The Pain Scale

by Tyler Dilts

  He considered it. “Maybe. Maybe they just didn’t want to up the ante by killing a cop.”

  I thought about that. Dave might have been right, but I didn’t think so. There was so much blood on the shooter’s hands at that point that the added weight of a cop on top of everything else wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

  But.

  We needed the video from the surveillance unit.

  “Why do you suppose he has such a heavy-duty camera setup?” Jen asked.

  “I don’t know. He had a lot of computer equipment. Must have been worth a lot. Maybe to protect it?”

  “Could be.” She thought for a moment. “You don’t think he could have put it in just since we went off the grid, do you?”

  “I doubt it. It was a serious installation. Not the kind of thing you’d do on the fly.”

  “Think the techs will be able to crack the security?”

  “They said they could; they just couldn’t say when. The more skilled he is, the longer it’ll be.”

  We sat in silence. The KABC news was on the TV in the waiting room, but the sound was turned down. About ten minutes in, there was an update on the Benton case. I watched a reporter standing in front of Bradley and Sara’s house in Bixby Knolls talk into the camera; then they cut to a video of Bailey and Jacob. The same one that Oliver Woods had leaked. All the stations were using it now. The report didn’t last long. There was nothing new for them to say.

  Jen insisted that I go home and try to rest. When I got there, though, I was so wired that I knew sleep would be hard to come by. The pain had been worsening in my arm and shoulder for several hours, and by midnight I couldn’t think of anything else. I took two Vicodin, put my iPod in the dock, set it on shuffle, and sat in the darkness of my living room, looking out the window at the quiet and empty street.

  After Johnny and Bruce—who are always in heavy rotation because I have so much of their music in my collection—the shuffle surprised me with Tom Waits’s “House Where Nobody Lives.” I hit the REPEAT button and let it play four or five times. It was the perfect song for wallowing.

  I waited for the meds to kick in and the progression of the pain to slow and hopefully even back up a bit. It didn’t.

  A few minutes after one, I took another pill and forced myself to sit down at the dining room table and watch a video of Bailey and Jacob. That didn’t work, either.

  I thought about calling Jen, but on the off chance that she’d managed to find any rest at the hospital, I didn’t want to disturb her. She’d said she’d let me know if there was any news, and I had no doubt that she would.

  After I moved on from Tom, Arcade Fire tried to cheer me up with “Antichrist Television Blues.” That didn’t work, either.

  I turned the iPod off and picked up the banjo. Five minutes of random finger picking did nothing.

  The pain was still as strong as it had been all night. The third Vicodin hadn’t dulled it, but it had left me feeling off center and mildly nauseous.

  It seemed that I stood in the kitchen for a very long time looking at the Grey Goose on the counter, but, in reality, I doubt that I took more than a minute to reach for the bottle.

  My cell phone seemed much louder than usual when it woke me. The morning sun was bright through the living-room window, and I was slumped uncomfortably over the arm of the sofa.

  It was Jen’s ringtone.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  I waited for her.

  “They say he’s not getting any worse.”

  “That’s good, right?”

  “Not as good as him waking up.”

  “That’s true. Did you sleep at all?”

  “A little. They let me crash on a cot in one of their break rooms. You in the squad?”

  “Not yet. Still at home.”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit. Sorry I woke you up. I just figured...” Her voice trailed off.

  She didn’t need to finish. It was 7:40. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so late. Then I wondered if I should think of the unconsciousness I’d just experienced as sleep. It didn’t seem like a good precedent to set.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m on the way in right now. Once I have updates on everything, I’ll head over there. Want me to bring you a change of clothes?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind staying for a little while, maybe I’ll take a break.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Good news,” Ben said.

  “Tell me.” I’d stopped to check in with him on the way up to the squad. I flipped open the top of the pink box and offered him a donut.

  He looked inside. “Four vanilla crullers?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why no chocolate?”

  “There’s a chocolate bar and two cake.”

  “But no chocolate crullers?”

  “No. Sorry. Have a vanilla.”

  His face screwed up into what looked like a very uncomfortable expression. “I’ll just have a glazed. Wouldn’t want to short anybody.”

  “Please.” I raised the box toward him. He took one.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “So what’s the news?”

  “The video recordings.”

  “Go on.”

  “It doesn’t look like Detective Glenn was worried about anybody finding the equipment.”

  “Then why the whole closed-circuit thing?”

  “He was worried about somebody picking up the signal. Hacking in. Getting a free show.”

  “Okay.” He could see I wasn’t following.

  “What that means is I didn’t have to figure out his security. I was able to bypass it and just remove the hard drives and access them with our equipment here.”

  “That’s great. What did you find?”

  “Nothing yet. He had six cameras and enough space for four or five days’ worth of recording. Going to have to scan it all manually.”

  “How long?”

  “A few hours, I’ll have everything that matters ready for you to look at.”

  Jen checked in with the doctor one more time before she agreed to let me take over her watch.

