On her way to pick up Grayson’s phone, she called Ben.
“Hey, Lara. Everything okay?”
They typically only saw each other on weekends, with texts and e-mails in between, so her call must have surprised him.
“I was just going to get some dinner and wondered if you wanted to join me.”
A pause. “It’s a lovely thought, but Kurt and I already had dinner. Now we’re looking at classes and trying to figure out his school schedule.”
Brushed off for a class schedule? “It’s that time of year.” She wanted to shake things up. “What about later? Would you meet me for a drink?”
“What’s going on? Is it important?”
“Not particularly. I just wanted to see you. Maybe discuss a case I’m working, or sneak in some midweek sex.”
He chuckled. “I love the idea, but my son is grounded and I can’t leave him home unsupervised. I’ll call you after a while and we can talk.”
“Okay. Bye.” What had she learned? Their relationship was going nowhere until his teenage son was out on his own, and with some male offspring that took until age twenty-five. As much as she liked Ben, she was too impatient for that. More important, after all this time, neither of them had ever said love.
Impulsively, she called Jackson and he picked up right away. “Evans, what have you got?”
“I need to talk about the Grayson case. Can you meet me for a drink?”
“I’ve got Benjie here. And Katie. So it’s not a good time to leave.” A pause.
She started to say Never mind, but he continued. “You can stop by for a while. Katie and Benjie are getting along well, and we can step out on the deck, drink a beer, and talk.”
That he would make time for her meant everything. Especially after Ben had blown her off. “Thanks. It’ll be a quick stop. Do I need to bring the beer?”
He laughed. “You know me too well.”
CHAPTER 17
Evans’ call had surprised him. Having her stop at his house was even more unusual, but turning her away seemed wrong. If Schak or Quince had wanted to talk in person, he would have made time for them. Evans was as much a friend as any of the guys on his team. Also, she had never asked him for special favors or attention, so something must be weighing on her mind. He wondered how Kera would feel about Evans stopping by—especially since he was avoiding his girlfriend rather than be at the hospital with her, waiting for Danette to die. Jackson couldn’t face more grief right now. Instead, he had guilt and worry rolling around in his gut. He was surprised Kera had called her ex to the hospital. Daniel had been mostly absent from his grandson’s life.
Jackson returned to the living room, and the joyous sight of Katie and Benjie playing hide-and-seek pushed his guilt and confusion aside. For a delirious moment, a fantasy played out in his head. He would adopt Benjie, and Katie would move home to help raise him. They would all bond, and Benjie would fill the hole in their lives left by the death of Katie’s mother. They would be a family. Kera and Micah too. Benjie could grow up with Kera’s grandson as his stepbrother. Maybe they’d all move in together. They could make it work.
Derrick strode up the hall and interrupted his happy thoughts. “I’m going out for a while. The noise is a bit much for me.” His brother slapped his arm with a rolled-up magazine.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m happy to see Katie. She looks good.”
His daughter turned, stuck out her tongue at them, then chased Benjie down the hall, laughing. She was still gaunt, still dressed in black, and had straightened her curly hair, but she seemed sober. Jackson had asked her to show him that she didn’t have alcohol in her backpack and had made her promise not to drink while she was home. “I’m not like Mom,” was all she’d said.
Jackson walked outside as Derrick drove off. The sun was sinking in a pink-and-charcoal sky, and the air had started to cool. He loved this time of day. Evans pulled in moments later. Neither she, nor anyone on his task force, had ever been to this house, which he’d only lived in for the last year. He’d grown up in the house as a kid, then gotten married and moved a mile away with his wife and daughter. After he and Renee divorced, he’d finally sold their house to get out of the joint mortgage and had moved back in here with his brother, who was typically not at home.
Evans walked up the driveway, moving a little slower than usual. Did she look sad? He was glad he’d hugged her earlier in the parking lot. Something was going on.
“Hey. It’s a nice evening for a brew on the porch with a friend.”
“Sure is.” She pulled two beers from a sack, opened them, and passed him one. “Is that Katie I hear inside?”
“Yep. She’s home for a few days to help with Benjie. They seem to like each other.”
“Good news.”
They sat side by side on the front porch, enjoying the dusk, and didn’t speak for a while. Evans drank like a thirsty person while Jackson sipped his beer. He hadn’t eaten dinner and rarely drank, so he could feel his tension slide quickly away.
Finally, she said, “I know you’re busy with your family and I don’t mean to stay long. But there’s more to the Grayson case than a jock having a heart attack from snorting cocaine. He had a girlfriend on the side, one that he paid rent for.”
“He sounds like a man under pressure.”
“I think so too.” She turned to face him. “Lammers wants me to drop the investigation, but I plan to find the other girlfriend and see what she has to say.”
