Tripp looked at my hands and saw that I couldn’t have killed Sylvia, yet he told me to leave the scene. He could have brought me back to his partner and explained why I wasn’t the killer, but he seemed not to want me anywhere near her. Why? Was she connected to the murders? That didn’t make sense. Especially if the killings were sex related. But what if they weren’t? Did Sylvia’s murder mean that Eddie’s death wasn’t sexual? Was there another reason for Eddie and Sylvia’s deaths?
Blackmail. It had crossed my mind before. It made sense. Eddie and Sylvia had too much money for what they were doing. So who were they blackmailing? One of Eddie’s clients? Was it the priest? If Hanson was Catholic, that could connect them. Is that why she was trying to railroad me? To protect her priest? God, I needed Eddie’s client list. I reminded myself to call Tiffany and find out how Cameron was doing on the password.
I’d been set up. That much was clear. The killer had forced Sylvia to call me, to get me over there. Then he’d killed her and called 911. He’d planned for the police to find me there. Hanson had expected to find me there. It was smart. Whatever Sylvia knew died with her, and implicating me in a second murder made it likely I’d be convicted of both. But I had an alibi. According to the GPS they’d attached to my car, I was home the whole time.
I decided for Tripp’s sake, and my own, to strengthen my alibi. As quickly as I could, I made a pitcher of Margaritas. Then guzzled down more than half the pitcher. I had other booze around, beer or vodka, which would have taken less prep, but I wouldn’t have been able to drink them as quickly as a cool, tart margarita. I’d nearly finished the entire blender full when they knocked on my door. I opened the door, to find Hanson and Tripp crowded together. I smiled at them like they were old friends. “Hey.”
“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Hanson said. “Can we come in?”
“I don’t think so.” I stood close to the screen door and did my best to breathe on her. “You’re not as friendly as you look.” Then I laughed, “Actually, you don’t look friendly at all.”
“Sylvia Navarez has been strangled.”
“And you thought of me, how sweet.” I slurred my words as best I could. My face felt flush with alcohol.
Hanson looked at Tripp and said, “He’s drunk.”
“Looks that way,” he said.
Anger passed over her face. She’d thought she had me, except she didn’t. Somehow she must have called whoever she had watching my GPS signal and found out it hadn’t budged for hours. And now she could smell “evidence” of what I’d been doing during those hours.
I couldn’t resist prodding her. “You wanna arrest me for something. How ‘bout Housing-While-Intoxicated.” It was a terrible joke, and I knew it. But it was exactly the kind of joke I made when I was drunk. And I’d begun to feel drunk. My stomach felt distended from all the Margarita I’d dumped into it.
Hatred floated off Hanson; she turned and walked down my lawn to the Crown Vic. Tripp gave me a little nod and followed his partner. I went into the kitchen to make another pitcher of Margaritas. While mixing the ingredients, I looked out the window and saw Hanson and Tripp standing on either side of the Crown Vic, arguing.
I stopped mixing Margaritas and watched. Hanson was furious, red-faced, yelling so loud the cords in her neck stood out. Tripp attempted to placate her. He had both hands up in a conciliatory gesture. Obviously, she was accusing him of something, but what?
I was thinking about easing open the window so I could hear what they were arguing about when Hanson got into the Crown Vic. Tripp tried to open the passenger’s door, but it was locked. He pounded on the window as she pulled away from the curb. I was shocked. Hanson had dumped her partner. I hurried out to the front yard. As I walked down the lawn, Tripp had his cell phone out making a call. When I got close, I could tell it was to a cab company. A minute later he hung up the phone.
“Trouble?” I asked. He gave me a dirty look. “You want me to give you a ride somewhere?”
“You’re drunk.”
I shrugged. “True. You want a Margarita?”
“I don’t drink.”
“Oh. That’s right.”
“What do you mean ‘that’s right?’ We never talked about that.”
“There’s a cup on your desk. The kind alcoholics have.”
He gave me a stern, unfriendly look. Then he seemed to remember I wasn’t the enemy. His look softened. I turned and walked up the lawn. Looking over my shoulder, I made sure he followed me. I was barely in the house before he grabbed me and pulled me to him. We kissed, tongues plunging deep into each other. Falling against my front door. Our hands everywhere.
Before I thought about it, I had my hand in his pants, wrapping a fist around the base of his thick cock. With my other hand, I unzipped his slacks. I eased his pants and briefs down around his hips and got his prick completely free. His skin was amazingly smooth, like living silk. He was uncircumcised, and I jerked him gently so the foreskin rubbed up and down his cockhead.
Meanwhile, he had hold of my prick, rubbing me through my shorts. He was rough, rougher than I was. I wondered then how completely he believed in my innocence. Did he still have doubts? Was he bringing them into this? When I broke our kiss and tried to look down at his dick, he pulled me back up to his mouth and gave me a bruising kiss.
Finally, he undid my shorts and pushed our naked cocks together. He pushed my hand away and jerked us both. His dick a darker brown than the rest of him, mine flushed pink. Letting go, he reached down and grabbed my balls. I gasped. He rolled my balls in one hand while pumping me with the other. Gently, he flicked the head with a finger.
