by Tyler Dilts
I asked him if he’d found anything else that might connect Avram to the car bomb.
“Not yet,” he said. “But we will. No doubt about it.”
After Patrick left, Lauren and I sat in the squad room. My plan had been to walk her through a few of my open cases, just to give her a stronger sense of the breadth and complexity of the homicide detail’s work. I’d worried a bit about starting at the top of the investigative food chain. Most patrol officers never become detectives, and most detectives never work homicide. But I knew she was hungry for it. Our conversation about the Denkins case, and all the time I’d spent with her, proved to me that she had not only the desire but also the perceptiveness and intelligence required. When I talked to her about it, she had seemed interested and enthusiastic. And besides, most cops never went to law school.
It surprised me, even though it shouldn’t have, how much progress I was making with her going over the cases. I thought I’d be doing little more than explaining things to her, but she fired back a question or two for every explanation I offered her. And they were good questions, smart ones, that even helped me reframe my perceptions and assumptions on a few cases. On one, a domestic murder in which a battered wife had killed her husband, Lauren studied the half dozen family photos we’d included of the couple, then even more images of the victim and the crime scene. “Look at that watch he’s wearing,” she said. “It’s got to be a Rolex or something. It’s in every one of these.” She pointed at the family pictures. “But he’s not wearing it in the crime-scene shots. She take it off him before we got there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But that was a good catch.”
She grinned.
We kept on like that, case after case, until lunchtime. Jen was at her desk, so I asked her if she wanted to eat with us.
“Can’t,” she said. “Have to get this finished.” She went back to work on the warrant-request template on her computer screen.
Because we weren’t pressed for time, I took Lauren to Enrique’s, which was literally on the other side of town. Most days, it wasn’t a viable option because it just took too long to get there, wait for a table, eat, and get back, but I decided to milk the flexibility we were enjoying for all it was worth.
Of course we took my new car.
As I drove, she asked, “Why are you so quiet?”
“What?” I pretended like I didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You were hoping with the case coming together and you not being in danger anymore, Jen would come around. Let you off the hook.”
“She didn’t even ask us to bring her something back. If somebody’s working through lunch, we always bring something back.”
“Bring something for her anyway,” she said.
“I don’t think that will fix anything.”
“Sometimes things don’t get fixed. But who doesn’t like free tacos?”
When we got back to the squad room, though, Jen wasn’t there anymore. Dave told us she was out running something down for Patrick.
I gave him the take-out container with the Number Nine Taco Trio combination inside.
“Enrique’s?” he said.
I nodded.
“Thanks, man. I’m starving.”
It felt weird to be home.
Before I went inside, I still followed the ritual of sitting out in the car and checking the video recordings on the iPad. I hadn’t planned on it or even thought about doing it. I’d been too distracted by my shiny new car to think about it.
There was nothing unusual on the camera footage, but I decided that if I kept checking it, I was eventually going to have to name the possum in the backyard.
I’m not sure what I expected to feel. Before the abduction and kidnapping, I’d felt like a prisoner, constricted and captive, anxious for independence. Since the hospital, though, I hadn’t minded the constant presence of others. I thought I had been looking forward to a night of freedom and independence, to having time to do what I wanted without having to consider anyone else.
In the kitchen, I opened the freezer and searched for something to have for dinner. I should have stopped on the way home. None of the frozen meals looked appealing. Well, they never really looked appealing, but now they weren’t even looking tolerable. I found a can of chili in the cupboard, emptied it into a bowl, and put it in the microwave. There were spots of mold on the bread, so I dumped it in the trash and took the chili into the living room to watch Jeopardy!
Half an hour later, feeling pleased with myself for knowing that the first author to have both fiction and nonfiction New York Times number-one bestsellers was John Steinbeck—the mention of his poodle made it too easy—I turned off the TV and practiced banjo for a while. Mostly just scales and finger rolls. It felt like I was starting from scratch. I knew what I wanted to do, but my hands wouldn’t cooperate. I’d fallen into a pattern of practicing every day for a few weeks and starting to feel a bit of progress, then not playing at all for a month or two, only to pick up the banjo again to find that I felt even more awkward and incompetent than I had at the beginning of the last cycle.
The heat of the day had broken when I locked up and set out on a long walk, my first in weeks. I took Appian Way past Colorado Lagoon and cut over on Paoli Way to get closer to the water of Marine Stadium, then did a big loop around Belmont Shore and came back home. Almost two hours.
It felt good to walk again, but I didn’t feel the sense of liberation and freedom I’d been hoping for. Instead, when I got home I felt a pang of loneliness. It wasn’t something I was used to and I didn’t know how to process it. I thought about calling Julia. She would have come if I’d asked her. But I didn’t want to do that. In an odd way, it seemed to me like picking up the phone would have been a capitulation, a way of giving in and admitting to a kind of weakness that I’d never really had a problem with before.
