Don't Leave Me

by Lorhainne Eckhart

  “I advise you and the McCabe girl to be clear on your story,” Grieves said. “And this was just down from the DA. He wants to be sure there are no more problems. This has just been wrapped up neatly and put to rest, and everyone wants to get on with their day, forget this mess, and put it behind them. So I advise you strongly, Detective, to put this behind you, too.”

  “And if I don’t?” he said, but he already knew the answer. Dead was dead, but so too could he be set up for some unspeakable act and locked away. The last thing he wanted was to have the police as his enemy.

  “I think you already know the answer to that. No need for you to be in court tomorrow.”

  Then he hung up, and Tony squeezed his phone and turned around, slowly taking in the shock, the horror, and the tears that shimmered in Claudia’s eyes.

  “So I take it you heard,” he said.

  Vic took a breath, and Shelley covered her mouth, obviously thinking how bad this was.

  “So the cops are walking away, Zoe’s staying in jail for something she didn’t do, and the homeless are being shuffled across the state line to California,” Aaron said. “The four dead will never get justice. And there’s you and my sister.”

  Claudia stood up and walked across the room to him, and Tony could see the minute she realized what Aaron was saying. “I hate to say this,” she said, “but Vic’s right. It’s time to go.”

  Chapter 29

  She didn’t know what woke her, but she opened her eyes to see Tony standing at the window, looking out into the night. They were in one of the suites Vic had booked. He was naked, and she found herself just taking in the outline of his perfect body and missing the heat that had been pressed against her as he made love to her deeply, passionately, a desperate connection that was just Tony and Claudia, before she’d fallen asleep.

  “How long have you been awake?” she asked, looking at the time. It was the middle of the night or too early in the morning, whatever way you looked at it.

  “Never went to sleep. You should, though, and I should…” He sighed, and she wondered what it was he thought he was going to do.

  “What, Tony? What should you do? You heard my brothers, and even though I’m not one to go along with them on anything, I agree we need to leave. I heard you. I heard what Vic and Chase said to you. You’ve become a target just like me. At the same time, I don’t want to run and let those assholes get away with what they did, but I think my brothers are right. For the interim, we need to leave. For now.”

  He actually turned and faced her and walked over to the bed. The mattress dipped as he sat down. “You should go, but I can’t. I have a job—”

  She reached over and touched his arm. “You can’t do your job here anymore. If you stay, you’ll likely find yourself killed in some accident. I don’t want to lose you. How can you even be considering staying and working here, after this?”

  Tony was shaking his head. “It’s not about me staying and working, Claudia. That’s not what I was going to say. I have a job I can’t do anymore, so I’m out, but that isn’t to say I’m walking away from this. You need to go now, though, back to Oregon with your brother in the morning. Get the fuck out of here and leave this place with your family, where you’ll be safe. I need to be in court tomorrow morning. I need to handle this right, and I can’t just up and leave, because I’ve never seen people take sides like this. Even though I know many cops are really good, amazing, decent, and do so much for the public, there are those who’ve always thought that the laws don’t apply to them, and they’re the ones who have a badge to protect them.” He let out a sigh, and his hand rested over her leg, up the curve of her waist, over the side of her breast, and to her chin, along the edge, tracing it as he leaned in and kissed her again. It was so tender.

  Then he pulled back, and her hand went to the scruff on his cheek from days without shaving. He was so decent, one of the good ones, and she was at a loss for what to say, having seen the defeat that had hung over all of them through dinner. Even Chase, who she’d thought wouldn’t give up, had made a call only to learn that Zoe had in fact taken the deal, refusing any help from him.

  “But I don’t want to leave you,” she said and took in his expression as he smiled.

  “You’re not, but this part, tomorrow, I need to finish. It’ll be fine, I promise,” he said as he went to kiss her again. He moved her onto her back, pulling back the sheet, touching her and loving her, once again showing her what she meant to him.

  * * *

  Tony had said goodbye to Claudia and tucked her into the back of Vic’s car along with her parents. Aaron was grabbing a cab and flying back home to Alabama. Chase was the only one he hadn’t seen this morning. Vic had only said he had something to do. Whatever that meant, Tony didn’t know.

  The courtroom was packed with a media circus, and as he stood on the steps outside, he saw a city on the edge and wondered what the spin would be. He found a seat in the back of the courtroom.

  When the judge arrived, the cops were led in, and the case was dismissed, he knew he was seeing the worst of humanity.

  It should have been easy to walk into the precinct and the office of the deputy chief, a woman who’d only recently been hired. Latisha Blake had dark skin and straight dark hair that just reached her shoulders, and Tony didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile. He tapped once on the door and opened it before stepping in to see the dark cop uniform she was wearing.

  “Martin, what is this?” she said. She was giving him everything in her gaze, and he could read none of it.

  He unfastened his gun and slipped it on her desk along with his badge. “Just so there’s no question, I quit.”

  She leaned back in her chair but didn’t get up. She rested her hands over her stomach. “I see, and this is because of…” She waited for him to finish as if she needed him to spell it out.

