Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  Beurkens hung limply, his hands dangling at his side. Urine dripped from the cuffs of his pajama bottoms and dripped onto the overturned step ladder beneath him. His bulging eyes stared straight ahead vacantly.

  “Son of a bitch,” I whispered. “No way you killed yourself.”

  His visitor had something to do with this. Hell, my bet was that he had everything to do with this. Bracco was closing down loose ends.

  Loose ends.

  Christ.

  Monique was a loose end.

  So was I.

  I turned away from the grotesque form of Lyle Beurkens and headed out of the garage. A sense of urgency coursed through my system. I closed the door behind me and walked down the short hallway toward the kitchen.

  I had to get to the hospital. If Bracco was willing to send his goon here to kill Beurkens, he’d have no hesitation sending him up to—

  A harsh white light blasted into my face.

  “Police!” boomed a powerful voice. “Don’t you fucking move!”

  31

  I squinted into the light, raising my hands up in the air automatically.

  “Turn away from me!” the booming voice commanded. “Now!”

  I turned slowly, keeping my hands high. I could hear the tramp of boot steps and the creak of leather. A second beam washed over me, then a third.

  “Go down on your knees!”

  I lowered myself onto my good knee, then shifted slowly to put my bad one on the ground. Before I’d even settled it, the voice yelled at me again. “Now onto your belly! Fall forward and catch yourself.”

  I did as he said. A sense of déjà vu came over me. I remembered training on these techniques on the mats in the police academy gym.

  “Hands out to the side! Palms up! Cross your legs!”

  I anticipated each command and obeyed before he was even finished ordering it. Once I was in position, there was another tramp of feet. I braced myself for what was coming next.

  The crushing weight of a knee across the back of my neck pressed me flat to the tile floor. My cheekbone felt like it would snap against the hard surface. Two sets of hands reefed on each of my arms, forcing my hands to the small of my back.

  I cried out involuntarily. “Easy,” I grunted into the cold tile. “My left shoulder’s bad.”

  Neither cop answered me as they snapped the handcuffs into place. Cold metal bit into my wrists. Only then did the knee across my neck lighten up.

  “Where’s your friend?” asked a different voice than the one that ordered me to the ground. He ran his hands around my belt line, checking for weapons. “Where’s he hiding?”

  “I’m by myself,” I said.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m alone.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He finished his search, then rolled me onto my side and up to a sitting position. “Get your feet underneath you.”

  I tucked in my feet and pushed up. He provided counter ballast and got me to a standing position.

  “Let’s take him to the car,” the first voice ordered. “Stuff him and then we’ll hold the perimeter for the K-9.”

  At least that was something. The rough cuffing I got was nothing compared to getting bit by a hundred pound German shepherd.

  Two of them escorted me out the front door, down the walk and halfway up the block to a waiting patrol car. They did another search, removing all my possessions and putting them into a plastic bag on the trunk of the car.

  “What’s this?” The cop who didn’t believe I was alone held up the mini tape recorder.

  “It’s a mini tape recorder,” I said.

  “I know that. What’s it for?”

  “Recording.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Okay. Be a smart ass then.”

  He finished searching me and stuffed me unceremoniously into the back seat of the patrol car. I adjusted so that I was sitting sideways on the plastic coated seat. The cuffs hurt bad enough as it was, but at least this way I wasn’t putting additional pressure on them.

  More cars arrived. They had given up all sense of stealth and now were merely keeping the house contained, waiting for the K9. It would be a great plan if there was someone else left in the house.

  But, of course, there was. And eventually, they were going to find him.

  I took a deep breath. The stench of past prisoners filled my nostrils. I let it out.

  This was bad.

  A K9 officer arrived a minute or two later. I recognized him as soon as he got out of the car. He’d been on the K9 unit even when I was on the job. Shane was his name. His last name was something Hispanic, but I couldn’t remember it exactly.

  He opened the back door and leashed up a small brown shepherd. I’d expected to see the huge black shepherd named Čert, a devil dog if ever there was one. But that was what? Eleven years ago? Even if that dog was still alive, he’d be long retired by now. Hell, this might even be Gomez’s second dog since Čert.

  Gomez. That was his name.

  I watched as they approached the house. Gomez made a loud announcement at the front door about how the premises were about to be searched by a police dog. He warned the bad guys inside that if the dog found them, he would bite them. In my experience, very few believed him, and they were always proven wrong.

  But they weren’t going to find, or bite, any bad guys in that house.

  32

  The K9 search took about ten minutes once they released the dog into the house. When he finally came back to the handler, Gomez put him on a leash and went in with several cover officers. Lights went on throughout Beurkens’ home as they searched it.

