"She would forgive you," Carrie said. "And she would insist that you get back to work. She was very proud of your work. If you don't go back to work, then what do their deaths mean? Helping sick people is the only good thing that can come from such a horrible tragedy."
Now it was John's turn to wipe his eyes.
Not here.
Not now.
Hold it in, he told himself.
Carrie kissed him on the cheek, and when she stepped back, she dug into her bag, and pulled her keys out once more.
"We both have to forgive ourselves, John. It's the only thing left to do."
Carrie turned and walked to her car, got in, and drove away without looking back. As John watched her leave, he turned to survey the parking lot once more—wondering to himself if it would be for the last time. Then his cell phone rang. He answered.
"Hello," John said.
"Dr. Randall, this is Detective Bell. I'd like to meet with you."
CHAPTER 42
John leaned over the railing and watched the dark green ocean waves strike the pier pilings below, momentarily splitting in two, spraying white foam in the air, reforming on the other side, and thinning to a white foam blanket as they covered the shoreline. Above him, puffy white clouds slowly crossed a clear blue sky. It was still chilly, but sunny. Brisk and clean. It felt to John like the sort of day to start a new project. A man had more energy on a day like this. Yes, start a list of supplies, drive to the hardware store, buy your stuff, get back home, open the garage, and start building. But John had his project—find the killer. And Megan was his mentor. Certainly his lover. No matter what he called her, she was there and she was helping him. He would listen, ask questions, and then listen again. It was good. He couldn't argue with that. It was good and he felt good about it. Better every day.
Detective Bell had asked for a face-to-face, but not at the station. The Greenwood City Pier—7:00 a.m. He didn't mind the time. He liked early mornings. He liked the quiet, and he hadn't been to the pier in a long time. It was nice. The smell of the ocean and the sea gulls flying overhead. A group of surfers were out, but the waves were nil and they weren't getting much in terms of a good ride. John turned back from the rail, walked down a few more feet, and sat on a concrete bench. He wasn't sitting there for very long before he spotted Detective Bell walking his way, a cup of coffee in each hand. When he reached John, he extended his right hand.
"Coffee?"
John took the cup. "Thanks."
"I hope you don't mind black," Detective Bell said.
"That's fine."
Bell sat down next to John and took a sip from his cup. They sat like that, sipping their coffee in silence for a minute, before Bell finally spoke.
"I grew up just a couple miles from here," Bell said.
John nodded.
"On sixteenth street. Born in sixty-two. Got a sister with her own State Farm office in Seattle. Another sister's married with three kids down in Lincoln," Bell said as he looked at John.
"You got kin?" Bell said.
"No," John said, shaking his head.
"Too bad. It's good to have family."
"I agree," John said,
"Family is like the glue of life, wouldn't you say, Doc?"
John was beginning to wonder where this was leading. He was hoping he might be able to help the case by answering more questions about the killer. He figured Bell wanted to get him alone to make it easier than being inside the station with all the other detectives looking his way. But this conversation did not seem to be going in that direction.
"Sure," John said.
Bell took another sip of his coffee, leaned back, exhaled, and brought his left hand up to the bridge of his nose, then rubbed his forehead like he had a headache.
"You're fucking my partner, John."
John froze. Before he could respond, Bell spoke again.
"How is she supposed to do her work if she's banging you all the time?"
"It's her choice," John said, not knowing what else to say.
"Didn't it seem a little too easy?" Bell said.
"What do you mean, easy?"
Bell sat up, turned to face John, and said, "Let me clear a few things up for you, okay, cuz you really don't know what you're into. How do I put this?"
Bell looked off, nodding his head, as if he were reading down a bullet list of story titles, then turned back to John and said, "There were three of us—three wide-eyed, green recruits. It was me, Russell Ash, and a cute twenty-three year old cadet named Megan Palmer. She was the top female cadet in the class, number fifty-nine overall. Fifty-nine out of three hundred and five. Beat me by a hundred."
A seagull flew over them and hovered, waiting for something to be thrown his way, but soon flew away.
"Russell and Megan hooked up during basic training" Bell shook his head. "It was doomed from the start. We all graduated, hit the streets, and life was good. Russell and I eventually became partners. But you know what, Doc, some men have no business being with a woman. Know what I mean?"
John did, and again wondered where this was all leading to, but at the same time the name "Russell" had struck a chord.
Was this the same Russell that Anna spoke of?
"Every Monday morning I'd get the debrief. Russell loved his debrief. ′I fucked her this way. I did her that way.′ All he could talk about. After a while, I stopped listening. It wasn't right. I mean, she was my friend, too." Bell said as he shook his head and took another sip of coffee.
"The things he'd make her do," Bell said.
John looked at Bell. This was beginning to make sense to him. It was the same Russell. Had to be, and yet, that's not the impression of Russell that Anna and Megan had given him. Bell wasn't making any sense, and John wanted to wrap up this little meeting.
"So why did you ask me out here today?" John said.
Bell ignored the question and pushed on. "I was best man, you know. Three months later…Russell was dead. Killed on a domestic call. The worst kind. We'd been called out there before. Carson Apartments. But, well, the way I see it, what goes around comes around, know what I mean, Doc? Anyway, Megan never fully recovered."
