Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He touched her glass with his.

  Upright again. "Mike, you said a lot of this was my fault. I think it was, too."

  "Merci—"

  "No. Let me finish. I'm going to tell you what I see. It's necessary. You need to see it, too."

  He looked at her, said nothing.

  "You know, you ran into a pretty tough girl when you met me. I look normal from the outside, but inside, I'm just. . . very hard sometimes. On me. And on the people I'm trying to love."

  Mike had sat down on the same couch, but with plenty of distance between them, just the way she liked it.

  "I've been in a haze since Hess died. You know that. I can work okay. I can raise my boy okay. But I can't get out of it. It's like this fog that just won't lift. And for the last two years plus, Mike, every time I look at you I say, now there's a good guy, nice looking and kind, and look how much he loves you. But I haven't loved you back. Not with all of me, or even a big part of me. I just haven't been present."

  He spoke quietly. "I know that. I knew it was part of the deal."

  What she wanted to say was, explain the silencer in your tackle box. And the letters in your pistol case, and the boots in your closet. And the missing friendship card and your presence in the crime lab. But if they were evidence of what she thought they were, Mike would destroy them and she would be guilty of not only treachery but unforgivable foolishness.

  "I can't wash myself, Mike. I can't get clean. I can't start over."

  He nodded, moved a little closer. "But you can't blame yourself forever, Merci. That's all I've ever tried to tell you. You got to put it all box and throw the box away."

  A tackle box? she wondered. And where would Hess go? Hess, was right in the middle of all of it. She couldn't throw him out, like an old pair of shoes, or a noisy tenant. It angered her that Hess was more a part of her sadness than of her joy, but she had not designed the circuitry of own heart. She did not understand it, and she could not repair or replace it.

  "I know that, but I can't shut up my own conscience. The voice is too strong. I might not hear it for a few days, then it comes roaring at me. Right in the middle of breakfast. Or driving down the road. 0r in a dream. Or when I look at you and tell myself I should love you."

  She willed herself to see him as blameless. He sat there, scrub and decent, young and strong, forelock down and eyes alive, dressed and scented up for her, earnestly trying to win her heart the best way he knew. For what, the hundredth time?

  Merci realized that this might be the last time she'd be able to see him like this. She felt a sweet movement in her heart right then, a moment that made her fingers warm and her eyes moist.

  Then it was gone. Letters. Boots. Tackle box.

  "I'll sell the ring, if it's too much pressure," he said.

  "I need to use the head."

  She gathered up her purse and went into Mike's bedroom, where the full bath was. In the mirror she looked yellow. She could feel her heart hitting her ribs. She bent over the toilet and vomited. Then she ran some hot water and washed her hands. She got her toothbrush from the draw and loaded on the paste.

  Back in the bedroom she listened, heard nothing. She looked at his bed, made up neatly now, pillows fluffed, bedspread taut. She imagined herself in there with him, locked up and sweating, chasing down that elusive release that came far less often than she wished. Muscles quivering, breath hot and fast. For just a minute or two, you were really free, gone, new.

  What a perfect time to torture yourself with that image, she thought. She understood by now that the conscience is eager to betray.

  Then she moved quietly back to the bathroom, where Mike often hung his shoulder rig on the robe hook. She pushed the door in and followed. Coughing to mask the sound, she carefully popped the holster snap and slid out his Colt .45, then slipped it into her coat. She pulled the range gun from her purse, put it in the rig. Left the snap off. Then she hung her coat.

  She flushed the toilet again, washed her hands again.

  Mike was standing by the fire.

  "You okay?" he asked.

  "I feel sick."

  "I'll make some herbal tea."

  "I hate herbal tea."

  "It settles the stomach."

  "Just some water."

  Mike hopped to, brought her a glass with ice and a lemon slice on top.

  "There's a bug going around the department," he said.

  "Maybe that's what I've got."

