Come Twilight (3 page)

“I feel sorry for him,” she said.

“Think he knows more than he’s saying?”

“Everybody knows more than they’re saying.”

Most of what I was interested in was in the desk or file cabinet—rental agreements, financial records, legal documents. Jen searched the rest of the apartment while I dug into the paperwork. An hour later, I had a box full of files and Jen had searched the place from top to bottom.

“Find anything?” I asked, snapping the lid closed on the large plastic evidence container.

She shook her head. “Not really. Nothing out of the ordinary. Don’t think Bill was a big drinker, though. No alcohol containers in the trash and only one beer in the fridge, on the bottom shelf, pushed way in back.”

I looked at the coffee table where the Glenlivet bottle had been before it was collected as evidence. “Last night must have been an anomaly.”

“So, why did Bill get shit-faced last night?” she asked.

“And who was he with?”

Jen offered to take the autopsy so I could get some sleep before Julia’s show. I wanted to make a good impression, because I hadn’t met many of her friends yet. But when we got out to the curb, I saw my Camry, still parked halfway up the block.

“Shit,” I said. “I forgot I need to get my car to the repair shop.”

Jen took pity on me. “Give me your keys. I’ll get a tow for you.”

“Thanks,” I said, working the ignition key off of my key ring.

“Still take it to that place up on Cherry?”

I nodded, handed her the business card I keep in my wallet for the mechanic, and started for the cruiser.

She read the card. “See you tonight.”

That stopped me. “You’re going, too?”

“Your girlfriend sent me the event invite on Facebook, so yeah.”

“We’re not, I mean she’s not—”

“Go sleep.” I heard her laughing as she walked away.

CHAPTER
T
WO

THE BOY IN THE BUBBLE

Three hours in bed wasn’t enough to make up for the sleep I’d lost the night before, but I was feeling rested and, honestly, a little bit nervous. I was certain Julia had anticipated this and invited Jen so I wouldn’t feel quite so fish-out-of-watery.

After a shower and a shave, I spent too much time deciding what to wear. I went with khakis and a blue linen button-up with vertical stripes that I knew from experience would do a good job of concealing my Glock in its inside-the-waistband holster behind my right hip.

When I was as ready as I was going to get, I headed out to the gallery. It was in the East Village, which was really just the eastern edge of downtown Long Beach. Several years ago someone thought rebranding the area might be a good idea, so they hung a new name on the neighborhood and watched the gastropubs and retro-cool dive bars and art galleries sprout and blossom. I’d been spending a lot more time there since I’d been with Julia. The truth was that I was beginning to enjoy the neighborhood more, and that left me feeling conflicted. I worried about becoming so comfortable with the curated authenticity of the hipsters and gentrifiers that I’d lose my sense of the actual authenticity I needed on the job whenever I ventured out of the comfortable pockets of privilege where I found myself spending more and more of my time.

When I mentioned this to Julia, she just smiled at me. “What?” I’d asked her.

“That’s a good thing to be worried about.”

As I circled the block a second time looking for parking, I thought about pulling into a loading zone or a short-term spot. Nobody would ticket an unmarked police car. I decided against it, though, because I thought one of Julia’s friends might see me do it, and I didn’t want the first impression I made on anyone to be of a cop exploiting the perks of his job.

I found an empty space two blocks over on Elm and checked my watch. Five minutes to seven. Perfect timing. As I turned the corner onto Broadway, I could see Julia and Jen on the sidewalk up the street in front of the gallery. I picked up my pace.

Jen saw me first. She said something to Julia, who turned and smiled as I got close.

“They’re just about ready,” she said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek.

I looked inside. A young guy with a thick hipster beard and waxed mustache was adjusting a cheese tray and lining up bottles of wine on a folding table. No one else was inside.

“And I was worried I’d be late.”

Julia laughed. “I should have mentioned that no one shows up to an art opening on time.”

“No one except the cops, apparently,” Jen said.

