by Robbi McCoy
“Her name’s Stef,” Jackie offered.
“Stef? No, I don’t think so.”
“Yes!” Rudy stated. “Her name’s Stef Byers. It says so right here on her fishing license application.” He looked to Jackie for confirmation and she nodded.
“She was phenomenal,” Ida said, “whatever her name was. Just like Jackie Chan.” Ida held the mop handle in both hands in front of her like a martial arts weapon. Rudy shook his head.
“Stef wasn’t hurt?” Jackie asked.
“Not a scratch. She rounded up both those boys and sat ’em right over here to wait for the paddy wagon.”
“It sounds like she really was phenomenal.”
“And cool as a cucumber the whole time.”
“Where is she now?”
“She took off last night,” Rudy said. “Said she was getting underway as soon as she left here. Miles away by now.”
“She didn’t say where, I guess. Where she was headed?”
Rudy shook his head.
Jackie felt frustrated with herself. If only she’d come out to the marina last night after finding Stef gone. She might have caught her. It would never have occurred to her that she might even be at the bait shop getting a fishing license. Instead, she had gone home and spent a miserable, tear-filled evening alone.
“You can give her a call,” suggested her father, his expression sympathetic.
Jackie realized she must not be doing a good job hiding her disappointment. “I’ll do that.”
Rudy approached her and put his arm around her shoulders. “She’ll have to come back.”
“She will?”
“She’s a witness. More than a witness even. She’ll have to come back for the trial.”
“Oh, sure, I guess she will.” That was something, Jackie thought, but a trial could take months to happen and might not ever happen, depending on the pleas. “But that would be in Sacramento, not here.”
He nodded and gave her an encouraging pat on the back. Jackie noticed her mother standing nearby with a look of suspicion on her face.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Something’s going on. Why are you sulking and your father trying to cheer you up?”
Rudy grinned gleefully and scuttled back to his place behind the counter. “Maybe you don’t know everything that goes on in this town,” he crowed. “Maybe not even when it’s about your own daughter.”
“Suppose you tell me,” she suggested indignantly.
Jackie decided to leave them to their game, knowing her mother would get what she wanted in the end. She walked outside and called Stef’s number. After three rings, it went to voice mail. “You’ve reached Stef Byers. Leave a message.” Momentarily stunned by the sound of Stef’s voice, Jackie hesitated before shutting her phone. If she was going to leave a message, she needed to decide what to say. She might only get one chance, if that, if Stef would listen to her message at all. She slumped into the Bel-Air car seat and stared across the road to a row of colorful boats docked at the marina, going over possibilities in her mind. Nothing seemed right. Nothing she could think of was any different from what she’d already told Stef.
I love you. I want you. Please, please come back to me.
But none of that had changed her mind before.
Or she could try something like, “I know what happened to Joe Molina and I’m so, so sorry. I felt sick when I heard about it and just wanted to hold you and comfort you and take care of you like…uh, something other than a wounded puppy.” Obviously, that wouldn’t work, nor would anything Stef could interpret as pity. So what could she say that would make a difference?
When her phone rang, she snapped it open and answered, “Hello!” thinking Stef had seen her number and was calling her back. But it was Niko, saying, “Are you coming in? Your nine o’ clock is here. Mrs. Peterson and Max.”
“Oh, damn! Sorry. I’m over here at the bait shop. It got robbed last night.”
“I heard. Are your folks all right?”
“They’re fine. They seem elated, in fact. Can you ask Mrs. Peterson to wait? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Sure.” Jackie was about to hang up when Niko said, “A leopard walks into a vet’s office and says, ‘Doc, I’m tired of this look. Can you change my spots?’ The vet says, ‘No.’”
Jackie let out a spontaneous squawk of delight. “That’s a good one.”
“Thanks. I know you haven’t been very happy lately, so I figure if I can still get a laugh out of you, things can’t be too bad.”
