Aloa said.

  “What I was saying, Miss Snow, is that you could have easily been killed. Motorcycles are dangerous. Thousands of people die every year on them. You came very close.”

  “Yeah, and people die of bee stings and spider bites. Should I stay away from insects too?” Aloa said.

  The doctor ignored her, addressing Quinn. “While her concussion isn’t severe, it’s still serious. She needs to rest and stay hydrated, and someone should monitor her for symptoms like vomiting, confusion, and slurred speech for the next twenty-four hours. You may also see emotional changes: anger, hostility.”

  “In other words, she’ll be herself,” Quinn said. His eyes sparkled with humor.

  “Not funny,” Aloa muttered.

  “She also may experience periods of forgetfulness, and lethargy over the next few days,” the physician continued. “She definitely shouldn’t drive or make important decisions, and I’d cut back on computer and TV time. And I’d also recommend giving up that motorcycle of hers.”

  Not a chance, Aloa thought, even though she’d seen the tow truck haul off her crumpled bike and wasn’t sure it was even fixable.

  Quinn grinned and shoved himself away from the wall. “Come on, Evel Knievel,” he said, “let’s get you home.”

  Quinn somehow managed a miracle and found a parking spot a few yards from Aloa’s house. He followed her through the front door and into the living room.

  “Did you forget to pay your electric bill or something?” he said as he set her daypack on her desk. “It’s like a refrigerator in here.”

  “Cold house, warm heart,” Aloa said and sank onto her couch.

  Quinn s
miled. “How about I make you something to eat?”

  Either the concussion or the run had wiped out the dead-body smell and Aloa realized she was hungry. “Sounds good. Thanks,” she said and settled back on the couch, propping up her head with a pillow and tugging a throw over herself.

  Her hip ached, her arm stung, and her head pounded dully as she lay there, listening to the hiss of flame, the clank of pans as Quinn worked in the kitchen. Part of her suddenly longed for him, for someone, to always be there to take care of her.

  She told herself it was the concussion talking and shoved the thought into her mental spam folder where it belonged.

  She heard Quinn take a phone call about the Sacrificial Lamb murders. A short time later, he came into the living room.

  “Omelet with prosciutto and spinach,” he said. “There wasn’t a lot to work with.”

  “I didn’t know you could cook,” she said, sitting up.

  Quinn handed her a fork and the plate.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” he said.

  “So tell me,” Aloa said and took a bite of the omelet. It was good.

  Quinn shook his head and dropped into her grandmother’s rosé chair.

  “The doc said I shouldn’t watch TV or get on the computer. How am I supposed to entertain myself?” she said.

  He sighed. “OK. What do you want to know?”

  “Where you grew up. How you became a cop. Start there,” she said.

  Quinn stretched his legs, crossing them at his ankles. “All right. Let’s see. I didn’t grow up anywhere, really. My dad was a guitarist; played in a bunch of second-tier rock bands. We had this Ford van we lived in, pretty much going from gig to gig. The only time we stayed put was when the van broke down, in which case we’d hang out until we saved enough money to fix it. My mom called herself an artist, but she spent most of her life so stoned, she really didn’t function.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No need. My dad, Craig, was pretty solid. He made up for her being MIA most of the time.”

  “School?” she asked.

  “Craig taught me to read,” Quinn said. “After that, I was pretty much on my own. I left them when I was fourteen. We were outside San Diego when the transmission blew. When it was fixed, they left and I didn’t. I was tired of moving around. I forged my dad’s signature and enrolled in high school. I lived on the beach and stole food from the cafeteria. I showered at the gym. A cop named Winston Graham found me camped out and took me home instead of hauling me to juvie. I lived with him and his wife and two kids through junior college. He was a good man. He helped people. I guess that’s why I became a cop. What about you? What’s your story?”

  Aloa thought about the many ways parents could fail their children—from neglect to violence to selfishness—and set her plate aside. She told him about her own father and how he died on a run through the woods, and about her grandmother Maja, who lost her husband when she was forty and spent her days doing hair and makeup for the dead, a clientele that never tipped, but also never complained.

  “She saved her pennies and built this house,” Aloa said. “She was so proud of it. On Saturdays, she’d tie up her hair, get on her knees, and wax every inch of the floor. She always said that you needed a clean house and a clean conscience, in that order.”

  “I’m not so good in either department,” Quinn said.

  “I’ve got a few dusty corners myself,” Aloa said.

  She told him about her scholarship to UC Berkeley, about her mother’s death, and about losing a job she loved. She didn’t mention her eating disorder, her stay in the psych ward, or Michael.

  Her conscience-scrubbing could come later.

  Afterward, Quinn made them cups of tea. Darkness pressed against the front window.

  “Don’t you have to get home?” Aloa asked.

  “I wouldn’t call a couch in my cousin’s house a home,” he said.

  “What about . . . ?” Aloa began.

  “My wife?” He twisted the platinum band on his finger. “We’re not exactly together at the moment.”

  The tick of her grandmother’s clock suddenly felt too loud in her ears.

