Killer Swell (17 page)

I found the Blazer out front, courtesy of Liz having it towed. I headed straight for the hospital to see Carter.

It surprised me that Liz had shared as much with me as she had. She took her work seriously and, most of the time, didn't take me too seriously. Telling me about the politics involved and handing me that scrap of paper weren't things that she normally did. It felt like we'd cleared a small hurdle in our relationship.

I took my time moving up the highway toward UCSD, staring aimlessly at the lights on Fiesta Island and Mission Bay as I moved by. I wanted nothing more than to take the exit at Grand, head straight west toward the water, grab my board, and hide from all of the crap that had entered my life by riding the water until my body went numb.

But I knew that I couldn't, so I passed the exit at Grand and tried not to think about it.

Carter's eyes widened when I walked into his room.

“Did you fall out of a building?” he asked.

“Sort of,” I said, pulling what I'd started thinking of as my own personal chair next to the bed.

“What the hell happened?”

I sat down in the chair and told him about my visit with Costilla.

“You said you wouldn't do that without me,” he said when I finished.

“I forgot,” I said. “How are you?”

“I'm fine. Surgery was fine. I'm ready to go.” He looked at me. “Jesus, I look better than you.”

I rubbed my bruised cheek. “Thanks.”

“Listen to me next time.”

“When are you out of here?”

He dropped his head back on the pillow and heaved a pissed off, exasperated sigh. “Two days is what the doc said. I'm gonna push him on it, though.”

“Don't,” I said. “They know better than you do when you're ready to go home.” I pulled the paper Liz had given me out of my pocket. “Here's something to keep you occupied.” I handed it to him.

He let it rest in his palm. “I get shot and this is what you bring me?”

“Shut up. Liz gave it to me.”

He raised an eyebrow, surprised. “The Ice Queen gave you something other than the finger?”

“We made peace.”

He looked back at the paper. “‘Charlotte.' The city?”

“What about the T?”

“I don't know. Where'd Liz get it?”

“The car they found Kate in.”

“The ‘T' could be an initial,” he said, running his finger over the paper, trying to smooth it out.

“A last name,” I said. “That's my guess.”

“What does Liz think it is?”

I shook my head. “She's not sure. That's why she gave it to me.”

He handed it back. “That doesn't sound like her.”

I told him what she'd said about finding Kate's killer.

“Still,” Carter said. “Doesn't sound like Liz.”

“I think the guilt is working her over pretty good.”

“I suppose,” he said. “But a crappy piece of paper that may have been just trash isn't much.”

“No,” I agreed. “It's not. But at least it's something.”

The door to the room opened, and an older nurse with a gray afro stuck her head in. “Visiting hours end in five minutes, gentlemen.”

I waved at her, and Carter made a face.

She smiled and shut the door.

I stood up. “I'm gonna head out. I'll come see you in the morning.”

“Okay. Don't knock yourself out over this, Noah,” he said, a note of caution in his voice.

“What? The paper?”

“That and everything else. It's not worth getting the shit kicked out of you. Again.”

“I know.”

“No, you don't,” he said, tugging at the blankets that barely covered his long frame. “Otherwise you wouldn't have gone to see Costilla.”

I turned toward the door.

“Even if you figure this out,” Carter continued, “what's gonna happen? Ken and Marilyn are going to give you a fat check? I know you could care less about that. Kate's not gonna be able to say thank you. No matter what you find out.” He paused. “It won't bring her back.”

I waved at him and left.

Carter's words stung me.

I didn't think I was doing this to make amends for Kate, but maybe I was fooling myself. The police and the government didn't want it solved. In all likelihood, even if Kate's murder was solved, it was going to be done quietly. They would prefer that Costilla did it because it gave them one more thing to hang on him. I still wasn't convinced, and I kept turning everything over in my mind until I pulled up to Emily's.

I wasn't quite sure why I'd gone to her place. I tried telling myself that it was because I wanted to ask her more about her sister and Randall and also to see if she knew anything about the piece of paper Liz had given me. But, somewhere, in the recesses of my brain, I knew it was because I needed to settle whatever had happened between us.

I parked my car in front of her garage and walked up the stairs. I was getting used to the stiffness and soreness that permeated my body. I tried to pretend it was from a really difficult workout. And if that workout had included being used as a heavy bag, maybe my body would've bought it.

I pressed the illuminated button next to her door. After a moment, I heard her muffled voice, then footsteps. The door opened, and she stuck her head out. “Noah.”

“Hey.”

She opened the door enough for her to step into the opening. “I didn't know you were coming over.”

“I didn't either. I was just at the hospital and thought I'd come by.”

