Come Twilight (25 page)

When he finished, he said, “Danny. Good to see you out and about. How’s the investigation going?” He was referring to the attempt on my life rather than the Denkins murder, although those wound up being the same case.

“Looks like we’ve got things cleared up.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said. I hadn’t told him much about it when we ate lunch together at the Potholder, but he knew me well enough to have seen how much it had been rattling me.

I introduced him to Julia. He hadn’t seen me with a woman since Megan died, so I expected some kind of joke or double entendre, but none came. Instead he chatted with her a bit and ended by saying, “Danny’s a good guy.” His earnestness and sincerity could have only meant one thing. He was still worried about me.

“I know,” Julia said, taking my hand.

An hour later, the crowd had quadrupled, and it was still early in the lineup. There was still room in front of the center stage, though, where a scruffy banjo player in a dark T-shirt, baseball cap, and thick-framed glasses had just started a set with his bandmates. They were called Rosie Harlow & the Tall Tale Boys and had a folky alt-bluegrass sound that I really liked.

I wasn’t their only fan. In the area directly in front of the stage, a fiftyish blonde woman in a gauzy white blouse and long gray skirt was dancing oddly out of time with the music. She was clearly in an altered mental state of some kind. Her cheek had some bruising, and a small scab hung just below her eye. The other people in the crowd were giving her space, and, while she didn’t look particularly joyful or even happy, it was clear the music was having a positive effect on her. I looked over at Julia, who was watching her, too, with a shade of concern in her expression. The woman wasn’t really bothering anyone, though, and no one seemed to have a problem with her.

Until the drunk asshole behind me started talking.

“What’s wrong with her?” I heard him ask quietly. He didn’t get an answer, so after a few moments he raised his voice and directed it at the dancing woman. “Get out of there,” he said. “You’re ruining it!”

She seemed oblivious to him. But he kept it up. I turned to look at him. Trucker hat, sunglasses, mustache, T-shirt, shorts, sandals, and, of course, a beer in his hand. It clearly wasn’t his first of the evening. He was as oblivious to my dirty look as the woman was to his voice.

I glanced to my right again as he moved past me on the left toward the stage. When I turned, he was a few feet in front of the woman. He moved toward her, his arms outstretched, as if he were trying to herd a sheep.

The nearest uniforms were at the back of the crowd and I couldn’t tell if they were aware of what was going on.

For the first time since I’d noticed her, the woman’s eyes seemed to connect with the world around her, and when she looked at him they filled with fear. He took another step forward and this time actually nudged her toward the side of the stage.

I moved, quickly closing the fifteen feet between us, and slid in between them, facing the asshole. His eyes were hidden behind the dark lenses of his glasses, but his posture straightened and his chest expanded and I wanted desperately for him to escalate the situation with a swing or a shove or anything else that would give me license to attack. I knew I should say something to calm him down and back him off, but I didn’t. I met his threatening posture with my own and tried to will him to attack.

We eyeballed each other.

I should have badged him, de-escalated the situation.

I didn’t.

His neck twitched and his head tilted a few degrees.

Something burned behind my eyes.

Everything slowed down.

He dropped his beer and lifted his hand to shove me.

I saw it coming and twisted my torso so his palm only brushed across my chest. Without thinking, I continued the motion and drove my right elbow hard into his jaw. The impact snapped his head sideways. I put my left hand on his shoulder and pushed him in the direction of his own momentum to spin him around.

With one small step I was behind him and used my shin to pop his knee out from under his hips. Then I pushed him face-first into the puddle of beer on the ground. I planted my knee in the small of his back, yanked his arm up hard, then twisted it back down while I reached for the spot on my hip where for years I’d carried my handcuffs while I was in uniform.

There was nothing there.

He kept struggling and trying to pull his arm free.

I put more weight on my knee and began torquing his wrist up between his shoulder blades.

But before I could break anything, two patrol officers were behind me.

“We got this, Detective,” one of them said, grasping my triceps and tugging me back.

I stood up and backed off, trying to catch my breath, feeling like I’d been somewhere else for the last minute.

