A Cold and Broken Hallelujah

by Tyler Dilts

  So Marty was, for the time being, partnering with Patrick.

  As I watched Patrick leave, I wasn’t sure if the emotion I felt was envy or sorrow.

  It wasn’t long after nine when the phone on my desk rang.

  “Homicide,” I said in the voice I had honed to a dull edge over the years. “This is Beckett.”

  “Hello, Detective. This is Julia Rice.”

  I paused.

  “We spoke yesterday?”

  “Of course, Ms. Rice. I didn’t expect you to call so soon.”

  “I wanted to get the photos to you as quickly as I could.”

  “We appreciate that.”

  “They’re all in the file. I’m afraid it’s too big to e-mail. I have them on a flash drive, or I can upload them to a website that—”

  “Are you at home? I’m only two blocks away. I could come by and pick them up.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll bring them to you. I’m going to be staring at a computer screen all day anyway. It’ll do me good to get out.”

  Twenty minutes later, I met her downstairs and she handed me a small beige envelope with the flash drive inside.

  “I hope there’s not too many there. The description wasn’t terribly specific, so I erred on the side of inclusiveness.”

  “That’s good. We’re glad to have anything that might be even a remote possibility.”

  “I really do hope it helps.” She used the word “hope” a lot. I wondered if I should infer anything from that.

  “So do I. Thank you for your help, Ms. Rice.”

  “Please,” she said. “Call me Julia.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “What’s that?” Jen asked as I inserted the drive into my computer.

  “Julia Rice dropped it off. It’s the pictures she mentioned to us yesterday.”

  “She made a special trip?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  Jen didn’t answer. She just grinned and shook her head.

  It was early still, especially for someone working nights, but I dialed Henry Nichols’s number anyway. When his voice mail picked up, I assumed he was still asleep and left a message asking him to call me back as soon as he could. With luck, we’d be able to get him into the station that day to look at Julia’s photos and see if he could find a shot of Bishop anywhere in the batch. I felt hopeful, but I assumed it was Julia’s attitude affecting me. Generally, I agree with Stephen King that hope is a dangerous thing. And also that the road to hell is paved with adverbs.

  “You want to bring him in or take the photos to him?” Jen asked.

  “Bring him in,” I said. “I think the change of location might help him focus.”

  “Get him lunch and set him up in the conference room. Give him the VIP treatment.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Want me to do the talking?”

  “You’ve got a rapport going with him,” I said. “You mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  When he called me back, I explained what we wanted to do and asked if he could come in around noon. Then I went over to Modica’s Deli and brought back five different kinds of sandwiches and a bunch of sides. Nichols would get a good lunch and so would the rest of the squad.

  Jen met him when he arrived and led him to one of the nice administrative conference rooms. I brought the food.

  “What kind of sandwich would you like? Turkey, roast beef, ham, pastrami, or vegetarian?”

  “Wow. That’s a good selection,” he said. He seemed to be in much better shape than he had been the last time we talked to him. He was understandably more awake and alert, but he seemed somehow sharper, too. The khakis and white long-sleeved button-down he was wearing helped. “How about the roast beef?”

  “You got it.”

  I dug through the bag and found the wrapper with the big black “RB” written in Sharpie on top. I slid the sandwich, a Coke, a bag of chips, and a stack of napkins across the table to him. Then I let Jen take over.

  “Thanks for coming, Henry,” she said. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Sure. I’d really like to help if I can.”

  “How are you doing today?” she said. It was a little late in the conversation for that question, but she’d picked up on the change in his demeanor too.

  “Good,” he said. “I’m having a good day.”

  “They’re not all good, are they?”

  “No, ma’am, they’re not.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich so he’d feel comfortable taking one of his. When he was almost done chewing, she asked, “Was it a good one when we talked to you last time?”

  “No, and it got worse after I saw you. No offense.”

  “None taken.” She gave him a warm smile. “Everything going okay with work and the new place?”

  “It is. I’m just trying not to get too comfortable.”

  “Why?”

  “Just worried that something might still go wrong, you know?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that,” she said with an authority in her voice that even convinced me.

  “I hope not.”

  She kept smiling and he took another bite of his roast beef. “Is that good?”

  “Yeah, really good, thanks again.”

  She chatted a bit more as we worked our way through lunch. We both paced ourselves against Nichols, and when the food was nearly gone, she explained what we wanted him to do.

  “So just look at all the pictures and look for Bishop?”

  “That’s right.”

  Jen slid the laptop in front of him and showed him where to click to advance to the next photo. We moved in closer to him, Jen on his right and me on his left, so we could watch the faces as he clicked through them. He took his time with each one and studied it intently before moving on. Occasionally he’d give his head a little shake or mutter a soft “no” or “uh-uh” under his breath. When he got to the end and hadn’t seen Bishop’s face, he said, “Could I go through one more time?”

