Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "Everything seemed to be riding on it."

  "And now it's failed."

  Merci nodded, looked out the window at the completed fall of darkness. She disliked the winter months, when the light was gone by five and the nights seemed to last forever.

  "Your partner may start looking for a place to do it. It's just like a homicide—he'll need means, motive and opportunity. With cops, it's almost always guns. You need to take the next step, Merci. You need to ask him the question. Be blunt about it if you have to: Are you thinking of killing yourself?"

  "I know," she said quietly.

  "Merci, is he absentee any more than you'd expect, given the situation?"

  "He's gone a lot. I get the feeling he won't do anything while she's alive."

  "You may be right, but you're the Gatekeeper, Merci—the first finder. You're the one who can aim him out of this. We've got great statistics on QPR success. It works. But it takes the first finder to make it work. You're it. Question him. Get him to me. That's my professional recommendation."

  On her way to the door, Merci stopped and hugged the doctor again.

  "Thank you."

  "You've done the right thing here, Merci. I wish the care you took of yourself were as thoughtful and kind as the care you take of your partner."

  "But I'm not suicidal, Joan. Come on. I'm fine."

  "Being not suicidal and being fine are two very different things. Make an appointment and tell me about how fine you are then, will you? Bring Tim. I'd love to see him again."

  "I'm not going to go through with that EMDR, with you or anyone else. I don't trust any initials but SD, P.D. or FBI."

  They smiled, laughed.

  "Look, girl, we don't have to do Eye Movement Desensitization if you don't want to. But the EMDR results have been fantastically good in situations very similar to yours."

  Merci opened the door. "But that's me, Joan—fantastically good in every way."

  "I love you, friend. Let me help you if I can. You've certainly helped me."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Tim was sitting on her father's lap at the dining-room table when Merci walked in. Clark's wedding album was open in front of them just out of reach of Tim's greedy hands. Tim shrieked when he saw her, struggled to get free.

  Merci could see the soft pain on Clark's face as he looked up at her. .Merci kissed his cheek, then lifted Tim away. The Man was getting: heavy. She glanced down at the album: a black and white shot of CIark and Marcella next to a giant wedding cake. They looked very young and very happy. Every couple of months Clark got the album out, got dreamy and quiet, took a walk or a drive, went to bed early.

  "No dinner for me tonight," she said. "I'll be going over to Mike

  She looked at her watch. The idea of seven o'clock sank through heart like a boulder through mud.

  "You work out your problems last night?"

  "Just the usual disagreements, Dad. We're fine."

  "He's a good guy."

  "I can still disagree with him, can't I?"

  He smiled a little, flipped the album page over.

  Merci showered while Tim pouted at her from behind the mesh his playpen. He hated confinement and held her fully responsible, but was either that or he'd wander off, crack his head on something, swallow a toy, knock over the TV or—Tim's favorite—play with the electrical outlets. He was exceptionally hazardous. And he was talking a lot now—long sentences of nonsense syllables mixed with words, all of which he seemed to think she understood. Wablum, bob-wop, mom-mom-mom, wob-lalla, mum-mum-mum, goy, goy, goy ...

  She said them back to him from behind the clear glass shower door, and he seemed to understand them just fine. What exactly was she telling him? Shaving her legs, she hoped it was something helpful.

  She loved the way Tim made her feel like she was an infant, too: carefree, opinionless, plugged directly into the moment, only one modifier necessary—mine, mine, mine. In Tim's world there was no seven o'clock date with a man you had once loved and were now reluctant even to look at.

  In the mirror she saw herself, a tall, naked, big-boned, dark-haired woman chattering away like a mockingbird.

  She carried on the conversation while she dried off, put on her makeup, got dressed. She made sure the clip was full, then put the borrowed Colt .45 in her purse, careful to turn her back to keep Tim from seeing it. Anything he saw, he'd try to get into.

  Half an hour later she was back in the kitchen with a glass of wine, Tim up in the highchair, Clark fiddling with a soup he'd been making for the last three days.

  "Back in '69, Dad, did you think there was something wrong with the Bailey case?" she asked.

