Thread of Innocence (Joe Tyler Mystery #4)

by Jeff Shelby

  The run back up the sand was tougher. The breeze had shifted so it was in my face and my thighs were burning, payback for having gone out so fast to begin with. It took me nearly twice as long to get back as it had to go out and by the end, I was walking and gasping for air. I'd done my best to tire myself out.

  I was trudging up the sand toward the street and wiping the sweat from my eyes when I stopped cold.

  Bazer was sitting on the wall, looking at me.

  I stayed frozen for a moment, then continued walking toward him. He was wearing khakis, a golf shirt and black dress shoes. Mirrored sunglasses covered his eyes and his silver wristwatch glinted in the late day sun.

  He stood when I reached him. “Joe.”

  I nodded, but didn't say anything.

  “I came to your house to talk to you. Saw you leave for your run,” he said. “I didn't want to interrupt so I waited on you here.”

  I nodded again.

  He adjusted the sunglasses. “I know you probably don't want to talk to me and that's fine. But I heard you're still looking into your daughter's disappearance.”

  The anger ignited somewhere around my ankles and worked its way up my body. It was one thing for Lauren to suggest I let it go. I understood where she was coming from and I respected her opinion. But to hear it from Bazer? A guy that had turned on a dime on me and thrown me to the wolves? Forget that I suspected he might've been involved with Elizabeth's disappearance. Just the notion that he had any right to give me his opinion about what happened was enough to set me off.

  “Go fuck yourself,” I said, moving to my left and walking past the edge of the wall where he sat. “It's none of your business and if you think you can tell me what to do at this point, you can talk until you're blue in the face. I'll finish you off by choking the shit out of you.”

  I started walking down the sidewalk on the other side of the short brick wall and I heard him leave the wall and follow me onto the concrete. I picked up my pace because I knew if he kept talking to me, I'd end up taking a swing at him.

  “Joe, listen to me,” he called.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I'm telling you that you should look.”

  My steps slowed until I stopped. I turned around. “What?”

  He walked toward me. “You think I'm here to tell you to stop looking?” He shook his head. “I'm not.”

  I realized my hands were balled into fists and forced them to unclench.

  “I think you should be looking into what happened,” he said, pulling the sunglasses from his face, squinting into the sun.

  I took a moment to collect myself. “Why?”

  “Why shouldn't you?” he answered. “I don't think you got any definitive answers.”

  “Yeah, but why do you give a shit?” I said. “For years, all you wanted me to do was to leave the whole thing alone. You basically fired me because I wouldn't leave it alone.”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “Yeah, you did,” I said. “That and because I made your department look bad. So you leaked a bullshit story about me maybe being a potential suspect, ruined my fucking life. You were more than happy to wave goodbye to me. Then when I showed up here again, you threatened me, tried to scare me off. Fortunately, I could give a shit what you think, didn't listen to you and found my daughter.” I shook my head. “So excuse me if I'm not buying the benevolent change of heart. You just aren't that kind of guy.”

  He looked away from me toward the water.

  “Answer isn't out there,” I said. “Why don't you look me in the eye and say whatever the hell it is you want to say?”

  His gaze slowly came back to me. “I was wrong.”

  “No shit. But I don't want an apology.”

  “I understand that,” he said. “But I'm telling you, I was wrong. About your daughter. About you. About everything. And the bottom line is that her disappearance happened on my watch and it's never been solved.” He paused, folded his arms across his chest. “If you think that doesn't bother me, then you don't get me at all.”

  “I don't think it bothers you the way it should've,” I said. “And I don't need to get you.”

  He nodded slowly. “Right. Fair enough. All I'm telling you is that if you need any help, let me know.”

  I couldn't help but laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No.”

  My hands clenched again. “For years, I spent every day looking for her. You cost me my job. You probably cost me my marriage. And you sure as hell cost me my reputation. And now you're offering your help? After stonewalling me for forever?” I laughed again. “I don't know whether to punch you or feel sorry for you.”

  He slipped the glasses back on. “You can do whatever you'd like, Joe. I'm just telling you that if you need help, the department is willing to provide it.”

  I stared at him. I genuinely couldn't believe his audacity and I thought I had to have been missing something, some part of the conversation that had somehow managed to escape me. Not once since Elizabeth's abduction had he acted like he cared about anything more than the reputation of his department. Not once. And now he wanted me to know that his resources were at my disposal. It was all surreal.

  I thought for a moment and decided to call him on it. “Okay. I got a question.”

  He cleared his throat. “Ask it.”

  “Right around the time Elizabeth disappeared, there was a bust in I.B.,” I said. “Right down on the strand. Involved the Tijuana cartel, a local gang and the DEA. What do you know about it?”

  He shifted his weight from one to the other. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  He stood there, thinking. I knew I was putting him on the spot and giving some of what I'd worked on away. It was a risk because I was showing him some of my cards and, if he was involved in Elizabeth's abduction, I was giving him a hint that I was onto him if the bust was tied to her disappearance. But I was tired of being passive with him. I wanted to see if I could get him to squirm.

