by Lois Greiman
“Why else would you be here?”
“I was just curious . . . Bomstad turned my life upside down. You can’t blame me for trying to set things in order.” I shuffled my weight, settling a little more firmly against him. Rhododendrons may look just dandy in a hedgerow, but they’ll never sell as daybeds. A branch was goosing me with constant regularity. Randy little pervert.
“Is that why you keep coming back here?” he asked. “To set things in order?”
I zapped my gaze to his. “You’ve been following me?”
He snorted, but he neither agreed or disagreed. “What do you want, McMullen?” he asked. Beneath my hand, his chest felt as hard as the long arm of the law. And for a moment I considered telling him the truth. I’d really like to see him naked, not necessarily in the rhododendrons, but . . .
“Tell me your part in this,” he said. “I’d like to believe you’re innocent, but—”
“I am innocent,” I breathed, leaning closer.
“You’re making it hard,” he said.
“What?” I refused to glance down the length of his body, but my own tingled in anticipatory interaction.
“To believe,” he said. “You’re making it hard to believe.”
I felt my face flush, but if he could see it in the darkness, he said nothing. Instead, he grasped my wrists and, while I was distracted, shimmied up the wall behind him. In a moment we were standing against the bricks, albeit a bit unsteadily. He pulled me close, hip to hip, I assumed for support. His head wobbled a little. I wrapped an arm around his back. It seemed like the right thing to do.
“Did he go over the fence or back to the street?”
“What?” I staggered a little, trying to keep him upright.
“The intruder,” he said. “Which direction?”
“It’s dark. I couldn’t—”
“What did you hear? Think. Scrambling through bushes? Scraping over a fence?”
“I . . .” I shook my head. “You coughed,” I said. “I thought you were dying.”
He grunted. “You must have noticed something. You should have been able to see a silhouette from where I left you.”
I said nothing.
“You did stay there, didn’t you?”
“Of course.” I shifted my eyes away. “But I couldn’t see past the shrubs. Then it was just running feet.”
“Okay,” he said and wobbled as if to move away from the wall. I tightened my grip on his shirt.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“My job,” he said and stepped forward.
I pressed into him. “Is it your job to drop dead in an ex-tight end’s rhododendrons?”
He swayed.
“Because if it is,” I said, forcing him back up against the wall and supporting him with my infinitesimal weight, “I’d rather you didn’t do so with my flashlight in your pocket.” I could feel it pressing against my hip, though it seemed to move slightly even as I spoke. I raised my eyes to his and blinked with all the faux innocence a thirty-something ex-cocktail waitress could muster. “That is my flashlight, isn’t it?”
20
The theory of relativity don’t amount to a hill of beans when there’s a bonfire in your shorts.
—J.D. Solberg,
upon first seeing Chrissy McMullen in her Warthog uniform
HIS TEETH GLIMMERED AGAIN, and he dropped his head back against the house. “Jesus,” he said, “you are a one-woman catastrophe.”
The “flashlight” moved again. Did that mean he liked one-woman catastrophes?
“I didn’t do anything,” I reminded him, but he shifted slightly so that my breast was pressed a little more firmly against his chest.
“Come on,” he said, gripping my waist as he stepped forward. “I’ll get you to your car.”
I complied, guiding him through the shrubbery and around the corner of the house, but the meaning of his words dawned on me in a moment. “Where are you going?”
“Hard to say, since you didn’t have the foresight to watch which way the suspect went.”
I snorted. Ladylike as always. Was he pressed a little tighter than necessary against my left breast? “You need your head examined.”
“Looking to drum up business?” he asked and stumbled a little.
I tightened my grip on his waist. Tight as a frickin’ yardarm. “I meant medical attention. But now that you mention it, I could suggest a good therapist.”
“You don’t consider yourself qualified?”
“I don’t like to waste my time on lost causes.”
We’d reached the fence. I looked at it, wondering how the hell I was going to get him over. Maybe I could just kick him in the shins and roll him underneath. He stumbled to a halt and gazed up at it.
“Shit,” he said. Eloquence was not his strong suit. Or diplomacy. But muscle tone . . .
“Yeah,” I said, and winced. “You going to need help?”
I thought I saw one eyebrow rise. He shifted his weight slightly so that I found my back against the wrought-iron railing. It felt cool even through the cotton sweater. I was sweating like a Percheron, and suddenly Rivera had me pinned against the metal, one hand on the bar on each side of me. His body felt hard and suspiciously strong against mine. Maybe he’d been supporting me. “You offering to give me a lift, McMullen?”
Sometime during our unsteady journey across Bomstad’s manicured lawn, he had slipped his flashlight into its holster at his side. Mine was still in his back pocket.
Which only left one option as to the identity of the hot weight that pressed against my belly. “Seems I already did that, Rivera,” I said.
He leaned closer. “Well, that’s a first,” he murmured. His voice was deep and low and did funny things to my already jittering nerve endings.
