A King of Infinite Space

by Tyler Dilts

  I was surprised by how light she felt in my arms. For a reason I couldn’t articulate, I felt a pang of fear ripple through my chest. She seemed so small, so vulnerable, so different from her waking self that, as I carried her down the hallway toward my bedroom, more than once I stopped and adjusted her position in my arms to avoid even the possibility of an unexpected bump or scrape.

  As soon as I laid her down on the bed, she shifted her position, rolling onto her side. I took off her shoes and pulled the comforter up over her. Kneeling by the side of the bed, I studied her face, her closed eyes, her parted lips, her mussed hair, and tried to reconcile this new image of my partner with the many already dancing around my head. Her ability to astonish me seemed, at that moment, infinite.

  TWENTY

  I turned on the CD player in the living room and set the volume low. Mule Variations was next up in the changer, and I sat down and leaned back into the couch. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep before midnight, but after a few minutes I kicked off my shoes, put up my feet, and rested my head on the armrest. I thought of Jen in the bedroom. No one other than Megan and myself had ever slept in that bed. I found it difficult not to attach any significance to that fact. I tried not to think about it. But there it was.

  The last thing I heard before closing my eyes was the broken glass tenderness of Tom Waits’s voice as he sang “Georgia Lee.”

  I slept a solid six and a half hours, the best I’d done in a long time, and I thought that perhaps I should switch to the couch on a permanent basis. Even then, though, I knew it wasn’t really the couch that had made the difference. I’d had a dream, but its details eluded me every time I came close to capturing them in my memory. A woman had been there, but I wasn’t sure who it was. Each time I almost glimpsed her face in my mind’s eye, she slipped away again, as if turning away and disappearing.

  As I stood in the bedroom doorway and watched, Jen rolled from her back to her side and tucked her arm beneath her head. My stomach tingling, I felt like a child who couldn’t help but do something he knew he shouldn’t—say, rifling through his parents’ closet in mid-December, finding the Christmas bounty, and not being able to tear himself away.

  When Jen opened her eyes a few minutes later, I was still watching. She opened and closed them a few more times, trying to reconcile the unfamiliar surroundings with her recollection of the night before. As her awareness fell into synch with her memories, she lifted her head and saw me leaning a shoulder against the doorjamb.

  “Morning,” I said, attempting an upbeat inflection.

  “Hi,” she said, pressing her palms to her cheeks and rubbing her eyes with her fingertips. After a jaw-straining yawn and a feline stretch, she began to rub her tongue around the inside of her mouth and then pouted at the taste. Her voice resonating somewhere deep in her chest, she said, “Ewwwww.”

  While she showered, I tried to remember the last time I cleaned the bathroom. I rummaged through the kitchen cabinets looking for something “breakfasty” that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to offer her. Behind cans of Stagg Steakhouse Chili and Chef Boyardee Ravioli, I found an old box of Twinings Irish Breakfast Tea. Sniffing one of the bags, I decided it would do, although I wasn’t convinced I’d even be able to tell the difference between fresh and stale tea with my sense of smell. I rinsed out the kettle, filled it with water, and put it on the stove. It began to whistle just before Jen came out of the bathroom, freshly showered, wearing yesterday’s clothes.

  “I’ve got some tea,” I said.

  “Thanks.” Her eyes didn’t seem to be quite open yet. “Anything to eat?”

  “I’m thinking either Egg Heaven or The Potholder. If we stay here, it’s either marshmallow Fruit Loops or Wild Magic Burst Pop-Tarts.”

  “You’re intentionally trying to make me puke, right?”

  “Not intentionally, no.” I poured a cup of hot water over a tea bag in a ceramic Smith & Wesson mug. A sales rep had dropped off several cases of the mugs last year when he was trying to persuade the LBPD to change its standard sidearm. We didn’t buy the guns, but now half the cops in the department had matching sets of coffee mugs.

  “I’d forgotten what it feels like to have a hangover,” she said.

