by J. R. Rain
“I can’t wait that long,” I said.
“You’ve waited twenty-two years.”
“That’s when I didn’t know who the killer was.”
“And you do now?”
I nodded and felt the sweat trickle down through my hairline. “As sure as I can be.”
“Sure enough to bounce someone’s head off of a table.”
“Sometimes you gotta kick the hornet’s nest,” I said.
“Or break its nose,” said Sanchez. “He’s got to be nervous.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’m hoping.”
“You think he’ll make a move?”
“We’ll see.”
“And you think his move might be directed towards Cindy?”
“He’s a monster,” I said. “Monsters can do anything.”
“So what’s next?” asked Sanchez.
“We wait.”
“For what?”
“The monster to reveal himself.”
“And until then we watch Cindy?”
“Yup. One of us. At all times. And if we’re both busy, I’ll hire someone.”
Sanchez pointed toward Cindy’s building. “Does she know we’re watching her?”
“She knows. She doesn’t like it. But she knows.”
Sanchez shrugged. “And what if he never rears his ugly head?”
“He will,” I said.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll keep kicking,” I said. “And keep breaking. And did you just say ‘rears his ugly head’?”
“Me talk pretty.”
Chapter Forty-six
It was two weeks before I received the phone call I was waiting for.
I was been in my office making a list of my favorite European beers. I had just decided that tops on my list was Guinness Dry Stout when my phone rang. I set my pen aside, pleased with my list.
“Knighthorse Investigations.”
“Mr. Knighthorse, it’s Bert Tomlinson.”
I took in some air, collected my thoughts. “The same Bert Tomlinson whose son raped and murdered my mother?”
“We need to talk.”
“Boy do we.”
“Not here. Not over the phone.”
“At the police station, perhaps?”
“No. Neutral ground. There’s some...information I need to tell you about your mother.”
“Sure,” I said, knowing he was full of shit. “When and where?”
“Tomorrow. Do you know where Irvine Lake is?”
“Yup.”
“There are some park benches along the east side. This time of year, it should be quiet.”
“Sounds like a great place for an ambush.”
“I’ll be there alone. You have my word.”
“Is that the same word you used to uphold the law?”
“I’ll be there alone, Knighthorse. Please be the same. We need to talk.”
“We need to do something,” I said. “What time?”
“Seven p.m. Dusk.”
“Sounds spooky.”
“See you there, Knighthorse.”
And he clicked off.
I sat quietly at my desk, digesting everything, listening to the sounds of the traffic outside, to my own beating heart, to the small hum of the mini-refrigerator cycling on.
I then reached for my cell and dialed the only number I could think of dialing.
Chapter Forty-seven
Cindy was asleep and I was alone on her balcony, drinking.
It was coming on midnight and I’d had a few hours to think about my rendezvous with Bert Tomlinson tomorrow at the east end of Irvine Lake.
It was a set-up, certainly. I knew that. And he knew that I knew that. Hell, Ginger and Junior knew that.
So, why would I go?
Good question.
I was drinking an old-school Michelob, which is what my poor Mexican neighbors drank in Inglewood. Whenever I saw a bottle of Michelob, with its tinfoil top, I thought of old Mexican men sitting around on plastic chairs outside their houses, drinking and laughing and having a damn good time. They didn’t act poor. They acted...content. Happy. Not to mention that they always seemed to have strong familial bonds that I never understood. I would play catch with myself, tossing a football or baseball or golf ball, and sometimes watch the Mexican men drinking in a circle, laughing or talking seriously, and I could feel their bond from across the street.
The only bond I had ever had like that was with my mother. My father didn’t know how to bond. He knew how to intimidate and kill, but not bond.
I had been starved for such connections...and then I met Cindy. With Cindy, I finally felt at ease. I finally felt at home. I never told her that, granted. You can’t tell someone something like that. It puts too much pressure on them. But I knew it in my heart. She was my rock. She was my family.
She and Sanchez. And maybe even Jack. And now Junior.
I’m weird, I thought, and drank again, deeply, from the old-school bottle of Michelob.
So why should I go and put my life on the line when I knew damn well it was a set-up? The answer was easy. At least, easy for me.
This was my chance to get answers. This was my chance to finally put this forever to rest. Something was going to go down tomorrow. One way or another, answers would be given. Lives would move on...or lives would end.
Tomorrow would be closure.
Blessed closure.
The bottle was empty now, but I still occasionally tilted it back and drank the hidden drops. Only one bottle tonight. No hangovers. I needed a clear head. Clear mind. Fast reflexes.
Tomorrow.
These past two months had been hard. And hard on my relationship with Cindy, too. And hard on the little things. Like relaxing. Like thinking about something other than my slain mother. My painting and reading had gone out the window. Yes, I paint. Not very good, granted. But it was a release for me. I saw the world the way I see the world. I painted with colors that suited me, that were alive to me.
For the past two months, color was gone from my life. I had been consumed by this, even in quiet moments with Cindy, with Sanchez, or with anyone.