  “He said Patrick’s doing a bit better. The pressure in his head is going down. That’s a good sign.” She didn’t sound convinced, though. “I’m just going to get cleaned up and change; then I’ll be back, okay?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Maybe just lie down for a few minutes, too.”

  “Maybe.”

  When she hugged me, I pulled her head into my shoulder and let her rest it there for a long time.

  After she left, I checked in with the nurse on duty and told her I was there for Patrick. She told me the doctor would be checking on him before too long and they’d let me know if there were any changes in his condition.

  I sat down in the waiting room and got out my Kindle. The only things I had on it that I hadn’t read were The Passage, a postapocalyptic vampire book, and Room, a novel narrated by a five-year-old who had never set foot outside the storage in which he and his kidnapped mother were held hostage. Both were on a bunch of the end-of-the-year best book lists. While I was trying to decide which one to start on, my memory got the best of me and I started thinking about Jen holding vigil here for Patrick. It had been almost fourteen months since she’d done the same for me.

  Seeing her waiting had made me think of that experience, but I shoved it down in the back of my mind. I didn’t want to think about it. And I didn’t want to think about how hard it must have been for her. It was only just beginning to dawn on me that I’d been so caught up in my own pain and recovery that I hadn’t really given much thought to her. At least not about how she must have struggled. And I hadn’t given much consideration to her partnership with Patrick. I’d never thought of it as more than temporary, a transitory relationship that wouldn’t amount to anything of significance in the long run. But every month I was out on leave, every time the
next surgery didn’t quite go as far as we’d hoped, every extension of my medical leave—four months to six, to nine, to thirteen—had been another step for them.

  At what point, I wondered, did it start to feel like a long-term thing rather than a transitory, just-until-Danny-gets-back-on-his-feet deal?

  Jen and I had four years together before I went out on leave. That was a long partnership. Sure, Marty and Dave had us beat by quite a stretch, but that was at least in part because the lieutenant was old-school and liked what he got from teams who really had the opportunity to get to know one another well and learn each other’s moves and manners. How much of that had Jen and Patrick been able to do?

  Was I stepping in the middle of that? Did Jen resent it? Did Patrick? I had assumed that I’d walk right back into the job at exactly the place I’d been forced to leave it. Was I wrong to think I could do that? Was it even possible?

  Before I knew it, I was simmering in a swill of guilt and jealousy.

  Self indulgently, I tried to remember to blame my self-indulgence for Patrick being here.

  When I finally turned on the Kindle, I went for The Passage because I like postapocalyptic stuff even more than I hate vampires.

  Jen came back a few hours later, but the world still hadn’t ended. It was a long book.

  “You can take off,” she said. She looked rested and as if she’d gotten a second wind and hoisted the weight she carried into a more manageable position.

  “You talk to Marty and Dave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Seem like they’re on top of things?”

  She nodded.

  “How about if I stay a while?”

  The next morning, the doctor gave us an update. The pressure appeared to be back to normal levels and the swelling had gone down considerably. He was out of danger. “We’ll need to wait and see if there are any lingering effects.”

  “Like what?” she asked.

  “Well, traumatic brain injury can have a number of ramifications,” he said. “Memory loss, impaired function, primarily things like that. Because he was unconscious for more than six hours, the chances are greater that there will be some lasting consequences.”

  “Lasting?” I said, aware that Jen didn’t want to ask the hard question. “You mean permanent?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Thanks.”

  He went back to doing whatever he’d been doing, and I wondered how many people he’d have to give bad news to today. I thought about how hard it is to tell a person that someone they love is dead. At least he gets to give people good news once in a while.

  “What do you think?” I said. “Want to go back to the station with me, or stay here?”

  “You think Ben’s got the video ready?”

  “He said a couple of hours. It’s been more than three.”

  “You mind going?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Run it again, would you?” I said to Ben.

  He did, and I watched a man in jeans, a dark jacket, and a ski mask with a dark object in his extended hands move quickly across the loft toward Patrick, who appeared to be completely absorbed in his work at one of his computers. It was a wide-angle shot that distorted the field of view, particularly around the edges. When the man was about fifteen feet away, Patrick either heard the intruder or was drawn to the motion, because he stood up, turned toward the intruder, and reached for his holstered pistol. The man stopped and fired the Taser in his hands. Patrick’s body tensed in the distinctive convulsion caused by electroshock weapons and then collapsed. His head recoiled and snapped backward as it impacted the edge of his desk. The intruder closed the distance between them, dragged Patrick out from behind his desk and tables, and bound and gagged him. When he finished with that, he went to work on the computers.

  “You said you had it from two other angles as well?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. He showed me those, too. The second recording was from the upstairs camera he’d shown me the night before, and it gave us a better view of Patrick, but we were only able to see the intruder’s back. The third came from a camera mounted on the opposite of the loft and came fairly close to reversing the angle of the one we’d just watched.

  “This is fantastic coverage,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Never had three angles on a crime before.”

  “That’s not all.”

