by Tyler Dilts
“Yes,” I said, almost buying the lie myself.
She sighed softly and looked away from me. “Danny,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
We stood there.
When she finally looked at me and spoke again, she said, “Are you okay to get yourself home?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WINNING STREAK
When the first swallow of Glenlivet hit my stomach and the alcoholic warmth began to spread in waves through my body, I thought, for just a moment, that I might be able to forget.
An hour earlier, I’d sat in my new car in Julia’s parking garage, trying to figure out how the evening had gone so wrong. Her sending me home was an even bigger surprise to me than the altercation at Buskerfest. We’d planned on spending the night together and going out to breakfast in the morning, but there I was, alone and confused, with no idea of where to go or what to do.
There was no food in my house, so I needed to shop. I decided to go to the fancy Ralphs at Marina Pacifica even though it was out of the way. Because it was bigger and had a much better selection of fresh stuff in the deli and bakery. Not because of its expansive and well-stocked liquor section. But since I was there anyway, why not grab some Grey Goose?
I was headed to check out, a turkey-pesto sandwich, three frozen entrees, and a fifth of vodka in my basket, when I spotted the bottle on the shelf across the aisle from the craft-beer cooler. It was a surprise to see it there. Single-malt scotch in a grocery store? The location surely had something to do with it. The store was just across from Naples Island, the most exclusive part of Long Beach. Lots of rich people shopped there. It was the only market I’d ever visited multiple times without once finding a shopping cart with a bad wheel. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
The Marina Pacifica might not have been on my way home, but once I was there, Bill Denkins’s apartment was. I parked across the street from his building, not far from where I’d seen my Camry for the last time before the bomb totaled it. It was getting late, but still I got out, crossed Belmont Avenue, and tried the gate at the side of the building that led to the units in the back. The latch wouldn’t open. The mechanism was designed to lock automatically, though I’d noticed on a previous visit that it didn’t always work. But tonight it did.
From where I stood, three steps up from the sidewalk, I could see the concrete porch that Bill’s unit shared with the upstairs neighbor’s. If I stepped to the left and leaned, I could just get an angle on his front door. It looked dark.
I took a shot and walked back down to the sidewalk, then looped onto Second Street and around the building Kurt Acker managed. The gate on the alley was open. I went in. Above the garage, the lights were on in Harold Craig’s studio. There was only darkness behind the front window of the apartment that had belonged to Kobe.
There was no light on in Bill’s place, either.
I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to visit. What could I have possibly expected to find?
As soon as I’d spotted the bottle of single malt on the shelf at the supermarket, Bill had wedged himself back into my mind. I thought of him sitting in his living room on a night like any other and hearing a knock on the door. His son-in-law and an associate. Had Bill known Novak? I thought about it. Their paths might have crossed with Joe’s restaurant business. If I was still doing the interrogation, I’d make a point of trying to find out.
Maybe Patrick knew. I didn’t know how far he’d progressed on the investigation, how many of the minor details he’d been able to sort out. How annoyed, I wondered, would Patrick be if I asked him about it tomorrow? It didn’t matter. I decided I’d try to find out whether he liked it or not.
I stepped up onto Bill’s porch and put my hand on the door. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. What I was apologizing for, I didn’t fully understand. Letting the case go? Not following through? That I wasn’t the one who’d be twisting the truth out of Joe on Monday morning? Each of those was more absurd than the last. Bill had never known me, had no investment in me closing his case. The only thing that mattered was that it was closed, and Patrick was doing at least as good a job as I would have. Maybe better. The apology must not have been for Bill, I thought. But before I could pursue the idea any further, I heard the rattle of someone unlocking the front gate and heels clacking on the walkway. It was a woman. As she got closer, I recognized her as the tenant who lived directly above Bill. She didn’t recognize me, though, and stopped ten feet away, clutching her purse tightly to her side.
“Hello, Ms. Clare,” I said, pulling the badge holder from my pocket and flipping it open for her to see. “I’m Danny Beckett. Long Beach PD. You spoke to my partner a few weeks ago.”
As I talked, the tension drained from her posture and she stood up a little bit taller. “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”
I smiled at her but didn’t say anything.
“Can I help you with something?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I was just driving past and I wanted to stop.”
By that time she was on the porch, too, and unlocking the door that led upstairs to her unit. “Okay.” She didn’t do a very good job of pretending to understand what I was talking about. “Do you know what happened yet?”
I nodded.
“But I’m sure you can’t say anything about it, right?”
I nodded again. “No, not really. We do know that there’s nothing for anybody else in the neighborhood to worry about, though.”
“How do you know that?”
I thought about what I might be able to tell her that wasn’t confidential. “There was a very specific motive that doesn’t really apply to anyone else.”
She thought about it and seemed to relax. “That’s good.”
“It is,” I said. I smiled again and started for the gate.
I was already in my car and turning right onto Broadway when I thought about Harold upstairs, alone and anxious in his tiny studio, and it occurred to me that I should have checked in with him while I was there. A small twinge fluttered in my gut and I felt guilty. I considered turning around and going back but talked myself out of it. Maybe I didn’t feel guilty enough.
