Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He watched her, eyes heavy beneath the blond forelock, mouth frozen downward.

  "I forbid you to ask me anything about Aubrey Whittaker, ever again."

  "Agreed."

  "You never agreed to anything before. I should go to jail more often. Why are you here? Just to gawk?"

  "No. To ... see you."

  "It's curiosity, isn't it? You're looking for what you missed. For the one thing that would tell you I could do something like that. For the dead giveaway. You think, since you were so blind for so long, that now it must be visible."

  "No. Just to see you."

  "You've done that."

  "And to see if there's ... anything I can do to help you."

  Mike smiled like a skull. "Help me?"

  "Yes. There's Danny and Big Pat and—"

  "Taken care of, woman. All taken care of. I am actually a man capable of taking care of my family. I even have dinner being delivered, because the slop they serve in here is so bad."

  Merci felt a great flush of shame and sadness break over her face. She wanted to run and run and run some more, never come back, never have to look this man in the eye again.

  "Okay. Then that's all, I guess."

  He stood. She could see how red his hands were from the cuffs. He held them up beneath his chin to let the blood run down. He looked little like he was praying.

  "Wait. There is one thing you can do. Feed the dogs. I got everything covered for the next few days, but I forgot the dogs."

  "I'd be ... I mean, sure. I've got that. Long as you need it."

  He looked at her. "Use your key. I'm sure you've got your warrent by now, so maybe you can combine it with your evidence search. Save yourself a trip."

  "It's Wheeler's and Teague's now."

  "No. This is ours, Merci. Yours and mine."

  « • •

  On her way through the parking lot Merci saw Lynda Coiner walk toward the jail entrance. She moved with purpose but not hurry, eyes straight ahead, her purse slung over her shoulder and a white paper bag in her hand.

  • • •

  Merci entered Mike's home in the blackness of Modjeska Canyon, just the glow of the porch light to guide her way.

  Inside she smelled the familiar smells as she fumbled for the switch. The fire was out and the house was cold. She stood for a moment; pictured herself there with Tim, Jr., Mike and Danny, remember clearly the happy gab of their little half-families rolled into one almost whole family and she inhaled deeply, dizzily, realizing how many thing Mike had killed along with Aubrey Whittaker.

  She got the kennel key from beneath a kitchen cabinet, where hung on a hook beside the coffee mugs. Mike had kept the dog locked since some neighborhood kids climbed the fence one day and let the dogs out to play. Polly had wandered two miles down the canyon before someone found her and called.

  Outside, the bloodhounds started yelping, and Merci swore there was something mournful in their voices but she knew she was eager self-punishment and if it took personifying three dogs to beat her even lower she would leap at the chance to do it.

  "Hi, doggies," she said quietly. "Hi. Mike couldn't make it tonight so I'm going to be your server. My name is Merci."

  She opened the gate to the run, then let Dolly, Molly and Polly out of their cages. Dolly and Molly shared a kennel space, but Polly, a true bitch, had to have her own. They grunted and knocked up against Merci's legs, looking up at her with what she believed were lugubrious expressions. She knelt and pet them, scratched behind their ears, ran her hand along their soft shiny coats.

  She collected their bowls. The dogs—Mike always called them The Girls—followed her to the food bin, where she used an old dog food can to which Mike had soldered a handle to measure out the kibbles. She gave them each a little extra.

  When she had lured them back into their cages with the full bowls, she closed the doors and swung the gate shut behind her. She locked it and took the key back inside. The whole time she felt this thick wet lump in the bottom of her throat, just waiting to burst out.

  The great betrayer, she thought: Rayborn the treacherous, Rayborn the false, Rayborn and her thirty pieces of silver. Where, exactly, was that silver? It would not be found in the faces of the people she worked with. It wouldn't line her pocketbook, her smile or her soul. It's nowhere, she thought, because I didn't do it for money, I did it because it was right. Right. She was beginning to hate that word.

