by Peter Styles
“Nico Suarez,” he said. He didn’t say anything more, and I could tell he was hoping it would ring a bell for me. After a moment’s thought, it did. Three years ago, I’d arrested Oliver Suarez in connection with the murder of a young woman, Nora Grant. He’d been tried and convicted in a televised trial. The media had been all over the damn thing. Now, after all this time, Suarez’s nephew was blowing up my damn work phone every day, leaving message after message. I’d deleted them all without listening to them.
“Yeah, what about Nico Suarez?” I asked.
“It’s my understanding he’s been trying to get in touch with you and you’ve not been returning his calls,” Houston answered.
“Look, what the hell does he have to do with any of this? What the hell do I have to do with any of this?”
“Finn knows Nico. He’s saying he’s got more information about the case.”
“They all say that, Collier,” I sighed.
“Yeah, well they aren’t all friends with my husband, and they aren’t all responsible for my husband instituting a house-wide blowjob ban, either, now are they?”
I groaned. “Jesus, I really don’t want to know this much about your sex life, Collier.”
“Yeah, well I’m desperate, Landon. Can’t you just help me out on this one?”
“Look, I’m a cop, not a goddamn vigilante. It’s not that simple.”
“Well, listen. Has the kid actually been calling you?”
“Yeah, left me a shit pile of messages I didn’t even listen to,” I admitted.
“As a favor, can you at least meet the kid or, Jesus, return a phone call? I’d owe you. Look, I’m not saying you end up doing anything more, just do something so I can tell Finn I did everything I could and so he’ll lift this damn ban, and I can go back to being a happy man. Think of it as an early wedding present.”
“Do I look like the kind of guy that’d buy you a damn wedding present?” I asked, teasing him. It was annoying, but it was also funny as shit. At the very least, I could give him shit about this forever. “Fine, fine. I’ll do it. But you owe me big time, Collier.”
“You got it, boss. Whatever you say.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said before telling him goodbye and hanging up.
I stepped back inside to the table already set and Noah waiting, nursing another scotch.
“Sorry, work stuff,” I grunted as I settled in to eat.
“No worries,” Noah stated. “What about?”
I sighed. “The Grant case.”
Noah shook his head slightly, ladling some stir fry onto my plate.
“Are you ever going to be finished with that one?”
“Sure as hell doesn’t seem like it,” I grumbled.
Noah nodded, but didn’t say anything else. A good thing about visiting with Noah was that he didn’t clutter everything with a bunch of bullshit small talk. I ate in silence and contemplated the case. It had been grisly, and I remembered how relieved everyone was to know that we had made an arrest in the case. From there it had been a whirlwind of press, and, shockingly fast, the case was heading to trial. When they announced Oliver Suarez’s conviction, I’d felt a huge pressure release itself from my chest, and, after round upon round of liquor at the bar with my colleagues, I’d slept better than I had in months. Whatever it was that this kid had to tell me threatened to potentially stir all that up. I couldn’t imagine any other reason he’d have to want to speak with me after three years.
But that wasn’t why I was here tonight. There’d be plenty of time to think about all of that later. As we finished the meal, I cleared my throat and wiped my mouth before starting in on what I’d actually meant to ask about.
“So, are you liking your new therapist?” I asked hesitantly.
Noah stood and started taking up the dirty dishes, focusing on stacking them all up instead of my question, but his back was tense. He’d heard. He was just ignoring the question. Fine. Two could play that game. I grabbed up the serving bowl and followed him back into the kitchen. Setting the bowl on the counter beside the sink, I leaned my back against the counter, arms crossed.
Noah looked over and saw the stubborn set of my face before sighing and answering.
“Fine,” he said shortly.
“Yeah? That’s good. Better than the last lady? When’s your next appointment?”
Noah focused back on the pots and pans he was currently scrubbing.
“Few days from now,” he answered sharply.
