Red Light

by T. Jefferson Parker

  He looked at her, then pulled the letter from the envelope. He read it slowly, looking up at her twice. Then he slid the letter back into envelope.

  "Interesting words," he said.

  "And more of them, right here. Patti Bailey's."

  She hit the play button on her tape recorder and turned up the volume.

  Man: "Whazzat?"

  Woman: "Zwhat?"

  Man: "Clickin' sound."

  Woman: "My bubble gum." Chewing sounds.

  "It was actually the sound of Patti's tape recorder going on."

  Brighton eyed her sharply. Merci held up the key that O'Brien had sent her, courtesy of Mel Glandis.

  "Inland Storage, Riverside," she said. "That's where your box of Bailey evidence got to. After it disappeared from your unit at Security."

  A look of bewilderment crossed his face. She saw that Brighton couldn't understand who had betrayed him. Because it was so much like what he himself had done to Bill Owen thirty-two years back. She wondered if schemers were most easily manipulated, if their cunning left a blind spot.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "It doesn't matter right now. What I found in the box does."

  "You tape-recording this?"

  "I don't have to. You know what you're listening to right now. You've heard it. More than once, I'd guess. Bailey and Meeks. Bailey and Bill Owen. Bailey and Jim O'Brien. He shoots her in the back. You can hear her hit, hear him swear and cry. You put him up to it. You and Big Pat. Just like the letter says."

  Brighton was nodding now, as if in agreement with some minor point of order. "Jim O'Brien's dying words, thirty-two years after the fact, won't carry much weight in court."

  "They'd carry a lot of weight on the front page of the Times, the Register or the Journal."

  "You won't do that."

  "Why not?"

  "You don't get it, do you?"

  "It's all pretty much right here."

  "No, Rayborn—the consequences. The consequences of you going to the media, or the Grand Jury, or whatever you're thinking."

  "I understand that you'd be disgraced. Between the Bailey tape and O'Brien's letter, that's evidence of conspiracy to commit murder, blackmail, obstruction of justice."

  "Sure. You could ruin me, but what would it do to you?”

  "Nothing good."

  "Then I don't understand. Why are you even thinking of this? It goes against your department. It goes against your superiors. It goes again your friends and supporters. You're going to bring down everybody around you. For what? Why?"

  "For Patti Bailey. She's the one we were supposed to serve and protect. Remember?"

  Brighton shook his head, looking down at Tim. Then he scooped the boy and sat down by the window. He bounced Tim gently on knee, his big weathered hands secure around Tim's soft middle.

  The boy looked up at Merci and smiled, proud to be riding, proud be on the lap of a big strong man.

  "Let me set up a couple of scenarios for you, Merci. One: You expose all this to solve a thirty-two-year-old homicide case—fine. I'm deposed and Mel Glandis steps in as interim sheriff. Pat McNally goes down the drain. The men and women in the department look on you as a vulture---the detective who accused her own boyfriend of murder, the detective who dusted off an irrelevant case from three decades ago and made everyone suffer for her ideals. You'd be vapor. You'd be gone. They'd haze right into the smog. So, you play the child and everyone gets hurt. Including you. Tim here—you'd be bringing him into a world that despises his mother. Nice. Great. Just how I'd want to raise my son."

  Tim still bounced happily on Brighton's knee.

  "Okay, here's scenario number two. You compromise with youself, just a little. You know the truth about Bailey, you can let it out any time you want. It's not going away. O'Brien killed her—not me or Pat or body else. In your heart the case is solved, and there's no killer on the streets to do it again. Bailey's never coming back, no matter which way you play it. That's what you pay. Now, what do you get? You get whatever you want. Head of Homicide Detail, then Crimes Against Persons Section? Take it. A shot at my office a few years down the line? Take it. I'll back you with every ounce of my power and gratitude. You'd have a department that's with you instead of against you. You'd have a world that likes the sight of your face. You'd have a way to bring up this guy with some advantages. And you can keep Clark out of it."

