Never Fear

by Heather Graham

  Then, of course, there were the cross county drives when he'd get called out on a Sunday afternoon. The wife and he finally made plans to get out of the house and go hiking the hills outside Temecula, but then some observant Border Patrol agents had found a body a mile east of San Ysidro.

  Jeff took a bite of the chipotle veggie burger he picked up from the brewery and wiggled his toes in the Coronado beach sand as the sun slowly dipped lower. Lisa had already eaten at home, so he figured he would stop and enjoy the sunset and the Coronado Brewery had some pretty good vegan options. He just didn't feel much like dining in. On a Sunday, there was bound to be at least one group of SEALs or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) and Special Warfare Combatant-craft Crewman (SWCC) candidates getting tipsy and reminding Jeff of shattered dreams.

  As he swallowed down his food, the flip phone holstered next to the Glock 43 inside his waistband began to vibrate and let out the factory-installed jingle that Motorola thought would sound good back in whatever decade the sheriff's department had bought the things.

  “Bukowski,” he answered, as if the lieutenant didn't know who he was.

  “Is it going to be related?” his boss' boss asked.

  “Tough to say already. Her throat was slit, hands duct taped behind her back, and she worked at Pure Platinum, so same M.O. (Modus Operandi) but we'll have to wait on the coroner before we start connecting dots.”

  “Pure Platinum? She must've been classy. Look, Jeff, you've been a homicide detective for ten fucking years. The media isn't going to wait for the coroner's report and neither is the Captain. Is this going to be part of the series or not?”

  Jeff listened to the BUD/S candidates calling cadence in the distance. How any of these rich tourists ever got a moment of sleep with the Navy always blowing something up or tearing up the beaches at 5am, he could never figure out.

  “Yeah, it's our guy,” he said.

  “Ok,” Lieutenant replied. “I'll let the brass know before they do the briefing. Tell Lisa I said 'hi' when you get home.”

  “Will do, Lieutenant.”

  Jeff flipped the phone shut and snapped it into place on the cheap plastic holster the department had issued him. He almost shivered as the breeze picked up. He took a sip from his water and a final bite of his veggie-burger before crumpling it up in the paper wrap and tossing the leftovers into the trashcan next to the picnic bench. He sighed as he thought about all the report writing that awaited him in the morning and began to brush the sand off his feet before pulling his socks back on.

  ***

  “Hi, Dad. Bye, Dad,” Emma said as she grabbed the keys to the Corolla she had inherited from her mother when they bought the Explorer last year and ran out the door.

  “Where's she off to?” Jeff asked his wife.

  “Who knows?” Lisa answered in the thick Jersey accent she still carried after twenty-five years in SoCal. “She's eighteen now. She could be running off to buy crack and marry one of the Mexicans hanging out in front of the landscaping store for all I care.”

  “You say that now,” Jeff said as she fell into his arms and he planted a peck on her lips, “but when she's running around campus next year with all those blue-eyed Brigham Young Mormon boys, we'll see what your attitude is.”

  “Oh, Lord. I am not raising a bunch of Jack Mormon grandkids and I sure as hell ain't sitting through a dry wedding reception.” Lisa was the sweetest, most caring woman Jeff had ever met, but she started more sentences with “I'm not racist, but…” than anyone he knew.

  “So, how many does this one make?” She filled a mug from the filter pitcher in the refrigerator, placed it in the microwave, and pressed the beverage button, knowing her husband would need a cup of chamomile before heading to bed.

  “Six. Another young girl.”

  “A hooker or a stripper this time?”

  “Stripper.”

  “At least this sicko's consistent. Three hussies paying their way through nursing school giving out hand jobs and three guys with enough money to blow on hand jobs. Just have every doctor, lawyer, accountant, and slut barricade themselves at home until Detective Bukowski and the San Diego Sheriff's Department can string the bastard up and drag him through the streets.” Jeff eyed the Our Lady of Fatima prayer card hanging by a magnet on the refrigerator door. Only his wife could get away with talking about hussies and sluts in front of the Virgin Mary and still be considered a sweetheart.

