“That’s how he saw it. You going to finish those?” he said, looking over my shoulder.
Smiling, I handed him the rest of the peanuts and dusted off my salty fingers on my jeans. “You don’t seem agitated or even alarmed by it all.”
He shrugged. “Ain’t no good in being so. Let me tell you, pichouette, there’s folks in this world that, no matter what, will absolutely, goddamned and for sure convince themselves that it’s always somebody else’s fault. Hell, they wouldn’t recognize the truth if it walked right up, pinched them on the ass, and called them sweetheart.”
I barked out a laugh. Jake paused. Then he looked at me, his eyes boring into mine as if trying to brand his words on my brain. “And I’ll tell you this, too. Every cop knows that the best, the most dangerous lie is that last one, the one that lets them pull the trigger, the one that says ‘he deserves it.’ Delusional fuckers like that, they’ll do anything. And you’ve got to know them when you see them. Or I promise you, girl, you’ll be dead. You’ll be dead fast, and you won’t be dead pretty.”
“And you won’t be dead pretty,” Jake’s rumbling voice echoed in my brain. And now, here I stood staring at Jake as he lay dying, not fast, not pretty, just dying. And why? Who could have done this? Was it some pathetic moron who convinced himself of his right to kill over a petty transgression? Or was there some deeper reason for someone to hate Jake this much? I wasn’t a fool; Jake was no Sunday school teacher. Yes, he probably had enemies. Any cop—good, bad, or otherwise—would. But for someone to shoot him in the back and think it justified? No. I don’t care what the reason; there is no justification, no purported last, best lie that could ever excuse such cowardice. I squeezed my eyes against the burning tears. And there could be nothing to excuse my failing him either.
Bunching my hands into fists, I pounded them against the bedrails, wincing as I did. The pain killers were wearing off, and every movement brought hot pain from the stitches lacing my swollen flesh together. The humiliation burned hotter. I was weak, worthless.
Enough! Damn it, Madison, stop being such a prima donna.
I took a deep, calming breath, went to Jake’s side, and took his hand. It was cool and fleshy, too large to wrap my fingers around completely. Steadying myself, I said, “Okay, how about this one? Why did the quantum chicken cross the road? Give up? Because it was already on both sides.” I squeezed his hand. “Come on, old man. That’s funny.”
“Madison?”
I turned toward the deep-timbered voice. Chicago Policeman Nestor Lopez stood in the door bathed in the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital corridor. I knew him. He was the beat cop who worked the area where Jake had his business and one of the most chill cops in the precinct. Jake had introduced us on my first day at work, considering it a priority to be on good terms with the cops, the local uniforms especially. As fate would have it, the place we were staking out was within a mile of the repurposed, turn-of-the-century mansion that’s now our office building, well within the beat Nestor covers with his partner. In fact, the two of them had been the first ones to reach Jake and me. And theirs weren’t the only familiar faces present. Given that Jake’s best friend, Hunter, palled around with members of the force’s upper echelons, Jake had come to be known by—and liked by—just about all the local police at all levels. That explained why Captain Vincent Voltaire himself, district chief of the South Side, had set up shop in a conference room down the hall. Yes, familiar faces were everywhere, but that did little to ward off the hollow dread seething in my gut.
Nestor nodded at me. “What are you doing, Chica?” he said, an undercurrent of home-spoken Spanish softening his tone.
I wiped the outside of my eyes, affecting composure. “I’ve been telling him jokes.”
Nestor rubbed his thumbs over the black-and-white checkered band on the wheel cap in his hands. A young cop, brawny with a touch of Latino sharpness in his face, he wore his hair short in what was probably the same cut he’d gotten from the same barber since he was a boy.
He tossed the hat on the metal table behind me and adjusted his utility belt. “Jokes?”
“Yeah. A little quantum mechanics, a little string theory. Funny stuff.”
He slanted his eyes. “Uh-huh. Is it working?”
“Not really. He’s more the dark energy type.” The muscles in my throat seized up, and I gasped, swallowing more tears. Forcing a smile, I said, “Now if you were an astronomer, that would be … well, actually it would still be lame.” I shook my head. “I’m trying, you know. I am. The problem is that I’m not any good at this watching-people-die thing. You’d think, since my dad died last year, I’d have gotten used to it … but I don’t think I can do this again.”
