The rough dirt road hurt her feet. It was hard and pebbly. Behind her, she heard shouting, but she didn’t look back. A moment later, the rumble of the truck engine started, and she heard the tires kick up dirt.
“Don’t stop!” Missy shouted.
41
Baudin got to the station well into the evening. Heather would be sleeping over at Keri’s house. Baudin felt bad about imposing on her all the time, but Keri had said she loved the girl, and it made Gina happy. He didn’t know if she was being nice or if that was true, but Keri did seem lonely. Maybe the sound of girls running around the house alleviated some of that loneliness.
The station was nearly empty, and the detective bureau was completely empty. The only light on was in Jessop’s office. Baudin headed there and found Dixon sitting on the couch. His eyes were rimmed with red, and even from the doorway, Baudin could smell the booze on him. He could guess what the meeting was about. Dixon had been drunk on duty, and Jessop wanted to nail him for it.
“Bill,” Baudin said as placatingly as he could, “you should know that Kyle went through about the worst thing a husband and father could go through. He did the best he could with what—”
Baudin spotted the photograph of Chris, his dismembered body loosely thrown together like some grotesque jigsaw puzzle, on Jessop’s desk. His heart stopped.
“I got this in the mail,” Jessop said, “along with a cartridge retrieved from the body. One cartridge, from Kyle’s gun.”
“Allegedly from Kyle’s gun,” Baudin said. There was no way a ballistics match had been made that fast.
“Kyle told me what happened.”
Shit.
“What did he say happened?” Baudin asked.
“He said he shot the fucker and then buried him out in the desert. That true?”
Baudin looked at Dixon, who wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I want my union rep. So does Kyle.”
“He already confessed, dipshit.”
“Get us our reps.”
“I will. But first, you’re gonna do something, Detective Baudin. You’re gonna place your partner under arrest, read him his rights, and take him down to the holding cells.”
“The fuck I will.”
“It’s fine.” Dixon stood up. He nearly fell over then caught himself against the wall. “It’s fine.”
“Kyle, shut the fuck up, man.”
“No, I’m sick of lying. I can’t handle it anymore. I’m sick of it. I just want it to be done.”
“Kyle, you better—”
“It’s over, Ethan.” He held out his wrists.
Baudin looked at Jessop, who had a smirk on his face. He’s been waiting for this. Wanting something like this. Baudin’s lip curled, and he considered grabbing something off the desk and whacking Jessop in the face with it.
“Ethan, just do it, man. I’m fine.”
Baudin exhaled loudly. He took out his cuffs and put them on his partner’s wrists. “You have the right to remain silent…”
42
Baudin led Dixon to the cells. The holding cells of any station were maintained just enough to avoid lawsuits. They were places where people who couldn’t be stuck anywhere else went to sober up or await transfer to the metro jail. Cold, dirty cement walls and metal doors that slid closed with a loud bang let the inmates know they weren’t going anywhere.
Baudin took off Dixon’s cuffs and sat next to him on a bench circling the cell.
“What did you say?” Baudin asked.
“He brought me into the office and confronted me. I told him everything. Everything except your part. I said I did everything.”
“Why?”
Dixon put his face into his palms and sobbed. Baudin placed a hand on his back and let him finish. When he was done, Dixon sat up and leaned back against the wall, his cheeks flushed from dehydration and alcohol.
“They sent one to Hillary, too. She asked me if I did it. I tried to deny it, but she could just tell. She could always tell.”
Baudin leaned forward on his thighs, staring at the dirty floor. “We’re in a world of hurt, man. This isn’t good. You’ll get life in prison.”
“I don’t care.”
“You will when you sober up.” Baudin took in a deep breath and rose. “I’ll figure a way out of this. For now, you don’t talk to anyone but our union rep, okay? Kyle, okay?”
“Okay.”
“No one. Not even Hillary.”
“Okay. I won’t talk. For you.” He paused. “You’re the best friend I ever had, Ethan.”