Jackie smiled to herself. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Stef parked her bike on the street in front of a small white house with wood siding and a patchy lawn. She’d memorized the address Womack had given her. Once he’d gotten her legal name from property records for the old Lincoln Avenue apartment house, tracking Luisa Avila down had been relatively simple.
The neighborhood seemed respectable but poor. Across the street a young man worked under a jacked-up car. A little girl rode a tricycle on the sidewalk two houses away. An elderly man next door paused on his way to his mailbox to peer at Stef and her motorcycle. She smiled his way and he shuffled off. It was weekday quiet up and down the street.
This had been Stef’s first destination after leaving Stillwater Bay, piloting Mudbug up the Sacramento River, through Suisun Bay, and on to the Carquinez Strait to the Bay Area town of Martinez. All large waterways, so plenty of room to get familiar with Mudbug’s quirks. She was starting to get the hang of steering that tub. When she was done here, she’d go back to the heart of the Delta and explore some of the smaller channels, lose herself in remote locations where no roads penetrated.
The windows and front door of the house were open, leaving only a screen door covering the doorway. Her helmet tucked under her arm, she walked up a short sidewalk to the porch and was about to ring the bell when a woman’s voice greeted her from the dim interior.
“Hi, hi,” she said enthusiastically. “Come in.”
Stef opened the screen door and stepped inside. The room was small and stuffy, furnished with old-fashioned chairs and tables. The walls were cluttered with knickknacks and photos. It was a much lived-in looking space. The woman who had called to her sat in a recliner across the room, facing the door where she could see anybody approach.
“Hi,” said Stef, stepping over to the recliner. “I’m Stef Byers.” She shook the woman’s hand.
Luisa Avila was not as old as Stef had expected. Molina had described her as old when he was a kid of twelve, which was fifteen years ago. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, which would have made her just about forty at the time. She was large, as he and his brother remembered, close to three hundred pounds, wearing a loose kaftan-like dress. Her legs were up on the recliner’s footrest, her broad-ankled feet clad in fuzzy pink slippers. She had a wide nose, eyes obscured behind thick glasses and mostly dark gray, puffy hair.
“Sit down,” she said, motioning toward the chair next to her.
Stef sat. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“So what’s this all about? You said on the phone José Molina’s dead. He was so young. What did he die of?”
“He was twenty-seven,” Stef reported. “He was killed in the line of duty. He was a police officer.”
“Was he?” Mrs. Avila nodded approvingly. “Good for him! Made something of himself after all. I always thought that boy could do something with himself if he tried. No thanks to that slut of a mother.”
“That’s why I’m here, because of how you took an interest in him. He remembered the way you made sure he went to school. He and his brother. He used to tell me about it. He wanted to thank you, but he never got around to it.”
“So you want to thank me for him?”
“Right. And tell you it made a difference, what you did. He thought his life might have been wasted without your intervention.”
“I didn’t do much. Didn’t have the means. I di
dn’t have much myself in those days.”
“But you did make them go to school and that was the important thing.”
“That’s what I thought. They could get out of that place and be around other kids and teachers, have a normal day, make friends and learn a few things. That building was no place for kids. I know I owned the place, but it wasn’t for me to tell people how to live if they paid the rent. That place was a real dump.” She shook her head in dismay. “I was so glad to finally unload it.”
Stef nodded politely and glanced around, feeling anxious. She’d said what she came to say, but knew it would be rude to leave so quickly. Like most people, Stef assumed Mrs. Avila would find things of her own to talk about since she had a guest willing to listen.
“Were you his friend?” she asked.
Stef nodded.
“Girlfriend?”
“No. We worked together.”
“You a police officer too?”
Stef hesitated, then quickly decided she didn’t need to explain. “Yes.”
“So he turned out pretty good?”
“Yeah, he was a good guy. Good cop.”
“What happened to the little guy, his brother, Roberto?”
“He’s in prison.”
“Kill somebody, did he?”
