“What about my bike?” he said, glancing at it in the doorway, his one possession, his one means of escape. ‘They won’t let me take it, will they?”
“Probably not, honey, but you can ask.”
A few minutes later, he walked out the door, suitcase in hand, his shoulders slumped. He glanced back at Lara. They didn’t say goodbye. He didn’t return for his bicycle.
As soon as they left, Lara went back to Emmet’s.
The complex wasn’t really such a bad place to live, she thought, crossing the courtyard with the huge weeping willow, its branches brushing the ground. That is, if you overlooked the neighborhood surrounding it. A nest of sparrows lived in that tree, and every time she walked out the front door, she could hear them chirping. Today they were silent. But mature trees were scattered all throughout the complex, making it shady and lush. She thought the trees and grounds might be what had attracted Emmet. The structures were older, steeped in character, marked by time. Lara liked that type of thing. She’d always looked back instead of forward. Most of Orange County was so new, so shiny. Row after row of tract houses lined the streets, the trees all mowed down by developers.
She’d never felt so dejected in her life. She had to get Josh back. She had seen through that tough outer shell. He was just a frightened child—so alone, so full of pain. Sure, he was bitter. Who wouldn’t be bitter? She had no idea what he had been through before the murders, but she knew it wasn’t good.
She’d tried to call Irene Murdock, but she was out. Everyone seemed to be out. With the ever present sunshine, the seventy-degree temperature, the ocean always only a few miles away, people in Southern California seldom stayed inside their homes.
Every time she thought about Emmet, she smiled—even now when her heart was breaking. Almost from the night she had met him, Lara classified herself as an Emmet fan; she admired him so much. He struggled with his disease without ever slipping into self-pity. He lived independently and had built a successful business. And he was a marvelous companion, far more interesting than any other men she knew. He was witty, intelligent, sensitive. Many Friday and Saturday evenings when Lara didn’t have a date—and there were many—she’d call Emmet up and come over here, have real discussions about philosophy, literature, science, Emmet typing out responses on his computer faster than she could read, Lara standing behind him sipping a glass of wine.
Emmet’s condominium was sparsely furnished. When he’d purchased it, he’d had all the carpeting removed and discovered the original hardwood flooring underneath. Since the building was older, it had wide hallways and oversized doors, which made it easier for Emmet to navigate his wheelchair in and around the rooms. His front door was wired to the ever present computer. All he had to do was push a few buttons and the front door opened.
Lara plunked down in the one chair, a Lazy Boy recliner. When there was no one to help him, Emmet used a trapeze type of device to hoist himself into the recliner. Lara flipped it out of the way. Every evening between six and seven o’clock, a male nurse came to assist him.
“I don’t know what to do,” Lara told him after he’d joined her in the living room. “Even if I went against Rickerson’s and everyone’s advice and moved back into the house in Irvine, they still won’t let me have Josh back. Of course, they probably have a point—that I would be putting him at risk. I told them maybe I could get a larger place, but I can’t do it today or tomorrow, and I certainly won’t be able to get one that’s furnished like the model. I just have to get him back, Emmet. He needs me. He just can’t be involved in the murders. I know it.”
“I…have…an…idea,” Emmet said, making an effort to squeeze out all four words. At the end of the day, speaking was even more strenuous. “Come…” He turned his electric chair around and headed for his office, the wheels rolling over the hardwood flooring. Lara followed.
Sticking his head back into the steel cage, Emmet started tapping out words on the computer. Lara stood behind him and read.
“You can have my place until you find another and I’ll stay at your place. I have three bedrooms. We’ll move some of my equipment and I’ll be fine. I can come over here and work during the day when you’re gone.”
“Emmet,” Lara said. “I can’t ask you to do that…all this”—she looked around at the room—“this is your work. You need all this equipment. We’d have to hire someone to disconnect everything and reassemble it at my place, and my place is carpeted. No,” she said, shaking her head. “I appreciate it, but no. I’ll find something.” She thought of the house in San Clemente—the obvious choice. It was doubtful if the killers would go back there, but she knew living in that house right now would be too painful.
