by P J Parrish
The seconds ticked off as Jesse and Dale peered at the watch in the water.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Louis looked to the door. Gibralter was standing there, staring at Jesse and Dale huddled over the coffeepot.
Jesse jumped to his feet. “A test.”
Gibralter came over to the desk and looked down at the glass bowl. “What kind of test?”
“We’re trying to find out how long this watch will run in ice water.”
“Why?” Gibralter demanded.
“Louis thinks Fred — ”
Gibralter’s eye flicked to Louis and then back to Jesse. He reached in the coffeepot, pulled out the watch and tossed it on the desk.
“Every minute you waste could cost another officer his life,” Gibralter said, leveling his gaze at Jesse. “I told you to go through the case files. Now go do your damn job.”
Jesse wet his lips. “But — ”
“Do your job, Harrison,” Gibralter repeated, enunciating each word, as if to a child. Without looking at Louis, he went into his office, slamming the door.
Louis looked at Jesse. He was just standing there, his face red with embarrassment. Dale and Florence were watching, their eyes wide in sympathy.
“Fuck,” Jesse muttered, wandering off.
Louis looked down at the watch. The face was clouded with condensation. He picked it up.
It had stopped at 5:04.
CHAPTER 12
The sound of bells tolling. A white meadow, snow, and a stand of pines in the distance. A white church, with a steeple piercing a cobalt blue sky. And a line of blue moving slowly, swaying, emerging from the church. A coffin…they were carrying a coffin out into the snowy meadow as the bells tolled.
Louis woke with a start. Bells…the phone.
Wiping a hand over his eyes, he turned over and grabbed the receiver. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
“Louis?”
“Yeah.” He reached for his watch and squinted at the dial. It was after ten. He had slept through the morning.
“Louis, this is Phillip.”
“Phillip?” He blinked at the sound of his foster father’s voice and pulled himself up on one elbow. “Phillip! Jeez, it’s good to hear from you.” He reached down to pull the covers over his bare chest. The room was freezing cold.
“You sound strange. Don’t tell me I woke you up.” The voice on the other end of the line chuckled.
“No, no. Well, yeah, you did. But that’s okay. I’m off today.” Louis’s eyes swept over the crumpled bed. He spotted his chambray shirt crumpled in the blanket at the end. He squinted and saw two glasses on the bureau, half-filled with tawny liquid.
“I know. I called the station. They gave me your number.”
Louis suppressed a sigh. He had forgotten to call his foster parents and tell them he had finally gotten a phone.
“Look, Louis,” Phillip went on, “I won’t waste time busting your chops about why we haven’t heard from you in weeks.”
“Thanks,” Louis said softly. Leave it to Phillip Lawrence to cut through the bullshit. He hated talking on the phone more than Louis did.
“But it does make it easier to guilt you into coming down to dinner,” Phillip added.
“Dinner?” Louis said, surprised. “Where are you?”
“We’re at Higgins Lake. We brought the motor home up for the week.”
Louis laughed. “That old piece of shit? I’m surprised it made it this far.”
“Oh, I got rid of the Winnebago. Got a brand-new Gulf Stream Super Coach. The galley’s bigger than our kitchen. Frances is happier than a clam.”
Louis smiled, remembering a trip they had taken to Saugatuck in the Winnebago the summer of his thirteenth year. Frances tried to cook a chicken on the tiny stove.
“So, when can you come?”
Louis rubbed a hand over his face, trying to clear his head. What day was it? He had spent yesterday with Jesse in the station, going through case files. It has been Jesse’s day off, but he had come in anyway, desperate to find something after the watch scene with Gibralter. But after hours of going through the files they had found no one who could be considered a threat.
“Louis? You there?”
“Yeah, Phil.”
“How about tonight? Fran’s making a Christmas ham.”
Christmas…it was two days away. He had forgotten that, too. “Sure, I’m off today, I’ll be there,” he said.