  Twenty minutes later, the search complete, the officers huddled outside the front door, talking and gesturing with animation. They pointed at me a couple of times. Finally, a sergeant’s car rolled up. I couldn’t recognize who it was, but he joined the gaggle at the front door. After a bit, he went inside. When he came back out a few minutes later, it was clear he was giving directions. The uniformed officers scattered to carry out his orders, leaving one stationed at the front door.

  The cop who didn’t believe me returned to the car and got in without a word. He started the car, typed something quickly on his mobile data computer and put the car into Drive.

  I didn’t have to ask where we were going.

  The trip to the station took about ten minutes. It would’ve taken twice as long in the daytime. All the way down the hill and through downtown, the cop in the driver’s seat studiously ignored me. He didn’t try to engage me in any sort of conversation at all. He certainly didn’t read me my Miranda rights.

  And that worried me. It meant that the sergeant told him not to. And the sergeant would only have told him not to talk to me if he was worried that the case would somehow get screwed up if he did. And that kind of caution only came into play in big cases.

  Like murders.

  33

  I stole a glance at the cop’s nametag when he pulled me out of the car in the basement of the police station. I didn’t recognize it. Without a word, he took me up the elevator to the investigator’s floor. We walked down the empty hallway until we passed under a hanging sign that read “Major Crimes.”

  I turned to the right before he even directed me, and then left again toward the interview rooms.

  “You been here before?” he asked, a little bit of honest surprise in his tone.

  I didn’t reply.

  He put me in interview room one, took off the handcuffs and locked the door behind him. Even though I couldn’t see him through the small square window in the door, I knew he was there, standing guard.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes.

  This was going to take a while.

  The one good thing about waiting for a detective to show up was it gave me time to think.

  Obviously, I knew Bracco had Beurkens killed. There was no way the contractor killed himself. I saw Bracco’s thug leave just within an hour of his death. The urine hadn’t
even had time to dry yet when I’d found him. Beurkens was murdered, and Bracco was behind it.

  So I could just tell that to the detective, right? Offer to witness on the case?

  I shook my head. And then what? Wait around for Bracco or one of his thugs to visit me sometime before trial? It wasn’t like River City PD was going to put me into a witness protection program.

  So what were my other options? Dummy up? If I did that, I’d take a burglary hit for sure, which was a felony. And that was best case. If I didn’t say a word, it wouldn’t be very difficult for them to pin Beurkens’ murder on me.

  I wondered for a second if they’d decide it was a suicide. Maybe the way Bracco’s goon did it left no evidence. He could have pointed a gun at Beurkens and walked him through every act, then kicked the step ladder out from under the contractor.

  Somehow I doubted it. I didn’t see the fiery Beurkens going gently into the good night.

  There’d be evidence.

  And if I didn’t say a word, they’d pin it on me.

  I thought about it some more, wondering what I could say. I couldn’t tell them about Rolo. But what about Monique? What if I said I was working for her? That was true, in more ways than one. And if my working for her led me to Beurkens…

  I sighed.

  What I really should do was call a lawyer. The only other time I needed a lawyer, I called Joel Harrity. He is probably the best one in the city, at least when it comes to criminal defense. He didn’t make my problem go away, but he walked me through it, he listened to me, and he told me the straight up truth of the situation. He helped me.

  I should call him again.

  The door to the interview room opened suddenly and a detective walked in.

  Not just any detective.

  Detective Katie MacLeod.

  I forgot all about lawyers.

  34

  She stood across from me, her expression a mixture of professionalism, anger and disgust. I wondered how much of it was real and how much was simply how she had decided to play it with me.

  It had been over a year since we’d spoken. Right here in this room, actually.

  A dozen images of her flashed through my mind all in a brief second. Us as friends. Lovers. Torn apart. My fault.

  Christ.

  There was a reason it had been over a year.

  “Katie,” I said. “God, I’m glad it’s you.”

  She sat in the chair across from me. The hard scowl on her face made her look much older than she was, but no less beautiful. “I don’t know why,” she said.

  I paused, considering. Could I still trust her? After the way I treated her when I left the job and then how I ended up sitting in this room last year, I wondered. How deep did old bonds really go?

  “You…must be on call?” I asked cautiously, avoiding the real topic.

  “Wow. You should have been a detective yourself,” she said coldly.

  I sighed. “Jesus, Katie, let’s not be this way.”

  “What way is that?”

  “This. Way.”

  She pressed her lips together, her hard stare cutting into me. I felt a small flutter in the pit of my stomach. She’d looked at me much differently, once upon a time.

  “Tell me how it should be then,” she said.

  “Like we’re friends.”

  “Friends?” She shook her head. “You’ve got a messed up idea of friendship, Stef.”

  I didn’t reply, because she was right. Friends don’t treat each other the way I’ve treated her. “I’m…I’m sorry, Katie.”

  “Sorry is yesterday’s news,” Katie said, her tone cold. “Today is about reality.”

