by Tyler Dilts
He hadn’t thought much more about it at the time, but over the next few days of Peter’s recuperation, he became more conscious of how he was walking.
That was how he felt now, in the backyard. His gait felt normal. It was just the stress. He repeated that quietly to himself, over and over. Just the stress. Just the stress.
He kept walking and muttering until Peter came outside and said, “Is it time for TV?”
Ben checked his watch. It was Saturday, but it was time. He left his damp shoes, stray blades of grass sticking to the toes, by the patio door and went into the living room with his father to watch one of the episodes of Ellen saved on the DVR.
All evening Ben waited. For Rob to get back to him. For the police to knock on his door. For something.
Had Rob found the stranger in his hotel room? Had the cleaning staff? Had he somehow managed to get away on his own?
At least until Peter went to bed, he’d had something to distract him. Now, though, all he had were the TV and the sound of the rain falling on the roof. He knew he should have called Becerra or Jennifer, but he didn’t. That might escalate things even more than he already had. He suspected the stranger was a cop or had been at one point. The way he’d twisted his body and prepared to draw his weapon had been conditioned into him through training or experience or both. Where would that have come from if not the police? He could have been one of the dirty cops Rob was trying to take down, and reporting could trigger alarm bells and maybe make things more dangerous for Grace. Even worse, he might have been a cop who wasn’t dirty, and then the felony Ben had committed would definitely come back to haunt him.
But if he wasn’t dirty, where was his badge? If he was a cop, whatever he was doing in Rob’s room was off the books, or he would have had his badge and ID with him. Your shield was more important than your gun. You weren’t really police without it.
Shit.
Where was the Glock? What had he done with it? He’d had it when he got into the Volvo at the Marriott, he remembered dropping it onto the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, but he hadn’t thought about it since.
He hurried into the kitchen and grabbed the car keys from the small bowl where he’d trained himself to put them every time he came home, and he ran out the front door into the rain. Already soaked through when got to the car at the curb, he fumbled to get the key into the lock of the passenger’s door. The light wasn’t too bright anymore, but there it was, right where he had left it. The sense of relief was more palpable than the rain pelting his back and splashing onto the seat below him. Hugging it to his chest as if it might melt if it got too wet, he hurried up the walkway, locked the front door behind him, and took the pistol straight into his bedroom.
He opened the drawer next to the bed, removed the magazine from the Glock and cleared the chamber, then inserted the extra cartridge back into the magazine. His mother had taught him how to shoot and the fundamentals of gun safety when he was thirteen, just as she’d taught his father when they first moved in together. He could almost hear her voice saying, “If you’re going to live in a house with a weapon, you’re going to learn how to use it properly.”
There was a gun in the nightstand again.
It didn’t make him feel any safer, though.
Walking back into the living room, he looked at the wet footprints on the floor. He was still making them, and even when he stopped moving, he was still dripping. In the bathroom, he took off his wet shirt and dropped it on the floor, then grabbed a bath towel off the rack to soak up the mess. He pulled a hoodie out of the closet and put it on, cleaned up the water from the storm, then did almost three thousand more steps on the living-room-kitchen circuit.
When he’d replaced his old iPhone a year and a half ago, Ben had set up photo sharing on the new one, so when he sat down at the desk and brought the computer to life, all the pictures he’d taken of documents in Rob’s hotel room had been uploaded into the cloud and were waiting for him.
He went through them one by one. They still didn’t make much sense to him without the necessary context. Seventeen pages of phone records with no names attached. They seemed to track three different phone numbers. He wondered if he should start cross-referencing them to see if each of the numbers showed up in each other set of records. Ben assumed they would or that there was some common pattern of outgoing or incoming calls to be found. Why else would Rob have them together in the file? He wondered if Rob had done this already. It didn’t appear that he had, because the printouts had no notes or marks on them. Ben remembered how he used to go at phone records with a dozen different-colored pens and highlighters. There would have been no mistaking whether or not he’d gone over documents like these. Even before he went out on disability, though, things were changing. Maybe these records had already been sorted and cross-referenced digitally. Why spend hours hunched over piles of paper when you could do the same thing more reliably by typing in a set of search parameters?
Context, he thought again. Unless he knew what he was looking for, it didn’t seem worth the time and energy.
The ten pages of bank records and credit-card statements presented similar issues. They were identified only by account numbers. Whose account numbers were they? They might be Grace’s. But even a casual examination showed quite a few more transactions than he expected based on what Becerra had told him of her activity. She could have accounts under another name, but if she was trying to keep a low profile, that didn’t seem likely.
Next were six pages of spreadsheets. Ben had no idea what any of them meant.
What came after that, though, was interesting. Fourteen single-spaced pages, in a tiny font, of what he thought were time-stamped GPS coordinates. Again, there was no name or identification other than a six-digit number on the top of each page. It could have been from a phone, but he suspected they came from a tracking device, because of the level of detail and the formatting. Just dates along the left margin and dozens of entries for each day. They covered a span of nine days. The most recent was the day before Grace disappeared.
