Liquid Smoke (23 page)

Simington sat in one of the chairs, a plate with a huge hamburger and a pile of French fries in front of him. Two guards, at opposite ends of the room, watched him with the same pleasure they might watch a late-night infomercial.

He smiled and gestured at the plate. “All day. I get pretty much whatever I want. I’ve got a pizza, a lasagna, a plate of pancakes, and a six pack of Pepsi coming in tonight for the last one.”

When I’d called to arrange the visit, they’d told me he’d be in a different room, but I wasn’t prepared to be so close to him. Not having the glass between us was unnerving. The barrier had provided a buffer for me, something that kept me from realizing he was a real person. Without it, I couldn’t escape that he was a living, breathing human being.

About to die.

I slid into the metal folding chair across the table from him. “That’s great.”

He stuffed a fry into his mouth and nodded. “Like they’re trying to make up for what they’re about to do to me. Oh well, huh?”

There was no anxiety or nervousness about him. His repeated statements that he was fine with all this seemed proven by his attitude and his appetite.

“I guess,” I said.

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Surprised you came back. Thought we were done the last time.”

“Me, too.”

He folded his arms across his chest, the tattoo on his wrist flashing at me like a neon sign. “So. You take care of things in San Diego?” I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah.” “Good for you,” he said, his voice lower now. “Not really.”

“Yes, it is. It needed to get done.”

Discussing a murder in a prison was doing nothing to alleviate the tension in my body and my mind.

“Been a long time coming,” Simington said. “Never thought it would happen, really.” A thin, dry smile appeared on his face. “Almost didn’t, I guess. But I knew I could count on you.” He reached for one of the hamburgers.

Knew I could count on you.

It had been sticking in my skin for the previous two weeks. Why had he sent Darcy to me in the first place when he’d had no intention of fighting his sentence? Why had he talked to me when he’d spoken to no one else? Why had he thrown out Keene’s name in the first place? His answers had always seemed hollow, but I’d accepted them at the time. Maybe because I’d been looking for some sort of connection with him. Maybe because I’d wanted to believe that some part of him was good. But somewhere in my head and in my heart, I knew there was something else, something much less altruistic, in his actions. And now, finally, I heard it in his words.

“This is what you wanted from the first day, isn’t it?” I asked.

The hamburger was halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“You didn’t give a shit about me,” I said, seeing it all again in my head. “You wanted Keene.”

He set the burger back on the plate and wiped his hands on the thighs of his pants. “What are you talking about?”

“You were never going to work with Darcy,” I said. “You sent her to me to get to Keene. And then you sent me after him.”

He leaned back in the chair and said nothing.

“Gave me just enough to keep me going,” I said, shaking my head at how stupid I’d been. “Just pointing me in the right direction.”

Simington cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on me. “Some things need to get done.”

His voice had dropped an octave, like someone had poured sawdust down his throat. His eyes had hollowed out. And I finally saw the man whom everyone had talked about. The thug, the killer, the man who belonged on death row.

“You used me,” I said.

“You let me use you.”

“Fuck you.”

He laughed. “Whatever it takes. That son of a bitch was gonna die before I did. I just seized an opportunity.”

I thought of Darcy and Liz. They had died because Simington had been looking for revenge. Revenge that I had carried out for him.

“You’ll find another girlfriend, Noah,” he said. “That’s what you’re really upset about. It’ll pass.”

It was like his words were on tape and they’d gotten stuck in the player, coming out slow and garbled. I ran them through my head again to make sure I’d heard him correctly.

“How do you know about her?” I asked, an invisible spear digging into my spine.

“What?” he said. Something flashed across his face. He realized he’d made a mistake.

I was rewinding the tape in my head. The last time I’d been there, Kenney had said something that hadn’t made sense to me. Something about Simington having old friends visit him. Visitors.

“Keene came to see you,” I said, as much for me to hear as for Simington.

“Noah, look—”

“What did he tell you about her?” I asked, the spear digging in further.

