Free Fall

by Robert Crais

  "And all five guys have to be on board with it."

  Pike nodded. "Everybody has to be on board."

  I turned the sausages again. The skins were taking on a crunchy texture and the cat had hopped up on the rail that runs around the edge of the deck so he could be as close to the sausage as possible. Any closer and we could serve barbecued cat.

  Pike said, "Eric was nervous. That's not like him. Maybe even scared, and that's not like him, either."

  "Okay."

  "Scared people do atypical things. He was thinking maybe that he could scare you off. Now that he knows that I'm in, it will change what he thinks. He knows that I won't scare."

  "Great. That will make him all the more dangerous."

  "Yes," Pike said. "It will."

  "Maybe Dees is telling the truth. Maybe we're just stepping on a case and he's pissed."

  Pike shook his head. "He wants you out, it's easy. He tells his boss and his boss calls you in and you sit down together. You know that." The sky darkened and the hillside below us grew speckled with lights. Pike adjusted his sunglasses, but did not remove them. He never removes them. Even at night. "If he's not playing it straight, then he can't play it straight. That's the first rule every cop learns."

  I turned the sausage rings a last time, then took them off the grill and put them onto a maple cutting board. I sliced them at an angle, then put half the meat on my plate and a serious portion on a saucer for the cat. I blew on his to cool it. Pike went into the house and came out with two more Falstaffs and what was left of a loaf of rosemary bread. I took some of the salad and tasted it. Pike had made a dressing of soy sauce, rice vinegar, and minced garlic. I nodded. "Good."

  He nodded back.

  We ate without speaking for several minutes, and Pike didn't look happy. Of course, since Pike never smiles, it's sometimes tough to tell when he is happy, but there are ways. I said, "What?"

  Pike picked up a piece of tuna with his fingers, took a small bite, then held out the rest to the cat. The cat stepped forward and ate with enthusiasm. Pike said, "I haven't seen Eric in many years."

  "Was he good?"

  "Yes."

  "Was he honest?"

  Pike turned his head and the dark lenses angled toward me. "If I saw it any other way, I wouldn't have ridden with him."

  I nodded. "But people change."

  Pike wiped his fingers on his napkin, then turned back to his meal. "Yes. People change."

  We ate the rest of the meal in silence, and then we brought the dirty dishes into the kitchen and flipped a nickel to see who would wash. I lost. Midway through the load the phone rang and Joe Pike answered. He said, "Jennifer Sheridan."

  I took the phone and said, "Elvis Cole, Personal Detective to Jennifer Sheridan."

  Jennifer Sheridan said, "Floyd Riggens just left me. He was here with another officer. They said that I was going to get Mark killed. They said that if I didn't make you stop, something bad would happen." Her voice was tight and compressed and the words came quickly, as if she were keeping a close rein, but just.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I called Mark, but he's not home."

  "What about you? Are you all right?"

  I could hear her breathe. She didn't say anything for a time, and then she said, "I'd like someone with me, I think. Would you mind?"

  "I'm leaving now."

  I hung up. Pike was staring at me, his glasses reflecting the kitchen lights. "Riggens paid her a visit. I'd better go over there."

  Pike said, "This isn't going to work out the way she wants it to."

  I spread my hands. "I don't know. Maybe we can make it work out that way."

  "If Dees and Thurman and these guys are mixed up with Akeem D'Muere, it'll be ugly. She may find out something about him that she wished she didn't know."

  I spread my hands again. "Maybe that's the price for being in love."

  Pike said, "I'll finish the dishes."

  I told him thanks, then I put on the Dan Wesson and drove to see Jennifer Sheridan.

  CHAPTER 14

  Twenty-six minutes later I parked on the street across from Jennifer Sheridan's apartment building and buzzed her number on the security phone. The speaker came to life and Jennifer Sheridan said, "Who is it?"

  "Elvis Cole."

  The door lock buzzed open and I went in and took the elevator to the third floor.

