Broken (8 page)

We went
into a small, wood-paneled sauna adjacent to the women’s locker room. It was
early in the day and we had it to ourselves. Molly had gone to the juice bar
and come back with two large bottles of water, more than I typically drank in a
month. “Time to sweat,” she said, handing me one of them.

Inside
the sauna, Molly poured a ladle full of water onto the hot stones and we sat
there as the heat overwhelmed us. “I’ve never sweat this much in my life” I
told her.

“Good,”
she said. “It’ll get some of that poison out of you.”

“I’m not
sure that’s how it works,” I said.

“Can’t
hurt.”

We sat
on the benches and sweated in silence for a moment. The heat did feel good, and
the cool water was like drinking from a river in Heaven, but I still couldn’t
help but notice how
wrong
my own sweat smelled. I’d known I was pretty
far from healthy, but that had been unexpected.

“Ridge-hand,”
Molly noted. “A little unorthodox for Shotokan.”

“It was
the best move I had available,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to kill the guy. I
just wanted to end the fight.”

“A shot
to the throat is always tricky,” she said. “It’ll stop anyone in their tracks,
no matter how big they are. But a little too hard…”

“Yeah.”

“So tell
me what happened.”

I told
her the story of how Chandler Emerson had showed up on my doorstep and taken me
to Solana Beach to hear Alan Davies make an offer I couldn’t refuse. I told her
about my confrontation with Dan Evans at the police station, and my trip to
Heather Davies’s condo and what I’d seen there. And then I walked her through
Todd’s arrival at my house, and his subsequent death at my hands.

She
nodded frequently throughout the story, sipping occasionally from her huge
bottle of water as she listened. When I was finished she was silent for a long
moment. I kept sweating and let her think about it. “I should never have agreed
to be your therapist,” she said finally.

“I’m
that much trouble?”

“You
are, but that’s not what I meant and you know it, Nevada. I can be your
therapist or your friend. Not both. I took you on as a patient because I knew
you’d never see anyone else and I thought if you had some professional help…”
she shook her head. “Well, look where that got us.”

“It’s
not that bad…” I began.

“You
look like the corpse of my friend Nevada,” she cut me off. “Not my friend
Nevada. Drink some water.”

I didn’t
have the energy to fight with her. I drank some water.

“As your
therapist, I should tell you to get far away from all of this. Get yourself
into a rehab, get yourself some
intensive
treatment, because goddamn,
Nevada, you really need it. You need it more than anyone I have ever met.”

I
nodded. That was more or less what I’d expected her to say. “And since you know
that’s never going to happen?”

She
sighed. “Work the case. Go find the woman and her daughter. Try not to kill
anyone else.”

“I
didn’t mean to kill him!”

“I
believe that. I also believe there’s a very thin line between where you are
right now and complete, never-coming-back insanity. Did you notice how I didn’t
say the line was between sanity and insanity?”

“Yeah, I
saw what you did there.”

“It’s
because you’re
not
sane, Nevada,” she continued. “You’re very sick. You
haven’t crossed that line yet, but you’re so close…tell me something. If you
were in a situation where you had to kill an innocent person to get to the
Laughing Man, would you do it?”

“This
has nothing to do with the Laughing Man.”

“
Everything
with you is about the Laughing Man,” she said. “Would you kill someone if it
meant getting to him?”

I should
have pretended to struggle with the question, but I knew exactly what I’d have
done. “Yes. I would.”

She
nodded. “Of course you would. See, that’s the
wrong
answer. You can’t
see this right now, but the way you’re thinking? It’s really screwed up.”

“And you
think working a case is going to help me with my thinking? Dan had the same
idea.”

“Dan has
a tragic romantic streak, but I don’t think he’s all that far off. Sitting home
alone drinking is not doing anything to get you back on the right path.
You’re…I don’t know how to say this.”

“I’m a
cop?”

“No.
Being a cop doesn’t matter. It’s just a convenient outlet. You have this
pathological need for opposition. You’re a…you’re a
hunter
. You need to
be out hunting or you’re not happy.”

A
hunter? I’d heard that before, but not from Molly. Years ago a psychiatrist
who’d fancied himself a real-life Hannibal Lecter had said it to me as I’d
pushed him into a squad car. He’d killed two people before I caught up with him,
and when I had him in cuffs he decided he wanted to analyze me on the drive to
jail. That had been a very long twenty minutes. If anybody had seen me slam him
into a wall once we got to the police station, nobody had said anything about
it.

“So go
hunt,” Molly continued. “It’ll satisfy whatever part of you needs to do that,
and maybe bring you a little closer to our side of the line.”

“And
then I’ll be sane?” I smirked.

