Above the Law (18 page)

“You never thought about adopting?” The standard line; it sounded stupid.

She shook her head. “It would have been an admission to the world that he wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t deal with that.”

I couldn’t help it—I was too hungry not to eat, and I needed something to do besides sit like a bump on a log and listen to this, I shoved a dressing-laden wing in my mouth, washed it down.

“We talked about breaking up,” she continued.

“Why didn’t you?”

“More Protestant guilt. For better or worse, whatever. Because to leave him would have been to admit failure, my failure. It would have made our failures public, and that would have killed Dennis, before he killed himself. I couldn’t do that to him.” She gave me one of her intense looks. “I loved him, flaws and all. I really did love him, Luke. I’d followed him here out of old-fashioned wifely devotion and then I just stayed. To the bitter fucking end.”

I reached over and touched her hand. She grabbed hold of mine like she was holding on to a life raft.

“A couple of years before Dennis died, I started working at the D.A.’s office. Then Turner Jenkins, the old D.A., retired and endorsed me. Forced me to run, truth be told. I ran unopposed and here I be.” She let go of my hand. “It ain’t the bright lights, big city, but it’s home now. I can’t explain why. My fate, karma, whatever they call it.”

I wanted to say,
You aren’t stuck here if you don’t want to be. Not now.
But I didn’t. It was none of my business. She’d already told me more than I wanted to hear.

“Hey, Miz Ray.”

We both looked up. A hefty, good-looking Native American man in his late twenties was standing at the end of our booth, smiling at us.

Nora smiled back at him. “Hey, Wayne. Say hello to an old friend of mine, Luke Garrison. Luke, this is Wayne Bearpaw, one of Tom Miller’s deputies.”

Bearpaw. I remembered the name from the reading material: the deputy who had been with Miller on the DEA raid.

We shook hands, said hellos.

“I heard you were in town. You’re the city lawyer’s going to help our D.A. beat up the big boys from Washington,” Bearpaw said, grinning at Nora.

“I put in my two cents, that’s it,” I corrected him.

“Luke won’t be involved any further with our investigation. I’ll fill you in later,” Nora told him with a forced smile.

“Sorry to hear that. I’ve heard good things about you.”

“You were there on that raid,” I said, out of curiosity and to change the subject. I looked him over. He was big and strong. He could handle his end.

“Yeah, I was a warm body,” he said derisively. “Like it mattered.”

“Sounds like it was a real mess.”

“Shit, and then some. Me and the sheriff, we were lucky we didn’t get our asses blown to kingdom come when all that munitions blew inside. Stupid fuckers. They should’ve never stuck their damn selfs into it. Me and Sheriff Miller, we could’ve smoked those fuckers out. With enough time and money.” He looked pointedly at Nora.

“Luke knows all about that,” she said, placating him. “We’re just having a friendly dinner now. Dinner among old friends.”

“Yeah.” He calmed down as fast as he’d heated up. “Didn’t mean to come on salty there, but boy, that was a piss-poor operation. And then, after all that, they up and kill their own prisoner.” He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it had all happened the way it had.

“You think they did?” I was interested in his adamance over the killing.

“Who else was there? Nobody with a brain buys that shit about his own men doing him. I know how those people live. They don’t operate that way.”

“Wayne’s our number one undercover narc,” Nora said. “He’s broken some big cases for us—big by our standards.”

“Yeah, nobody suspects a dumb Injun,” Bearpaw said, laughing.

“You weren’t there, though?” I asked. “When Juarez was killed.” Had I read that? I didn’t remember.

A negative head-shake. “I went home once the survivors had been captured. We had nothing to do there, Jerome and them sure as hell didn’t want us around. I was in bed sawing logs by the time the killing happened.”

“But Miller stayed.”

“He’s an old warhorse. He’s the best.” The deputy gave Nora a good-bye salute. “Nice meeting you,” he said to me. “Sorry you ain’t coming aboard. I think it’s going to be fun.” He melded into the crowd.

“He sounds gung ho,” I said, looking at his retreating back.

“We all are.” She gave me a last-chance look.

“Well, I hope you get your man.” I turned back to my dinner.