Before I was fully aware of what was happening, Julia was next to me, asking if I was all right, and the two cops had the drunk cuffed and on his feet and were leading him away from the empty hole I’d created in the crowd.

Still breathing heavily and shaking from the adrenaline, I looked around to find the woman he’d been harassing. She was behind me, huddled with a few others. A much younger woman who was comforting her nodded at me.

“Where’s Stan?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Julia said. She put her hands on my arms and looked me squarely in the eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” I tried to look over my shoulder, but she put her hand gently on the side of my face to keep my attention focused on her. “Is that woman all right?” I asked.

She nodded. “She’s with some friends. They’re taking care of her.”

“Good,” I said. “Good.”

As we walked toward the squad cars on Elm, I noticed something I hadn’t seen earlier. Someone had strung a cord from one rooftop all the way across the street to a second on the other side. Hanging from it were three-foot-tall blue and black letters that silhouetted the word “Buskerfest” against the last of the sunset fading behind the Long Beach skyline.

When we got back to Julia’s place, she opened the door and we went inside. It smelled like flowers. There was a vase of roses and lilies on the table that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Probably because the air conditioning had been on and I was inside just long enough for Julia to pick up her bag and walk back out with me.

“Those flowers smell nice,” I said.

She put her hand on my cheek and said, “Thank you.”

I was still amped up from the altercation and she wasn’t buying my attempt at casual conversation.

“What happened back there?” she asked.

“You saw the same thing I did. That asshole was harassing that lady. As soon as he touched her it was battery, so I had to do something.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “What happened to you?”

“He assaulted me. I defended myself.”

The tenderness in her face slipped away and was replaced by something firmer. “Do you really believe that’s all there was to it?”

“Yes,” I said, almost buying the lie myself.

She sighed softly and looked away from me. “Danny,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

We stood there.

When she finally looked at me and spoke again, she said, “Are you okay to get yourself home?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WINNING STREAK

When the first swallow of Glenlivet hit my stomach and the alcoholic warmth began to spread in waves through my body, I thought, for just a moment, that I might be able to forget.

An hour earlier, I’d sat in my new car in Julia’s parking garage, trying to figure out how the evening had gone so wrong. Her sending me home was an even bigger surprise to me than the altercation at Buskerfest. We’d planned on spending the night together and going out to breakfast in the morning, but there I was, alone and confused, with no idea of where to go or what to do.

There was no food in my house, so I needed to shop. I decided to go to the fancy Ralphs at Marina Pacifica even though it was out of the way. Because it was bigger and had a much better selection of fresh stuff in the deli and bakery. Not because of its expansive and well-stocked liquor section. But since I was there anyway, why not grab some Grey Goose?

I was headed to check out, a turkey-pesto sandwich, three frozen entrees, and a fifth of vodka in my basket, when I spotted the bottle on the shelf across the aisle from the craft-beer cooler. It was a surprise to see it there. Single-malt scotch in a grocery store? The location surely had something to do with it. The store was just across from Naples Island, the most exclusive part of Long Beach. Lots of rich people shopped there. It was the only market I’d ever visited multiple times without once finding a shopping cart with a bad wheel. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.

The Marina Pacifica might not have been on my way home, but once I was there, Bill Denkins’s apartment was. I parked across the street from his building, not far from where I’d seen my Camry for the last time before the bomb totaled it. It was getting late, but still I got out, crossed Belmont Avenue, and tried the gate at the side of the building that led to the units in the back. The latch wouldn’t open. The mechanism was designed to lock automatically, though I’d noticed on a previous visit that it didn’t always work. But tonight it did.

From where I stood, three steps up from the sidewalk, I could see the concrete porch that Bill’s unit shared with the upstairs neighbor’s. If I stepped to the left and leaned, I could just get an angle on his front door. It looked dark.

I took a shot and walked back down to the sidewalk, then looped onto Second Street and around the building Kurt Acker managed. The gate on the alley was open. I went in. Above the garage, the lights were on in Harold Craig’s studio. There was only darkness behind the front window of the apartment that had belonged to Kobe.

There was no light on in Bill’s place, either.