Nestor drew closer. Reaching out, he rubbed my good arm. “It’ll be okay.”
My head shot up. I glared at him. “No, it won’t! My dad was a doctor, so I know what’s happening, Nestor. I’m watching a man die. The bullet that took out a chunk of his lung is lodged in an inoperable spot a few centimeters from his heart. He’s lost almost a third of his blood supply, he’s in a coma, and he’s crashed twice since we got him here.” I looked back at Jake, swallowing hard. “It’s a matter of time.”
“Chica, you’re hurt. Everything seems worse—”
My breath came harder, faster, as words tumbled out of me, spilled over us.
“I’m fine, damn it! Just a stupid nail in my shoulder, and I pass out. I mean, hell, my boss was bleeding to death at my feet, but could I be bothered to save him? No! Why? Because I was too busy being unconscious over a nail in my shoulder. Fine, yeah? Hell, I’m fan-fucking-tastic!”
Nestor took me firmly by my uninjured shoulder. “Slow down.”
I slapped his hand away. “You want to know what’s really pissing me off?”
His voice steady and calm, he said, “Sure. You tell me.”
I pointed out the window, tears burning at the corners of my eyes. “Some bastard, some lowlife son of a bitch, stood in a window and shot him. Just shot him! Like he was some rabid dog, like, like, I mean, God! How does someone do that? How does a human being just shoot someone? I don’t, I don’t understand—” The words stopped. I couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe. My ears roared, and the lights dimmed and flickered.
As if I were detached from my body, I felt Nestor’s hands pull me into a chair and his cool palms on my cheeks. My head tipped up, toward the glaring lights in the hall. His voice, gentle but dominant, sounded in front of me. “That’s enough. Breathe. Just breathe.”
I did, eventually coming back to myself. Nestor squatted before me, grasping my hands.
“I’m okay,” I said. “That was me becoming hysterical. In case you didn’t notice, I thought that I’d point that out. It’s important to me that you know I’m aware I became hysterical. And I’m possibly on the verge of doing it again. But the talking helps. It holds it in. The words rush out, and the panic stays in. It’s when I can’t talk that I can’t control it. That’s odd, don’t you think?” Laughter burbled out of me. “And that’s laughter, possibly another harbinger of panic.” I pulled my hands free of his and put them out before me. “But we’re not losing it, again. I mean, I’m not. I can’t vouch for you. But you will try to stay calm, won’t you?”
“Yeah, I’ll do my best.” He looked at me squarely. The corner of his eyes crinkled as he gazed intently into my own. “Now you listen, eh? That man over there? Don’t you go counting him out. He’s not that easy to kill. He’s been through a hell of a lot worse than this. And he’s brought others through worse too. All the stories they tell about him? They’re all true.”
I cocked my head, taken aback. “Stories? What stories?” Jake was just an XXL ex-cop with a lousy car, a lousy attitude, and an aspires-to-be-lousy wardrobe; a man whose ambition is limited to finding the best beer and burger combo in town.
Wasn’t he?
Nestor nodded, fatalistically it seemed. “Just like him not to tell you.”
“Tel
l me what? What do you know—?”
“It’s not my place to say. But there’s a lot to know about that man: good—” he paused to glance over to Jake, the set of his mouth going grim, his voice flat, “—and bad.” Nestor looked back at me, his dour expression metamorphosing into a smile. It was a brilliant smile, straight white teeth set in a firm jaw, like something out of a 1950s sitcom, reassuring, wholesome: comfort food for the brain. He patted my hand. “You ask him, when he’s better.”
I stared at him, puzzled: good and bad? That was true about everyone. But the way Nestor had said it seemed ominous and made me wonder what Jake had been keeping from me. Yet, the look on Nestor’s face made it clear I wasn’t going to get any more information from him. But his smooth and easy confidence had helped, and I felt my panic subside. I licked my lips and smiled faintly at him. “You have a very nice smile. It puts a girl completely off-guard.”
Nestor stood, his face falling into shadow. “What reason would I have to do that?”