“That’s probably what I would do too.” He patted her leg. “Let me know what you find out.”
Evans put her hand on his leg and left it. “I knew you would say that.”
Jackson didn’t know what was happening, but he liked it. Too uncertain to move, he sat quietly, enjoying the feel of her body so close to his.
Her voice was soft. “Do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”
Who was she really asking about? “It happens.” He tried to sound casual.
“But eventually something has to give, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I think that’s what happened to Logan Grayson.” She kissed his cheek and slipped away.
Later, he was reading through his case notes and nodding off in his chair when his phone rang. He recognized the number as the department’s front desk. What could it be? He hadn’t asked for any bulletins yet. “Jackson here.”
“You’re running the homicide case out of 2395 Pershing?”
“Yes. What have you got?”
“That house is on fire. The dispatcher who took the call recognized the address and notified us.”
The evidence! “What happened?”
“It was just called in. I’m sure the fire department is still out there.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” He clicked off.
It had to be arson. And the person who came to mind was Dylan Gilmore, the budding young sociopath who lived next door. What was he trying to cover up?
CHAPTER 18
A year earlier
Logan Grayson clenched his teeth. A hot knife of pain twisted into his left knee as they lifted him onto the gurney. “Motherfucker!” Four games left before the BCS Championship game and now he was injured. If he had to have surgery and sit out the rest of the season, his shot at the pros could be ruined.
Coach Harper ran alongside the gurney as the paramedics carried him off the field. “Don’t worry, son. We’ll get you the best orthopedic in the business. You’ll be back in no time.” The coach called every player son, so his message wasn’t personal. Still, the words gave him some comfort. Logan prayed it wasn’t his ACL. Many athletes never played sports again after a serious outer ligament tear.
In the hospital, he learned that he’d torn his medial collateral ligament. “That’s the good ne
ws,” his doctor said. “It could be much worse. The bad news is that you need surgery and a month of rest. But you will play again.”
Logan looked to his mother, who’d flown to Portland to stay with him. “I’ll miss the bowl game and my shot at the Heisman.”
“You still have next year. And you’ll be a senior.”
Would he? Some players were never the same after major surgery. They did all right and finished out their college careers, but then it was over. They no longer excelled and caught the pro scouts’ attention. He couldn’t let that happen to him. Football was all he had. He wasn’t smart enough to have a real career. And after a taste of the limelight, how could he spend his life working in one of his father’s auto shops? His depression would overtake him.
By the second week of recovery, he was too restless to sleep at night. He couldn’t run or work out or do anything physical, and his frustration was building to a breaking point. He gave up trying to sleep, grabbed his laptop from the nightstand, and clicked open his Chrome browser. When his bookmarked tabs loaded, he opened his Gmail. Nothing new but promotional crap. He thought about starting a chat with his girlfriend, but she would be asleep and not appreciate hearing from him. Danica had been avoiding him since his injury, and he suspected she was cheating on him. Going without sex wasn’t easy for him either. She could have at least given him a few blow jobs. Some girls just didn’t understand how important that was.
A quick glance at Facebook, then he clicked over to the next tab. He signed in with a password, checked a box that said he was over eighteen, and his favorite poker site loaded. He’d discovered online gambling after getting bored with late-night porn. Logan wasn’t a sidelines kind of guy, and with gambling, he could participate. The real-money aspect of internet gambling gave it even more of an edge. He’d already maxed out one credit card, but his skills were improving all the time. He was due for a big win.
After a few hours, his leg started to ache and he reached for another Percocet. The pain pills worried him more than the gambling debt. He’d battled and beaten a cocaine addiction in high school, and he never wanted to go back into that world. Opioids were wonderful. And evil. Sometimes he felt the old cravings. Logan shook it off. It was one pain pill, and he was healing. In a few weeks, everything would be back to normal.
Except it wasn’t. Without exercise and purpose, his energy leaked away and his depression came back. His mother talked him into trying a new kind of antidepressant. SSRIs had never worked for him. That’s because you’re bipolar, a little voice in his head chirped. Logan shut it down. He wasn’t mentally ill. He just got depressed sometimes in the off-season—or when he was sidelined. Logan called his old doctor from high school, and without even seeing him in person, the doc called in a new prescription.
The new meds kicked in quickly, his knee healed, and he started to practice lightly with the team. But he still had a constant mild pain and his energy hadn’t rebounded. At six weeks, his surgeon cut off his Percocet. Logan woke the next day sweating, shaking, and nauseated. At first, he thought he had the flu, but he scored a Vicodin from a teammate at practice, and as soon as it hit his system, the nausea passed. He needed a new doctor and a new pain prescription. He couldn’t afford to be sick or look weak. He had a reputation to maintain. His teammates needed him to be strong and throw touchdown passes. His girlfriend, fellow students, young football players, and Duck fans everywhere counted on him to be a shining example of athletic prowess, public charm, and decent academic performance. More important, he had to maintain his scholarship. If he didn’t perform for the team, the coach would boot him and the school would cut him loose. He would have to give up his sweet apartment, drop out, and go home. Failure was not an option.