Pushing away, I began to drop to my knees, anxious to get him into my mouth. He grabbed me by the neck to stop me. I looked into his eyes, questioning. He smiled and continued to jerk me off. I reached over and pulled on his dick.
Our eyes glued to each other, we pumped. Soon, his cock seemed to swell, getting even harder. Then it contracted, and come spurted out of him, landing on the floor and all over my hand. Even as he was coming, he pulled me into a kiss. And then I joined him, my hips pushing forward as my muscles convulsed. I came on his nicely laundered shirttails.
We held each other, panting, for a few moments. Then I went into the kitchen and got a paper towel from the butcher block. After we wiped up, I asked, “Why is your partner mad at you?”
He frowned, seeming to be sorry the mood had changed. “She thinks you killed Sylvia Navarez. She’s pissed you’re getting away with it.”
“Why is she so sure? You’re not sure.”
He just looked at me for a moment. “You know what, I really shouldn’t talk to you about the case. I’ve already said too much.”
Then I answered my own question. “She thinks I killed Sylvia because she thinks I killed Eddie. It doesn’t make sense they’d be strangled by different people. So it has to be me.”
“We should talk about the weather. Nice day, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think I killed Sylvia. That means you don’t think I killed Eddie. You let me go because you’re afraid your partner is going to find a way to pin both murders on me.”
“I like this time of year,” he said, wiping himself off and pulling up his pants. “It’s comfortable, but not too cold.”
“Sylvia called me and asked me to come over. Whoever killed her made her do that. Set it up so it would look like it was me.”
With a serious look, he said, “You should go to a hotel. Hide out. Don’t answer the phone. This will be over in a few days.”
“I can’t do that,” I said, without explaining the reasons, without even understanding the reasons myself.
“What’s your favorite time of year, Matt?” He kept his eyes on mine. I wasn’t sure if he was falling in love with me or trying to see if he’d made a mistake letting me go.
“I’m beginning to
think this isn’t about sex,” I said.
“After what we just did, how you can say that?”
“I mean the murders. I don’t think the murders are about sex.”
He nodded, but didn’t say anything. A good cop wouldn’t. I decided to give him a break and change the subject. “We hardly know anything about each other.”
“Actually, I know a lot about you,” he said. I imagined it was true, too.
“Okay, I don’t know much about you. Where’d you grow up?”
“Cerritos.” I wasn’t too familiar with the area, but I was pretty sure it was a suburban area down near Orange County.
“School?”
“Cal State Long Beach. Criminology. You want my GPA?”
“I’d say it was above three point eight.”
“Three point nine two.” He was smart, obviously. But more than that, his high GPA meant he knew how to play by the rules. He probably liked playing by the rules. Saving me must have gone against every instinct he had.
I remembered the feeling I’d had about Hanson when I was at Hollywood Station giving my statement. “Do you think your partner’s in love with you?”
He laughed. “She knows better.”
“She wouldn’t be the first woman who knew better but fell anyway.”
“She’s protective of her partners. We all call her Mama Lucy.”
“Do you think she has something to do with the murders?”
“No. She’s just wrong about you, that’s all. She’s stubborn.”
“And she thinks you’re wrong about me.”
“She doesn’t want to be my partner anymore,” he said.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“She doesn’t trust me. Thinks I have a thing for you. That I’m letting it cloud my judgment.” He looked miserable, almost as though he was in pain. “It might be true.”
My heart bounced around in my chest. He had a thing for me. Well, obviously he had a thing for me, if only the momentary kind. But the look on his face told me this might be the longer kind. The kind that didn’t go away after a quickie.
“When this is over…” I said, as I noticed a cab pull up in front of my house.
“Yeah, when this is over…” Tripp walked out the front door and got into the cab. I watched as they drove off.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about what just happened. Deciding to forgo the second pitcher of Margaritas, I drank a few glasses of water to help my body deal with the alcohol.
Booze. That’s all it was. The thing with Tripp. I’d been drinking, so something that was really very trivial took on a bigger importance than it normally would have. We jacked each other off. Didn’t mean anything. I was definitely not falling for the cop who had been trying to put me in jail and who now seemed to be trying to keep me out of jail.
My phone rang. As I wandered around looking for the cordless, I hoped it was Tripp wanting to talk more, wanting to come back. But it was Sonja, calling to tell me that my job was officially kaput.
“But nothing’s happened,” I said. “I haven’t been arrested. And even if they do arrest me, we have this thing in America called innocent until proven guilty.”
“This really has nothing to do with what’s happening to you. This is about the re-engineering.”
“That’s an outright lie, and you know it.” There was a silence. I had breached one of the unwritten laws of corporate America. Never call a liar a liar.
“I was afraid you’d be unpleasant about this,” Sonja said.
“Why shouldn’t I be unpleasant?”
“I’ve managed to get you two months severance. Plus your unused vacation time, of course.”