  • • •

  Dinner lasted for several thousand years. Merci guided the talk toward Tim, Jr., and Danny. Mike almost always followed her conversational lead and rarely took it himself. He listened to her with an intensity that she originally had thought was a tool for getting her into bed. He could chatter like a jaybird about sports or hunting with his friends but Merci cared about neither. Tonight he was quiet, attentive, aglow in the candlelight. He looked good in the black sweater. She pictured him pushing his silenced Colt into Aubrey Whittaker's chest and pulling the trigger. She could picture his body okay, but his face was just fog.

  She believed, but she did not believe.

  She helped him clear and rinse the dishes. Mike slid the dish towel over the oven handle.

  "Please come to bed with me now," he said.

  "Okay."

  It was over fast so they started in again. Merci surrendered to the wrongness of it all, she clutched it like a boozer his bottle, a suicide his gun. Beyond the wrongness she found something that had to be love because nothing else could possibly exist there. Love of what they once had. Love of Mike, the boy and the man. Love of love. Her climaxes were powerful implosions that seemed less of muscle and nerve than of bone. During them she was vertiginous and free and she wished they could on for hours, leaving her exhausted and purged and molecularly rearranged into a completely different person—a good-natured blonde; perhaps, or a fundamentalist, a savant, a pilot. Her jugular throbbed and her ears roared.

  When it was over they lay in the darkness breathing hard. She had done what she wanted to do. For just a few minutes she had loved and believed in him. She had given him everything she had, even the benefit of her doubt. She had testified to the innocence she had helped him lose. Offered proof of a trust she wanted so badly to feel.

  And now, while Mike dozed beside her, she came back to herself with an awesome regret.

  She looked up at the ceiling, knowing that whatever had been between them was over now. She would never look at him the same way, for better or for worse. There was betrayal and maybe murder. There was before Aubrey, and after. One thing had just ended; another was just beginning; and there was a fat black line dividing the two.

  She got up, collected the condoms she had brought, went to the bathroom and dosed herself with the aerosol spermicide from her purse. Then she showered and dressed.

  "Stay tonight," he whispered in the dark.

  "No."

  "I love you, Merci Rayborn."

  She brushed away his hair and kissed his forehead. "I'll see tomorrow."

  Five miles down Modjeska Canyon Merci pulled onto a wide shoulder and parked the Impala. The moon was high and cast a silver light on the hillsides.

  She took the .45 from her purse and aimed at the man in that moon, trying to keep him atop the sights. She couldn't hold it still.

  Then it jumped in her hands and the noise hit her ears with a sharp crack. She collected the brass with a flashlight and a tissue. Then she emptied the clip and reloaded it. First she put in three shells from the new box she'd bought at the range. The top four cartridges were Mike's. She wiped down the gun with a rag from the trunk.

  Five minutes later she let herself back into Mike's house. Nothing looked different. Even with the bloodhounds howling, Mike was a world-class sleeper once he was down.

  She walked down the hallway to the bedroom and peeked in. He was over on his side now, facing the wall, curled up like a child, which was how he liked to do those deep first hours. She stepped in and close
d the door half way. The room went deeper into shadow. No movement from Mike.

  "Back forever?" he whispered, words slurring.

  "You warmed me up so much I forgot my coat," she said. She went to the bathroom, left the lights off. She got the coat off the robe hook and put it on. Then she eased the range gun from the holster and slid it into her pocket.

  "That was really nice, Merci."

  "It was."

  She replaced Mike's Colt. No snap.

  She went over and touched Mike's cheek. Her hands were shaking again and she wanted to ask him to forgive her but she would not have forgiven him for this, and she knew it.

  He was breathing heavy and deep, his hands balled into fists up near his chin. It reminded her of Tim. The sleep of a child, the sleep of the innocent.

  • • •

  She woke Gilliam up at home, 12:27 a.m., and told him what she needed.

  "No case number, no NIBIN, no DrugFire, no IBIS, no Brasscatcher. Nobody sees it, nobody touches it, nobody knows about it but you. Not Coiner, not O'Brien, nobody. You and you only."

