Vertical Coffin (2004) (38 page)

"Tony's a good guy, but if he hadn't eased up on you he'd be wearing a few new knots on that shiny bald head."

She hit me in the arm. "Cut it out, tough guy."

"Sorry, some parts of me won't ever change. You gotta take the good with the bad."

She looked over, sensing the strange place I was in, seeing how uncomfortable I was with how all this had ended.

"You know, Shane," she said softly, "we can only do the best we can. If life was so easy to predict, nobody would ever get hurt. You can only view your culpability in any situation by the choices you made looking forward. If you view it looking back, it's called second guessing."

"When you look into the future, what do you see?" I asked her.

"I see things I want to do. I see Chooch in college, getting married, raising children. I see us growing old together, always being in love." She reached over and took my hand. "What do you see?" she asked.

"Nothing. I see nothing. I've always been afraid to have dreams, to look too far into the future."

"We'll just have to work on that." She smiled sadly, but I could tell she was worried about me when she said it.

"From the time I was a baby, my future only held disappointment," I said, trying to explain. "Maybe if I'd seen more, felt more, taken more chances . . . maybe I coulda changed what happened."

"Honey, don't go there. Coulda, woulda, shoulda. You're not to blame. Jo Brickhouse was a good police officer, she signed on to do a dangerous job. She made a mistake and she paid the full price. I didn't know her, but from what you've told me, she'd tell you to let it go. She'd want you to know it's not your fault."

"Okay," I said, but I was just ducking her now, and she sensed it.

"I know something happened out there on the gunnery range, because a lot of this doesn't add up. But Shane, whatever happened, whatever you had to do--you did the right thing. You reached down into a vat of goo and pulled out a rabbit. You saved this for me and for Tony, and you kept something terrible from happening. What happened to Jo and Sonny wasn't your fault. You could just as easily have been the one to get hit."

"Cut one and we all bleed," I said softly. I finally understood the full extent of that slogan.

Later that afternoon, there was a knock at my door. I opened it and Darren Zook was standing there.

"Come outside, I want to show you something," he said.

I followed him out.

Parked in my driveway was Emo's beautiful red Harley Softail. The chrome glittered, the lacquered black paint sparkled in the sun.

"Isn't that Emo's?" I asked.

"Not anymore," he said. "It's yours."

"Mine?" Looking at the bike, not understanding.

"Elana Rojas is grateful for all you did. She wants you to have it if you'll teach Alfredo to ride it when he's sixteen."

He handed me the keys.

An hour later I was riding Emo's bike through Trancas Canyon, going fast, leaning hard on the turns. Not oversteering this time--taking chances, just letting it all happen. The wind was tugging at my shirtsleeves and flapping my pant legs. The engine filled my ears with its throaty roar. Finally, I pulled into the place where we'd started the Iron Pig ride last summer. It was a spot high in the Malibu hills that overlooked the ocean. I shut off the engine, kicked down the stand, and reached into the hand-tooled saddlebag, taking out the beer I'd brought with me. Then I opened it and walked over to the lip of the hill, sat on a boulder, and looked out at the Pacific. The sun was just setting, turning the water and sky a purplish-orange.

In my heart and head I was always racing toward something I could never quite define, my ambition and ego pushing me, my final destination, unsure. Along the way, there were many places to stop. Some of them were havens where people I loved were waiting--Alexa, Chooch, Emo, and Jo--places where lessons could be learned. Others were simply hideouts. There were also dangerous spots where demons waited. Where I stopped, an
d w
hat happened to me when I did, was not only controlled by fate. I had a lot to do with those decisions. They defined my destiny. All I had to do was simply own it. I had spent two hours with the ghost of the future, and knew I didn't want to end up like Royal Mortenson. In the end, life was all about choices. Alexa was right. I had done the best I could, and it hadn't quite worked out the way I wanted. I had to find a way to accept that, but not second
-
guess it.

I had told Jo that in order to grow she needed to be vulnerable. Maybe that's all this was. Vulnerability. Maybe I didn't have that down quite as well as I thought. Maybe vulnerability was just going to take some more getting used to.

The funerals had all been delayed by the forensics. In the next week, after the coroner finished with the bodies, I would stand at four grave sites while more empty words and hollow platitudes were spoken.

But this was my time.

I raised my beer and said all of their names softly.

"Emo Rojas, Josephine Brickhouse, William Greenridge, Michael Nightingale." Soldiers who had fallen while I marched on. It was just the way it was.

As the sun went down, I said good-bye to all of them.

God, how I hate cop funerals.

*

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I trust Californians will forgive me for rearranging the geography of the State a bit to suit my fictional designs, with special apologies to the municipalities of Palm Springs and Indio.