  “What else?”

  “Detective Glenn had a camera outside, too.”

  “Show me.”

  He tapped at his keyboard, and I saw a view of the street and part of the parking lot outside of Patrick’s place. A Honda Accord pulled up to the curb and parked about thirty yards north of the loft. It was partially obscured by some tree branches, but we could see the man who accosted Patrick get out and walk calmly toward the front door. It looked liked he put the mask on while his face was out of view.

  “Nothing on the face?”

  “No, but I did find something interesting on the car. It was confiscated three days ago in a DEA drug raid. It’s supposed to be impounded in Santa Ana.”

  “Supposed to be? Do we know if it is?”

  “Yeah, it’s there now. And according to the lot’s records, it never left.”

  “Can you put everything you just showed me on a disc?”

  “Already did. And made a couple of extras, too.” He handed me three DVDs in plastic jewel cases. “I’m going to stay on these. See if we can find anything else.”

  As soon as I got back upstairs, I slipped the DVD into my computer and cued up the footage. I watched each angle again and then began to focus on them one at a time. It was the third time through the first angle Ben had shown me—the wide-angle view from across the room—that I spotted them. I wasn’t sure at first, so I went through the other angles a few times each. When I was absolutely positive, I called Jen.

  “How’s he doing?” I asked.

  “About the same as when you left. He’s out of danger, but he still hasn’t woken up.”

  “How about you?”

  “I’m doing okay,” she said. She’d said that to half a dozen people in the last eighteen hours. This was the first time I believed her.

  “Good,” I said. “Because I need some backup.”

  One

  “THE SHOES?” JEN asked.

  “Yeah. New Balance Nine Fifty-Fives. We talked about them. Remember I told you about meeting him at The Potholder?”

  “He was wearing them?”

  “Yeah. I used to have a pair just like his. Then they changed the model, and neither one of us liked the new version.”

  “Is that enough?”

  “There’s the car, too.” I told her about the impound lot in Santa Ana.

  “Is that the same one the Orange County Sheriff’s Department uses?”

  I nodded. “Santa Ana PD, too. If we dig around there, we might be able to firm things up a bit.”

  “We put him at the lot or in the car, it’s solid,” she said. “Want to head over there?”

  “We know they’ve got video, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why don’t we skip the preliminaries and go right for a warrant?”

  “I’ll call Bob.”

  By dinnertime we were in the lieutenant’s office showing him the footage Patrick’s camera had picked up outside his loft of Goodman getting into the car. The time codes from both sources lined up perfectly, putting him at the scene less than an hour after he’d left the impound lot.

  “He’s at the Westin?” Ruiz asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Grab him before he gets wind of the warrant.”

  The hotel was only a few blocks away from the station. I was only half joking when I suggested to Jen that we should walk. Dave and Marty hadn’t signed out for the day, so they and four uniforms joined us.

  “You suppose we’re going in heavy?” Marty asked.

  “No,” I said. “He only used a Taser on Patrick, but
he could be getting desperate, feeling cornered. Better to hit him hard with a lot of force so he doesn’t get any stupid ideas.”

  “Shock and awe,” Dave said from the backseat. I looked at him in the rearview mirror, and the setting sun angling onto his face made the laugh lines etched into his face look like creases in ancient leather.

  The Westin’s director of security was a former LBPD sergeant who had taken his twenty and gone private. He met us at the desk.

  Marty had ridden with him back in the day.

  “Sarge,” Marty said, extending his hand.

  They shook and gave each other a pat on the elbow with their free hands.

  “Good to see you,” he said, giving the rest of us a single nod.

  I stepped forward, and he didn’t have to ask which one of us was the lead. “He’s upstairs?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just had the front desk do a courtesy check. He said everything was fine.”

  “Any chance that might have tipped him?”

  “Got a man on the door, just in case.”

  “You want to lead us up?”

  We took two elevators to the eighth floor.

  He rode with the uniforms.

  Down the hall from Goodman’s room, he gave me a master key card. “Works just like a regular one, slide it into the slot, pull it out, wait for the little green light, and you’re good to go.”

  “I know how hotel key cards work, Sarge,” I said.

  “Well, you can’t ever be sure with detectives.”

  The uniforms got a grin out of that, and to be honest, the rest of us did, too.

  We stacked up on either side of the door, Dave on my shoulder and Marty on Jen’s. We unholstered our weapons.

  “Ready?” I whispered, making brief eye contact with each person close to the door. When I had unanimous nods, I slipped the key into the door, pushed it open, and shouted, “Agent Goodman! Police! We’re coming inside!”

  The room was off-white with lots of wood and earth-toned upholstery and accents. It was also empty.

  “Goodman!” I shouted. “Police!”

  I moved inside. The crew followed. Something was wrong. He’d answered the phone ten minutes earlier. Was he barricaded in the bathroom? The door, to my right as I came in, was closed. I nodded in that direction, and Jen moved into position behind me, facing it and giving me cover to check out the rest of the room.