Come Twilight (15 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

GRAVEYARD

That Nina Simone song Julia had been playing. What was it called? The French one. Shit. Did she even say? I don’t think so. Have to figure it out, add it to the playlist. She’d like that, I think.

The eggs smell so good. The butter, the cheese. I can almost taste them.

Megan used to cook scrambled eggs. When I made detective and didn’t have to work on the weekends. Scrambled eggs on sourdough toast. Why did I give her so much shit about liking Coldplay? I put “’Til Kingdom Come” on the funeral list for her. That was her favorite song. And “Fix You.” I watched that documentary about the chorus of senior citizens who sang popular songs. Old people singing the Ramones. Ha. She would have loved it. Then that one old guy with the oxygen tube in his nose sang “Fix You” and I wept because she died thinking I couldn’t stand her favorite songs.

We danced to “If I Should Fall Behind” at our wedding. That song was the anchor. So much Springsteen. Crazy Janey. The ragamuffin gunner. Wild Billy. Mary and the Magic Rat. The dogs on Main Street. That stranger passing through who put up a sign.

Jesus. I was almost the chicken man. Still could be.

Still could be.

“Forever Young.”

Buckley’s “Hallelujah” because it wasn’t everybody’s ringtone yet. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” by Bruddah Iz—same reason. Are they still on there? Cut them.

“Tears in Heaven.” The antidepressants took a long time to start working.

“Spirit in the Sky” or “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Which is funnier?

“Night Comes On.”

“The Weight.”

“The Boy in the Bubble.”

That Deb Talan song you like so much. For sure that one.

The cast is still on my arm from the last surgery when you come to visit. I get up to answer the door without closing the file and you see it on my laptop.
You’re early, partner,
I say. “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” is still playing.

What’s this?
you ask.

Bob Dylan.

Not the song. This.
You point to the screen.

A playlist.

Songs For My Funeral
?

Yeah.

What the fuck?

Something to do,
I say, embarrassed, trying to play it off.
No big deal. Just killing time.

Suicidal ideation. The therapist kept asking me about it.
Have you wished you were dead or wished you could go to sleep and not wake up? Have you actually had any thoughts of killing yourself? Have you been thinking about how you might kill yourself? Have you had these thoughts and had some intention of acting on them? Have you started to work out or worked out the details of how to kill yourself and do you have any intention of carrying out this plan? Have you done anything, started to do anything, or prepared to do anything to end your life?

No?

You say,
You’re still seeing the therapist, right?

Twice a week,
I say. But I think,
If you don’t count last week. Or this week.

You’re really worried. You’re trying not to let it show. You aren’t doing a very good job.

It’s just a list of songs,
I say.

I don’t think it is.

I’m not thinking about killing myself.

What are you thinking about?

Dying.

You don’t say anything. How long has it been then? Three years? Almost four?

You saw me through Megan’s death. You stopped the bleeding, saved my hand, saved my life.

Now you look so sad.

Do you smell eggs?

“Hold On.” The old one, Tom Waits. Not Alabama Shakes. That one is good but it’s a different song. The wrong song. Not born yet. Maybe Neko Case, though. “Hold On, Hold On.”

You keep asking me questions like the therapist.

I lied to her. I tell you the truth.

You listen. You understand.

No,
I say,
I’m not okay.
I pause for a long time, then say,
But I will be.

Because you believe it, I start to believe it, too.

This is a lot of songs,
you say.

Haven’t you ever been to an Irish funeral?

You’re Irish all of a sudden?

My grandfather was Irish.

I thought it was your great-grandfather.

Same thing.

No, it’s not.

Did you read the whole list?

I didn’t get past the part where you included every song Springsteen ever wrote.

Look at the end there.

You know we’re just going to get a bagpiper and play “Wind Beneath My Wings,” right?

But then you do look. When you gave me the CD, I asked which song was your favorite.
They’re all my favorites,
you said. I know, I said, but which one?
“Ashes on Your Eyes.”

It’s the last song on the list.

I’ll make some eggs,
I think, but I don’t because there isn’t any sourdough.

CHAPTER TWELVE

NE ME QUITTE PAS

William Denkins’s entire case file was spread out before me on the dining-room table. I didn’t know what time it was, but it was late. I’d been working alone for hours. Everything was there. All the reports, the crime-scene photos, the personal records, the warrant requests, the witness statements, the yellow pads filled with notes. The stacks of pages—more than a hundred of them by that point in the investigation—were arranged in staggered piles that covered every inch of the surface. My eyes moved from one pile to the next and back again.

Then I saw it. Once it clicked, it seemed so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it sooner. I began riffling through the pages, pulling one here and one there, rearranging them. Everything fell into place.
Of course, of course.
I felt the adrenaline as one piece of the puzzle after another fit together.