I wasn’t sure why I felt compelled to visit. What could I have possibly expected to find?

As soon as I’d spotted the bottle of single malt on the shelf at the supermarket, Bill had wedged himself back into my mind. I thought of him sitting in his living room on a night like any other and hearing a knock on the door. His son-in-law and an associate. Had Bill known Novak? I thought about it. Their paths might have crossed with Joe’s restaurant business. If I was still doing the interrogation, I’d make a point of trying to find out.

Maybe Patrick knew. I didn’t know how far he’d progressed on the investigation, how many of the minor details he’d been able to sort out. How annoyed, I wondered, would Patrick be if I asked him about it tomorrow? It didn’t matter. I decided I’d try to find out whether he liked it or not.

I stepped up onto Bill’s porch and put my hand on the door. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. What I was apologizing for, I didn’t fully understand. Letting the case go? Not following through? That I wasn’t the one who’d be twisting the truth out of Joe on Monday morning? Each of those was more absurd than the last. Bill had never known me, had no investment in me closing his case. The only thing that mattered was that it was closed, and Patrick was doing at least as good a job as I would have. Maybe better. The apology must not have been for Bill, I thought. But before I could pursue the idea any further, I heard the rattle of someone unlocking the front gate and heels clacking on the walkway. It was a woman. As she got closer, I recognized her as the tenant who lived directly above Bill. She didn’t recognize me, though, and stopped ten feet away, clutching her purse tightly to her side.

“Hello, Ms. Clare,” I said, pulling the badge holder from my pocket and flipping it open for her to see. “I’m Danny Beckett. Long Beach PD. You spoke to my partner a few weeks ago.”

As I talked, the tension drained from her posture and she stood up a little bit taller. “Yes,” she said. “I remember.”

I smiled at her but didn’t say anything.

“Can I help you with something?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I was just driving past and I wanted to stop.”

By that time she was on the porch, too, and unlocking the door that led upstairs to her unit. “Okay.” She didn’t do a very good job of pretending to understand what I was talking about. “Do you know what happened yet?”

I nodded.

“But I’m sure you can’t say anything about it, right?”

I nodded again. “No, not really. We do know that there’s nothing for anybody else in the neighborhood to worry about, though.”

“How do you know that?”

I thought about what I might be able to tell her that wasn’t confidential. “There was a very specific motive that doesn’t really apply to anyone else.”

She thought about it and seemed to relax. “That’s good.”

“It is,” I said. I smiled again and started for the gate.

I was already in my car and turning right onto Broadway when I thought about Harold upstairs, alone and anxious in his tiny studio, and it occurred to me that I should have checked in with him while I was there. A small twinge fluttered in my gut and I felt guilty. I considered turning around and going back but talked myself out of it. Maybe I didn’t feel guilty enough.

At home I dropped a few ice cubes in a short glass and poured Glenlivet over them. I’d never really been a scotch drinker, but Bill Denkins and his last night were still on my mind. Very few of the crimes we investigate involve people who expected to die, who had some reason to worry or to suspect what was coming. What had Bill known? Did he trust Joe? Was that enough for him to be comfortable drinking with Novak? Did he have any suspicions about either of them that night? Or did he go with no warning at all? A few pleasant drinks and then lights out? Novak didn’t seem like the type to signal his intentions.

No,
I thought,
he wouldn’t warn you off or even attempt it. He’d just come at you. If he put a bomb in your car, you’d be in the driver’s seat when it went off.

The ice hadn’t melted very much, so I poured another glass. When that one was gone, so were the cubes, so I started drinking it straight. It wasn’t until I tried texting Julia that I realized how much my tolerance for alcohol had diminished since I’d stopped drinking vodka every day. Or maybe scotch just hit me harder.

My thumbs felt twice as big as they normally did and I was having difficulty hitting the right keys on my iPhone.
sre tiu okya?
I wrote. Eventually I was able to correct it to
Are you okay?
and hit “Send.”

