Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (11 page)

Clay tented his hands again and studied them. "He called once, a week, ten days ago, said his stomach hurt something awful. I told him to go the ER. Call an ambulance. It wasn't anything to fool around with. All the drugs he's been given over the years, along with all that drink, who knows what shape his insides are in." He shook his head angrily. "Were in."

"Did he go to the ER?"

"Said he did. Said they were doing some tests. Gave him something for the pain. That was the last I heard. Reggie wasn't the chattiest guy. He'd call if he needed me. He always could. He knew that. When you said he'd gone in the ocean, I don't know. I guess I figured he'd just had enough. Then I started with all the things I maybe ought to have done, wondering could I have kept this from happening. If I should have gone down there, never mind how many times I done that before." He shrugged wearily. "Fall's a busy time. I didn't go."

The tent came apart, Clay's hands swooping up and slamming down hard on the table. "FUCK! Joe, I can't stand this. All the times we've thought he was done, tried to get our hearts and minds ready for it, and he's bounced back. Finally it's really looking like he's getting better, and wham! He's gone."

He folded his arms on the table and put his head down, his shoulders heaving convulsively. He didn't make a sound.

Burgess might have had more questions, but he'd asked enough. He made mental notes about the pills and the money that he hadn't found in Reggie's room. It was time to go. He patted Clay's shoulder. "I'm going to take off," he said. "I'll call you about arrangements. You can call me. Anytime. You know that, right?"

Clay mumbled something from the cradle of his arms.

"Mary coming back tomorrow?"

Clay nodded.

"Okay. I'll call Claire and Joey, then."

Clay lifted a tear-streaked face, blotched red where it had pressed against his arms. "You tell them this, too, Joe, okay. You tell them I don't want to hear one goddamned word about land or money until Reggie is decently in the ground. I think maybe the Veteran's Cemetery, don't you? It's nice out there. They do a good service."

Burgess nodded, too choked to talk. Then he walked to the door and let himself out. Clay's sobs hurt so much they were like a knife in his own gut. The dog nudged his leg for attention and he stopped in the deepening dusk to pet it. He made it to the car before sorrow got him, too. He put his forehead on the wheel and let it come.

Chapter 7

He should have gone home. Chris would be waiting to comfort him, but he wasn't ready to accept comfort. He felt solitary and uncivil. He needed some time alone to process the last thirty-six hours. The only person he would have felt comfortable with was his fellow detective and close friend, Terry Kyle. Kyle was a great sounding board and familiar with his dark side. Burgess could have bounced some ideas off him, gotten a second "detective's gut" reacting to the case, but Kyle was out of town with his girlfriend, Michelle.

For the last six years Kyle's vindictive ex-wife, Wanda, had put him through hell, culminating in her threat to move his beloved daughters to Texas. Kyle had been endlessly patient with her, but given the choice between being decent and honorable and losing his girls, or fighting back, Kyle had hired a lawyer. He'd shown the court all of Wanda's erratic, vindictive behavior, produced her notes, her threatening messages taped by Dispatch and on his answering machine. He'd shown how often Wanda arbitrarily canceled visitation after he'd moved heaven and earth to free the time, and how devastating it had been to the girls. It had been brutal and ugly, but he'd won custody. Now in a new relationship with a loving woman, Kyle deserved a weekend without a phone call from Burgess about a possible homicide.

By the time he got back to Portland, it was after seven. Dark and with a bite in the air that held the taste of things to come. The grays and browns of November. The false gaiety of December. The endless stretch from January through March of dirty snow and slippery brick sidewalks, dry, pinched faces and shoulders hunched against the cold. If he lived in the now, he would have enjoyed yesterday and today, two perfect, if fleeting, fall days.

It was an odd expression—living in the now. Detectives rarely lived in the now. Most often, they lived in the "then," reconstructing the events of the crimes they investigated, first the day and time of the crime, then going backward through time to the events leading up to the crime, the last time the victim was seen, who might have had a reason to want to harm him, etcetera, then moving ahead to the events coming after. It was like following a rock thrown into a still pond. First you looked back to figure out who threw it and why, then followed the rings of ripples, trying to see who was affected and how, probing for the lies in statements like emotional dentists searching for decay.

The station was quiet at this time of night on a holiday weekend, just the way he liked it. He parked in the cement bunker that was their lot and went upstairs. There was something soothing about the quiet hum of electronics, the occasional ring of a phone, maybe one or two solitary detectives talking in low voices on their phones or writing reports. All the paper clutter of a detective's life without the human commotion.

He looked up an address and phone number for Claire Fontaine Libby, unsurprised to find she was still in the stately home her parents had bought to provide a proper place for their daughter to raise their grandson. Claire had gotten Reggie when he was still hopeful. Damaged but hopeful and believing that what he should do next was get as normal as possible. Normal was go to college, get married, have a family. Reggie had tried so hard to do normal, but it was hard to do college when he couldn't sleep, when being around "normal" people made him nervous, when he was having explosions of anger and bouts of deep despair he couldn't understand or control.

In the midst of Reggie's struggle, Claire had announced she was pregnant. Reggie knew he wasn't ready and they'd agreed to wait before they had children. But Claire was an indulged only child who'd always done what she wanted when she wanted, and she was no different with this. So while Reggie was struggling to get his demons under control and learn to be a good husband, he found himself also a father.