He snorted. “Don’t get all pussy on me now.” He put his hand on Dixon’s shoulder. “Keep your head up. I’ll get us out of this.”
With that, he left, letting the door slam shut behind him. Baudin walked over to the night shift desk and told the guard there, “You get him whatever he needs. He’s one of us.”
“I know. I’ll take care of him.”
Heading to the stairs, Baudin caught a glimpse of his partner inside the cell. He had his face in his hands again and was crying.
Baudin marched straight into Jessop’s office. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“He murdered someone. You know how that’s gonna play out? Especially after all that shit with Crest?”
“We could’ve handled this privately. You want him marched in front of the cameras in handcuffs.”
Jessop leaned back, a smile on his face. “So what if I do? Revenge is revenge, ain’t it?”
Baudin shook his head. “No. It just escalates it for everyone. You’re wrong about this.”
“Shit. We’ll see, won’t we?”
Baudin stomped out of the detective bureau and sat in his car. He breathed silently for a moment then slammed his fist into the steering wheel. He punched it over and over, until his knuckles ached and someone came out of the station in response to the horn. Baudin didn’t say anything to him. He just started the car and peeled away.
A bar he’d found some months back sat next to a pool hall at an intersection downtown. Baudin went inside and ordered a whiskey. He drank it down then finished two more before he finally ordered a beer. His mind was buzzing. His thoughts swirled over and over to that night that he’d disposed of Chris’s body. How could I have been followed? He’d waited until the middle of the night and left for the desert. He didn’t remember any taillights. I would’ve noticed something like that. The only way someone could’ve been there was if a pro had been following him—or Chris.
Baudin drank his beer in a couple of gulps and stared at the froth in the bottom of the mug. He watched the bubbles pop and fizzle. He didn’t know what to do. His partner would go down. Baudin could step up and tell them he’d done it all, but he would be leaving Heather alone. Randy at least had his mother. This can’t be it. There has to be a way out of this.
A ruckus came from the other side of the bar, then two men exploded into a brawl. One grabbed a stool and swung it as if he were a medieval warrior with a battleax. The other one let the stool smash into him and then tackled the warrior. They both hit the floor in a flurry of fists and blood. Baudin watched the brawl passively. It didn’t even dawn on him until he felt his sidearm strapped to his hip that he was a cop and bound to stop the fight.
Fuck that. He wasn’t going to be a cop much longer. He knew he was going down just like Dixon was.
One of the men reached back and slammed both fists down into the warrior’s face like an ape smashing a walnut. The warrior went limp, twitched a few times, then went limp again. The other man said, “Oh, shit,” and was out the door in under a couple of seconds, no doubt thinking he’d killed the man.
Baudin rose to check on him, but he was in no condition to do anyone any good. The bartender was calling in an ambulance anyway. As he was debating what to do, Baudin’s cell phone rang. The number belonged to the station, probably his union rep or an IAD detective wanting to interview him about Christopher Stuttle’s death. Baudin turned off his phone.
He ordered another beer, la
id his head down on the bar, and closed his eyes.
43
Dixon stared at the floor. It was covered in dead cockroaches. A particularly large one was crawling over the others slowly, half his guts hanging out after being stepped on… then it stopped. It was the last one of them that was alive.
The guard, a man Dixon knew, came over. “You need anything, Detective? Food? Gatorade or somethin’?”
“No, thank you, Tyler. I’m good. Just a blanket if you don’t mind.”
“Be back in a jiff.”
Dixon lay down on the bench. In the last two hours, the drunkenness had faded, leaving only shame and fear. An icy, dead fear sat in his gut as though he’d eaten a rock. He’d confessed to Jessop and Hillary. Everything was out in the open now. Charges would soon be filed, then the media shitstorm would begin. A homicide detective who’d committed a homicide wasn’t going to just be let go or get a small blurb on some blog then be forgotten. His family and friends would be hounded for interviews for weeks to come. Every aspect of his life and career would be torn apart to find some kernel the media could use to try to explain his behavior.
