Broken (3 page)

Chapter 4

The
retching was over pretty quickly. I had nothing solid in my stomach to get rid
of. I was breathing hard when I finished and had to put a hand on the town car to
steady myself as I got my stomach back under control. Todd didn’t get out of
the car to see if I was all right. Either he hadn’t noticed the vomiting, or he
was too annoyed with me to care. It didn’t make all that much difference to me.
This kind of thing happened all the time lately. I was more sorry to lose what
was left of my mimosas than anything else.

When I
felt reasonably steady again I started for the building’s main entrance,
ignoring the questioning looks from people on the sidewalk who had stopped to
watch me be sick. The stares didn’t bother me. Vomiting was hardly the most
embarrassing thing I’d ever done in public.

There
was a line at the building’s entrance for the metal detector that anyone not
wearing a badge had to go through. I passed through it without anyone giving me
a second look. I didn’t have anything interesting in my pockets, and I hadn’t
bothered to bring a purse along. It occurred to me that that meant I didn’t
have any identification, but I didn’t think I’d be needing it any time soon.

My
destination was on the 4
^th
floor of the building. I’d have preferred
to avoid a crowded elevator in case I got sick again. Throwing up on the
sidewalk was one thing. Doing it in an elevator was quite another. But there
was no way I was strong enough to get up four flights of stairs. My legs probably
wouldn’t start to shake for a few hours yet, but they felt weak and I’d already
had a lot more exertion than usual today.

The
Homicide Division was in a large open room filled with desks arranged in pairs.
Offices for the higher-ranking officers lined the walls, giving each one a view
of San Diego’s downtown area. None of the offices were particularly large, and
a corner office here certainly didn’t have the cachet that a corner office in a
Fortune 500 company would carry, but once upon a time an office had been all I
wanted. Rank and power didn’t mean anything to me, but views were priceless.

Nobody
gave me a second look until I was halfway to my destination, and then the
atmosphere in the room abruptly changed as I was noticed. Murmurs started up
instantly and a few people rose from their desks. I was a legend here, but
being a legend can carry as many bad things with it as it can good.

A pretty
woman in her early thirties put herself directly in my path, forcing me to
stop. I looked at her curiously, struggling to remember her name. Had we been
friends?

The
woman bit her lip nervously. “Nevada?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

“Sarah,”
I said, remembering her. Of course. Sarah Winters had been new to Homicide when
I’d gotten the Laughing Man case. She’d been there for the beginning of the
end. I remembered her telling me I was her role model once. What a lousy judge
of character she’d turned out to be.

“Yes,
I’m Sarah,” she said slowly, as if she was speaking to a lost tourist who
didn’t understand English. “Can you remember me?”

For a
minute I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then it occurred to me
that she must think I’d gone off my meds and wandered in here by accident. It
was a reasonable conclusion given that I’d once been locked up in a psych ward,
but she was wrong about the meds. The only medication I’d ever been given in
there were tranquilizers to stop my uncontrollable, hysterical laughter. At
first. Later the same tranquilizers were used to stop me from screaming. After
my stint in the ward I’d been mandated to see a psychiatrist, but I’d thrown
the prescription he’d given me in the trash and never gone back.

“I’m
fine, Sarah,” I told her. “It’s okay. I’m here to see Dan.”

“Okay.”
She looked me up and down and I could see a blend of fear and sorrow in her
eyes. Had some of the vomit splashed onto my clothes? “You look…” she began.

“Yeah?”

“You
look really bad, Nevada.”

I
blinked in surprise. “Okay,” I said. “Well, I appreciate your honesty, Sarah.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to get out of my way now.”

“Nevada,
I…”

I shook
my head at her. I didn’t begin to have time for this. “Sarah, I always liked
you. You’re a nice girl and I knew you’d make a good detective. But you need to
get out of my way now.” I didn’t need to raise my voice. My tone didn’t invite
argument or discussion.