  “Yeah, well, they have to pay their way through nursing school somehow. Navy ain't taking every old Jack and Jill off the streets like back in our day.”

  “Oh, heavens, if they had the same recruiting standards back in our day, I’d have had to have met you giving out handies behind a dumpster instead of having poor, laid up, Seaman Bukowski coming into the clinic with his bum ankle.”

  Theirs was the love story every uninspired romance author dreamed up: Sailor gets hurt training and discovers he has a thing for foul-mouthed Italian girls when the corpsman comes walking in to wrap up his ankle. It takes a special talent to look good in camouflage utilities and Lisa had that talent. Somewhere, beneath everything Jersey and Italian about her, she had just enough Irish in her genes to make her fertile enough to get knocked up the first time they fucked in her barracks room after a fancy date to McP's.

  The microwave chimed and Lisa dropped a tea bag into the steaming mug before taking a seat beside Jeff at the table. The tea bag bobbed in the water as he pulled on the string, waiting patiently for the tea to cool.

  “You hear from Sam at all today?” Jeff asked.

  “No, I think he and Melissa had plans today.”

  “Well, at least you won't have to worry about those two having a dry wedding, the way her family is.”

  “Speaking of which, you need to talk to your son. I'm not saying they need to pop out a kid right away like we did with him, but with Emma out of the house next year, it'd be nice to have some grandkids come out and visit.”

  Jeff chuckled as he lifted the mug to his lips and slurped up more than he intended. The hot liquid burned at his esophagus before lighting a fire within his stomach. He grabbed at his chest and the edge of the table, trying to fight away the dizziness and tightening within his chest.

  “Oh, for fuck's sake, Jeff! Will you go to a doctor already?”

  “I don't need to see a doctor, Lisa,” Jeff squeezed out between his clenched teeth.

  “No, you never see the fucking doctor. How long are you going to keep doing this? It's been, what, four, five months you've been fighting with this? I'm sick of eating kale and fucking tofu because you're scared every doctor's got it out for you just because one shitty Navy doc messed up. I'm sorry you never got to see your dream of becoming a SEAL, but I'm not going to tell my grandkids stories about their late grandpop because he was too scared to go see a doctor.”

  Jeff tried to think of a comeback, some way to keep himself out of a doctor's office, but he was too busy holding himself up by the table's edge.

  For as long as he could remember, Jeff had wanted to become a Navy SEAL. He had spent his whole life surrounded by the Navy until his father retired as commander in charge of an aviation squadron Jeff's junior year of high school. On every base they had been stationed, Jeff would get as close as a dependent could to watch the SEALs training or watch the BUD/S candidates getting the shit kicked out of them when his dad pulled a tour at Naval Air Station North Island.

  Jeff shipped to basic training the day after high school and, after he saw Charlie Sheen's cheesy action-flick of Naval Special Warfare's elite fighting terrorists in Lebanon a week after graduating his A school (advanced training school), he dropped his BUD/S paperwork. The day after Hell Week started, Jeff found himself laying on a hospital bed in Balboa having his ankle getting wrapped up by none other than the gorgeous Hospital Nurse Lisa Marrazzo. It was supposed to be a quick surgery to fix the tear in his Achilles tendon caused by falling off the spider wall during a run of the obstacle course. The doc cut too de
ep and Seaman Bukowski was handed medical discharge paperwork. Luckily, Lisa was still covered medically when it came time to deliver Sam and Jeff taught himself how to walk so as to cover up the injury in time for the sheriff's academy.

  “You going to go see a doctor so we can finally go out to dinner for once without having to wonder if they put cheese on their soy burgers?”

  “No,” Jeff grunted, grabbing his chamomile and stomping off to bed.

  December

  Clairmont Mesa just off the 805 wasn't the most upscale neighborhood, but it wasn't one prone to having a body found in a dumpster behind a taco shop either; let alone two bodies.

  “They got any ID on these two yet?” Teddy asked.

