Scars (Nevada James #2) (Nevada James Mysteries) (14 page)

Chapter 21

“You look
like shit,” Dan said the next morning as he sat down.

I’d been
toying with the second half of my Denver omelet, pushing bits of it around my
plate like race cars around a track, when he arrived. I’d told him to meet me at
a Denny’s when I finally returned one of his calls. I didn’t feel like going
down to the station, which is where I knew he wanted me.

“I
didn’t get much sleep,” I said.

“That’s
not really a surprise.” He asked for a cup of coffee as the waitress passed by.
“You don’t smell like booze, though. I was wondering if I was going to have to
drag your ass to detox.”

“To be
honest, so was I. How’s Sarah?”

Dan
shrugged. “Shaken up but she’s taking it better than I would have expected. I
think I underestimated her. She’s more angry at herself than anything else.
Thinks she should have acted faster when she started to suspect Ellis.”

“Nobody
wants to point the finger at another cop,” I said. “Her career would have been
over if she’d been wrong. Hell, it might have been over even if she was right.”
I speared a piece of ham, but wasn’t hungry enough to put it in my mouth. “She
reached out to me but I ignored her because I didn’t want to deal with it.
That’s on me.”

“Yeah.
That is on you.”

I
blinked. That hadn’t exactly been what I’d expected to hear. “You do remember
I’m not a cop anymore, right?”

“I seem
to remember telling you a while back you’re always going to be a cop,” he said.
“That doesn’t change because you’re not wearing the badge.” He pointed at me.
“You have responsibilities. To me. To Sarah. To the department.”

I looked
at him. “You know what? You’re right about you and Sarah. I haven’t done some
of the things I should have.”

“No, you
certainly…” he started.

I cut
him off. “But fuck the department. I don’t care about the department anymore.
Did you bring my badge along with you?” He nodded. “Throw it in the trash. I’m
never putting it back on.”

Dan
pursed his lips and watched as I took a drink of my Diet Coke. “Your poker face
needs work,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re
not upset at the department. It’s something else. Is it that you think you
should have spotted Ellis, too? Are you mad at yourself?”

“I’m
just mad,” I said.

“What’s
going on, Nevada?”

I sighed.
Meeting him in person had been a mistake. “I’ve been working on something
else,” I admitted. “Privately.”

His eyes
widened. “You have another case? Tell me it’s not organized crime again.”

“No.
Odds are you’ll hear the details soon enough. It’s just…I thought I was doing
the right thing. I thought I was going to help an old lady find some closure
for something she went through a long time ago. And I’ve realized that if what
I think happened is what happened, then no good is going to come out of it
whatsoever. If I do everything by the book, a guy who made a terrible mistake
twenty years ago is going to prison for the rest of his life. I should drop the
whole thing and move to Tahiti.”

“If I
thought you’d stay there, I’d buy you the ticket myself.” He sighed. “But you’d
get bored, Nevada. You always get bored.”

“Yeah.” I
pushed my plate aside. I wasn’t going to be eating any more. “I just wonder
what the point of all this is.”

The
waitress came to refill Dan’s coffee and this time left the pot. He took a sip
and grimaced. “You know this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe
you don’t remember. Marjorie Hamlin. This was…seven years ago? I was still a
sergeant.”

I let
the name bounce around my head. “Older woman. Shoved her husband during an
argument?”

Dan
nodded. “He fell down and hit his head wrong. Got a bleed on the brain and died
three days later. We had no history of abuse on either side, no previous
incidents. By all accounts it was just a terrible accident.”

“Yeah.”

“She was
looking at a homicide charge. Got scared. You brought her in when she ran and
then you started yelling at me.”

“That
sounds like something I’d do.”

“You
asked what the point was. She was an old lady, she hadn’t meant to kill anyone,
she was no danger to anyone else. She had to live with what she’d done. What
was the point of putting her in prison? Wasn’t the pain of living with what
she’d done bad enough?”

“And
what did you say, o wise one?”

“You
know exactly what I said.”