  She felt the blood rise to her face, the quiet acceleration of her heartbeat. "What's to leave out?"

  Brighton sighed, held Tim up for a face-to-face. "Tim, your grandfather paid for the storage of the Bailey evidence for ten years. Twenty-eight dollars a month, cash. He helped me, Tim. He helped an old friend stay above the bullshit that we all have to live with every day. That's what we cops do. Anyway, Tim, you can figure your old grandpa into the conspiracy, if that's what you want to do. He's part of it. It would come out and he'd suffer. But he did the right thing. He understood the difference between being a child, like you, and being a man."

  Brighton looked at Merci, his eyes sharp and cold. "Jim killed that girl to protect himself and his friends. We covered it up for the good of the department, Sergeant. We covered it up to help get me where I needed to go. To help Frank Stills onto the Board of Supervisors. To keep the county clean. To make it a good place to live. To bring up kids like this one."

  "Don't blame my son for your crimes, Brighton. That sickens me. It's all disposable with you, isn't it? Disposable law. Disposable friends. Disposable women. Who did Meeks and Owen get to beat up Jesse Acuna?"

  "Some young L.A. cops. We learned of the arrangement through the tapes, used it to get a substation we needed badly. That was part of the deal when Stills stepped up and Meeks stepped down. What's it matter now?"

  Brighton stood, Tim still between his hands. He held out the infant and Merci took him.

  "Do the right thing for this little guy. He'll never thank you. He'll never know. But you will. Welcome to the world, Rayborn. Rough place. Every once in a while, you get a chance to do something good. Take it."

  He touched Tim's cheek, looked at Merci without expression, then walked out.

  Merci walked the little cottage with her heart pounding hard and a dark sleepiness hanging over her. She called Zamorra for the third time that day—just his message machine at home. She managed to get a home phone number for Janine's parents. They talked a while. They said Paul had spoken highly of her. They hadn't heard from or seen him since they buried their daughter. That was over a week ago. He'd looked terrible that day, eyes looking past everybody and everything for something they couldn't find. He said something about getting away for a while.

  • • •

  She got to Mike's place just before seven, sat in the car until she saw him open the front door. The dogs barked and bayed. The night moonless and cold and the stars looked too far away to matter.

  Mike stood in the doorway. The house light behind him seemed the only light in Modjeska Canyon, the only light left in the world. Tim was in his car seat, head to the side and a little forward, shoulder straps secure, like a tiny parachutist on his way down.

  She climbed out of the Impala, pain biting her side as she stood walked up the stepping-stones toward the door. She stopped halfway.

  "Hello, Mike," she said. It was cold enough that her breath condensed in the night air. She could see the faint clouds as she breathed.

  "Hi, Merci."

  She had already decided not to go in, but it hurt and angered her he didn't ask her.

  "I'm sorry for what I did. I made a bad call, a real bad one. I never made a worse one. Well, maybe that's not true."

  She heard her voice catch and she felt the hot tears running down cheeks but she wouldn't crack. It was crucial that she not, for reasons she could not have explained.

  "But I'm sorry Mike. I just... I just can't tell you how sorry I am to have put you through all that. I wish so bad there was a way to take it back, not do what I did."

  His
features were hard to make out with the light behind him. Maybe he wanted it that way.

  "I accept your apology," he said quietly.

  "And I . . . you know I really cared about you, Mike. I cared about you more than anybody but Tim, Jr., and Dad, but I was always just . . . so . . . shitty at it. I couldn't get over Hess and I took it out on you and nothing made sense after a while. But you were a good friend and a lover and I... I didn't ever intend to hurt you like I did."

  "I know."

  She wanted to tell him she loved him, but she knew she did not love him and had never loved him in the way that she had wanted to. They were the wrong words. They were words for a time that hadn't happened yet, and maybe would never happen.

  "Forgive me."

  Mike said nothing for a long minute. "All right."

  "I mean genuinely forgive me? If I kneel down in front of you and look up and ask you to forgive me will you touch my head and forgive me?"