  “I remember it,” he said finally. “19th Street Kings.”

  I nodded. “Correct.”

  “What does that have to do with Elizabeth?”

  “You tell me.”

  He frowned at me, deep crevices forming at the corner of his eyes. “I can't because I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Anything weird happen after the bust?” I asked.

  “Weird like?”

  “You tell me.”

  His jaw twitched. “I don't know what you're getting at.”

  “Okay.”

  He unfolded his arms from his chest and put his hands on his hips. “Okay. I'll play. But don't forget. I know you're still good pals with Lorenzo.”

  A small butterfly took flight in my gut.

  “I'm not gonna get into the details,” he said. “But, yes. Something occurred after that bust that required more work on my part.”

  “You're going to have to elaborate.”

  “I'm not going to because I can't,” he said. “Privacy laws. But I didn't like what happened and I let Lorenzo know about it. Things fixed themselves.”

  My head was spinning and he was making me second guess myself, both in what I'd suspected and what I'd told him.

  “I'm not exactly sure why it occurred,” Bazer said. “I never got a straight answer. But I covered for him and things were rectified.”

  “You're talking about the money,” I said. “You're saying Mike was involved with it?”

  He shuffled his feet. “I'm not saying anything about anything, Joe.” He took a step backward, then stopped. He adjusted the glasses again. “But the offer stands.”

  I didn't say anything, trying to wrap my head around what he'd said.

  “You've got my help if you want it,” Bazer said.

  I watched him stride down the sidewalk, cross the street to his car and drive off.

  TWENTY SIX

  I showered when I got hom
e, then tried to eat a sandwich, but my stomach was in knots after seeing Bazer.

  It felt to me like he was insinuating that Mike had done something wrong, but based on what I knew, that could've been anything. It could've been taking the money or it could've been going over his head with the DEA. And even if that was the insinuation he was making, it didn't mean that any of that was tied to Elizabeth. It could've been coincidental. It didn't give me any direct connection to whomever took Elizabeth or why.

  I laid down on the sofa. The ceiling fan above me spun lazily and I fixated on the blades. I hated not knowing about Mike. Every time I thought I could rule him out, something else would show up that would point the compass in his direction again. And I hated that it was Bazer who was pointing the compass this time. I was far more comfortable being angry at Bazer and thinking Mike was still my friend. I didn't want to consider having those roles reversed.

  My cell buzzed on the coffee table and I was grateful for the distraction when I saw Lauren's name. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said. “Sorry we didn't call this morning. Day got moving and got away from me.”

  “That's okay,” I said, thinking I could tell her the same thing about my day. “How was it today?”

  “Different,” she said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it started off pretty good, actually,” she said. “She woke up in a better mood and we had a fine breakfast. No arguments, no stare downs. We were watching the news and just talking. Normally.”

  “That's good.”

  “It was. Then we went to meet the Corzines again.”

  “Where?”

  “At their house,” she answered. “Which was fine. We'd talked about it yesterday and I was okay with it. She wanted to go over and get into her room and that kind of stuff.”

  “Cool,” I said, glad that Lauren was at least able to see that Elizabeth needed some time there.

  “Yeah, well, it went not cool in a hurry,” Lauren said.

  I shifted on the couch. “How?”

  “I'm not sure how we got into it,” she explained. “The family, they were actually...they were actually very nice. They understood about yesterday. They understood why I didn't want her staying there and they were supportive of that.”

  “That's a good thing.”

  “I thought so,” she said. “But then the conversation turned to them wanting an ongoing relationship with her. Elizabeth was in her room, doing whatever. And they started asking about visiting her in San Diego and when we thought we might allow her to come back and visit them.”

  A small knot formed in my gut.

  “I told them we were nowhere near that point and I wasn't sure if we ever would be,” she continued. “I explained that we were there for closure for Elizabeth, not to figure out what the future held.”

  “How'd that go over?”

  “Not good,” she said. “The guy started getting agitated and shitty with me, telling me they'd raised her and had a right to have some sort of relationship with her. I told him he didn't have shit for rights and they were lucky we were even there, letting them see her again.”

  “And Elizabeth wasn't there for any of that?” I asked.

  “No, but she heard some of it,” Lauren said. “Our voices got loud and we talked about it later on.”

  “What was their response to you at that point?”

  “He was still going off about their rights and I finally told him there'd be no relationship and if he pursued it any further, we'd be far more aggressive in asking the FBI to pursue a case against them.” She paused. “He clammed up after that, at the suggestion of his wife.”

  I pushed myself up into a sitting position. “Wow. Okay.”

  “Yeah,” Lauren said and I could picture her frowning. “So then we left and Elizabeth asked about it. If she was going to have a relationship with them. I said no. And she went ballistic.”

  I sighed. “How?”

  “Just telling me how unfair it was, that she should have a say in it, that she thought it was crap that we're telling her everything she has to do,” Lauren said.

  “And you said?”