“Yes,” Emmet typed, “it will be easy. No big deal. I have a firm that will set up the things I need at your place in only a few hours and I can work here during the day. I’ll call the phone company and have a modem installed. Because I’m disabled, they’ll do it at once. Let me help you, Lara. It will make me feel good to help someone else.”
He stopped typing and tried to look her in the eye. Every time his gaze drifted, he seemed to force it back with a concentrated effort.
“But, Emmet, I have carpet, remember?”
He spun back around to the computer and typed out another rapid-fire message. “We can have plastic runners put down. They’ll work just fine. Besides, I won’t need my knee pads when I exercise.”
“All right,” Lara said, putting her hands together and clapping softly and then clasping them together tightly in relief. “We can start making the arrangements right now. You’re a hero, Emmet. You’re a first-class hero.”
His head rolled far to the side, almost to the armrest of the wheelchair. His eyes smiled behind his thick glasses. “I…know,” he said. “I like being…a…hero.”
Lara laughed. “You know, huh? Let’s call these people and start getting things set up. I’m sure it won’t be for more than a few days at the most. They’re trying to find the man now, and then we can go home.”
“I’ll…make the calls,” he said.
“Don’t you want me to handle the arrangements, Emmet?” Lara asked.
“No need,” Emmet said. “Let…me…do something.”
Lara gave him an extra key and let herself out of the condo, crossing the courtyard. She’d let Social Services know that she had a place for Josh first thing in the morning.
Back in the condo, she placed a call to Benjamin England at his residence in Tustin. His message had said he would be returning this weekend. She simply could not be alone another moment. When she was alone the demons came out and stalked her. They were stalking her now.
She saw herself in a dark, deep well, clawing the walls to get out, screaming for someone to come and rescue her. Her sister’s body kept appearing in her mind, Sam’s exposed brain tissue, the gruesome blood-splattered walls. It should have been her, she thought. Ivory had Josh. She picked up the birth certificate and stared at the tiny footprints again. She had nothing. If she could change places with Ivory right this minute, she would. In the blackness there must be peace, she thought—an end to this chaotic existence that seemed to lead nowhere and was so full of anguish.
Even though she had never been religious, Lara fell to her knees by the little sofa. She let her head fall forward and prayed. She prayed for courage to raise her nephew, track down her sister’s killer and avenge her senseless death. She’d let her sister down, failed to see the signs when her life was falling apart. By her own hand, a tap of the gavel, the man who had possibly done this had been set free. She prayed for strength and direction.
In the silence Lara listened. The answers came to her. She stood and pushed her shoulders back as a wave of calmness and resolve washed over her. Her mother used to say that you should never ask God for something you can handle yourself. Lara was the direct descendant of a Cherokee chief. She would not succumb to weakness and self-pity. Not now, not ever.
Chapter 15
R
ickerson and his two sons were finishing dinner at the long oak table in the kitchen. He’d finally had to take a little time off. He was completely exhausted and besides, he had to go back out to interview the young man who had made threats to Lara in the courtroom. Big case or not, Rickerson knew he had to go home every now and then. He did have a family to raise, and unfortunately, right now he was doing it alone.
Stephen and Jimmy had prepared the entire meal by themselves. They’d made a roast chicken, a salad, some lumpy mashed potatoes. “Not bad,” Rickerson told them. “Next time, though, turn the oven up a little higher the last ten or fifteen minutes. That way the chicken will get nice and brown on the top.”
Jimmy had the pot of potatoes set on his plate and was scooping out every last bite. “How’d you learn to cook, Dad? Mom never said you could cook.”
“Oh, yeah, well, I know how to sew too. Think I’m a sissy?”
Jimmy started laughing. He had a little pot belly, and when he laughed, it jumped up and down. They would never in their wildest dreams consider their rugged father a sissy. “Tell,” Jimmy said, sticking a spoonful of potatoes in his mouth.