I studied him as he looked at anything other than me. He’d been fighting this for years, this thing neither of us wanted to name. If he had his way, he’d never leave this house again. It tore me up to think about how much life he was missing out on, how much everyone else was missing out on by not getting to experience him, the gifts he had. He’d tried time and time again with therapists, medication. Sometimes the things they tried seemed to work at first, only for Noah to pull back, pull away, and we were back at step one again.
“Well,” I said, “morning comes early.”
I grabbed my jacket and my deputy’s hat before clapping him on the back, feeling him tense at the contact.
“Thanks for supper, Noah.”
He nodded, but said nothing, and I took that as my cue to leave. I was still worried about him when I closed the door to my cruiser. My work cell phone caught my eye, and I rolled my eyes remembering my conversation with Collier earlier this evening. Well, no time like the present, I guess.
Sure enough, my voicemail had a new message from the same number that had been calling me for the last few weeks non-stop. I listened to it.
“Hello, yeah. This is Nico Suarez. Again. Do you, like, never return calls or what? Look, I have some information I’d like to talk about with you. If you could give me a call back already, I’d appreciate it…”
He sounded young, pissed off, and difficult. Just what I needed this evening. Sighing, I pressed the redial button. The phone only rang once before the same voice answered the phone with a brusque, “Hello?”
“Nico Suarez? It’s Landon Case…”
3
I was losing hope of ever getting through to Case, whether Finn talked to Houston who talked to Case or not. I was worried that somewhere along that line, the message had gotten lost. Worse, maybe it had gotten through to Case crystal-clear; it just turned out that he didn’t give enough of a shit to return my phone calls anyway. I started thinking of what else I could do if the radio-silence on Case’s end continued forever until, one night, I finally got an answer.
“Yes. Hi!” I said, pressing the phone between my ear and my shoulder as I reached around to find something to write with. Case made his introductions, I explained about the letter, and we agreed to meet at The Longhorn, a sort of shitty dive bar that people went to when you didn’t want to be recognized, didn’t care to follow a dress code, and didn’t want to do much talking. I was relieved that he apparently didn’t want me to come down to the precinct since the last thing I wanted to do was walk into a room full of cops right before announcing that I’d thought they’d screwed up on a pretty public case. I also didn’t want to get confused for some kind of gangbanger out on a vendetta for a relative in prison. With a name like Suarez, you couldn’t be too careful about that kind of thing.
Neither at school, where other students might fail to mind their own business, nor at Case’s job, The Longhorn seemed like the perfect neutral ground to meet. So, after my last night class was done, we met up.
God, I thought when he walked in, he can’t even try to say he’s not a cop. Even without the uniform, you could just tell. Anyone would have guessed military or cop just from looking at him based on the fact that, whatever he did, he clearly worked some kind of job where he got to tell people what to do on a regular basis. Aside from the fact that his arms almost didn’t seem like they fit inside of his sleeves, they were so thick around. He walked around straight-backed and stiff and I could tell that he was scanning the bar as soon as he
set foot in it, halfway looking around to make sure everything was all right, maybe expecting a fight or for something to go wrong any second, and halfway trying to figure out which one of these guys he was supposed to be meeting with.
I must have stuck out because after running his eyes all over the place, his gaze fell on me and lingered. He must have decided that I was the guy, since he bellied up to the bar, bought himself a beer and moved to sit at the booth that I’d staked out.
“Nico Suarez?”
“Nico Suarez,” I agreed.
He stuck a hand out and gripped my hand in the strongest handshake I’d ever gotten, and my uncle had made sure I knew how to shake hands. Evidently, he didn’t have much time for pleasantries, either, as he cut right to the chase almost as soon as I’d drawn my hand back.
“So, let’s see it,” he prompted me.
