Come Twilight (23 page)

The nights were growing warmer as we got closer to the end of summer and the miserable heat that came with it. The weather forecasters were telling us to expect the average high temperature to set records and that we were likely to have more one-hundred-plus-degree days than in any year since they started keeping records. But we probably still had a few weeks of bearable temperatures ahead of us before the hotpocalypse arrived.

Julia invited Lauren to join us watching TV, but when she found out we were planning to continue our
Downton Abbey
marathon, she declined.

I assumed she turned us down for the same reason that I’d been initially reluctant to watch, so I said, “It’s really not as lame as you think it’s going to be.”

“Lame?” She seemed genuinely offended. “If it was ‘lame’ would I have watched the whole thing twice?”

Julia thought that was hysterical.

A few episodes later, when I started complaining that I didn’t buy the procedure the police were using to investigate a murder, she thought we’d had enough. “Will you do me a favor?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“Can I borrow your laptop for a minute?”

“Sure,” I said, heading into the kitchen where I’d left it earlier that day. I was glad I’d changed the title of the
Songs For My Funeral
playlist.

“Here you go,” I said, sitting down next to her again.

She opened a browser window, typed something she didn’t want me to see into the search box, and clicked on a link before handing it back to me. I started to close the cover, but she said, “No, that wasn’t the favor. This is.” She showed me the screen. On the screen was a “Which
Downton Abbey
Character Are You?” quiz.

“Really?” I said.

“Humor me.”

I picked a color, a movie, a song, and a bunch of other things. When it told me it was calculating the results, I handed it back to her, pretending not to be curious.

“Ha, I knew it!” she said, grinning broadly. She spun it back around for me to see. It said I was Mr. Bates.

I took the computer away from her, closed it, and put it down on the coffee table, all while trying to hide the fact that I’d gotten exactly the result I’d been hoping for.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

SIRENS

“We got him,” Dave shouted from the other side of the squad room. I looked up and saw Patrick and Jen rush over to his desk. The lab had matched fibers from the back of Avram Novak’s SUV to trace evidence found on Kobe’s pants in the Dumpster. Not Kobe, I corrected myself, Ryan Wong.

With Kayla’s help, they found S. Wise, whose name, in what could only have been a fundamental error in his understanding of alias theory, did in fact turn out to be Sam. He corroborated Kayla’s story, although he hadn’t stuck around much longer than Kayla. When Joe told them he wanted to “grow the business” from pot to include harder drugs as well, that was where he drew the line.

Despite the information provided by Sam and Kayla, though, B. Darklighter was nowhere to be found. His apartment appeared to have been quickly vacated just as Ryan’s was and he didn’t answer either his regular cell phone or the burner linked to the contact list.

“So,” I heard Patrick ask, “did Novak kill Ryan because of his involvement in the drug ring, or because of his proximity to the Denkins murder?”

“Good question,” Dave said. “If we could answer it, we’d know whether we’re looking for a runner or for another potential victim.”

Patrick wheeled another chair over to my desk and sat down.

“Good news,” I said.

He nodded. “How are you doing? Jen said everything looked okay at the doctor yesterday.”

“It did, yeah. Head still hurts. That’s to be expected, though.”

“How about the other stuff?”

I wondered what other stuff he was referring to and what Jen had told him. “The doctor didn’t think it was anything to worry about.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

“Me too.”

“Jen’s been keeping you in the loop, right?”

I nodded.

He looked down at his hands. “Danny, I’m sorry about the way—”

“Don’t be. I understand. It’s okay.”

He let out an audible sigh and I could see the relief in his expression.

“So,” I said, “you find any connection between the Novaks and that Serbian crew with the South African hardware?”

“Not yet. But I know it’s there.”

“What’s the relationship between Avram and Goran?”

“Avram is the nephew. Grew up with Goran. Nobody knows what happened to his father. Probably never made it here from Yugoslavia.”

“I thought they were Croatian.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “You can Google that later. The important thing is that the bombing totally fits Goran’s MO. The biggest reason no one’s ever made a case against him is that everybody who’s ever been willing to testify, and there weren’t many, has either disappeared or died.”

“Any car bombings?”

Patrick nodded. “Two of them.”