“When I was really young, my parents lived in Ohio. We had a boardinghouse. So, I had to help my mama with the cooking. I had to mend things that needed mending. I always wanted you guys to know how to take care of yourselves. Never know when you’ll be alone in this world. Can’t always depend on other people to care for you all your life.”
Stephen was listening intently. He knew the boardinghouse story. He also knew his mother had walked out on his father, and he simply could not forgive her no matter how hard he tried. If he was his father, he wouldn’t take her back, no matter what she said or did. She was his mother and he would always love her, but she had just abandoned them. He could handle it. He would be in college next year, but it certainly wasn’t fair to Jimmy. He was immature for his age and missed her terribly. Some nights Stephen heard him crying.
Rickerson was rolling a cigar around in his fingers, about to bite off the end and shove it in his mouth. “If you light that, Dad,” Stephen said, “I’m leaving the room, okay, and you can clean up the kitchen. I can’t stand that smell.” Just then Jimmy reached over and grabbed another roll. Stephen slapped it out of his hand. “Stop that. What do you want to do, weigh three hundred pounds? You’ll die of a heart attack when you’re thirty.”
Rickerson’s eyelids fluttered and he dropped the fat cigar onto the table. “Any news on your scholarship?”
“Get up, asshole,” Stephen said to his brother. “Now. Move it. I have to do my homework. I don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all night.” As soon as his brother started clearing the table, he turned to his father. “My counselor said I definitely have a partial academic scholarship, but it won’t cover my room and board in the dorm and all of my tuition. They’re still reviewing it, so I could get more, but I don’t know. It’s going to be expensive, Dad. Stanford’s an expensive school.”
Rickerson looked at his son. He was so serious. Too serious almost. “What? You don’t think I can afford to send you to college?”
Stephen dropped his head. “I don’t know. With Mom in school now and everything, I—I could go somewhere else. Maybe I could go to UCI and live at home. That would save a lot of money. And I could help you with Jimmy if Mom doesn’t move back home.”
Rickerson leaned over until he was peering into his son’s eyes. “I’ve got the money, kid. Just worry about your grades, okay? Let the old man worry about the dough.”
“What about Jimmy? He can’t stay here alone all the time when I go off to college. All he’ll do is eat and get in trouble. He won’t even do his homework.”
“Hey, what are you, the diet cop? I’m the real cop and you’re suddenly your brother’s dietitian. Give the guy a break. And as to next year, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Rickerson left the table to go into the living room to smoke his cigar. He flopped down on the sofa, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes, sticking his long legs out in front of him and kicking off his shoes. He let his mind wander to Lara Sanderstone. For some reason his thoughts drifted more and more to her every day. Something about her intrigued him, and it wasn’t simply that they were spending a lot of time together, talking to each other several times a day.
It might be the fact that she was lonely.
Rickerson knew about that type of thing. He felt terribly alone sometimes, and the funny thing was, he’d felt that way long before his wife had left. Joyce had always had the kids, the house to keep up, her own set of friends and activities. Women married to police officers tended to get very self-reliant.
The only friends he really had were other cops, and all they talked about was the job. After all these years he just got tired of listening to the same four-letter words, the same pumped-up war stories, the constant complaints. It was hard, really, for people like him to socialize. What did he possibly have in common with a man who sold used cars like the guy next door, or a man who punched numbers in a computer all day in a room about the size of a closet? Most Friday and Saturday nights when friends got together to socialize were the nights of heavy business for Rickerson. That’s when the natives really got restless, and violence and crime spewed forth like water from an untapped faucet.
Cops were a different species. Most of the time when he was with people outside the job, all they wanted to do was ask him about the job anyway. Being a police officer was like wearing a suit of clothes with no zipper, like the color of a man’s skin. If you were black or brown, you were black or brown from the time you got up until the time you went to bed. That’s what it was like to be a cop.