“Yes.”
“Not surprised. That little shit had a mean look when he was just a tiny kid. He was just hard through and through. Not really his fault, I guess. Considering. Was he in a gang?”
“Uh-huh. Norteños.”
Mrs. Avila shook her head. “What about José?”
“He was Norteño too. He got out when he was twenty-one, when he decided to join the force.”
“He was lucky, then. Smart. Smarter than his little brother. Too bad José got killed. Gunned down by one of those Norteños maybe? They don’t like it when you change sides.”
Stef shifted self-consciously in her chair. “No. The suspects we were after weren’t gang members.”
Mrs. Avila observed her silently while Stef wondered how to politely excuse herself. She had expected Mrs. Avila to chatter at her about her cat or her garden or tell her old stories, but she was just asking questions about Molina. Uncomfortable questions.
“You’re not very talkative, are you?” Mrs. Avila noted. “You went to all this trouble to find me to tell me about José Molina, but you don’t have much to say.”
“I just wanted to tell you he was grateful to you. That’s all. Because he wanted to tell you himself.”
“If he had come, I guess I’d get to see for myself what kind of a man he turned into. I always liked him. That’s why I stuck my nose in. He was a little charmer. I bet he was a good-looking man.”
“Oh,” Stef said, realizing she could at least satisfy that bit of Mrs. Avila’s curiosity. “I can show you.” She took out her wallet and slipped out a photo of Molina in uniform.
Mrs. Avila smiled at the picture, holding it close to her face. “Yep, a regular lady-killer, that one.” She looked up to catch Stef’s eye. “You’re sure you and José weren’t—”
Stef shook her head. “No. Just friends.”
Mrs. Avila gazed steadily at her, her mouth shut tightly. “Why’d you come here?”
“I told you, to let you know he appreciated what you did.”
“Uh-huh.” She sounded skeptical. She had a direct and unnerving way about her. Stef had expected a pleasant, chatty old woman. Instead, she felt she was being probed, and she was starting to get irritated.
“Really,” Stef said coolly, “that’s it. And now that I’ve delivered the message.” She pushed herself up from the deep cushion of the chair, anxious to leave.
“But I mean, why you? You’re not a relative, not his girlfriend. You’re a colleague.”
“We were close. Close friends. He was like a brother to me.”
“Yes, yes.” Mrs. Avila nodded understandingly. “Brothers in arms. Like soldiers on a battlefield. What department was he with?”
“Oakland.”
She chuckled. “Now that’s a battlefield, for sure. You too, right? Oakland?”
“Right.” Stef stood awkwardly in front of the chair, wondering if she was leaving or staying.
“Being his close friend, like a sister and all, you must have known him pretty well. What was he like?” She handed the photo back to Stef.
“What was he like?” Stef paused, wondering how to answer, thinking that was a hard question to answer about anybody, to try to give a sense of a person to someone who hadn’t known him. She sat back down and focused on the photo. “He was obviously a handsome man. And he knew it.”
Mrs. Avila laughed shortly. “Lady-killer, like I said.”
“He usually did have a girlfriend,” Stef confirmed. “But he hadn’t yet found anyone permanent. He always knew she was just around the corner, though. He wasn’t disillusioned or anything. Always optimistic. He had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed a lot. He had a relaxed, easy laugh, the kind of laugh that could make some really bad stuff seem not worth worrying about.”
Stef paused, wondering what sorts of things Mrs. Avila wanted to hear, but she offered no help. She merely waited for Stef to continue.