He hesitated for a moment, probably trying to decide whether he should keep up the act. I could almost see the mental shrug, him deciding it wasn’t worth the effort. His face hardened. “He told me you were dating a cop.”

“Did he threaten her?”

“Does it matter?”

The anger was building, but I tried to remain calm. “Did Keene threaten her?”

He watched me, then nodded.

“And you didn’t tell me? When I was here last time, you didn’t tell me?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “Keene came here to scare me. Fuckin’ moron.” He waved his hand around the room. “Thinking I’d be scared of him after living here. He was pissing his pants if he was crazy enough to walk in here and be seen with me.”

I sat there, staring at him, my legs starting to shake.

“That son of a bitch told me if you didn’t back off, he was gonna take her out,” he said, his eyes empty. “He thought that would do something for me, make me rethink talking to you. I think he feared me just enough to not go directly after you. But he thought threatening your girlfriend might shake things up.”

The shivers moved from my legs up my spine.

“Well, it did, but not the way he thought,” he said, chuckling.

“You didn’t tell me,” I whispered.

“Hell, no, I didn’t tell you,” he said. “I wanted Keene to go after her. I needed something to kick you in the ass. I could see you didn’t have it in you. I thought that might be it.” His smile contained a million little daggers. “And I was right.”

I jumped out of the chair at him, but he was ready. In one smooth motion, his arm swept around my neck and he brought my head down onto his knee like he was slamming a door shut. Colors exploded behind my eyes, and pain rocketed through my head and neck.

I fell to the floor. Voices and heavy footsteps echoed around me. I rolled over onto my back. Simington was bent over the table, a guard on either side of him, his hands already in cuffs. One of the guards was talking into the mic wired into his shirt.

Blood leaked into my right eye. The impact had opened a gash above my eyebrow, and I could feel the air sucking into the gap in my skin.

Another guard helped me up. “Are you alright, sir?” “I’m fine,” I said, dizzy and disoriented. “You’re going to need to go to the infirmary,” he said. Simington was smiling at me as the two guards raised him off the table.

“I’m fine,” I repeated.

“We’ll see what they say at the infirmary, sir,” the guard said, slipping his hand behind my arm and steadying me.

“Sorry, son,” Simington said. “Sorry that it had to end like this.”

The blood stung my eye but I didn’t lift a hand to wipe it away. Carolina had warned me.

Don’t let him hurt you now.

I’d failed there, too. He’d hurt me in several unimaginable ways, ways that were going to leave lifetime scars.

Simington chuckled again as the guards escorted him out of the room, my last vision of him blurred and bloody.

The nurse in the prison infirmary wanted to stitch the cut, but I refused, not wanting to spend any more time there than I had to. She closed it with a butterfly bandage and urged me to reconsider getting the stitches.

I left without saying a word.

My flight back to San Diego was delayed. I sat in the airport fingering the bandage and trying not to watch the news coverage on the overhead television monitors, most of it focusing on Simington’s impending execution, now hours away. The crowd outside the prison had multiplied since I’d left.

Two hours behind schedule, the airline personnel finally boarded us. I slid into my window seat.

It was dark now outside, the tiny runway lights blinking as we taxied. The plane paused as we positioned for takeoff.

San Francisco had not been kind to me. It wasn’t the city’s fault, but I would always associate it with the ugliest time in my life.

My breathing sped up. I tried to slow it, but I couldn’t.

The plane accelerated, pressing me back into my seat.

My fingers went to the bandage, feeling the gauze and tape and what Simington had done to me. And to Darcy and to Liz.

We lifted off the ground and I felt it all—all of the things that I’d gone through the last few weeks—catch me like a sucker punch from an invisible fist. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to push it away.

The plane angled upward and turned.

I opened my eyes and looked out the window, the tears obscuring everything I was saying goodbye to.

My cell phone rang as soon as I turned it on, stepping off the Jetway in San Diego. I recognized Carter’s number and answered.

“Hey.”

“Where are you?” he asked, his voice urgent. “Just got back. Walking to my car.” “From where?” “San Francisco.” “They found him.”