  A few minutes later she was driving back down the dark canyon, her right hand dangling into the space behind the seat. The treetops were capped in silver light, branches bare and still. The stars were bright and there wasn't a cloud. The man in the moon looked down at her like she should be hung for treason, and she agreed, almost wholeheartedly.

  She swung her arm back to the wheel and commanded herself to get her shit together. It was harder now to master her will, to make herself believe the things she wanted to believe, to force that will upon the world. It used to be easy, but she was younger then and more foolish.

  She opened a window and felt the cold wind on her face. She held the steering wheel with one hand at twelve o'clock and punched the big V-8 up to eighty when she hit the interstate.

  Clark was watching TV when she got home. He looked at her cautious as she walked into the living room with a rather large Scotch on ice and sat down.

  Earlier that evening, when she'd told her father about Mike's arrest, Clark's face had gone pale. He'd quickly agreed to miss his poker night appearance to watch Tim, Jr., though they both acknowledged—without comment—how hard it would be for Clark to sit down at a card tablet with Big Pat.

  Now, hours later, at least he had his color back.

  "Damn," she said quietly. She leaned forward, sipped the power drink, let some time pass. "I worked that case, Dad? You know, did the usual things? Went by the book. Did what I do. And it led me straight to Mike. And no matter how hard I tried to bend things, see over the tops of them, it kept coming up Mike. I did something I shouldn’t have done—I went to his place, used my key and did a search. I found threatening letters the girl had written him. I found bloody boots in closet with the same sole print as her killer wore. I found a noise suppressor to fit a forty-five. I even fired some brass from his gun to compare against the crime-scene brass: match. I was looking for something that would point me away, tell me I was off. But I just... buried him.

  "Mike buried Mike."

  She drank again, sat back. "So now, we make our case and Mike makes his. We got the search warrant late today, so the judge covered my . . . overzealous police work. Nobody will have to know what duplicitous bitch I am, if they don't already."

  "Merci, your investigation led to an arrest. And who was being duplicitous?"

  "Yeah, I know."

  "Then don't forget it. This isn't the time for you to be pounding yourself down again, girl. This is the time for you to hold your head high and take your shots. You are going to take them. But you did what was right and you did what was hard. You could have hidden behind the badge and no one would have ever known the truth."

  She nodded. Clark's words seemed to skip off her skin, like she was made of some ceramic that nothing could pierce.

  "You know what I keep picturing? Me. Me, walking into work on the day when everybody's realized that I was the one who busted Mike McNally. I can't do it, Dad. I can't walk down that hall to the detective pen with everybody in the department hating my guts. How am I going to do my job anymore? How am I going to get to do the things I wanted to do?"

  "You're going to find a way. That's what people do."

  She looked at him steadily, understanding that his unconditional love was just like what she felt for Tim. It was a beautiful thing, maybe the most beautiful thing she'd witnessed on earth, but it could make fools of people and it often did.

  "I'll find a way," she said quietly.

  "I know you will."

  "Listen to me, whining about me. The me expert. You know what I wish? I wish I coul
d wrap up in a ball under the covers and could molt like a larvae, or a pupae, or whatever in hell those worms turn into. Then hatch out into an angel. An angel, but an angel with an H&K nine. And I could fly around catching the creeps and everything I did would be perfect. And I wouldn't have to walk into headquarters and look at two thousand sheriff's employees who think I betrayed them, who'd like to have my heart on a platter."

  She wondered what Joan Cash would make of her little speech.

  Clark chuckled. "An angel with a gun. No. You'd miss your son too much. And I'd miss you. I never wanted an angel, just a daughter."

  "Yeah, well, you got one."

  She stood, legs heavy, head aching, her heart beating slow and hard like it was doing so against its will.

  Halfway across the room she stopped and looked back at her father. "You want to know what I kept thinking when I was finding that stuff in Mike's place? I kept thinking that there was still one good thing that could come of it."

