by Tyler Dilts
“What did you tell them?” he asked her.
“That Lopez was going to kill you and I shot him,” she said. There was more, Ben knew, much more, but he didn’t need to hear anything else. She had spared his father from the investigation. She knew what it would do to him, the relentless questioning, having to go over it again and again, maybe even a trial. He might not remember the details. But no matter what the outcome of the investigation was, after having the details of the shooting drilled into him over and over, the shadow would engulf him. And no matter what they told him, he would never believe he hadn’t done a bad thing. They still might not be able to convince him that he’d saved their lives, that what he’d done was something good. But at least now there would be a chance of that. So Ben didn’t need to hear anything else. Not then, at least.
Peter was quiet and his eyes were faraway. Ben put his arm around him and felt him shivering. The fleece blanket Ben had used, sleeping there the night before, was folded on the ottoman. He reached over and spread it across his father’s lap, pulling the edge up over his abdomen and tucking it under his arms. Then he leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.
“You saved our lives, Dad.”
Peter turned toward him and said, “I did?”
“Yeah. You did a good thing.”
THIRTY
Ben decided to replace the whole floor in the studio. The blood had seeped too deeply into the wood for it to be refinished. The contractor said he could just replace the damaged slats and that the patch job would only be noticeable if you knew what you were for looking for, but that wouldn’t work. Ben would always know.
He showed Grace some samples and she chose a nice blond-streaked bamboo. And since they’d need to move everything out anyway, why not have the place painted, too?
For Ben, it was a good distraction from the continuing investigation. He’d spent four long days downtown repeating the story of the shooting and what had led up to it for different groups of suits from Long Beach and San Bernardino. Grace had been there even more than he had. Peter only had to do one brief interview that Zepeda recorded on video. The old detective was surprisingly gentle with him and didn’t even press when the answers didn’t seem to add up into a coherent narrative.
By the time the renovation was completed, there were all-new furniture, an upgraded refrigerator in the kitchenette, and retractable shades on all the windows. Grace had been uncomfortable making so many of the choices when she wasn’t sure of her plans, but Ben wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“How’s your dad doing?” Jennifer asked. They were sitting on the patio. The sun was shining and the air was clear and cold. It had been eleven days.
“Not too bad.”
She studied him. He wondered if she suspected what had really happened. If she did, would she understand why Grace lied and why he went along with it? She would, he thought, but understanding probably wouldn’t be enough for her to let it go. Unless she’d changed in the years since they’d worked together. She’d always been by the book, and he had always respected her integrity. But that was the old Ben Shepard. Now he wasn’t sure that integrity meant the same thing to him it once had.
“Have they made the call yet?”
“It’s complicated. Dead cops and multiple jurisdictions and everything. But Zepeda’s calling what happened here justified.”
“Is he getting pushback?”
“Nothing strong enough to worry about. Just a lot of red tape before they close it.”
“That’s good,” Ben said. “They figure out how Lopez knew she was here?” That question had been keeping him up at night. He couldn’t stop worrying that he’d screwed up, that he’d missed something, that it was his fault.
“That’s one of the things I wanted to show you.” She slid her iPad out of its case, flipped open the cover, and started tapping and swiping. When she turned it around, he saw a picture of a house taken from overhead. It took a second for it to register that he was looking at his own home. He swiped through ten or twelve more pictures taken at different times of day and in different weather conditions, and he realized.
Tim over on Gardenia wasn’t the only one with a drone.
“I didn’t know you could fly those in the rain.”
“Some of the high-end ones you can. Nothing but the best for the narcs.”
“I tried to be careful. To make sure no one was watching.”
“You did good, Ben. I wouldn’t have thought to watch out for something like this, and I’m supposed to be on top of this kind of stuff. Drones weren’t even a thing the last time you wore your shield. How could you know?”
He felt a pang of guilt for all the things he was holding back from her. But he managed it. He had one more question for her. “Can I get my mother’s gun back?”
“We can probably swing that if it goes down the way it looks like it will.”
He walked her out to her car. “Lunch soon?”
She smiled at him. “I’d like that.”
Two days after they’d gotten the official word that Lopez’s shooting had been ruled justifiable homicide, the electrician finished hanging the new ceiling fan and they went inside.
“Wow,” Grace said. “This doesn’t even look like the same place.”
It was true. The room his mother had decorated so long ago was gone. For Ben, though, that room had disappeared the moment Lopez had stepped inside. Now, the room where he died was gone, too.
“What do you think?” Ben said, rubbing the back of his head. “Want to give it a try?”
Grace nodded. “I think so. Yeah.”
“Does it feel weird, with what happened?”
“No,” she said. “It ended here. It feels safe.”
It had been three and a half weeks since the last seizure, on the day of the storm. He didn’t mention it when they did the CAT scan the next day. Somehow, the results came back negative, no concussion. If he had another one before his neuro consult, he’d report it. He couldn’t risk a mandatory DMV suspension of his license. How would he take care of Peter if he couldn’t drive? Besides, he was doing better than he had in a long time.
They all were. He’d been worried about his father, but the nightmares that came every night the first week were fading. It had been six days since the last one. And Grace was checking out the grad program at Cal State Long Beach. Maybe she wouldn’t go back to Riverside after all.
After the storm flooded Long Beach with more rain than any other ever had, even the rain seemed to be moving on.
On their evening walk, Peter looked disappointed when Sriracha bounded up to them and greeted Grace before she greeted him. But then the sound of a small plane rose in the distance and he looked up to search the sky for it.
Ben saw it before his father did, one of the training flights, passing from behind the cover of the trees into view, and banking north to continue its loop. “There it is,” he said, pointing up at the plane so his father could see.
Peter’s hand shot up high over his head and he waved it back and forth.
Then it happened. The plane dipped its wing toward them.
Peter stopped waving, turned quickly to Ben, as if he couldn’t believe what he had just seen. Ben nodded, and Peter turned back to the plane and waved even more enthusiastically than before.
The plane dipped its wing again.
Peter kept waving as it flew past them, then turned to Ben, his eyes alight with joyful wonder. “Did they really?”
“Yeah, they really did, Dad.” Ben felt something catch in his throat. “They waved back. They saw us.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2012 Nicole Gharda
Tyler Dilts received his BA in theater from Cal State Long Beach and performed in more than sixty plays before turning his focus to writing. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Best American Mystery Stories. He is also the author of the Long Beach Homicide series of detective novels: A King of Infinite
Space, The Pain Scale, A Cold and Broken Hallelujah (an Amazon #1 bestseller) and, most recently, the Edgar Award–nominated Come Twilight. In 2014, he was the Writer-in-Residence at John Cabot University in Rome, and in 2015 he joined the teaching staff of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. He currently teaches English at his alma mater, where his specialties include creative writing, crime fiction, and literary theory. He lives with his wife in Long Beach, California. Contact Tyler at www.facebook.com/tylerdiltsbooks.