He grabbed a pen off the nightstand and wrote directions to the campsite on his palm. He said good-bye and hung up, rolling onto his back and pulling the blanket up over his naked body.
He shivered, giving in to his mild feeling of guilt. He hadn’t called the Lawrences since he left Detroit and he had seen them only three times since his return from Mississippi last February. They hadn’t pressed and he was grateful. He knew that they loved him. They had been his parents, without being his mother and father. They had always instinctively honored the emotional buffer he had installed around himself. And he had loved them all the more for that. But right now, he was feeling more than a little guilty. They deserved better.
A snow blower started up somewhere off in the distance. He didn’t want to get up. He felt lazy, satiated with the languid energy of a good night’s sleep. He pulled the sheet over his cold nose. A smell drifted up to him, the sweet-musky smell of sex.
Zoe…
He closed his eyes. Zoe…snow…glow. He smiled.
Glow…go…slow.
Slow…don’t…go…Zoe.
He flipped over on his stomach, burying his face in the pillow, inhaling her smell, reliving in his head the chaotic choreography of their lovemaking.
Finally, with a sigh, he heaved himself out of the warm bed. He shivered and started to the bathroom. It was an hour’s drive down to Higgins Lake and he had to stop in town and find something that would pass as Christmas presents.
“So, how’s the job going?”
Louis poured himself another glass of brandy and sat back in the kitchen booth. “Good. Not what I expected exactly, but it’s a good, honest department.”
Phillip smiled. “I guess so. When I called, somebody named Dale McGuire answered. When I told him who I was he acted like I was his long-lost cousin or something.”
Louis laughed. “Dale’s very…social.”
“So they’re treating you good there?”
Louis considered the question for a moment. Phillip was asking, without asking, if things were different than they had been in Mississippi. It had always been that like between them, this odd dance they did about race. They were white; he was half white, half black. They had always dealt with it obliquely, a thing seen always from the corner of the eye, never straight on. Sometimes it bothered Louis. Sometimes he was grateful for it.
Like now. He hadn’t told Phillip everything that had happened to him down in Mississippi, just that his color had been “a problem.” He hadn’t told him that for the first time in his life, his color had nearly cost him his life.
Phillip Lawrence, he knew, would not ask either. It was part of the emotional buffer. It was part of their dance.
“It’s different here,” Louis said finally.
Phillip accepted the answer and took another sip of his brandy. “Thanks for the Courvoisier,” he said. “Don’t usually get this kind of good stuff.”
“I bought it for myself,” Louis said with a smile as he poured himself another three-finger shot. Phillip watched him carefully.
“And thank you for the White Shoulders, dear,” Frances chimed in from the stove.
Louis smiled up at her. Booze and perfume weren’t the most original presents, but then Loon Lake wasn’t exactly a Turkish bazaar. “Thanks for the sweater. I needed it,” he said.
She smiled and bent to poke her head into the oven. The smell of baked ham filled the motor home. The radio was playing softly, Christmas carols. Frances began to hum along.
“I’ve been reading about your cas
e in the Free Press,” Phillip said. “Tragic.”
“Yeah,” Louis said, taking a quick drink.
“Are you close to catching anyone?”
“No, not yet,” Louis said. He glanced up at Frances. She had stopped humming.
“You’re being careful, aren’t you?” Phillip asked.
“Of course. We all are,” He took another swift drink. He glanced to his left, out the window, unable to meet Phillip’s eyes. The window was fogged and he wiped it with his shirtsleeve. He could see out across Higgins Lake. It was much bigger than Loon Lake. To the north, he could see gray clouds moving down toward them. Snow clouds.
Frances set a plate in front of him. He looked down at the careful arrangement of crackers around a crock of bright-yellow cheese. He looked up at her.
“Win Schuler’s?” he asked with a smile.
“What else?” she said, smiling back.