  Jennifer Sheridan lived in one of those stucco ant farms just off the freeway in Woodland Hills that caters to attractive young singles, attractive young couples, and the not-so-young-but-almost-as-attractive newly divorced. There would be a lot of grabass around the pool and something called a "fitness room" where men and women would watch each other work out, but I guess it was a fair trade for a secure building at an affordable price in a low-crime area. Unless the cops were doing the crime.

  Apartment 312

  was down a long hall with a lot of shag carpeting and textured wallpaper and cottage-cheese ceilings. Jennifer Sheridan was peeking out of a two-inch crack in her door, waiting for me. When she saw me, she closed the door to unhook the chain, then opened it again. "I'm sorry for calling you like that, but I didn't know what else to do. I feel so silly."

  I gave her the benevolent detective smile. "It's no trouble and you did the right thing by calling me." Maybe it was the six-pack-of-Falstaff smile.

  She stepped out of the door and led me through an entry past her kitchen and into the living room. She was wearing an oversized white sweatshirt that hung low over black tights and white Keds tennis shoes. Comfortable. Just the kind of thing to be lounging around in in the apartment when Floyd Riggens came to call. She said, "I tried calling Mark again, but there's still no answer. I left a message on his machine."

  "Okay."

  "There was another man with Floyd, but I don't know his name. He was a police officer, also."

  "What did he look like?"

  "Bigger than Floyd, with very short hair. Blond."

  "Pinkworth."

  She nodded. "Yes, that's right. Floyd called him Pink but I didn't realize that was a name." She was trying to be brave and she was doing a good job.

  "Did Floyd threaten you?"

  She nodded.

  I said, "Did they hurt you?"

  "Not really." She made an uneasy smile, as if she didn't want to say anything that would cause trouble. "He sort of grabbed me a little, that's all. I think he'd been drinking." When she said it, she sort of brushed at her right arm. She wore the sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed above her elbows and on her forearm where she brushed there were angry red marks, the way there might be if someone grabbed hard and twisted.

  I touched her forearm and turned it to look at the marks and a sharp pain throbbed behind my eyes. I said, "Floyd."

  She took her arm back, and made a sort of dismissive laugh. "I don't think he meant to. It just surprised me, that's all."

  "Of course." The throbbing pain was worse.

  It was a nice apartment, with inexpensive oak furniture and the kind of large overstuffed couch and matching chairs that you would buy on sale at Ikea or Home Club. A Sony television sat on a long white Formica table opposite the couch, along with a lot of plants and a portable CD player. A little forest of photographs stood between the plants and Mark Thurman was in most of the photographs. Many of the shots were duplicates of ones I had seen in Mark Thurman's album but many were not. An enormous stuffed Garfield stood sentry by the dining room table and a half-dozen smaller stuffed animals rested on the couch. Everything was neat and clean and in its proper place. I said, "Why don't you sit, and I'll get something for us to drink, and then we can figure out what to do."

  She shook her head. "I'm not helpless. Besides, the activity is good. Would you like a diet Coke or a glass of wine? I've got a Pinot Grigio."

  "The Pinot."

  She said, "You sit, and I'll be right back."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She smiled and went into the kitchen.

 
There was a pass-through between the kitchen and the living room so you could see from one into the other. I sat in the overstuffed chair at the far end of the living room and watched her get the wine. Jennifer Sheridan stood on her toes to reach two flute glasses out of her cupboard, then put them on the counter beside her sink. She opened the fridge, took out the bottle of Pinot, and worked out the cork. The Pinot had been opened earlier and was missing maybe a glass. She worked with her back to me. I watched the shape of her calves when she went up onto her toes and the line of her thighs and the way the oversized sweatshirt hung low over her bottom and draped from her shoulders. She didn't look so young from the back and I had to turn away to make myself stop looking at her. Jesus Christ, Cole. Portrait of the detective as a lecher. I looked at the pictures on the white table instead. Mark Thurman. Watching me. I crossed my eyes and made a face at him. Screw you, Mark. I looked at the Garfield, instead. Maybe you shouldn't drink a six-pack of Falstaff before you visit a client.