  Clark exhaled and turned. "I was burg-theft, Merci."

  "You were a good investigator. You heard things."

  "I never heard anything like that."

  Clark had never talked much about his days on duty. He wasn't a raconteur, wasn't nostalgic, didn't think anybody was really interested. She knew for a fact that Clark could make a good story boring.

  Merci had adopted some of her father's fundamental beliefs about being a cop years before she thought about becoming one: You did the job, you shut up about it, there was them and us, loose lips sink ships.

  But she hadn't gotten her other beliefs about being a cop from Clark at all. She'd never understood where she did get them, certainly not from her rather beautiful, rather insecure, rather treacherous mother. Where she differed from Clark was: You kicked ass to the fullest lawful degree every day of your life, and that's how you kept criminals from taking over the planet. You were part of the balance of power, not just employee in a bureaucracy. What you did made a difference, a damn large one. You were right and you were good, and you had a privilege to believe it and a responsibility to act it.

  "Then what did you hear?"

  "I heard Thornton say the body was moved. He talked too much my opinion."

  "Thornton told me nobody cared about a dead whore. Glandis told me it was because nobody trusted anybody else in the department back then. Everybody worried about whether the next guy was a communist or not."

  "That was one rotten year, Merci. But it really wasn't comical or that simple."

  "No. I know."

  Merci watched Tim try to get the safety spoon to his mouth with a load of mashed potatoes on it. He stared at it so hard his eyes crossed. He started kicking. The potatoes were already on the bib, the highchair tray, his face, his hair, his fists. Mouth open, Tim pushed the spoon into his chin, dropped it, pushed it around the tray top before getting it again. Still kicking. She wiped him off with a damp washcloth for the third time in five minutes.

  "Were you for Bill Owen, or against?"

  Clark turned and looked at her, then came over and sat down. "Against, Owen had been sheriff for twenty-two years. He was old. I thought we needed a man more hands-on. Someone who would clean things up a little, get a shine on the department. See, we had lot of undeveloped, open land back in those days. We were kind of a rural force. But the county was growing and we needed an organizer, someone to bring us up to speed. We didn't have a crime lab. We didn't have a morgue. We didn't have a substation down in south county. Bill just liked to sit back and watch things happen."

  "What about him being tight with Meeks?"

  "Meeks was powerful, dishonest. Development money ran county government—everybody knew it. I tried to keep that out of my thinking, so far as the department was concerned. I didn't care who sheriff's friends were."

  Merci thought about this. It was pure Clark to remain neutral.

  "Were you a Bircher?"

  Clark sighed and turned a page in the wedding book. "Real briefly. About a year. But those guys threw too much heat, not enough light."

  "Did Owen know you were against him?"

  "Probably. But I was just a burg-theft investigator. I hardly ever talked to Bill Owen."

  "So who were the guys really against Owen then? The deputies who wanted him out?"

  Clark h
eld up the book to Merci. He smiled, pointing to the picture of Marcella on a beach in Mexico. It was an Acapulco honeymoon. She looked like a Bond girl—big hair, big boobs, big sunglasses, little bikini.

  "I asked you a question, Dad."

  "Beck Rainer was the most obvious. He was popular, a good lieutenant, the point man. Ed Vale spoke his piece. Then, a whole lot of rank-and-file guys—North, Wilberforce—guys like that. Jim O'Brien was a pretty outspoken young deputy then, a gung-ho Bircher. Funny as a rubber crutch. Tough as nails."

  "Evan's father?"

  "Yeah. Strange. Of all the men I worked with back then, the last one I'd pick as a suicide was Jim O'Brien. You never know who's going to crack."

  "Where was Pat McNally on the Bill Owen debate?"

  Clark nodded. "Pat was quiet. He wasn't an Owen supporter, but he didn't flaunt it."

  "It was sudden when Owen stepped down, wasn't it?"

  Clark shut the wedding album and shrugged. "Surprised everyone. I guess he'd just had enough. Merci, can I ask you where you're going with all this? There's no connect between department politics and Patti Bailey that I can see. The case got lost in the shuffle. Lots of them did. Don't swing for the fence every time."