This was unfinished business.
Tomorrow, it would be finished.
I thought about all of this and more as I crossed my ankles over the balcony railing and half-closed my eyes. Half-closed, because when I closed them all the way, there she was. Pale and dead and drained of blood, her hand reaching under her bed, to a box of my childhood things.
Why had she been reaching for the box?
I would never know, but I knew I had been her last thought in this world. She had thought of me while an animal stole her life and hurt her so bad.
And so I sat like that, with my eyes half-closed, waiting.
Waiting for tomorrow.
Chapter Forty-eight
I was to meet Bert Tomlinson, retired LAPD homicide detective, at 7:00 p.m. Which is why I got there at 6:00 p.m.
It had been raining earlier in the day, which, in itself, was cause for celebration. I drove slowly through the park, around the curve of the lake, and, sure enough, there was no one here. The park said it would close at dusk, but I didn’t see anyone here to enforce such a closure. Besides, there was nothing to actually close. Unless, somehow, they drained the lake.
I ended up in a back parking lot. From there, I found a narrow dirt road that led deeper into the dense shrubbery. Irvine Lake is surrounded by a lot of stunted trees that did their best to look like woods. The undergrowth ranged from sparse to dense, and was populated by a lot of spiky plants that looked like a cross between cactus and something from Venus. On the lake before me, tethered to a floating dock, were some generic rowboats that visitors could rent.
I appeared to be alone, but I knew I wasn’t.
With my van mostly buried in ferns, creosote, huckleberry, gooseberries and sages, and surrounded by bent and twisted oaks, firs and pines, I studied the layout before me. I could clearly see the main r
oad that led into this section of the park. The picnic tables were before me. I counted three of them.
I looked at my watch. Fifty more minutes.
I moved into the rear of my van and fetched three recorders. Each recorder, I knew, could record up to four continuous hours.
Perfect.
I next slid the side door open and waded through some milkweed and sugar brush, and stepped out into the picnic clearing. I crossed the sparse grass and, at the picnic tables, I did my best to hide the recorders in nooks and crossbeams along the underside of the tables, making sure the duct tape didn’t cover the mouthpieces.
I pressed ‘Play’ on each of them.
From here, I could smell the lake, which didn’t smell very clean. Then again, lakes rarely smelled clean. The light rain helped the smell. The rain smelled fresh and invigorating and seemed to fall straight from heaven. Maybe it did.
With the light rain came something else. A scent. A hint of perfume. A soft suggestion of flowers mixed with...what? Citrus? Yes, citrus.
I knew the scent well. In fact, I had smelled it not too long ago at the cemetery, too, although I pretended I hadn’t.
It was my mother’s perfume.
The hair on my neck stood on end and a strong shiver coursed through me. The skin along my forearms rippled in goosebumps. I stood there silently, feeling as if an electric current was moving gently through my body. I didn’t know what was happening, but I liked it.
I stood like that until the feeling went away, and when it did, I saw him driving along the dirt road, his lights out.
Bert Tomlinson.
Chapter Forty-nine
As far as I could tell he was alone.
The park was significantly darker, and the sky between the trees was a deep purple. As far as I could tell, we were alone in the park. That is, alone to the naked eye.
He’s out there, somewhere, I thought.
Bert Tomlinson parked his Cadillac near the benches. The older Tomlinson got out of his car and walked around and ran his hand through his gray hair. He exhaled mightily. He checked his watch often, and once or twice I saw him adjust something under his armpit.
A shoulder holster.
A gun.
He checked his watch again, and I checked the time on my dash. It was almost seven.
Show time.
I threw on my high beams, blasting the open picnic area with light.
Bert spun around, shielding his eyes, and reached for something inside his jacket but thought better of it, and stopped halfway there. Smart move, since he didn’t know how many guns were trained on him.
I stepped out of my van, holding my Smith & Wesson out before me, and pushed through the shrubs. “Toss your gun aside, Detective,” I said.
“I didn’t come here to get into a shoot-out with you, Knighthorse.”
“Toss the gun,” I said, moving closer to him. I knew my own body was silhouetted in the headlights behind me. But he was brilliantly lit, and he looked incredibly old and weary. Much older than I remembered him looking.
He sighed, reached inside his jacket, and slowly withdrew his own gleaming Smith & Wesson. He held it loosely before him with his thumb and forefinger. I jerked my head, and he tossed it aside. It landed with a thud, and mostly disappeared in some leaves, although the shiny barrel reflected some of the headlights.
“Can you turn off the damned lights, Knighthorse?”
“No,” I said, and stepped closer to him. “And keep your hands up.”
He kept them up and I stepped over to him, and backhanded him hard across the mouth. He went spinning to the ground. I ordered him to stand again.
As he did so, I said, “That’s for being a shitty cop.”
The backhand had dazed him enough that I was able to quickly pat him down and verify he was weaponless. I then checked out his car. It was empty. I came back and was tempted to backhand him again, but I somehow restrained myself.