  "What?"

  "I wouldn't have to marry him."

  She couldn't read the expression on Clark's face. He stood, walked over and put his arms around her. He was a lean man, but tall, and even now his arms were strong.

  She felt the tears burning her eyes but she didn't cry. She heard herself speak, tear-choked and snot-clogged, a voice she hated because sounded weak and dependent and useless. "I wish I could stop the things that come into my head."

  "They'll go away."

  "Take me out and shoot me."

  "Take you to bed. Come on, girl. It's been way too long a day."

  • • •

  She checked on Tim, made sure his cap was on, got the blankets up nice and snug. He was the most perfect living thing she had ever seen.

  Then she went into her room and sat up in bed with the lights on, thinking. She could hear the creaks of the old house and the breeze outside. Twice, her father's phone rang, and twice she heard the almost imperceptible murmur of his voice. It was close to midnight.

  She told herself that she had done the right thing. She wondered why the right thing had to feel so wrong. Then she slowly allowed herself to admit that her fall from grace within the department was going to acceptable. She gathered this idea just one little bit at a time, like sweeping table crumbs into a palm, careful not to get too much all at once.

  It doesn't matter, she thought, that you won't be running Homicide Detail by forty, or Crimes Against Persons by fifty, or be a viable candidate for sheriff by age fifty-eight—those were the dreams of a different woman. Maybe it would be better this way.

  Maybe along with the disrespect she would get from the rank and file would come a little bit of freedom, too. Freedom for Tim, for herself, for whatever passions she might find outside of work. Her self-pity crept in, and she wondered why a big, strong woman like herself, innately wired for the task of law-enforcement, had to fall victim to circumstance. Was it just bad luck? Would good luck follow?

  Passions I might find outside of work.

  She thought about that and admitted she had none, except Tim. I had no hobbies, no interests, no sports she played or art she loved; had no real desire to travel, learn a new language or engage a culture other than her own. She watched movies for diversion, TV as a sedative, read books exclusively for facts, went to the big art shows up in L.A. because someone else always got the tickets.

  She shook her head and smiled unhappily. Wasn't she just exactly like Hess in this way? Wasn't his single-mindedness and devotion to work what had first attracted her to him? She realized it was. And she also realized that, even back then, when she looked at the old warrior Hess she was looking at herself.

  Admiring the great lonely hero she wanted to become. That was part of why she had loved him.

  When she took the idea of work-as-life one step further, Merci had to admit that there was something else about it that stole her heart: Work was something she could do alone. Sure, she would always have a partner. Sure, she would always be part of a team and a bureaucracy. But the essence of the work was individual effort, you against them. You against the whole world. You devised the broad strategies, made the mundane procedural calls as well as the split-second decisions that could—and often did—save a life or end one. It was impressive, really, the power that the world gave you when it issued you a badge and gun. It was all up to you.

  As she sat there, Merci pictured herself sitting there: a dark-haired woman with a mirthless face and a half-empty glass of Scotch in her hand. Alone. This was always how she saw herself. Never connected to a department, a husband, a partner, a son, a father, a family. Just alone.

  What exactly is it, she wondered, that makes you so special, so singled-out, so solitary and self-sustaining?

  Nothing, she thought. Nothing at all.

  After she had shot and killed the murderer Colesceau, Merci had felt her willpower depart. It had actually gone out of her, like breath. She had never told anyone. It was gone for several months, though she disguised the loss as best she could.

  It came back slowly, piece by piece, and it was arranged differently than before. It was stiffer now. It was brittle and less tensile. It was afraid of new things. It was familiar but foreign, too, like a friend's face changed by surgery, like a twin you haven't seen for fifty years.

