Catalina Eddy

by Daniel Pyne

  At the pool’s end was a hydraulic lift with a sling seat that Riley sat in, pulled a lever, and it raised her up out of the water to the deck, where her chair waited. She made the lift arm pivot, and then, dripping wet, executed the shift and transfer into her seat, still clumsy, but defiant, now, and too pissed off to care how it looked.

  “You make assumptions. You assume the world will bend to your inclination.”

  Lennox sighed. He had recently perfected a whole language of sighs. But he was still dodging and weaving around her emotions like the good-looking, calculating jamook she’d always known. Riley tried to wheel herself away, but Lennox grabbed the handles of the chair and she couldn’t go anywhere. Her wet hands skidded on the wheel tread.

  “Let go.”

  “No.”

  “Let. Go.”

  Muscling the chair around, Lennox got her facing him and sank to his knees, right in front of her.

  “Never.” He seemed to think this was his manly moment; it was, she realized sadly, how his head worked. But Riley was crying, and hating that she was crying, trying to scrape the tears away with the sides of her hands, as Lennox made his plea. “We’re going to get through this together. Okay? I promise. You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted, since the first time I saw you. Back on the track. At Peninsula High.”

  She let the “girl” pass, and reminded him, “Throwing up after the fucking eight hundred, which I never wanted to run but Coach Walter made me, promising me he’d give me the three hundred hurdles, which he never fucking did.”

  “Who brought you a towel? My towel. It never smelled right again.”

  Riley couldn’t help but smile a little. They’d known each other for so long, had their moments, she softened and considered that maybe they could find new common ground, if he would just listen.

  No. What were the odds?

  Lennox’s hands found her hips. She lowered her head. Their foreheads touched.

  “I want my job back.”

  “You’re tired.” Lennox attempted a soothing voice that wasn’t convincing at all. “You’re frustrated. Why don’t we sleep on this and then—”

  “You mean dream, not sleep. And I’m done with dreams.” She felt him tense up. Gently she disengaged, held him away by the shoulders and looked into his eyes and said, “I want my job back, Terry. So I can prove Willa Ko is innocent.”

  Lennox said nothing. And Riley’s frail smile died.

  —

  SHE JOLTED AWAKE, as if she’d been shot again—or dreaming about it—heart speeding, sweating, trembling, she fumbled for the bed’s control, raised up, and saw, covering the entirety of the opposite wall, a mosaic of photographs: dozens of old-school chemical-print color eight-by-tens matched overlapping in a tiled, wall-spanning study of the Willa Ko condo murder scene, assembled from Finn’s late-night reshoot.

  In sum, it was breathtaking: lurid, striking, beautiful, ambivalent, and cruel. Every nuance of the crime peeled back, the palpable sense of the violence done there, overcast with sadness, and loss.

  Finn Miller was asleep in the big chair across the room. A glaze of oatmeal light seeped from the windows, cast by another June morning’s marine layer draped low across the harbor.

  Riley angled forward, drew the covers aside, lifted her transfer board from beside the bed, set it in place, and slid competently over into her wheelchair. With every repetition she was better at it.

  She rolled her chair close to the wall of photos. Studying it, holding her breath, transfixed by the ambition of it. Her fingers traced the outline where Charlie’s body had been, the tile floor painted with dark pools of dried flaking blood, the forensic flags, the frenzied spatter and drywall impacts, the jagged bullet hole in the overturned chair.

  It was like she was in the room, but better, because the stillness of it, the immutability of Finn’s timeless tableau, allowed her to find distance, think, reflect.

  She studied the wall for a long time, rolling back and forth. Then she pivoted her chair away, glided to where Finn was scrunched up sleeping, and sat, studying him, confounded. Sleeping, he looked painfully young, almost helpless. Why this man? She didn’t find him all that attractive, so how was it possible she was attracted to him? Who was he, this new normal, before she was even caused to have one?

  Surely a misstep.

  She reached and gently touched the huge new ugly bruise on the side of his head. His eyes fluttered open and her heartbeat skipped. Fuck.