“I already didn’t,” she said directly. “But that’s okay, I understand your reasons. I’ll get the one who killed Juarez. If there’s anyone to be getting.”

We said our good-byes at my motel door.

“I’ll keep in touch,” I told her. “If I think of anything, or anyone who you should talk to, I’ll call.”

“Thanks.”

It was after midnight, chilly out. I could have invited her in—I could tell she was reluctant to go back to her empty home, but I didn’t have anything to drink, and it was time to close this chapter.

“It was great seeing you again, Nora, after all this time.”

“You, too, Luke.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I feel about what happened to Dennis.”

She nodded.

“This might seem like a shitty thing to say, but I’m glad I didn’t know what had happened. My memories of him will always be good ones.”

“I’m glad of that. I try to do that, too. Sometimes I can.”

She was deflated, from my rejection and from bringing up the old wounds. I pulled her to me in a hug. She hugged back, her body pressing against mine. For a moment she laid her head on my shoulder. Then we separated.

“I hope you keep your promise.” she said.

“About?”

“Keeping in touch.”

“I will. Promise.” I crossed my heart over my jacket.

We stood there in the dark. There was nothing more to say.

“Thanks for coming. You helped me a lot.”

“I’m glad.” I smiled at her. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

“I’ve survived a lot worse than anything some stooges from Washington could ever do to me. I’ll make it fine.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you will.” She was one tough lady; she’d grown into it. A far cry from the young, idealistic, wealthy sheltered girl I’d known in school, who had the prince and the whole world on a string. “You have.”

There was nothing left to say or do. She reached out and touched my sleeve for a second, then turned and walked to her car, got in, and drove away. I went into my room and called Riva and told her I was coming home.

I
FLEW FROM RENO
to L.A., L.A. to Santa Barbara. It was early afternoon when my plane taxied in. Riva and Bucky were waiting for me at the gate. It was a good thirty degrees warmer here than it had been in Blue River—Riva was wearing shorts, sandals, a UCSB sweatshirt. She looked fetching and sexy and welcoming, and I grabbed her up in my arms as soon as I got to her.

“Missed you,” I said into her hair.

“Me, too.”

I swung Buck up onto my shoulders. We made like an airplane on our way to the parking lot.

“So how’d it go?” Riva quizzed me. “You didn’t say much on the phone.”

We were southbound on 101, heading for home. I was driving, she was in the front passenger seat, Bucky was in his car-seat in the back, half-dozing. I’d arrived when he normally takes his nap, but he wasn’t going to miss out on seeing his daddy get off that big airplane.

“Different from what I’d expected.”

“Different how?”

“For one thing, her husband didn’t just die, he committed suicide.”

Riva’s mouth made a round, wordless
O.
“Jesus,” she then said, “that’s awful.” She couldn’t resist asking, “How?”

“Gun.”

“Ugh.” She turned and looked reflexively at Buck—a mother’s protective instinct.

“Yeah. So there was that.” I looked at my son in the rearview mirror—he’d fallen asleep. They look like angels at this age when they’re sleeping. Mine does, anyway. He has curly blond hair, blue eyes, the works. Botticelli couldn’t have created someone this perfect.

“And we talked about her work, this DEA case specifically. I need to talk to you about that, but it’s going to take time, so let’s get home, get me unpacked, have dinner, put Buck to bed, then I’ll fill you in on everything.”

She gave me one of her funny stares. “Is there something I need to know about?” Meaning,
Something wrong?

“Not at all,” I assured her. “It’s complicated, that’s all. And I want a break, okay?”

“Fine by me.”

She had no cause to worry—and I had no intention of giving her any.

What with playing with Buck, feeding him his dinner, getting him ready for bed and then into bed—no small achievement, he was all keyed up from Daddy being home, tonight was a two-book, three-story bedtime—then the two of us having our dinner, candlelight, wine, the whole romantic trip, it was almost ten by the time we settled in for the story of my trip. My brief but interesting trip.

“Nora’s going to do her own investigation of the fiasco up there. She isn’t satisfied with the DEA’s version of what happened. She thinks they’re whitewashing it. Covering their tracks.”

“Dirty tracks?”

“Looks that way.”