“No,”
she said. “I don’t think you’re ever going to be sane. Not really. But if we
straighten you out a little, get you to stop self-medicating, maybe you’ll have
an easier time making the right choices when the time comes.”

I sighed
deeply. I wasn’t sure what I’d wanted to hear when I’d come here, but I was
pretty sure that wasn’t it. “Is that your professional opinion?”

“No.
That is your friend’s opinion. My professional opinion is that I should
fifty-one fifty your ass.” 5150 was the section of California state code that
allowed for putting an involuntary psychiatric hold on someone who was deemed a
danger to themselves or to others. It meant 72 hours locked in a psych ward.

“That
didn’t work out so well last time,” I pointed out.

“No,”
she said. “It didn’t. Finish your water.”

We sat
there and kept sweating for a while, me drinking as much water at a time as I
could stand without getting nauseous. After a while Molly asked, “You already
know what you’re going to do when you leave here. Why don’t you tell me about
it?”

“I’m
going to work the case,” I said. “It is good, to be out there doing something
useful again. It makes me feel…I don’t know. Like my life matters.”

“Of
course your life matters,” Molly said. “It matters whether you’re working cases
or not.”

“I don’t
know.”

Molly
sighed. “Nevada, I have to ask. Have you thought about A.A.?”

I nearly
choked on my water. “Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“You
think I want to sit around and listen to a bunch of losers whine about how much
they miss drinking?”

“I think
you’d find that’s not what twelve-step programs are about.”

“No.”

“They
have meetings for cops. You’d be talking to people that have had similar
experiences…” she cut herself off. “No, I guess that’s not true. But cops.
There’s at least some common ground there.”

“I
really don’t see the point.”

“Will
you come back and talk to me about it when you finish with this case?”

“As my
friend or as my therapist?”

“As your
friend who happens to be a therapist,” she said. “Not your therapist. I could
recommend someone else for that. I know a guy…”

“I’ll
talk to you about it later,” I cut her off.

“Promise
me a year isn’t going to go by before I see you again?”

“Molly…”

“Promise
me.”

“Fine,”
I said. “I promise. Jesus. Everyone and their damn promises these days.”

“We’re
going to save your life, Nevada. Mark my words.”

I didn’t
reply. I just would have told her my life wasn’t worth saving, and then we’d
have had to go round and round again. We’d been there and done that before. But
I was glad I’d come to see Molly. I was going to have some bruises in the
morning, but I’d be proud of them. I’d
earned
them. Even if Molly hadn’t
made me promise, I’d have come back to see her. I missed her. I missed a lot of
things.

I missed
my life.

Chapter 10

After a
long shower I found myself wishing I had some clean clothes to put on. The
smell of the clothes I’d worn to the gym made me nauseous. I didn’t want to
drive home and do laundry, but there was no way I could keep this shirt on much
longer.

There was a novelty t-shirt store for tourists two doors
up from Molly’s dojo. I went inside and picked out the first shirt that didn’t
make me want to punch someone. It had a cartoon of a surfing dog on it, which
was not my thing at all, but at least it was clean.

I changed shirts in my car and tossed the dirty one onto
the back seat. That would do for now. New jeans and underwear could wait for a
while.

Alan Davies’s card was still in my pocket. I retrieved
it and then remembered I still had no idea where my cell phone was. I’d never
bothered to look for it after Todd had shown up at my house and tried to kill
me. It hardly seemed worth driving back to Ocean Beach to make a phone call to
let him know I was coming. I’d just have to show up unannounced. Davies would
have to make the time to see me, provided he was home and not off at some
gangster business meeting. Was that something gangsters did? Go to meetings?

My hands were starting to tremble when I reached for the
steering wheel and I realized my body was lacking both food and alcohol now. I
never ate that much anyway, but having vomited earlier meant I had been running
on empty for quite a while. I needed to get some calories in me before my body
started to shut down.

I drove north as far as Del Mar before stopping at a
fast food place and hitting the drive-through. As I was waiting for a
hamburger, I realized something was still nagging me. I was missing something.
Working a case could be a lot like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you were
missing pieces, but I had the feeling I was missing a piece I’d already seen
and just misplaced somewhere. It was starting to drive me nuts.

Kidnappers, since that seemed to be what I was dealing
with, had posed as furniture delivery people and wheeled two huge crates into
the lobby of a security building, past the guard, and right up to the door of
Heather Davies’s condo. And she’d let them in? That didn’t make any sense.
She’d have known perfectly well that she hadn’t ordered any furniture and
wasn’t expecting a delivery. Why would she have let them in? Getting furniture
delivered wasn’t like having someone send you flowers. It was never a surprise.

