Lost Dog (A Gideon and Sirius Novel Book 3) (30 page)

CHAPTER 43

ANSWER UNCLEAR, TRY LATER

“You want to go for a ride?”

It was a question I needn’t have asked. Sirius always wants to go for a ride.

“We’re going to see a friend of yours,” I told him.

That was reason for more tail thumping. Just being alive, Sirius knows, is reason enough for tail thumping. My partner reminds me of that every day, and shares his contagious joy. He keeps me from being a grump, which qualifies him as a miracle worker. I would nominate him for sainthood, but the Catholic Church has always discouraged any canine veneration.

The weeks since the car crash were supposed to have been a time of healing, but work had conspired against that. Sometimes the aftermath of a case proves to be more problematic than the solving of it, with a flurry of required reports and meetings.

As I drove, I tried to get comfortable. The car crash had thrown my body out of alignment. I sang my woes to Sirius: “Your backbone connected to your shoulder bone, your shoulder bone connected to your neck bone, your neck bone connected to your head bone.”

My cell phone rang, and I looked at the display. Lisbet was calling.
Uh-oh,
I thought. And then I finished the lyric: “I hear the word of the Lord.”

I suspected I was busted but pretended otherwise in my best mellifluous on-air voice: “This is the love doctor, and right now I’d like to give a shout-out to a special L.A. lady named Lisbet.”

“And I’d like to ask the love doctor why a certain L.A. cop didn’t go to physical therapy today,” said Lisbet.

“Temporary insanity?” I waited a moment for her to laugh, and when that didn’t happen, I said, “I had to take a conference call with the assistant DA.”

“You can’t keep putting off the therapy. You have to prioritize it.”

“I’ll make it tomorrow,” I promised.

“Why is it that the bad guys have time for physical therapy, and the good guys don’t?”

“Thanks to Sirius,” I said, “James Rhodes needs to do
a lot
more PT than I do. Of course, his scumbag defense lawyer is trying to claim that his client’s wounds were a result of excessive force.”

“Saving your life constituted excessive force?”

“When you have a client looking at the attempted murder of a police officer with special circumstances, assault with a deadly weapon, and assorted other charges, lawyers tend to grasp for any straws they can. And we’re not even taking into account the premeditated murders of Andrea Rhodes and Langston Walker.”

After the fact, we’d learned that James Rhodes had run down his wife when he discovered she was having an affair. On the surface it was a crime of passion, but scratching that surface showed all the planning that had gone into her murder. Rhodes had targeted a problem drinker, and stolen Donald Warren’s car after determining the man was in a drunken stupor. After running down his wife on a residential road as she was biking home, Rhodes had returned the damaged car to where he’d stolen it. There was a reason Warren had no memory of having driven his car on the night Andrea Rhodes was killed—he hadn’t driven it, after all. It wasn’t a blackout like everyone had assumed. Warren’s death from cirrhosis of the liver was the only thing that had spared him a trial and a jail sentence.

“I’d rather you cared more about yourself than your cases,” said Lisbet. “You think I can’t see how much you’re still hurting?”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Then why is it you’ve worn loafers ever since the crash? You can’t even bend down to tie your shoes.”

It was nice having a girlfriend who cared, but there were times I wished she wasn’t so observant.

“I promise I will be better about going to physical therapy,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “I hate having to act like a schoolmarm.”

I found myself laughing at her use of the word “schoolmarm.”

“Schoolmarm,” I repeated, and then attempted an urchin voice and said, “I have been naughty, teacher.”

“Yes, you have,” she said, “and I’m not about to be bought off with an apple.”

“Then how can I go about currying your favor?”

“You can bring over a variety of kebabs for dinner. While you grill them up, I can make some rice pilaf and a Greek salad.”

“Do you want some falafel with the kebabs?”

“That sounds good, but baklava sounds even better. In fact, I’m already salivating. What time will you be over?”

“Six,” I said, and then added, “I think. It’s possible I’ll be late, but no later than eight. Then again, I might even be early.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “Was that you, or the Magic 8 Ball, being ambiguous?”

“Reply hazy,” I said. “Try again.”

“You do plan on showing up sometime tonight?”

“You may rely on it,” I said.

“And it will be sometime between five and eight?”

“It is decidedly so.”

“Do you think you’ll get lucky?”

“Signs point to yes,” I said.

“I think you must have an old Magic Eight Ball,” she said. “Mine says, ‘Answer unclear, try later.’”

Even before I reached the door, Angie began barking. I rang the doorbell and waited for the door to open, listening as deadbolts and locks were unlatched.

Heather Moreland offered up a big pretend smile, and I was reminded of how I’d presented the same faux cheeriness while recovering from my fire walk. My mantra had been, “Fake it ’til you make it.” I was sure that’s what Heather was doing.

Despite wearing makeup, she was pale, and under her eyes were deep, dark circles. She wasn’t quite as haggard-looking as when I’d found her three weeks earlier, but she still hadn’t regained the weight she’d lost. She had proved her resilience, but her ordeal had taken its toll. Now she looked worn and fragile. Handle with care.

I hadn’t seen her since our time together in the dungeon. That night she’d clung to Angie and had clung to me. She’d wanted to clean up before being taken to the hospital, but the best I could do was wrap a coat around her. The cardinal rule of investigation is to preserve evidence and not contaminate a crime scene. Sometimes that means you can’t be the human you want to be.

Heather extended a hand to shake. I think that was her way of making sure I didn’t try and hug her. We shook and she said, “Thank you for coming, Detective.”

Sirius had already invited himself in, and he and Angie were romping around the living room.

Heather gestured for me to come inside. “Please take a seat wherever you’re comfortable.”

