Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  She woke up suddenly in the dark, rain roaring down on the house, Tim's cries coming through the monitor she'd turned up full blast because she slept like the dead. Her first thought was that some tremendous disaster had just befallen him, and she headed to his room fast, throwing on all the lights on the way.

  The darkness seemed to reach for her and this scared her, and she hated the darkness for it. Her heart was pounding hard by the time got to her son. He looked up at her with wide blue eyes filled with tears, his legs kicking, and she understood that the storm had scared him, that was all, just a baby's fear of a storm.

  She carried him back to her room. Goodness, she thought: Would it be great to be assured and confident and a little bit mean again, she was before Hess? Before the Purse Snatcher? Before it was such ordeal to get to your baby in a rainstorm?

  She brought him to bed with her. He stopped crying almost instantly, then fell asleep against her chest while Merci stroked his small soft head and listened to the rain splattering onto the patio. She looked back to doorway and realized she'd left every light on, including the one in bedroom.

  She rolled over, wrapped the pillow over her head and thought.

  We'll be giving him every chance to explain himself.

  And what explanation was there? That he'd hidden a silencer in his tackle box, but decided not to use it?

  That it must be someone else's, planted there to frame him?

  She could almost believe that. Almost. But it didn't account for his chukka boots with the blood on them, or the letters Aubrey had written him implying that she thought exposing him would be a good thing. It didn't explain the evidence—a card handwritten by him—gone missing from the crime lab. It didn't explain the fact that he'd had dinner in her apartment and allegedly left less than an hour before she was murdered. It didn't explain the underwear Merci had let him have, against her better instincts, later used to conceal a silencer.

  She pictured the scene again. She saw Mike leaving Aubrey Whittaker's place, his blond hair bouncing as he takes the steps. She saw him coming back up a few minutes later—he looks tighter, more purposeful. She saw him standing in the porch light, knocking. She saw Aubrey at the door, peering through the peephole and opening the door to the guy who'd just left...

  • • •

  She got up and delivered sleeping Tim back to his crib, then dressed. It was just after 5 a.m. The world was still dark as she guided her Impala down the rut-riddled dirt road that led away from her house, her right hand absently feeling around in the space behind her seat—a habit by now. The rain boiled in the puddles, and in her brights it looked like acid frothing up, a witches' brew, something that would put your eyes out. She'd only slept four hours, and her head felt pressured, her eyeballs tight, her body heavy and inefficient.

  Mike, I'm so damned sorry.

  • • •

  The head of hotel security, Ronald, met her in the lobby and took her up to room 350. They made the elevator ride in silence, Merci assuming that Ronald didn't think much of lady detectives.

  Brighton let them in. Clay Brenkus shook her hand firmly and said, "It took a lot of balls for you to do this, young lady. Congratulations and good luck."

  "I hope we have more than luck, Mr. Brenkus."

  "It's Clay, and all we're doing is getting the truth. It isn't your truth or mine. It's McNally's. He did it or he didn't. We're going to find which."

  Guy Pitt, one of the assistant DAs Merci had worked with, got coffee and a croissant from a tray. "I'm going to depose you," he said quietly. "Marion here is going to swear you in, do the recording. Okay?”

  Merci nodded. It felt just like a dream but she couldn't wake up. The rain washed down the windows in gallons.

  A thin and lusterless woman rose from one of the couches extended her hand. "I'm ready to start when you are, Guy."

  "Merci, it's going to be me and Clay, two of our investigators, sheriff and two of his men. I'll ask the questions. Remember, Mike confessed to you—about the shooting and about having a silencer in possession. I'm still going to frame them in a way to make what you seem reasonable and necessary, given the emergency exception under Mincey versus Arizona. All that means is, if you hadn't made warrantless search, the evidence would have been destroyed. This sworn testimony, but you're not in court. Relax, tell the truth, and if don't understand something, just ask."

  "Yeah."

  "All right?"

  "Yeah, Guy, I'm all right."