  Merci felt her neck go hot. She wiped Tim's face again. He smiled and grabbed for the dish.

  "Look, Dad. Someone murdered Patti Bailey, cleaned it up real slick. Thornton takes the case, a good young dick, but he can't come up with anything. It looks to him like the body was moved. Thornton says there was no pressure for an arrest. Not from Owen in sixty-nine, from Vance Putnam, who replaced him. Not from his partner, Rymers, who ran Homicide Detail and made the assignments. Thornton says nobody cared about a dead whore in sixty-nine. Glandis tells me same thing. All right. But my question is why not? Why didn't anybody care? These men aren't incompetents. They're not animals. So why don't they care? Then you say the case got lost in the shuffle. Well, Dad, I appreciate that, but I want to know . . . what shuffle? They were busy. We're always busy. They didn't know when the sheriff was going to step down. Well, we don't know when Brighton's going to step down, but we don't lose the Aubrey Whittaker case in the damned alleged shuffle. The next and obvious question is: What if someone profited from her murder? Those are legit questions, if you ask me. Do you think that's swinging for the fence?"

  Clark nodded amiably, smiled. "Yeah, I do. But carry it through, Merci. Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. What I'm saying is, solve crime, not the world."

  Her father's gentle tone turned Merci's anger to shame. Her resolve deflated to the flat dread that was Mike McNally and seven o'clock. She looked at her watch. She loved her father without reservation but evenhandedness and rationality could embalm her passions in a second. In her mother's words: He puts my heart to sleep sometimes.

  "I got a letter today," she said. "All it said was 'For P. B.'—Patty Bailey, I assume. There was a key in it, apparently to a storage area in Riverside."

  That got his attention. He stared at her evenly, but she could see the wheels turning inside him. "Oh? That's damned strange."

  "I'll say. Someone helping. Someone interfering. Someone being cute. I'll know more tomorrow."

  "Then someone has an interest in your solving the case. Or in your not solving it. Be careful, Merci. What looks like help might not be.”

  "It's one more reason to kick butt, Dad. I'm going to solve the Bailey case if it kills me." Merci heard herself say this, ranking it among top five stupidest things she'd said in her life.

  "I don't mean that."

  Her father reached out and put a cool, dry hand on Merci's heated face. "I know you don't. Tim knows you don't, too. Hey, say hi to Mike for me, will you?"

  • • •

  She got Zamorra at home. His voice was flat and unemotional, like he was reading off a script.

  "Those prints I got out of Whittaker's kitchen, they didn't match up with any of the others we lifted. They're not hers. They're not Mike's. But they didn't score hits on AFIS or CAL-ID, not with the parameters I used. So he's not a printed criminal, and he's not law enforcement. Maybe it's Man Friend Number Two, like our neighbor friend heard. Maybe it's Man Friend Number Three—someone we haven't even considered yet. Whoever he is, he tore the drawers out and wrecked the runners the night she died."

  Merci tried to reconcile the new prints with what she'd found in Mike's barn. It was like trying to get two magnets to latch up when you had them turned wrong.

  "What if it was earlier?"

  "Meaning what?"

  "If the prints were left earlier they could be from a tradesman—a guy fixing the drawers, a plumber, a housecleaner she hired off the books for fifty bucks every other week."

  "A guy she hired to yank out the drawers, wreck the runners?"

  "No. Okay. No. I'm just trying to simplify, here."

  "Merci, they popped real quick with the fingerprint dust. They're fresh. There was a struggle in the kitchen, and it wasn't Aubrey Whittaker."

  It just wouldn't track, no matter how she tried to line things up. "What about Moladan?"

  "I checked. But how about that little church boy, the one who bought the forty-five for home protection?"

  "Lance Spartas."

  "I'll shake him down tomorrow. He'll be glad to leave me a good set of prints."

  "Shouldn't be hard, he's scared to death of being found out."

  A long pause.

  "Paul, the reason I called was to see how you're holding up."

  "Fine." The same emotionless tone.

  "Janine?"