My heart was beating like a racehorse’s. “Been a while for you, has it?” I asked, trying to remember the exact phrase he’d used on me.
He grinned, actually grinned, full-blown. I felt a little light-headed. “That’s the first time you got my name right,” he explained. “You nervous, McMullen?”
“Nervous? I’m with an officer of the law. Why would I be nervous?”
“I don’t know. You seem to be breathing kind of hard.”
“I think I overdressed for the occasion.”
“Want to remedy that?”
Hell, yeah, my hormones screamed. But by the time I was on my eighteenth loser boyfriend I’d learned to override any influx of screaming hormones. “I think I’ll wait,” I said.
He grunted something unintelligible, then, “Can you get your ass over the fence or do you need assistance?”
“Please!” I scoffed, trying to inject my tone with injured self-confidence. But mostly I was still arguing with my hormones, and my knees felt a little unsteady. Also, I really didn’t want him to see my fence-climbing techniques. If I remembered correctly, they were less than noteworthy.
“You first,” he said and eased away. I tried to adjust to the separation of our bodies and hardly staggered at all as I turned around to grip the bars.
Adrenaline was more powerful than I had expected, because I was halfway up the fence before I knew it. Of course, the fact that he splayed his fingers across my left butt cheek didn’t hurt any. For a moment I considered shimmying down on top of him, but shame made me scramble faster, over the top and down the other side.
Even considering my prowess and his weakened state, his technique was somewhat superior. But once on the opposite side of the fence, his face looked pale in the darkness.
“You going to be able to get yourself to the hospital?” I asked.
“I’m an officer of the law.”
“Of course. I forgot,” I said, but I couldn’t help noticing that he stumbled when he turned. Conscience kicked in. Something about my brother facedown in the peonies and my own stinging behind. “Where’s your car?” I asked.
He bobbed his head toward the street, and we found his vehicle a minute later—a
dark Jeep with a detachable roof. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”
I eyed him. He didn’t look up to breathing, much less driving.
“How ’bout I drive, you sit?”
He canted his head at me. “You trying to seduce me, McMullen?”
I considered running him over, but I just told him he was an ass and took his keys. He relinquished them without much argument, then rounded the bumper and eased into the passenger seat. Even in the darkness, he looked limp and exhausted. Oh, crap.
“Which hospital?” I asked.
“Just take me home.”
“Good idea. Then I can make an appointment right away to ID your dead body in the morning.”
“I didn’t think you cared, McMullen.”
“So astute. Which hospital?”
He exhaled carefully and touched a hand to his head. “I just need some sleep.”
“Glendale or Huntington Memorial?”
“Fourteen twenty-two Rosehaven. Want to carry me up to my bedroom? I hear you make house calls.”
“Bite me.”
“Not here,” he said. “It’s against the law. But anything goes in the privacy of my bedchamber.”
I considered opening his door and kicking him into the street, but in order to do that I’d have to reach across his lap, and that seemed tantamount to sniffing cookie dough while dieting. “You scared of doctors, Reeves?” I asked.
“I don’t like to undress in front of strangers.”
“Really.”
He nodded, but his head was listing against the Jeep’s gray cushion. “Mother Superior taught me better than to show off.”
I gave him a look, but it was wasted. His eyes had fallen closed.
“What part of Rosehaven?” I asked.
“Simi.”
I lifted a brow at him. Simi was a posh part of town. “On the take, Lieutenant?”
“Ha,” he said, and I wondered silently about his father, the affluent bastard senator.
“That what you’re interested in, McMullen?” he asked. “Money?”
I started up the Jeep and eased into the street. There wasn’t another moving vehicle as far as the eye could see. “Isn’t everyone?”
“No,” he said and left it like that.
I looked at him. “Just out to get your man?”
“Or woman.”
“You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
He touched his head again. “Feels like I fell out of the damned tree. What the hell were you doing in Bomstad’s yard?”
“I told you—”
“The diary’s police property now.”
My heart rate bumped up as I jerked toward him. “You found it?”
He opened his eyes to slits, but didn’t bother to lift his head. “The Bomber led an interesting life.”
My mind buzzed. “Then you know I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Because you were only interested in him professionally.”
See, there was the sticky part. But my own private fantasies had no basis in reality. Never had, if truth be told.
“Seems he was more interested in the nonprofessional side of you, though,” he said.
I stared at him. He was just baiting me. Wasn’t he? I mean, the Bomb had been found with a hard-on the size of the Getty Center. Any half-wit could deduce he wasn’t much interested in my diploma.
“Ever heard of Stephanie Meyers, McMullen?”
My breath caught in my throat, but my mind was flipping out. Was he trying to trap me? Trying to tie the starlet’s death to Bomstad and Bomstad’s to me?
“Isn’t she an actress?” I said, keeping my tone oh so casual.
I could feel his gaze strike me through the darkness. “Was. She died a few months ago.”
I focused my serious expression on the street. “The entertainment field is fraught with emotional pitfalls.”