"Detective Ash was married?" John said.
Bell nodded. "She's a widow. You didn't know that did you. She puts on a good face, and I've tried to help, but she just won't listen to me. Always been the independent type. Strong, you know. As long as I stick to business, she's fine." Bell stared ahead. "She hasn't told you, has she?"
John shook his head vaguely.
"Yeah, well…"Bell stood, walked to the edge of the pier, and poured the remainder of his coffee over the side. John watched him from behind, noticing his thick body and broad shoulders. Bell turned back and approached John, looking down at him.
"The thing is, Doc," Bell said, "she's got issues. That's what matters. She's like family to me, and she's got issues. You're just another issue."
Bell bent over at the waist so his eyes met John's.
"It's time you walked away, Doc," Bell said and stood up straight, still looking down at John, to make sure his point stuck.
"I think that's best," Bell said.
Then Bell turned and walked back down the pier, through a small group of kids, and disappeared into a parking lot.
Less than a hundred feet away, tucked around the corner of a dumpster at the end of the pier, an Olympus HD digital camera equipped with a 1,000x zoom lens and holding a memory card full of fifteen-megapixel pictures of the meeting between the doctor and the detective…snapped photo number twenty-eight.
Click.
CHAPTER 43
The color photographs were laid out across the dark twenty-foot-long oak conference room table, which was stained with coffee rings and cigarette burns from years of use. Marcus made sure the best photos were directly under the canned lights in the ceiling—the better for Morry to scrutinize—which was exactly what he was doing.
"What the hell is this?" Morry asked, pointing to the ph
oto of John and Megan in John's front yard the morning his home was searched.
"I said the same thing when I saw that," Marcus said.
"So what the hell is it?"
"She's handing him her business card."
"Oh," said Morry.
"But you should have seen the whole thing," Marcus said. "The detective's hand lingered in his and she was looking up at Dr. Randall with this come-hither smile."
"Come hither?" Morry said. “What the hell do you know about a come hither? You're too damn young. You'd squirt your panties before a girl even got close to you. Come hither, my ass. She's a detective for Christ sakes!"
Marcus argued, "Call it what you want, Morry, she was giving him some sort of message, you could tell by the way he watched her walk away. He stared at her." Marcus nodded down the table and said, "Look at the rest of them."
Morry took his time, scanning the rest of the photographs, with Marcus adding his two cents whenever Morry asked for it, but Marcus knew the payoff was coming far down at the end. Morry was taking his sweet time and Marcus almost couldn't stand it anymore. Finally, Marcus backed up and waited.
Then it came.
"What the fuck is this?" Morry yelled.
Morry turned, his eyes wide, staring back at Marcus, as if he needed the sexually inexperienced young man to explain the ways of life to him. Without looking at the photograph, Marcus said, "I said the same thing."
"They're fucking kissing," Morry said.
"Yup," Marcus said.
"Why the fuck is a homicide detective kissing this former prime suicidal suspect?" Morry said.
"That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn't it?"
Morry was still staring back at Marcus, but Marcus gave another chin nod at the table, causing Morry to turn back and proceed down the conference table. Once he got to the very end he stopped again, staring at one photo in particular. Again, Marcus knew exactly which one it was and once again Morry turned back to face Marcus, this time he held the photo in his hand, waving it in the air.
"You're just full of surprises aren't you?" Morry said.
Marcus couldn't get the shit-eating grin off his face. He finally stepped forward and took the photo from Morry, laying it back down on the table.
"I almost shit my pants when I saw him walk up." Marcus said. "They sat there for about ten minutes. The detective did most of the talking."
Morry asked, "Was he yelling at him?"
"Didn't seem to be," Marcus said, "but I know what you mean. Looks like it in the photo. But I was too far away to hear the voices, so I can't say for sure."
Morry turned back to face the table, put a Camel in between his lips, and snapped open his silver lighter, lighting up in the conference room and sending a curl of smoke overhead. Marcus looked around, then up at the overhead sprinkler, thinking of the running pool all the reporters had going on whether Morry would set off the fire alarms, again, before the end of the year. He made a mental note to recheck the odds.
Morry pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, turned, and pointed at Marcus, stabbing the air between them with his cigarette while he spoke. "This is what you're going to do. If you're right about what you've told me, and I think you are, you're going to keep following this guy Randall. Wherever he goes. Whatever he does. You follow him. Keep taking pictures. Camp out on his street. Call him or stop by enough to keep your feet in the door. But not too much. Be his friend."
Morry turned back to the photos, took another pull on his cigarette, blew out the smoke. He looked down at the photo of Detective Bell, bent down, his large frame looming over Dr. Randall sitting on the bench, index finger pointed at the doctor's face, and said, "My boy, you might be partying with Mr. Pulitzer this time next year."