  “You’re kidding, right? Four dirty cops get to walk away—”

  She held up the flat of her hand to stop him as she stood up. Then she walked around her desk to the open door and closed it. “Have a seat, Detective.” She gestured to the chair in front of her desk.

  What was this? He was about to refuse, but her unhappy gaze said loud and clear, Sit your ass down. So he did, and then she sat back in her chair and glanced past him to the door.

  “It was handled poorly,” she said. “You want to take down cops, you need to have more than what you had.” She raised her hand again when he began to interrupt. “That was weak. You wore a wire on your fellow cops. Ballsy, but stupid.”

  She reached for his gun and badge, then dumped them in a drawer and closed it. “You had no credible witnesses—a homeless guy, who’s disappeared, a homeless woman, who’s in jail and took a plea, and then there’s Claudia McCabe, a college student who’d have been ripped to shreds on the stand. She may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but it wouldn’t have taken much for the prosecutor to start pointing fingers and hint that she was buying drugs at a known party place. Wouldn’t have to be true, you know that. Credibility shot.

  “Then the wire. There was one tape, and whoever was in charge of the integrity of the chain of evidence, well, that part is a little murky, according to Special Agent Dawson. He pointed the finger at Agent Alexander. So, yes, I will take your badge and your gun, and you will move on, and, yes, Llewellyn, Flores, Jackson, and Patterson will come back and do their jobs, and everything will eventually die down, and those four victims will be forgotten about as people move on with their lives. The city got their ordinance, the people of Henderson will get their clean streets and parks, and you know what? No one will remember what happened here.

  “No one will ever know that over seventy percent of those homeless were once tax-paying residents with homes or that insensitive jerks with more power and money than the average person can write letters and lobby their city councilmen, senators, and governors, who are brutally insensitive, calling those on the street ‘riff raff’ and ‘drunks’ and
‘addicts’ and saying that the wealthy have earned their right to live in this city, this country, that they went out and got an education, worked hard, and earned what they got, and no resident in this city should have to worry about being mugged or robbed by some lowlife living on the street. They say they shouldn’t have to see the struggle and pain and despair of the homeless as they take their kids to the park or drive to and from work every day, that they want their families to enjoy all this city has to offer.”

  She stopped talking and stared at him, raising her brows as if to make a point, but he was speechless. “In case you’re wondering,” she said, “that was only one of many letters addressed to the mayor, to council, so the ordinance has passed. You’ll move on, someplace out of state, I’m sure, and start over—but remember something, Tony. What you did, wearing that wire, whether you were justified or not, will follow you wherever you go. You will always be seen as the rat, the one trying to take down your brothers in uniform, and that part, everyone will remember.”

  She moved forward in her chair. Maybe that was his cue to leave after…what? A dressing down, a pep talk? He didn’t know what the fuck he’d just received.

  He looked over to the door. “So you’re okay with dirty cops killing. Is that what you’re saying?” He made a rude noise as he stood up.

  “You miss the point of the story,” she said. “Every system has a breaking point. Poor people don’t vote, so politicians ignore them. Yes, it really does matter. Let me tell you, just because I’m a black woman who’s worked my way to where I am, that doesn’t mean I’m without empathy, but if you want to make a change, you need to be the change. Let me ask you something. Before the shooting, and before what went down at the Waverly, how much attention, help, anything did you give any of those poor folks on the street?” She lifted her hand as he stood there, knowing he’d given them nothing. There had been days, weeks when he’d never noticed them even though they had been standing right there in front of him.

  So he walked to the door, rested his hand on the knob, and took in the deputy chief, who’d just called him out on everything. Then he pulled the door open and walked out.

  Chapter 30

  “You’re a hard man to find,” Chase said as he took in the lakefront cottage. There was smoke coming from the chimney, and they were surrounded by heavy Idaho forest, hours from the Nevada border. Chase had traded his loafers for sneakers and pulled on a light all-weather over his T-shirt and jeans.

  Alexander was a man of medium height. He wore a ball cap over his thick dark hair, and the mustache he’d had for as long as Chase could remember was shaved off. He was in hiking boots, blue jeans, and a baggy T-shirt. “How’d you find me?” he asked, walking away from the front of the cabin, where two deck chairs were stashed.

  “Oh, they said you had a family emergency, but I knew you were divorced, so then I thought maybe it was your kids, and I reached out to your ex. Sorry to hear that Kathy remarried, but the kids were fine. She hadn’t heard from you either and suggested your cabin. You may want to make sure no one knows about this place if you’re trying to hide out. So who got to you?”

  Alexander turned to the lake, where clouds were moving in and would likely bring a pile of rain down on them. “Likely my boss’s boss. Was told I was off the case. Dawson was there and had been appointed to take over. I walked into the bureau chief’s office in Nevada, because there was no way in hell I was allowing this case to be pulled from me, but I was told that this case wasn’t going anywhere. I was told to drop it, and then I was suddenly on leave, a paid vacation, for how long…?” He shrugged.

