The Intersection of Purgatory and Paradise (3 page)

He thought about making food, but with his stomach churning there didn’t seem to be much point. When the medication hit him hard enough to slow his racing thoughts, he draped a towel over his pillow in case he rolled over, shed his grimy jogging clothes, and crawled into bed.

Before he passed out, he pulled his cell phone and the small bottle of painkillers out of his pocket and set them on the cluttered nightstand. He stared at the bottle for a moment, wondering how many of the pain pills he would need to swallow to sleep through the next two days. Just long enough so he wouldn’t have to face his birthday or the memories tainting it. But then again, why not take enough to sleep forever? He wouldn’t have to think about why Doug kept punishing himself by working in Elkin or think of an excuse for the half-inch long line of stitches on the back of his head.

“Stupid,” Christopher said out loud. “Better just to use a gun….”

By the time Christopher was aware of anything again, a thin ribbon of sunlight was draped across the bed. The blankets on Doug’s side were a mess, and the scent of coffee was wafting up from the kitchen. There was no sign of Doug, and Christopher was grateful for that. His hair was long enough to cover the angry red line of stitches and the Steri-Strip on the back of his head, but there was no way to hide how much pain he was in every time he moved.

He dug another painkiller out of the prescription bottle and swallowed it dry. Collapsing back onto the bed, he buried his face in the pillow and waited for the world to stop throbbing.

The shrill ring of his cell phone cut through the pain like a hacksaw. He fumbled for the phone, then buried his eyes in the pillow again before answering. “Hello?”

“Good morning,” Doug said amid a din of voices and the clang of metal hitting metal. “Are you still in bed?”

“Yeah. I feel like shit,” Christopher said. That was true enough.

“Probably a good thing I let you sleep this morning. I had to leave early to get a prisoner transfer set up. I’m going to be on the road all day, so I won’t be able to meet you for lunch.”

“Lunch?” Christopher’s only real excuse to get away from the empty, silent ranch during the day.

“Yeah. I’ve got to drive all the way down to Warm Springs. You’re not going to go stir-crazy out there on your own, right?”

“If I’m sitting still, I’m stir-crazy,” Christopher said bluntly. “Don’t worry, I’ll find something to do. Oh, hey, do you think you can take Sunday and Monday off? Maybe Tuesday, too?”

“Maybe. I figured you might want to go somewhere for your… for tomorrow.”

Christopher was glad he hadn’t said “birthday.” He wasn’t sure he could stand hearing the word right now. “Actually, there’s this thing in San Diego on Sunday.”

“I’ll talk to the sheriff about it when I get back tonight. And I’ve got to go. See you tonight.”

When Christopher wandered downstairs, he found a cold bowl of gelatinous oatmeal waiting for him, along with half a pot of bitter coffee. His phone rang again as he was about to dump the coffee out. His partner this time.

“Hayes.”

Ray Delgado laughed at him. “You don’t say? I would think after a year of being a lazy slacker, you’d have learned how to answer the phone with ‘hello’ like a normal person.”

“Lazy?” Christopher was almost insulted. “A psychopath tried to kill me with a truck,” Christopher reminded him. “What’s wrong, anyway? You never call unless you’re bored, and you’re never bored unless you’ve gotten yourself suspended.”

“Give me time. If I get five minutes alone with the assholes who had my current case before me, I’ll be lucky not to end up in jail.”

Christopher reached for a mug. He wanted to point out they probably weren’t that bad, but he’d learned a long time ago if he was going to argue with his partner, he needed hard evidence first. “What did they do?”

“They didn’t do their jobs. CPS requested a welfare check, and the guys assigned to do it were lazy, incompetent morons who didn’t bother trying to talk to the kid alone before chatting with the parents. They closed out the case because there wasn’t sufficient evidence of abuse.”

