Cut to the Quick (36 page)

He took a deep breath, one of Dena’s five million relaxation techniques, and mentally said,
Inhale
. He then exhaled at length.
Relax
. Two breaths in. Two breaths out. He did it several more times. He had to admit that he felt calmer.

Clicking on the flashlight, holding it in his left hand and the gun in his right, he forced his feet to move to the next doorway.

Bathroom, as he had thought. Empty.

One room left. The door was open. Of course. That was Crowley’s M.O. Everything open for the world to see. C’mon in.

He hated him—more than he hated life itself.

What to do? What to do next?

He would march down there and announce himself. He wouldn’t shoot until he saw the whites of Crowley’s eyes.

Wait, wait, wait.… He had to think about this.

He shut off the flashlight.

What if Crowley slept with a gun or a knife under his pillow? That was what got him sent to prison, throwing a knife at a guy and hitting him in the heart.

Best thing would be to shoot first and sort it out later.

Maybe he had a woman with him. He’d have to kill the woman too. If he was going to succeed in framing Jenkins for Crowley’s murder, he couldn’t leave witnesses.

Crowley had a son. He’d TiVo’d Dena’s interview with Bowie, and they’d talked about a son, a boy Luddy’s age. What if the boy was there?

Scoville talked himself out of that idea. If the boy was here, he wouldn’t be sleeping with his father. One of those couches had to be a pullout. Hell, Luddy slept like a log anywhere.

He was losing his nerve. Stop thinking and start shooting.

He took a deep breath, mentally counting
One
. Another breath.
Two
. One more.
Three
.

He turned on the flashlight and stomped toward the final door. His tennis shoes squeaked against the hardwood floor. He was all about action. Man of action.

He was at the door. The flashlight beam flit across the bed. Crowley was there. In bed. Beneath the covers.

Scoville started shooting. Shooting and shooting. Shooting wildly. The silencer muffled the timbre of the shots, but in Scoville’s mind, the room exploded. The comforter danced from the impact of the bullets. No noise came from beneath the covers. Sometimes death was quiet. Like with the thug and the hood ornament. Sometimes death was as subtle as the quiet thwack of a skull cracking open against asphalt.

He kept firing. The empty gun made anemic clicks but he kept on, finally letting his hand drop to his side. A haze of feather fragments from the down comforter
swirled in the moonlight that spilled through the naked window.

The overhead light went on.

Scoville let out a bleat of surprise and spun on his heel.

“Whatcha doin’, Mark?” Crowley stood behind him, wearing only boxer shorts, a knife in his hand.

Scoville fired at the bare chest of his nemesis, using a gun that had no bullets, an apt metaphor for his life. The gun not achieving the desired result, he raised it in his hand and charged Crowley, intending to do to him what he had done to the thug.

In one smooth motion, Crowley set the knife on a dresser, seized Scoville’s wrist, and twisted it behind his back, pinning it there.

Scoville yelped and the gun clattered to the floor. He cried out again when Crowley sharply tugged on his arm as if he was going to pull it out of the socket. He felt Crowley’s body heat and his rock-hard chest through the back of his T-shirt. It repulsed him.

“Mark, quiet down. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Facing the bed, looking at the bullet-riddled comforter, Scoville saw the flaw in his logic. It was too warm a night for a heavy down comforter.

“You
are
hurting me. Let me go.”

“Not until you promise to stop acting stupid.”

“You screw my wife in my own home and I’m supposed to do nothing.”

Crowley leaned to speak into Scoville’s ear. “I’ll admit that was uncool. If I was you, I’d be pissed too. I’d want to do to me exactly what you came here to do. But Mark, what kind of man terrorizes his wife and children? If you have a situation with me, deal with me.”

“Dena called you.”

“She called me.”

“I guess the police are there.”

“They are.”

“Are they coming here?” Scoville asked almost hopefully.

Crowley released Scoville’s arm and pushed him away. “I don’t need to settle this with cops.”

Scoville faced Crowley, rotating his shoulder and rubbing the socket. “Do you have anything to drink?”

“There’s no alcohol in this house. From what I see, you don’t need any booze.”

“Don’t fucking preach to me, okay? You A.A.-ers, you’re like evangelicals. You have a gospel tract you want to give me?”