This was something. Ben knew he could look up the coordinates online. All he’d need would be Google Maps and a lot of time. He made a note on the legal pad. Look up coordinates?
The last document was different. He hadn’t taken a close-enough look at it in the room. It was a page of typed case notes.
There had been several more pages when he was interrupted. He clicked to move to the next photo and saw the stranger’s battered face gazing slack jawed into the camera.
“You fucking idiot,” he whispered to himself.
Why hadn’t he finished the job before he left?
Ben clicked back to the case notes and used the “Z” key to zoom in until the photo displayed at close to its actual size. Rob had used abbreviations for names, some of which he could guess, but the others were as meaningless as the other documents. He copied the notes he believed he understood onto the yellow notepad.
G—first barista job in Long Beach
Talk to manager, coworkers
4245 Atlantic
G had to be Grace, Ben thought. If he was right, then the Attic wasn’t the first place she’d worked in Long Beach. That address wasn’t too far from where he sat. He tried to think of the coffeehouses on Atlantic. It had to be either the Coffee Bean or that other place just up the street. The one that used to be It’s a Grind. It was something else now, had been for a few years, but he couldn’t remember what. Still a coffee place, though.
Apartment—Bluff Heights
Contact Roommate
307 Orizaba
Had Grace had another apartment in Long Beach, too? Another job and another home. That seemed odd to Ben. Why switch? And how long had she been in those places? She’d been in Long Beach longer than he had realized. He tried to think it through. If he didn’t know what he knew about Grace’s past, it would make sense. The job at the Attic likely paid more than the one at the coffeehouse, and the rent for the studio here
would be less than something comparable in Bluff Heights, so maybe the decision was strictly financial. If she or Rob suspected her cover was shaky, she’d put a lot more distance between herself and the new life she’d been trying to make in Long Beach, wouldn’t she?
Find K. BF?
That one was more cryptic. Ben assumed BF stood for boyfriend. It didn’t seem to be too big a leap. If she had been involved with someone and it hadn’t worked out, that would give more credence to the theory that moving and switching jobs had more to do with her new life than her old one.
Ben didn’t need to spend too much time or energy with the last note he copied. It was perfectly self-explanatory.
Talk to B, don’t let him get too close
Too late for that one.
Back in the living room, just as he was about to sit down on the couch, he caught a glimpse of the Lucite brick encasing his shield. He walked over to it, moved his mother’s picture to the side, and took it down off the shelf.
He held it in his hands and looked at it more closely than he remembered ever doing before. It had been polished before they put it inside, the brass bright, almost glowing. “POLICE,” it said on the top edge of the ring in the center. On each outer edge was the distinctive logo with a capital L centered on top of and bisecting a capital B. On the bottom, “CITY OF LONG BEACH.” In the center of the circle, a star with the city seal. But it was the banner above the ring that he focused on. It read “DETECTIVE.”
It had meant something once.
Maybe it still did.
Ben carried it back into the office and put it on the desk next to the computer. It took him half an hour of Googling, but he finally found what he was looking for by following a link in the forum section of the American Numismatic Association.
Before falling asleep on the couch watching Carpool Karaoke, he texted Bernie to ask for another favor.
THIRTEEN
“I’m not sure about this,” Bernie said the next morning. “You positive it’s not against the law or something?”
They were in his garage, where Bernie maintained a small welding shop to work on personal stuff—he’d become an amateur sculptor after he retired—and do small projects, mostly as favors for friends and family.
“Nothing I’m asking you to do is illegal,” Ben said, hoping he wasn’t lying.
“How about what you’re going to do with it when I’m done?”
When Ben didn’t answer, Bernie sighed and said, “Let me see it again.”
Ben held up the iPad and showed him the page on the numismatics message board where he’d found the instructions.
“Put these on and stand over there.” Bernie handed him a pair of safety glasses and waved his hand toward the closed garage door.
Ben watched him heft a dark-green metal cylinder—it looked kind of like a scuba tank with handles on top—out from under the workbench and put it in the middle of the floor.
“That’s the liquid nitrogen?”
Bernie nodded and put on a pair of welding gloves, grabbed one of the handles with his left hand, and used his right to twist the top. It was a removable lid, Ben realized.
Bernie looked at the rim of the cylinder, then at the block of Lucite, then back at the cylinder again. He shook his head. “I don’t think it’s gonna fit, but I’ll give it a try.” Next to the badge was a pair of large tongs. Bernie used them to pick up the block and attempt to dip it into the top of the tank. It almost fit.
“Crap.” He put the block back on the bench, then went to one of the shelves that lined the back wall and came back with some kind of heavy-duty metal bucket, which he placed on the floor next to the cylinder.
He carefully tipped the tank to the side and poured its contents into the bucket. White wisps of mist rose from the liquid. Bernie picked up the badge with the tongs again and lowered it into the bucket. As he held it there, he turned his head toward Ben. “It’s a felony?”
“Is what a felony?” Ben asked.
“What you’re planning to do with this.” There was a tone in Bernie’s voice that Ben hadn’t heard since he was a teenager.
His own voice was hardly louder than a whisper when he answered. “Misdemeanor.”
