Come Twilight

by Tyler Dilts

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” I said.

  She tried to play it off. “What?”

  “If I wanted to be thinking about my car, I would be.”

  With a shrug she let it go.

  On my computer I opened the template for a phone-records warrant. As I started filling in the specifics, though, I felt a rising queasiness in my stomach. I tried to push it back down, but it wouldn’t quit. When it reached the back of my throat, I leaned over and puked into my wastebasket.

  Maybe I’m really only good at one thing.

  “You want the meatball or the chicken Parm?” Patrick said, opening the bag from Modica’s, an Italian deli a few blocks from the station.

  It had been almost half an hour since I’d left my breakfast in the trash can, so I decided I’d eat. “Surprise me,” I said. He slid one of the sandwiches across the conference-room table to me.

  “You catch the Keith Richards interview on WTF yet?” Several months earlier, when I was bitching about an NPR pledge drive, he’d suggested a few podcasts to me, and, while I was reluctant at first, I’d since become an obsessive listener.

  “No,” I said as I unwrapped the chicken sandwich. The marinara sauce had leaked out from the inside and coated the edges of the bread. “Got any extra napkins?”

  Patrick reached into the bag and handed over half a dozen. “I love it when Maron goes all fanboy on the guest.”

  I took a bite of the sandwich and for a moment considered the possibility he was trying to loosen me up and build a rapport with me like I was a suspect. Walsh’s accusatory tone from the meeting in Ruiz’s was echoing in my head. Was Patrick setting me up for an interrogation?

  “You should check it out,” he said. “It’s good.” Then he bit off a big chunk of meatball sub and I watched him chew. After he swallowed, he sucked some iced tea through a straw and said, “You have any idea who wants to kill you?”

  I told him I didn’t, and he laid out what they knew so far. The bomb had been constructed out of an antipersonnel mine—like a claymore, he said, but a smaller version, made in South Africa. It wasn’t complicated, but the bomber clearly knew what he was doing. And, more alarmingly, had access to black-market military-grade hardware.

  “Why detonate it at the mechanic’s shop?” I asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Patrick said. “Maybe he figured they’d find the bomb and knew it would be harder to trace if he detonated it.”

  I thought about it. “Maybe he hadn’t planned to set it off while I was in the car. Could it have been a warning?”

  “Maybe. Walsh and I talked about that, too. We just don’t know yet.”

  “Do they have any idea how long it had been there?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Walsh thinks they might be able to narrow down a window with more analysis.”

  Patrick kept eating his sandwich as he spoke, taking small bites and chewing and swallowing in between sentences. I had lost my appetite.

  “He says they might be able to get something that will help identify the bomber, but we shouldn’t hold our breath.”

  “He actually say ‘don’t hold your breath’?”

  Patrick took another bite, and a glob of marinara plopped down onto the table. “Yeah, he actually did.” He wiped up the sauce with his finger and licked it clean.

  “What’s your take on him?” I asked.

  “He’s a complete asshole.” Patrick sucked some more tea through the straw. “He’s supposed to have a good squad, though. Ruiz asked for him personally.”

  “So how do we do this?” I asked. “I’ve never worked a bombing before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “Well, then, I won’t worry.”

  Patrick laughed, but I felt like a dick as soon as I said it. He was a good cop. I’d been working with him for more than long enough to know that. The only person I’d trust more than him to have my back was Jen. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Dude,” he said, examining me. “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Why?”

  “Because that crack was barely even passive-aggressive and you’re apologizing. You’re worse than that when there’s no more Splenda by the coffee machine.”

  “There’s a giant Costco-sized box right in the cupboard,” I said.

  “See?”

  He was right. I didn’t want to admit to anyone, least of all myself, that I was rattled. And I didn’t want to be. But I could feel a ball of anxiety roiling in my gut. I imagined it spinning and growing like a cartoon snowball on its way down a hill. It wasn’t that I hadn’t come face-to-face with the idea of my own death in the past. I had. Many times. When my hand was nearly severed, I came very close to bleeding to death, and in the year I spent recovering, hardly a day passed when I didn’t contemplate my own mortality. That was the darkest period of my life. Even darker than the time I spent mourning my wife. I learned what the muzzle of my gun tasted like and made a list of songs to play at my funeral. When I came back from that, though, I thought I’d lost the fear of death once and for all. I’ve been in a handful of potentially fatal situations since then. In none of them, nor in their aftermaths, had I felt anything shake loose.

  “So what do we do?” I asked Patrick.

  “We let Walsh and his crew do their job and we do ours. Let’s start digging through your cases and looking for suspects.”

  On the table was the two-thirds of the sandwich I’d left uneaten. I wished I’d had the other one. Meatballs save a lot better than chicken Parmesan does. Still, I went ahead and wrapped it up for later. I knew I’d be hungry again before long.

  “How you feeling?” Jen asked when we came back into the squad room.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You eat something?”

  “A bit.”

