by Tyler Dilts
The last of the day’s sunlight was shining in through Julia’s balcony door as I put some music on and made us dinner. The omelets were too dry and the sourdough toasted too brown, but I managed to pick us a good bottle of wine.
We finished eating and took the rest of the wine into the living room just as Nina Simone’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” was finishing and Leonard Cohen’s “Night Comes On” was beginning.
“I like this,” she said. “Is it a mix?”
“Just some songs I like,” I said. “I’ll make you a copy.”
We sat on the couch, my arm around her shoulders, and finished the wine while we listened.
“Ashes on Your Eyes” was playing when she turned her face away from me and whispered, “I don’t know if I can do this.”
I didn’t know what she meant and I didn’t want to, so I pulled her closer and pretended I hadn’t heard the words.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
IF I SHOULD FALL BEHIND
The week before the anniversary party for Jen’s parents, the temperature had topped one hundred four days in a row. Jen had wanted to move the party inside, but her mother wouldn’t hear of it. There was a good turnout. Forty or fifty people. I didn’t know most of them, only Jen’s parents and her brother, Johnny. The only other cops there were Patrick and Lauren, so we huddled back by the garage and talked about work.
“The plea deal’s set,” Patrick said. “They’re knocking a few years off of Joe’s sentence in exchange for his testimony against Novak.” After I’d left the interrogation, Joe had admitted that he and Avram Novak had gone to William Denkins’s apartment to convince him to offer up more money. Joe claimed he had no idea what Novak had planned, but did nothing to stop him as they plied Bill with more and more Glenlivet until he was close enough to unconsciousness that Novak was able to put the gun in Bill’s hand and pull the trigger. Patrick believed him, but it didn’t really matter. He was certain Lucinda hadn’t known what her husband had done. We never did find out why she hadn’t taken Joe’s last name. Whatever the reason for her long-ago decision, it might provide a tiny sliver of consolation in the face of her overwhelming grief. The case was closed and the men who’d murdered William Denkins were going away. I thought again about how close they’d come to pulling it off. If either of them had thought to put the gun in his right hand, they would have walked away.
Patrick had already told me what he’d discovered searching Terry’s apartment. It looked like a textbook case of an intimacy-seeking stalker. Prior to the photo, he hadn’t seen Julia since the support group almost two years earlier, but when she bumped into him on the pier and took his picture, it set something off in him. He read it as her initiating a kind of intimate connection with him and he became obsessed. His web-browser histories showed countless searches for every possible variation of her name. He’d bookmarked dozens of sites with mentions of her name or her artwork. There was a journal that documented his actions and he’d taken candid photos of her, too. Even paid an online investigative company to do a deep search and pull up everything from public records to her credit history. There was no way it could have ended well for him. And even though I empathized deeply with his pain, I couldn’t say I was sorry he was gone. I’d seen a lot of stalkers in my years with the department, and things could have been much worse for Julia.
Lauren came back from the drink table with a beer for herself and an iced tea for me. “How was the first week back in uniform?” I asked her.
“Not bad,” she said.
Patrick grinned and said, “But I’ll bet you figured out when you’ll be eligible for the Detectives’ exam.”
We heard a clinking sound and someone saying, “Excuse me, everyone, excuse me.”
It was Johnny, Jen’s younger brother, standing under the pergola on the steps leading up from the patio into the kitchen, a bottle of champagne in his hand. “Thank you all for coming. We’re so happy you’ve joined us to celebrate Mom and Dad’s fortieth.”
Jen and another woman I didn’t know moved through the crowd carrying trays of prefilled plastic cups while Johnny spoke. By the time Jen made it back to where we were standing, there were only two left. Patrick and Lauren took them.
Jen looked at me and said, “Shit, I’m sorry, let me—”
“It’s okay,” I said, holding up the tea bottle in my hand. “This will be fine.”
She turned around just as her brother shouted, “Congratulations!”
The crowd had started to thin, and the pain was climbing up my shoulder and neck by the time Jen found me back in the corner of the yard, sitting on the bench in the twilight under the oak’s bough.
“Julia couldn’t make it?”
We’d been together almost every night since the gallery, but something had changed. I didn’t know if it was the trauma of that day that had been affecting her or if it was something else, something deeper. All I really knew was that we were finally caught up on Downton Abbey and the final season was waiting for us. I hoped we’d be watching it together.
“She’s still having a hard time,” I said. “Didn’t feel up to socializing today.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“I don’t know. Maybe take her for coffee or lunch. I think she’s getting a little tired of me.”
“I’ll give her a call.”
“Thanks.”
We sat there in the shade and I could tell there was something else she needed to say. Something she didn’t want to tell me. “Ruiz talked to you, right?”
“About what?”
“Getting a new detective for the squad.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to hear what came next.
She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “He wants me to train him. Partner with him for a while.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Until he gets up to speed.”
There were still a few stragglers hanging around the patio, laughing and talking to each other. Smiling. Not ready for the party to end.
“Danny?”
“Yeah?”
“Say something.”
“Patrick just nailed two big cases. Why not him?”
“I don’t know. That’s not the call Ruiz made.”
I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what. A breeze rustled the leaves of the tree above us.
She stood up, put her hand on my shoulder, and said, “I’m sorry, Danny.”
As she walked away toward the others, I stopped her. “Jen?”
She turned back.
“Are we okay?” I said.
There was something sad and wistful in her voice as she sighed and said, “Look at those people over there. You know who they are? You know who everyone I invited here today is?”
I shook my head.
“My family.”
She walked back toward the house and I sat there under the oak in the shadow of the evening trees.
The pain loosened its grip.
I rose and followed her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book wouldn’t exist without the generous support of many others. To them I owe a significant debt of gratitude. My most heartfelt thanks to:
Gracie Doyle, Alison Dasho, Jacque Ben-Zekry, Sarah Shaw, Charlotte Herscher, Meredith Jacobson, and the rest of the team at Thomas & Mercer.
David Aimerito, Zachary Locklin, Paul Tayyar, and Eileen Klink.
Jay Chase, Derek Pacifico, and Scott Brick.
Matt Gourley, creator and host of the podcast I Was There Too, for not only inspiring a significant portion of this novel, but also for graciously allowing me to use the lyrics to the IWTT theme song both in the epigraph and throughout the text.
And to my family—my brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Kim Dilts, whose heavy lifting allowed me the time and space to work; my beautiful amazing wife, Nicole Gharda, whose unflagging belief in me never wavers; and my mom, Sharon Dilts, whose love, encouragement, and compassion made me the writer I am today.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a child, Tyler Dilts dreamed of following in the footsteps of his policeman father. Though his career goals changed over time, he never lost interest in the daily work of homicide detectives. Today he teaches at California State University in Long Beach, and his writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Best American Mystery Stories, and numerous other publications. He is the author of three previous novels in the Long Beach Homicide series: A King of Infinite Space, The Pain Scale, and A Cold and Broken Hallelujah. He lives with his wife in Long Beach, California.