Surprised at my own comment, I blinked. “I don’t know why I said that. I guess I’m not myself. It’s been a premium-ticket-ride day. One of those you-must-be-taller-than-the-person-trying-to-kill-you, keep-your-hands-within-the-vehicle-of-death things. Ever have those?”
He moved back into the light, looking a bit bemused. “About every other week. Hang on.” Nestor walked over to the door and closed it almost completely. When he came back, he tipped his head, looking down at me intently. “Did you get your pain pill prescription filled?”
I bit my lip. I guessed why he was asking and felt embarrassed. “Kind of.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Which means no, right? I heard you giving the nurse trouble.”
“Look, I don’t have health insurance, except for what my mom keeps on me. I’ve used it thus far because I don’t want to stiff the hospital for stitching me up. But I don’t want to take advantage. Besides, I don’t need pain pills. I’ve got aspirin at home.”
He scoffed. “Oh, do you? Uh-huh. Have you ever had a puncture wound before?”
“I slipped with a pair of pointy tweezers once and got myself pretty good, right here,” I said, pointing to the small scar above my right eyebrow.
He tipped his head to one side. “And did it bleed?”
“No, not really.” I shifted in my chair. “But pain is good for building character, right?”
Nestor dug in to his pocket and pulled out a small brown bottle. “Pain’s good for teaching you not to do stupid things, and you don’t ignore it if you don’t have to.” He proffered the container. “Here. There’s only a couple left, but you need them. Take them.”
I took the bottle. The label had been scraped off. Inside were two small white pills. Having worked in my dad’s office enough summers, I recognized them instantly: Percocet. I looked up at Nestor in shock. “Isn’t this—?” Massively illegal, was what I’d started to say. Only I didn’t want to look like some dorky goody two-shoes in front of the good-looking cop. My vanity never takes a break. And I needed the pills. “Isn’t this, um, pain pills? Well, actually aren’t these pain pills? Or, also one could say, isn’t this a pain pill, accompanied by another pain pill, or, um—you know what? Screw grammar. Where did you get these?”
“I hurt my back in a car chase last year. But I’m about to get off them. Besides, there’s not a cop around who doesn’t end up with a stash of pills, bandages or braces after a few years.” He lowered his voice. “Mira, put them in your pocket. You don’t want ’em, flush ’em.”
I stuffed the bottle in my jeans, a twinge of discomfort hitting me. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate what was, frankly, a somewhat intimate gesture: risking that I wouldn’t turn him in for giving me a controlled substance. On the contrary, I welcomed the trust. I simply hadn’t thought of us being on those terms yet. The handful of times we’d met—mostly chatting on the street or at the police station—were when I’d tagged along as Jake’s designated horse-holder and chief bottle-washer (whatever the hell that means). So, not a lot of opportunities for deep social interaction there. But maybe getting shot at is an entrée to credibility in “cop world.” Go figure.
I said, “I don’t mean to offend. I appreciate this. And it might be for the best. I’m prone to vivid dreams when I take painkillers. In fact, I’m prone to hypnagogic imagery in general.”
Nestor frowned. “Sorry?”
“It’s a type of cognition that occurs when someone enters a dream state. There’s anecdotal evidence that people, especially scientists and artists, solve difficult problems in their sleep via hypnagogic imagery. For example, Friedrich Kekulé supposedly came up with the idea that the structure of benzene was hexagonal from a dream he had about a snake grasping its tail in its mouth. On the other hand, my Great-Aunt Ada, who’s a Willa B. Casey Endowed Chair for Psychology, thinks that’s a crock.” I grinned. “That’s the scientific term, of course.
“Anyway, she just got a huge research grant from—” I broke off as I noticed that familiar look of horrified bewilderment, that deer-in-the-headlights, what-the-hell-is-she-talking-about look that I see so often on the faces of normal people. “Yeah, okay, never mind. The point is, maybe I’ll get lucky and dream about the man who shot Jake.”
Nestor straightened. “You said you didn’t see anyone.”
“I said, I don’t remember seeing anyone. But I know the bullet must have come from the second-story window across the alley. I remember there was this dog that lay down—”
He narrowed his eyes, his demeanor intensifying. “But you didn’t actually see anyone?”