  I hadn’t told Patrick about throwing up earlier. He was right there with us, so I expected him to ask what she was talking about. Then I expected Jen to tell him. Then I expected them to laugh at me and turn my weak stomach into a running joke. When none of that happened, I was afraid the nausea was going to return.

  When Walsh had treated me like a suspect in Ruiz’s office that morning, it pissed me off. Still, though, that was better than what seemed to be going on here. If Patrick and Jen started treating me like a victim, I wouldn’t be able to take it.

  My arm and shoulder had been tight and stiff all morning. So instead of telling them my concerns like a grown man, I turned to my desk and started trying to stretch some of the ache away.

  “Why don’t we get started?” I said.

  I pulled my files going back two years and we started sorting them, giving the highest priority to open files and the closed cases for which I knew I’d be testifying in court in the near future. There were six, and five of those were gang related.

  Before we could start reviewing them, though, Patrick’s phone rang. He answered and listened for a few seconds. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s right here.” Whoever was on the other end talked some more, then Patrick said, “Okay, we’re on the way,” and ended the call.

  “On the way to where?” I asked.

  “Your place. They’re bringing the dogs.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PRIESTS AND PARAMEDICS

  For several years, I’d lived in the lower unit of a duplex on Roycroft that I moved into after my wife died in an automobile accident. I’d gotten very comfortable there. Only once had that comfort been shaken. A suspect in a case I’d been working found my house and tried to ambush me. He was involved in the murder of a homeless man who had been burned to death by three teenagers trying to score street cred. Untangling that mess had also brought me into contact with a gang lawyer who we suspected had been connected to the murder.

  “You’re quiet,” Patrick said, turning off of Seventh Street. “What are you thinking about?”

  The attorney, Benicio Guerra, was better known by his street name. “Benny War,” I said.

  “
Think he’d be involved in something like this?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not his style.” If he’d come for me, it would have been quiet. Maybe even looked like an accident. And I’d almost surely be dead.

  An LA County Sheriff’s SUV and matching patrol car were parked in front of my house. Patrick drove past them, made a three-point turn, and parked across the street. As we were getting out of the car, my phone rang. Julia.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “How are you doing? Think you’ll be able to make it tonight for round two of Downton Abbey?” she asked.

  I hadn’t even thought about that. Or about how to tell Julia what was going on. “I’m not sure yet.” I felt like I should say something else, but didn’t have any idea what it should be. “I’ll give you a call later, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Don’t work too hard.”

  “I won’t.” I ended the call and crossed the street.

  Patrick was on my drought-brown lawn with two bomb-squad deputies in tactical uniforms. Each had a German shepherd at his heel. Walsh wasn’t there. I was glad for that.

  Patrick introduced us. He’d met them the night before at the mechanic’s shop. The thick, dark-haired deputy who looked like an Olympic power lifter was named Kevin Farley, and the shorter, wiry one with the long scar that ran down from his temple to the corner of his mouth was Steven Gonzales. He was the senior deputy and did most of the talking while Kevin nodded and looked stalwart.

  “The outside’s clear,” Gonzales said. “But we still need to check inside the house and the garage. Could I get your keys?”

  I showed him which key went to which lock and handed them over. “Should we just wait here?”

  “Might want to wait across the street by your car,” Gonzales said. “Just in case.”

  We watched them go up onto the porch and work the key into the lock.

  “He was joking, right?” I asked Patrick.

  He shrugged his shoulders and we both headed back onto the asphalt.

  “Hope you didn’t leave anything embarrassing lying around.”

  “Like what?” I said. “Bondage gear?”

  “I was thinking of all your banjo stuff. But whatever floats your boat.”

  Twenty minutes later Gonzales gave us the all-clear and motioned us back across the street. “What about upstairs?” he asked me.

  “It’s vacant,” I said.

  “Can you call the landlord for us?”

  “Don’t need to. He’s got a Hide-A-Key in the backyard.”

  I led them around to the small backyard and picked up a fake rock from the planter along the back fence. “Here you go,” I said, handing it to Gonzales. He led Kevin and the dogs up the back stairs.

  “They got you showing the place to prospective renters?” Patrick asked me.

  “No,” I said. “Worse. The guy I let in was a contractor.”

  “Remodeling?”

  “I don’t know. I’m a little worried. The big thing in the neighborhood right now is to take these prewar two-story duplexes and turn them into single houses and sell them for a million and a half.”

  Patrick and Jen had both moved out of rentals in the last few years. Patrick bought a condo in Signal Hill and Jen, with the help of her parents, had lucked into a fantastic house in the Heights before the real-estate market had bounced back from the recession. I didn’t even want to think about moving, let alone that kind of major change.

  Only when Gonzales and company came back down the stairs did I realize we hadn’t taken shelter this time around. “It’s all good,” he said.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “We go to work on the bomb fragments and other evidence from the scene and report back to your friend here.” He tilted his head toward Patrick.

  I wondered if my take on Walsh was accurate. Maybe he was just hard assed. Ruiz could be the same way sometimes, but I knew he was good at his job and he always had our backs. “Where does your boss fit into this?”