And just like that, the suffocating weight that I had felt crushing me ever since I was first informed about the explosion, that morning in Ruiz’s office, lifted off of me and floated away.

Patrick put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You can go home tonight. You’re in the clear, buddy.”

I caught Ruiz just as he was about to leave for lunch. “Must be a hell of a relief,” he said.

“It is. Okay if I take some more sick time this afternoon?”

“You feeling all right?”

“Yeah. Just have some personal business to take care of. Going to keep Lauren with me for another day, too.”

He nodded. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s a good cop. She’ll be working for you in a couple of years.”

“Too bad she’s not ready yet. Just got the word from upstairs. The funding came through. We’re going to be adding one more to the squad roster.”

“A rising murder rate lifts all boats.”

He almost grinned at that.

I got up, but stopped at the door and turned back to him. “You should keep Lauren on reassignment until Patrick closes this. It’ll do her good.”

Ruiz looked me in the eye, and when he said, “Okay,” I knew it was as much for me as it was for her.

At my desk, I packed up my messenger bag and got ready to go. Jen was talking to someone on the phone and the conversation looked serious, so I didn’t disturb her. On my way out, I looked over my shoulder and caught her eye. I smiled and lifted my hand to wave, as if to say
It’s all good, see you later.
She raised her hand in return, but even from twenty feet away, I could see the sadness behind her smile.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

GO FAR

After we left the station, I told Lauren I needed to go home. We were only a few blocks from Jen’s house when I realized I needed to clarify that I meant the duplex on Roycroft.

My home.

We parked across the street and I dug the iPad out of my bag and opened the app that would let me check the surveillance footage from Patrick’s cameras.

“Do you still need to do that?” Lauren asked.

I thought for a second and realized that I didn’t. Looking at her, I said, “Can’t hurt.” She waited patiently for several minutes while I scrolled through recordings. Some of the cats were starting to look familiar, as was the mail carrier. The possum was still frequenting the backyard, too.

“Looks like the coast is clear,” I said.

She followed me inside. It was the first time she’d been there.

“So that’s the famous banjo,” she said, looking at the Saratoga Star in its stand by the sofa.

“How do you know about that?”

“Everybody knows.”

That was news to me. I imagined uniforms at crime scenes making banjo jokes behind my back and was surprised I hadn’t got any crap about it.

“What’s the difference between a banjo and an onion?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. What is it?”

“Nobody cries when you cut up a banjo.”

I left her in the living room and went into the office, smiled at the cow jumping over the moon, and opened the file cabinet. In the top drawer, where I kept my financial stuff, I found the file with my paycheck stubs and pulled out the last six and last month’s bank statement.

As I joined Lauren in the living room, an odd feeling washed over me like a wave of cold water. He’d been in the kitchen, waiting for me. My kitchen. In my home. It had only been days, but it seemed like something that had happened much longer ago.

She reached down and strummed a fingernail across the strings, and the rich twang of the Deering pulled me back into the moment.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Where?” she asked.

“So this is the end of the line for my reassignment, huh?” Lauren said as we walked down another row of Imprezas and Crosstreks and Foresters at the Subaru dealership. I knew what I was looking for and imagined I was trying to pick a suspect out of a lineup.

“Not quite,” I said. “Ruiz is keeping you on until the case is closed. Probably until after Patrick interrogates Joe.”

“Really? Sweet.”

Two rows back I felt the tingle of recognition as I spotted the one I was looking for.

She followed me as I cut between two Outbacks. “Why is he doing that?”

“Because I asked him to.”

I ran my hand over the fender of the Legacy. It was the Lapis Blue Pearl I’d picked out on the website. Cupping my hands and leaning down, I looked inside through the driver’s-side window and saw the Warm Ivory leather. This was the one.

A young Latino salesman in a white oxford with a maroon tie approached us. “How are you folks doing today?”

I looked him square in the eye and said, “I want to buy this one.”

Less than an hour later I was sitting in the driver’s seat basking in the new-car smell and listening to Ramon explain how to operate the car’s features. There was a lot more going on than there had been in my fifteen-year-old Camry. He synced my iPhone and hooked it up to the new charger. I had him set the audio system to E Street Radio.

Lauren had been in the backseat, and when Ramon was finished I told her to move up front.

“This is nice,” she said.

“I want to buy you lunch.”