At home I dropped a few ice cubes in a short glass and poured Glenlivet over them. I’d never really been a scotch drinker, but Bill Denkins and his last night were still on my mind. Very few of the crimes we investigate involve people who expected to die, who had some reason to worry or to suspect what was coming. What had Bill known? Did he trust Joe? Was that enough for him to be comfortable drinking with Novak? Did he have any suspicions about either of them that night? Or did he go with no warning at all? A few pleasant drinks and then lights out? Novak didn’t seem like the type to signal his intentions.
No, I thought, he wouldn’t warn you off or even attempt it. He’d just come at you. If he put a bomb in your car, you’d be in the driver’s seat when it went off.
The ice hadn’t melted very much, so I poured another glass. When that one was gone, so were the cubes, so I started drinking it straight. It wasn’t until I tried texting Julia that I realized how much my tolerance for alcohol had diminished since I’d stopped drinking vodka every day. Or maybe scotch just hit me harder.
My thumbs felt twice as big as they normally did and I was having difficulty hitting the right keys on my iPhone. sre tiu okya? I wrote. Eventually I was able to correct it to Are you okay? and hit “Send.”
I hadn’t been that drunk in a long time. When I’d poured the first glass I hadn’t intended to wind up where I was. The alcohol wasn’t providing any escape or relief, it was only pulling me deeper into the tangle of emotions I’d been trying not to acknowledge for weeks. A deep sense of despair filled me to the point that I could no longer contain it. I thought of Bill. And of the victim before him and before and before. So much death. All the way back to Megan and, eventually, to my father.
A therapist once told me she suspected I’d become a homicide detective in order to confront the loss I�
�d felt since I was a child. Losing a parent to violence at such an early age wounds you, she said. Investigating murder was my way of facing it head-on, of trying to come to terms with the inevitability we all face and trying to heal. But had I healed? I didn’t know the answer to that question. Was I still just that open, bleeding wound or had I become nothing more than a mass of hardened scar tissue?
I tipped the bottle one more time, swearing it would be the last of the long night, then raised the glass to all my dead.
Sunday morning I felt like shit. It was hard to tell where the physical hangover ended and the emotional one began. I couldn’t remember going to bed, but that’s where I woke up. Somehow I’d even managed to change into sweatshorts and a T-shirt. The clock on the nightstand told me it was almost ten thirty. I tried to remember the last time I had slept so late, but my memory failed me.
Julia had texted me back three hours earlier. I’m okay. Worried about you. We should talk. Dinner?
We should talk. What did that mean? How badly had I screwed things up last night?
The asshole who was harassing the impaired woman had been a kind of opportunity for me. Not a good or positive one, but an opportunity nonetheless. He’d given me the chance to unleash the anger I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying since the bombing. He’d given me the chance to feel powerful in the face of the utter impotence I’d been experiencing but refused to acknowledge. He’d given me the chance to explode.
I’d been lucky. In different circumstances it could have been far worse. Because, truthfully, I’d wanted to hurt him much more than I actually had. I’d wanted to grind his face into a smear on the asphalt. But what would have happened without a convenient villain to punish? Where would my rage have gone? Who would it have hurt?
That’s what really worried me. How much of that had Julia been able to see? I had no idea what she might be thinking or what she wanted to talk about. Maybe she’d seen who I really was. And maybe that was all she wanted to see of me.
I found Patrick in the squad room. An hour earlier, I’d called and asked if I could buy him lunch. It didn’t surprise me at all to discover he was working. If I had an interrogation on a Monday that a major case hinged on, I’d be at my desk all day Sunday, too. On the way downtown I stopped at Modica’s and picked up sandwiches—a meatball and a chicken Parm. When I asked him which one he wanted, he chose the meatball. I should have known.
“I’ve been thinking about Novak,” I said after swallowing my first bite.
“What about him?” Patrick asked.
“He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who gives warnings.”
He sucked some iced tea through the straw in his cup. “I don’t get what you mean.”
“Well, are we still operating under the theory that the bomb in my car was a warning?”
“Not necessarily,” he said. “You weren’t in your car again after that morning at the crime scene. It could just as easily have been a missed opportunity and he detonated the bomb because he figured it would be found and a lot easier to trace if it hadn’t gone off.”
That was a good point. But it wasn’t enough. “What about my abduction?”
He raised his eyebrows and wiped some marinara from his chin.
“Why even grab me? Why not just put a bullet in the back of my head right there in the kitchen? Doesn’t that seem more like his style?”
Patrick tossed the idea around for a few seconds. “Yeah, but I’m not convinced. Maybe he tried to warn you off because there was too much heat from the bombing. Figured it was safer that way. And none of the Novak family has ever killed a cop. That’s a whole different game.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. “I’m still betting on Avram.”
His logic made sense, but it didn’t ease my suspicion that there was more to the attempt on my life than we were seeing—though I didn’t have anything other than my hunch to back up the feeling.
“Since you’re here,” he said, “would you mind walking me through Denkins’s file one more time?”