She tried to smile, but it came off as more nervous. Her hair was tousled and her cheeks flushed. She blinked several times. “Oh, um, how's Carter?”

I became keenly aware that she was not inviting me in. “He's okay. Better anyway.”

She almost glanced over her shoulder, then caught herself, the look on her face telling me what I had already guessed.

“Bad timing,” I said.

“Uh, yeah,” she said, laughing quickly. “You could say that.” She paused. “I'm sorry.”

I held up my hand. “Nothing to be sorry about. I should've called.”

“No,” she said. “It's just…I don't know. I'm not getting this out.”

“You don't have to,” I said, backing up. “I'm on my way.”

She opened the door wider. I could see she was wearing a man's dress shirt over a pair of khaki shorts. She must've noticed me looking at her clothes because she looked at herself and blushed.

“Noah,” she said, then stopped. “It's my ex. The almost husband.”

“Em, you don't owe me an explanation,” I said, feeling the warmth in my cheeks now.

She started to say something, then looked harder at me. “What happened to your face?”

I waved a hand. “Nothing. I'll tell you later.”

She looked like she wanted to say something else, then stopped. “Okay. I'll call you.”

I hustled down the stairs and waved at her over my shoulder so she couldn't see the rising tide of embarrassment on my face.

I managed not to squeal the tires of the Blazer as I left Emily's condo, but when I turned out onto Camino Del Mar, I floored it.

It wasn't that I felt that Emily and I had established some sort of relationship. We hadn't. I had avoided any discussion of a relationship on purpose, and our guilt had prevented us from doing anything else.

Seeing her, flustered and embarrassed, had rattled me, but not in the way that I would've predicted. I wasn't upset or jealous, which is what I would've expected. Instead, I was relieved. Emily and I didn't belong together, and our awkward meeting had confirmed that. Maybe I'd been trying to replace Kate with her, which was screwed up on so many levels that I didn't even want to think about it. She didn't deserve that.

And as I sped through the dark curves on Torrey Pines Road and down into La Jolla Shores, something that had been riding around in my head started to get a whole lot clearer.

I stopped at a bar in PB, already packed with an early-evening crowd, and downed a beer and a shot of tequila in about fifteen minutes. I stood at the bar, listening to Tristan Prettyman's soft voice coming from the speakers in the wall, contemplating doing something that I couldn't believe I was even giving serious thought to. I didn't want to go home and be alone. I felt like I'd been on my own all day. Before I could talk myself out of it, I left the bar and drove south.

Coronado is a small island west of the downtown area, dominated by the Naval Station and the expensive beachfront hotels, most notably the red-roofed Hotel del Coronado. Most of the families that live on Coronado have been there for years, and just about everyone seems to know each other, giving the island a feeling of having never left the fifties. The streets are narrow, the lawns are immaculate, and the view from any location—house, hotel, or restaurant—is phenomenal.

When I turned off the big blue Coronado Bridge, I dropped the windows in the SUV and let the cool evening breeze sweep across the bay into the car. My mood lightened as the island's tree-lined streets enveloped me. The hurried pace and congestion of the downtown area felt miles away, even though I could see the lights sparkling on the skyscrapers across the water.

The street I was looking for curved back with the body of the bay, and I pulled up at the curb across from the last house on the block, the bay waters lapping quietly at the retaining wall just a few feet away from me. I shut the engine off.

Many of the homes reminded me of brownstones on the East Coast, just not as tall. Straight up and down, rectangular, with flat roofs that served as decks. This particular home was whitewashed brick. A tiny walk split the emerald green lawn, with precisely trimmed rosebushes running along the front of the house. Four windows, two up and two down, dotted the face of the house, flower boxes underlining the two lower windows with bright pinks and yellows.

I got out of the car and tried to remember the last time I'd been here. It didn't come to me as I walked across the street and up the front walk into the glare of the porch light.

The front door was shut behind a slim screen door, and before I could think about it, I knocked.

No answer.

I knocked again, but I heard only silence in return.

I walked backward down the stone walk, looking up at the roof.

“You up there?” I yelled. “It's me, Noah.”

I heard the scraping of an aluminum chair and hollow footsteps.

Liz looked over the edge at me. “I'm here. What's going on?”

I could see her only from the waist up, the edge of the brick rising a few feet higher than the roof. She was wearing a navy jogging tank.

“Nothing,” I said.

She pulled the dark hair away from her face. “I take it you wanna come up.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I guess. But if you're busy…”

She stared at me for a minute, clearly wondering what I was doing on her front lawn.

“I'm not talking business,” she said, holding a beer up in her hand. “I've had enough for today.”