  "Ruined from the waist down. Both sides. No chance of it ever coming back."

  "Fuck," she said, quietly.

  But Zamorra said nothing. What did she expect him to do, make feel her better?

  "What can I do for her, Paul?"

  "There's not one thing on earth."

  "What about you?"

  "Shoot me in the head. I'll be fine."

  This was her cue. She closed her eyes and jumped: "You thinking doing that yourself, Paul?"

  "I won't leave her. Ever."

  "But when she's gone? She'll be gone someday."

  "I'll deal with someday when it gets here."

  "I want you to talk to a friend of mine. She's a doctor."

  "That's funny."

  "I'm serious. A good doctor."

  Zamorra was silent for a few seconds. "I appreciate it, but no. The answer is a definite no."

  "You know, Paul, maybe a few days off would—"

  "If I don't get back to work soon, I'm going to shoot myself in head. Look, I'm going to be back there just as soon as I can. Day after tomorrow, Janine's coming home, so I won't be in the next couple. I’ve got to arrange for in-home nursing, get one of those hospital beds with the motors in them, get her set up with a wheelchair and a portable john. I'll make the time to lean on Spartas, but that's probably it."

  Merci tried to imagine what Paul Zamorra was feeling right now but she couldn't do it. At least with Hess it had been fast. It was never a matter of watching him die one inch at a time.

  "I'm with you, Paul."

  "Thanks. But you don't want to be anywhere near me."

  "Don't tell me what I want. There's an end to this, you know. It'll be over someday."

  Silence.

  "Yeah, I know. I look forward to that day. I feel like scum for saying that, but it's true."

  "You don't have years with her, Paul. But you've got days. You've got hours. Those hours are yours."

  "I don't want them."

  "Someday, you will. Talk to my friend. Just talk. Just once. It's absolutely confidential. She's a terrific person."

  "I'm not in the mood for terrific people."

  "I'm going to give you her business number now. Take your pen and write it down, Paul."

  "Merci—"

  "Just take the damned number, Paul. Write it down."

  She waited a beat, digging the address book from her purse, then read it off to him. She asked him to rep
eat it and he did, his voice flat and uninflected, like a digitized operator giving you the number.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Merci drove out Modjeska Canyon through the leafless, quivering oaks, her hand tight on the wheel and her eyes fixed on the stripe that seemed to lap out of infinity at her. Black sky, black earth, black road.

  She shivered, notched the heater up a level, took a deep breath. Alone in all this darkness, she felt trapped in a steel box, cut off from The Men, from her partner, from everybody and everything. She pictured a small boat vanishing into a black horizon and she was the only person on it. No, Jamine Zamorra was on it, too, sitting in a wheelchair with blankets over her legs.

  She told herself she was doing this for Mike. The same hopeless optimism that had let her secretly inspect his home now let her believe that she was giving Mike another chance. She quashed the dissenting voice inside her and she trembled because she knew she could be wrong. She'd been wrong before, profoundly.

  It had cost everybody something, Hess his life.

  For you, Mike, because I want to trust you. I want to believe in you. I want to know you.

  He was wearing his favorite black sweater when he opened the door. When he hugged her she smelled a new scent on him, something clean and alpine. She'd forgotten how strong his arms were.

  "You're cold, Merci."

  Her fingertips were numb. Mike guided her inside and had her sit by the fire.

  "It's good to see you," she said.

  It wasn't untrue. She was afraid at what he might have done. But she wasn't afraid of him. No matter what he'd done, part of him would be a man who had treated her well, probably better than she deserved.

  "Damn, it's good to see you. Red or white?"

  "Red."

  "Take your coat?"

  "Not now."

  The room was cold so she stayed by the fire, still wrapped in the coat. A minute later Mike came back with the wine. Lit by the orange flames in the firebox, Mike's face seemed to glow. She could see from the downiness of his hair that he'd just washed and dried it. After a shave Mike's cheeks flushed, and they were flushed now. Merci suddenly felt light-headed, like she was tipping over backward, slowly, but didn't have legs to stop herself. Just like Janine Zamorra didn't.