Instead, I pointed to one of the picnic benches and said, “Sit.”
He sat. I scanned the woods, or what passed for woods in this part of the country, listening hard. As far as I could tell, we were still alone. It had also begun to rain harder. It angled down through the clearing and nearly directly into my face. Bert Tomlinson hunched forward on the table, leaning on his elbows. He was dressed in a slightly heavier jacket than mine, with a hood. I didn’t believe in hoods. Hoods were for wimps. He was wearing jeans and running sneakers. I wondered if he was planning on doing any running tonight.
Something honked out on the lake. Something honked in return. Soon there was a helluva lot of honking going on. Something was spooking these geese.
“Where’s your son?” I asked.
“At home, I presume.”
“He killed my mother.”
“I understand you might think that.”
With the headlights shining into the clearing, the scene looked a little like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Rain crossed through the lights, slashing like silver daggers. The whole setting looked surreal.
“He also raped two other women.”
Tomlinson was shaking his head. “No.”
“And you got him off. Every time.”
“I think you overestimate the reach of a simple homicide detective.”
Except my father had looked into this. I said, “The assistant DA at the time was an ex-partner of yours. In fact, the two of you had been partners for nearly ten years before an injury forced him to pursue a law degree, a degree that eventually landed him in the district attorney’s office.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Knighthorse.”
“So, how many innocent women has your piece of shit son killed, Detective?”
With the glow of the headlights illuminating just one side of his face, the retired homicide investigator looked impossibly old. A living corpse. His hands were clenched into fists, the backs of which were covered with age spots. He was an old man who should be playing with his grandchildren or relaxing poolside on a cruise ship...anything other than sitting in the rain and staring down the barrel of a gun.
“He’s a good kid,” he said.
I stepped closer to the table, ignoring the rain, ignoring the bright headlights. “You’ve spent your entire life protecting him, haven’t you?”
He hadn’t stopped shaking his head. “He’s a good kid.”
“Your son is a killer, and as far as I’m concerned, so are you.”
Beyond the surreal light, the geese stopped honking. I heard the lapping of water along the sandy shore. The jostling of boats tied together. The wind in branches, and another sound, too.
Whimpering. Coming from the old man.
“You’ve bailed your son out of so much trouble, he probably thinks he’s bulletproof. Immune. A god among men. He could take what he wants, when he wants, and dear ol’ dad will always get him off. Always.”
“No, no. You’re wrong,” he said, and his voice sounded strangled, and I saw that he was weeping now. He covered his face with his hands.
“He’s a killer, and you’re his accomplice.”
I heard the noise behind me, coming up from the lake. As I spun toward it, a nearby voice said, “Drop the gun, Knighthorse.”
Chapter Fifty
Under different circumstances, I probably wouldn’t have dropped the gun. I would have started firing and kept on firing until all of us were dead.
Instead, I tossed my gun aside and there, silhouetted in the headlights of my van, was a figure I had come to recognize.
Gary Tomlinson.
He stepped forward through the short grass, his facial features hidden in shadow. He was holding what appeared to be shotgun. Pointed directly at my chest.
“Get on the ground,” he said.
“Go fuck yourself.”
He stepped closer, and the closer her got, the more I could make him out. His nose was still a little swollen. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, the sleeves of which were rolled up to hi
s elbows. He was a few inches shorter than me, but he didn’t look it. There was a lot of muscle around his shoulders, and his forearms rippled as he gripped the shotgun tightly.
“Then put your hands up.”
“Go fuck yourself. Again.”
Gary was now standing near his father, who was still sitting at the table, holding his head in his hands. The old man looked traumatized, bewildered, and I realized now that this whole nighttime set-up had been Gary’s idea, not his father’s.
Gary glanced at his father. “You believe this guy, Dad? You would think he was the one holding the gun.”
Dad didn’t say anything. He just continued to hold his head in his hands. The picture of denial.
“I swept the area. Twice. We’re all alone. Park’s closed. No rangers, no campers. Nothing.” Now he looked at me. “You’re not in a very good position.”
“I’m always in a good position.”
Gary shook his head and walked carefully around the table. He kept the weapon loosely trained on me. That was a good decision on his part.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “This ends now, anyway.”
“For some of us.”
Gary looked at me curiously from above his still-swollen nose. Curiously, because I wasn’t acting the part of a scared and cornered victim. He shrugged. “So you found me, Knighthorse. After twenty years. Funny how I always knew you would. So how did you find me?”
“I Googled ‘murderous scumbags.’”
Gary tilted his head slightly. “I’m not as murderous as you think, Knighthorse. Sure, there was your mother and another woman who shall remain nameless. But that’s it. Just the two of them. You see, killing is more troublesome than it’s worth. There’s the cleaning and the hiding and the worrying. Not to mention I happen to like my current lifestyle...although things can get a little boring.”
“So you mix things up with a little rape and murder?”
“Actually, yes, although I’ve discovered other...outlets.”
“Spoken like a true psychopath.” I didn’t want to know about his other outlets.