  He seemed about to speak but didn't. She walked the rest of the way to the door and knelt down on the cold hard porch in front of him. The wound in her side jumped with pain and her leg felt hot and stiff. When she looked up she still couldn't see the expression on his face.

  "Forgive me."

  She watched the vapor come from his nose.

  "You sold me cheap, Merci. The worst of it all is that after everything I am and everything I tried to be, you believed the worst about me. You believed I'd kill that girl."

  "Forgive me for that, too."

  He shut the door and locked it.

  Then she heard the car pull in behind her, saw the face of the house bathed by headlights. She struggled up slowly, got her balance, turned and squinted. The lights went out and a door opened.

  A moment later Lynda Coiner walked toward her. "I'm sorry," Coiner said. Then she hustled past Merci like someone trying to get out of the rain. The door opened up to receive her, then shut again. Merci heard the dead bolt slide into place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Later that night she sat by the fire with her father, up close to get warmth into her aching bones. Another storm front had swung down from the north and the rain came fast and hard against the roof.

  Clark was stretched into his favorite recliner, his long body not quite comfortable in its contours, his hands folded across his lap and flames flickering in his glasses.

  It seemed like she had seen him in this position for as long as she could remember:: sitting calmly by a fire while his wife fluttered around and made conversation that Clark only took a partial interest in, Answering quietly. Trying to dodge an argument. And if his black hair had thinned and grayed, and if his straight frame had bent and softened, he was still the same man entranced by the fire, intent upon it, as if the flames could offer him answers his life could not.

  "Dad, did you know what the twenty-eight bucks a month was for?”

  His attention turned from the fireplace to her, but he said nothing. Merci thought: Here I am, replacing my mother, trying to draw him something he'd rather not talk about. Tough.

  She continued. "I read Jim O'Brien's suicide letter to his son. He pretty much spelled it out. As an emissary of Bill Owen and Ralph Meeks, Brighton suggested that O'Brien shut up Patti Bailey for good. When that didn't work Brighton got Big Pat to threaten him, to say they'd rat out Jim to his wife if he wouldn't kill the girl. And that did work. But Brighton and Big Pat didn't destroy the crime-scene evidence to protect Jim, like they promised. They kept it and used it to make him threaten Owen and Meeks. Brighton had both of them on tape with her, talking about arranging the Acuna beating. That was probably enough. But O'Brien threatening to point a finger at them clinched the deal, sent them both into early retirement. Good for Brighton. Part of the deal was that he got Owen's nod as successor. Vance Putnam, the interim sheriff, was never a player."

  "Go on."

  "No, Dad. You go on. Help me out here. I just about got killed trying to solve this case, and you damned knew who did it all along. I'm more than just a little pissed off at you. If my ass wasn't important enough for you to save, then fine. But you came that close to letting Tim, Jr.'s, mother get killed, and that is most definitely not fucking fine. Am I clear?"

  "Yes. Yes. I... was pretty sure that things had happened like you say. I never knew for sure. I understood the payment every month was connected to Bailey, to Owen and Meeks giving up, to Brighton ascending like he did. I paid it like I was asked to. But I never knew. I... distanced myself from Brighton and Pat after that. Went into admin. Tried to steer clear of everything. I knew there was blood on my hands, but I didn't know how much."

  "You never wanted to know."

  "No."

  "You were brave enough to play the game, but not brave enough to collect your prize."

  "You can look at it that way. Although there's another way to see it, too."

  "Well, I'll tell you what was in that storage area you paid for. Bailey's dress and shoes. Bailey's tapes of Owen and Meeks. O'Brien's gun and the spent shells. All the things that you guys needed to cover up a murder and drive a man to suicide while you went about your lives. You. Big Pat. Brighton. Rymers was probably in on it, too, keeping his own partner in the cold. Glandis stole it all when Jim O'Brien killed himself. Thought he might need it someday. He got Evan to mail me a key."

  Clark was looking at her again now. He sat up straight and moved his hands to the arms of the chair. "We never knew what happened to that box. And everything else. The whole place was cleaned out."