“No. But if I could just relax, maybe my mind would clear.” I reached up with my good arm and massaged the back of my neck, my muscles twisted as tight as a well-wrung dishcloth.
Nestor came around behind me into the shadowed corner. His strong hands came to rest on the back of my neck. “Maybe this will help.” He slid his hand up and down my spine.
They were warm, strong hands: reassuring. I closed my eyes and leaned back into him, muscles releasing, feeling safe. “Hmm. That’s nice.”
He slipped a hand around to the front of my throat, gently gripping under my chin, lifting it. His other hand came up to the base of my skull.
The door opened and a woman’s voice sounded. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Nestor’s partner, Lilly Killrain, strode into the room. I smiled, further relieved. Fact is, I’m an outsider in the world of cops and robbers, PIs and perverts. While Hunter would love to send me off the world entirely, Jake was my ticket and shield, and Nestor’s support made me cool by association. But, having no-one-says-no-to-Lilly on my side, too, was the surefire trifecta.
She flicked the light switch, and I shielded my eyes with my hand, blinking at the brightness. A tall woman, she was attractive in a solid-but-trim farm-girl kind of way, her long auburn hair pulled into a large bun at the nape of her neck, and a straight, pert nose set between green, slanting eyes. The ten pounds of citizen-suppression equipment dangling from her belt and her tendency to clutch her nightstick by her side were attention-grabbing enough. But it was the self-assured way she carried herself that made her appear all but invulnerable.
Her eyes cut to Nestor and then to me. To my surprise, I saw tension—protectiveness? defensiveness?—in her piercing green eyes. Then it was gone, like a sudden, stiff breeze flicking away the fog, leaving me wondering if the look had been meant for me, for him, or if I’d just imagined it. Before I could sort it out, she dipped her head, running her gaze over me like a she-wolf assessing an injured pup. “Feeling better?”
“A bit. And thanks for the help. It’s good to have the ‘pit bull’ on my side.”
Her eyes lit with approval as she smiled at me. Lilly’s secondary sobriquet, “Pit Bull Killrain,” derived from her reputation for engaging in single-minded pursuit of, well, anything and everything. You name the cause, and Lilly championed it: whether taking point on the department’s annual Habitat for Humanity outing, findi
ng homes for the pups that didn’t make it in the K-9 corps, or creating the Committee for Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Transgender Policepersons. Lucky me, I seemed to have become her latest cause. She’d been the first one I’d seen when I woke in the alley, and she’d not left my side—kneeling by me on the ground, riding with me in the ambulance, hovering by the trolley as they wheeled me into the emergency room—until Nestor had literally taken her by the elbow and led her away so that the doctors could treat me. Of course, she’d been firing questions at me the whole way: Had I seen the shooter? Where had the shots originated? Had I seen anyone running away? Sure, such intensity can be stifling, and, yes, some people found her “too-high bandwidth” to deal with. But since I shared the tendency to obsess to the point of obnoxiousness when in pursuit of a goal, I got her.
Her eyes cut this time to the bed where Jake lay, her brow furrowing. “Anything for a friend of Jake’s.”
Nestor walked around the chair to stand beside me. I caught the sound of a small sigh coming from him and had the distinct impression her words had annoyed him. I paused, perplexed. Why would that be? What was I missing?
Evenly, he said, “Where did you go?”
“I called Carter Lewis.” She looked at me. “He’s the head of the local chapter of Retired Police Officers. I thought maybe he’d want to rally the troops to help Jake through this.”
Nestor crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at the ground, shaking his head. He was smiling, and while the smile seemed good humored, it also seemed tinged with exasperation. He looked up at her. “Being that Jake’s such a good buddy of Captain Voltaire’s, I suspect Carter will let him know how thoughtful you were.”
Lilly raised an eyebrow, the luminance of her smile dimming a couple of notches. She began tapping her nightstick against her thigh. “He might,” she said with a hint of defensiveness.
Nestor looked at Lilly. Lilly looked at Nestor. I looked at them both, and I could almost see the megabytes of data streaming in the photons reflecting their silent conversation between their eyes. But the unspoken intercourse occurring between them was as if via a quantum-encrypted data link to which I had no key. And we all know what that means.
The Last Best Lie Page 3