Christopher wasn’t too surprised by the violence in his partner’s voice. “No evidence?” Regardless of how much evidence there had been initially, Ray wouldn’t have taken over the case if it hadn’t become a homicide.

There was a long silence. Christopher could imagine the expression Ray would have on his face, trying to figure out how to convince Christopher he was right without actually changing the facts.

“Technically,” Ray said begrudgingly, “the pathologist’s report said most of the fractures took place over a period of several years, and they said the boy didn’t appear to have any bruises or injuries during the interview.”

Christopher forced himself to swallow the stale coffee.
“Sounds like it wasn’t much to go on.”

“The pathologist’s report may have said the fractures were old, but there was evidence of eighteen separate ones,” Ray added.

Christopher tightened his grip on the mug and took a deep breath. “Anything to explain the injuries in the kid’s history?”

“Apparently he was accident prone. He was eight fucking years old, Hayes. And those pricks didn’t even have the discipline to look at the autopsy photos to see how badly they’d fucked up!”

“Don’t be an asshole, Delgado,” Christopher said automatically. “Outside of Homicide, that’d freak anybody out.”

“I don’t care. He’s dead, and if they’d done their jobs, he’d be alive. The least they can do is look at the damage they caused.”

Christopher finished his coffee and let his mind chew on the tone of his partner’s voice. “Have you got enough to arrest the parents?”

“Already done. Now I’m running around getting more witness statements to make sure neither of them bond out before they go to trial.”

“If you’ve already got them, why not relax?”

“They’ve got another kid. A four-year-old girl. Remanded to the care of her grandmother during the investigation. If they bond out, the grandparents will hand her back to them.”

“Sounds like a mess.” Christopher wondered how long Ray would keep dragging out the conversation by talking shop. “So, you’re getting married? Did you decide that on a whim?”

Ray groaned. “If I said yes, would you laugh?”

“Delgado, I….” Christopher closed his eyes. “No, I wouldn’t laugh. It’s just a little weird for you, isn’t it?”

“Tell me about it. But we had this big dinner a month ago for his birthday. His family came down from San Francisco, and they’re….”

Christopher heard Ray choke. “You all right?”

“I’m fabulous. And they were really cool about me and him. They were really cool about everything. They even invited my sister and her kids to dinner, and it was…. It was like I went back in time, and I had a home again, you know? I love him, and watching his folks together made me think about what it’d be like to grow old with him. And… I want that. Shit, I don’t know how to explain it. You’re coming, right? I know the timing is absolute shit. We weren’t planning on doing it so fast, we really weren’t, but everything sort of fell into place. Please tell me you’re coming.”

Christopher sighed. Maybe getting away from Elkin, and those few assholes who were intent on turning it into his own personal hell, was just what he needed. “I wouldn’t miss it. If I leave tomorrow, I can get there Saturday afternoon.”

C
HRISTOPHER
COLLAPSED
onto the dirt near the edge of bluff. He folded his arms over his knees and dropped his head onto his forearms. The valley stretched out beneath him, buildings and houses peeking out through the dense canopy of trees, but he didn’t care about the view. He’d avoided the trails along the cliffs and bluffs overlooking the valley for most of the year, and now that he’d finally forced himself to make the hike, he felt like he was going to be sick.

Less than a foot away, a gnarled tree stump clung to the side of the cliff, its roots half-exposed. A year ago, his older brother had chosen this spot to end his life, carving a bloody “Happy” into his left arm and “Birthday” into his right before hanging himself. He thought the rage and adrenaline he’d been riding when he’d had to deal with his brother’s death had faded, but every time something reminded him of Peter, it surged back to gnaw at him all over again.

He was so tired of remembering. He was tired of the guilt, the pain, and even the anger. He was tired of feeling worthless, of having no way to define himself beyond the slurs and insults hurled at him in town.

How could Doug stand it? But Christopher already knew the answer. Doug relied on his job to anchor him, to give his life enough purpose that putting up with the town’s bullshit was worthwhile.

