Come Twilight (18 page)

Julia was getting ready to head home for the night when Harlan came in. They hadn’t yet met, but they’d heard about each other. I introduced them.

“How’s he doing?” Harlan asked her.

“They say he’ll probably be able to go home in the morning.”

Harlan grunted. “Hope they have somebody to babysit him, keep him out of trouble.”

Julia smiled pleasantly at him. “I’m sure they’ve got that under control.”

“I saw the uniform out in the lobby. He’s there for Danny, right?”

She nodded. “Why don’t I let you two visit?” she said. She picked up her bag, gave me a kiss, then started for the door. “It was a pleasure to finally meet you, Harlan.”

“Likewise,” he replied, smiling more warmly at her than he ever had at me. When she was gone, he looked me in the eye and said seriously, “Boy, you were right. She really is way out of your league.”

He sat down, and we talked about banjo music and the weather and a dozen other inconsequential things.

It was almost eight when Jen finally texted me back.
The interview went well. I’ll fill you in tomorrow.

I told Harlan what had happened with Jen the night before and that day, told him how upset she had seemed. He said, “Can you blame her? Honestly, I’m surprised she’s being as cordial as she is.”

“Cordial?” I asked. “You think this is cordial?”

“Danny,” he said. “We both know you’re a good cop. I’m not saying that just to make you feel good. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about your self-esteem. Every cop I’ve ever met thinks they’re better at the job than anybody else. So what? It doesn’t make you special. Most cops are good at their jobs. Sure, a lot of them are assholes and douchebags, but they still try to do their job right, and usually they do. You close a lot of cases. Good for you. So does everybody else on your squad. Being a good cop isn’t that big of a deal.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because if you’re not careful you’re going to fuck it all up.”

The next morning, it still took two hours after they told me my CT scan looked good for them to release me. I was so intent on getting out of the hospital, I hadn’t thought about what would come next. I sent a group text to Patrick and Jen.
They’re letting me go. What should I do?

My clothes were in a plastic bag in the closet. The T-shirt was dirty from the asphalt of the parking lot and there was still a piece of duct tape stuck to one of the legs of my jeans. I pulled a latex glove from the dispenser on the wall next to the hand sanitizer. After slipping my hand into it, I carefully pulled the tape off and dropped it into the now-empty plastic bag. Any trace evidence would probably be useless because of cross-contamination, but I saved it just the same. They should have taken all my clothes, anyway. I wondered why they hadn’t. Did Patrick drop the ball?

“Hey, Danny,” someone said from the doorway.

I looked up from tying my shoes to see Lauren Terrones. She was in uniform and, I assumed, on duty.

“Hi, Lauren.”

She could tell I was surprised to see her. “I took over for Mears out in the lobby. Jen just called me and said you were ready to go.”

I didn’t know whether to be upset that Jen didn’t seem to be talking to me, or grateful that she had apparently arranged for someone I knew to pick me up. “Do you know where I’m supposed to go?”

“Jen said to take you home to get cleaned up, then back to the station to see Lieutenant Ruiz.” I always had to remind myself she had less than two years on the job. She’d gone to college and law school before joining the LBPD with the first new class of recruits we’d had since the beginning of the recession. Being older and more experienced than her fellow rookies had served her well. She’d excelled at the academy and had glowing reports from her field-training officers.

“I hope you didn’t get in trouble or anything,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because you must have pissed somebody off to get stuck with babysitting duty.”

She looked puzzled. “Babysitting? I don’t know what you mean. Ruiz said Jen recommended me for this. I was happy to help.”

“You heard what happened the other day, right? Nobody’s very pleased with me right now.”

“Where did you get that idea? Everybody’s just glad you’re okay.”

“Maybe not everybody.”

“Stop it,” she said firmly, surprising me.

“That’s a lot of attitude for a rookie.”

“I’m not a rookie anymore.”

“I stand corrected.”

“And Jen told me not to put up with any of your shit.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FORGOTTEN

The lecture I’d been expecting from Ruiz since I had left the hospital never came. Instead, he sat me down in his office with his hand on my shoulder and said, “Jesus, I’m glad you’re back. You had us worried.” He stepped around behind his desk and sat down. There was a rare smile on his face. “How’s your head?”

“Not too bad,” I said. The constant headache had become so normal at that point, I barely paid attention to it anymore. It’s surprising how quickly you can become used to pain once you have some experience with it.

“Good,” he said. “Traumatic brain injury is serious business.”