He dug a cracker into the soft cheese and took a bite. The tang of the cheese brought back a flood of memories. He had eaten only Velveeta before the Lawrences had taken him to Win Schuler’s for his tenth birthday. He had never seen a salad bar before that, never been to a restaurant. He had been paralyzed with the choices. Frances had coaxed him to try the cheese. He loved it. He still did.
“Have you made any new friends, dear?” Frances asked, going back to her post at the sink.
Louis shook his head slowly, smiling. “You mean women.”
“Well, okay…women,” she said, nodding.
“Fran, leave the man alone,” Phillip said, scooping a cracker into the cheese.
“It’s okay, Phil,” Louis said, still smiling. “Fact is, there is someone.”
Frances smiled. “Oh, Louis! I’m so glad. What’s her name? When can we meet her?”
“Zoe,” Louis said. “And not for a while.”
“Zoe,” Frances repeated. “Is she foreign?”
Louis grinned. “I guess you could say that.”
Phillip reached across the table for a pack of cigarettes and matches. Frances saw him and frowned just at the moment he looked up at her.
He let out a sigh. “Come on, Fran. It’s twenty degrees out there.”
“I don’t care. You’re stinking up my new home with those things.”
Phillip looked at Louis. “You want to keep me company?”
“Sure,” Louis said, picking up his glass.
They put on their coats and went outside. Louis watched as Phillip lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He blew out the smoke in a slow stream, ending almost in a sigh.
“You shouldn’t smoke so much,” Louis said.
“You shouldn’t drink so much,” Phillip replied.
Louis looked away out over the lake and then back at Phillip. He leaned against the motor home, holding the glass down at his side. They were silent for several minutes.
Louis raised his glass and drained the brandy. He looked over to see Phillip looking at him.
“It’s bad, isn’t it,” Phillip said.
Louis knew he was talking about the murders, but he didn’t know what to say in response. As much as he loved Phillip, he had never been able to share his feelings with him easily. Even now, their relationship ripened as it was to adult status, he couldn’t bring himself to open a vein and let his fear bleed out for Phillip to see.
“It’s hard on the nerves,” Louis said. “But we’ll get him. I know we will.” He paused. “They put me in charge of the investigation,” he added, a touch of pride in his voice.
“A promotion already?” Phillip asked.
“Not really. Peter Principle more like it.”
“So, have you found anything yet?”
Louis told him about the piece of fabric and the other tenuous clues. He told him about the watch experiment and his theory about the timing of the two murders. Before he realized what was happening, he was spilling out all the details of the case, including his doubts about Jesse’s stability. It felt good. He needed to talk to someone outside the department. And as much as he had wanted to he couldn’t share it with Zoe.
Phillip listened attentively. Finally, Louis stopped, noticing that Phillip was standing awkwardly, a slight grimace on his face.
“Something wrong?” Louis asked.
Phillip rubbed his thigh. “Cold makes the leg hurt, that’s all.”
“You want to go in?”
“Soon as I finish this butt.”
Louis watched Phillip as he rubbed his leg again, holding the cigarette between his teeth. Another teenage memory bubbled up into his head, the first time he had seen the long scars on Phillip’s leg. Phillip had told him how he had gotten the wound in the Korean War, how the doctor had saved his leg, but left him with a lifelong limp. It was Louis’s first indication that the man who had become the most important figure in his life was truly human, less than a god. Not long after that, Phillip had opened a trunk in the attic and shown him his souvenirs from the war. Louis remembered the uniform patch that had caught his eye. It was a soaring eagle on the red background with the words SILVER EAGLES and the numbers of Phillip’s company on it. He had let Louis keep the patch. Louis lost it somewhere years ago. He never told Phillip.
Louis straightened up off the motorhome. Something stirred in his brain, a connection being made.
“Phillip, you remember that patch you gave me?”
“What patch?”
“The one from your uniform,” Louis said. “The eagle?”
“Oh, yeah. What’d you do with it, by the way?”
