GAGE BUTLER'S RECKONING

by Justine Davis

  "It's a cute house," she had said.

  His mouth twisted. "Funny, that's what my wife said."

  She'd stared at him then, barely managing to remember to apply the brakes. "You're … married?"

  "I was." He'd opened the car door, put one foot out slowly, then looked back at her. "I was eight years ago, too."

  He'd gotten out before she could react, leaving her sitting there wondering why he had said that, if there had been some kind of implication she was supposed to understand. But then he was thanking her for the ride, and for waiting, and the moment to ask passed.

  He had graciously thanked her again when she'd helped him gather up the personal items that the accident investigator had thought to take out of his car before it was towed. The man had dropped them off at the hospital, just one of several uniforms that had appeared as word got around that one of their own had been involved in the hit-and-run. Some had glanced at her, one or two had smiled, but none had let anything slow them on their quest to check on Gage.

  And now, as she turned into the parking lot of the Marina del Mar resort hotel she was staying at—where Lacey Buckhart worked, when she wasn't nine months pregnant—Laurey let out an audible sigh. Caitlin had suggested the place because of Lacey, and Laurey had agreed because it was close to the beach and far enough from her old home not to be a constant reminder that the carefree life she'd once known was gone forever. The life she'd never appreciated enough when she had it.

  After she parked the car, she sat for a moment, staring down at her hands on the wheel. They weren't shaking now, but the memory was still clear. He'd been hurt, had barely escaped dying, yet he'd had the discernment to sense what had upset her to the edge of hysteria, and the grace to comfort her when she'd done nothing but berate him for something she was sure he saw as simply doing his job. When, for all he knew, she still hated him.

  For all he knew? Didn't she still hate him?

  She searched within herself for the anger, the loathing she had always carried, but all she could find was a vague sheepishness. Could it have changed so quickly? Could those feelings have vanished in a matter of days after existing in that corner of her mind for years?

  She was now willing to admit that she had taken out on him all her hurt feelings from back then, when he'd ignored her efforts to gain his attention. She should have been above screaming at him as if she were some hysterical child. And for that, she admitted ruefully, she did owe him an apology.

  But did that change what he'd done? Did that make his betrayal any less? Did it alter the fact that he'd pretended to be something he wasn't, in order to trick kids into thinking he was their friend and to be trusted?

  What is it you expect, Laurey? That the cops go out on the street armed with nothing but Boy Scout honor? That they always play fair and honest when nobody else does?

  Again Caitlin's words came back to her. And more.

  …he chose to try, to try and stop the drugs and guns before they got to the kids…

  She couldn't remember ever feeling so torn. Except the day she'd found out that the beautiful golden boy she'd loved was a narc. A plant, a spy, a traitor.

  She ran the old litany through her mind, wondering if she could stir up the old fire. Perhaps even hoping she could. It would be much easier if she could just continue to hate him, if she could hang on to that image from long ago.

  But she couldn't. The one-dimensional picture she'd always had in her head had changed now. Gage Butler was real, not some cardboard cutout villain she could vent her anger on. There was nothing one-dimensional about the man so many others loved and admired. There was nothing one-dimensional about the man who had helped all those kids on Caitlin's wall. There was certainly nothing one-dimensional about the man who, in the midst of his own fear and pain, had taken the time to ease hers. Even thinking she would most likely not welcome it, his instinct had been to try to help.

  And there was most certainly nothing one-dimensional about the man who had walked out of that emergency room, his unbuttoned shirt revealing a strong chest and flat belly that even the reddened areas that would no doubt soon be bruises of varying colors could detract from. Her reaction had startled her, she'd hated him in her mind for so long that she had managed to forget why she'd been attracted to him in the first place. And when she'd seen him again, seen that he was indeed the same golden boy he'd been then, she'd been moved not at all; Gage Butler, she'd thought with satisfaction, was an affliction she'd been cured of permanently.

  So why had her pulse speeded up at the sight of him tonight? Why had she found it suddenly hard to breathe as she watched his careful walk, and why had she felt that odd quiver in the pit of her stomach as her gaze had strayed to the bloodstains on his shirt? When she was eighteen, she might have thought he deserved it, simply for being a liar and a sneak. In fact, she'd thought she was being extremely fair by not hating all cops, just him. Had her reluctant admission that she owed him an apology turned her head to mush? Was she buying all the pro-Butler propaganda that was being tossed at her?

  She didn't know. Right now, she didn't feel like she knew anything. Except that, once again, Gage Butler had turned her ordered world on its head.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  "It's better to just get it over with," Laurey repeated for at least the tenth time since that morning.

  She rehearsed the words she'd worked out in her head as she'd lain awake long into the night. "You were right, it should be ancient history, and I should never have said those things to you. I'm sorry."