For a moment the car was silent, and then he laughed. “Fraught with emotional pitfalls? Is that how you talk to your patients?”
“Forgive me if I prefer to maintain a professional image,” I said.
The sound he made defied description. “Well, it worked for the Bomb, huh? Blasted his rocket.”
I tried to think of something scalding to say, but he was already continuing. “He and Stephanie had a thing for a while.”
“Stephanie Meyers?” I didn’t even try to keep the surprise out of my tone. Rivera and I had something of a history and he had yet to call me by my first name. But his relationship with the late starlet seemed rather personal.
He had turned to gaze out the window. “She was just a kid.”
“You knew her?”
“Our paths crossed from time to time.”
Did those paths traipse through his bedroom? I could imagine them together—him, dark and protective; her, bright and dynamic.
“She was seeing a psychiatrist,” he said.
I almost winced. “I didn’t cause her death,” I said. “Neither did her therapist.”
“He didn’t prevent it, either,” he said, and there was something in his voice, a raw frustration that made me think he believed he should have prevented it.
“I’m sorry.” It was a poor substitute for anything constructive, but it seemed to deflate his rigid anger.
“What’d you see in him?” he asked. “In Bomstad.”
“As I told you before—”
“Fuck that,” he said but there was no aggression in his voice now, just tired resignation. “What would she have seen in him?”
“Meyers?”
“Yeah.”
Had Rivera been in love with her? Was he still? “I think you know the answer to that,” I said.
“Humor me.”
I passed the only car on the highway. L.A. felt strangely deserted at three in the morning.
“I’m considering the possibility that he was schizophrenic,” I said.
“Split personality?”
“That’s a bit simplistic. But yes. He seemed to be so gentle and . . . He was very convincing,” I said.
“Convincing how?”
“He seemed genuinely kind, interested in others. Sensitive, even.”
“And you didn’t look into his background?”
“I had no reason to believe he was anything other than the image he chose to project.”
He gazed into the night, a dark man with dark thoughts. “What image do I project?”
The image of a man who’s been wounded by life, I thought, but shoved the idea behind me. It was not my place to try to fix him. It probably couldn’t even be done. “When was the last time you slept?” I asked.
He turned wearily toward me, “You think I’m delirious, McMullen?”
“Fatigue has been known to change a person’s personality.”
“What’s my personality now?”
Tired. And disturbingly vulnerable, like a battle-weary soldier, but I watched the road and refused to be drawn into his private war. I had gotten over my weakness for vulnerability a long time ago. Now I just wanted someone who used a single toothbrush each morning and didn’t fantasize about the same guys I did. “I don’t think now would be the proper time to analyze you, Rivera.”
He snorted. “I am what you see.”
“That’s what I thought about Bomstad.”
He nodded slowly. “Was he capable of murder?”
“What?”
“In your opinion,” he said. “Did he have the temperament to take another person’s life?”
“It’s difficult to . . .” I began, but his meaning kicked in suddenly. “You think he killed Meyers?”
He looked at me, then scrubbed his hand over his face. “I wish to hell I knew. I keep thinking about it. Thinking—” He paused.
“Maybe you need to quit thinking for a while,” I said. “Get some sleep.”
He nodded. “Sleep. Nice idea.”
“You’re an insomniac?�
��
“You shrinks have big words for everything?”
“It makes us feel superior. The one with the biggest word wins.”
“Like guns in my line of work.”
Our eyes met in the darkness. His looked tired and sad and honest, and there is nothing more dangerous than honesty to a woman who hasn’t had sex in over a . . . while. “You got a big gun, Lieutenant?”
“Want to come in and find out?”
More than anything. “I’m not that interested in artillery.”
“You never know, you might like it if you try it.”
“I was speaking metaphorically.”
“Me, too.”
I couldn’t help but smile. It was entirely possible that I’d never smiled at him before, but then he’d usually been accusing me of a capital offense. It tends to put a strain on a relationship. “I have one hard, fast stipulation, Rivera: I don’t sleep with men who have accused me of murder.”
“That rule out many guys?”
“You’re the first.”
“Bad luck for me. Would it help if I told you I have an M-fifty-seven?”
“Is that a gun or a disease?”
“I’m disease-free. It’s documented.”
“Girl can hardly ask for more than that.”
“Well . . .” He shrugged. “And the—”
“M-fifty-seven,” I finished for him.
“You always read people’s minds?” he asked.
“I’m a trained professional,” I said, “and men’s minds are pretty one-track.”
He didn’t try to deny it. “But it’s not a bad track.”
No, I thought, and wondered a bit dizzily how big an M57 really was.
“Come in,” he said. “Find out.”
I shot a glance toward him, terrified I’d spoken out loud.
“I’m a trained professional,” he said. “And a year is a long time.”
“I didn’t say it had been a year.”
“How long, then?”
Fourteen months, five days, and about six hours. I hadn’t been sleeping much lately, either. I’d had a lot of time to figure it out. “You need to have someone examine your head,” I said.