Swift Horses Racing

by Victoria Kazarian

  Swift Horses Racing

  Victoria Kazarian

  Fog Hollow Books

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright, 2021 Victoria Kazarian

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Do you remember still the falling stars

  That like swift horses through the heavens raced

  And suddenly leaped across

  The hurdles of our wishes–do you recall?

  And we did make so many!

  For there were countless numbers of stars:

  Each time we looked above we were astounded

  By the swiftness of their daring play,

  While in our hearts we felt safe and secure

  Watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,

  Knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  For Stanley Vierk, my father,

  who first explained flight to me

  and later shared my fear of it.

  1

  Detective Mario Flores scrolled through his phone as he waited for his drink.

  He checked emails, then every social media site on his phone. Faces of girls he’d known, posing in sunglasses, doing duck face pouts and laughing.

  His finger swiped up, down, left, right. They rifled past him hypnotically, like images in a kid’s flip book.

  His legs dangled off the stool, the toes of his shoes knocking up against the wooden bar. The smell at Someplace Bar & Grill wasn’t pleasant—popcorn drenched in artificial butter, canned nacho cheese, sour spilled beer—but it was familiar.

  He’d taken a seat at the bar because that’s where you sit when you come by yourself. For the first time he wasn’t waiting for someone. He was waiting for the bourbon. He’d be drinking it by himself.

  For the last month he’d come here to meet Ruiz. Jimmy Ruiz, of Monte Verde PD up on the peninsula. Ruiz sat across from him, his padded baseball glove of a hand wrapped around his beer as they talked about the Schuler homicide. Threw out theories and talked about suspects. Over time, they cautiously ventured into talking about their lives apart from the force. Ruiz’s big frame hunched down over the table, lips turned up at one corner. His voice cut through with a low, rumbling laugh; he couldn’t help but crack up at his own jokes.

  Tara, daughter of the owner, handed him his bourbon. She had the same warm smile for everyone. It was possible she’d heard the news; police gossip spread like a virus here. But in her eyes, he saw acceptance. He needed it. He drank it up.

  Then Flores remembered, took out his wallet and lay some bills on the counter. Before he took a sip, Ruiz would always lay out a big tip for the waitress so he wouldn’t forget. A guy who does what’s right, in little things and big things. It was built into him like a compass or GPS. Reyna had told Flores once: He’s the kind of guy who always returns the shopping cart at Safeway.

  Flores’s first sips of bourbon went down smooth, the warmth spreading through his body and melting down every jagged edge. He took in a deep breath and felt the burn make its way down to his fingers, his gut. He couldn’t make a habit of this. It felt too good.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw a large man at a table at the back of the room. The guy faced the front of the bar like Ruiz did: the cop on alert, watching the door. In the mix of voices in the bar, he heard low grunts of laughter. Flores turned his head quickly and scanned the back of the room.

  He saw a young guy, thickly built, at a table of guys with fresh haircuts, all of them looking exposed and naive. New academy grads. The group of newbies looked at back at him, startled as if he’d shone a flashlight into their car.

  Jesus, he was maybe seven years older than they were.

  The bourbon had reached Flores’s brain and was stirring up a mix of thoughts. He was sixteen years old again on an August night, face down against the warm asphalt of a Target parking lot, his cheek scratched and bleeding. An officer patted him down. He’d stolen a car with his friends. None of them needed it. It was for the excitement, in an Orange County suburb where you had to cut or punch yourself every once in a while to remind yourself you were alive. Desperately seeking an edge in a town where all falls were cushioned and the thrills were as manufactured as the coasters in nearby Disneyland. His friends, all of them, were from well-off families. After a night in juvie, they’d been bailed out by their parents. He remembered the faces—his older sister Dawn, his mother and father, and later, girls at school he’d dated. Disbelief, disgust, shame.

  He’d come before the judge, an older Black woman, who looked down over her glasses at him and told him he had more privilege than 98 percent of the kids his age, and he was too smart to be pulling shit like this.

  Let this be that one time, Mr. Flores. That one time.

  She sentenced him to community service in the Police Explorers. In the youth program for two years, several officers mentored him, spent more time with him than his dad ever had. He made friends with the kind of kids he’d never bothered talking to at school. And he’d stayed friends with them.

  After college and a few months in Europe, he’d applied for the academy. Not in Orange County, which he felt a strong desire to leave. Not in the rural community of Davis, where he’d gone to college. In San Jose, a place where nobody knew him and they were hiring to rebuild their force.