Julia laughed again. Her easy calmness impressed me. I hadn’t expected too much nervousness or anxiety from her, she was always steady that way. It was one of my favorite things about her. She never seemed to rattle. But I knew this show was a big deal for her. Things were really taking off with her photography. Not only was the show more exposure for her art, but she was hoping to sell, too. On the advice of the gallery owner, a man-bunned guy named Trev, she’d increased the asking prices for her new works. From what I could see, though, I was more concerned about how the evening would go than she was.

“Come inside,” Julia said. “I need to show you something.”

I followed her toward the back corner where her work was displayed. It looked good. She’d shown them all to me a few days earlier, when she was deciding which ones to include. She had a dozen photos of various sizes, some color, some black-and-white. Street photography, she called her style. She liked to find a subject, a person, and to photograph him or her in a way that situated the particular person in a particular place. Whether it was a homeless person downtown, a gangbanger in North Long Beach, a rich guy on Naples Island, there always seemed to be something that pulled me into the moment she’d captured. My favorite of the lot was a black-and-white that she’d taken on Belmont Pier. There were about a dozen people in the photo, but its subject was unmistakably the bearded man in running clothes sitting on a bench and focusing intently on a running shoe he was holding up in front of himself. It was only after studying it for a moment that I realized it was not just a shoe, but his own prosthetic lower leg.

As we got closer I saw one I didn’t recognize—in the center of a dark rectangle was a bright square of light, in which stood a man facing away from the camera on a balcony, looking out at the city. It took me a few seconds to realize the photograph was taken from deep inside a room, and the dark frame consisted of the walls around a sliding glass door. It took a few more seconds to realize I was the man and the balcony was Julia’s.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“You got my good side,” I said.

“Is it okay? Do you mind me including it?”

I looked her in the eyes. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the photo. Part of me felt flattered to be one of her subjects, to be part of a piece of her art. But I also felt a certain uneasiness. I had no idea where it came from or why I felt it, but the idea of that photo hanging on a stranger’s wall bothered me.

“I like it,” I said. “But do we have to sell that one?”

She pointed at a small, round red sticker on a bottom corner of the frame’s glass surface that I hadn’t noticed before. “I’m way ahead of you. That means this one’s already spoken for.”

“Look at you,” Jen said, approaching us. She had a small paper plate with cheese and grapes in her hand. “She got your good side.”

A few more people had arrived. Julia introduced us to Trev, the owner, and to one of the other artists. We made some small talk, and by then the crowd had begun to grow.

“I should probably start mingling,” Julia said, giving my hand a quick squeeze.

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ll try not to break anything.”

I watched her greet a small circle of women. They looked like old friends—hugs and smiles all around. Then I noticed Jen watching me.

“What?” I asked.

“I like her,” she said. “And I like you with her.”

“You don’t like me otherwise?”

She didn’t take the bait. “She’s good for you.”

“That she is,” I said. Julia had moved on to a group of two couples and she seemed just as happy to see them as she had the others. I couldn’t help but wonder if I was good for her.

As soon as I had the chance I pulled Jen into a corner to talk about the case. “How’d the autopsy go?” I asked.

“No surprises.” She took a sip of bottled water. Neither of us had opted for the wine. “Blood alcohol was point-one-nine, with more in his stomach.”

“And if he wasn’t a heavy drinker,” I said, “he was probably close to passing out.”

“If he wasn’t already unconscious.”

“GSR on the left hand?”

“Yeah, but inconclusive.”

“So someone could have put the gun in his hand and manipulated it themselves?”

She nodded and eyeballed the picked-over cheese tray. “We’re going for food after, right?”

“That’s the plan. Reservations at James Republic.”

“Should have worn your fancy pants.”

I laughed and stepped away to call the crime lab to check on the preliminary results from the scene. It was nearly eight, but it wasn’t unusual for them to work late processing evidence. The phone was still ringing when I saw Julia waving me over to where she was standing. She was chatting with a young guy, maybe midtwenties, who looked happy to be there but seemed a little out of place in his Dockers and long-sleeved plaid shirt.