  How hard could it be? It wasn't as if she had to explain why she'd reacted so strongly. She wasn't going to have to admit to that silly, long-ago infatuation. She wasn't going to have to say "The reason I went so crazy now was because I was crazy about you then."

  No, she wouldn't have to explain how hurt she had been, how he'd trampled all over her fledgling feelings, already tenuous because of their very newness. She wouldn't have to tell him of the nights she'd spent in helpless longing, praying he would give her any little sign that she stood out for him at all. She wouldn't have to tell him of the hours she'd spent trying to make herself over, trying to mask her height, her awkwardness, trying to become what she could never be—the petite, pixieish cheerleader type, one of the confident, poised girls who were secure in their appeal and therefore not at all hesitant to turn their charms loose on the gorgeous new transfer student. She'd taken some small comfort in the fact that, although he flirted right back, he never took it any further with them than he did with her, which meant nowhere. It hadn't been much, but it had been all he'd left her then.

  She'd better be careful, she thought as she turned off of Trinity Street West

  and slowed, trying to remember the directions he'd given her last night and reverse them. She'd better be careful, or she would be back to hating him again.

  Maybe she should thank him, she thought ironically, for at last giving her something in common with those confident girls; they'd been fooled by him, too. Somehow she didn't find much comfort in the fact. Nor, now that she could look back, did she feel much regret that she hadn't had much in common with those girls; too many of them had slid by on their looks, and when they had to rely on something else in the real world, they'd had nothing to turn to. There was something to be said for having had little to do in your spare time except study, she supposed.

  As she turned the corner, breathing a sigh of relief as she saw the house and knew she'd found her way back, she found herself wondering what kind of student Gage had been when he had really been in high school. Not the slack-off, uncaring type he'd pretended to be, she guessed. He wouldn't have been able to pull off what he had if he'd been stupid.

  Don't let the fact that you're here to apologize inspire you to admiration, she told herself as she negotiated the drive once more, more easily in the daylight.

  She'd waited until now, nearly noon, figuring he would be sleeping late after the battering
he'd taken last night. She noticed the curtains at the front window were closed, but she thought they had been that way last night; he'd probably just left them that way.

  As she went up the three steps of the porch, she took a deep breath of air tinged with some sweet smell that had to be coming from one of the plants by the front porch. Amazing, that there were blooms this late in the year. Only in California, she thought. She'd gotten used to winters in Seattle.

  Had his wife originally planted those flowers? she wondered suddenly.

  He'd been married eight years ago. That boy who looked young enough to pass for seventeen had gone home to a wife at night. Was it that that had kept him from cashing in on the more obvious offers he'd gotten from some of the senior girls? Or had it been simply that he was on duty? She knew cops weren't supposed to drink on duty, but did that extend to … other things?

  For the first time she thought about what a fine line he must have been walking then, trying to balance the facade with the reality.

  "So now you feel sorry for him?" she chided herself. "Just apologize and get it over with."

  That got her to the door, and she rapped her knuckles on it smartly. She waited, then knocked again. When a couple of minutes passed, she looked around and spotted a doorbell half-hidden beneath a vine Gage's vaunted gardener needed to pay some attention to. She pushed the button, heard the distant chiming, and waited again.

  Still nothing.

  A furrow creased her forehead. He could still be asleep, she supposed. She knew the doctor had given him some pills; the doctor had mentioned it, and she'd seen him take the small white envelope inside last night.

  He was probably only asleep, she told herself. But then a memory of that dark swelling above his right temple came to her, and she felt a creeping shiver. What if … something had gone wrong?

  You don't mess with head injuries, Quisto had said. And wasn't it true that sometimes people went to sleep and never woke up? The doctor had said he was fine, no concussion, but mistakes were made sometimes, everybody knew that.

  She stood there on the porch, uncertain of what, if anything, she should do. Just leaving occurred to her, but she didn't know if she could do it. What if she did and later found out he'd died or something?

  The thought made her shiver again, and she told herself it was only at the thought, that it was nothing personal, nothing to do with Gage himself.

  She would look around, she decided. Maybe she would be able to see something in the back, or maybe he just couldn't hear the knock or the bell from wherever he was.

  She went down the steps and walked slowly, carefully over to the driveway that led past the side of the house to the garage. There was no sound except her footsteps. No sign of life, except the occasional yelp of a dog somewhere down the block.

  She hesitated, then went through a back gate, wondering if she was setting off some kind of alarm that would have Gage's colleagues swarming over her in moments.

  There was a small, tidy backyard, a patch of grass bordered by more flowers, and a patio with a wood cover and some furniture scattered around, plus what looked like a well-used barbecue to the side of a sliding glass door. Seeing that the drape was partly open, she crossed the cement deck to the door and peered inside.