CHAPTER 44
The sex started at the local Coffee Bean bathroom at 9:15 a.m. that morning. The coffee house was always crowded on a Saturday morning with people running to appointments and Bible meetings, complete with a caffe latte, no foam. Mothers would rush in, or send in their daughters, to grab their four-dollar drink of choice before running to the soccer game or the shopping mall. The coffee house was tucked into an L-shaped center, between a Supercuts and a Verizon store, and today's crowd was in full swing. The line was seven deep; with five people standing off to one side waiting for their blended drink. The latest Sting CD played.
Megan was already there when John entered. She caught his eye, turned toward the back hallway, and entered the women's bathroom. She was wearing a beige sweater that clung to her breasts, a short, loose-fitting navy-blue skirt, and high heels. No stockings. No panties. Once inside, Megan threw her right high-heeled shoe onto the handicap bar along the wall and leaned forward over the toilet, facing the corner, gripping the bars with both hands. John stepped in the room, locked the door, stepped to Megan, dropped his pants, and entered her from behind. She was already wet. He was already hard. After two orgasms for Megan and one for him, they walked out past the unknowing patrons. They drove separately, John following Megan, to Jack's Independent Bookseller half a mile away on Hawthorne Boulevard. Once they'd parked, Megan exited her car and walked past John's car while he was still inside. She dropped her keys, and knowing that John was watching, locked her knees and bent over to pick them up…slowly.
Inside the store, Megan hit the magazine racks and kept one eye on the front door, again catching John's gaze after he stepped inside. Once she knew he was coming, she waited for him to round the corner and when he did, she slowly lifted her skirt, showing him her shaved vagina.
A fiftyish-looking man stood behind Megan, flipping through a Car and Driver magazine, totally oblivious to the ongoing sex charade between the highly skilled homicide detective presently working the most talked-about serial killer case in state history and the once suicidal emergency room doctor, standing just three feet to his right. They continued cruising through the bookstore, from automotive to Harry Potter, pretending not to know each other, flashing, posing, opening their mouths, and letting their tongues linger. As they moved through the store, they unknowingly pulled into the "Relationships" and "Self -Help" aisle.
***
It was John's plan to ask her about Russell the very next time he spoke to her, but she had left instructions on where to find her on his cell phone and made it clear they were going to have sex. His mind said no. His dick said, Are you crazy?
His dick won.
John found a book on sexual positions and began flipping through the pictures, looking for one to show Megan. Maybe something they could try in the bookstore bathroom or maybe behind the bookstore in the backseat of his car. Never in his life had he had so much fun with a woman. Not until he'd met Megan had he ever had the kind of free-form, anything goes sex. Not even with Paulette. But he didn't want to think about her—no, he wouldn't think about her. Not now. He didn't want it to stop. He didn't know where it was going, and for now he didn't care. He was lost in whatever world it was and he didn't want to find his way out. He was content to float…and he'd worry about where he landed sometime later.
But there was still the question of Russell.
They were facing the same shelf of books and John could see from the corner of his eye that Megan was staring intently at a book near the top right corner of the shelf. But she stood very still, for a very long time. John finally turned to face her, and that's when he noticed the tear in her left eye. She was completely still, just staring upward when she finally acknowledged John's presence beside her. She quickly brushed the tear from her eye, turned away from him, and disappeared around the corner. John returned his book to the shelf, took three short steps to his right, and looked up to where Megan had been looking.
What was she looking at?
Then he saw it, spotting the title on the book spine. He immediately knew why she was crying. It confirmed what he had suspected…but hadn't wanted to admit. He knew, but he didn't want to know. Didn't want to ask. Asking would be like a kid asking Dad how much it had cost him
to fly the whole family to Disney World. Dad didn't want to think about it and if you really wanted to keep having fun, you just didn't bring it up. But John knew that what he had with Megan was now over. It would never be the same again. Not now, because now, he had to ask the question. He'd have to get her alone. Someplace safe and non-threatening.
This could get ugly.
Russell would have to wait. To ask about both would be too much for her to take at one time. He'd ask her to his place or maybe just park at the beach in his car. That might be a good place. They could talk for as long as she wanted. Turn off the cell phones and just listen to the sound of the waves in the background. No matter where he broached the subject, he'd have to do it soon. This wasn't something they could ignore. She saw the book, and she'd cried.
He saw the book, and knew why. John reached up and pulled the book down, turned it over in his hands, opened the back cover, and read about the author. Yes, she was telling her story. How she'd made it through. The author's name was Jennifer Moore, PhD in Psychology. The book was titled, Sex Addiction: Battling the Affliction and Coming Out Whole on The Other Side.
He heard Detective Bell's words ring in his ears…
You're just another issue, John.
CHAPTER 45
"Where have you been?"
Gerald watched as Megan dropped her purse on her desk and turned on her computer. After a quick good-bye to John, Megan had dashed home, showered while crying her eyes out, then got dressed and drove herself to work. It was two forty-five in the afternoon. She'd worked on her excuse as she drove in.
The cleaners, then to the tire store for new tires.
Forgot to turn on her cell phone. No, that never works.
Tire store in a bad cell area. No coverage. What could she do about that?
Needed the new tires. No, he might check the tires. Brakes. New brakes. Can't see those.
"At the cleaners, then got new brakes. Mine were squealing." Megan flopped down in her chair and slid the mouse left to right until her monitor sprang to life.
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