That was the first time anyone had mentioned TBI to me, even though it had been worming its way around my imagination since I woke up in the hospital. I had Googled it, but was hoping my self-diagnosis had been off base. It wasn’t. My grade-three concussion qualified.

“I seem to be doing okay,” I said, hoping it was true.

He said “Good” again and I could tell he was preparing himself to say something he didn’t want to say. I was pretty sure I knew what it was going to be.

“Yesterday, I officially took you off the Denkins case and made Jen the primary.”

“I understand,” I said.

He sighed and seemed relieved that I didn’t argue with him. “I’m sorry I had to do it. But there’s clearly a link between the bombing and the suicide investigation.”

I still didn’t want to acknowledge it, but my attacker warning me off of the interview with Lucinda couldn’t have meant anything else. But I also knew that until the case was closed—or, failing that, until it cooled down considerably—I’d still be considered a target. What I was unsure of was what that meant.

“We’ve got two choices,” Ruiz said. “You can use some vacation time, but only if you want to get out of town for a while. We don’t have the manpower to keep someone with you 24-7 if you’re just going to be hanging out at home.”

Maybe Julia would want to take a week and go away someplace. We hadn’t taken a trip together yet. It might be good for us. The thought left as quickly as it had come. It would be hard enough for me not to be working the Denkins case, but to walk away completely? I couldn’t do it. At least if I was here I’d be able to follow Jen’s progress, maybe keep a toe in the water.

I didn’t really need to ask about the other choice, but I did. “And the alternative?”

“Administrative duty, keep you at your desk for a while. Besides, that’s all the doctor has cleared you for at this point. That’s what you’d be doing anyway.”

“Okay,” I said.

He nodded. I imagined he thought things were going much more smoothly than he had anticipated. “How do you feel about Officer Terrones?”

“She’s good. Jen’s right. I like her. Why?”

“I’ve gotten her temporarily reassigned from patrol. She’ll be backing you up whenever you’re not in the station. It’ll work out well with you staying at Jen’s house.”

“You think I should still be there?”

“Yes,” he said. “Don’t you?”

I did, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe Jen would agree. She wouldn’t even return my texts. But that’s not what I told Ruiz. “If he was keeping close-enough tabs on me to know when I got in the shower, I’m sure he knows I’m staying at Jen’s house. I’m worried about putting her and Lauren at risk.”

“I don’t know,” he said, chewing on the idea. “You had a bag over your head, but did you get an impression of the guy? Think he was a heavy hitter? He the kind of guy who’ll drive by with a car full of bangers and AK-47s?”

“I couldn’t tell, not really. He didn’t sound street, or foreign. But he apparently has access to South African antipersonnel mines.”

“He does,” Ruiz said. “But if he’s that serious, why didn’t he just kill you when he had the chance?” He let that sink in, then added, “If he doesn’t want one dead cop on his hands, it doesn’t seem very likely he’d want three.”

“Still.”

“Danny, somebody’s got to watch your back for a while. They’re up for it. They want to do it.”

I wondered if he’d talked to Jen recently. “All right,” I said.

We talked for a few more minutes about my other open cases and how I’d prioritize things now that the Denkins case was out of my hands.

“One last thing,” he said. “Patrick and Jen will need to consult with you, but give them the space they need. You’re going to want to keep your fingers in the pie, but don’t. Let them work.”

There’s always more work to do. When a new case comes in, it jumps immediately to the front of the line. Often, there’s little actual investigative work required. It’s perfectly clear who killed whom, and it’s just a matter of documenting the incident and passing everything up the line to the prosecutors. Other times, it will take a few days or weeks of sorting through the evidence until we reach the conclusion that was more or less forgone the moment the body of the victim was discovered. There are others still, fortunately a small minority, that don’t offer answers to our questions of who and why. We run out of leads, or don’t have any to begin with. We follow the stream of evidence until it runs dry. Every homicide detective has a backlog of these cases, waiting for either that new bit of information that will bring them back to life or the lack of it that will eventually consign them to the open/unsolved files.

I was sitting at my desk sorting through my open cases and prioritizing them, making lists of things to review and follow up on, looking for new questions to ask or new threads to pull, when Patrick and Jen came into the squad room. He said something I couldn’t quite hear and she laughed.

“Hey, guys,” I said, raising my hand in a halfhearted wave.

“Danny,” Patrick said. “How are you doing?”

They came over to my desk, Patrick more enthusiastically than Jen.

“Not too bad,” I said. “Still have a headache.”