  Finn’s voice was dry and growly. “Oh, hi.” He sat up awkwardly, surfacing, self-conscious. “Hi. Hi, I—”

  “Yeah, that’s enough times with the ‘hi,’ okay?”

  “Right. Okay. So—”

  “—The wall? I noticed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s something.”

  Finn blushed, Finn rambled, “Well you said you needed the crime scene photos from the Ko murder and I don’t have backup because everything got stolen so I went back to the condo and, because my memory for how I shoot things is pretty photographic, no pun intended—”

  “That’s not—” Riley started to interrupt.

  “At first I was just going to re-create what I did for the crime lab—”

  “—a pun, though. Is it?”

  “And then I thought, Heck, maybe if I just did a close composite of the whole space you could get a clear idea of—”

  “Amazing and useless,” she said over him. “Very David Hockney, though.”

  “What?” He looked at his wall, frowned. “No. Hockney’s not the only artist who—” then caught himself. “I used an old Pentax film camera. I had to get this guy I know—who’s not a guy, actually, I guess now—but she’s got a portrait studio and a darkroom and we printed all these, I forgot how long it takes, they’re still a little damp.”

  “Did I need to know all that, Finn Miller?”

  “No. Right.”

  But couldn’t resist noting, “I see you’re not a big fan of the golden ratio.”

  He was caught short. “No. Wait. How do you know about—”

  “Too provincial for you?”

  “Yeah. Well, no. I mean. It’s just, I think every composition has its own unique, organic logic. If you start to apply some artificial rule—”

  “Was it Susan Sontag who said that the knowledge we get from still photography is always going to be sentimental? Cynical or humanist. Do you agree with her?”

  “Sontag?” Finn stared, with an expression that seemed to ask, Is she fucking with me?

  No, she was acutely aware that he had done this for her, and her voice shifted gentle. “You’re collecting head wounds.”

  He touched the bruise. “Yeah . . . ignoring that some chick sucker-punched me first, last night this yeti-like personage walked into the condo while I was there—”

  “Wait. How did you get in?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t tell me. The condo was sealed.” She closed her eyes in frustration. “Finn, that’s illegal, it’s a felony, if you get caught.”

  Finn shrugged it off, digging in his backpack for a proof sheet, jacked. “I kinda blinded him and ran, but he caught me with a lucky punch.” He showed her the strips of blown-out, overexposed images. “But when I triggered the flash, I also took pictures of him, so—see? There—” Sure enough, tiny photographs of the big man from the condo, Dutch-angled, flash-washed, that would have been comic if he hadn’t come so close to shooting Finn.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  “Don Mexico.”

  “You know him? I think he’s a cop.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Riley tried to guess what business Mexico could have had in going there. “Cop and a half.”

  Finn seemed not to have processed it yet from the way he said, almost thrilled, “He tried to kill me.”

  Riley stared at
Finn, worried, for the first time understanding the full measure of what he had done. He took the proof sheet back and met her gaze and she looked away, face flushed, at the wall of photos from the crime scene, but she wasn’t really seeing anything, she was momentarily overwhelmed.

  “What.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Can I ask you,” Finn said, then, “why would a cop want to go back there after, what, six, eight weeks? And—”

  Riley talked over him, “You need to get out of here, Finn,” rolling backward, away, “and you need to take me with you.” At the closet, she pivoted the chair and started stuffing her few spare clothes and belongings into an overnight bag.

  “Wait, what? Why?” He watched her, completely confused. “I’m . . . Slow down for a sec. What does this—”

  “Take the pictures down,” she told him, and when he didn’t start moving, repeated, louder, “Finn. TAKE THE PICTURES OFF THE WALL.”

  He did, then, grabbed and stripped, leaving a couple corners and bits of tape.

  “We can’t let them figure out it was you—”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Mexico. Whoever. Just hurry.”

  He held up the thick messy stack of rumpled photo prints. “What should I do with these?”