Sarah
swallowed hard and stepped aside. I looked around the room. Every eye was fixed
on me now. I’d known I couldn’t walk around up here without drawing at least
some
attention, but I hadn’t expected all of this. But then, the last time I’d been
in this room it had ended pretty badly. If I hadn’t been a cop, I probably
would have gone to jail for what I’d done.

I made
it to the northwest corner office without any further interruptions. Dan Evans,
my former boss, was sitting behind his desk. He was a huge bear of a man whose
dress shirts never fit him right and whose ties always seemed comically small
on his frame. I’d offered to take him shopping more than once; the man needed
some quality time in a Big & Tall department like nobody’s business. He’d
never taken me up on it.

Dan was talking
with one of the higher-ups from Vice whose name I couldn’t remember when I
stepped into his office. “Get out,” I said to the other man.

“Excuse
me?” the Vice cop asked.

Dan
raised a hand in a gesture of supplication. “It’s all right, Harry,” he said.
“We can finish up later.”

Harry,
whoever he was, stood up and looked me square in the eyes. “You’ve got a lot of
damn nerve coming back here.”

“Do
something about it,” I dared him.

Harry
eyed me for a second, then glanced back at Dan. “You need me to call someone?”

“No,”
Dan said. “Don’t. Do me a favor and shut the door on your way out.”

Harry
took another look at me as he passed by, closing the door behind him. I turned
my attention to Dan. He gave me a small half-smile. “Nevada,” he said. “It’s
always nice to see you.”

“You son
of a bitch…” I began.

“Shut
up!” he thundered, his voice like a mountain tearing itself apart. It stopped
me in my tracks instantly. I’d heard Dan shout plenty of times, but he’d never
erupted at me like that before.  “You sit the fuck down, and you shut the fuck
up!” He pointed at the chair in front of his desk that Harry had been sitting
in when I’d arrived.

Telling
me what to do was, historically speaking, not such a great idea. But my energy
was fading quickly and I’d lost my train of thought when he blew up at me. I
tried to think of a cutting remark but drew a blank. Frustrated with myself, I
sat down.

Dan
stood up and I could see that he was shaking in rage. I’d crossed a line with
him, a line I hadn’t even known was there to cross. Maybe I should have started
with “hello” before I cussed him out.

“Do you
have any idea what you look like right now?” he asked.

“I took
a shower…” I started.

“You
look like
shit
!” he continued. “Absolute shit! You look like some
goddamn thing the cat dragged in and then dragged back outside to die.”

I stood
up, trying to hide the fact that my legs were beginning to tremble. “I don’t
have to take this.”

Dan took
a step around his desk, fists clenched. “Sit in the fucking chair,” he warned
me.

Dan and
I had gone at it before, plenty of times, but it had only ever been words. Things
had never gotten physical between us. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. But now
I wasn’t sure if he was willing to go there or not. If he wanted to take things
to the next level I wasn’t going to be able to put up much of a fight. On a
better day, maybe. His size would be a problem, but I was faster, and I’d
earned a black belt in Shotokan karate while I’d been a cop.

I sat
back down. “This isn’t going the way I had it planned,” I noted.

Dan
ignored my attempt at levity. “I am so fucking sick of you, Nevada,” he
continued. “I am sick of watching you kill yourself.” He went back to his side
of the desk. “You know what? Here.” He opened his desk drawer and took out a
.38 revolver. He turned the handle toward me and slammed it down on his desk.
“Do it,” he said, pointing at the gun. “Put that in your mouth and be done with
this shit.” He sat down in his chair and glared at me.

I stared
back at him, stunned. I’d expected him to be angry with me, sure. But I’d never
seen him like this before.

I’d have
been lying if I said the gun didn’t tempt me. Part of me wanted to pick it up
and hold it, to feel the cool steel of the barrel, and to find out just what
I’d do next.

If I’d
been alone it might have been a different story, but I wasn’t going to shoot
myself in front of Dan. I might have deserved that, but he didn’t.

“I’m
sorry,” I said, my hands clasped together on my lap.

“You
are
sorry,” he said. Some of the anger had left his voice, but there was plenty left
to spare.
And pain
, I thought. I’d hurt him badly.