  I hadn’t, so I dunked the tea bag up and down in the cup, hoping the subject would change of its own accord. “Here you go,” I said, sliding the cup across the counter. “I’ve got some orange juice too. I’ll get you a glass.”

  “Thanks.”

  After we downed our tea and juice, I suggested breakfast.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said.

  “Trust me, you’ll want to eat.”

  The sadness in her eyes as she looked into my face caught me by surprise.

  The Potholder is a breakfast-only restaurant on Broadway that, in order to accommodate even the most liberal definitions of the most important meal of the day, closes its doors in midafternoon. I indulged myself with an overflowing plate of French toast, scrambled eggs, and sausage. Jen had a fruit plate and an order of one of the kitchen’s specialties—super spuds.

  “Do you want some of these hash browns?” she asked after she’d spooned half of the uneaten mound of potatoes from one side of the plate to the other and back again.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She hadn’t spoken much since we left my apartment. At first I attributed her silence to her hangover, but as we ate, I began to suspect that there was something more on her mind.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  “You mean other than feeling like I’m going to vomit until my head explodes?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “other than that.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What if I said I don’t believe you?”

  “I’d say it’s a very sad thing when the trust scampers out of a partnership.”

  “Then I won’t say that.”

  “Probably for the best.”

  The number of attendees at each task force meeting was dwindling, as was the actual size of the force itself. The deputy chief hadn’t put in an appearance in more than a week, and one by one, the other detectives and uniforms assigned to the investigation were returning to their normal duties and case rotations.

  “Is this everybody?” Marty asked. Around the table with him were the lieutenant, Dave, Pat, Kincaid, Jen, and myself.

  “Yeah,” Ruiz said.

  “And then there were seven,” I said, referring to the ever-decreasing size of our meetings. No one got the Christie reference. That, or no one wanted to encourage me.

  “Unless we put in a request for assistance,” Ruiz said, “the rest of the crew will be returning to regular assignments.”

  “Why?” Jen asked.

  “Because it’s been days since we made Eyewitness News.” Ruiz rubbed his temples. “What have we got?”

  Jen asked, “The colonel?”

  One of the advantages, I thought, to our new, sleeker, leaner task force—if there were any at all—was that everyone in the room already knew the major developments of the case, saving us the monotony of regurgitating the story over and over again. Jen could ask her two-word question, and everyone knew who and what she was talking about.

  “He’s right where you left him,” Ruiz said. “We didn’t talk about holding him.”

  “No,” I said. “We didn’t.”

  Judging by Ruiz’s expression, I was well beyond his glibness threshold. He glared at me and asked, “What are you going do with him?”

  “How about we tattoo ‘short eyes’ on his forehead and toss him in with the general population at county?”

  His lip quivered, and I knew I’d gone too far.

  “Honestly,” Jen said, “we can’t figure out what to charge him with. We don’t have jurisdiction on the sexual abuse, and we’ve got nothing to use to charge him on the murder.” She looked at Kincaid. “Any ideas?”

  “Do we just want to hold him, or do we want something we can make a case with?” Kinca
id asked.

  “I want to see him burn,” Jen said.

  “We can book him on a withholding charge,” Kincaid said, “and hope it sticks long enough to figure out just who does have jurisdiction. It’s a long shot, though. We’d have to convince whoever winds up prosecuting that they have a case—and one that’s worth pursuing. Then we’d have to arrange extradition. I doubt we’d manage that. Not if his lawyer’s even halfway decent. Give it a go, though, if you want.” He smiled at Jen. The glare of his bleached teeth made me want to squint.

  “Is it worth it?” Ruiz asked no one in particular.

  “Yes,” Jen said. “We take it as far as we can. I’m not going to have a hand in kicking that fuck loose.”

  Ruiz thought a moment and then nodded. “We’re sure he’s not our guy on the murder?”

  “Sure?” she asked. “No. We’re not sure. We’ve got serious doubts. But sure? No.”

  “What about a suspicion charge?” Ruiz asked Kincaid.

