Mercy Dogs

by Tyler Dilts

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Have you ever shot a gun?”

  Her eyes widened. “No.”

  “I’m sure you won’t need this,” he said, unwrapping the Glock. The magazine was in the other towel. He checked the chamber to make sure it was empty and handed the pistol to her. “Just in case.”

  He showed her how to work the slide, checked the chamber again, and had her point the muzzle at the floor and dry fire it to get the feel of the trigger. Then he slid the magazine into the well in the grip and gave it back to her.

  “Remember,” he said. “Keep your finger out of the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot, and never, ever point it at anything you’re not willing to kill.”

  Ben could see the weight of it, not just in her hand but in her eyes as well. He hoped he had made the right call. “Promise you won’t go without calling me first.”

  She nodded, but didn’t say anything until he was back out on the porch with his father, and then she spoke quietly, her voice almost a whisper. “Thank you, Ben. For everything.”

  He hoped that wasn’t a goodbye.

  Peter was in a good mood when they got home. Seeing Grace had either wiped the memories of the difficult morning away or been enough to raise his spirits in spite of them. Either way, Ben was relieved. Hoping to maintain his father’s state of mind, he asked Bernie to hang out with Peter while he took care of some business that he needed to attend to.

  There was some trepidation on Bernie’s part, not about looking after Peter, but rather about just what business it was that Ben needed to take care of. When he told him he had to go to the police station, Bernie’s sense of relief was palpable even over the phone.

  Only Jennifer and Zepeda were there. Ben didn’t know where Becerra was and he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to be the one who had to tell the younger detective that he’d knocked on Grace’s door and left convinced that it was a dead end.

  “We should just go talk to her,” Zepeda said.

  “Not if you want her to cooperate,” Ben said.

  Zepeda didn’t like that. “You’re saying if we go pick her up, she won’t talk to us?”

  “No, she won’t.” Ben was beginning to think that maybe Grace was right. “Can you blame her?”

  Jennifer apparently saw where the two men were headed and said, “What does she need from us in order to cooperate?”

  “She needs to feel safe,” Ben said. “She hasn’t felt that way in a long time.”

  Zepeda grumbled. “How are we supposed to do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “Maybe start with some official protection?”

  “Yeah, right. Half the time we can’t even get that approved when shot callers are putting up open bounties on trial witnesses. Get her in here to talk and if she gives us something solid, I mean really solid, we might be able to get someone to consider the request. Even then, though, it’s a long shot.”

  Ben looked at Jennifer. “Do you have anything at all on Lopez?”

  “San Bernardino IA won’t release any of Rob’s reports or files. They’re saying it’s too sensitive. And whoever killed Rob took anything he had with him.”

  “So there’s nothing?”

  “We did ID one relevant set of prints at the scene. Took the techs a long time to sort through everything.”

  Ben remembered how hard it was to get useful prints in a hotel room. They were rarely, if ever, cleaned thoroughly enough to erase the evidence of the hundreds of people who passed through them. “Whose were they?”

  Zepeda said, “Brett Sowers. One of Lopez’s crew.”

  “Well, that’s a start.”

  Zepeda shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s evidence that he was in the room prior to the crime.”

  “What evidence?” Ben asked.

  Zepeda raised his eyebrows, opened the cover of the iPad on the table in front of him, tapped and swiped the screen, then turned it around for Ben to see. It was Sowers’s SB Sheriff’s Department ID. His face looked familiar, but Ben couldn’t quite place it.

  “You don’t recognize him?” Zepeda asked.

  “I think I’ve seen him somewhere, but I can’t say for sure.”

  Zepeda snorted and turned the tablet back toward himself. He swiped the screen a few more times and then showed it to Ben again.

  It was the swollen and bloodied face of the stranger drooling on the carpet in Rob’s room.

  Ben nearly said they had him for B&E and assault, when he realized the only witness to those crimes was someone who’d committed them himself. And honestly, Ben was the only person who’d really committed assault in that room, wasn’t he?

  “What are you going to do?” Ben asked.

  Zepeda looked at Jennifer.

  “Our lieutenant is pressing San Bernardino to release whatever Rob gave them on Lopez. We’ll go higher up the chain if we have to. We’re not going to let it go. For the time being, though, all we really have is Grace’s word.”

  “Fuck,” Zepeda said, sighing the word as much as speaking it. “We don’t even have that. All we have is you telling us what she said.”

  “I know that’s not what you were hoping to hear,” Jennifer said when she was walking him out to the parking lot. “But we’re going to stay on it. San Bernardino will come through with Rob’s reports. We’ll make the case.”

  “You don’t think they’d let a case go cold to cover their asses?”

  “No,” she said. “Think about it. It’s Internal Affairs. They live for this kind of shit. Taking down a cop who killed another cop? That’s like the Super Bowl for them.”

  “Maybe,” Ben said. “But do you think they’ll let Long Beach win it?”

  Fortunately for him, he was too angry to remember what happened the last time he left the visitors’ parking lot.