  The house looked utterly deserted, no lights on, no sound from within. She could see a sofa that looked cushy enough to sleep on, and a couple of overstuffed chairs that looked nearly as comfortable. A television and stereo sat in a shelf unit in one corner, a bookcase crammed with books in the other. There were a few magazines scattered on a low coffee table and what looked like the bloodied shirt tossed across the back of one of the chairs. The rest of the room was neat, including the corner of what seemed to be a dining table; all she could see from where she stood.

  She knocked on the glass door. It rattled slightly in its track, but nothing else happened. No movement, no response. That chill started up her spine again. Could he be inside, unconscious—or worse?

  "Gage?" She called his name tentatively, then repeated it more loudly. Still nothing.

  Now what? she muttered under her breath.

  For a long moment she stood there, thinking. What would she do if she were home and this had happened? If it had been her friend Sandy, or someone else she knew?

  I'd call somebody with a key, she answered her own question. But she didn't know anybody with a key. Should she call Caitlin? What if Quisto hadn't told her yet? Maybe she should just call him? She glanced at her watch, wondering what time he left for the evening shift. She couldn't call the house; if Caitlin answered, she could hardly ask to speak to him without explaining.

  Maybe she should just call the police, period. The accident must be general knowledge by now; Caitlin had told her that Trinity West had a grapevine that put any other to shame. It wouldn't be like she was spilling the beans or anything.

  And really, did any of that matter if a man was lying hurt and helpless on the other side of the door?

  Decided now, she ran back to her car. There had been a phone at that convenience store a few blocks back, she thought, and moments later was pulling into the busy parking lot. She found the phones, hesitated about calling 911, then decided she wasn't sure enough to tie up an emergency line, and looked up the nonemergency number in the rather ragged directory hanging below the phone. She dialed quickly and got a helpful voice asking how she could direct her call.

  "It's about one of your officers, Gage Butler," Laurey began

  "Did you want to speak to him? I can put you through."

  Laurey blinked. "You mean … he's there? On Saturday?"

  The woman chuckled. "He's almost always here. He hasn't taken any extra time off that he wasn't ordered to in his entire career."

  Laurey felt a bit foolish now, over her panic. She'd been envisioning him unconscious or dead in his house, and all the time he'd been at work. She thanked the woman, declined another offer to connect her to Gage's office and hung up.

  He was at work. It was the weekend, he'd nearly died in a traffic accident the night before, he had to be stiff and sore, and he was at work.

  Dedicated, she thought, wasn't the word for it. Driven, maybe. But there was a fine line between driven and obsessed, and nobody knew that better than she did. She'd lived her childhood with a man on the wrong side of that line; her father's compulsion had left his family as alone as if he'd been merely a distant relative who occasionally visited.

  She tried to veer away from old, tired thoughts that accomplished nothing. Her father was who he was, and he would never change. She didn't know if a man like that could change, even if he wanted to. And her father had certainly never given any indication that he wanted to.

  It doesn't matter, Laurey told herself as she got back into her rental car. They'd gotten along just fine without him, her and Mom and Lisa…

  She started the car quickly as the ugly memories threatened to swamp her once more. She pulled out of the parking lot, driving with fierce concentration, thinking through every move in her head, fighting to block the ugliness with the mundane.

  What her father was didn't matter, and if Gage was like him, well, that didn't matter, either. Certainly not to her. And even if he was the worst kind of workaholic, she still owed him that apology. And she wanted to get it over with, so he would quit hovering in her mind like this, so she could quit thinking about him all the time, so she could quit feeling guilty about how she'd acted, nursing that long-ago grudge like a little girl clinging to some childish slight.

  She found her way back to Trinity Street West

  , the main road back to her hotel, and sat at the corner for a moment, waiting for the light to change.

  The Marina Heights police station was on Trinity Street West

  , she thought, remembering that was how the building had come to be called Trinity West. In fact, she'd heard the cops who worked there called Trinity West cops more often than anything else, despite the formal name of the department. She'd already b
een in Seattle when all the big news had happened, when the Marina Heights police chief had been murdered in a drive-by shooting that had left two other men injured, including the man who had succeeded him as chief. She'd sarcastically hoped that one of them had been Gage, although she'd had the grace to feel a qualm of unease even as she thought it.

  At least he didn't know that, so she didn't have to apologize for that, as well, she thought now. This was going to be bad enough.

  So get it over with, she ordered herself yet again.

  "All right," she muttered, "no time like the present."

  She'd never voluntarily gone to a police station before, but then, she'd never had to apologize to a cop before. She'd never even talked to a cop, not since that awful day she had never forgotten.

  "And if you don't quit thinking about that, this is going to be impossible!"

  That exclamation got her around the corner, and she drove the few blocks until she saw the large, plain building ahead. It sat boxlike on a corner, overlooking a large lot that had been vacant for as long as she could remember. It was from there the windows had been shot out, she thought, the childhood memory stirring; her father, on one of his rare evenings at home, expressing outrage at the idea of a sniper taking aim at the police station. She'd been shocked, as well; she'd been raised to respect the police.