The answers were there. And I could see them as clearly as I’d ever seen anything before.

I knew.

I knew.

“Danny?”

My eyes opened and I was staring up at a fluorescent-light fixture recessed in the ceiling.

“Danny?” she said.

Someone was holding my hand.

“Jen?” I said, turning my head to look into her face.

“No,” she said. “It’s me.”

I looked at her. There was concern in her green eyes and she looked tired. Her brown hair was pulled back, but a few strands hung down along the side of her face. Somehow I knew she’d been there a long time. We’d been there a long time. She squeezed my hand and I squeezed hers too. I knew her. There was a connection I could feel deep in my abdomen. She had a name. I knew it. I wanted to say it. But it hung just out of reach.

“You’re in the hospital,” she said. “You have a head injury.”

I tried to sit up, to get out of bed. There was something attached to my arm. I looked at it. She leaned forward and gently pushed me back down. I felt the pillow against the back of my head.

“But I know who did it,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said, reaching across my body and fishing for a heavy gray cord. There was a handle with a button on the end. I recognized it. That was how you called for help.

She pushed the button with her thumb. “They wanted me to let them know when you woke up.”

I nodded.

“I know who did it.”

“Who?” she said.

When I tried to tell her, though, the certainty I’d felt only a few moments before had vanished, leaving nothing in its place. Only an emptiness that felt unimaginably vast and desolate. It was only when she wiped the tears from my eyes that I realized I was crying.

Two hours later, most of the confusion had passed and I was able to recall what had happened. Most of it. A doctor had come in and given me a neurological exam. I had a concussion and several bruised ribs. He was concerned about the potential for a subdural hematoma. They’d need to watch me for a while.

The first thing Jen said when she came in was, “Dumb shit.” She was angry. That’s how I knew I probably wasn’t going to die. Julia told me Jen had been there most of the night, only leaving to join Patrick when the doctor told her the CT scan didn’t show any signs of major damage or intracranial bleeding.

“How’s he doing?” Jen asked Julia.

Julia told her everything the doctor had said, then smiled at me and said, “I’m going to run down to the cafeteria, okay?”

I nodded.

“What were you thinking?” Jen asked.

There was no good answer, so I pretended it was a rhetorical question.

I started to tell her what I remembered.

“Save it for Patrick,” she said. “He’ll be here soon.”

We sat in silence. I tried to read her. She was angry. With me, of course, but also with herself. I knew she would hold herself responsible for what had happened to me, even though it was completely my fault.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You should be. I told you to go straight to my place.”

“He could have got me there, too.”

“No, he couldn’t. Lauren was off yesterday. Home. I called her and asked her to keep an eye out for you. Otherwise I never would have said okay to you going alone.”

“I don’t know. She’s still a rook—”

“Shut up. She would have had your back. And she’s not a rookie anymore.” She wasn’t just upset. She was angry. I hadn’t seen her like this often. She was very good at keeping things in check.

“Look, Jen, I’m really—”

“Stop, just fucking stop.” She looked out the window and I could see that she was thinking through something. After a long silence, she looked like she came to a decision and turned back to face me again.

“You need to grow up. There are people who care about you. Do you have any idea what you put us through last night?”

When she saw my blank stare, she told me.

Jen’s testimony the previous day should have been straightforward and relatively quick. The case was an attempted murder-suicide, but after shooting his ex-wife, the man had second thoughts. Jen had been surprised it even went to trial. The evidence against him was so overwhelming, she had expected a plea deal. But the defense attorney was stringing things out so much, she was worried she’d have to come back the next day. The judge curtailed him, though, so they were able to wrap things up by the end of the day.

When she read the text message asking about going straight to her house, she checked with Lauren to make sure she was home and, against her better judgment, gave the go-ahead.

Then she phoned in a take-out order from Enrique’s. Carne asada, chicken enchiladas, and tacos. She sent a group text saying she’d be bringing dinner. The only reply came from Lauren.

By the time she got home, she’d started to worry. She checked in with Julia to see if she had heard anything, then called Patrick, who was alone in the squad room.

“Is Danny still there?”

“I think he left a little while ago, but I’ll check around,” Patrick told her. “Make sure he’s not somewhere else in the station.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I’m going to go check his place.”

She got back in her RAV4, drove for five long minutes, and parked on Roycroft. The cruiser from the motor pool was there and the back door was unlocked.

“Danny?” she called when she went inside. Some papers had fallen off the table, and a dining chair had been pushed back away from the table.

Were these signs of a struggle?

Yes, she realized, they were. It hit her in the stomach first, and as she felt it rising into her chest, she swallowed hard to push the apprehension back down.