  Instead of turning on Bixby Road and going home, Ben continued north on Cherry. He didn’t have to go too far to get to the Public Storage facility. Just a few blocks north of Carson Street, he stopped at the gate and fumbled through his wallet until he found the slip of paper with the gate code. He punched the number in and drove around back to the east side of the building. They had an outside ten-by-fifteen unit with drive-up access.

  He parked the Volvo, unlocked the door, and heaved it open. Usually he’d get lost in nostalgia every time he’d visit. Seeing all the old furniture—most of which they’d moved out to make room for him when he was released from the rehab center—and so many of his mother’s old possessions was comforting, and he’d spend an hour or two just going through things and trying to remember. In those early days, before Peter’s first emergency surgery, they would visit every two or three months. He felt a pang thinking about the time when his father could remember more than he could himself, and he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he brought Peter back here now. Some of the things might trigger memories. It might be good for him.

  Bring dad to storage unit, he scribbled in his book.

  He didn’t have time to linger today, though—he knew exactly why he was here. He worked his way to the back of the unit, past the rocking chair and the love seat and the bookcases and the plastic storage boxes to the small safe in the corner. He squatted down in front of it and entered the combination—his father’s birthday, 7-25-34—and opened the door.

  There was only one thing inside. A brown suede pistol rug. He took it out and unzipped it, laying it flat on top of the safe. The Smith & Wesson Model 65LS looked as clean and well maintained as it had the day he’d last locked it up inside, a few weeks after her funeral. It had been her carry gun when she first made detective, and it stayed with her through every subsequent plainclothes assignment of her career.

  When he came home from the hospital, they told him it would be better if he didn’t have access to firearms. Of course he found that insulting, but he also knew it was true. The department had already confiscated his duty weapon as part of the investi
gation of his shooting. So he sold his other two pistols, a Sig P229 that he sometimes carried off duty and the Ruger SP101 he used as a backup. But he’d forgotten about his mom’s gun. Peter had moved the safe into the storage unit with all the other things and not mentioned it to Ben.

  He picked up the revolver, checked the cylinder to be sure it wasn’t loaded, pointed the muzzle at the concrete floor, and dry fired it a few times. Just as smooth as it had been decades ago when she taught him to shoot with it.

  With the pistol rug on the passenger’s seat, he drove down Cherry past his house one more time, turned left on Willow, and parked in front of Turner’s Outdoorsman. Inside, he bought two boxes of .38 Special +P Hollow Points, and then, finally, went home.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There was a towel in the back seat. He’d brought it out with him one day when the rain was particularly heavy, and since it hadn’t cleared up for more than a few days at a time in the last few weeks, he left it there. Just in case he might need it.

  He wrapped the case and the boxes of ammunition in it and went inside, hoping he could get them into his room without Bernie or his father asking about them. They were both in the living room watching a home-renovation show that Ben didn’t recognize.

  “Hey, guys,” he said. “How’s it going?”

  Sriracha bounded over to him and wagged her tail. He reached down and scratched her head.

  “Good,” Bernie said. “How about you? Everything go okay downtown?”

  “Yeah,” Ben lied. “I think things are going to get cleared up pretty soon.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Ben nodded. “How you doing, Dad?”

  “Hanging in there,” he said, watching the dog. He clapped his hands together lightly and she jogged back over to him. He leaned forward in his chair to pet her, then she jumped up into his lap.

  Ben took that as his cue to disappear into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

  He put the bundled towel down on the bed and unfolded it. How long was it since he’d fired the revolver? Twenty-five years? More? He picked up the gun, felt its familiar heft, looked at the etched Lady Smith on the right side of the frame below the cylinder, remembered how lame he thought it was when he was thirteen. Only after his mother told him she’d taught his father to shoot with the same revolver did he finally agree that maybe a girl’s gun wouldn’t be so bad. A few years later, when she realized he was serious about following her career path, she’d taken him back to the range. It became a regular weekend routine.

  Why had he bought two boxes of ammo? One would have been plenty. Even just six rounds. If Lopez came for them and they wound up needing the gun, they’d have two or three shots at most. There wouldn’t be any reloading.

  He pushed the cylinder release, slipped a round into each chamber, and clicked it back into place. Then he extended his arm, pointed the muzzle at the pillow on his bed, and focused on the front sight notched perfectly in the rear. Could he pull the trigger if he needed to? When he was still a cop, he’d occasionally pondered that question. The answer then was always yes.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door, then his father’s voice. “You okay?”

  Ben moved to put the revolver in the top drawer in the nightstand, exactly where the Glock had been until he gave it to Grace, but the door opened when his hand was still two feet away, startling him. He tossed the gun in the drawer and pushed it closed.

  “Did I scare you?”

  “A little, yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ben studied his father’s face for a sign that he’d seen the gun. It didn’t look like he had. “Yeah, I’m good. What’s up?”

  “Can we go outside?” Sriracha was rubbing herself against his leg.

  “Just make sure the grass isn’t still wet.”