  He took one more sip and swirled the glass around, watching the reflection of the bar lights shimmer in the amber liquid. Maybe it was time to move on again. Seattle. Maybe Austin or Atlanta. It almost didn’t matter where. Every person who had been a bright spot in his life here a month ago was gone.

  In his mental flip book, they fluttered past him again. A pretty face splashed with light from the police cruiser on the expressway that night. That glare from Mandy Dirkson, angry at him for shirking his duty to the force.

  Then Ruiz’s heavy-lidded eyes leveled at him for the last time, pain on his face—at least as much as his pride would let him show.

  Flores, how could you have done this?

  It was a look no amount of bourbon could wash away.

  2

  Detective James Ruiz was tir
ed, cold and entirely done with New Year’s.

  The beer he’d nursed all night and the conversation he’d had at the party in South San Jose hadn’t been worth the drive. It was his least favorite holiday. The men he’d talked to, husbands and boyfriends of Reyna’s coworkers at the dental office, engaged in the kind of chest beating that happened when drinking alcohol. Ruiz kept up the sports talk for as long as possible because he actually enjoyed it. Then he waited for the flurry of desperation partying to end. At 1:30 a.m., he approached Reyna in the kitchen. She nodded that she was ready and downed the last of her cosmopolitan.

  As he pulled his Ford F-150 onto the side street that led to the expressway, he wished for some kind of sci fi wormhole to speed them to their home in Santa Clara. Eight-year-old Jacky was at his lola’s tonight. The one bright spot in this evening was, he and Reyna would have the next twelve hours or so to themselves.

  He pulled onto Almaden heading north. A mist hung over the road, turning streetlights ahead into blurry red and green circles on the damp pavement. A car passed on the other side of the median, no headlights. He shivered. A drunk or someone too tired to drive. An accident waiting to happen.

  Apart from that, the lanes were empty. In the corner of his eye, he saw Reyna shivering, pulling her thin jacket up around her neck.

  “My Niners jacket’s in the jump seat, hon. I don’t need it.”

  She twisted around and pulled the jacket out of the back. She leaned forward in the seat and slid the gold and red jacket on, putting a delicate arm into each sleeve. She wrapped the sides of the huge jacket across her chest and settled back in the seat. He liked the look of her in it.

  They had just passed Branham Avenue, when Ruiz saw an SUV pulled over to the narrow shoulder, idling.

  “Bad night for car trouble.”

  “You’re not going to stop, Jimmy. Tell me you’re not going to stop. I just want to get home and go to bed.”

  He shook his head. “Me, too.” He wanted to be in bed with her, too, though the odds of anything happening between them there were low.

  Suddenly he heard the roar of an engine coming up behind them. The SUV had pulled onto the expressway and was revving behind them. It swerved into the left lane and zoomed ahead.

  A white sedan had just turned onto the expressway from a side street. The SUV ran the light and pulled up until it was on the left side of the white car.

  Two shots echoed in the cold air. Ruiz felt adrenaline hit, a sudden surge of hyperawareness that woke every cell in his tired body.

  The white car that had entered the intersection continued, lurching toward the row of trees on the shoulder, no loss in speed, with the abandon of an out-of-control vehicle. Ruiz felt the boom as the car hit the trunk of a large eucalyptus, with a screech of bending metal.

  Ruiz watched as the SUV sped off, a good twenty yards ahead. He squinted and caught the glimmer of a California plate, reflected in the streetlights. He called out to Reyna, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

  “You get the plate number?

  “Nine something, I think—”

  “Call 911. Now.”

  The SUV was 200 yards ahead of them, taillights dimly glowing like red eyes in the mist ahead. His senses buzzed. He pulled over fifteen feet behind the white car, the Ford’s tires bumping up over the low curb.

  He opened the door and ran to the car, a white Camry, now twisted around the trunk of a eucalyptus. A branch cracked and fell just as he approached, landing next to him. Scythe-like leaves, their menthol smell released, fluttered down.

  The driver’s side window had shattered into jagged diamonds, lit by the yellow streetlight above. Through a hole in the shards, he saw a flood of red, a bright white shock of hair. Santa Claus colors. He pulled at the bent door. which resisted, then opened with a low scraping noise. The thin and frail body had twisted up and sideways from the impact.

  An elderly man. The bullet had entered the side of his head and, it looked from the quantity of blood, the other shot had hit his chest.

  A siren wailed in the distance, coming closer. Ruiz felt for a pulse in the thin wrist. To his surprise, he felt a beat. The shots had been at fairly close range—and targeted. The old man should be dead. He should have died instantly.