  He understood completely. He asked no questions. He'd have what she needed by the start of the workday.

  He gave her directions to his house and Merci wrote them down in her blue notebook, using the swing-out lamp above the radio for light, guiding the big car down Modjeska Canyon with her left hand at two o'clock, just like her father used to do.

  She tried to concentrate on the road, but she had trouble thinking. Trouble knowing what to feel. Trouble believing that today was Tuesday, barely a week since she'd seen Aubrey Whittaker for the first time. Last Wednesday morning she'd argued with Mike about a movie date she wanted break. And now, a few short days later, she was gathering evidence to determine whether or not Mike McNally was a killer. Her hand was locked on the wheel and her jaw clamped tight and her eyes weren't seeing well.

  Too much, she thought. Too fast, too strange, too bad.

  • •

  At home she checked on Tim, tucked the blankets up a little tighter, made sure his mittens were still on. He didn't budge. She turned up the heater. Clark's door was closed. Dreaming of Marcella, thought Merci, of all they'd had and all they'd said good-bye to. Sometimes it crushed her to think that she, Merci, was the best of what her father had left. Or maybe Tim was. She wished he'd find someone new to love again, but he didn't socialize much except for the poker games on Wednesdays. She wondered if he considered himself alone.

  She poured a huge Scotch, thought of Hess as she always did when she poured a huge Scotch, and took another shower. She lathered and rinsed her hair, then did it again. She scrubbed once with shower gel, once with soap. She stood under the hot powerful water and wished everything that felt unclean inside her could just run off and go down the drain like all the unclean things outside her. When she got out her eyes were red and she looked like hell.

  She put her little .32 in her robe pocket and went back out to the living room. For a while she sat in her father's recliner, a butt-sprung chair that was comfortable and worn. The old house creaked and her heart jumped. She hated her fear. She wondered if a modern, creak-less home would be better for her, but that meant neighbors you'd have see, no orange groves for protection, nothing between them and us

  I'll sell the ring, if it's too much pressure.

  She sipped down some Scotch and wondered if life was sad like this for everybody. She hated her sadness like she hated her fear but she couldn't figure a way around it. The trouble was, everywhere she aimed an optimistic thought it ricocheted and came back at her head: She thought of a man she had loved and he was gone; she thought of her own mother and she was gone; she thought of Clark and he was alone; she thought of Mike and he was hiding silencers in his barn and good Jesus in heaven, even if he hadn't shot Aubrey Whittaker, what in hell was going on in that brain of his? Paul. Janine. It seemed like the only point of light in the whole miserable universe was Tim, Jr., so radiantly and perfectly happy. But what about five years from now? she thought. What's he going to be then, one of those kids who brings a gun to school and shoots everybody? How much time does he have before life wrecks him? What an awful thing to think. She hated herself for thinking it, for poisoning even her son's unlived future with her own fear and sadness. She wished she could crawl out of her skin. Become new. Become improved. Trade all the fear and sadness and become quiet, content, efficient and occasionally chipper. How long since she'd actually smiled without irony? How long since she'd laughed without bitterness? It felt like a million years. Was this too much to ask? And yet, if she had a choice she wouldn't choose this. It wasn't her nature to feel this way. She hadn't had a single miserable day in her whole life until what happened to Hess. Since then, that's all she'd had. Like something in the air, like something you couldn't get off you.

  She considered Joan Cash's Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing procedure, much promoted by the FBI in its Critical Incident Stress Management Program. But all she could think of with regard to EMDR was the opening scene of that horrible college movie where the razor slices the eyeball. It made her queasy.

  So she told herself she was just feeling sorry for herself, that she only felt this way because she chose to feel this way. She reminded herself that she was captain of her own ship. That she was responsible for her own feelings. That the world you saw was the world you wanted to see. And all that other crap everyone was always trying to tell you. She wondered if she should give herself over to Jesus, but she couldn't respect a God that loved her unconditionally. It made her suspicious of Him. Those were some of the same reasons she couldn't marry Mike was she equating God with Mike now? What did that say about her. Fuck, it was just a damned mess.