“The letter? Sure.” I asked sort of stupidly before pulling it out of one of my school binders and handing it to him. Case accepted the letter, but not before reaching into his back pocket to pull out a worn-out little notepad and a pen to go with it. He unfolded the letter and set it down on the table in front of him with his notepad placed neatly to its side in case he wanted to take notes, I figured. I was still kind of taken aback at the fact that this guy might have been off his shift, but apparently didn’t even leave work behind when he wasn’t actually there at work. Then again, I was the one asking him to do police work after he was off, so maybe it was just for my benefit. While I tried to decide whether he was always like this or not, Case finished reading the letter and refolded it. The fact that he was done and ready to discuss it put me off anything else I might have wondered about Case, though. For now, there was my uncle to think about.
“What do you think?” I asked, making sure that I didn’t sound anything like how anxious I was for him to answer favorably. Caring enough to take notes on the letter seemed like a good sign, but he was serious and didn’t change his expression too much, so I couldn’t get a read either way on how he’d taken the letter.
“Well, I’ll be honest, kid,” Case started, replacing the cover on the notepad and shifting to put it back in his pocket. “It is something…”
“But?” I pushed him to tell me, once and for all.
“But,” he repeated, sort of sounding put-off that I’d tried to rush him. “An anonymous letter? No indication of who this mystery witness might be? No corroborating evidence to suggest that ‘N’ really knows what ‘N’ is talking about? I mean the information you have here is secondhand at best. I can tell you right now that even if you found ‘N,’ depending on what ‘N’ saw, the fact that they didn’t see Suarez—your uncle, sorry—there doesn’t prove that he wasn’t there.”
Just when I’d been sure that Case might see things my way, my hopes came crashing down around me.
“But—” I tried to gather what I was going to say, any argument I could make to help my case. “But, that’s the point, isn’t it? You’re saying there’s something there but that we need more information. Great! That means we need to reopen the case, not write it off. That’s exactly why we have to reopen the investigation. I’m working on my criminal justice degree right now and I—”
“All right,” Case said before draining the rest of his beer. My eyes went wide at the idea that he’d come around so easily, but, as soon as he was done with his beer, he slammed it down on the table. “This was a bad idea. You have a good night, Mr. Suarez,” he said as he started sliding towards the edge of his seat to get up.
“You’re leaving?” I said, shocked. Almost before I knew it, I was up out of the booth and on my feet, reaching for my bag.
“Looks like it,” Case said, facing away from me and walking out towards the exit. I didn’t want to make a scene in the bar, so I kept my mouth shut until we’d both made outside.
“You said we might have something!” I called at Case’s back.
“I don’t know who ‘we’ in all this is, kid, but it doesn’t involve me,” his still-retreating back answered.
“But there’s a chance. There’s a chance, and you’re telling me not to take it!” I said, hurrying to keep up with him. I heard a beep from his car, indicating that he’d unlocked it from his pocket, so I picked up the pace before he jumped in and drove away without giving me one more shot. “I remember you from the arrest. You were there, and you weren’t a dick. I remembered that. That’s why I called you and not that asshole Wolfton.”
Case stopped, his hand on the door handle, and turned back to me. “That ‘dick’? Sheriff Wolfton? He’s my boss, and he’s a good sheriff. Unfortunately for you, he’s also part of this process even if you do find something. Look,” Case sighed tiredly before continuing. “If you found something, which I doubt you will, but if you did, you’d have to take it to Sheriff Wolfton who’d then take it to the DA. But, Sheriff Wolfton won’t take anything to the DA unless it’s solid, and Wolfton probably wouldn’t take anything right now, anyway. He’s up for re-election and this? This looks bad.”
I narrowed my eyes in spite of myself.
“Letting an innocent man out of prison looks bad?” I asked, sharper than I meant to. “And, anyway, even if it did, it’s better to be re-elected knowing that someone innocent is in prison than to let them out and not get re-elected?”
“That’s not a decision I can make and it’s not a decision you can make. It just is what it is. He’s the sheriff, for fuck’s sake, he can’t exactly run on being soft on crime. I’m sorry.”
“What crime?!” I demanded.
“The fucking murder of Nora Grant, that’s what. The murder of Nora Grant by someone who the evidence pointed to, who got caught, and who is serving time over it. That shit was all over the news. You have to think about what it’ll look like if we’ve got the guy that killed that pretty little girl and just let him walk.”