“I have water, orange juice, or punch. What would you like?”

“I’ve got vodka in my car.”

“Water, orange juice, or punch.”

“Whatever.” Scoville was somber, his bluster spent like the last of his bullets.

Crowley grabbed a pair of Levi’s from the back of a chair. Scoville looked away as he put them on, buttoned the fly, and buckled the belt that was already through the loops. He slipped his feet into worn huaraches and the knife into a leather sleeve on the belt. He waved his hand, indicating that he wanted Scoville to walk ahead of him.

In the kitchen, Crowley turned on the overhead light and surveyed the tools scattered around from his remodeling project. “Mark, clasp your hands behind your head.”

“I’m not gonna—”

“Just do it.”

Scoville complied.

In the bright kitchen, Crowley got a good look at Scoville. “You get in a fight?”

“Yeah.” Scoville chuckled. “You should see the other guy.”

Crowley appraised Scoville’s injuries. “You might need a couple of stitches. I’ll take you to the E.R.”

“No.”

“It’s your face.” Crowley opened the refrigerator. “I’ve got water and punch. I’m out of orange juice. Need to go to the market.”

“I’ll take punch.”

Crowley took out two small flexible pouches with plastic straws attached. The back of the pouch was transparent, showing blue liquid inside.

Scoville made a face and dropped his hands.

“It’s my son’s Kool-Aid. Sugar-free. Hundred percent of your daily requirement of vitamin C. Keep your hands behind your head, Mark.”

Scoville huffed and again laced his fingers behind his head.

“Let’s go in the front room. Watch your step.”

Scoville wove around the clutter, leading the way into the living room. “You doing this work yourself?”

“It’s a hobby. I learned cabinetmaking in the joint. Helps keep my head clear.”

On the way, Crowley grabbed a chair from the dinette set stacked on top of the dining room table. He plunked it in the middle of the living room and turned on a lamp.

“Sit down.”

Crowley handed him a pouch of punch. He sat in a deep leather chair, unpeeled a straw from its wrapper, and stabbed it into the opening of his own pouch.

Scoville did the same, sucking up the blue Kool-Aid. Only a couple of hours ago, he’d left his office and gone to the liquor store, where he’d encountered the thug. Earlier, he had considered going to the police and telling them everything about Jenkins and the double homicide.
At that time, his worst crime had been lying. He’d since broken through that invisible veil in everyone’s life, the membrane that separates before and after, the barrier that one might not even know is there until it’s pierced, never to be restored.

In life, there are, of course, normal, recognized milestones. Graduations, marriage, children. Certain deaths are expected. Normal. Then there’s the unpredictable rest. Falling in love. Landing a sought-after job. Making a friend. But the melodrama of before and after comes not from the best life has to offer, but the worst. Those dark nights of the soul in which one cries out for the boring, unsatisfying before. If one could have only known what the future held. How a simple twist of fate could set in motion a landslide of destruction.

I didn’t realize how good I had it
. Scoville drank the last of the blue Kool-Aid. He squeezed the empty container and hung his head, wiping tears and mucus from his swollen face.

“You want to talk about it?” Crowley looked like a Roman statue. His smooth upper body descended in a V shape to the waistband of his faded Levi’s. His legs were relaxed and open. His long hair was sleep-tousled. His famous tattoo was on his right bicep. On his hip, the hilt of his bowie knife protruded from a well-worn case.

Scoville did want to talk about it. The horrible secrets he’d been harboring were eating him from the inside out, just like the Prestone patty Jenkins had fed Mercer’s dog. There wasn’t enough booze in the world to drown it. He could kill all his enemies in the world and it wouldn’t help. Nothing could restore before. The best he could do was to deal with after like a man.

Finally, he met Crowley’s eyes. Scoville would never have believed it was possible, but they had a lot in common. Both had murdered in a fit of rage. But Crowley
had found redemption. He’d come far enough back to win the heart of a woman like Dena. Yeah, Scoville knew he’d lost her for good. He couldn’t blame her.

He started talking. He told Crowley everything, beginning with the moment he set eyes on Jenkins outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, up through the bludgeoning of the thug, and how he’d come after Dena.