  “I’m feeling a little, I don’t know, claustrophobic,” Aloa said. “Do you mind if we go outside?”

  The concussion seemed to be playing with her emotions, making them appear and disappear with only the slightest nudge.

  Quinn shrugged into his jacket. Aloa wrapped herself in the throw and they went out to sit on the Vallejo Street steps. The fog had lifted so it was now a high cloud. She could see the glow of lights below.

  “Nice,” Quinn said of the view.

  Aloa’s head gave a slow spin and she closed her eyes until it stopped. Then: “I guess marriage is harder than it looks,” she said. She wasn’t sure if it was an apology for asking too personal a question or something she actually believed.

  Quinn stretched his arms so his hands hung over his knees. “Yeah, especially if you find out you owe about sixty thousand dollars on two credit cards you never knew about and that your wife and an old boyfriend have been texting back and forth for the past eight months.” He stared into the night. “It’s kind of hard to trust anything she says right now.”

  “Ouch, that’s rough.”

  “We went to counseling.” He shrugged. “She says it was my fault for not being home enough.”

  “We probably should talk about something else, huh?”

  “Good idea.” A truck rumbled past on the street below.

  “How come you didn’t consider Kyle, the assistant, as a suspect?” she asked.

  “We did. His roommate said he was home during the time Corrine was killed. The girl had no reason to lie for Williams as far as we could tell.”

  “I don’t think he liked Corrine. He was a real jerk to her, from what I’ve heard.”

  “You can’t arrest people for being jerks. Otherwise, all the jails would be full.”

  “You know, the professor has an alibi too.”

  He looked sideways at her. “What do you know?”

  She thought about her promise to Hamlin. “I can’t tell you at the moment.”

  “Not that again,” Quinn said.

  “But I will the moment I figure out a few things,” she added quickly. She touched her fingertips to her forehead.

  Was it the concussion that made her feel so fragile, so combustible?

  “And when will you be figuring those things out?” Quinn asked.

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “Well, while you’re at it, why don’t you ask Hamlin why he bought a boning knife on Amazon right before Corrine Davenport was killed?”

  Aloa pushed down a flash of surprise. “But unless you find the knife with her DNA on it, it doesn’t prove anything, right?”

  “We’re serving a search warrant as we speak.” Quinn’s phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. He looked at the caller ID. “Speak of the devil.”

  He answered.

  “Are you kidding me?” he said after a few moments of listening. “When? Did anybody get a plate number?” He waited. “Well, find the hell out.”

  He swore, disconnected the call, and stood.

  “Looks like Hamlin skipped,” he said.

  What have you done, Tick?

  “A neighbor saw him leave with a suitcase this afternoon. He came out with an old guy in a porkpie hat and they got into a VW van.” He turned to her. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  She massaged her temples. “Not really,” she said.

  “I’m not stupid, Aloa. I know what kind of car your gray-hairs drive. What did you do?”

  “Nothing. Well, maybe something.” Aloa looked up. “Tick called.”

  Quinn waited.

  “He’s Burns Hamlin’s dad.”

  “Mother of God,” Quinn exploded.

  “I just told him my best suspect was dead; that he couldn’t have killed Corrine. I was going to explai
n more later but he must have panicked.”

  “So basically, you told Tick we were coming for his son,” Quinn said.

  “He promised he wouldn’t run.”

  “Well, you can see how well that worked out.” Quinn folded his arms across his chest. “What else did you blab about? Did you tell him we had his cell phone records?”

  Aloa felt anger spark. Part of it was aimed at Quinn’s tone, the rest at herself for not stopping Tick. “Anybody who watches TV knows the cops look at your cell phone locations.”

  “Christ,” Quinn said. “I can’t believe this.”

  He paced down two steps before coming back in front of her. “Why did I ever think I could trust a reporter? I should have known better.”

  Aloa got to her feet. “Listen, Quinn—”

  “No.” He held up a hand to her face. “I thought you were different. I thought you were one of those who wanted the truth more than big headlines. You’re no better than the rest of them.”

  Aloa had spent years fighting to have her voice heard in a testosterone-soaked profession and she wasn’t about to be shushed now. Not by Quinn. Not by any man.

  “Put that hand down before I do something you and I will both regret,” she said.

  Slowly, Quinn lowered his palm.

  Aloa leaned toward him, her voice rising. “I’m not a headline hunter, Quinn. The only thing I want is to make sure the bad guys get what they deserve and the innocent aren’t railroaded.”

  “It isn’t being railroaded when all the evidence points in one direction,” Quinn said.

  “It is if you forget the track runs both ways.”

  “Hamlin is guilty and you know it. What about the texts, the cell phone, the voice the husband heard?”

  “I think he’s innocent,” Aloa said. “You just need to look a little harder.”

  They were shouting now.

  “And how can I look when you run around mouthing off to my suspect about important evidence, when you screw up my case?”

  “A case against the wrong man,” Aloa said. “And don’t yell at me.”

  “It’s the only way I can get past that giant ego of yours,” Quinn said.