  "When we're done, everyone's going into the room next door to interview Mike. You'll be able to hear and see from in here—we've a camera set up next door, a closed-circuit monitor over there by couch. If we have to, we'll shuttle some people back and forth, get some direction from you, clarify something. But we don't want you in there. We don't want him to know you're here, or what you did. Nothing about that yet."

  Brighton walked her over toward the couch, a heavy arm around her shoulder. "You did the right thing."

  "Then how come everybody has to keep telling me?"

  "Easy does it."

  • • •

  The deposition took almost an hour. It was the usual thing with lawyers—too many questions, then more questions. And the flyfishing tackle box that you described, what was the purpose of that box so far as you knew?

  It held flyfishing tackle.

  Was it used exclusively for flyfishing or for other kinds of fishing, so far as you knew?

  Just flyfishing.

  You say it was the only handmade box on the workbench?

  Only one I saw.

  And you say you had knowledge that it was handmade by Mr. McNally?

  Yes.

  And was the box in plain view, on the workbench of the workshop where Mr. McNally lives?

  There was a net over it. But I could see the box through the mesh. It wasn't hidden from view. It was obscured, slightly.

  Or, questions she'd rather they never asked, but they did anyway.

  Sergeant Rayborn, how could you be certain the undergarment—the undergarment surrounding the sound suppressor you found in the flyfishing tackle box—belonged to you?

  Because I gave it to him.

  When she was finished Merci went into the bathroom, washed her face in hot water, used one of the fat luxurious terry washcloths to scrub out all the whatever it was that seemed to be roiling out from inside her like poison. She threw the wet cloth into the corner just for spite, then felt bad, picked it up, rinsed it, squeezed it damp and hung it carefully over the shower rod, got angry for feeling bad then threw it back in the corner again.

  • • •

  Sitting down on the couch in room 348, Mike McNally had an expression like Hess used to have when he came out of a radiation treatment— stunned but undefeated. His face was pale. He sat on his hands. He stared at the camera for long beat, then studied someone across the room from him with a nervous disdain, like a rattlesnake looking up at a shovel.

  "You're videotaping this?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Brighton brusquely. "You don't mind?"

  "What's this about, sir?" Mike sat forward, leaning toward the coffee table in front of him.

  "Aubrey Whittaker, Tuesday night, last week."

  Mike looked around. Merci could see part of Brighton's should and the back of his head as he faced his vice detective. She could see Brenkus in profile, at the top of the screen. Between them were the DA investigators. The two deputies Brighton had mentioned were off camera.

  "Look, Mike," said Brighton. His voice was low, unhurried, confidential. "You had dinner with Aubrey Whittaker last week. She was murdered shortly after you left. I want you to tell me about that night. Everything about it. Your reason for accepting such an invite. Your feeings about the girl. Your state of mind when you got there. Heck, tell about the dessert, too. I just want to know what happened. I want know everything that happened. Because frankly, Mike, we've got some evidence collected that looks incriminating to us. This is your chance spill it, come cl
ean, get the record straight. We can be done with this and out of here in a couple of hours if you just tell us the truth. We can all go back to work, get on with things. That's what we'd all like most."

  Merci watched Mike's expression go from alertness to surprise to disbelief to embarrassment to anger. Mike wasn't subtle. Mike wasn’t devious. Mike was obvious, his face an honest reflection of his heart. It was like watching a chameleon change colors.

  "You think I killed her."

  It wasn't a question.

  "We don't think anything," said Brenkus. "All we're after is truth, Mike."

  "Oh," he said with sarcasm. "All right."

  Mike sat back for a moment, then forward again. Merci could see his eyes get that distant look, then refocus, leading him back to the present. He nodded, as if sealing a deal with himself. He took a deep breath.

  "I'm going to stand up," he said. "I'm going to walk to that window, look out. Any of you dumb monkeys got a problem with that?"

  Brenkus looked to Brighton, Brighton to McNally, then glanced off to his left. Shadows in the room moved. Mike stood and walked toward the window, offscreen.

  Everyone stood. The two plainclothes deputies followed him, trying to seem casual, unsure of how much urgency to show.