Nobody said anything, and I wondered if the silence felt as awkward to them as it did to me. To break it, I said, “I talked to Ruiz. I’ll be riding the desk for a while. I made copies of all my notes and files for you. The murder book’s on your desk, Jen.” It took every bit of willpower I could muster not to ask them about the investigation. They must have had something new. How did Jen’s interview with Lucinda Denkins go? Did they get anything from the van? What about Joe? Had they talked to Dave about Kobe’s case? Was there any progress on identifying S. Wise and C. Shepard? I kept my questions to myself, shoved them down into that deep empty pit where I keep my emotions. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

Patrick said, “Thanks, we will.”

“I’ve been listening to
I Was There Too
,” I said. “Napalm smells best in the evening.”

He laughed. “Have you gotten to the one with Stephen Tobolowsky yet?”

“That’s my favorite so far.
Groundhog Day
and
Deadwood
. Doesn’t get better than that.”

“We’re getting takeout for lunch,” he said. “Anything sound good?”

I smiled as pleasantly as I could. “Whatever you guys are getting is great.”

Patrick went back to his desk. Jen remained where she stood, leaning against a file cabinet, arms crossed in front of her chest. She stared at me, frowning, her expression impossible to read. “How long until you follow up with the doctor about your head injury?”

While I was trying to decide whether to eat the second half of the pastrami sandwich or save it for later, Jen sent me an e-mail. The body of the message was blank, but the subject line said “Interview” and there were two attachments. The first was a written report, the second an audio file. I opened both files, put my earbuds in, and read while I listened. Cross-referencing between the words and Jen’s description was the next-best thing to being there.

Jen had met Lucinda downstairs and brought her back up to the squad room. Marty was the only one there. Jen’s phone rang, and she looked at the display and said, “Could you excuse me for a minute? I really need to take this.” She answered the call and asked whoever was on the other end to hold on. “Marty?”

“Yeah?” he said.

“Could you do me a favor and get Ms. Denkins set up for her interview?”

“Sure,” he said with a smile. “No problem.”

Jen stepped out into the hallway and ended the call while Marty led Lucinda into the small interview room and sat her down at the table pushed up against the wall. The carpet and the walls were the same dull gray. The table and two chairs were gray as well, just a few shades lighter. The walls were bare, and the light fixture recessed into the ceiling flooded the room with a harsh fluorescence.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked her. “Coffee, water?”

“No,” she said. “I’m okay.”

He closed the door and joined Jen back in the squad room. “How long are you going to make her wait?”

“Not long,” she said.

Seven minutes later, Jen opened the door and found Lucinda waiting patiently. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.

Lucinda looked up at her and said, “Oh, that’s okay.”

Jen sensed she was a bit apprehensive, but didn’t detect any traces of anxiety or fear. “I’m not sure why Marty left you in here,” she said. “I wanted him to show you into the conference room. Why don’t we go in there? It will be more comfortable.”

“All right,” Lucinda said. She picked up her purse and stood to join Jen, who led her out and down the hallway to the conference room.

It wasn’t anything special, just a big rectangular table with eight chairs around it. But the table was wood and the chairs had fabric on the seats and backs, and there was a poster of the Long Beach skyline on one wall and a window on the other. And there was a clock. It was just like thousands of other conference rooms. It was only after someone had spent a while in the claustrophobic cell of the interrogation room that the conference room seemed warm and inviting.

That was the effect Jen was counting on. “What would you like to drink? Coffee? Water?”

“Just water would be okay.”

Jen went to the break room next door and came back with two bottles of Aquafina.

“Here you go,” she said, sitting down next to Lucinda. She put her phone on the table beside a notepad. “I just need to record this,” she said, reaching over and touching the screen.

She started with small talk, asking Lucinda how she was holding up, about work, whether she’d been able to get into her father’s apartment without any trouble. She went on for a few minutes, until it seemed more like a conversation than an interview. Subtly, Jen led her to more discussion of her father. Lucinda didn’t seem to notice the transition.

“How is Joe doing?” Jen asked.

“I don’t know. He seems like, in some ways he’s taking it even harder than me.”

Jen let the opportunity for a direct question about Joe pass, and instead went at it obliquely. “Your dad liked Joe, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Lucinda said. Her voice was weighted with sadness. “He worried about him businesswise, but he really cared about him.”

“That’s why your father invested in the restaurant?”

“Yes, he was really hoping that would work out.” A hint of optimism slipped into her tone, as if the failing of Winter was still something that could be forestalled, but it disappeared just as quickly as she continued. “We all were, of course.”