  And Merci had understood since that day with Colesceau that you are not only what you make of yourself but what the world makes of you. This world, the one you see around you right now. If there was idea more humbling and frightening she had yet to think it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Merci stood with Paul Zamorra in the back of the conference room while Sheriff Chuck Brighton, County of Orange, told the press and media that one of his own vice sergeants had been arrested for the murder of a prostitute.

  Detectives Wheeler and Teague—one thin and one bulky—sat at a table behind the podium, trying to look bored.

  Assistant Sheriff Melvin Glandis, taut with uniform, took over from Brighton to explain the investigation and field questions.

  "Thank you," he said, stepping to the podium, though nobody had offered him one thing to be thankful for. Brighton stood aside but not back. Glandis nodded slightly, a man comfortable taking orders, his mouth set and grim.

  Merci watched the camera lights blanch their faces, saw that every pit and wrinkle was highlighted by them, saw the sheen of sweat at Glandis's brow when he finished his brief summary of the investigation. Glandis sighed when a reporter asked how and when Sergeant Mike McNally became a suspect in the case.

  "I'm not at liberty to discuss that at this time," Glandis said. "Next? Susanne?"

  "Was Sergeant McNally involved with the woman?"

  Glandis shook his head. "Sergeant McNally was part of a Vice Detail operation to curb outcall prostitution in the county."

  "Then he knew Ms. Whittaker?"

  "They had worked together on a limited basis, yes."

  "Was there a personal relationship?"

  "I'm not at liberty to discuss that at this time. Next? Dan?"

  "Where is Sergeant McNally right now?"

  "In the protective block at the county jail."

  "Have you recovered the murder weapon, and if so, can you describe it?"

  "We impounded a forty-five caliber Colt automatic belonging Sergeant McNally. It is in our crime lab as we speak, undergoing a battery of firearms, toolmark and ballistic analyses. Next? Brice?"

  "Did you find the silencer?"

  "We have a warrant to search for such a device."

  "McNally's property, or somewhere else?"

  "I'm not at liberty to—"

  "How's it look for special circumstances and a death penalty?"

  Merci cringed at Brice's tone of voice, making light of the idea executing Mike McNally. She saw Glandis redden, too.

  "What do you mean?" asked Glandis. "How's it look? This isn’t acircus here, Brice, this is a man's life. And a woman's."

  "The woman's life is over. So, special circumst
ances or not?"

  "That isn't our decision. We made an arrest based on evidence. You can talk to the district attorney about that. Next? Bowman?"

  "Mel, did he act alone?"

  "We believe so."

  "What was his motive?"

  "We don't know yet. We're looking at a couple of possibilities."

  "Do you have a witness?"

  "I'm not at liberty .. ."

  Merci saw Gary Brice turn in his seat and look back at her. He peered at her over the tops of his glasses, a gaze of pointed question of the fact that she and Zamorra weren't up there at the table instead Wheeler and Teague. She shook her head slightly, looking away.

  Brice was the only reporter who knew about her off-duty relationship with Mike—so far as she knew. Did reporters gossip like cops? Maybe not. Given the bigness of this breaking story, none of them had thought to ask why one team of detectives had started the investigation and another had taken it over. Gary Brice, she knew, was waiting to ask her in private.

  Zamorra whispered in her ear, reading her mind again like it was easy, "Tell him it's none of his damned business. Or I will."

  "I can do that," she murmured back.

  "Meet me in the conference room when you get done with him. I've got something."

  She nodded and headed out.

  • •

  Brice caught up with her in the hall and Merci took him outside. She put on her sunglasses against the perfect after-storm sunshine, walking fast with Brice beside her.

  "I could have used a heads-up on this one," he said.

  "We arrested him last night, Gary. Late."

  "What gives—first it's your case and now it's not."

  "Mike and I are friends, you know that. It's just a matter of common sense and procedure."

  "Conflict of interest."

  "You could call it that."

  "So, how do I describe your relationship with Mike, in my paper?"

  "Good friends, if you have to at all. The meat of this story isn't Mike and me. It's Mike."