“Crooked cops.” She said the words with utter contempt, practically spat them out. “They’re all over the place.” She was referring to my episode in the desert.

“More than there ought to be, that’s for sure.” There ought to be none, zero.

“She wanted your expert advice.”

“Yes.”

“Which you freely gave.”

“Yes.”

We’d cracked a bottle of Taylor port, vintage 1985, a stellar year. It was warming me up nicely, after the coq au vin and the Santa Ynez Valley Syrah and the homemade oatmeal cookies. Nora was a nice cook, her venison stew had been excellent, but no chef on earth touches my wife’s cooking, as far as I’m concerned.

“I read a yard of documents the DEA sent her on their investigation, interviewed a few local law-enforcement people. She was honed in already; she wanted someone like me, who’d been in the job, to confirm what she’d been thinking. Someone she knew and could trust. Thought she knew,” I added. “Twenty years go by, you can’t know that person. You know who they were, not who they are.” Except for a decent resemblance physically to what she’d looked like at age twenty-three, Nora Ray was not the woman I’d known twenty odd years ago—who is?

“So that’s it? Do you get a certificate of commendation?”

“I’ll put in for one.” I stretched out on the sofa. Through the windows overlooking the harbor I watched the lights dancing.

“Her office can’t handle the job internally. It’s too small, and this case could be Godzilla. She’s going to bring in an independent prosecutor. The state’s backing her action—they’re going to pay for it.”

“This sounds like the big time.” Riva was cuddled up to me, her head on my shoulder, her body against mine. Now she sat up. “It could be a nationally publicized case.”

“It will be. Small county takes on big drug cartel and a major government agency. It’s going to run into millions. Geraldo and Larry King will get plenty of airtime out of this one.”

“Did she tell you who she’s bringing in?”

I turned to her; I tried to smile, to make light of it, but I couldn’t. “She asked me.”

Riva stared at me in disbelief. “You’ve been holding this small, insignificant tidbit from me for what, seven hours? When does she want you to start? Your calendar’s full for months. You could lay most of the work off, but…”

“I turned her down.”

Her jaw dropped. “You what?”

“Turned her down. What would you think I’d do, take it?”

“I guess…yes.”

“Why would I want that job? It’s going to be a nest of hornets.”

“I guess…because it’s going to be a high-profile job, and you’re a high-profile lawyer.”

“Was. I don’t want to be anymore.” I shifted around so I could face her directly. “This could take up to a year. I’d have to live up there, most of the time. My entire practice here would go down the drain.”

I’m a single practitioner; I don’t have partners to cover me in cases like this.

“Your practice is never going to go away, even if you’re gone,” Riva said. “You’re too good. And I know how those things work, you wouldn’t be there all the time, there’ll be slack periods. And you’d have a staff, wouldn’t you?”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You’re talking like you
want
me to take this on.”

“I want you to do what you want to do.”

“What I want to do is not that.” My glass was empty; I got up and refilled it; just a little, I don’t drink that much port, it’s too heavy. A little goes a long way for me now. Like a lot of things I used to indulge in. I sat down next to her again.

“I don’t want to be away from you and Buck for a year. That’s ridiculous.”

“Who says we’d have to be away from each other?” She was knocking down every argument I threw at her. It was like she’d been offered the job and I was the one trying to dissuade her. “We’d come with you.”

I literally broke into laughter. “You wouldn’t last a week up there. Blue River would bore your tits off.”

“I was living up-country when we met.”

“That was different. That was sophisticated rural. This is nothing-to-do rural. And what about Bucky,” I pressed on. “He’s got playgroup, his ocean camp this summer…”

“Ocean camp?” She chortled. “He’s two years old. He isn’t going to ocean camp. He’s with me.” She reached over and softly touched my face with her hand; an intimate and provocative gesture. “And I’m with you.”

“Which is why I’m staying right here in Santa Barbara, California, garden spot of the world.”

She leaned back. “It’s your decision. I want to make sure you’re doing it because
you
want to, not because you’re worried about me and the crown prince. Because we’re like Paladin, except without the gun.”

“I don’t want to do it. I’ve had the spotlight. I don’t need it anymore. I don’t want it. I want to live a life of quiet bliss in the bosom of my family.”