  “I see,” Chase said. “Any ideas where this is coming down from?” He couldn’t believe it. Here was Alexander, an agent he’d worked with and known for years, tucked away at a cottage in the middle of nowhere and doing nothing about it. Then there was Zoe, who’d refused to see him when he stopped in at the jail. She was going into a state run psychiatric facility, and the orders at the front were that he’d never be allowed to see her again.

  “You know the game, Chase,” Alexander said. “You haven’t been out of it that long. Toes were stepped on in this one, is my guess—a senator, governor, some state official. How they went about it was stupid, but…” He stopped talking, and Chase could see now that he had been handled, and this case was done.

  “So that’s it,” he said. “Four dirty cops go free to kill another day, and Zoe is stuck in a maximum security psychiatric facility for something she didn’t do.”

  “Stop.” Alexander waved his hand. “She was in prison before on the streets. What’s the difference? At least now she’ll eat, have a bed, shelter. And it’s better than her ending up on death row.”

  He couldn’t believe Alexander had said that.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Chase. I didn’t say I agreed with it or that I’m happy with how this went down, but I’ll tell you something: She’d have died quicker on the streets, and her kids, too. Maybe the fight you’re looking for isn’t the one you’re fighting now. I guarantee you, you’ll see no mention of her, her kids, or those homeless people on the news, but you will over the next bit hear about how Henderson has cleaned up and is one of the safest cities in Nevada, in the US. They’ll have a new slogan, and businesses and opportunities will start rolling in.”

  Chase wiped his face and then took in the lake. The anger, his frustration, he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Maybe Alexander knew, because he stepped closer and rested his hand on Chase’s shoulder. “If you want to do something, Chase, maybe start with the system and how Zoe ended up on the streets to begin with. You fix that, and then you’ve solved something.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Chase asked and took in the sun, which was lower in the sky, late afternoon. It would be dark in a few hours.

  “Fish, figure out a few things, find a way to come to peace with all of this. You?”

  Chase had driven all this way to talk to Alexander, and he hadn’t expected to find another dead end. He’d wanted so much to achieve justice for everyone. Maybe it was all his time in politics, seeing the worst of so many in power, that was making him grasp at a way to fix all of this, find a solution. “I don’t know,” he said—and he didn’t, even as he headed back to his car, slid behind the wheel, and started it.

  Chapter 31

  Tony had packed up one bag, tossed it in the back of his truck, and slid behind the wheel of his old pickup. It was his only vehicle, as he had left the cruiser, with its smashed windshield, in the lot of the Henderson Police Department. He drove across the state to Oregon and on to Salem, heading for the address Vic McCabe had left him. What he hadn’t expected was to drive into such luxury, an estate the likes of which he’d never seen.

  He stood on the front steps, knocking on the door, and was greeted by Claudia.

  “You made it!” she said, her arms around his neck. She pressed her body against him and pressed a kiss to his lips before pulling him inside.

  “I did, but I’m no longer a cop. I’m unemployed. You still want me?” he teased. For a minute, he wondered from her expression whether it was a problem.

  “I’d have been worried if you were still working as a cop and not unemployed,” she said. “Of course I still want you.”

  “Wow, this is…” Out of his price range, he thought.

  “Big, I know, but that’s Vic. Come in. Everyone’s here except Chase and Aaron. Well, Aaron is getting ready for another fight. Don’t know where Chase headed off to.”

  He rested his bag on the floor at the front door before Claudia pulled him into a massive front room, where he saw Vic holding a little girl he assumed was his daughter, with his arm around a woman who had to be his wife. Then Tony was introduced to Claudia’s other brother, Luc, and his husband, Julian, as well as their four kids. He also met Vic’s son, who was Claudia’s age, and then there were Claudia’s parents, who were now also there. The house could hold a lot of people.

  “Tony
, glad you could make it,” Vic said before turning to Claudia. “Did you tell him?”

  Tony realized Claudia seemed unusually happy, almost bursting.

  “No, I wanted to wait. Was hoping Chase would be here, too,” she said. She was holding his hand, and he was wishing someone would just say it. He’d had enough of surprises for a long time.

  “Well?” he said, looking to Vic, who walked around the bar and put his daughter onto his wife’s lap. She was dark haired and gorgeous, and he appeared to only have eyes for her.

  “Chase already knows, and he’s on his way home to his family,” Vic said. Then he walked over to an easel and lifted off the dark cloth draped over it. It was floorplans or something, and Tony stepped closer as Vic continued. “What happened to those folks, the homeless, was bad, but here’s something we can do now. This is just the start of a community, a nonprofit I’ve started that will build homes, townhomes, for those who need them. The first one is in Salem, right here in this city. We’re giving homes, clean, safe places, to those who’ve lost theirs. Families first, one community at a time.”

  Tony took in the architect’s drawings, which showed fifty townhouses, a community with gardens, a park, and a place people could call home. Then he took in Claudia and the smile she couldn’t keep from her face.

  “And my brother wants me to head it up,” she said.

  Tony didn’t know what to say, and maybe Vic knew.

  “You’d be surprised by the number of people, people with money, who want to get behind something like this that will make a change for the better,” he said. “So, Detective Tony Martin, are you on board with us?”