I chose an armchair, and Heather sat in a rocking chair, but only for a second. “I didn’t realize the room was so dark,” she said, getting up and opening the curtains halfway.

She stood in the light, blinking, and then said, “Can I get you something to drink? I have lemonade and cookies already made.”

“Lemonade and cookies sound great.”

She hurried off, first returning with a plate of oatmeal cookies, and then coming back with a pitcher and glasses. Only after pouring did she sit in her rocker again.

“I’ve heard the rocking chair is a uniquely American invention,” I said. “Some European said only Americans would be crazy enough to invent a chair that requires you to work while you sit.”

“I suppose that’s right,” said Heather.

She looked preoccupied. Her chair moved up and down, but I don’t think she was aware of that. I took a bite of one of her cookies.

“Yum,” I said appreciatively. “These have to be homemade.”

“They are. And if you like them, you have to take all the rest with you. I’ve been doing all sorts of baking. It keeps me busy, but I don’t know what to do with all the extra food.”

“I’m sure Angie is willing to be your test kitchen.”

Heather offered up her first real smile of the afternoon. “She’s more than willing, but I try to make sure she has a healthy diet.”

We both sipped our lemonade. “I meant to have you over before now,” she said. “I wanted to thank you in person. I know I would be dead if it weren’t for you.”

I shook my head. “I was just the guy holding the leash. It was Angie who tracked you down. I just wish I’d let her do that sooner than I did.”

“I know how tirelessly you worked to find me. My friends tell me you were calling them night and day.”

“I was doing my job.”

She nodded, and her rocking chair slowed. “I had an ulterior motive for asking you over here. It wasn’t only that I wanted to thank you. I also wanted to ask your advice.”

“I don’t know if that’s my strong suit,” I said, “but ask away.”

Heather took a nervous breath. “You’ve been in the spotlight before. I was living in Los Angeles when you and Sirius captured the Weatherman. I remember how everyone was afraid you might die from your burns and wounds, and how every day there were reports on your condition.”

“The good thing about being in the burn unit,” I said, “is that I was spared from the media onslaught. You weren’t afforded that luxury.”

The media had been relentlessly pursuing Heather’s story. That partly explained her acting like a recluse.

“How long did it take you to get your life back?” she asked.

I shrugged. “After I was released from the hospital, I went around for about a year saying, ‘No comment.’”

“But your silence didn’t stop the media from reporting on you.”

“Not completely, but I wasn’t an active participant in their nonsense. The department had me do some talks for PR purposes, which the local stations used as fodder for slow news days.”

“Have you put all of that—craziness—behind you now?”

I thought about her question before admitting, “Probably not.”

Then I found myself unconsciously touching the keloid scarring on my face. Heather noticed what I was doing.

“I have scars of my own,” she said, “even though they’re not visible like yours.”

“I have those kinds of scars too, but I’m sure they’re nothing compared to yours. I hope you’re getting help.”

“I am, but every time I sit down and talk with my therapist, I think about the therapist who abducted me and raped me. It’s an irony that doesn’t escape me, or that I can’t seem to escape from.”

“Things get better.”

“Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“There are days when I find myself shaking and feeling scared. I know Barron is behind bars, but it feels as if I can’t escape his evil.”

“It takes time. The grip of fear lessens.”

“You know this?”

“All too personally,” I said.

“I’m afraid of being targeted by another Barron.”

“You beat Barron,” I said. “You took him on after he’d raped you, and enslaved you, and done everything imaginable to break you down physically and mentally. And in the end, you still had the presence of mind to open your veins and soil yourself to make it appear you’d died, just to have the chance to live. And then, as weak as you were, you took him on. That’s why your story is so inspirational. You never gave up. And ultimately, do you know how you won? It was love that won out. The love that you gave Angie, and the love that she gave you, were not to be denied. The good guys actually won.”

“Did they?” asked Heather. “Sometimes I wonder. I thought I would never have to see Barron again, but now I’m told I’ll be facing him in the courtroom. And I’ll have to listen to his lies. Do you know he claims that all he was doing was fulfilling my sexual desires? He’s trying to suggest that I wanted my abduction to happen, and that it was a form of role-playing between us.”

I took a picture out of my coat pocket and handed it to Heather. She looked at the glossy of a cut-up, battered, and bleeding Dr. Alec Barron, and then at me.

“The jurors are going to see that picture,” I said. “The jurors are going to see lots of pictures. They’ll know it was never a game. That doesn’t mean Barron won’t stop telling his lies. He will. But for the rest of his life, and let’s hope that won’t be too long, whenever Barron looks in the mirror, he’ll think of you.
You
beat him, Heather. That was all you and Angie. Against all odds, you destroyed the monster. And he will always know you beat him, and that hard truth will haunt him day and night. That’s the story people will take away from this, because that’s the real story.”

Heather handed the picture back to me, but I had a sense she was now breathing a little easier and feeling less anxious.

“Why is it that you never agreed to a book deal,” she asked, “or a movie deal?”

“That wasn’t for me.”

“I’m not sure what I should do. There’s this part of me that wants to tell my story, and this part of me that just wants to go into hiding. I’ve been listening to offers, though. All these publishers and studios are after me, and they’re offering crazy money. I’d never have to work again.”

“What do you think you’re going to do?”

She shook her head. “I’ve always been a private person. It’s hard for me to imagine putting all my dirty underwear on display. And as you know, I’m talking both literally and figuratively. If I’m going to tell the story, I’m going to tell everything.”

Heather gave me a sad smile; I tried to give her a supportive one.

“Maybe it would be therapeutic if you told your story,” I said. “Everyone has demons. Writing about what happened might be a way of exorcising yours. Isn’t confession supposed to be good for the soul?”