  Riley threw him the duffel and started to wheel out the door. “In the bag. LET’S GO.”

  “Slow down—wait . . .” It took Finn another moment to get the sheaf of photos from his mosaic stuffed into the duffel, and he had to run to catch up with her as she sped down the corridor. “How would he figure out who I am, he barely saw me.”

  “I DON’T KNOW. He’s a cop. Maybe he’s seen you before at a crime scene? It doesn’t really matter.” They shot past the floor station, where a desk nurse absently watched them go. “And if Mexico finds you here, sees those pictures, connects you with me? All hell’s gonna break loose.”

  “He already tried to kill me. What other hell could there be? And anyway, I want to hear him explain what he was doing in that condo middle of the night this long after the shooting.”

  “No, you don’t. You were in a court-sealed crime scene, Finn. He’s a cop, he can make up a reason. You’ve got no defense.”

  “Why don’t we call your fiancé and have him give us some protection?”

  “And tell him what? That his number two went back to an active-case crime scene to look around?”

  Finn was quiet.

  “We can’t prove anything, except that you broke in. And if Mexico IS dirty?” She let the comment hang. “You’re the one with all the theories about doctored photos and bad cops on the inside.”

  Finn became defensive, “Okay, but.” He didn’t, however, have any defense to fall back on.

  “And Terry Lennox’s not my fiancé, he’s—”

  “—none of my business, I know. I was—”

  “—Don’t.” They arrived at the elevators, and Riley punched the call button.

  Ding.

  The elevator doors gaped, Riley backed herself in, and Finn followed. “Where are we going?”

  Riley said, “Where do you live?” as if she didn’t know.

  Did she?

  Ding.

  A second elevator arrived, its doors whispering apart to deliver a relatively upbeat Detective Terry Lennox, in no real rush. He had another excessive offering under his arm, a plush stuffed Fifty Shades of Grey teddy bear he got from God only knew where. Little pink handcuffs and a blindfold over the button eyes; Terry couldn’t help himself, Riley thought sadly, and if he’d turned the other way he would have seen her, seen her leaving with Finn Miller, but Lennox strode off toward Riley’s rehab wing, checking his reflection in the big windows, clearly liking what he saw there, and oblivious to the elevator doors closing behind him, and her escape.

  6

  FURTHER ELEVATOR ADVENTURES upon arriving at Finn’s building: The ancient utility lift doors were open, but the car itself was stuck four feet off the lobby. There was a repair guy from Otis beneath it, bitching under his breath and hammering on something so filthy it was shedding grime like dandruff.

  “Gonna be at least the end of the day, sorry, kids,” he mumbled to Finn and Riley after they had stared at him for long enough. “I’m waiting on this master control dealio my trainee’s bringing down from Camarillo, but there’s a Sig Alert on the 101 at Topanga. Traffic’s backed up all the way to Oxnard.”

  Finn and Riley swapped vexed looks, and moments later Finn was carrying her up the stairwell, already sweating when they got to the first landing.

  “You can stop if you need to rest.”

  “I’m fine,” Finn insisted grimly. “You’re not that heavy.”

  They both knew he was lying. By the time they summited the second floor, Finn’s legs were wobbly, and as he gathered himself for the final ascent, the nearest loft door opened and Arden came bustling out, dolled up for an audition. She locked up, turned, saw Finn with Riley in his arms, and stopped dead, all dagger eyes.

  What could Finn say? “How’s the rash?”

  Arden answered icily, “I made you lemon cake.” She wheeled, fumbled with her lock, and went back into her flat, slamming the door.

  “Is that your girlfriend?”

  “No,” Finn said too quickly, and kept climbing.

  “She’s gorgeous,” Riley added.

  Sure enough, lemon cake was in a Tupperware placed by the door to Finn’s third-floor entry. “Arden thinks lemon is a comfort food,” Finn said. He faced up to the skein of locks, Riley sagging in his aching arms; he needed his keys but also to not drop her, which was physically impossible. His legs started to shake.