“Danny,” Julia said. “This is Terry Wright.”

I slipped my phone in my pocket and reached out and shook his hand. He had a solid grip that made him seem stronger than he looked. He had his shirt cuffs turned up and I noticed a tattoo on his forearm. It was only partially exposed, but I could see what looked like an old aerial bomb over lightning bolts and a wreath of some kind.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“Likewise.”

Julia looked at me expectantly, as if she thought I might recognize him. “He’s in the Belmont Pier shot you like so much.”

“Shit, I’m sorry. You shaved.” I tried not to look down at his prosthetic leg.

“It was time for a change,” he said.

When I’d told her that photo was my favorite of the lot, Julia had mentioned that she’d actually met Terry a few years earlier, when she’d worked at the VA hospital. She didn’t mention in what capacity they’d met, so I assumed it involved some sort of counseling situation.

The gallery manager came up and put a red sticker on a bottom corner of his picture and gave Julia a subtle thumbs-up sign. Then he motioned for her to follow him.

“Somebody likes it,” she said to Terry.

“I don’t think it’s me they’re buying,” he said as we both watched her walk across the room to another group of patrons.

I wondered how much it had sold for. Julia often gave the subjects of her photos a cut of the money if their photos sold. She said it was unusual, but not unheard of. Many of the people she took pictures of were struggling in one way or another, and she never wanted to feel like she was profiting from their misfortune.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I wondered how long it would be before I could check it without looking like an asshole.

“How do you know Julia?” he asked me.

“From work,” I said. We’d met when I was investigating the murder of a homeless man who’d been burned to death by a group of aspiring gang members.

He looked curious, but I didn’t offer any more. We stood there for a minute and I could sense he was feeling awkward. I was, too, but one of the things I’d learned in my years of detective work was how to project a kind of pleasant disinterest no matter what I was feeling. I found it at least as useful in social situations as it was in the interrogation room. No matter how out of place I felt at a party, I could pretty much always make the person I was chatting with feel like they were the source of the awkwardness between us. It was kind of a dick move, but that never stopped me from using it.

Terry looked at me with a polite expectation in his eyes, and when I didn’t speak, he said, “I’m going to go grab a glass of wine. Can I bring you something?”

“No, thanks,” I said. As he walked away, his limp was almost imperceptible.

A twinge of embarrassment lodged itself in my gut. I looked at the scar that encircled my wrist, almost hidden by my watchband, and felt the familiar tightness grabbing at my arm and shoulder.

I went outside to check my phone. Ethan, the crime-scene technician who’d collected and cataloged the evidence last night and this morning, had returned my call and left a message. So far the only news was that fingerprint evidence revealed there had been at least three people other than Bill Denkins in his apartment recently. If Lucy and Joe were two, who was the third?

When I went back inside, I saw that the gallery had filled. There must have been three dozen people crowded into the space. As I checked out the other artists’ work, I felt a trickle of sweat run down the small of my back. I found Jen studying a photo of some kind of purple flower. The richness of the color stood out against the duller and less focused tones of the background.

“That’s not as good as Julia’s,” I said.

“Not that you’re biased or anything.”

“Objectivity is the bedrock of my existence.”

“Yabba-dabba-doo.”

As things were winding down, Julia found Jen and me back at her section of the exhibit. All of her photos had been red-dotted.

“A few people are going to Thai District across the street,” Julia said.

“I made reservations at James Republic.”

“What would you think about canceling?”

“I don’t know.” I put on my best faux-disappointed face. “I was really looking forward to the grilled octopus and heirloom gazpacho.”

Twenty minutes later, Julia, Jen, and I were sitting by the window with Trev, whose name unsurprisingly turned out to be short for Trevanian rather than Trevor, and two of the other artists.

After the wine came and the server worked her way around the table to me, I said, “I’ll have the chicken fried rice.”

Julia and Jen shared a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.