He heard footsteps in the hall and looked up as his door opened, expecting Tyler to be there with the blanket. Instead, he saw a man in a suit. Dixon didn’t recognize the man at first, not until he sat down next to him and sighed.
“Quite a pickle, ain’t it?” Sandoval said.
Dixon noticed that, though it was probably late at night, Sandoval was dressed for the courtroom. His shoes were shiny, and his tie was knotted firmly at his throat.
Dixon looked away. “You can gloat later. I just want to be alone right now.”
“I don’t want to gloat, Detective. I never did. You’re one of us. One of the people fighting on the streets to have some semblance of a normal life for the people out there. You see it, I know you do. Every time you drive by someone’s house and see their kids playing outside, it hits you—you’re different. You see the world differently—much closer to the way it actually is than the way you’d like it to be. You’re one of the few people who’ve seen the abyss and know what we really are. And it terrifies you that no one else sees it.” He looked off. “I’ve seen it, too, Detective Dixon. I know what’s out there. The world is a choice between the lesser of two evils. I am the lesser of the two you have before you.”
Dixon swallowed. “What do you want?”
“I want something simple: loyalty. It’s such a rare gift in a man. I’ve lived on this earth now sixty-eight and a half years, and do you know I can count the number of loyal—truly loyal—men I’ve encountered on one hand?”
Dixon stared at him. “He was right about you. You sent those photos.”
He grinned. “By he, I assume you mean Detective Baudin, and yes, he is a clever one.” He grimaced. “I do wish I could get loyalty from him, but he’s not like us, Kyle. He’s not country folk. We look out for our own. We always have. So I’m asking you: will you look out for me?” He placed his hand on Dixon’s thigh gently then rose. “Sleep on it. I don’t want an answer while you’re inebriated. If yes, a whole new world of opportunity is going to open up for you. Things you couldn’t believe. If no, well…” He glanced around the cell. “Then I hope you like your accommodations. Because you will never get out of a prison cell again.”
As Dixon listened to Sandoval’s footsteps disappear in the hall, he had never felt so alone.
Another couple of hours passed, and Dixon slept. He woke to the sound of his door opening again and saw that a blanket had been laid on top of him, though he didn’t remember anyone doing that.
Hillary walked in. Her face was puffy, and her eyes were red. She was wearing sweats, and her hair was a mess, but she had never looked so beautiful to him. She sat down near his feet and played with her fingers. Dixon didn’t speak. When he sat up and took her hand, she didn’t fight him.
“Do you want to know the worst part?” she said. “I lashed out at you, but I know it’s my fault. This whole thing is my fault. I mean, what did I think would happen?” She paused. “And now Chris is dead. Chris is dead because of me.”
Dixon felt like crying, too, but he didn’t have it in him. He felt utterly numb, as though he would never feel anything again. He wanted to say something comforting to his wife, but nothing came.
“What’s going to happen to you?” she asked after a long cry.
“I’m going to prison.”
“For how long?”
“I would guess at least ten to twenty years, maybe more. I could be gone the rest of my life, depending on what the DA charges me with.” He said it so matter-of-factly, it surprised even him. The prison sentence was a foregone conclusion, something he’d already accepted.
She shook her head. “No. No, please. I can’t lose you. Not like that. Not like that.” Her head fell into his chest, and she began to cry again.
He wrapped his arm around her and pressed her body against his. In that moment, Dixon knew what his life had been about and where he had gone wrong. With her in his arms, he knew that he would do absolutely anything for his family. No matter what pain Hillary put him through, no matter how degraded he felt, he would do anything to be with her.
And that, he knew, was going to be his death.
44
Baudin, despite his bravado, didn’t even have the strength to drink. Drinking wasn’t madness: men drank to escape so they could prevent madness. But he didn’t want to prevent that right now. Maybe the insane had it figured out. Maybe the proper response to this insanity was insanity.