  Peter nodded and headed for the patio door.

  Bernie was still on the couch, watching a big guy in overalls pointing at an exposed ceiling beam and explaining how somebody had really screwed it up.

  “How’d it go with the cops?” he said.

  “Not exactly what I was hoping for, but I think it’s going to be okay.”

  “Good.”

  “You still rent out the cabin in Julian?”

  “Sometimes, yeah.”

  “Anybody using it now?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Where is that?” Grace asked. “By Big Bear?”

  “It’s down south, inland from San Diego.”

  “Is that far enough away?”

  “For now, I think it is. If Long Beach or San Bernardino don’t get Lopez soon, we’ll make other plans. Right now, though, it might be good if you’re not completely cut off. I can let you know what’s going on. When it’s safe to come back.”

  “If. If it’s safe to come back.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “If.”

  The plan was simple enough. Grace would pack up, Ben would meet her at Kyle’s place, bring her home so she could get the rest of her things from the studio, and then, early enough in the morning to beat the traffic, they would all head south to Bernie’s cabin in Julian. Ben and Peter would stay with her for a day or two until she got settled, and then head back. It wasn’t perfect, but he believed it was their best option. Even if Zepeda and Jennifer couldn’t make the case against Lopez, and even if San Bernardino stonewalled them, the investigation would surely curtail and limit his actions. He had to know he was a suspect. There would be no direct link between Grace and Bernie, no electronic or paper records to track down to provide a trail. The only possible way Lopez could find out where Grace was going would be if he already had Ben under surveillance and followed them. There had been no indication that anyone had been watching, and Ben had exercised great caution. He was confident that they could make the trip undetected.

  It was a good plan. It would work. Grace would be safe and she wouldn’t walk away from her life and become someone else.

  It was a good plan.

  You’re surprised at how angry you feel. The way she blindsided you. And how could she have done that to you? How could he have betrayed you like that? You want to scream, to throw something, to lash out.

  “Oh no,” Grace says. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Of course she’s sorry. She didn’t know. How could she possibly know? Your father couldn’t tell her, any more than he could have betrayed you. He was just showing her photos in an album. All she said was that she didn’t know you were married. Asked your wife’s name.

  The person you should be angry with is yourself. If you didn’t want anyone to see the photos, you should have just taken them out of the album. But you didn’t do that, did you? No. You were too worried about making yourself uncomfortable to look at them before you gave the book to your father. And you didn’t even do that right, did you? If you really wanted to protect yourself you should have just thrown those photos out at the same time you dumped the wedding album in the garbage. But did you do that? No. Because you were too much of a pussy to even—

  “Ben,” she says softly, calmly, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s . . .” You try to get the words out, but they catch in your throat. “I try not to think about it.” But you are thinking about it now. You can’t stop thinking about it. About her.

  They were in the living room, your father and Grace, sitting on the couch. Peter had the album in his lap and he was slowly turning the pages. You were watching from the dining room. They didn’t seem to know you were there. He wasn’t saying much. Occasionally he’d point out you or your mom, but mostly he was just looking. Grace was watching him as much as she was looking at the pictures. Mostly, he didn’t seem to know what he was looking at, but every page or two he would see something that made his face light up, and she’d smile, too. When they got about two-thirds of the way through, Peter stopped, a sad look on his face. “What’s wrong, Pete?” she asked. He looked at her and whispered, “Kate.” Whatever you did or said, you can’
t remember, but they both looked up at you with surprise and concern in their faces. Then you stormed out the patio door.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to talk about it. You want to go back inside?”

  You do want to. You want to go back inside and forget this happened.

  But instead you sit down at the patio table. Grace sits next to you.

  “Kate and I were married for nine years.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but you can see the question in her eyes.

  “Do you remember when I told you about the hole?”

  She looks puzzled.

  “The time I can’t remember, all those months I lost around the time that I was shot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kate left me a little over a month before it happened.”

  Grace’s eyes widen. “And you don’t remember it?”

  “Not at all. The last thing I remember, we were happily married.” You don’t want to think about it, but you can’t help it. “The edges of the hole are hazy, you know? Kind of like when you can’t quite remember a dream? The last clear memory of us together is here, having dinner with my dad.” You close your eyes, remember standing next to her in the kitchen, helping with the dishes, sneaking a kiss when your father stepped out of the room. “We did that after my mom died. Tried to see him more often. That was Kate. She worried about him.”

  You’re quiet for a long time. Not wanting to say what comes next.

  “Next thing I remember, she’s by my bed in the hospital, crying, trying to explain. She shows me the divorce papers I signed before everything went down. She’d told me before, but I didn’t believe her, thought it was some kind of cruel joke. That’s why she had the papers with her. Why, I asked her, why?” You can’t bring yourself to repeat her words.

  “What did she say?” she asks.

  “That I fucked someone else.”

  You watch her reaction. Is there a flash of revulsion in the narrowing of her eyes and the turned-down corners of her mouth? If there is, it vanishes as quickly as it appeared.