“Is that what everyone’s getting in the re-engineering?”
“No. I got you more.” That gave me a little sympathy for her. Not because she’d gotten me more money, but because I knew the only way she’d gotten it was to fight for it.
“It’s not going to be easy without me,” I told her. She didn’t reply, so I hung up and made that second pitcher of Margaritas.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next morning, the alarm went off and my head nearly exploded. I struggled to turn it off while trying to remember why I’d wanted to get up at quarter to seven when I didn’t even have a job anymore. Then I remembered. I had some place to be.
Saint Dominic’s was on Melrose near Larchmont. The church looked to be about four stories tall, brick, and had concrete curlicues at the top. Attached on one side was an even taller bell tower. I hurried up the front steps and found myself in a small lobby. The doors were open to the main church. The service hadn’t begun.
In the center of the lobby was a standing basin with what I assumed was holy water. On one wall, I noticed a plaque explaining who St. Dominic had been. It didn’t say when he’d lived, but he was the son of a blacksmith who dreamed of becoming a priest. Unfortunately, he died at the age of fifteen. He was the patron saint of juvenile delinquents. I had been brought up as a lukewarm Christian. The Catholic church was a different planet.
The mass was at seven-thirty. I flicked on my phone and saw that it should start in about six minutes. I went into the main church and took a seat in one of the last pews. There were about ten other people scattered around. An organist was playing somewhere I couldn’t see, possibly in a balcony above me.
A few minutes later, the music changed and everyone rose. They all had hymnals in their hands. I grabbed one from the back of the pew in front of me. Randomly, I opened to a hymn and tried to look like I might be about to sing. Then a line of men and teenage boys came down the aisle in a kind of parade. I scanned them, looking for Father O’Hannahan. He wasn’t there. Not even close. The two older men in the procession were Asian.
I stood there wondering what to do. I could just leave. It would be rude, but it wasn’t like I’d come with a Catholic friend. I promised myself that I’d leave as soon as I could without making a disturbance. The hymn ended, and we sat back down as the priests and altar boys made themselves comfortable at the front.
Slipping down the pew, I headed for the aisle that ran along the outside wall of the church. Before I turned to leave, I noticed Father O’Hannahan standing in front of a door to the side of the altar. I headed up the outer aisle toward him. My movement caught his attention, and he ducked into the door behind him.
I dove through the door after him. I heard a gasp behind me as I did. It was probably a priests-only area. I found myself in a hallway. I ran down it until I got to another hallway, this one lined with doors leading to offices, I supposed. I caught O’Hannahan halfway down this hallway.
“Father, I need to talk to you.”
He spun around. “I told you to leave.”
“Was it you? Did you kill Eddie?”
“No, of course not. I never even met him.”
“You didn’t? He wasn’t a member of your church?”
He shook his head.
“Then how did you end up doing his funeral?”
“Sylvia Navarez asked me.”
Something very obvious suddenly occurred to me. “You know who killed them, don’t you. You know who killed Eddie.”
Even what he was going to say before he said it, “Yes, yes I know. But I can’t tell you.”
“You have to. He’s killed two people, and he’s not going to stop.”
“I can’t. That’s why you have to leave. Do you understand? You’re not safe.”
I grabbed him by the arm. “You have to tell me. Who killed them? Who was it?”
He pushed me off him. Then, without a word, ran down the hall. There didn’t seem to be a point in chasing him.
As I walked back to my car, I wondered if the priest could at least tell the police it wasn’t me who killed Eddie. If he did that much, he wouldn’t be violating the confessional or wh
atever they call it. I was about a half mile from home when my phone rang. It was illegal to talk on the phone while driving without one of those Bluetooth ear pieces, but when I saw that it as Jeremy, I answered anyway.
“How’s Palm Springs?” I said instead of hello.
“The hotel is nice,” he said, after a sheepish pause. “We tried to register under fake names, but it’s harder to do than you’d think. Everyone wants to see photo IDs.”
“Why, Jeremy? Why did you give that statement?”
“Oh, God. Matt, it was terrible. Suddenly there was all this pounding on the door and yelling. There were, like, six cops, with their guns drawn. This detective waved a search warrant at me and then they’re in our home looking at everything.”
“Was it Hanson? The woman you talked to before?”
“I guess. Anyway, they sat Skye and me down in the living room and a few minutes later she’s showing us this bag of crystal and Skye’s looking at me like it’s mine. But it wasn’t mine. I have no idea where it came from. I think the detective brought it with her.”
“Then what?”
“She’s telling us we’ll have to go to prison unless we can make some kind of deal. She kept looking at me when she was talking. She said you were dangerous, that you were looking for victims, that you were likely to kill again.”
“And you believed that?”
“Not really.”
“Not really? Thanks.”
“Matt, she told me what to write and said we’d go to prison if I didn’t sign it.”
“And she did this in front of five other cops?”
He was silent. “Maybe it was just two. They were outside while she dictated the statement.”
“Did she take pictures of where she found the meth?”
“I don’t think so.”
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