  Merci looked out the window: rain slanting down through the dark morning sky.

  Mike came back to the couch, but he didn't sit. "Well then, here's the truth: I won't answer a single one of your questions until I've got a lawyer."

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Clay Brenkus shook his head and sighed.

  "That's the hard way, Mike," said Brighton. "We'll need to go downtown for that."

  "Let's go."

  Mike had his forty-five out before Merci knew what he was doing. His arm straightened and the barrel lined up with Brighton. Bodies in motion then, and curses from unseen men in the room, shadows moving quick. Pitt jumped out of camera. Brenkus rolled off his seat. Brighton froze.

  Mike spun the automatic around his finger, stopped it barrel up, his fingers out, then set it on the coffee table.

  "May God forgive you assholes."

  Then he looked straight at the monitor, which meant he looked straight at Merci. She'd never seen cold rage on his face before, but she saw it now. She didn't know he could look this way.

  "You stupid woman," he said. "I can't believe you did this, you stupid, gutless bitch."

  • • •

  Brighton came in after they led Mike out. His face looked gray, ten years older than he'd looked the day before.

  "With regards to the rest of this day at headquarters," he said to Merci, "miss it."

  "I will."

  His hard eyes bored into her. "I don't know what to say, Merci, don't know how this is going to play out. I just know that when the press finds out we've arrested our own vice cop in the Whittaker murder, it’s going to be worse than a circus. Stay low. I'll take the heat."

  She nodded. "I've got some interviews set up. The Bailey case."

  "Do what you need to do. Look, I had a talk with Paul Zamorra yesterday. I think he's on the verge of hurting somebody, probably himself. I offered him a week off to get his wife settled, but he wouldn't take it. I think he should take it. I want you to encourage him in that direction. I don't want to force a leave on him, but I will."

  "I understand, sir."

  Brighton held up his hand. It was trembling. "Mike could have shot me a minute ago. It's just catching up with me. Maybe I am too old this job. Maybe I should get out while I've still got an ass to sit on."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Ralph Meeks answered his door wearing sheepskin boots that Merci thought made him look like a Sherpa.

  "You're soakin' wet, honey."

  "It's been raining six hours straight."

  He was a short, skinny man, his legs lost in the baggy slacks he tucked into the boots. Bright little eyes, hair like steel wool. He wore a turtleneck under a bulky sweater with reindeer trailing across the yoke and chest.

  Standing in the doorway, he rotated a large cigar and blew the smoke away from her. "Well, come in. At least you're good looking. What, six feet?"

  "Five-eleven," she said, stepping into the towering entryway.

  "I'm five-seven. I'm also seventy-nine years old. They make 'em bigger now. D cup?"

  Her mouth parted in disbelief. Ralph Meeks cackled. "Just playin' with ya. My wife was flat as a window, so it doesn't really matter to me."

  "Play some other way, Mr. Meeks, I'm here to—"

  "I know, I know. To find out about who killed Patti Bailey and all those other current events. Now you walk down this shiny floor here eleven steps, turn left when you get to the room that smells like burning wood. Where it smells like burning wood, there's fire. Go in and sit by that fire. I'll get you some hot chocolate."

  "No, thank you, I—"

  "It's already made, you're gettin' it. Go, march, lady—I don't have all day."

  She counted ten steps while she took in what she could see of house: marble entryway with a big chandelier up high, a living room with white carpet and a view of the storm-blasted beach just a few yards away, a library with shelves twelve feet high and rolling ladders to get them with.

  Her eleventh step brought her to the study: huge fireplace with a raging fire, a leather recliner and couch arranged in front of the fire but too close, an immense mahogany desk to her right, an entire wall of oak file cabinets. It was all illuminated by recessed lights and storm glow from a large skylight cut in the vaulted ceiling above. The fire roared quietly like a river, and the rain slammed down on the skylight glass.

  Meeks padded back in with a couple mugs of hot something, handed her one.

  "Nice aroma, isn't it? It's orange wood, only kind I burn. Gotta get it from Riverside County now."

  Merci nodded, looking at the little man.

