Thread of Hope (The Joe Tyler Series, #1) (13 page)

I nodded, unsure of what to say.

“I never thought I’d be apart from you.”

I nodded again.  “I know.  Me either.  Some days, I turn to say something to you.  But you aren’t there.”

She smiled at me, nodding in a way that told me she’d done the same thing.

I pushed the coffee mug away.  “But I haven’t moved on, Lauren.  I'm still stuck on that day.  I’m the same guy I was at the end of our marriage.  Maybe a little more reasonable, maybe more realistic, but I’m still the guy that sucked the life out of us.”  I paused.  “Elizabeth is the first and last thing I think about every day.  I’m not sure that’s ever going to change.”

She studied me for a moment.  “I know.  I can see it in your face.  I saw it the second you came into Chuck’s hospital room.”

I always assumed I hid it well.  I cut people off when they began to pry.  I didn’t talk about my daughter with anyone.  I tried to compartmentalize the hurt.  But maybe Lauren simply knew me too well.

“I’m not saying I wanna be married to you again, Joe.  I can’t go back to that,” Lauren said, her eyes bouncing from me to the window and then back to me.  She reached over, laid her hand on top of mine.  “But I think I’d like to spend the night with you tonight.”

TWENTY-FIVE

Nine beers and a couple of tequila shots.

Those were my thoughts as I pried open my eyelids and squinted into the sunshine that seemed to be burning a hole through my hotel window.  That’s what I remembered drinking at the hotel bar.  I was pretty sure I'd put away more than that, but those were the numbers that stuck before the rest of the night went hazy.

I pushed myself out of bed and stumbled toward the window. I pulled the curtain closed, shutting out the bright light that threatened to scorch my retinas.  The floor wobbled beneath me and I teetered back into the bed before it spun me out of control.  I placed my hands flat against the sheets, bracing myself, and looked at the clock.  It was ten in the morning.  I couldn’t recall the last time I’d slept that late.  Couldn’t recall the last time I’d had that much to drink, either.

A nice, rhythmic pounding started in my temples and the aroma of stale beer cloaked the dark room.  I rolled out of the bed, stumbled to the shower and turned the water on.

Cold.  Full blast.

I stood under the icy water for a minute, letting the low temperature shock me back to life before turning the water up to a more tolerable degree of warmth.  Slowly, the pounding subsided, my tongue shrunk from the size of a rug to its normal size and I got out, feeling almost normal.

I stood at the mirror, the towel wrapped around my waist, my hands on the cold marble counter and wondered how angry Lauren was with me now.

“Not a good idea,” I’d said when she brought up spending the night together.

She'd blinked several times and pulled her hand away from mine.  “Why not?”

“Come on, Lauren.”

“What?” she asked, anger sweeping across her face.  “You think someone’s gonna find her while we’re fucking and you’ll miss the call?”

I held up a hand.  “Don’t do this.”

The anger intensified and her eyes lit up.  “Do what?  Admit that our relationship didn’t end for me just because you left?  That it didn’t end for me because someone took our daughter?”  Her mouth puckered up in disgust.  “Sorry, Joe.  I guess I just didn’t love her like you did.”

“Whatever, Lauren,” I said.  “I’m not having this conversation.”

I stood and walked out of the café.

She came out on my heels.  She grabbed me by the arm, her nails digging into my skin.  “The hell you aren’t.  You owe me at least that.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

Her eyes widened.  “Are you serious?  You seriously believe that?”  She gripped my arm harder.  “You were half a day away when you called me to tell me you weren’t coming back.  And you don’t think you owe me anything?”

People walking past were giving us a wider berth.

I yanked her hand off my arm.  “Our marriage was over, Lauren.  We both knew it.”

“
You
knew it,” she said.  “You knew it and by default, it was over for me.  And you ran away like a scared little kid.  You think it didn’t hurt me to see her empty room every day?”  She hiccuped on sobs as she spoke.  “You think you were the only one torn apart by that?  My God!  I told you that I still sometimes blame you.  But even with that, I wasn’t ready to give up our marriage.
You didn’t come back, so I had to.
”  The anger melted from her face and her mouth opened. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was trying to come up with an answer she didn’t have.  “I mean, how did you just stop loving me?  How did it change overnight?  How did...”

“I saw her,” I said, cutting her off.

Her expression froze.

“Every time I looked at you,” I explained, the words coming out of my mouth like they contained jagged edges.  “I saw Elizabeth.”

She took that in, started to say something, then stopped.  Then she pivoted and walked off in a rush.

I didn’t go after her, just stood there as still as if I was standing in front of the mirror after a shower.  I'd told her the truth.  It had become too much to look at my wife every day and see my daughter.  I held no illusions that that was my problem and no one else’s.  But I hadn’t figured out a way to fix it and that was one of the reasons why I had stayed away from Coronado for so many years. 