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me where. I’ll meet you.”

“Let me drive you. We’ll pick up your car later.”

I turned out of the dealership and into the right lane. The Legacy wasn’t much bigger than my old car had been but it felt solid and stout, and more secure in its performance than my Camry ever had. I liked it already.

Lauren was fiddling with the touch screen in the center of the dash. “So this is an all-Springsteen station? Seriously?”

“Awesome, right?”

The next song in the rotation was “Atlantic City.” When the Boss started singing, Lauren said, “Hey, I know this song.”

“That speaks very highly of your character.”

“Dude,” she said. “You were almost the chicken man.”

After we had lunch at the Lazy Dog I took Lauren to pick up her car, and then drove to Jen’s house. On the 405, I activated the adaptive cruise control, which adjusted the speed to maintain the right distance behind the car in front of me. With all the new technology on the Subaru, it was apparent I had a steep learning curve ahead of me before I’d be able to figure it all out, but I was already wishing I’d made the leap a long time ago. It would be a long time before I realized that what I was feeling about my new Subaru didn’t really have much to do with the car at all.

When I got back to Jen’s, I gathered up all my dirty clothes that were scattered around the guest room and pulled the sheets from the bed. After dividing everything into lights and darks, I started the first load in the washing machine. Then I vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. When the sheets were ready to go back on the bed, everything was cleaner than it had been when I arrived.

Lauren found me as I was packing the clean laundry into my duffel bag.

“Staying at your house tonight?”

“Julia’s probably.”

“Good. You didn’t seem too comfortable when we were there.”

“It was that obvious?”

She nodded. “Jen wouldn’t mind if you stayed here a while longer.”

“Are you kidding? She’ll be glad to have me out of here.”

“You’re wrong.”

I smiled and nodded. “I hope so,” I said. No matter how much I wished that what she was saying was true, I knew it wasn’t. “See you in the squad room tomorrow.”

The hug surprised me. I hadn’t seen it coming, but fortunately I was quick-thinking enough to return it.

“Thanks for the last few days,” she said.

“You’re welcome.”

The new blue Legacy was parked in one of the visitors’ spots in the parking garage under Julia’s building and I was leaning against the fender with a bag of takeout from Bigmista’s Barbecue—her favorite pulled chicken and my favorite pastrami, along with sides of barbecue beans and pineapple coleslaw—when she pulled her Forester into the spot with her apartment number on it. She almost missed me, so I said “Hey” loudly enough for her to hear.

“Danny?” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.” She kissed me and looked at the car. “Is this a rental?”

“Nope.”

“Nice,” she said. “They closed the case?”

“Not yet, but apparently I’m in the clear.” I’d been thinking about Patrick telling me I was safe. There’d been no doubt in my mind when he first said it—the relief I’d felt was palpable. But the truth was that there wasn’t a solid link between the Novaks and the bombing of my car. Everything was circumstantial.
Let it go,
I told myself,
you’re just being paranoid because of the concussion.

That wasn’t hard to do when Julia put her arms around me, and I returned the embrace one-handed while I held the bag of food awkwardly out to the side so no stray sauce could get on her clothes.

“I brought dinner,” I said.

“Oh, it smells good. Bigmista’s?”

“Yep.”

She leaned against me as we rode up in the elevator. Inside, she said, “Put the food down in the kitchen.”

When I did, she kissed me deeply, took my hand, and pulled me into the bedroom.

By the time we finally got around to eating, everything was cold. Except the coleslaw. That had gotten warm.

Later we took the new car for a drive down PCH. I was already getting used to the feel and finding myself more and more comfortable behind the wheel.

The Camry was the first new car I had ever bought. I was still young enough then to look into a low-end BMW, but Megan and I were barely beyond the newlywed phase and talking about starting a family, so I knew the way to impress her most was to demonstrate my sensible maturity with a fine new midsized Toyota sedan.

I don’t know how long I would have held on to the Camry if I hadn’t been forced into the change. Probably until it was too worn down by time and miles to keep going. Maybe it was a good thing I’d been forced to move on. Cradled in the heated, five-way power-adjustable ivory leather embrace of the driver’s seat, I glanced over at Julia as she looked out the window at the moon glinting on the Pacific and was glad for the NHTSA five-star safety rating of the choice I’d made.