“Tell me
anyway. I think I need to hear it.”

He
nodded. “I said
we
weren’t putting her in prison. We were bringing her
in so justice could be served. What form that took was for the court to decide.
She had to stand in front of a jury and put the decision to them. Twelve people
would hear what happened, look at the evidence, and then decide what needed to
be done.” He reached across the table and took one of my hands. “Because there
has to be an accounting, Nevada. People need to be accountable for what they’ve
done. And as I remember it, Marjorie Hamlin got probation.”

“That
sounds about right,” I said.

“So
whatever this thing is that you’re not telling me about, keep in mind that you
aren’t judge, jury and executioner. That’s not your role. You don’t decide
right and wrong. You’re just an agent that gives justice the opportunity to be
served.”

I leaned
back. “Look at you dropping philosophy,” I said. “When did you get so
eloquent?”

He
shrugged. “Sometimes I want to grab you and shake you, Nevada, but that
wouldn’t get me far. I do this instead.”

“Thanks,”
I said. “I actually feel a little better.”

“Good.”

“I’m
still putting a bullet in the Laughing Man when I catch up with him, though.”

“Not if
I beat you to it.” He smiled faintly. “I’m going to wait a couple days, and
then we’re going to have another conversation about your badge.”

“My
answer isn’t going to be different. Maybe don’t throw it in the trash, though.
I worked hard to get it.”

“It
suits you. Also, I like it when you have to follow my orders.”

“I never
followed your orders.”

He
shrugged. “Fair enough. I like it when I can keep an eye on you, then. You want
to tell me where you’ve been staying?”

“It
doesn’t matter. I’ll be moving back to my old motel soon. You should come over.
We’ll get a pizza and watch awful television.”

He
nodded. “Deal. Anyway, I’ve got to go. My guys are having a pretty bad day and
I should be there, but I needed to see you first. Good luck with this thing
you’re doing. Let me know how it works out.”

On
impulse, I stuck my hand out and he shook it. That wasn’t something we did very
often. Later, I’d wonder what had been going on in my head to make me want to
do that. Maybe it was the thought that everything was going to be okay.

Chapter 22

Del Mar
was just up the coast. I could have called ahead but I didn’t think this was
going to be a long conversation, and even though I doubted Conrad Meyers was
going to run, I’d have looked like an idiot if he did.

His
house was easy to find. It was in a modest suburb in the hills overlooking the
ocean. I couldn’t think of the last time I’d been up here. I doubted I’d been
looking for a murder suspect at the time. Del Mar wasn’t exactly a hotbed of
violent crime. It was more a hotbed of BMWs and overpriced restaurants.

I parked
on the street and sat in the car watching the house for a while. My Glock was
tucked away in its shoulder holster. I doubted I was going to need it here.

After a
few minutes of thinking it over, I got out and went up to the front door to
ring the bell. A man in his late forties opened it. He had graying hair and
wore a green cardigan. My first thought was that I should tell him to lose the
cardigan. He looked like he was about to audition for a new version of the
Mister Rogers show.

He
smiled at me. “I’d be happy to take a brochure, miss.”

I
blinked. “What?”

“Oh,” he
said. “I thought you must be a Jehovah’s Witness. They come by sometimes to
hand out their literature.”

“No,” I
shook my head. “My name is Nevada James. I used to be with the San Diego Police
Department. Are you Conrad Meyers?”

“I am,”
he said. He squinted his eyes slightly. “I think I’ve seen you on television.
You were at a crime scene.”

And they
said people didn’t watch local news anymore. “That was me,” I admitted.

“You
can’t think I know something about that? I don’t. Did you want to come inside?”
He moved aside so I could have entered. I didn’t really want to.

“No,” I
said. “I’m here about something else.” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “I’m
here to ask you about the Adam Collins bombing from 1993. I was wondering if…”

There
was no need to finish the sentence. Conrad’s face had gone white. And then the
bastard started to cry.

***

I called
Anita Collins two hours later as I was driving back to San Diego. “It’s over,”
I said. “I found the bomber.”