No, I told myself, it was just the concussion. The injury had left me feeling vulnerable and off center. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t the kind of guy who got lonely.
There were only a few episodes of I Was There Too that I hadn’t heard yet. Soon I’d be relegated to new episodes like everybody else. That was my biggest complaint about podcasts. I’d find one I liked, binge-listen to all the old episodes, and then when I was completely hooked, I’d be left to the whims of lazy podcasters who somehow think an hour every two weeks or so is an acceptable level of output.
I thought about fast-forwarding through the theme song so it wouldn’t be stuck in my head all night, but then I realized that just thinking about skipping it had already planted the earworm.
It’s been said you can’t handle the truth.
But that ain’t so.
How do I know?
I was there too.
In bed, trying to sleep, I listened to Dwier Brown talking about playing Costner’s dad in Field of Dreams.
I had almost nodded off when I heard a noise in the backyard. Sitting up, I reached for my gun, which I’d left on the nightstand instead of in the safe on the closet shelf, and got up.
Past the edge of the window shade, I could see a sliver of the yard. I nudged it with a fingertip to get a better view.
The yard was dark and filled with shadows.
Nothing moved.
I left my bedroom, went through the hall and kitchen and into the laundry room. Flipping the light switch next to the back door, I watched as the hundred-watt bulb illuminated everything from the back porch to the alley fence.
It didn’t look like there was anything outside that shouldn’t have been there, so I made sure the door was deadbolted and went back into the kitchen. Out of habit I reached up on top of the refrigerator for the bottle of Grey Goose, forgetting it hadn’t been there for months.
When I went back to bed, I took the iPad with me, opened the video-surveillance app, and propped it up on the nightstand. The live feed of the backyard filled the room with a soft gray glow.
The temperature peaked in
the midnineties, but it had dropped a few degrees by the time I got to Julia’s, so we decided to leave my Legacy there and walk to Buskerfest. She’d gone to the music festival for the first time the same week she moved downtown and hadn’t missed one since. She’d even showed me a few photos she’d taken that year in the portfolio on her website.
They closed off a block-long stretch of First Street between Linden and Elm, just a few blocks away from the gallery where Julia’s show had been, and set up a makeshift multistage performance venue by parking large flatbed trucks every fifty yards or so for the musicians to use as stages. I’d been before, but I wasn’t a regular. Not because I didn’t enjoy myself, but because I never liked being an off-duty cop in a crowd of people drinking and partying. It’s way too easy to wind up back on duty.
Everything was supposed to get rolling at five and last until eleven or so. We could hear the first band playing as we turned the corner from Broadway onto Elm. There were three LBPD patrol cars parked on the other side of the street and I wondered how many uniforms were assigned to the event. As we got closer and the music grew louder, I could see that the crowd was still sparse. It never got too packed until around sundown. As we neared First, I slowed a bit and then stopped. I felt a twinge in my stomach.
“What is it?” Julia asked.
“Just a few butterflies,” I said. “This is my first time in a crowd since the thing.”
She took my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Just a little surprised. I didn’t expect to feel weird.”
“We don’t have to go,” she said.
“No, I want to. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” she said.
We walked around the corner and I was glad we had gotten there early. The band was on the first stage at the west end of the block, and although they were already into their set, the crowd hadn’t yet materialized. There were a few people in front of the stage, including a contingent of fans who’d clearly come to hear this particular band, Tall Walls, and were enthusiastically bopping up and down with the power-pop beat. The music didn’t really grab me until the two-woman horn section joined in and the trumpet and saxophone added another layer to the sound.
We listened for a few more minutes, then decided to check out the rest of the street before it got too crowded. As we walked behind the beer stand, we bumped into Stan Burke. He was in uniform and speaking into the radio mic attached to his shoulder.
When he finished, he said, “Danny. Good to see you out and about. How’s the investigation going?” He was referring to the attempt on my life rather than the Denkins murder, although those wound up being the same case.
“Looks like we’ve got things cleared up.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. I hadn’t told him much about it when we ate lunch together at the Potholder, but he knew me well enough to have seen how much it had been rattling me.
I introduced him to Julia. He hadn’t seen me with a woman since Megan died, so I expected some kind of joke or double entendre, but none came. Instead he chatted with her a bit and ended by saying, “Danny’s a good guy.” His earnestness and sincerity could have only meant one thing. He was still worried about me.
“I know,” Julia said, taking my hand.
An hour later, the crowd had quadrupled, and it was still early in the lineup. There was still room in front of the center stage, though, where a scruffy banjo player in a dark T-shirt, baseball cap, and thick-framed glasses had just started a set with his bandmates. They were called Rosie Harlow & the Tall Tale Boys and had a folky alt-bluegrass sound that I really liked.