  “Again, depends on the lawyer. It’s another option, though. Definitely.”

  “He hasn’t lawyered up yet,” I said. “Maybe he won’t.”

  Kincaid considered that. “If he doesn’t, we can keep him under the key a while. Eventually, we’ll have to get him a public defender, though. And the longer we dick him around, the more likely it is a judge’ll cut him loose when we get to court. We need to think about how we want to play it.”

  “Bottom line, though,” Ruiz said, “we’re still looking for a killer.”

  Jen and I nodded. I added a “yep” for emphasis.

  Ruiz turned the page of his notepad. “Dave has something for us,” Ruiz said.

  We all looked at Dave expectantly. “Something on Tropov.” Dave must have heard me sigh because he fixed his eyes on mine as he continued. “Possible motive. The guy Tropov works for, name’s Anton Samuels. Changed it from some three-foot-long Russian name with no vowels. Anyway, this guy, he’s supposed to be some former KGB honcho, right? And he’s got a history in Seattle, too. Just like Tropov. Turns out Anton has a kid in high school. And back up north, some of this kid’s teachers filed a police report saying they felt intimidated by Anton and his goons whenever junior’s report cards didn’t measure up. Now, guess where the kid went to school last year.”

  “Warren,” Ruiz said. It didn’t sound like a guess.

  “And he was in Beth’s class?” I asked.

  “And guess what grade she gave him.”

  “I have a better idea, Dave,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell us?”

  “She gave him an F. He had to go to summer school to graduate.”

  “And that made him so bitter and resentful he had his old man whack out his English teacher,” I said. “Not sure I buy that.”

  Ruiz eyeballed me again. “I don’t remember you bringing a better motive to the table. You might want to think about shutting your mouth.” I took his advice.

  “What are we supposed to do with that, though?” Marty asked. “Wasn’t the official word from the brass to lay off Tropov?”

  “It was,” Ruiz said. “But we’re not going to. Keep digging. Just find something solid and let me worry about the deputy chief.” He looked around the room. “What else?”

  No one spoke.

  “Pat,” he said. “Anything on those knife sales?”

  “Nothing that looks promising on the direct online sales,” Pat answered. “But I’m looking at the company’s shipping manifests. A few dozen units went to LA and Orange County stores. I’m working my way through their sales records. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Think our boy was dumb enough to buy the murder weapon with plastic?” Marty said to no one in particular.

  “Keep working on it.” Ruiz thought a moment. “Jen, anything new on Waxler?”

  She shook her head. I stared at him, but he pretended not to notice. “What else?” he said again. “Anyone?” There was a long, awkward pause while we all shuffled our feet under the table, looked down at our notepads, fidgeted with our pens, and above all, avoided Ruiz’s eyes. I had a sudden impulse to pass a note to Jen telling her to meet me behind the gym after study hall, but I fought it off.

  When I got back to my desk, the message light on my phone was blinking. The colonel had been rushed to the emergency room.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “How the fuck did he hang himself?” I yelled at the poor schlub of a city jailer unlucky enough to have answered the phone. “Didn’t you take his belt and laces?”

  “Um…yeah, we did.”

  “Then what did he hang himself with?”

  “Uh…his underwear?”

  “Are you asking me?”

  “No,” he said. He was new and not used to dealing with pissed-off detectives. The fact that I’d forgotten his name probably wasn’t helping. “He used his underwear,” he repeated.

  “How does someone hang himself with underwear?”

  “Well, from what I understand, he was up on the top bunk, okay? And he took one leg hole and wrapped it around the bed frame, okay? Oh, and these are briefs, not boxers. You know, tighty whities? So he takes the rest of them and pulls them through the loop around the frame so they’re tied off like a lanyard or something, and then he squeezes his head through the other leg hole and just rolls right off the bunk.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Yeah, the other guys, the sergeant and everybody, they were real impressed.”

  “They don’t get out much do they?”

  “Huh?”

  “He was alive when they took him away?”