“He was very confident in his abilities. He never considered failure. And he was super competitive. On the gun range, he always had to get the best score. Or if we were playing a trivia game, which we did sometimes to pass the time, he’d get so frustrated if he didn’t win. One time, we had this hot chile challenge. Just a spur-of-the-moment thing.” Stef laughed. “We both nearly killed ourselves. He took every challenge seriously. But he didn’t get mad if he lost. He didn’t have a temper. He was a good sport. He played soccer. He loved the game. Played in a city league. He’d come in on Mondays sometimes during the soccer season with bruises all over him. He played hard. He coached a girls’ team too. I went to a couple of games. He’d get so excited when they made a goal. He’d jump around and pump the air with his fist, run in place and hoot. It was so entertaining that after every goal the whole team, and even the opposing team, watched him dance before they got into position.” She laughed and looked up to see a smile on Mrs. Avila’s lips. “Those girls adored him, every last one of them. They all came to his funeral, in their soccer uniforms, and gave him a really nice tribute.”
Stef waited to hear if Mrs. Avila had any comment, but she was immobile except for the blinking of her eyes, small and indistinct through the lenses of her glasses.
Stef noticed a shelf of dusty glass figurines on the wall behind her. All birds. A green and blue hummingbird. A red cardinal. Yellow canary. A clear, graceful stork or crane, wings outstretched, framing a long, undulating neck.
She swallowed, noting how dry her throat had become. She quit looking at Mrs. Avila and looked down instead at the photo between her fingers. “He had a strong sense of responsibility,” she continued. “A good thing for a cop. He wanted to protect people. The slogan, to serve and to protect, was always up front with him. He was very compassionate, equally toward everyone. He had a hard time keeping his heart out of his work. We busted this guy one time for running a meth lab in his apartment. The guy had a son about fourteen. The whole time we were there, arresting the guy, securing the scene, this boy was sobbing until Child Protective Services came and took him away.” Stef shook her head, remembering. “Molina was really worried about that boy. He followed up on him, found out he was turned over to an aunt. Then he went and signed up with Big Brothers just so he could be that kid’s big brother and help him out. He stayed in Big Brothers even after that. He was good with kids. So patient. They liked him. They respected him too. He knew how to talk to kids.” Stef felt a lump in her throat. “I always told him he was going to be the most fantastic father.”
She heard her voice falter and realized she could no longer speak. Her eyes stung as the image in her hand began to blur. She fought to force down the emotion.
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Avila said, pushing down her footrest.
Stef put a hand to her face, unable to stop her tears from falling. Mrs. Avila rose from her chair and came to hug Stef in her ample arms, which was embarrassing and comforting at the same time, but also liberating in that it encouraged her to cry more freely.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Here,” Mrs. Avila said, pushing a box of tissues toward her. “What’s wrong with you is you miss your friend, that’s what.”
Stef put the picture of Molina on the table, took a tissue and wiped her eyes, but she couldn’t stop sobbing.
“You go ahead and have a cry,” Mrs. Avila said, patting her on the back. “I’ll go get you a glass of water. How about some tea? Would you like that?”
Stef nodded without looking up.
“Okay. We’ll have tea. You get it all out now. Then we’ll have a nice long talk.”
Stef took advantage of the older woman’s absence to allow herself something she almost never did allow, unrestrained tears. As she sat by herself in the dim, dusty room, she knew that when Mrs. Avila returned with the tea, she would tell her everything. She would tell her how Molina died and how her life had been shattered as a result. She’d tell her about how Roberto had accused her of murdering his brother and how right that had sounded to her. She’d tell her about the nightmares and her sense of helpless despair, of her flattened spirit and the feeling that there was no place for her in the world anymore. She might even tell her about Jackie, a woman who wanted nothing more than to give her perfect love, but how incapable of accepting it she felt, how her own imperfect and damaged heart was unfit to receive a gift so pure.
She could tell she was about to do that, reveal all of her buried pain to this stranger she had nothing in common with, whom she’d never see again, this stranger who no doubt had problems of her own, losses and regrets of her own. But Stef didn’t care about any of that. And she knew Mrs. Avila wouldn’t bring any of it up. Somehow she just knew that. She would listen with unselfish, objective compassion. She would listen, but she would offer no judgment and no advice, for which Stef would be grateful.