I wasn’t their only fan. In the area directly in front of the stage, a fiftyish blonde woman in a gauzy white blouse and long gray skirt was dancing oddly out of time with the music. She was clearly in an altered mental state of some kind. Her cheek had some bruising, and a small scab hung just below her eye. The other people in the crowd were giving her space, and, while she didn’t look particularly joyful or even happy, it was clear the music was having a positive effect on her. I looked over at Julia, who was watching her, too, with a shade of concern in her expression. The woman wasn’t really bothering anyone, though, and no one seemed to have a problem with her.
Until the drunk asshole behind me started talking.
“What’s wrong with her?” I heard him ask quietly. He didn’t get an answer, so after a few moments he raised his voice and directed it at the dancing woman. “Get out of there,” he said. “You’re ruining it!”
She seemed oblivious to him. But he kept it up. I turned to look at him. Trucker hat, sunglasses, mustache, T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and, of course, a beer in his hand. It clearly wasn’t his first of the evening. He was as oblivious to my dirty look as the woman was to his voice.
I glanced to my right again as he moved past me on the left toward the stage. When I turned, he was a few feet in front of the woman. He moved toward her, his arms outstretched, as if he were trying to herd a sheep.
The nearest uniforms were at the back of the crowd and I couldn’t tell if they were aware of what was going on.
For the first time since I’d noticed her, the woman’s eyes seemed to connect with the world around her, and when she looked at him they filled with fear. He took another step forward and this time actually nudged her toward the side of the stage.
I moved, quickly closing the fifteen feet between us, and slid in between them, facing the asshole. His eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses of his glasses, but his posture straightened and his chest expanded and I wanted desperately for him to escalate the situation with a swing or a shove or anything else that would give me license to attack. I knew I should say something to calm him down and back him off, but I didn’t. I met his threatening posture with my own and tried to will him to attack.
We eyeballed each other.
I should have badged him, de-escalated the situation.
I didn’t.
His neck twitched and his head tilted a few degrees.
Something burned behind my eyes.
Everything slowed down.
He dropped his beer and lifted his hand to shove me.
I saw it coming and twisted my torso so his palm only brushed across my chest. Without thinking, I continued the motion and drove my right elbow hard into his jaw. The impact snapped his head sideways. I put my left hand on his shoulder and pushed him in the direction of his own momentum to spin him around.
With one small step I was behind him and used my shin to pop his knee out from under his hips. Then I pushed him face-first into the puddle of beer on the ground. I planted my knee in the small of his back, yanked his arm up hard, then twisted it back down while I reached for the spot on my hip where for years I’d carried my handcuffs while I was in uniform.
There was nothing there.
He kept struggling and trying to pull his arm free.
I put more weight on my knee and began torquing his wrist up between his shoulder blades.
But before I could break anything, two patrol officers were behind me.
“We got this, Detective,” one of them said, grasping my triceps and tugging me back.
I stood up and backed off, trying to catch my breath, feeling like I’d been somewhere else for the last minute.
Before I was fully aware of what was happening, Julia was next to me, asking if I was all right, and the two cops had the drunk cuffed and on his feet and were leading him away from the empty hole I’d created in the crowd.
Still breathing heavily and shaking from the adrenaline, I looked around to find the woman he’d been harassing. She was behind me, huddled with a few others. A much younger woman who was comforting her nodded at me.
“Where’s Stan?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Julia said. She put her hands on my arms and looked me squarely in the eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I tried to look over my shoulder, but she put her hand gently on the side of my face to keep my attention focuse
d on her. “Is that woman all right?” I asked.
She nodded. “She’s with some friends. They’re taking care of her.”
“Good,” I said. “Good.”
As we walked toward the squad cars on Elm, I noticed something I hadn’t seen earlier. Someone had strung a cord from one rooftop all the way across the street to a second on the other side. Hanging from it were three-foot-tall blue and black letters that silhouetted the word “Buskerfest” against the last of the sunset fading behind the Long Beach skyline.
When we got back to Julia’s place, she opened the door and we went inside. It smelled like flowers. There was a vase of roses and lilies on the table that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Probably because the air conditioning had been on and I was inside just long enough for Julia to pick up her bag and walk back out with me.
“Those flowers smell nice,” I said.
She put her hand on my cheek and said, “Thank you.”
I was still amped up from the altercation and she wasn’t buying my attempt at casual conversation.
“What happened back there?” she asked.
“You saw the same thing I did. That asshole was harassing that lady. As soon as he touched her it was battery, so I had to do something.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “What happened to you?”
“He assaulted me. I defended myself.”
The tenderness in her face slipped away and was replaced by something firmer. “Do you really believe that’s all there was to it?”