  “Of course,” Jen said. I could tell that she was glad that he volunteered without having to be asked.

  He clicked through all of the pictures again, and when he finished, his shoulders rounded and he lowered his head. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay.” Jen put her hand on his forearm. “Don’t worry.”

  He looked up at her, a realization dawning in his eyes. “Wait. Oh, man. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.”

  Henry had a story, and thanks to Jen, he was comfortable enough to tell it.

  Things had gone well at the VA, and for the first time in weeks, Henry felt that his luck might be changing for the better. The first check had been issued to him for the back pay and the Wounded Warrior benefits he was supposed to have received after his injury in Afghanistan. A stupid clerical mistake had denied him his due for more than a year. But things were looking up. He’d been able to get a shower at the shelter and had gone to a good laundromat by the hospital to wash his clothes. The VA had also confirmed his spot on the waiting list for transitional housing. In group, everyone had congratulated him and smacked his shoulders. Good news went a long way these days. He might even be out of the van by the end of the month.

  After he’d finished cleaning everything he owned—he even washed the van at the coin-operated car wash on Broadway—he put almost all of the rest of the money in his Wells Fargo account. He had more than enough to cover the deposit at Century Villages. He thought again about the sixty extra dollars he’d kept out of the check for a new phone. Before he came home from active duty, he’d never been much of a second-guesser. He followed his instincts when that seemed appropriate, made a plan when necessary, but either way, once he committed he was all in.

  Not anymore, though. Now every decision, even the smallest, was an ordeal. Especially every purchase. But he reassured himself. He’d even run the idea past Dr. Winston, the VA psychiatrist, who’d reassured him.

  But he couldn’
t help feeling that a cell phone was a luxury. An indulgence he couldn’t afford.

  He’d only been living in the van for a few months, but everything about him had changed.

  No, he thought. That’s not right. Everything changed before the van, before he came home. He remembered the desert, the heat, the smell of the baked dust.

  But he stopped himself. Thought of the plan again. Focused on his goal and started the van and headed north on Bellflower.

  Inside Target, he purchased the cheapest prepaid cell phone they carried—an LG TracFone—and the phone card to go with it. He sat in the parked Chrysler, in the back corner of the parking lot by the McDonald’s, where he allowed himself the further indulgence of a strawberry shake, and he counted his breaths. He got to thirty before he felt calm and centered enough to dial the number.

  His mother didn’t answer. He heard the same answering-machine message that he’d helped her record when he was still in high school. That was okay, though, it felt good to make the connection. He left a message, told her he was sorry it had been so long since he’d called and that things were looking up. He told her he loved her.

  Then he wondered how to spend the afternoon. A kind of low-grade satisfaction that he remembered from years ago filled him, left him with a warmth that he struggled to recognize. It wasn’t contentment—he didn’t feel that secure yet, he knew he’d need to save that for a roof and a job—but it was something good.

  At the Jack in the Box drive-through, he got three of the one-dollar chicken sandwiches, two tacos, and a large Dr Pepper. With the soda in the cup holder and the fast-food bag in the passenger’s seat, he thought about where to go. It didn’t take long to decide.

  He took PCH to Redondo, hung a left, and drove all the way to Ocean. Before long, he’d made it through downtown and had parked the clean but aging Town & Country in the lot at Palm Beach Park and was sitting in the shade watching the Catalina Express cruise under the Queensway Bridge heading for Avalon.

  The Dr Pepper had been drained down to the ice, but he’d only eaten one of the sandwiches. He thought that maybe the most valuable skill he’d learned in the army was how to save food for later. The circle of shade he’d been sitting in had moved left, leaving him in the sun. He stretched his legs out in front of himself, leaned back on his hands, and looked up at the sky.

  The time seemed to soften and elongate, and he wouldn’t have been able to say how long he’d been there before Bishop approached him. He wouldn’t even have been able to say that that was exactly who he’d been hoping to see when he came to the park. But when Henry saw him, he was glad. That much he was sure of.

  “Bishop,” he said. “Pull up some grass.”

  “I don’t mind if I do,” the older man said. “Not at all.”

  “I got some lunch for you. Tacos or chicken sandwich?”

  Bishop looked baffled.

  Henry smiled at him and said, “How about one of each?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  The two men set up the chessboard and ate as they played. When Bishop had claimed both of Henry’s knights, one of his rooks, and a quartet of his pawns, he looked at the young man and said, “Good day, is it?”

  Henry was confused for a moment, thinking he meant the game, but then he realized it was him, his mood, that Bishop was commenting on. It must have been as apparent to everyone else as it was to Henry himself. “Yes,” he finally said. “It is.”

  He told Bishop about everything, the VA benefits, the waiting list for transitional housing, even the cell phone.

  “Phone has a camera on it, right?” Bishop asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure it does. Didn’t try it yet.”

  “Well, get it out. It’s a good day for a picture.”

  “This was in July?” Jen asked.