My uncle didn’t kill anyone, pretty little girl or not, I thought. Or, at least, I meant to think that. I meant to explain that the evidence didn’t add up to what I knew about my uncle, I really did.
Instead, before I could catch myself, my fist was swinging up from behind me and was connecting under Case’s jaw, knocking him back a pace against his car. I heard his back hit the car, less from my swing and more from his effort at stepping back away from me, but I heard it and I heard him growl when it did. It wasn’t my intention to hurt him, it wasn’t my intention to pick a fight. I’d just seen red when he talked like he took it for granted that Uncle Oliver had killed that girl, and I’d acted without thinking, but I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I didn’t have to worry about it too much, though, because pretty soon it became clear that of the two of us, he wasn’t the one who has going to wind up hurt.
Quick as a flash, he bounced his back off the car and used the momentum to grab me by the collar of my shirt. He tugged, and I went along to avoid getting choked, which he only used to turn himself around and to slam me down onto the hood of his car. For a moment, I was aware of how his hips were holding me in place against his car and aware of how badly my face was aching and how good the cool metal of the car felt against it. I thought for sure it was done, but another moment later, I was lifted off the hood, pushed to my knees and laid flat out on my chest. I tried kicking up, but Case had evidently laid down on me as the entirety of his body weight sandwiched me into the pavement.
“Mr. Suarez,” Case said coolly as anything, as though I weren’t winded and gasping for air underneath him. “I would hope that, in the course of your criminal justice degree, you covered the penalties for assault, especially the assault of an officer, so I would advise calming right the hell on down.”
I stopped struggling and focused on catching my breath. He was right, and I couldn’t fight him on it. I couldn’t much help my uncle if I was on the inside, too. I stopped and allowed him to lay on me, demonstrating that I wasn’t going to do anything else.
“You get a warning,” Case said letting me up, apparently sensing that I had cooled of
f. “One warning.” Case dusted his jeans off and got into his car, but I wasn’t about to let him leave without getting my say in, either.
“Case!” I yelled as I scrambled to my feet. “I’m not letting this go, Case!”
Not giving him a chance to answer, I started my walk back to my own car, slamming the car door open and shut as hard as I could. I grabbed the steering wheel and breathed, trying to calm myself and to breathe through the pain. I smacked the steering wheel with the palm of my hand, pissed as hell at everything that Case had said and his refusal to help me. A little sliver inside me, though, a sliver I wished weren’t there, was less angry about what Case had done and angrier that he’d stopped.
No, fuck that. I thought as I tried to will away the blood pooling to my crotch. Fuck that.
4
My jaw still stung at the end of the night. Though, that was just as likely from me grinding my teeth as it was from the punk’s right hook. That kid had some fucking nerve, asking for my help and then socking me in the face. If I was honest, pinning the little bastard to the ground was more satisfying than it should have been. Whatever. There was no way in hell I was going to stick my neck out for the bastard after that little temper tantrum.
It was getting late, and after my shift was over, I threw some case files and other odds and ends in my bag, already looking forward to a cold beer and a hot shower. And, if I possibly rubbed one out to the thought of a twenty-year-old boy fighting and straining against me, well, that was none of anyone’s fucking business.
“Case, wait. Come here a minute,” a voice called from behind me. Sheriff Wolfton had been the sheriff for nigh on twenty years. He wasn’t a terrible boss, and he’d given me a shot when I was out of the service and fresh from physical therapy for my back. He’d called for me from his office, and I went in to take a seat on the other side of his desk.
Wolfton smiled brightly at me as I entered. “How are ya, son?”
“Not too bad, sir.”
“Good work on that drug bust the other week. State boys said you were indispensable to ‘em.” Praise from the old man was elusive, and I wondered if he was going to tell me I was covering nights for the rest of the year or something. “I have some information that you might find interesting, Landon.”