After he’d finished, he asked Crowley, “What’s Jenkins’s beef with you anyway?”

Bowie raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his neck, unintentionally creating the famous beefcake pose from his
Vanity Fair
photo shoot.

After a while, he said, “It’s a long story.” He dropped his hands onto the chair arms. “Actually, it’s a short story.”

Crowley had changed into boots, his trademark black T-shirt, and a leather jacket. His knife was still in its sleeve on his hip.

Mounting his bike, he picked up his helmet from the handlebars and put it on. He released the brake and rolled the Harley down the street until he passed his neighbors’ houses before firing up the engine and heading out of the canyon toward the freeway.

THIRTY-FOUR

K
issick and
Vining decided to get a few hours’ sleep before driving out to the Salton Sea. Returning to the station, they borrowed a pickup truck from Vice that had been confiscated from drug dealers. It had tinted windows, four-wheel drive, big off-road tires, and a roll bar.

They went by Vining’s house so she could pick up a change of clothes and make sure everything was okay. It was. The alarm was still set and, as near as she could see, no one had bothered her house. She could have spent the night there—Kissick would have picked her up later—but she had taken him up on his offer to bunk at his house. It was a few miles farther east and closer to their destination. That was the trivial reason they’d settled on. Neither one shared their true motives. Vining guessed he had hoped for more than sleep. As for her, sleeping beneath his roof and sharing coffee in the morning was all she wanted. She’d had enough of saying good-bye to him.

They picked up carne asada burritos from Taco Fiesta near Vining’s house and ate in his dining room, drinking bottles of beer from his refrigerator. The old Craftsman-style house’s original wood chandelier with its amber frosted glass shades gave off a warm light and made even the humblest of meals special. Sitting there in the easy silence made her acutely aware of how painfully empty her cluttered life was.

All of a sudden, emotion welled within her. She knew that when she was tired issues took on a magnitude they wouldn’t normally. She ran her hands over her face and eyes, rubbing off the last traces of the makeup she’d put on that morning.

He slid his hand across the table and touched hers. He misinterpreted the source of her distress. “Hey, we don’t need to figure anything out tonight about Nitro, T. B. Mann, or whatever you’re not telling me about that necklace. Let’s get some sleep and tomorrow maybe we’ll catch us a bad guy.”

She dared to meet his eyes. She opened her hand and he laced his fingers with hers.

This was how they’d started three months ago. They’d gone for drinks and his hand on hers had led to a soulful kiss. That had happened in a public place, and it had been easy to back away, to listen to all the practical reasons they were not a good idea. Now they were alone. It had been her call to come here. And it was her call now. She knew why she’d come. Another person she needed to stop lying to was herself. His hand on hers swept away the cobwebs. She’d thought barbed wire had encased her heart, but it was only cobwebs, scary but harmless.

She withdrew her hand. She could tell by his eyes that he thought she was backing away again. If she did it again, here where everything was perfect, it would be the last time; he wouldn’t keep putting himself out there. She wouldn’t respect him if he did.

She pushed herself up, her eyes not leaving his.

He slowly pulled his arm across the table and into his lap, but didn’t move to stand. His lips parted slightly as she rounded the table. The old wooden floorboards creaked beneath her deliberate steps. He slid back his chair. She took her spot on his lap and reached to hold his face between her hands. They kissed. He tasted like spicy
beef, beer, and some long-missed but never-forgotten delicacy.

After a while, she got to her feet, took his hand, and led him through the living room. They passed the fireplace and the rug in front where they’d last made love two years ago and he’d made the mistake of confessing his love for her. She led him down the hallway and into his bedroom. She had much to confess, but it could wait. He closed the bedroom door behind them.

It was dawn when they arrived at the Salton Sea. They had roared across the Southland and into the desert at high speed, encountering little traffic. They’d only been stopped once by the CHP outside Redlands. A flash of their shields had quickly resolved the situation.

While Kissick drove, Vining touched base with the Imperial County Sheriff’s El Centro station to give them a heads-up that they were working in the vicinity. She also checked in with Sergeant Early. They didn’t expect any fireworks, just a couple of uneventful hours seeing if Jack Jenkins was around, who he associated with, where he went, and possibly snatching something with his DNA on it.