In the
background I could hear voices in conversation and clinking sounds that must
have been glasses knocking together. I hadn’t bothered to ask where she was. It
seemed early for a cocktail party. Maybe she was at a brunch.

For a
long time she didn’t say anything. “Anita?” I asked.

“I’m
here,” she said. “Sorry. That really wasn’t what I was expecting to hear this
morning.”

“Are you
busy? You sound like you’re at a party. I could call back, I guess.”

“Nothing
is more important than this,” she said. I heard her take a deep breath. “Tell
me.”

Traffic
was light heading back into San Diego, but I put her on speaker so I could keep
my hands on the wheel. “His name is Conrad Meyers. He was getting his Ph.D.
when he became aware of your husband’s work.”

“I’ve
heard the name. As I remember…he was the one my donor brought to me. He
developed that treatment for malaria everyone was raving about.”

“Yeah.”

She snorted.
“Was that supposed to be some kind of joke? Coming to me like that after he’d
killed my family?”

“No,” I
said. “It was supposed to be penance.”

“I see.
Penance.” She was silent again. I waited. I didn’t imagine this was easy to
hear. “Explain it to me.”

“Your
husband worked in artificial intelligence. Meyers was an anti-technology…I
guess
zealot
is the word I’m looking for, but that hardly jibes with the
guy I just met. Anyway, he believed, or at least he believed at the time, that
computers were going to lead to the breakdown of human society. It was the
beginning of the Internet age. The world was changing. He thought computers
doing our thinking for us was going to be the beginning of the end.”

Anita
snorted. “Was he twelve years old? What kind of stupid…” She stopped for a
moment. “And he thought my husband deserved to die for this?”

“No. The
bomb…it wasn’t supposed to do what it did. He’d been working with, and forgive
me if I don’t get all of this right, oxide chains, or something about oxide
chains and peroxide bonds…I probably should have written this down. Anyway, he
thought the bomb was going to make a big
bang
and smoke like crazy. After
the note he left, he thought that would be frightening enough to make your
husband give up his work. Meyers said he had no idea the explosion would be as
powerful as it was. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”

“And yet
my husband and child are dead, and I look like...” She stopped. “All that for
nothing.”

I opened
my mouth but realized I was about to defend Meyers, which wasn’t what I meant
to do at all. Maybe all the crying had gotten to me. Sitting in his living room
while he cried on his couch, and then his wife cried, and when they called
their son at his college to tell him what was happening…it had been a long,
unpleasant morning. I didn’t care to repeat the experience anytime soon. The
next time someone asked me to look at a cold case, I was going to tell them to
get stuffed.

“What
happens now?” Anita asked. “Where is he?”

“I gave
him a day to put his house in order,” I said. “He’s turning himself in
tomorrow. They’ll charge him with whatever they decide is appropriate.”

“You let
him go?”

“He’s
not going to run. In his mind he’s been running for twenty years. I think part
of him was relieved to finally be caught.”

“How
nice for him.”

“Anyway,
that’s where we stand. I figured you’d want to know. I’m done with this now.”

Now I
was fairly certain I could hear a string quartet playing somewhere near Anita.
It sounded like I was missing quite a party. Well, it probably wasn’t the kind
of party I’d be interested in, except for the free food. Although I wasn’t
hungry. I doubted I would be again for a while. The whole experience with
Meyers had left me feeling nauseous.

“I’m
sorry,” Anita said. “I should sound grateful, and I am. It’s just…”

“I
wasn’t offended. I’m not going to say I know what you’re going through, but I’m
sure it’s not easy.”

“It’s
not,” she said. “But after all this time, I’m grateful it’s almost over. The
truth is I didn’t expect you to be successful. Come by the house later and
we’ll talk about your compensation.”

“Nah,” I
said. “I don’t really care. All things considered it wasn’t much work, and I
still have Alan Davies’s money burning a hole in my pocket.”

“I have
to give you something.”

“I’ll
call you in a few days,” I said. “Right now I think I need a vacation.”