We sat
there in silence for a moment. I had no idea what to say to make any of this
better. “Do you think maybe we could start this conversation over?” I asked.
“Hi, Dan!” I said with mock cheerfulness. “How have you been?”

“No,” he
said, no longer looking at me. His eyes were wet. He wasn’t crying, but this
was as close as I’d ever seen him to it.

I
sighed. “What do you want me to say?”

He
looked back at me now. “I have been watching someone I love die,” he said.

Was his
mother ill? I started to ask him but then I realized he’d been talking about
me.

“You
have been dying for three years,” he said. His voice carried a quiet urgency.
“Maybe even longer than that. I won’t even…” he waved a hand at me. “How much
do you even weigh now?”

“Never
ask a woman how much she weighs,” I said. But the truth was I had no idea.
Certainly a lot less than when I’d been healthy.

“You
look like a damn skeleton.”

On any
other day a comment like that would have led to angry words being exchanged,
but he’d managed to take the fight right out of me. “It’s not that bad.”

“It’s
exactly that bad.”

“Well,”
I said.

“Well,”
he repeated.

We sat
there for another minute but I didn’t have any excuses left to make about my
drinking or my health. He wasn’t going to hear that today, and he was right. I
knew I was full of shit.

I
decided to try a different tack. “Why did you give Alan Davies my name?”

“You’re
a detective, aren’t you? Why do you think, dumbass?”

I
already knew the answer, didn’t I? “You had some romantic notion that working a
case could lead to my salvation,” I said. “Especially if there was a child
involved.” I sighed. “You thought this might be just what I need to turn my
life around before it’s too late.”

He
nodded. “I would have phrased it differently,” he said. “But yeah. That’s about
it.”

“Yeah.”
I sighed again. “It’s really not, Dan.”

“We’ll
see. At least we’ll have you doing something useful before your organs start
failing. Have you seen a doctor recently?”

I
stifled a laugh. “What do you think?”

He
nodded. “Well, I can’t force you to go to a rehab, and I know nobody will ever
talk you into it. So there’s this. The work.”

I tried
to think of something clever to say. Everything he was saying was true, of
course. I knew I was dying. I just didn’t care. I hadn’t cared in a long time.

“Did you
guys really grow up together?” I asked.

“We knew
each other. The kids in a neighborhood always know each other, you know? We
weren’t all that close but I thought he was a good guy, back then.”

“And now
he’s the Godfather. He makes the deals people can’t refuse.”

The corner
of his mouth twitched up. Good. I’d nearly made him laugh. I’d always been good
at that. I was also secretly pleased that someone finally got one of my Mafia
jokes.

“Something
like that,” Dan said. “I hadn’t seen him in years, until he called me.”

“You guys
sound like a
Lifetime
movie.” I deepened my voice to sound like I was
narrating a movie trailer. “‘They grew up together on the mean streets of El
Cajon. Now one’s a cop, and one’s a criminal.’”

Dan
shrugged. “If I ever get him on a murder, I’m not going to lose any sleep
putting him away.”

I
nodded. Typical, incorruptible Dan. “What do you think about the case?”

“I think
it’s a domestic dispute.”

“Then
why get me involved?”

“Didn’t
we just have this conversation?”

“You
probably could have found something else for me to do, if you really wanted
to.”

“Well,
this is what landed on my desk,” he said. “And maybe it’s not a domestic thing.
Even if it is, it gets you out of that house for a few days. It’ll be a few
days you’re not drinking yourself to death.”

I
decided to let that one go. “You think there’s any chance Davies is an abuser?”

“I
wouldn’t swear to it, but I doubt it. He never seemed like the type to me.”

“He’s a
criminal.”

“Doesn’t
mean he hits his wife or the kid. And he told me he’d consider the matter
closed if you gave him your word that they were somewhere safe. Even if he
changes his mind, he’s not fool enough to threaten you.”

“You
think I intimidate him?”

“I don’t
know,” Dan said. “But I know I do.”