Bernie didn’t say anything but kept looking at him with something like judgment in his eyes. There was something else there, too. Sympathy, maybe, or concern.
He lifted the block out of the bucket and put it down on the workbench, laid the tongs next to it, and reached for a ball-peen hammer on the pegboard wall. Bernie took a quick glance over his shoulder to make sure Ben hadn’t moved, then lifted the hammer high and smashed it down onto the block.
The Lucite shattered with a loud crack, sending tiny fragments everywhere. Ben felt one bounce off his forearm. Bernie’s body blocked his view of the badge, so he took a few steps to the side.
“Did it work?”
Bernie held up the badge under the light and used a gloved finger to brush and pick away stray bits of plastic. “Son of a bitch,” he said, trying to conceal his grin from Ben. “It looks pretty good.”
Ben couldn’t look away from the glints of light reflecting gold from his shield.
“There’s still some bits of plastic stuck on here.” Bernie grabbed a clean shop towel from a box under the bench and put the badge down on top of it. Then he put on a pair of reading glasses and went to work with a small hooked tool that looked like something a dentist might use.
Ben watched him silently while he worked. After about ten minutes, he held the badge up again and examined it in the light. “Looks pretty good,” he said. Then something else caught his attention. He tried to work the clasp on the back. “Uh-oh.”
“What’s the matter?”
“This isn’t working. Must be some plastic in the little hinge there.” He pointed to the tiny jewelry-like mechanism that allowed the pin to swing out and slip through the grommets on a uniform or badge holder. He gave it a few more gentle tugs. “Nah. It’s stuck.”
“Anything you can do?”
Bernie put the badge back down on the towel and used a propane torch with a tiny flame to heat the hinge. He kept pulling gently on the pin until the last bit of Lucite let go and it swung free.
“It worked,” Ben said.
Bernie put the torch down, but kept rotating the pin. When he saw the question in Ben’s eyes, he said, “Gotta keep moving it until it cools off so it doesn’t get stuck again.”
When he was satisfied that it was okay, he put a tiny dab of some kind of polish on the shop towel, rubbed it over the badge, and buffed it off. Then he gave it to Ben and said, “Be careful.”
Ben examined the shield, felt its familiar weight in his hand. “Thank you. Really, I—”
“No problem. But I mean it. Promise me you’re going to be careful.”
“I will,” Ben said. “I promise.”
He found the old badge holders in his patrol bag in the garage. Even though he knew he would only be using the one with the belt clip, he took both of them. The wallet would be preferable, but he wouldn’t have anything to put in the empty window slot where the valid ID should be. This time he didn’t bother putting the patrol bag back into the trash-can liner and hoisting it back up onto the shelf. After he zipped it up he left it on the floor in the corner. Who knew what he might need next.
Inside, Peter had just finished a yogurt for lunch and was rinsing out the container in the kitchen sink. He didn’t say anything to Ben when he came in.
“You okay, Dad?”
“Fine.”
Among the many things his father had lost was the ability to conceal his emotions. He was utterly and completely without guile. Sometimes Ben thought the best way to handle things when Peter was upset was to let it go, to pretend like nothing was wrong at all. He didn’t want his father to know he could see right through the attempts to hide his feelings, because it would be just one more thing Peter would know he couldn’t do anymore. It was kind of like the way he’d wait until Peter was
in the other room, where he couldn’t see, to make sure the spoon he had washed was actually clean enough to put back in the drawer. There was about a fifty-fifty shot, Ben knew. But it was worth the subterfuge to let his father believe he was still capable of something as simple as washing the dishes.
Now, though, he couldn’t walk away. He needed to try to fix this so it wouldn’t be hanging over him for the next two hours.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” His voice sounded much harsher than he had meant it to.
Peter doubled down. “Nothing.” His eyes were narrowed and he stared at the drain in the sink.
“Something’s wrong,” Ben said, trying to soften his voice. “Tell me what it is.” He put a hand on his father’s shoulder.
Peter pulled away. “My stomach hurts. I’m going to lie down.” He walked around Ben into the hallway and closed the door hard. Not quite a slam, but enough to make his point.
“Shit,” Ben said, slapping the counter in frustration. A sharp pain shot through his hand and wrist. He knew he should ice it again, but the idea seemed like too much trouble, so he popped a couple of Advil and sat down at the counter with a cup of coffee and one of Peter’s Hershey’s bars. If he waited a few minutes, maybe he’d be able to calm down enough to go talk to his father and figure out what was wrong.
He ate a piece of chocolate and checked the burner phone. Still no message. Rob had left him hanging. Again. It felt different this time, though. They were in the middle of arranging a meeting with the last text. Ben wondered if Rob had found the stranger in his room. Even if he hadn’t, if the man had somehow gotten up on his own or even with the help of an accomplice and made it out, Rob must have known something was wrong. There had been blood and spit and vomit on the carpeting. Surely in the struggle they had disturbed other things as well. But what if the stranger had gotten out and the cleaning staff had attended to the room? Was it possible that Rob wouldn’t have noticed?