I thought about that as I ate, burger in one hand and
the other on the wheel as I drove. She wouldn’t have had to let them in. She’d
only have had to open the door. The kidnappers could have forced their way
inside easily enough. In that building it would have been hard to hear if your
neighbor screamed.

The security guard in front of Davies’s estate was the
same guy I’d seen before, but this time he was openly carrying an MP5. “Jesus,”
I said as he approached my window. “Seriously?”

“Ma’am?”

“Are you guys expecting a war?”

“You can go on up, ma’am.” The gate was already opening
up behind him.

I drove through the gate and started on up towards
Davies’s house, which was just as garish as I remembered. As I approached the
fountain out front I could see Davies on his lawn, hurrying toward the gazebo.
He was wearing a different Tommy Bahama outfit. I was starting to wonder if he
ever wore anything else.

He wanted to talk in the gazebo again? Was he afraid I
was going to stink up his house? Given my appearance yesterday it would have
been a reasonable conclusion, but…

Of course that wasn’t it, I realized. And he wasn’t
afraid I was going to steal an ashtray or make fun of his furniture, either.

I pulled the car off to the side of the driveway and got
out, not bothering to shut my door. Davies was still making a beeline for the
gazebo. “Hey!” I yelled after him. “Davies! Asshole!”

Davies turned to face me once he reached the gazebo. He
took a small, square device out of his pocket and pressed a switch on it. I couldn’t
see it well enough to identify it, but I was pretty sure I already knew what it
was.

I wasn’t thrilled about the long walk to the gazebo,
especially after my exercise earlier, but I hardly had a choice at this point. He
wasn’t going to  come to me. “You son of a bitch,” I said once I reached him.

Davies put his hands up. “I understand you’re…”

I punched him in the solar plexus as hard as I could,
which really wasn’t all that hard given how tired I was. It felt like punching
a brick wall, sending a shock wave up my arm all the way into my shoulder.
Davies fell to his knees with a grunt. I would have to hope he stayed down and didn’t
try to challenge me. I didn’t have another punch left over.

“You fucking lied to me!” I shouted.

Davies made it to one knee, his face red. I pulled back
as if I was going to hit him again, and he put a hand up in surrender. “Damn
it,” he wheezed. I understood the sentiment. My arm had gone numb.

“You knew they’d been kidnapped,” I said. “That small
army you’ve got walking around here with assault rifles isn’t normal at all, is
it? You’re getting ready for a war.”

“Yes.”

“Son of a bitch!” I repeated. The truth was I was
angrier at myself than I was at him. I should have seen through him from the
start. If I hadn’t been drinking myself to sleep every night for the last few
years I would have.

“Can I get up now?” he asked.

I took a step back and nodded, hoping he wasn’t going to
try to make a move. He’d be able to beat me pretty easily now if he did. I
wasn’t sure I could lift my right arm if I tried.

Davies got to his feet and kept both hands in the air
with his palms facing outward. “Can we sit down?”

“You first,” I said.

He sat and put his hands on the table. I hesitated a
moment, then took the seat across from him.

“That thing in your pocket is some kind of jammer isn’t
it? You’re worried about bugs.”

He nodded. “The house is too big to sweep every day.
This spot isn’t. And this,” he tapped his pocket, “creates enough interference
to make most bugs useless, but it has a very short range. Not much bigger than
this pagoda.”

“Okay. Tell me everything.”

“Chandler will be here in…”

“I do not care about Chandler,” I cut him off. “You
seriously want to start talking now.”

He took a deep breath. “It started…well, nearly two
weeks ago now,” he said. “I got a call that my family had been taken.”

“Who called you?”

“I don’t have any names. I don’t know who they are. The
man has a Mexican accent. Probably some competitor of mine.”

“What did they ask for?”

“Money. Two million dollars.”

I scoffed. “That’s it? You fucking moron. Pay them. Pay
them all of it right now and get your family back.”

“You don’t understand,” Davies said. “The two million
was due in three days. I
did
pay it. Then they called again and asked for
two million more, due in three more days. Then it was two million more three
days after that. I paid every time, but it just continues.”

Ransom on an installment plan? “Until when?”

“There isn’t any ‘when.’ There is no timeline. I guess
until I don’t have any money left. Then I don’t know what happens.”

I thought that over. I’d never heard of it before, but I
had to admit it made sense. In the movies you always saw kidnappers making
absurd demands, like twenty million dollars in 24 hours. That was next to
impossible to actually pull off. That much money simply couldn’t be obtained
and transferred that quickly. Even for the very rich it takes time to liquidate
assets. Nobody keeps that much cash sitting around their house.

I heard footsteps on the grass. Chandler Emerson was
rushing toward the pagoda. “Oh, boy,” I said. “Now the party can get started.”

