Liquid Smoke (Noah Braddock)

by Jeff Shelby

  Keene had made a point of mentioning Carolina at the airport. He wanted me to know he was watching me. She was so surprised to see me. Keene didn’t strike me as the type to tease. “Noah,” Carter said. “What’s going on? You’re freaking us out.” The room hollowed out again. My stomach dropped. Keene wasn’t the type to tease. You should’ve seen her.

  He knew every move I was making. Every place I’d been. Every person I’d talked to.

  He’d used Carolina’s name. He hadn’t used Liz’s. But he knew.

  FORTY-NINE

  “Wellton!” I screamed into the phone as Carter and I flew down the freeway in his car. We’d left Miranda with my mother. “Tell me you know where she is.”

  I’d called her home and her cell and the station. She was nowhere to be found. Wellton was my last shot.

  “Braddock?” he said, confused. “What the hell—”

  “Liz! Is she with you?”

  “No, man. Haven’t seen her since this afternoon. She said—” “Get someone to her house! Now!”

  “What’s going on?” he said, his tone sharper now, on alert.

  “Just do it! Please.”

  “I’m on it,” he said and clicked off.

  I clutched the phone, feeling like it could shatter against the bones in my hand.

  “Come on, come on,” I said, rocking back and forth in the passenger seat.

  We were halfway over the bridge now, and Carter was doing ninety.

  “She can handle herself, Noah,” he said, laying on the horn as we came up on the bumper of a truck. The truck moved over quickly, and Carter accelerated. “She’s a cop.”

  “Why didn’t she answer?” I asked. “Why? Fuck!”

  We came to the bottom of the bridge, and he swung the huge car to the right, the rear fishtailing behind us.

  “Your mom was at the store,” he said, not sounding confident. “Maybe she’s out.”

  His argument was rational. She could have been out anywhere without her phone. A five-minute trip to the store or the beach.

  But it didn’t feel right.

  He hit the brakes, and I was out of the car before it stopped in front of her place, tumbling to the wet street, the rain stinging my face. I jumped up and ran to the house.

  No lights.

  I hit her door the same way I’d hit Carolina’s and pain radiated through my shoulder. Liz’s much heavier door fought me a little more, but landed on the floor with a thud, and I stumbled in on top of it.

  I stood still for a moment. The room was black and quiet. All I could hear was Carter’s and my breathing and the rain spanking the pavement outside.

  “Liz?” I yelled.

  Nothing.

  “I got upstairs,” Carter said, moving past me, his gun up and ready. “You get the kitchen?”

  I took a deep breath, bent my knees, and stepped quickly from the living room into the kitchen. I rotated my gun through the room. Dishes in the sink. A napkin on the table. Lightning flashed outside the window.

  No one.

  I stood up and took another deep breath, trying to gain control. Maybe Keene had just played me, messed with my head. Trying to show me he was in control. He’d gotten in my head at the airport. He’d seen it, and now he was seeing what he could do to me.

  I walked out of the kitchen and Carter was at the top of the stairs. He took one step down, his entire body lethargic and heavy. When I saw the expression on his face, an expression I’d never seen before—disbelief, confusion—I knew.

  FIFTY

  She was on the bed and, in the dark, appeared to be sleeping. I moved closer and felt my gun slip out of my hand and fall to the floor.

  Her eyes were open and her arms outstretched, like she’d been reaching for something. A deep, red circle on her chest half a foot in diameter had stained the T-shirt she was wearing and bled into the sheet.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and touched her hand. It was still warm, and I laced my fingers with hers, squeezing hard, as though I could transfer my life to hers.

  But I knew that I couldn’t.

  I heard sirens in the distance and shouts downstairs, but they seemed further away.

  I reached out and covered her eyes, gently pushing her lids down.

  The tears fell off my face onto hers, and in the murky, rainy moonlight, it looked like it was Liz who was crying rather than me.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Commotion.

  People were coming and going. Carter sat next to me on the sofa in Liz’s living room. I was vaguely aware of all this, yet completely removed from it. I wasn’t numb; I could feel a dull pain in my stomach that pulsed with each breath. It was more like I was trying to wake up and couldn’t clear my head.

  Wellton was standing in front of me. “Did you hear me?”

  I looked up. “What?”

  His eyes were blazing in the dark room. “I asked when you last spoke to her.”

  “Oh. I … um … this morning. I was here. Then I left.” “Where’d you go?” he asked.

  I’d walked out of the house. Told her I’d do the right thing. That I wouldn’t let her down.

  “Where did you go?” Wellton repeated, his voice seared with anger.

  “I … home, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Easy,” Carter said.

  Wellton pointed at Carter. “Shut the hell up. My partner is dead, and I want to know why.”

  Carter stood and started yelling at him, but his words faded in the air.

  I’d told her I wouldn’t let her down.

  But I had.

  Why had I even left her? Why hadn’t I seen it?

  The ache in my stomach pulsed like a strobe. My arms and legs felt light, like they were attached but I couldn’t control them.

  Two officers grabbed Carter and pulled him away from Wellton, and the words in the room exploded back into my head.