Louis felt a surge of excitement. God, the human brain was strange, its synapses firing out to make bridges when you were least expecting it. He was thinking of the cloth they had found on the fence by the park, dark green, like army fatigues.
“Platoons, military units, they all had names like that and numbers?” Louis asked.
“Some,” Phillip answered. “Why do you ask?”
“It could be related to one of the things I’m trying to track down in this case,” Louis said. “The killer leaves this clue, a drawing of a skull and the numbers ‘1 2 3.’ Does it mean anything? Could it be military?”
Phillip shrugged. “Maybe. The emblems were unofficial, something the guys created themselves.”
“What about on a playing card?”
“Hell, yes. We bought them at the PX, carried them everywhere.” He smiled. “I lost a month’s pay in Seoul trying to pull an inside straight.”
Louis’s mind was racing. Could it be that simple? Could it be some sort of military symbol? He had to find someone who knew about the military and what the numbers might mean. Was it a company, a squadron? And which war? It could -
“Louis?”
For a second, Phillip’s voice didn’t register. When Phillip repeated his name, Louis looked up at him. He saw the concern in Phillip’s face.
“It’s all right, Phil,” Louis said quietly.
“I’m worried about you,” Phillip said.
“I’m being careful.”
Phillip looked at him for a long time then took a final deep drag on his cigarette.
Louis watched the cigarette glow. He was struck suddenly by how different Phillip’s way of smoking was from Gibralter’s. Phillip’s style was deliberate, almost sensual, as though he was surrendering. Gibralter attacked the tobacco, as if he knew it was the enemy.
“My chief smokes unfiltered Camels,” Louis said.
“A real man’s smoke,” Phillip said with a dry smile.
Louis smiled. “Well, that’s Gibralter. A real man.”
“You like him?”
“Well, he’s not exactly likeable. He’s an enigma. Ego the size of Lake Michigan. Smart, strict. Probably ex-Marine and probably over-educated for the job.”
“Over-educated. Sounds like somebody else I know,” Phillip said with a small smile.
Louis let the remark pass.
“Your chief,” Phillip said after a moment, “is he the kind who takes care of his men?”
&
nbsp; Louis frowned slightly, unsure of what Phillip was asking. “He’s a very dedicated cop,” he answered finally.
“But to what?” Phillip said. “Police departments are a lot like the military, Louis. The men who run them understand that sometimes there must be casualties.”
Louis knew where Phillip was going with this and he tensed.
“This man Gibralter, is he taking care of his men?”
“There’s not much he can do. We have to do our job.”
Phillip paused. He tossed the cigarette into the snow. It fizzed and died.
“I had a C.O.,” Phillip said. “His name was Cliff McInerney. We called him Captain Mac. We were driving north near Yongsan and ran into heavy fire.”
“Is that where you were wounded?” Louis asked.
Phillip nodded. “We were pinned down for two days. Lost three men. Finally, Captain Mac decided he wasn’t going to wait any longer and tried to get us out. He led our squad through heavy fire. At one point he went back, running across this open field to rescue Hooper who went down in a trench. I thought he was nuts.”
Phillip looked at Louis. “Maybe he was. But he got us out of there when we were all sure we were going to die.”
“What happened to him?” Louis asked.
“He was killed. We were walking through the village. A grenade came out of nowhere. He jumped on it to protect two men walking ahead.”
Louis watched the subtle shift of emotions play over Phillip’s face.
“A leader believes in himself,” Phillip said. “But more important, he gives others the courage to believe in themselves.”
Louis lifted the empty glass and looked at it, suddenly wishing there was more in it.
Phillip gently took the glass from his hand then suddenly grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him close.
“Please be careful, Louis,” he said.
CHAPTER 13
The sky was the color of sheet metal. Louis looked out at the low-lying clouds then reached down and turned the cruiser’s heater up another notch.
“Smells like it’s gonna snow again,” Jesse said.
“Which is why I wanted to get an earlier start,” Louis said grimly.