  "Now you do. And you never told anyone what was in it."

  "Oh, never."

  "Not even me."

  "No."

  There was a long silence between them then, with only the sound the rain pouring down outside.

  "Okay, Dad—what's the other way I can see it? Conspiracy to cover a murder. Explain that in some other way, will you?"

  "Well, daughter, I did it for you."

  "I didn't ask you to."

  Clark stood up and warmed his hands at the fire. His voice was soft.

  "That's the whole point, don't you see? I was connected, Merci---through Brighton and Pat. They were friends. We were in it together, at the beginning. And once you've taken that first little step you can’t go back. You can't unstep. For me, it was taking that evidence to the storage area. Rymers and I made the arrangements, took the box there, got keys made. I took over the payments after he died. I really didn't know what we were storing until I opened the box. Well, at that point, it was too late. I was in. Because what were my choices by then? Arrest Jim O'Brien for murder? With Brighton headed for sheriff, O'Brien headed for the desert and Big Pat still a man I called a friend? Then what? Get myself hazed out of the department, take a job as a security guard somewhere? Not with your mother and you depending on me. You were a kindergartner with a beautiful smile and a good mind and a whole future ahead of you, and I wasn't about to offer you anything but the best I had. No, it was too late to do the right thing. Too late."

  She looked at him, slow and old by the fire, a lifetime of guilt carried on his slender frame.

  "Now I've got that same choice to make," Merci said. "I can clear the Bailey case. That would mean taking down Brighton, Big Pat, Everybody. Or I can just leave it alone. If I lay down, Brighton paves my way—head of detail, head of section, whatever I want. He'd endorse me for sheriff at some point, if I wanted. It's everything I've dreamed of. If I don't, I'm ruined. And Tim along with me, I guess."

  Clark looked back at her.

  "What would you do if you were me?" she asked.

  He thought for a long moment before he answered. "I already did it."

  "If you could do it again."

  "I'd have turned that evidence over to the DA instead of hiding it. I'd have done the right thing. Who knows? You'd probably be sitting here right now, just like you are, if I'd have done the right thing. But you're sitting here with a broken heart, because I didn't. See? I wanted to protect you. You were my greatest lov
e, and my biggest... rationale. But all I accomplished was almost getting you killed thirty years later. Don't leave the Bailey case for Tim to solve."

  She said nothing.

  "And something else, daughter of mine. You'll make some real enemies if you go to the press, or the Grand Jury, or wherever you're thinking of going. Big enemies. But you'll make some friends, too. Everybody's going to respect your decision, whether they hate you for it or not. You can take that respect with you, if it comes to that. You won't be ruined. You'll just be . . . diverted for a while. You'll need to watch your back. Maybe this had to happen. Maybe it's all a way of getting you onto a better path."

  "Which one? To where?"

  "I've got no idea."

  Merci stood and joined him closer to the fire. "I always thought that kind of optimism was just a handy crock of shit. Something people tell themselves to get by. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. But either way, what's the choice? It's worse to believe that life is just set up to make you miserable."

  "Low percentage."

  "But I never thought doing what's right could mess up so many people. My own father. My son."

  "Doesn't make it less right."

  "Right and wrong. Black and white. Yes and no. Them and us. That's why I became a cop to start with. So I'd know the answers right up front."

  Clark set a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you became a cop so you wouldn't have to ask the questions in the first place."

  She looked up and studied his face. "There always was some of that in me. Yeah."

  "Ask them. Here's your chance."

  "Either way, I'm going to call Bailey's sister tomorrow. I'm going tell her what she needs to know. It won't make her feel any better, but she thinks it will."

  "You never know."

  She looked at him. "That's the whole thing, Dad. Sometimes you do know. Sometimes you damned do know."

  •

  It was almost eleven when she called Gary Brice at home. She could hear a keyboard tapping as he answered.

  I've got a story for you," she said. "Six o'clock tomorrow morning, the snack stand at Fifteenth Street."