Emerson glared at me as he went to take a third chair at
the table. “Sir, I wish you hadn’t started without me,” he said to Davies.

“I didn’t make an appointment,” I said.

Emerson turned to me, his face stern. “You are Mr.
Davies’s employee. You should have called in advance…” he began.

“You know what?” I addressed Davies. “Get rid of this
fucking guy.”

Emerson started to bluster but I kept my eyes fixed on
Davies. “Now,” I said.

Davies turned to Emerson. “It’s all right, Chandler,” he
said softly. “Give us a minute, will you?”

“Sir, I really think…”

“Shoo, Chandler,” I said, waving him away like he was a
fly ruining my picnic.

Chandler’s eyes shot murder at me but he stepped out of
the pagoda and took up a position a few feet away. “Farther, Chandler!” I
yelled, not looking at him. I saw him take a few more steps backward out of the
corner of my eye.

“Is that
really necessary?” Davies asked me.

‘You’re
number one on my shitlist right now,” I said. “Maybe you don’t want to ask me
what’s really necessary.”

“Fair
enough.”

“How are
these payments working?”

“He
transfers the money…” Emerson called.

“Back
the fuck up, Chandler!”

Chandler
took another step back. “You tell me,” I said to Davies.

“They
call after I make a transfer. The Mexican puts Heather on the phone. Then he
tells me when to make the next transfer and hangs up.”

“You’ve
talked to Heather?”

“She
never gets more than a sentence out before they stop her.”

I
thought about it. “Does she say the same thing every time they call?”

He
frowned. “I…I don’t think so.” His eyes widened when he realized why I’d asked
the question. “Do you think it’s a recording?”

“I don’t
know. What about Anna?”

“They
don’t let me talk to Anna.”

“Okay,”
I said. I thought it over. “You know your boy Todd tried to kill me last night?”

“Dan Evans
called and told me about it,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“You
know why he did it?”

“Dan
said there had been an affair and you found out about it.”

“Did you
know about the affair?”

“Not
until last night.”

“I lied
to Dan,” I said. “Todd was there to kill me, but he was acting on somebody
else’s orders. He was being threatened.”

“Good
god!”

“Whoever
he was working for was going to tell you about the affair if he didn’t kill
me.”

“I see.”

I cocked
my head at him. “I can’t help but notice how surprised you aren’t.”

“It
doesn’t surprise me that one of my people would be working with, or for, the
kidnappers, no.”

“That’s
the real reason why you don’t have your own people working on this. What, you
don’t exactly inspire loyalty?”

“They’re
employees,” Davies said. “Other than Chandler and a few others, I don’t trust
any of them. Someone makes a better offer, they take it. It’s like any other
job.”

“But
Wal-Mart isn’t going to shoot you in the head if you leave to go work at Best
Buy.”

He
nodded. “No, I suppose they aren’t.”

I
glanced at Emerson, who was still fuming a few yards away. “This explains why
you went to Dan.”

“Yes.
Traditional law enforcement wasn’t going to touch this.”

“And why
you lied to me.”

“What
would you have said if I’d told you the truth?”

“I’d
have told you to go fuck yourself.”

“Of course
you would have.”

“But
knowing I’d find out the truth, and putting me in danger at the same time, that
was kind of clever.”

“I
didn’t mean to put you in danger!” he protested.

“Of
course you did,” I said. “It’s a kidnapping. I was in danger the minute I
started looking for your family. But you were banking on that. If someone took
a shot at me and I survived, I’d probably be pissed off enough about it to go after
whoever it was. And if I didn’t survive, Dan Evans would tear the city apart
looking for whoever killed me. It’s a win-win for you.”

Davies
opened his mouth, shut it, then opened it again. “I hadn’t thought of it
exactly like that, but you’re right.”

“It
wasn’t the best plan in the world,” I said. “If I’d died, Dan would have taken
you apart when he was finished with whoever had done me.”

“But my
family would be safe.”

I
nodded. That much was probably true.

We sat
there in silence as I mulled it over. I wanted to take my frustration out on
someone, and Emerson was standing
right there
, but in the end I took the
high road.

“When is
the next transfer scheduled?”

“Tomorrow
at two. It’s always at two.”

“I’ll be
here for it.”

His eyes
widened. “You’ll still help me?”

“I’m in
it now,” I said. “I won’t let a child die if there’s anything I can do about it.
But I swear to god, if you lie to me again, I’ll put a bullet in you when this
is done.”

“I
promise. You’ll know everything I know from now on.”

“Good,”
I said. I stood up. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“What
are you going to do?”

“Honestly?”
I asked. “I’m probably going to go have a drink. Then we’ll see.”