  Under the wail of the approaching sirens, Ruiz heard a sound. A gurgle, a rasping sound, as if the man was trying, against all odds, to form words.

  He suddenly remembered a hospital room. His mother. Three years ago, life leaving her as her body gave up its fight with ovarian cancer. Her lips had moved as if to say something, then her spirit left her mid-thought. Nothing.

  He bent closer toward the man. Then he heard it.

  It made no sense. It sounded like the old man whispered the word saloon.

  Then quiet. No rise in the man’s chest.

  A deep stillness filled the car.

  3

  The cold air hit Flores in the face as he opened the back door of the 1950s-era apartment lobby and headed to the covered parking area in the rear of the complex.

  The crisp air cut into his lungs and energized him, reminded him that he liked his job, even when it called him out at 2 a.m. He hadn’t been surprised at a call on New Year’s; he was especially lucky it was less than two miles from his home. He had no desire to run into any drunk drivers making their way home at this hour.

  He wound around the narrow off ramp from Lincoln Avenue to Almaden, which funneled his Prius around a curve, like a Hot Wheels track he’d had as a kid. Almaden was the offramp from the quaint area of Willow Glen to the rest of San Jose, a wasteland of strip malls, auto parts stores and drive-through fast food. Stucco bungalows and large oaks lined the quiet, narrow streets of Willow Glen. Lincoln Avenue formed an old-timey downtown, with shops and decent restaurants. In Willow Glen, people walked. Couples leaned into each other as they strolled along Lincoln Avenue. Families walked together, hand in hand.

  Completely unlike his Orange County neighborhood.

  He’d chosen it for that reason.

  As he headed south, Almaden Expressway opened like the maw of a whale in the mist, lit by the glow of yellow streetlights. Not far down the road, he saw the flashing lights on the opposite side of the median.

  Flores made a U-turn and drove onto the shoulder when he spotted the cause of the call: a white Camry bent against the base of a large eucalyptus tree. The impact had forced the driver’s side up at an angle. The firemen had lights in place and EMTs had a stretcher set up.

  The slow, methodical pace of the firemen made the bottom of Flores’s stomach drop.

  This was a recovery. There was no rush.

  Just beyond the Camry, he saw the patrol car, and two officers who looked familiar. They were talking to a Latino with the build of a linebacker, dressed in his best for a night out.

  Flores approached and called out to the patrol officers.

  “Detective Mario Flores, Homicide.”

  The air felt cold and stiff like a starched canvas backdrop.

  He walked toward the Camry, and one of the officers followed him. Flores looked into the shattered window and saw the blood-covered body of an old man, a bullet wound in the side of his head, his body jutting sideways at an unnatural angle.

  “The witness here called it in right before 2 a.m. There’s a bulletin out for the SUV the witnesses saw. Flores, this is Detective James Ruiz, of Monte Verde PD. He and his wife were coming home from a party.”

  A detective. The desolate feeling he’d had seeing the old man lifted. This guy would give a decent account of what he’d seen. Flores could trust what he’d hear. Flores reached out to shake hands and felt his own hand get lost in the man’s large one. Flores felt the man’s hand was trembling. From the looks of it, it wasn’t from the cold.

  “Good to meet you, Ruiz. Let’s step over here and you can tell me what you saw.”

  They stood by the concrete block fence, marked with splotches covering up graffiti. The outline of the F word hissed from behind
the gray paint. Ruiz paced in a tight triangle in front of the fence, flexing his hands.

  Ruiz was angry.

  “Hey, man. You okay?”

  Ruiz looked at him, actually down at him, since the Detective was a good six inches taller than he was. Ruiz frowned and looked to his right, down the shoulder at the Camry.

  “You and your wife coming back from a party?”

  Ruiz nodded, probably knowing he’d be asked about what he’d drank. “South San Jose. Neither of us drank much. I had a beer, Reyna had a cosmo.”

  Flores wondered if this guy was for real. He raised an eyebrow. “That’s pretty tame for New Year’s.”

  “These parties aren’t my favorite way to spend an evening. I worked patrol on New Year’s for five years. I learned to hate it.”

  “When did you first see the SUV?”

  “We passed it on the shoulder. Then it pulled onto the road and sped up behind us.”

  Ruiz rubbed his flushed face. He enunciated carefully as if determined to get the words on the record. Clouds of breath came out into the cold and dispersed as he talked.

  “As soon as the Camry turned onto the expressway, the SUV changed lanes and sped up. It swerved into the left lane so it was almost even with the Camry on the driver’s side. Whoever was in the passenger seat fired two shots. Then the SUV revved up and headed north on the expressway.”