  “Nothing really. I let her get it out. She finally ran out of gas and hasn't spoken to me since. She's in the shower again.”

  I leaned back in the sofa. Maybe I'd been wrong in encouraging them to go to Minnesota. It didn't seem to be doing anyone any good. “I'm sorry.”

  “I just don't know what to do with her, Joe,” she said, obviously frustrated. “I feel like everything I'm doing is wrong and I'm just making it worse.”

  “What were her reasons for wanting a relationship with them?”

  She sighed. “That she liked them. She said she doesn't think it's their fault. They didn't know about someone taking her, they just wanted a child. That she had a good life until she found out she was supposedly adopted.” She paused. “She loves them, Joe. I despise saying that, but she does.”

  I despised hearing it, but if there was a silver lining in place, it was that they'd obviously been decent parents to Elizabeth while she lived with them. I still doubted that you could just walk into a hotel room and pay for a child and not know that something was wrong with the set up, but I'd met families desperate enough to find their own children that they could talk themselves into anything, even if the rest of the world rolled its eyes.

  “Maybe we need to reconsider then,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Not anything major,” I explained. “But maybe saying she can't have a relationship with them isn't...realistic.”

  “So, what? She spends half the year with us and half with them?”

  “Stop. You know that's not what I mean.”

  “Well, what exactly do you mean?” she said, and I could picture her pacing around the hotel room, her anger finding fuel. “These people had no right to keep Elizabeth. None. And I don't give a shit if they fed and clothed her and drove her wherever she needed to go. Because that was supposed to be my job. But I got cheated out of it because she somehow landed with them. I was dead serious when I threatened them with the FBI. I'll make their lives miserable.” She paused. “There is no way I'm giving them another minute with her. I want my time.”

  “It's not just about us,” I said.

  “I don't give a shit, Joe,” she said. “I really don't. They aren't her parents. They aren't her relatives. They don't deserve anything and I'm not sacrificing my time with our daughter to give them any more time with her. They don't get to play step-parents or aunts and uncles or whatever they've got in their heads that they think they're entitled to. They can go to hell for all I care.”

  I waited a moment, hoping she might cool off. “Okay. But what about what Elizabeth wants?”

  “She doesn't know what she wants, Joe,” she said, pleading with me to understand, to come over to her side. “She's confused and I get that. Her life's been turned upside down. But giving her permission to spend time with these people is like letting her pick and choose a family down the block as her new family.”

  “No, it's not, Lauren,” I said, frowning. “It's the exact opposite of that. Until about a week ago, she thought they were her parents. She was attached to them. And she thought we were dead.”

  “She'll let it go,” Lauren said, her voice dropping. “It'll just take time. When she's able to shake the trauma off, she'll remember us as her parents. Before all this happened.”

  “Maybe. But you don't know that. And even if she does come to terms with that, it doesn't mean she won't want some connection with the Corzines. I mean, she'll be eighteen soon enough and then it won't matter what we want.”

  The line buzzed.

  I waited.

  “Well, until then, I'm saying no,” Lauren said.

  She hung up before I could respond.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  I tried calling back once, but it went to voicemail and I knew Lauren was done with me for the night. That was probably a good thing becaus
e I didn't see us getting on the same page any time soon and it was just going to create more animosity between us, which wasn't going to be good for anyone.

  As I lay awake, unable to sleep because I couldn't turn my brain off, I couldn't decide what was right. I believed what I'd told Lauren about Elizabeth's connection to the Corzine family. She had clearly been treated well by them and, at some point, she'd accepted that she was their daughter. Lauren and I may not have been comfortable hearing that but it was the truth and, until she'd found the phony adoption papers, she'd believed that to be the truth. They'd wanted a child, gotten one and treated her like their own daughter.

  But it was the way they'd gotten her that was still biting at me. No matter how they'd treated Elizabeth, they'd still flown to another city, paid an exorbitant sum and picked up their adopted daughter in a hotel room with no other adults around. No one in their right mind would find that acceptable' every rational adult I knew would question the circumstances behind it. And no matter how long they'd had Elizabeth, they had to have always been worrying that someone was going to come knocking on their door. Desperation will make people do funny things, but it doesn't change the concept of right and wrong. The Corzines had to have known that something wasn't right and I wasn't okay with the fact that they'd lived with the lie for so long.

  I wrestled with those thoughts for most of the night, unable to convince myself that one outweighed the other, and all I ended up with for all my thinking was a sleepless night.

  I pushed myself out of bed at daybreak, brewed a full pot of coffee and forced myself to think about other things as I opened my computer. I had money in my accounts, a product of a nomadic decade and having lived so sparsely in the years since I'd left Coronado. I'd never charged exorbitant fees for my services as a private investigator, but my clients paid me well. And I lived well below my means. But it wasn't going to last me forever. At some point, I was going to have to make a decision as to what I wanted to do. Did I want to continue the investigating and become official? Or did I want to find something that offered some stability, a regular paycheck and wouldn't chew my guts up?