  “Barely, they said.”

  “Thanks, you’ve been a big help.”

  “Sure thing, Detective Beckett,” he said, his eagerness raising the pitch of his voice. “Anytime.”

  I wished I could remember his name.

  “What did the hospital say?” Ruiz asked. Jen, Marty, Dave, and I were huddled around the lieutenant’s desk.

  “The prognosis isn’t good,” Jen said. “He’s in a coma, and there’s major brain damage from lack of oxygen. Even if he wakes up, he’s probably going to be vegetable stew.”

  “So what’s that mean for us?” Marty asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “He isn’t our doer.”

  Dave folded his arms across his chest. “You sound sure of yourself.”

  “I am,” I said, turning to face him.

  “And your dicks are exactly the same size,” Jen said. “Can we move on?”

  “What’s Baxter going to say about this?” Marty asked.

  Ruiz said, “I think we all know the answer to that, don’t we?”

  Two hours later, Deputy Chief Baxter called a press conference, ostensibly to announce that the case was closed and that Elizabeth Williams’s father had murdered her, and then, just as the intrepid task force began to piece the puzzle together, had taken his own life out of either remorse or the fear of spending the rest of his days behind bars.

  “He wants us to stand behind him while he makes the announcement,” Ruiz said, his voice a low, rumbling grunt.

  “What did you tell him?” Jen said.

  “Not what I wanted to,” he said. “I told him we’d be there.” Everyone grumbled.

  “Is this case really closed?” I asked.

  “Officially,” Ruiz said, obviously upset at being forced to toe the party line. “Yes, it is.”

  To avoid saying something we’d all be sure to regret, I stormed out of the office. I didn’t really have anywhere to go, so after marching up and down the hall several times, I went into the bathroom, washed my hands and face, realized I had to take a leak, took one, washed my hands again, and wandered back to my desk.

  I hadn’t been gone more than fifteen minutes, but Ruiz’s office was empty, and no one was in the squad room. The deputy chief had timed the press conference to coincide with the local late-morning newscasts, just far enough past eleven to avoid conflicts with the headlines and, most likely, assuring that the news directors wou
ldn’t have anything more titillating to broadcast.

  After turning on the small TV and tuning it to KCAL, I sat down with a fresh cup of coffee and a slightly stale apple fritter and waited. That was a bad idea.

  Before they even cut away to the live feed, I’d dialed Geoff Hatcher’s number. The phone was still ringing as the liaison officer on the screen introduced Baxter. The deputy chief took the podium and called the task force up to stand behind him. Guess he must have never heard that old coach’s axiom, “There’s no I in team.”

  “Hello?” Geoff said in my ear.

  “Hey, Geoff,” I said. “So how pissed are you?”

  “Daniel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s not really a good time. I’m driving like a madman to get to your news conference. It seems very unlikely I’m going to make it.” Although a bit of traffic noise filtered through his cell phone, there was no indication of any tension in his voice. He might just as well have been sitting in an overstuffed easy chair sipping brandy from a snifter.

  “Not a problem,” I said.

  “It’s not? I was led to believe that Deputy Chief Baxter would be making a significant announcement. And by the way, I am still quite pissed.”

  “Well, get ready to be unpissed. In fact, in a few minutes I think you’re going be in love with me all over again.”

  I spent three minutes giving him a brief rundown of everything we knew about Tropov, Waxler, and the colonel.

  “So he wasn’t even a suspect?” Geoff asked.

  “Not seriously, no.”

  “Well.”

  “I need to run. But I’ll call you later with more. In the meantime, start digging. And do me a favor, will you?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “I want you to use Tropov’s name.”

  “Are you quite—”

  “Yes.” As I hung up the phone, Baxter was on the TV, praising the diligence of the task force. The camera panned the team. Marty, Dave, and Jen looked merely uncomfortable. The lieutenant looked like he was about to explode. I knew he’d maintain through the press conference, though. But if he heard about what I’d just done, the shrapnel would fly. Oh yeah.