She called Patrick back. Told him what she’d found.

“I’m on the way,” he said. “I’ll bring a crew and tell the lieutenant.” He didn’t need to tell her he’d put out a BOLO, too.

Jen tried the phone again. Instinctively, she put her hand on the grip of her Glock and spun around when she heard the ringing in the bathroom. She went in and found the phone. Someone had been in the shower recently. The walls and sliding glass were still peppered with drops of water, and the towel hanging over the top rail was wet.

She saw the iPad on the table, thought about potential trace evidence, and decided that the video was more important. She’d never seen the icon for the app that linked to the surveillance cameras, so she started opening anything that looked unfamiliar. On the fourth try, she found the right one. It wasn’t hard to figure things out. The feeds from the two cameras covering the front of the duplex were clear, except for me pulling up to the curb, checking the same iPad she was holding, and then getting out and heading inside, so she switched to the one pointing out my bedroom window at the backyard.

She kept moving and she saw him. It was clear he knew about the camera because he wore the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head and he turned away from the lens as he jogged across the lawn.

She switched to the garage-mounted camera and watched him from behind as he peeked in the bedroom window and then went around the side of the building. When he’d seen what he was looking for, he came back and went to the back porch.

He crouched down and began working on the doorknob. He was too far away for her to see much detail, but even still she knew he was working at picking the lock. It took him a minute and a half for the first lock, which she assumed to be the doorknob, and almost two for the other, the deadbolt. And then he disappeared inside.

She watched the time signature as she fast-forwarded. Five minutes sped by in accelerated time and she knew he was waiting for the shower to stop. She checked her watch. The footage she was watching had been recorded fifty-three minutes earlier.

They could be anywhere now,
she thought.

Then she saw it. The man in the hoodie dragging an unconscious body across the porch, one hand in each armpit, as my feet clunked down the three stairs to the concrete below. He pulled his awkward load across the lawn and disappeared.

She looked up from the screen as flashing red lights lit up the living-room picture window that faced out onto Roycroft.

Then Patrick was knocking on the front door with two uniforms behind him.

Before he could say anything, Jen said, “Somebody grabbed him. One guy. Dragged him out through the backyard and into the alley.”

“How did Danny look?”

She didn’t answer. No matter what she feared, it was standard procedure to assume a kidnapping victim was alive until there is definitive proof otherwise.

“Don’t worry, we’ll get him.” Patrick got back on his phone and called Ruiz to tell him they had confirmation of a kidnapping.

Jen played back the video for him. The kidnapper looked like he was a bit under six feet tall, weight 170 or so. Athletic build. Patrick slowed the playback and froze on a frame of the kidnapper midway across the backyard, just as he was moving toward the edge of the camera’s field of vision.

“He knows where the camera is,” Patrick said. “He’s making sure we don’t get a good shot of his face.”

Jen looked again at the table and chair. At the papers on the floor.

“I think Danny was coming from the bedroom or the bathroom. He was in the shower. Walks up the hallway. The hoodie’s waiting for him.”

“Where?”

Jen looked around again. “The kitchen. It’s the only place for a good ambush.” She showed him. The arched opening was the size of a standard door and there was two feet of empty wall to the side. It would give an attacker a good place to hide. Unlike the opening from the hallway into the dining room, which was larger and had a bookshelf next to the jamb that wouldn’t provide much concealment.

She had Patrick walk past the kitchen door and she grabbed him from behind in slow motion. It was clear to both of them that the likely trajectory of my body would be into the table in the same direction as its displacement. The chair and the papers supported the theory.

Jen called the crime-scene tech over. “Get pictures of everything. Bathroom, bedroom, hallway, kitchen. And get everything here.” She swept her hand to indicate the dining table and the area around it.

She went into the bathroom and found the phone on the counter.

There was a call from an unknown number that synced up with the time on the video when the kidnapper was on the back porch. He’d been making sure his target was really in the shower.

“Why would he shower here?” Patrick asked. “Why not just wait until he got to your place?”

“Because I have a low-flow shower,” Jen said. She remembered the day last year when she’d stood in my bathroom and used a pocketknife to remove the flow limiter in the new showerhead the landlord had just installed. As she explained it to Patrick, she felt a twinge of guilt rising in her chest. Why hadn’t she just switched one of hers out for this one? She knew how much it helped the pain. She knew it would be days at least before the threat was neutralized. If she had, she thought, she might have prevented this. She pushed the thought out of her head. Replaced it with anger. At the kidnapper. At me.

Patrick’s phone rang. It was Ruiz. He was on the way.

Jen went outside and huddled with several patrol officers. She told them to start knocking on doors and asking if anyone had seen an unusual vehicle in the alley within the last few hours.