  “Leave him alone!” Carter was yelling. “He found her! How do you think he feels?”

  “She was my partner!” Wellton was screaming back, his hands now on Carter’s shirt.

  “And she was more to him!” Carter yelled back, straining against the grasp of the two officers.

  I knew they were talking about me, but I couldn’t engage.

  I felt Liz’s hands on my face. We were standing in her doorway. Her eyes were right in front of me. I could smell her hair, her skin, feel her breath against my skin, her lips against mine.

  Don’t worry about letting me down. Just do what you need to do.

  I’d let her down.

  I hadn’t done what I needed to do. And now she was gone.

  FIFTY-TWO

  I don’t know how long we stayed at Liz’s. I know that I tried to answer more of Wellton’s questions. I know that he and Carter continued to yell at each other. I know that Klimes and Zanella showed up at some point. And I know I saw her body come down on a stretcher beneath a white sheet.

  That, for sure, I know.

  At some point, Carter took me home. The rain was still pounding against the streets and his car as we drove. “We’ll find him,” Carter said.

  I didn’t know who he meant, and I didn’t ask. My mouth was sealed shut, like someone had filled it with cement. My eyes stung. Something throbbed in my ears.

  Carter was talking, but I was only hearing bits and pieces.

  “… I don’t know where …”

  A chill rattled my body. I looked across the bay as we neared Mission Beach and saw Liz standing in the water. “… and no one will …” I closed my eyes, trying to abate the stinging. “… don’t let it …”

  I leaned my head against the glass, the cold window sticking against my cheek. The car was spinning.

  I felt Carter’s hand on my shoulder. “Hey. Are you alright?”

  My head fell forward in something resembling a nod.

  I closed my eyes again, and when I opened them we were in the alley next to my place. I shoved the door open and slid out, my legs fe
eling awkward and stiff beneath me. I looked up, letting the rain pelt my face.

  Carter appeared next to me and held out a hand to help steady me.

  I waved him off and forced myself to walk toward the house. I got the door open. It was pitch black inside. I heard Carter come in behind me.

  I didn’t stop until I found my bed. I collapsed into it, shut my eyes, and wished for nothing else than to never wake up.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Flashbulbs kept going off in my head, showing me snapshots I didn’t know I’d taken.

  Liz and me in high school, talking in the hallway. She was a year older than me. She was telling me she wanted to interview me for the paper. I said okay.

  Then she was yelling at me. We were in a parking lot. She was furious with me, and I was yelling back at her.

  We were in her office. She was pointing a finger at me.

  We were sitting on her deck, drinking beer. I could see her legs in the dark.

  I was driving the Jeep. Liz was sitting next to me. We were on the 101, the sun setting to our left.

  We were in her bed. She was on top of me, sweating, our eyes locked as we moved together.

  Then we were in the ocean. I was yelling something across the water to her. My voice was coming out of my mouth, but I couldn’t make out what I was saying. She was coming toward me, the water splashing around her legs as she got closer.

  I was still talking, but I couldn’t hear the words.

  And then she was gone, and I was standing in the ocean by myself, still saying whatever I’d been saying, turning around in circles, looking for her.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  My eyes opened, and the daylight forced me to squeeze them shut again.

  I opened them more carefully this time. Muted sunlight filtered into the room. The sheets on my bed were twisted around me like ribbons, and I struggled to pull myself out of them. I pushed up and sat on the edge of the mattress. My head ached, and it felt like an entire cotton field had grown inside my mouth. I stood and walked out to the living room.

  Carter was on the sofa, watching the television with the sound turned down.

  He turned around. “Hey.” He reached over, grabbed the remote, and shut off the TV.

  I opened the fridge, found a bottle of water, and downed it in about four swallows.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  I threw the empty bottle in the sink. “Time is it?” My throat was tight and raw.

  “About four o’clock.”

  I looked out the window. The weak sunlight I’d seen in my room was about to disappear again behind clouds the color of steel. “You spend the night here?” I asked. He hesitated. “Both nights.” I looked at him. “Both?”

  “You haven’t come out of your room for almost two days, man.” I nodded like I knew that. I grabbed another bottle of water out of the fridge and drank half of it. “Where’s Miranda?” “My place.”

  The clouds swallowed the sun, and the rain started to fall. “Still raining?” I said.

  “It’s barely stopped,” he said. “Wellton wants you—” “Don’t.”

  He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

  “Not yet,” I said, watching the waves tumble outside.

  Neither of us said anything for a few minutes. I watched the water, and he watched me.

  “There’s one thing, Noah,” he finally said. “I think you should know.”

  I emptied the bottle, tossed it into the sink with the other, and took a deep breath. “What?”

  “Tomorrow. Ten AM,” he said, his voice cracking a little. “Her funeral.”

  I grabbed another bottle of water from the fridge and went back to my room.

  WEEK THREE

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Police funerals are like parades.

  Everyone gets dressed up. There is marching, speeches, and music. The dead are treated like heroes, as they should be.

  I assume they did the same for Liz, but I didn’t go to watch it.