  “It is what it is?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So what is it, then?”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms, staring across the table at me. The corners of her mouth turned down in a frown. “A Major Crimes detective has a suspect detained for burglary and murder. Suspect has a history of—“

  “You’re in Major Crimes now?” I asked. “That must have just happened recently.”

  She ignored me. “A history of burglary, assault, child pornography, illicit—”

  “Whoa,” I said, raising my hands. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

  “I know what?”

  “I was never involved.”

  “In what?”

  I stared back at her, the fluttering in my stomach turning to a small fire of anger. “Do you really think so little of me, Katie? That you would believe the shit that Jack Stone was flinging around?”

  “He was the case detective,” she said evenly.

  “He was an asshole. Probably still is.”

  “So you didn’t break into that guy’s house last year?”

  “I did. But not to steal anything.”

  “And you didn’t assault him?”

  “I did assault him. To get the information I needed.”

  “That sounds like first degree burglary to me.”

  I clenched my jaw. “Maybe. But he didn’t press charges.”

  “Small wonder, given what you two were up to.”

  I shook my head. “Believe what you want, Katie. I wasn’t involved in any of that other shit. I was looking for someone. I was helping a friend.”

  “Well, I hope you treated him better than you treat most of your friends.”

  I thought about Matt Sinderling for a moment, and how things eventually worked out between us. Maybe she had a point. But that didn’t mean I had to put up with this shit.

  “Why don’t you just do what you need to do,” I said quietly. “And we’ll get it over with.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  She eyed me for another moment, then recited, “You have the right to remain silent. If you give up that right, anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, and to have that attorney present during any questioning. Do you understand these rights?”

  “I do.”

  “Will you waive these rights and speak to me.”

  “No, I will not speak to you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “So you want a lawyer?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll talk to Ray Browning. No one else.”

  “Ray?” She looked surprised. “This is my case.”

  “I don’t care.”

  She stared at me, trying to work it out in her head, but I could tell she was out of her depth. A small piece of me was glad to see it.

  “You don’t get to pick and choose which detective you talk to,” she said. “That’s not how it works.”

  “Well,” I snapped, “if we were friends, I might give a fuck how it works. But seeing as how we’re not, you can get me Ray Browning or get me a lawyer.”

  She leaned forward, seething. “Do you know that people around here still put us together? They still judge me by you? No matter what I do?”

  “People? As in everybody? Or just the assholes?”

  “Enough people to make it hard.”

  “It doesn’t seem to have stunted your career much,” I said. “Major Crimes is the top of the detective pyramid.”

  “You don’t know how hard I worked to get here.”

  “I can guess.”

  “No. You really can’t. When things get difficult or messy, you just walk away.”

  I didn’t answer. This was going nowhere.

  We sat in silence for a little while, staring at each other across a small table that might as well have been the Gulf of Mexico. I searched her eyes for some vestige of what we once were, but as hard as I looked, I couldn’t find anything.

  She kept looking at me, her poker face falling away. Even a decade further on down the road, I still knew her well enough to see those emotions playing in her eyes. Anger. Surprise. Confusion.

  And hurt.

  Unfortunately, I was used to seeing that in her eyes. An edgy, dull pang went through my chest.

  After a few moments, she rose fro
m the table and left without a word.

  35

  Waiting for Ray Browning took another hour, which I expected. Once, a uniformed officer opened the door, and I thought for sure that he was going to cuff me and take me over to the jail. I was certain that Katie wasn’t interested in what I had to say and was going to slap the burg and the murder on me and let everything come out in the wash.

  He just asked me if I had to go to the restroom, though. I did. He escorted me there and back, gave me a bottle of water, and locked the door behind himself when he left the tiny interview room.

  I should have known better. Katie was too good a cop to blow the opportunity to get a suspect talking.

  Detective Ray Browning walked into the room dressed in a suit and tie, a folder under his arm. The suit didn’t surprise me. Part of it was psychological. Show up to interview a suspect at four in the morning dressed like a professional and it has impact. Makes the bad guy wonder what kind of supercop he’s up against.

  But part of it was just Ray, too.

  He looked older than I remembered, but then again, we all did. There was a touch of gray at the temples of his short afro and scattered throughout his goatee. His skin was always a dark cocoa but now seemed a little bit stretched and washed out. But there were no wrinkles, and his eyes were as sharp as ever.

  “Ray,” I said. “Long time.”

  I held out my hand.

  He hesitated for the barest of moments before taking my hand and shaking it.

  “The years have been good to you,” I added.

  “Every day is a gift,” he said, sitting down across from me.

  I wondered for a moment if he’d become religious or if he was merely being philosophical. Then I shrugged, because it really didn’t matter.

  “I understand Detective MacLeod read your Miranda rights to you earlier.”

  “She did.”