  “Here”—at least her voice was light—and reaching down into his pocket, she said, “Let me . . .” She found the keys.

  Finn started to give her instructions, forgetting for the moment that she would already have heard his disclaimer: “There’s a pattern. To how they open. You gotta do it in exactly the right order. Let me—let me just—catch my breath—and I can tell you—”

  But Riley got the right order, first time, and before Finn could calculate the ripple of that obvious confession, the unlocked door swung open and they were staggering inside.

  “I’m a good guesser,” Riley deflected, then, as if she could read his spinning mind. “I even used to teach SAT prep. When they didn’t dock you for guessing.”

  “Where do you want to—”

  “—Wherever. Just so I can sit without tipping over.” And then, gesturing, “There, there’s good—”

  He put her in the drafting chair. It was his most expensive piece of furniture, spine-friendly ergonomic, with soft rollers and a lever that she used to lower herself as Finn shrugged off his backpack and, exhausted, said, “I’ll go down and get your chair and duffel.”

  “No rush.” Using her hands, she spun and pushed off from the drawing table, rolled tilt-a-whirl to the kitchen counter, where she pushed off again, ping-ponging around the room—“I like this thing”—until she was back among the unofficial photographs from Charlie’s murder, which he’d left clipped and hanging from the lines all this time and which, now that he thought about it, must have been why she had wanted to be brought to his place.

  “Hey. Are all these from the Charlie Ko shooting?” she said, not really a question, but without guile, and again he couldn’t read her, whether she was jerking him around or truly thought she was seeing them for the first time. She went carefully from photo to photo for a while, then asked: “Would it be possible to print these in black-and-white? And can you reprint the others . . . the ones you took last night?”

  “Sure. No. The others are film, I’d have to go back to the darkroom.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to ask the one question he wanted answered.

  She nodded, distracted. “That’s okay, we’ll use what we have of those.” A quiet
loomed, and after a while Riley glanced over her shoulder and looked at him. “What?”

  Finn took the easy way out. “And the cop Mexico?”

  Riley shrugged. “Finn, I figure I have about twenty-four hours until the full wrath and weight of Long Beach PD comes down on us, or me, in the form of cease and desist, conduct unbecoming, suspension from active duty, mandatory Internal Affairs inquiry, psychological evaluation, and dismissal with cause for obstruction of and interference in an active investigation. That’s what I’m focused on. Whatever that fat squirrel is up to is the least of my worries.” Riley returned to the photographs. “This is what I needed: the pictures you took on the day, AND the pictures from last night. Do you have a loupe?”

  Finn did indeed.

  “Sweet. Oh, but first can you get my phone out of my bag?”

  —

  HE ANSWERED ON THE FIRST RING, an angry “Where are you?”

  Riley said, simply, “Safe. I wanted you to know, so you wouldn’t worry. Or harass the nurses.”

  From the guilty pause that followed, she knew that he had. “Riley what the fuck-all are you doing?”

  “Solving your murder, Terry,” she said. “Since you don’t seem fucking interested.”

  And before he could respond she’d hung up on him.

  Had he been speaking from her empty room? She wondered if he’d notice the bits of tape and photo paper from Finn’s mosaic on the big facing wall. For a detective, Lennox was easily blinded by his emotions, but she was fairly certain he’d find the engagement ring Finn had put on the side table and Riley had forgotten and left behind still untouched, and maybe he’d finally understand that the shooting had taken more than just her legs.

  —

  RILEY HANDED THE PHONE back to Finn. “Take the battery out, hit the phone with something, a hammer, if you’ve got one, break it into pieces and throw it in the trash.” She was settled again in her wheelchair, Finn having sherpa’d it up from the lobby with her duffel; a selection of Finn’s new photographs of the Charlie Ko condo crime scene were already tacked along the length of the longest loft wall at just the right height for her, while his big printer spat out black-and-whites of the unofficial photos from his original crime scene shoot. Finn watched her roll along the span of images, his photo loupe in her lap.