  Jennifer Sheridan came out with the two glasses of wine, handed one of them to me, and went to the couch. She must've seen me looking at the Garfield. "Mark won that for me. Isn't it cute?"

  "How nice." I smiled. "Tell me about Riggens and Pinkworth. Tell me everything they said. Don't leave anything out."

  She shook her head. 'The other guy didn't say very much. He just stood by the door, and every once in a while said something like 'You oughta listen to him,' or 'We're only trying to help.' "

  "Okay. Then tell me about Floyd."

  She sipped her wine and thought about it, as if she wanted to be very careful and get it right. As she told me she picked up a stuffed lion from the couch and held it. "He told me that Mark didn't know they were here, but that he was Mark's partner and he said that someone had to straighten me out because I was going to get Mark killed. I asked him to tell me what was going on but he wouldn't. He said that I didn't love Mark and I said that I did. He said I had a funny way of showing it. I told him to get out, but he wouldn't. He said that I never should have hired you because all you're doing is making trouble."

  "Floyd and I had a run-in today." I told her about the Farmer's Market.

  She blinked at me. "You hit him?"

  "No. I kicked him."

  She said, "Kicked?"

  "Yeah. Like Bruce Lee. You know."

  "You can get your foot up that high?"

  I spread my hands. "I am a man of profound talents."

  She touched her left cheek between the ear and the eye. "He had a bruise right here." Sort of awed.

  I spread my hands again and she smiled, maybe thinking how he had grabbed her. When she smiled I wanted to drop one wing and run in a circle. Guess we aren't so mature, after all.

  I said, "You don't get four active-duty REACT cops on your tail unless they're very scared of what you're doing. They didn't want me to know that they were on me, and now they know that I do, and they didn't want you to know that something is going on, and now Riggens has come here and threatened you. They've been trying to control the program but that isn't working, and things are beginning to fall apart. The gloves are coming off."

  She nodded, and looked thoughtful, like maybe whatever she was thinking wasn't easy to think about. She said, "Was Mark there? At the Market?"

  "No." I was watching her. The thing that was hard to think about was even harder to say.

  "He said Mark was in trouble. He said that they've been trying to help Mark, but that I was messing everything up and Mark was going to be hurt. He started yelling. He said maybe somebody ought to show me what it was like. I got scared then, and that's when he grabbed me." She suddenly stopped speaking, went into the kitchen, and came back with the bottle of Pinot. She added more to her glass, then put the bottle on the table. "Do you think Mark knew that Floyd was coming here?"

  "I don't know. Probably not." The detective answers a cry for support with a resounding maybe.

  "I asked him why he was doing this. I asked him to tell me what had happened or what was going on. I told him I would help. He thought that was funny. He said that I didn't want to know. He said that Mark had done bad things and now they were fucked. I said Mark wasn't like that and he said I didn't know anything about Mark." She stopped as if someone had pulled her plug, and stared into the forest of photographs.

  I said, "And you're scared he's right?"

  She nodded.

  "You're scared that you don't know anything about Mark, and that if you find out, you might not love him anymore."

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, then looked directly at me. "No. I will always love him. No matter what. If he did something, it's because he believed he had to. If I can help him, then I will help him. I will love him even if he no longer loves me." She blinked hard several times, and then took more wine. I watched her drink, and I wondered what it would be like to have someone love me with that commitment and that intensity, and, in that moment, I wished that it were me.

  I said, "Jennifer, did Mark ever mention someone named Lewis Washington?"

  "No."

  "It might've been three or four months ago."

  "Maybe he said the name in passing and I wasn't paying attention, but I don't think so."

  I said, "Four months ago, Mark's REACT team went into a place called the Premier Pawn Shop to arrest Lewis Washington for fencing stolen goods. There was a struggle, and Lewis Washington died of massive head injuries."

  She stared at me.