Christopher pulled out the tiny prescription bottle, pried the top off, and dumped a handful of pills into his palm.

“What the fuck am I thinking?” he muttered. With his luck, he’d just make himself sick. It’d be easier to throw himself over the edge of the bluff or get his Glock off the dresser in Doug’s bedroom and end it quickly. He took a deep breath and poured the pills back, disgusted with himself.

A year ago, he’d been Detective Christopher Hayes with the San Diego PD’s Central Homicide Unit. Now he was just the brother of pedophile Peter Hayes. Christopher was the man most people assumed had somehow implicated their old sheriff in Peter’s crimes. As long as he stayed in Montana that was all he’d ever be. Any other time of the year, he could pretend it wasn’t killing him, but not this close to his birthday.

He dug out his phone and held down the power button. He stared at Doug’s name and number in his contact list and hit send. It rang once, then went straight to voice mail. He hung up without leaving a message, then scrolled up and called his partner.

“Delgado.”

“Distract me.”

Ray didn’t miss a beat. “Want to hear about work?”

“No.” Christopher squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes. It’s hard to listen to you talk about your cases when there’s nothing I can do about any of it.”

“You could try telling me what’s wrong up there, if you think it’d help. Or you can get over it and come home. You know you were always better with the people shit than me. I could use your help with this case.”

“I can’t just leave. I can come down for the wedding, that’s a big deal, but….”

“Why not bring your cowboy down here once and for all? He could get hired on with the department easily enough, and your job is still here. He seemed pretty excited about teaching you to surf when you visited last winter. Problem solved.”

Christopher opened his eyes and wiped some of the dust from the trail away with the back of his hand. “He wouldn’t. His family’s home is up here. He’s attached to it.”

“Well, maybe we can persuade him SoCal is worth getting attached to while you guys are down here for the wedding. You could do a lot of good, Hayes. You both could.”

“Uh, I wouldn’t count on him coming to the wedding.”

“Does he have to work? That’s cool. I mean, we weren’t planning on doing anything huge. Except food. Elliot’s family seems to be physically incapable of doing anything involving food on a small scale. Aurora even promised her caterer would make something vegan, just for Doug.”

“Aurora? Who is Aurora, and how does she have a caterer?”

“My mother-in-law.”

Ray sounded so cheerful, happy even. Christopher bit back the sting of jealousy and forced himself to smile. He wrapped his fingers around the pill bottle and pushed himself to his feet. He stared at the bottle. If he didn’t find some way to regain his sense of self, the darkness welling up inside him would swallow him whole. In a few days, he’d stand beside Ray at his wedding. He would decide what he’d do with himself afterward. Ray was the closest thing to family he’d had for a long time, and Christopher owed him that much. Plus it wasn’t often you got to witness actual evidence that hell had frozen over.

“I don’t know if Doug can get time off,” he told Ray, “But I’ll be there.”

D
OUG
STARED
at the photos on his desk and felt his stomach twist painfully. A grainy black-and-white still photo pulled from the county coroner’s security camera showed a skinny teenager leaning over the roof of a large black SUV. He was drawing his arm back, like he was about to pitch a baseball. In the foreground, the jogger was easy to distinguish. Doug would know Christopher’s tousled blond hair and angular features anywhere.

The printed photos showed a clear progression of events, and Doug had to bite down his anger to look at them all. He wasn’t even sure who he should be mad at—the little punk who’d flung the rock or Christopher for not saying anything about it.

Across his desk, Sheriff Daniels was squeezed into an old office chair. “McAllister said Hayes doesn’t want to press charges, but you’ve got to at least try talking to him.”

“He doesn’t want to press charges?”

“That’s right.”

Doug sifted through the photos, then found the DMV record for the SUV Daniels had printed out. The vehicle was owned by another deputy sheriff. “This is Terry Marshall’s son driving. Nate, isn’t it?”