“Fine with me,” I said.

“Door's unlocked,” she said, disappearing from the edge.

So I went in.

She was stretched out on an old chaise lounge. White shorts with a Nike swoosh matched the jogging tank. Her dark hair was flying in several different directions. Her feet were bare, running shoes and socks in a pile next to her. Two empty beer bottles stood below the armrest of the chair.

She pointed to the tiny fridge on the corner of the deck. “Beer's in there.”

Four chairs dotted the deck, and a small office refrigerator sat in the corner, next to a tiny wooden table. The barbecue sat in the other corner. With no other houses to get in the way, the view of the bay and the downtown landscape was striking.

I grabbed a Dos Equis out of the fridge. “Thanks.”

“I don't want to be rude,” she said, looking at me. “But what the hell are you doing here?”

I sat down on the upraised brick wall that jutted above the deck, my back to the bridge and the South Bay. “I honestly don't know.”

Liz studied me for a moment, then shrugged. “Okay.”

We sat there in silence, drinking our beers. I felt awkward and out of place. When we had dated, we'd spent a lot of nights on the roof, drinking, eating, and talking. Arguing a lot, too. Our relationship had moved back and forth between easy affection and irritation.

“You go see Carter again?” she asked, sitting up in the chair.

I nodded. “Yeah. He's better.”

“Take a lot more than a couple of bullets to kill that elephant,” she said.

“I think of him as more of a giraffe.”

“Rhino fits, too.”

“Yeah, it does.”

We both laughed. She set her bottle down and pointed at the fridge. I reached in, grabbed a full one, opened it, and handed it to her. She took a long drink.

“Still running, I see,” I said, the silence digging into me.

“About five miles every night,” she said. “If I'm not worn out.”

“Which you probably are more often than not.”

She pursed her lips and tried to look indifferent.

“Wellton said some nice things about you today,” I told her.

Her lips curled into a small smile. “John's a good guy.”

“Said you take a lot of shit for partnering with him.”

“I do. But screw them, you know? He's a good guy and a good cop. He probably takes shit for having a woman as a partner.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We drank our beers and watched the lights shimmer on the harbor.

“Being around you again is weird,” she said.

“How's that?”

She tilted her head. “Well, when things ended, it was kind of bad between us.”

Our breakup had occurred outside a restaurant with each of us screaming at the other. I couldn't recall what that specific argument had been about, but the force of our words left no doubt about the finality of it all.

“Just kind of?” I said.

“Okay. Really bad. And then, with all this,” she waved her hand in the air, “you've pretty much been the irritation equivalent of, say, a nail in my eardrum.”

“It says a lot about you that a nail in your eardrum would be only an irritation, rather than excruciatingly painful.”

She smiled. “I'm tough.” She pointed the beer bottle in my direction. “But, now, I've gotta admit…” Her voice trailed off.

“Admit what?”

She clutched the bottle in both of her hands. “I've gotta admit I don't hate that you're here.” She looked at me for a moment, then drained the beer, setting the empty bottle down next to the others. “But maybe I'm drunk.”

“I'm not sure how to take that,” I told her.

She swung her legs over the chair, sitting on the edge of it. “Well, neither am I.” She looked at me. “Why are you here, Noah?”

I rolled my empty beer bottle between my hands. A horn blew out on the harbor from a distance, echoing softly across the water. The thought in my head that had rattled around as I left Emily's was this: if Liz had answered the door in another man's shirt, I would've been jealous and upset. I couldn't explain why, but I knew it as surely as I knew anything at that moment.

“I didn't want to be alone and I kept thinking of you,” I told her. “Carter's in the hospital. Who the hell else do I hang out with?”

“Ernie?”

I grunted. “Not anymore. I put him in a bad spot and I feel like shit for doing it.”

“He'll forgive you,” she said.

“Maybe, but it'll be a while.”

“Probably, but he will. Everyone does.”

I looked at her. “Everyone does what?”

She shook her head, a faint smile on her lips. “Forgive you, Noah. Everyone does—eventually. You screw up, you do dumbass things, but in the end, you get it right. You just have to do some stupid things before you get to the right things.” She paused, her blue eyes staring me down in the shadows. “It's just your way.”

I gazed back at her, wondering if she realized that might have been the kindest thing she had ever said about me.

“You are drunk,” I said.

She stood. “A little.” She walked over to me and held out her hand. “Come on.”

I grabbed her hand and pulled myself up, stifling a groan as my ribs protested that I should remain seated. “Where are we going?”

“Inside,” she said, taking me with her.

“Why?” I asked, even though I had a pretty good idea.

She didn't look back. “Because I don't feel like being alone, either.”