  “Yes,” Nichols answered. “Just a day or two after the fourth.”

  He held the flip phone open for us and we leaned in and got our first look at Bishop. I was completely unprepared for what I saw.

  Bishop was happy.

  I’m not sure why it came as such a shock to me. The possibility of his mirthful smile, of the cheerful exuberance shining in his eyes, of his whole face crinkled into such an expression of felicity, had not ever entered into the realm of my imagination. It seemed to me a failure of imagination on my part that made my stomach knot with sorrow.

  In all of my consideration of Bishop, the only thing I had been able to imagine was pain.

  “You okay?” Jen said to me. Nichols was looking at me too.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I just, I didn’t expect him to seem so—” I stopped midsentence, searching for the right word. “Could you excuse me for a minute?” I got up without waiting for an answer.

  In the men’s room, I splashed cold water on my face in the vain hope that if anyone else came in, they wouldn’t be able to tell I had been crying.

  10

  PLASTIC PONCHO: BLUE AND GOLD, W/ UCLA LOGO.

  “What happened in there?” Jen asked when we were back at our desks.

  “They looked happy in that picture,” I said. “Didn’t they?”

  “Yes. Why is that upsetting?”

  “I don’t know. Have you been imagining Bishop happy?”

  “No.” Jen shook her head.

  “Neither have I.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  “Neither do I, really.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “it’s because if we think of him having been happy, then it seems like a greater loss.”

  “No, I can’t accept that.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “You know why. We can’t think like that. We can’t let ourselves think like that.”

  “Every victim is created equal?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you work harder for happy victims?”

  “You know the answer to that.”

  “But that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “What the fuck, Danny? You’ve been doing this even longer than I have. You know the job. Sometimes they hit you harder. But you work the case just the same.”

  I didn’t say anything. She was right, of course. I wasn’t just behaving like someone who’d never worked a murder before, I was acting like I’d never even been a cop. My ability to compartmentalize had vanished. I was identifying too strongly with Bishop, and it was beginning to interfere with my objectivity.

  I tried to forget about it and got back to work. Now that we had a photo, the Media Relations Detail would reach out to the public with press releases and an update on the LBPD asking for assistance with the identification. They’d set up a tip line and e-mail account to handle the incoming info. It could lead to a break.

  Just as I hung up, Marty came into the squad room and plopped himself down in his chair.

  “How’s Patrick doing?” I asked.

  “Great,” he said. “He’s still working the scene. Kid’s got the bug. He’s gonna be fine.”

  “You hungry?” Jen asked. “We’ve got some leftovers from Modica’s.”

  “No, thanks. We were right around the corner from Joe Jost’s, so I grabbed a salami sandwich.”

  That was Zaferia, not Cambodia Town. “Where’s your scene?” I said.

  “Tenth and Ohio. Why?”

  “One of our suspects lives right there. Trying to get his brother to talk to us,” Jen said.

  “What’s the address?” I asked.

  Marty leaned forward. “1072 Ohio.”

  “Shit,” I said, looking at Jen. “That’s the front house.”

  We peppered Marty with questions, and we found out that early in the morning four Latinos in a stolen Yukon had pulled over in front of the gray Craftsman, and the two on the passenger’s side had leaned out of their windows and opened fire, one with an AK and the other with an AR. On the driver’s side, another shooter climbed up and sat on the windowsill behind
the driver so he could reach up and over and use the roof as a rest for his own weapon. They all had multiple jungle-clipped magazines, and the three of them kept at it long enough to fire more than two hundred rounds into the house.

  Five people lived there. A husband and wife and their three children. The mother and children were in the bedrooms in the back of the house, and even though dozens of the bullets penetrated the three or four walls between them and the street, they all managed to survive. One of the little girls suffered minor injuries from either bullet fragments or some other kind of shrapnel-like debris. The father had been in the living room, just off of the porch, drinking a cup of coffee and watching a morning news show. He’d reportedly been in a good mood because his kitchen-remodeling business was finally beginning to pick up again after bottoming out with the housing crisis. Later that morning he had been scheduled to begin work on a mid-six-figure job over in Belmont Shore. It would have really turned things around for him, and he was looking forward to moving his girls into their own house again and finally being able to stop worrying about the crappy neighborhood where his daughters were spending what should have been the happiest years of their childhood.

  Instead, he was shot eleven times and bled out on the living room floor in front of the flickering and slowly fading image of Matt Lauer.

  “Did you talk to the people in the back house?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Marty said. “Drunk woman and her little girl. How are they connected?”

  “The woman has two older sons,” I said. “High-school students. One of them is in custody on the burning. The other we think was supposed to be there but got smart just in time. We’re trying to flip him.”

  “Patrick didn’t make the connection yet?” Jen said. “He’s been helping us with some background.”

  “Not before I left.”

  I was sure I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “You have any motive on the drive-by? Any gang connections for the contractor?”