  "The REACT team statement is that Washington pulled a gun and the head injuries resulted accidentally when team members tried to subdue Washington without the use of firearms. Washington's family said that Lewis didn't own a gun and was trying to go straight. The Washingtons sued the city and the LAPD, claiming wrongful death. The LAPD investigated, but found that there had been no wrongdoing."

  Jennifer Sheridan didn't move. She was staring at the far pictures. Mark and Jenny at the prom. Mark and Jenny after the big game. See them smile. See them laugh. "Was it Mark?"

  "The REACT team statement was that it was a combination of all five officers present, though Eric Dees, the team leader, took responsibility."

  She took a deep breath. "Mark never told me any of that."

  "How about the name Akeem D'Muere?"

  "No."

  "Akeem D'Muere is a gangbanger in South Central Los Angeles. He bosses a street gang called the Eight-Deuce Gangster Boys. Lewis Washington's family dropped their lawsuit because Akeem D'Muere told them that he'd kill them if they didn't."

  "He didn't tell me any of this. You think Mark has something to do with these people?"

  "I don't know if these two things are connected or not. Maybe they're not. Maybe Mark didn't tell you about Akeem D'Muere because he doesn't know."

  "He didn't tell me about any of this." She was shaking her head.

  "This isn't going to be easy, Jennifer. What we find out about Mark might be a bad thing, just like Riggens said. It might be something that you'll wish you didn't know, and what you find out might change forever what you feel about Mark and about you with Mark. Do you see that?"

  "Are you telling me that we should stop?"

  "I'm not telling you one way or the other. I want you to know what you're dealing with, that's all."

  She turned away from me and looked at the pictures on the white Formica table, the pictures that had charted her life from the ninth grade until this moment. Her eyes turned pink and she rubbed at them. "Damn it, I didn't want to cry anymore. I'm tired of crying." She rubbed her eyes harder.

  I leaned forward and touched her arm. The arm that Riggens had hurt. I said, "Crying is dangerous. It's wise of you to avoid it this way."

  She said, "What?" Confused.

  "First, there's the dehydration, and then the lungs go into sob lock."

  She stopped the rubbing. "Sob lock?"

  I nodded. "A form of vapor lock induced by sobbing. The lungs lose all capacity to move air, and asphyxiation is only moments away. I've lost
more clients to this than gunshot wounds."

  "Maybe," she said, "that doesn't so much speak to the clients as to the detective."

  I slapped a hand over my chest. "Ouch."

  Jennifer Sheridan laughed, forgetting about the tears. "You're funny."

  "Nope. I'm Elvis." You get me on a roll, I'm murder.

  She laughed again and said, "Say something else funny."

  "Something else funny."

  She laughed again and made a big deal out of giving me exasperated. "No. I meant for you to say something funny."

  "Oh."

  "Well?" Waiting.

  "You want me to say something funny."

  "Yes."

  "Something funny."

  Jennifer Sheridan threw the stuffed lion at me but then the laughter died and she said, "Oh, my God. I am so scared."

  "I know."

  "I've got a college education. I have a good job. You're supposed to go out a lot, but I don't do that. You're supposed to be complete and whole all by yourself, but if I can't have him I feel like I'll die."

  "You're in love. People who say the other stuff are saying it either before they've been in love or after the love is over and it hasn't worked out for them, but no one says it when they're in the midst of love. When you're in love, there's too much at stake."

  She said, "I've never been with anyone who makes me feel the way that he makes me feel. I've never tried to be. Maybe I should've. Maybe it's all been a horrible mistake."

  "It's not a mistake if it's what you wanted." I was breathing hard and I couldn't get control of it.

  She stared down into her flute glass, and she traced her fingertip around its edge, and then she stared at me. She didn't look sixteen, now. She was lean and pretty, and somehow available. She said, "I like it that you make me laugh."

  I said, "Jennifer."

  She put down the flute glass. "You're very nice."

  I put down my glass and stood. She went very red and suddenly looked away. She said, "Ohmygod. I'm sorry."

  "It's all right."

  She stood, too. "Maybe you should go."

  I nodded, and realized that I didn't want to go. The sharp pain came back behind my eyes. "All right."