Reggie had been genuinely awestruck by Joey's arrival, and for a while it seemed like he finally had achieved normal. Claire had not been pleased when her husband wanted to name their son after a beat cop with a high school education, nor had she wanted Burgess to be godfather, but she'd gone along. The pressures of school, marriage, and parenthood, though, had proved to be too much for Reggie. Within the year, he'd been involuntarily committed twice. Claire got him a shrink, heavy-duty drugs, and finally, a private hospital placement. But when he hadn't proved an easy fix, she'd dusted her hands together like someone wiping off crumbs, shoved him out the door, and locked it behind him.

She had never remarried. Too hurt by her failure with Reggie, she said. Too grasping and controlling was what Burgess thought. When her smile revealed fangs, men more attuned than Reggie had recognized her for the bloodsucker she was and backed away. Even the pale white skin and long dark hair had fit Claire's vampire image. The only thing that didn't was that she could move about in the daytime.

He could understand her disappointment. Living with a vet who had PTSD was hard. What he couldn't forgive was her lack of understanding or sympathy or patience. Her lasting and vindictive anger at Reggie because he couldn't fix himself and her cruelty in barring Reggie from contact with his son. Burgess would admit he was prejudiced. Being thrown out of his house by a wife he'd loved, losing wife, home, and child all at once without the possibility of reconciliation, and then being barred from their lives completely had put Reggie on a terrible downward slide. He'd never fully recovered. Burgess knew Reggie had been difficult to live with. He still blamed Claire.

He closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the chair. Man. There was nothing this case wasn't going to dredge up. He'd probably start having the horror dreams and attention issues himself. Dr. Lee was right. He should just give this case to Stan and Terry. It was messy to try to work with something that involved a friend. But he wasn't sure that Lee was being truthful, saying he wouldn't work on a friend. He thought Lee was equally certain and controlling. Lee would do the autopsy on a case he cared about because of his certainty he'd do it best. Burgess didn't think he was arrogant—though there were those who'd disagree—but he believed he was competent and that a personal connection with a case meant he'd work harder to find the truth. There was something to be said for detachment, though. Professional distance was a lot less painful.

He went back into the computer to check on Joey. Reggie's son's only known address was still with Claire. His godson. Black-haired, shark-eyed, tall and handsome Joey. In the early years, he'd tried to do the job Reggie had given him. Trying to be there for Joey as Reggie couldn't be; taking Joey on weekend afternoons, throwing a football in the park, bringing the boy to see his mother. Claire had resisted until she'd managed to turn the child against him, too.

Cops are persistent and patient. They're used to taking abuse. It had taken him a long while to admit it was hopeless. For years after that, he'd kept track from a distance as Joey went through school, following his father onto the football field. He and Reggie had gone to the games, felt the pleasure and pride as Joey reprised some of their moments of glory.

He'd also watched Joey's slide into abusing drugs and alcohol during college. Bailed him out once or twice for small things—what the general public might call minor corruption, but what cops, and everybody else, did for each other. But there was something rotten in Joey. For all her holier-than-thou posing as the noble victim and her harsh condemnation of Reggie, Claire turned out to be the one without soul or conscience. She raised their son to be just like her—utterly selfish and indifferent to the hurt he caused. His godson was a narcissistic monster. Burgess might be willing to intervene to protect Joey when the situation involved a small drug offense or a minor accident; he hadn't been willing to do the same when Joey abused his girlfriends.

After the second time police were called to Joey's apartment to protect a battered and hysterical young woman and the second restraining order, after the second or third "You gotta help me, Uncle Joe" phone call, Burgess had sat Joey down and had a talk. He explained that Joey was right on the edge. Another incident and he was going to jail. Joey responded with the defensive whine of all cowardly batterers. Not his fault, they'd asked for it, driven him to it. They were all lying, manipulative bitches.

Based on his experience with his own mother, Joey might have been right, but that didn't make it universal, and Burgess had said so. Joey clung to his excuses. Women just used him and abused him. If he occasionally struck out in frustration, who could blame him?

Finally, pissed off, Burgess had growled, "Just don't try it in my town again," and left.

Sadly, Joey had taken the advice literally. He'd gotten an apartment thirty miles away and put his next girlfriend in the hospital. That one sent him to jail. A slap on the wrist, like too many young offenders got, but it earned him a record and jail time. It was the last one Burgess heard about. What he didn't know was whether Joey had changed his ways or just gotten smarter about picking his victims. Whether he lived at home so Claire could keep an eye on her wayward darling.

Reggie had blamed himself. Burgess believed that at a certain point, whatever the family circumstances, a person had to take responsibility for his own life and stop blaming others. But he also knew too well how much harm a toxic family could do. Something the public didn't always understand was that toxic families weren't confined to the poor side of town. It wasn't just welfare moms, alkie dads, and trailer trash who fucked up their kids. Toxic families could drive Mercedes and their kids could go to Waynflete or Exeter or St. Pauls. The socially prominent were as good, if not better, at destroying their children or raising a new generation of predators.

And now Joey had been out surveying the land that would someday be his.

Burgess printed out some relevant bits of Joey's information and put them in the file. Not even a confirmed homicide yet and the binder was already fat with reports. Time to do the chore he'd promised Clay he'd handle. He picked up the phone and called Claire. She answered on the second ring, stabbing an anxious, slightly breathless, "Claire Libby," into his ear.