  "Like my house?"

  "Looks fine to me."

  "Nixon's place was just a hundred yards north of here. We used party with him there, if you could call it partying. He was a crook, no doubt, but he didn't know how to have fun. Kind of the worst of both worlds."

  "Did you help him get elected?"

  "We threw some votes his way. Wasn't hard in Orange County."

  "I thought the Birchers were after you."

  "Sergeant, there's conservative Republicans, then there's Birchers. I was a registered democrat when I came here after the war, but changed my colors by the election of fifty-two."

  "How come?"

  "Used to be the only game in town, the republicans. Hell, the local Republican Party chairman started out as a democrat. Switched when he realized there was only one real side here. Now we got that Mexican democrat woman in the Congress, so it's all changed. Politics are boring. Let's talk about hookers and murder and pretty ladies getting shot in the back. Sit—take the sofa over here. If it gets too hot you can take off your clothes." Meeks cackled again. "Come on, show some humor."

  "You're not quite disgusting, Mr. Meeks. But you're close."

  "I'm harmless."

  She sat down and got out her blue notebook and her tape recorder. She turned it on, set it on the sofa toward him. "Get within a five-foot radius of me, Mr. Meeks, and I'll bash you over the head with my pistol."

  He looked at her. "I'd love that."

  Merci thought: The same way you loved it when Patti Bailey took out Big Ralphie?

  "Look, Mr. Meeks, I've got some business to take care of here. You said you'd help me with it. I'm going to tape this conversation and make some notes if you don't mind."

  "Wait, lady—I party with Richard Nixon and you think I'm gonna let you tape me? I don't talk to tapes. You want a tape, you can arrest me."

  Meeks hovered next to the leather recliner. Merci saw that he was bent and stiff. He looked at his cigar, then at her. "Come on, lady. Can that thing and I'll help you. I'm good to my word."

  Merci clicked off the tape recorder. But she already had part of what she wanted. Part of
the bravado had already blown out of him. So she decided to hit him hard, see if he'd let her get right to the heart of things.

  "How'd you meet Bailey?"

  Meeks was still standing in front of the recliner. He seemed to consider her question as he sat. She watched him do it the old man way: position feet, turn, brace with free hand, bend legs and lower butt, stiffen as the weight shifts, keep the back straight, there. When he was finished he looked at her. His face was sharp and beveled by the firelight. His eyes were orange dots. He took an ashtray from the stand beside the chair and brought it to his lap.

  "I met her at a party."

  "Who introduced you?"

  "We introduced ourselves, you know, like regular people. In the kitchen. I was makin' a bourbon; she was looking for a light. She had a marijuana cigarette, so I gave her my matches. I told her to go outside and smoke that shit. It was a felony back then, possession. I went out there with my drink and we got to talking."

  "Make a date?"

  "Naw. I didn't do that kinda thing. I was married."

  "You never made a date with her?"

  "I just said I didn't."

  "See her again after that?"

  "Other parties. I wouldn't even remember her, if she didn't get murdered. You know how it is."

  "That's the first lie you've told me, Mr. Meeks."

  Merci stood and walked over to the fire. She could only get six feet away before the heat stopped her. She looked back at Meeks. He looked small in the big recliner, reindeer dancing across his sweater like it was Christmas morning or something. He blew a big plume of smoke.

  "What do you want, lady?"

  "Listen."

  She went back to the recorder, pulled out the blank tape and put her dub of Patti Bailey's.

  She played the section with Meeks on it. He listened without moving, just cigar smoke rising around him.

  "I've got her date book, too. Interesting listening, interesting reading. You were seeing her once a week or so. You'd drink. She'd smoked dope. You'd do your thing."

  "I'm still listenin'."

  "Good. This is the score here. I can take you downtown right now and book you on suspicion of assault with intent to kill Jesse Acun. I can add conspiracy and probably make it stick. If the court won't convict you, the media will. I can make copies of that tape and hand them out to the press people, along with your home phone number. I can make the last few years of your life miserable, Meeksie. Or you can help me.”