  She drank down most of the Scotch, hoping it would dull her sadness. Thirty seconds later, it did. Made her dizzy, too, in a good way. She could see why people lived on the stuff.

  She dumped the rest down the drain and went in to check Tim again. There he was, perfection in a crib, the whole potential of the race contained in one individual thirty pound unit.

  All she could do was shake her head and smile.

  • • •

  Later that morning—Merci had no idea what time—she dreamed she was asleep in her bed, dreaming.

  She heard something beside the bed. She woke and reached under the bed frame for her H&K. When her hand found the butt of the gun, it froze. Hess stood across the room looking at her, his hands folded before him like he was standing in a reception line.

  It's okay, he said, then he turned his back to her and vanished.

  She jumped out of the bed before she even knew she was jumping. She landed hard on the floor. She looked at the wall through which Hess had traveled but it was simply the wall. Sweat ran down into her eyes and she could feel that she was soaked in it, her gown damp, palms slick, her hairline cooling.

  She heard her father's footsteps on the hardwood hall, felt the air the room change when the door flew open, and the next thing she knew she was stunned by light and he was lifting her off the floor and back into the bed.

  "Bad dream," he said. His voice was soft, like he'd been dreaming too, like he was talking down a five-year-old. "Just a bad dream, honey.”

  "Yeah. Hess."

  "Hess. That's okay. He's fine, you know. Now you settle in. Settle in, girl. Just a bad dream."

  "Good dream."

  "That's right. That's it. There you are. A good dream. Let me get you a washcloth, honey."

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The address in the "For P. B." letter turned out to be Inland Storage in Riverside. Merci stopped at the gate and punched in the entry code. The old guy in the office gave her a long hard stare so she gave him one back. She drove around, following the numbers to 355. It was a maze. The doors were faded orange, some of the padlocks brown with rust. The early morning sun hung over the roofline, shot into her face like a spotlight.

  She parked across from the unit, looked at the letter again. For P. B. It surprise
d her to think she was not the only person who gave a damn about Patti Bailey. She took her kit from the trunk and got back behind the wheel. She worked on a pair of fresh latex gloves, then brushed the key with black fingerprint dust. She found exactly what she expected to find, nothing.

  She pulled the key off the letter, examined the dopple of glue and the little platform of paper stuck to it. Back in the crime lab she could fume the letter, envelope and stamp with cyanoacrylate, but something told her she'd be wasting her time. It was a newly cut key, a generic blank, no ID from a cutter or shop.

  It slid easily into the padlock and the bolt jumped open. Merci worked it from the latch, then slid the catch into place. The big aluminum door shuddered as she pulled up on the handle, hooked her boot under the bottom and gave it a heave. Dust and rust showered down when the door slammed up. The sun shot in and held the cobwebs with light. Merci watched the motes swirl, sneezed twice.

  Half a dozen pasteboard boxes. A bike with flat, whitewall tires yellow couch along the far wall. A stack of newspapers. A 70s era quid stereo with eight-track tape player, all four speakers. Bootleg tapes stacked on top, labels faded and peeling: Jefferson Airplane, Fifth Dimension, The Doors. Two metal file cabinets, a credenza. A Regulator clock hung on the left wall, two lamp stands without shades. A mattress and box spring leaned against the right wall, wrapped in plastic that had long since cracked and peeled. Two chests of drawers. A refrigerator that looked thirty years old. That was about it. Lots of space, not much stuff.

  She sneezed again, then again, then stepped back into the sunlight for some fresh air. When she squinted back into the unit from a distance it looked like a diorama of a college student's room, or a bachelor’s apartment from three decades ago. All it needed was lava lamps and one of those astrological sex position calendars that she had first seen, been frankly mystified by, at a head shop when she was twelve.