  “No, they're letting the crime scene guys do their thing before we start digging for pocket litter,” Jeff replied to his partner. He took a sip from the coffee cup to warm up a tad. He had remembered a jacket this time. The weather was being as obnoxious as San Diego weather could be; rain, cold, and fog hung around until almost midday.

  “I got the patrol guys running all the cars in the parking lot.”

  “So, what's the deal?” Teddy said. “Taco shop guy's closing up for the night and finds these two while he's taking out the last load of garbage?” Teddy shot a thumb in the direction of the dumpster. A pool of clumpy, congealed blood mixed with kitchen grease beneath one of the dumpster's corners. The killer was usually pretty good about draining the bodies before he dumped them. Two bodies must have been too much work. Jeff hoped, somewhere in the bloody trash heap, they could find something resembling a clue.

  “Pretty much.”

  “How much you want to bet she works at the Cheetah's up the street and he's a big shot lawyer with a fast car and tiny dick? Any surveillance?”

  “Taco shops ain't working,” Jeff said. “We'll have to wait until morning to see if anybody else's works.”

  “Taco shops are getting 211'd every other night and they can't bother to have a working surveillance system. Who the fuck's running these joints?”

  “It's a taco shop, Teddy. It's not exactly like they have a security manager checking the thing every morning to make sure they didn't get held up the night prior. Somebody's got to have working surveillance around here and, the way the crime scene techs are working, we'll still be here when the furniture store and the bank across the street open up.”

  “Yeah, they didn't pull any punches on this one,” Teddy said, patting the side of the crime lab truck Jeff had been leaning against and stealing coffee from.

  “Look! Two homicide detectives on a homicide scene standing around with their thumbs up their asses while the sheriff's got his whole fist up my ass. I guess it's not a party unless everyone's getting fucked.”

  “Ah, shit,” Teddy said under his breath.

  There wasn't a thing in the world Assistant Sheriff Thompson wouldn't do to get another two stars on his shoulder, and he sure as hell wasn't going to get elected the next year with a serial killer on the loose.

  “Morning, Boss. Look, we're not even setting foot in the scene until the lab gets done turning over every rock and crumb inside the tape. As soon as patrol gets back with all the plates and their owners, we'll start digging on them. There's no video to review until the other businesses start opening up.” Jeff took a sip from his coffee cup so his mouth would be too busy to tell the assistant sheriff all the other things he wanted to.

  “Where's your sergeant and lieutenant at, while we're at it?” their boss asked.

  “Should be on their way, Sheriff,” Teddy answered, while Jeff busied himself with another sip of coffee.

  “This makes eight victims in case you all forgot how to count,” the assistant sheriff reminded them. “If your squad doesn't get this asshole, Christmas is getting fucking cancelled for your whole section. The sheriff's department has the lead on this case because our perp's been dumping the bodies all over the county, but so help me God, if we have to turn this over to the Fucking Bunch of Idiots (FBI), I'll have you all back in black and whites the next day.”

  “Sir,” Jeff said, finally having had enough of listening to the assistant sheriff's threats, “the guy's fucking smart and we've been following up every lead we can. Unfortunately, there's only so many of us with only so much time to spare. Just because this asshole's on the loose, husbands aren't going to stop shooting their wives, wives aren't going to stop stabbing their lazy-ass husbands, and the gangsters sure as fuck aren't going to stop smoking each other, so the case loads are stacking up, nut-job murderer or not.”

  “Listen here, Detective!” It was when the assistant sheriff stuck his finger in Jeff's face that caused Jeff's blood pressure to shoot through the roof. He didn't hear the ass chewing that came after it. He was on his knees a second later pulling at the tightness in his chest. By the time the world stopped spinning, he was already being loaded into the back of the ambulance.

  “Lisa? It's Teddy,” he said into the department issued flip phone. “It's about Jeff…”

  April

  “Adult Congenital Heart Disease,” Dr. Rosenthal said as he sat down behind his desk. Lisa squeezed Jeff's hand to remind him she was there.

  “Heart disease?” Jeff furled his brow, the confusion overwhelming him. “Doc, I've been watching what I eat for twenty years, exercising, and haven't touched a cigarette since the last time my dad whooped my ass. How the hell do I have heart disease at forty-six?”