He rose from the barstool and left two twenties on the bar. Paramedics had carted off the warrior. He wasn’t dead, but they thought he’d suffered a concussion. An officer had come to speak to Baudin, but he’d showed him his badge and told him to piss off.
Outside, the air was cool, much cooler than it should’ve been. A storm was coming. Baudin had a back injury from his time as a beat cop in LA, and whenever it was about to storm, the injury flared up. He leaned against his car in the dark and smoked. Options had to be considered. He could grab Heather and leave. Right now. Tonight. But where would we go? The DA’s Office would see it as running and issue a felony warrant. They would extradite him anywhere he went in the United States.
Another option was to kill whoever was responsible. Ultimately, he didn’t know who that was, but his money was on Sandoval. He suspected someone had been following him and Dixon, and that person had seen the murder then followed Baudin out to the desert. If Baudin killed Sandoval, the scrutiny might go away. Then again, Dixon had just confessed. The state had a case regardless of whether Sandoval or someone else was at the helm.
The final option was to suck it up and take whatever came. That seemed the worst of the three because that would mean giving up control. Rather than being proactive, he would have to fight off whatever was thrown at him.
As he thought, his cell phone rang. It was Keri.
“Hey,” he said.
“The girls are asleep. Just thought you’d want a check-in.”
“I appreciate it. Thanks. I should’ve called. My mind’s elsewhere right now.”
“Work, huh?”
“You could say that. I just got a shit of a decision, and I don’t know which way to turn.”
“One of those. I hate those.”
“Me, too.”
She sighed. “So, I’m here. Talk to me.”
“I’m not the type to dump my problems on other people.”
“Other people? Come on, Ethan. I’m sick of this bullshit. We’re dating. You’re as close to a boyfriend as I’ve had in years, and I’m guessing you haven’t even held another woman’s hand since your wife passed.”
He scratched an itch on his forehead with his thumb then lit another cigarette. “I like you, Keri. I really do. But you don’t want to be involved in the shitstorm that is my life.”
“I know about the shitstorm. I knew about it from Heather before the day I met you. So don’t give me t
hat ‘It’s not you; it’s me.’ I’m in, Ethan. You say the word, and I’m in.”
He grinned. He appreciated her tenacity. His wife had been the same way. “There’s some bad things I’ve done. And I’m not sure how to fix it. Sometimes, it feels like the darkness just gets to win. Like the game is rigged from the beginning.”
“If that were true, there’d be no point to all this. And whether there’s a point to this or not, you have to believe there is.”
“Why?”
“Because you make your own life. You choose what you want your life to mean. I learned that pretty quick after the divorce. I had nothing and no one and a daughter that was relying completely on me to provide for her. So I could’ve sat around and thought the universe was out to get me, or I could fight. And I chose to fight. For her. You have Heather. Are you gonna lay down, or are you gonna fight for her?”
Baudin blew out a puff of smoke. He thought of his daughter. When she was young, she couldn’t pronounce the letter D and had called him “Bab.” It made him chuckle every time. Then one day, she could say Dad, and then Ethan, and she began to understand the world around her. Pretty soon, she went from missing him to forgetting he was around. And it didn’t matter. His love for her never waned. Even when she was an old woman, he wouldn’t love her any less. She was the reason he was alive, the reason he got up in the darkness every morning and decided that he was going to bring just a little more light to the world. For her. It’d always been for her.
He felt the warmth of tears on his cheek and wiped them away. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“Come over. Come over and spend the night with me.”
He nodded, though no one was around. “I will.” His other line beeped. He pulled the phone away from his cheek and saw that the call was from Dixon’s cell phone. “I gotta take this. I’ll be over as soon as I can.”
The Unseen - A Mystery (The Baudin & Dixon Trilogy Book 2) Page 14