I moved over to the wall, out of the flow of foot traffic. “How do you know?”

“It was on the news an hour ago,” he said. “Hikers coming back from camping in the desert. They found him. Tried to call you, but I guess you were on the plane.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“I’m gonna lay low for a few days, see what shakes out,” he said. “We should be fine, but I don’t wanna take any chances.” “That’s fine.”

“I’ll call you,” he said and hung up.

I dropped the phone into my pocket. I didn’t know what I expected to feel, but Carter’s call hadn’t surprised me. I wasn’t entirely sure the police could tie Keene to us, but I knew where they’d coming looking first. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

I drove home in the rain, thinking about that, wondering what I should do.

The ideas were ticking through my head when I walked into my living room and found John Wellton sitting on the couch, in the dark.

“Where you been?” he asked.

I thought about asking him how he’d gotten in, but I didn’t see the point. “San Francisco.”

“What happened to your eye?” “Nothing.”

I stood there in the dark, looking at him.

“We found Keene,” he said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Dead. Outside of El Centro.” “Shame.”

He stood and walked over to the glass slider, the rain slithering down the door. “One of El Centro’s guys was there. Named Asanti.” My stomach lurched. “Oh.” “Says you guys know each other.”

“Yeah.”

“Klimes and Zanella are working the scene with him,” he said. “They interviewed a woman named Lucia Vasquez.”

A huge flash of lightening exploded over the ocean and lit the whole room for a moment.

My throat went dry, and my fingers felt cold and heavy.

“Asanti says you know her, too.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“She says you came to her home a few nights ago. That a friend of yours—a big guy—took her and her boys to a motel. So she’d be safe.” He paused. “She says you told her Keene was coming to her home.”

My heart pounded like it wanted out of my chest, like I was keeping it captive.

He turned to me. “I’ll give you two hours.”

“What?”

“They sent me to find you, Noah,” he said, his voice thick. “I’ll give you two hours before I start looking. Gives you a head start to get out of here.”

“Look, Wellton—”

He raised a hand. “Don’t, alright? Just don’t. I understand why you did it. I asked you to call me, but you didn’t. The less you say the better.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. “I’ll see what I can do, but for now, you need to get out of here and disappear. Unless you want to go down. Klimes is already champing at the bit to talk to you.”

I felt like vomiting. It was all slipping away from me, and there was no way for me to hold on to it.

But, then, what was really left for me to hold onto?

Wellton walked past me to the front door and opened it. “I can only put them off for so long. Don’t be a fool. Get out of here. And I don’t mean hole up with your pal. I mean get fucking lost.” He stepped out into the rain.

I sat down on the couch and watched the clock over the television tick away. I could stay and deny it all. There was no guarantee they’d have enough to tie me to Keene’s death. But what Lucia Vasquez knew was pretty damning. Klimes and Zanella had motive, and they knew I’d been there.

I didn’t want to go to jail. Didn’t want to be like Simington. Like my father. But maybe it was too late for that. It seemed that the more I had tried to distance myself from him, the more I had become like him.

You’re not him,
Liz had said.

Maybe I wasn’t when she said it, but I sure seemed to fit the bill now.

The hands on the clock lay across each other and pointed at the twelve. Midnight.

Simington would be strapped in now. The syringe would be readied. Maybe two more minutes in his life.

How many were left in mine?

The Last Day of February

I wondered how it had come to this.

No. That wasn’t right.

I knew exactly how it had come to this.

Lightning shattered the sky and raked the black surface of the ocean. The rain spilling out from above hit my face and body like a shower as I stood on my patio, soaking me and the duffel bag slung over my shoulder. The water stung the cut above my eye and grew the bloody stain on my shirt.

I knew that I wouldn’t ever stand on this patio again, stare at this view again, live in this home again.

Thunder rolled off the Pacific like it was coming through a megaphone, rattling the windows and doors of all the homes on the boardwalk. The rain picked up velocity, splashing violently into the puddles on the ground.