  “Well, that's just it, Jeff. You were born with this. Since the day you were born, it's only been a matter of time before it was bound to surface. Regular check-ups can sometimes identify it early if there are heart murmurs.” Jeff could feel Lisa's “I told you so” glare on his face. “Even then, sometimes there are no warning signs. Stress at home, stress at work, physical stress, these can all trigger the symptoms.”

  “So what now?” Lisa interrupted.

  “Well, luckily Jeff has one of the least serious kinds of the disease and his heart hasn't deteriorated much. He has Aortic Valve Stenosis; a leaky heart valve,” Dr. Rosenthal explained before they could even ask.

  “What does that mean for me from here on out?” Jeff asked.

  “We need to get a catheter inside that ticker of yours. Now, there are two surgery options.”

  “I'm not doing any fucking surgery,” Jeff blurted out. He felt his blood pressure raising and the dizziness that came with it. Dr. Steinberg, one of the doctors who worked in the ER at Sharp Memorial with Lisa, had taught Jeff a series of breathing exercises to help out whenever he got too excited. In for a four count, hold for a four count, out for a four count. It was amazingly simple and always seemed to work.

  “Jeff, relax. Listen to what Dr. Rosenthal has to say. We haven't been driving all the way here so you can go back to being scared of doctors and telling them how this is all going to work,” his wife scolded him. They had been making the drive to Scripps Memorial in La Jolla because Lisa said they were the best.

  Lisa had finally had enough after Jeff lost it behind the taco shop. He was either going to go to the doctor and get fixed up or she was going to kill him herself. It didn't leave him much of a choice in the matter.

  “Jeff, I know you haven't had the best opinion of medicine and doctors since the incident in the Navy, but I assure you this isn't some government circus show. Medical procedures have come a long way since the early nineties. I'm even going to give you some options.”

  Jeff sighed as he realized he didn't have much of an option, especially with Lisa knowing the combination to the gun safe. “What're my options, Doc?”

  “Well, the end result is all the same, we get a catheter into your heart to stop that valve from leaking. It won't make you bulletproof. You'll need to get regular check-ups to make sure no murmurs have started back up and make sure you're in working order and I don't see you running anymore marathons.

  “The two options are how we get the catheter into your heart. The first way is to insert the catheter into one of your arte
ries through your arm, your leg, the groin, wherever, and then thread it up the artery to your heart. It's minimally invasive and you can be awake through the whole procedure.”

  “The last thing I want is to be awake while you're all sawing away at me,” Jeff said. Dr. Rosenthal ignored him.

  “The second way is to insert the catheter directly into the heart. We make a small incision between the ribs and go right in, no need to do some gruesome open heart surgery where we have to crack your sternum open. A quick cut, we're in, we're out, and we sew you up.”

  Jeff sat there for a moment. A few months ago he had been counting his calories and browsing for a new treadmill to put in the basement just to avoid having some quack touch him with a stethoscope. Now he was listening to one of those quacks talk about cutting his heart open and sticking tubes into it. In for a four count, hold for a four count, out for a four count.

  “What's the quickest and easiest way to get this done with?” Jeff asked after two breaths brought his heart rate back under control.

  “To be honest, the surgical option is the easiest. Like I said, we make a small cut, we're in, we're out, and you're on the road to recovery. The other way is less invasive, but we have to map out your arteries ahead of time, pumping dye into your veins, and even then it's still a process getting the catheter up to your heart.”

  “Yeah, the last thing I want is for you guys to be pumping me full of chemicals right before you start shoving plastic tubes into my heart.”

  “I guess it's settled then,” the doctor said. Jeff didn't want to say it, but he didn't have much of a choice at that point.

  “I guess that settles it then,” Lisa said for her husband. “When can we schedule it?”

  “We're looking at about six weeks for the pre-surgery and we should be able to have him in a week after that. Until then, keep the exercise light, don't let the boss stress you out, and keep eating right. Honestly, the whole vegan diet isn't really necessary, nor do I really recommend it to…”