I hadn’t been that drunk in a long time. When I’d poured the first glass I hadn’t intended to wind up where I was. The alcohol wasn’t providing any escape or relief, it was only pulling me deeper into the tangle of emotions I’d been trying not to acknowledge for weeks. A deep sense of despair filled me to the point that I could no longer contain it. I thought of Bill. And of the victim before him and before and before. So much death. All the way back to Megan and, eventually, to my father.

A therapist once told me she suspected I’d become a homicide detective in order to confront the loss I’d felt since I was a child. Losing a parent to violence at such an early age wounds you, she said. Investigating murder was my way of facing it head-on, of trying to come to terms with the inevitability we all face and trying to heal. But had I healed? I didn’t know the answer to that question. Was I still just that open, bleeding wound or had I become nothing more than a mass of hardened scar tissue?

I tipped the bottle one more time, swearing it would be the last of the long night, then raised the glass to all my dead.

Sunday morning I felt like shit. It was hard to tell where the physical hangover ended and the emotional one began. I couldn’t remember going to bed, but that’s where I woke up. Somehow I’d even managed to change into sweatshorts and a T-shirt. The clock on the nightstand told me it was almost ten thirty. I tried to remember the last time I had slept so late, but my memory failed me.

Julia had texted me back three hours earlier.
I’m okay. Worried about you. We should talk. Dinner?

We should talk.
What did that mean? How badly had I screwed things up last night?

The asshole who was harassing the impaired woman had been a kind of opportunity for me. Not a good or positive one, but an opportunity nonetheless. He’d given me the chance to unleash the anger I hadn’t even realized I’d been carrying since the bombing. He’d given me the chance to feel powerful in the face of the utter impotence I’d been experiencing but refused to acknowledge. He’d given me the chance to explode.

I’d been lucky. In different circumstances it could have been far worse. Because, truthfully, I’d wanted to hurt him much more than I actually had. I’d wanted to grind his face into a smear on the asphalt. But what would have happened without a convenient villain to punish? Where would my rage have gone? Who would it have hurt?

That’s what really worried me. How much of that had Julia been able to see? I had no idea what she might be thinking or what she wanted to talk about. Maybe she’d seen who I really was. And maybe that was all she wanted to see of me.

I found Patrick in the squad room. An hour earlier, I’d called and asked if I could buy him lunch. It didn’t surprise me at all to discover he was working. If I had an interrogation on a Monday that a major case hinged on, I’d be at my desk all day Sunday, too. On the way downtown I stopped at Modica’s and picked up sandwiches—a meatball and a chicken Parm. When I asked him which one he wanted, he chose the meatball. I should have known.

“I’ve been thinking about Novak,” I said after swallowing my first bite.

“What about him?” Patrick asked.

“He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who gives warnings.”

He sucked some iced tea through the straw in his cup. “I don’t get what you mean.”

“Well, are we still operating under the theory that the bomb in my car was a warning?”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “You weren’t in your car again after that morning at the crime scene. It could just as easily have been a missed opportunity and he detonated the bomb because he figured it would be found and a lot easier to trace if it hadn’t gone off.”

That was a good point. But it wasn’t enough. “What about my abduction?”

He raised his eyebrows and wiped some marinara from his chin.

“Why even grab me? Why not just put a bullet in the back of my head right there in the kitchen? Doesn’t that seem more like his style?”

Patrick tossed the idea around for a few seconds. “Yeah, but I’m not convinced. Maybe he tried to warn you off because there was too much heat from the bombing. Figured it was safer that way. And none of the Novak family has ever killed a cop. That’s a whole different game.” He nodded, more to himself than to me. “I’m still betting on Avram.”

His logic made sense, but it didn’t ease my suspicion that there was more to the attempt on my life than we were seeing—though I didn’t have anything other than my hunch to back up the feeling.

“Since you’re here,” he said, “would you mind walking me through Denkins’s file one more time?”

We spent more than an hour reviewing the work I’d done on the case before it had been handed off to him. When we’d gone over everything and he’d asked me all the questions he could think of, he said, “So how’s the new car?”

“It’s okay.”

“Just okay? Lauren said you were gaga over it. I’m just about done here. Why don’t you show it to me? Maybe take a spin.”