We spent more than an hour reviewing the work I’d done on the case before it had been handed off to him. When we’d gone over everything and he’d asked me all the questions he could think of, he said, “So how’s the new car?”
“It’s okay.”
“Just okay? Lauren said you were gaga over it. I’m just about done here. Why don’t you show it to me? Maybe take a spin.”
“It’s just a car,” I said.
At home, I showered and got ready for dinner with Julia, all the while worrying about what she wanted to talk about. I figured this had to be it. She’d seen the real me at Buskerfest. Now she was going to end it. What else could she have meant by We should talk?
You’re just being foolish, I told myself. She was a social worker. She led support groups for veterans from Iraq. She’d get it. I’d just be honest and open and ask for her understanding and forgiveness. Besides, there was more to her message. Worried about you, she’d written. I was jumping to conclusions. It would be all right.
But when I stood on the porch, my hand was shaking so much it took three tries to get the key into the deadbolt.
I texted her. Had to meet with Patrick about the case. Won’t be able to make dinner. Tomorrow? I read it twice to be sure I hadn’t actually lied, then hit “Send.”
Back inside, there was still a third of the bottle of Glenlivet on the coffee table. I went into the kitchen for the Grey Goose instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
ASHES ON YOUR EYES
When Joseph Polson came into the squad room on Monday morning, he seemed lighthearted and even happy. He’d shaved off his soul patch. Patrick had been monitoring his phone. There had been no unexpected calls and no indication he’d had contact with anyone who might have had information about Avram’s arrest.
“Detective Beckett,” he said to me. “I’m so sorry to hear about your injury. I hope you’re all right.”
“I am, thank you. I’m sorry we had to reassign your case. I know Detective Glenn is doing a very thorough job.”
“He seems very professional,” Joe said. He realized too late that I might take it to mean he thought I hadn’t been. “I didn’t mean that you—”
“It’s okay,” I said with a friendly chuckle. “I didn’t think you were implying anything. How’s Lucinda holding up?”
“She’s doing a bit better. But it’s still hard, you know.”
“I do,” I said. “Detective Glenn is on the way. He had something he needed to follow up on, but he should be here any minute. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
“No, thank you.”
I led him up the hall to the interview room. “Go ahead and have a seat. It’ll just be a minute or two.”
Just down the hall and around the corner was the door to the observation room. I opened the door and found Patrick, Jen, and Lauren inside watching Joe on the monitor.
We assumed Lucinda would have told him about her interview—how she’d been led into the interview room only to be retrieved by Jen and taken to the much more relaxing conference room. On the monitor, Joe was looking around at the room. He didn’t look nervous, not yet, but he seemed curious about why he was in the box when his wife had been in the bigger room with a window and much more comfortable furniture.
“How’d it go?” Patrick asked me.
“Just like you planned,” I said. When he’d asked me earlier to be the one to greet Joe, I was hesitant. I didn’t want to cross any lines that would make Ruiz unhappy. Patrick told me it needed to be me because Joe had to see that I’d been out of commission and that I was uninvolved with the case at this point. We didn’t know how much he knew about what happened to me, but on the chance that he knew everything, Patrick wanted him to think that the abduction had worked, that I’d been effectively removed from the case, that I had, in fact, “stayed away from her” as I’d been told to do. I argued that it didn’t matter because Jen went right ahead and interviewed Lucinda anyway, b
ut it was Patrick’s case now, so I followed his direction.
“How long are you going to make him wait?”
“For a while yet. Let him stew.” He told Jen and Lauren and me that we could go back to work and he’d let us know when he was going to start.
Thirty-five minutes later we were all back in the observation room and Patrick went in to join Joe.
For more than an hour Patrick threw softballs at Joe, taking his time, building a rapport. It looked and sounded a lot like Jen’s interview with Lucinda and took a similar line. Everything seemed to be focused on his father-in-law, but bit by bit, Joe was getting closer and closer to talking about himself. It was so gradual that when Patrick started to drop the hammer we wouldn’t have noticed it if we hadn’t known what we were watching for.
“Just a few more questions and then we can wrap it up,” Patrick said.
Joe had been calm and comfortable, but when Patrick said that, there was a hint of relief in Joe’s eyes.
Patrick thumbed through his notes as if he wanted to make sure they’d covered everything. “And when was the last time you saw Bill again?”
“The day before he died.”
“So that was Wednesday. You stopped by his apartment and hung out and had a drink, right?”
“Yes.”
“Special occasion?”
“No. I was just in the neighborhood.”
“You had the Glenlivet? Man, I love that stuff.”
“Bill did, too,” Joe said.
Patrick jotted something down on the yellow pad, then consulted his notes again. “Okay, so that’s—wait a second. You said Wednesday, the day before?”
“Yes,” Joe said. “That’s right.”
“Not the day of?”
Joe shook his head.
Patrick went back to his notes and dug through them again, a puzzled look on his face. “You’re sure about the day?”
Joe said, “Yes.”
Patrick tapped the point of his pen on the pad. “This is weird. There’s this sales record from BevMo? You didn’t buy the bottle of Glenlivet until Thursday morning.”