  Carter and I—several times I’d told him I was fine, that he could leave me alone, but he never bought it and he was probably correct not to—waited for the pomp and circumstance to end and then drove out to the cemetery on Coronado. He dropped me off at the gate and said he’d be back in an hour.

  I wandered through the park, headstones rising out of the muddy ground like dominoes, until I found the one I was looking for.

  Elizabeth Shannon Santangelo.

  I knelt down next to the freshly turned earth and ran my hand across the dirt, knowing she was somewhere beneath it.

  I wasn’t sure what I believed when it came to the afterlife. Like most people, I hoped that there was something else, that in some way we lived on after our lives were extinguished here. But maybe that was just a concept, developed and perpetuated throughout time, meant to help us deal with the finality of death.

  As I let the dirt fall through my fingers, I chose to believe that there was something else, because believing that this was the final stop for Liz was too much for me to bear.

  The wind picked up and whistled across the cemetery, the rain taking a momentary respite.

  I’d heard people say that when someone you care about dies unexpectedly, it doesn’t seem real.

  That wasn’t the experience I was having.

  Sitting in a cemetery, next to a headstone with her name engraved in elegant letters, made it very real.

  I was surprised to see the headstone already in place, but the department arranged her funeral and I assumed that they expedited the creation and placement of the marker, not wanting one of their own to go anonymously into the earth.

  I ran my index finger across the letters. The stone was cold, and it sent a chill through my arm, down my spine, and into my heart.

  I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Maybe I’d be ready to do that another time, but not now.

  I just wanted to be near her.

  But as I sat there, knowing she wasn’t coming back, the chill in my body began to pulse, like someone was tapping my insides with a frozen hammer. Everything hurt.

  I stared at her name on that headstone for a long time. There were no tears. I don’t know why. But they didn’t come. I knew they’d arrive later, at some unexpected and irrelevant point when I finally gave in to being without her.

  The wind gathered speed and rain drops smacked the back of my neck.

  I grabbed another handful of dirt. I folded my fingers around it and squeezed.

  As the rain pelted me, I stood. I opened my hand, and it looked to me like some of the dirt had disappeared. It had probably just slipped out of my hand, but I liked the idea that it had forced its way into my skin, into my veins, and into my soul to stay with me forever.

  I looked down at the earth, the rain matting it down like it was trying to put a protective seal over her.

  “I’m sorry I let you down,” I told her, my voice cracking, as I backed away from Liz Santangelo’s grave. “But I will fix it.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  “What are we going to do?” Carter asked.

  We were headed back to Mission Beach, a light rain slicking the highway.

  “Moffitt first,” I said. “After I talk to him, I’ll have a better idea of what I want to do.”

  “Miranda’s getting restless,” Carter said, swinging his car onto Mission Bay Drive. “She feels like Darcy’s getting forgotten in all of this—”

  “I don’t care. Tell her to go home. Or don’t. But I don’t care what she does.” The gray clouds were sinking lower, obscuring even the rooftops of the hotels as we moved over Bahia Point. “I’m off Darcy’s case. The police can worry about her. It’s not my concern.”

  “She still thinks you’re working to help Simington,” he said.

  I laughed, but it sounded harsh and bitter. “She’s wrong. I’m done with him.”

  Carter pulled to a stop behind my place in the alley. Klimes’ Crown Victoria was a block up, but I didn’t mention it.

  “Okay,” he said. �
��I’ll get it settled with her and wait to hear from you. Then we get it done.”

  I opened the door and stepped out of the car. “Right. I’ll call you.”

  He sped off down the alley.

  He kept saying “we,” and I knew he meant it. I knew he’d do anything—no matter the consequence—to help me.

  But there wasn’t going to be any we in getting this thing done. Keene had taken Liz from me.

  And now I was going to take Keene from everyone else.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  I walked into my living room and saw Klimes, Zanella, and Wellton standing outside on my patio, each holding an umbrella. Klimes was peering in the door and raised an eyebrow when he saw me.

  I opened the slider and let them in.

  “Didn’t see you today,” Klimes said, closing his umbrella and dropping it on the patio. “Wanted to make sure you were fine.” Zanella and Wellton came in behind him. “I’m fine,” I said.

  “This always sounds empty,” Klimes said, running a hand across his jaw. “But I’m really sorry, Noah. Not just for you, but for us, too. She was a good cop.”

  I nodded but said nothing. Zanella looked uncomfortable, refusing to meet my eyes. Wellton looked exhausted, his eyes rimmed with red, his tie pulled loose at the neck.

  “We’re looking for Keene now,” Klimes said. “Have you heard from him?”

  “No.”

  Klimes nodded, like that’s what he expected. “Okay. Alright.” “Why are you here?” I asked.

  Klimes bit his lip and glanced at the other two. Zanella still looked nervous, and Wellton’s eyes just seemed vacant.

  “We wanted to check on you. We know how hard this must be,” Klimes said.

  “I’m fine. But you’re lying,” I said. “Why are you here?” “We want to make sure you don’t do anything stupid,” Zanella blurted out.