Seeing Lauren at the hospital, at dinner and in the café, I knew that nothing had changed for me.

Every time I looked at her, I saw my daughter who wasn’t there.

TWENTY-SIX

I dressed and went downstairs.  I found a deli counter, bought the last bagel they had and drove back to the island so I could push Lauren out of my head and focus on Chuck.

I had purposely avoided looking into Chuck’s assault because I knew that was going to take me to the Coronado Police Department.  If my old home was number one on the list of places I did not want to visit, CPD was number one-and-a-half.  But if I was truly going to help Chuck, there was no way I could get out of it.

I’d been
an officer in Coronado for nine
years when Elizabeth had disappeared.  It was my dream job.  I’d gotten my degree in criminal justice from USD and then gone right into the academy with no intention of working anywhere else.  I’d grown up on the island and it was a small enough place that the police officers were actually a part of the community rather than people who passed through it. 

It was a tough post to pull because if you wanted to be a cop in San Diego, there was no more idyllic place.  The residents were happy to see you, the department was well-funded and you rarely had to deal with more than drunks on the beach.  But it was a small department and the open spots were limited and much coveted.

So I worked harder at the academy than I’d ever worked at anything else and graduated at the top of my class. Along the way, I made sure that the CPD brass noticed me.  It was the only job I wanted, the only job I interviewed for and the only job I held as a cop.

It just hadn’t ended the way I’d envisioned.

I parked the car across the street from the CPD offices and paused on the sidewalk, taking in the building. 

It looked nothing like a police headquarters.  Single story, open archways, smothered in towering palm trees.  It resembled a rec center more than a government building and blended into the rest of the architecture of the island. I used to love going into that building every morning, ready for the tight camaraderie of a small department.

As I crossed the street and opened the glass door, I knew that I’d still feel the tight camaraderie.

I just wouldn’t be a part of it.

I didn’t recognize the desk sergeant, a guy in his early thirties with close-cut brown hair, squared-off shoulders and a friendly smile.  “Morning, sir.  How can we help you?”

“Detective Lorenzo in?”

He glanced down at the desk log, then shook his head.  “No, I’m sorry, he’s out this morning.  But maybe I can help?”

He was pleasant, eager, happy to be of service, the same way I had been trained to treat the island’s citizens.  The department wanted the residents to feel comfortable around the police officers and it had been drilled over and over into us that we served the community and our jobs were to help them in any way possible. 

I realized I was tapping my foot to a silent beat and I pressed my foot to the floor to make it stop.  “Is Lieutenant Bazer in?”

The sergeant hesitated for a moment, probably sizing me up more closely now.  “I can certainly check.  May I have your name, sir?”

“Joe Tyler.”

He did an excellent job of trying to hide his recognition.  He nodded like it was a normal request, punched in an extension on the phone pad and told whoever was on the other line that I was inquiring as to whether or not Bazer was available.  But he tried to sneak in a quick glance at me, as if he wanted to make sure he wasn’t seeing a ghost, and I knew he knew who I was.

He averted my eyes and waited for a moment, the phone still to his ear.  Then he raised an eyebrow, said “Okay” and hung up.

A tight smile emerged on his face.  “The lieutenant will be with you in just a moment.”

“Thanks.”

I turned away from him, not eager to watch him continue to steal glances at me.  I stared out through the glass doors, the palm trees bouncing softly in the breeze.  The last time I’d been in the station, I’d tossed my badge and gun on Bazer’s desk and dropped every profane word and phrase I knew on him.  I never anticipated being back inside, needing to speak to him again.  I thought I was through with him that day when I’d pushed through those glass doors.

Just one more thing I’d been wrong about.

“Joe?”

The voice paralyzed me for a moment, my breath catching like someone had a hand around my throat, my heart stuck in mid-beat.  I waited for a long second until my heart fired again and the invisible hand released my throat, letting me breathe.  I turned around slowly.

Lieutenant Thomas Bazer hadn’t aged much in the years since I’d last seen him.  Tiny threads of gray had invaded his razor-cut chestnut hair, a wrinkle or two had worked its way into his forehead, but otherwise he looked just like the guy I’d told to fuck off seven years before.  Eyes that were aware of everything in the room no matter where he looked, a physique that belonged more to a college wrestler than a sixty-year-old cop and wearing a uniform that looked as if it had been pressed onto his body.

He extended his hand.  “Nice to see you.”

I kept my hands in my pockets.  “You got a minute?”

If he took offense, he didn’t show it.  He motioned for me to follow him back to his office.  The desk sergeant snuck one more look at me as I went past him down the hallway.

Flashes of old conversations ricocheted through my head as I followed Bazer.  The Coronado Police Department was the only place I’d worked as an adult and as much as I wanted to shut out the memories of having worked there, they forced their way into my mind like morning sunlight through the blinds.  There was an ache in my gut and I couldn’t tell if it was because I hated the place or because I missed it.