Sometimes he’d made love to Joyce and fantasized about other women. He told himself that after twenty years of marriage, even the best of things became stale. Oh, he loved his wife. In many ways she had been his closest friend, but the excitement had vanished. Both of them had felt the clock ticking. Their youth was gone. All that was left, as he saw it, was to grow old and die. Now it looked like he was going to grow old and die alone. He would have never in a million years thought he would be in this position. The past three months he had tried not to give up hope, but hope was slowly slipping away.
Last night he had fantasized about Lara Sanderstone.
He sat up on the sofa and slapped his thigh. It was those damn suggestive pictures that got him daydreaming, started the juices flowing in a direction that he just had to put a stop to, and now, right now. When he looked at the pictures of Ivory, he imagined he was looking at Lara.
He simply couldn’t look at those pictures again.
Lara Sanderstone would never be interested in a man like him. He wasn’t a fool. She was a classy broad—a judge at that—and a good-looking woman. He’d never had a way with the women. Joyce was the only one he’d ever seriously dated.
Dating. Just the thought made him cringe. If Joyce didn’t come back soon, he’d have to start prowling around looking for someone to spend time with, someone to have sex with now and then. He might be forty, but he wasn’t dead. He was a man. He had normal desires. Women didn’t just hop into bed with anyone that walked by, not today, not with all the diseases floating around. And most of the single women in his age group were looking for security, a meal ticket, a man with a fat paycheck and a fancy car. He couldn’t afford to wine and dine them. He just didn’t have the money or the time.
“Dad,” Stephen said, sticking his head out the kitchen door. “It’s Bradshaw…you know, baby Bradshaw.”
Rickerson sighed, bringing himself back to reality. ‘Tell him I’m off duty. Unless he’s got another stiff, it can wait for tomorrow.”
Stephen disappeared and Rickerson fired up his cigar. He was smoking way too many of these things, he decided, rolling it in his fingers. Even he was beginning to get sick of them.
A few moments later Stephen stuck his head back out. “Says he’s got a stiff.” The boy shrugged his shoulders. “That’s what he
said.”
“Nan,” he said. “He’s pulling your leg. That stupid little prick. Just wants me to come to the phone. I’ll kill him…I’ll frigging kill him.”
Rickerson shuffled across the living room, looking down at all the spots on the carpet. In some places it was almost threadbare. Such is life, he said to himself.
“Bradshaw,” he barked, “if you don’t have a stiff, you better take out your gun and point it at your head.”
“I do, I do…” the officer said, so excited that he was panting.
Rickerson let the cigar fall from his mouth to the kitchen floor in a stream of saliva. “Give it to me. Damn you, who and where?”
“Dad,” Stephen yelled, bending down to pick up the cigar, “that’s disgusting. We just mopped the floor today.”
“Packy Cummings,” Bradshaw continued. “The S.O. found him a few minutes ago. In a car…wait…wait. It was his car—the red Camaro. I’m in the radio room. They’re on the air now.” He paused. In the background the dispatcher was talking and the unit at the scene responding.
“Okay, okay,” Bradshaw said. “He was shot…in the head. Ambulance and rescue are en route, but they’re certain he’s dead.”
“Where, Bradshaw?” Rickerson yelled into the phone. “Tell me where. I can’t do a damn thing if I don’t know where it is I’m going.”
“Just a minute…” More voices could be heard in the background. “Santa Ana…First Street…parking lot of an apartment complex near the courts. The officer doesn’t know the address. It just went down.”
“I’m on the way,” Rickerson said. If Bradshaw hadn’t fucked up, the location he was describing was right down the street from where Lara Sanderstone lived. “Get me an exact location and advise me over the radio.”
When his father hung up, Stephen was wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Guess he really had a stiff, huh?”
“Yeah,” Rickerson said, walking rapidly toward the door. Then he turned around and returned and gave his two sons a quick hug. “Don’t look for me tonight. It looks like a long one.”
Interest of Justice Page 20