  “Walsh? Nowhere, really. Unless we find something. Then he’ll be there to take the credit.”

  I was warming up to Deputy Gonzales. He and Kevin loaded up the dogs and drove off.

  Patrick went back to the cruiser across the street and got a big cardboard box out of the backseat.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Security,” he said. Patrick had been assigned to the computer-crimes detail before he’d joined the homicide squad. We all tried to stay caught up on the latest technology, but his professional geek background kept him well ahead of the rest of us. We went inside and he put the box down on the coffee table in my living room. The flaps weren’t taped, but they’d been tucked into each other to keep the top of the box from opening. He pulled them apart and took out a shrink-wrapped package. It was a webcam. There were several more inside. He handed one to me.

  “Open that,” he said.

  I tried to slit the plastic on the edge of the box with my fingernail while Patrick took out a folded sheet from a yellow legal pad. When he unfolded it, I saw it was a hand-drawn diagram of the floor plan of my apartment. It included the exterior as well, the front and back yards, side walkways, and detached garage. He studied it for a moment.

  “I had to draw this from memory,” he said. “I hope I got the angles right.”

  “You’re going to set those up in here?”

  “Yeah,” he said, taking the first camera out of its package and fiddling with it.

  “I’m not sure I want to have my entire personal life on camera.”

  He didn’t seem to be paying attention to me. “They won’t be looking at you.”

  “What will they be looking at?”

  He moved on to the next camera. “Doors and windows, mostly. They’ve got motion detectors, too.”

  As he worked, he lined them all up on the table in front of him. They were small, maybe three and a half or four inches tall and half as wide. I picked one up. It was heavier and more solid than I’d expected. A bulbous disk with a tiny dark eye mounted on a stubby shaft with a flat base on the bottom.

  “Put that back,” he said without looking at me.

  When he was done, there were six of them lined up like toy soldiers.

  Then he went through the boxes again and took out a power cord for each one. He placed one next to each camera, then referred to his diagram again.

  “Okay,” he said. “Your bedroom first.” He stood, picked up a camera in each hand, then started down the hallway toward the back of the apartment. Halfway there, he called over his shoulder, “Bring the cords.”

  I did. My bedroom is in the corner of the building, with a window on each exterior wall. By the time I caught up with him, he already had one of the blinds raised and was positioning one of the cameras on the windowsill. He adjusted it, then held his empty hand out to me. I handed him a power cord. He plugged one end into the base and the other into the wall socket next to the dresser.

  “We’ll need to move the bed.”

  I helped him pull it away from the wall so he could squeeze in between the headboard and the window. He repeated the process he’d just gone through. When he finished, he said, “Laundry room next.”

  As he headed back up the hall toward the living room, I started to slide the bed back into place, but then realized he’d probably need to adjust the camera again. I thought about patting myself on the back for my foresight, but I knew that would just make my chronic pain flare up.

  Patrick worked his way around the house. When he had all the webcams where he wanted them, he sat back down on the couch and opened his laptop. “What’s your Wi-Fi password?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He looked at me like a disappointed parent.

  “It’s in the spare bedroom.” The people who had lived there before me had used the room as a nursery and had painted a mural of the sky transitioning from the deep shade of the night sky into the bright blue of morning, with a cow jumping over a smili
ng moon on one side and grinning sun decked out in shades on the other. If I did have to leave, I thought, I’d miss that most of all.

  I took the sheet of paper onto which I’d copied the sixteen-digit mess of numerals and uppercase letters I’d copied off the back of the router into the living room and handed it to Patrick. The password-security lecture I’d expected didn’t happen, though, and he just looked at it and typed. After he worked for a few minutes connecting each of the cameras to the network, he got up, computer in hand, and went from room to room adjusting the angle and placement of each camera as he watched the image it sent to his screen. When he was satisfied and I thought we were finally finished, he said, “Okay, now outside.”

  “More?” I asked.

  He nodded matter of factly. “I don’t want any blind spots.”

  The cameras outside were different. Self-contained and battery powered. They’d only record when their motion detectors were triggered. He put one ten feet up in the tree by the curb that faced the front of the duplex, and another under the eaves of the garage that faced the back.

  We drank iced tea out of plastic bottles in the living room as he explained the whole setup to me. The inside units would record constantly. Because of storage-space limitations on the server they were wirelessly connected to, they’d be on a forty-eight-hour loop. We’d have to review them and manually save anything we thought we might want. He installed an app on my iPad and my phone that would let me monitor any one of the cameras in real time or access the recordings. I’d need to review everything from each camera anytime I came home, to be sure the bomber hadn’t planted anything new. He showed me how to fast-forward through each feed.

  “I have to do this before I come back here? All eight of them, every time?” I asked.

  “It’s the only way to be sure it’s safe,” he said. “I’ll be watching, too. With both of us looking, we won’t miss anything.”

  “What did you tell Ruiz?”

  “Just that I was going to put up a couple of cameras. He thought it was a good idea.”

  “Eight is ‘a couple’? Won’t that eat up a lot of resources?”