Sometimes he felt like a slave—paid just enough to live, eat, train, and nothing more. He went out on the field every day, where he was broken down physically and mentally, with time off only to attend classes he hated. During games, he and his teammates put on a show for spectators, who placed bets and objectified them. The fans loved him, but only when he performed well and won games. If he made mistakes, they screamed obscenities and posted hateful things online. Some days, he didn’t even feel human.
Then, one night at a party, he was introduced to an incredible woman. Tiny, with long platinum hair and full breasts. But her face was what drew him in. Dark-green eyes that hinted at sexual secrets and plump lips the color of cinnamon. When she touched his shoulder, an electric spark shot through his body. Later, when she offered him a line of coke, he fell in love. His energy was back in minutes, and he knew what he’d been missing. Later, she blew his mind—and other parts—with the most amazing sex he’d ever had. He needed her in ways he’d never needed anyone. But Catalina didn’t fit into his world. She wasn’t a student, she didn’t have money, and she wasn’t pretty the way Danica and her friends were. Catalina wasn’t someone he could ever introduce to his mother.
Yet, he couldn’t live without her.
CHAPTER 19
Thursday, September 5, 5:26 a.m.
Evans’ first waking thought was that she was back on Jackson’s task force and would see him at noon. She shut it down. She was an investigator with important things to accomplish. But first, a workout.
She shortened her normal forty-minute kickboxing routine to practice for the SWAT physical. Out in the backyard, the sun was just coming up. Evans assessed the object of torture for the morning: a piece of carpet rolled up around three pressure-treated fence posts. The effect was about the same as the one-hundred-eighty-pound dummy she would have to carry from a building as part of the test. She squatted next to the roll, swung it up into a fireman’s carry, and started across the small grassy yard. The weight was overwhelming—at least forty-five pounds heavier than her own body. After ten feet, a sharp pain in her lower back made her drop the heavy load.
Fuck! She’d made it all the way across the yard the day before. Evans stretched her back muscles, jogged around, and tried again. She hit the halfway point this time, then lost control of the load. Clearly, she needed more work on her core. But not now, when she was hurting. She went out for a three-mile run to cheer herself up, then showered and headed to work.
Her first stop would be North McKenzie Hospital. She’d picked up Logan Grayson’s phone at the reception desk the night before and spent an hour reading his recent texts and noting who he’d contacted. Two numbers popped up repeatedly. One didn’t have a name label, but it matched a single text from the same number, a text with the same tone as the e-mail from Cat. They obviously limited their communication to phone calls as much as possible. Because calls left no incriminating details for his other girlfriend to find? Through the citizen database, Evans had tracked that number to Catalina Morales, complete with an address. As eager as she was to question the secret girlfriend, the early hour wasn’t best for most people.
But in a hospital, it didn’t matter; the patient was either able to communicate or not. And the second, more-frequently-called number belonged to Trey Sandoval, the player who’d been in a car accident Tuesday. She was on her way to see him now and hoped he was able to answer questions.
As she walked across the hospital parking lot, enjoying the early morning coolness, she couldn’t stop thinking about how the best friends had experienced traumatic incidents within twelve hours of each other. The image of Grayson’s bloody nose popped into her head. What if Grayson and Sandoval had both ingested tainted cocaine? Giving one a heart attack and the other a seizure or something that had caused him to lose control of his car? Evans warmed to the idea but worried it would be hard to prove unless she could find a sample of the drug. Was Catalina the supplier?
After she showed her badge, the receptionist directed her to a room on the seventh floor. Evans rode the elevator with a sad older couple, then strode through quiet hallways. The new hospital was massive, ornate, and half empty—the corporate owners had overestimated the local
need.
The door to Sandoval’s room was open, so she tentatively stepped in and said her name. A young woman in shorts and a tank top sat in the chair next to the bed, typing on a laptop. She looked much like the young man in the hospital bed—dark eyes, silky straight dark hair, and muscles popping out of her smooth skin. The patient had a bandage around his head and a cast on his right arm. And possibly more injuries concealed by the white blanket.
“Did you say detective?” Sandoval sat up and clicked off the TV.
The young woman, probably a sister, eyed her warily. “The state investigator was already here.”
“I’m with the Eugene Police.” She turned to the injured young man. “I need to ask you about Logan Grayson.”
His face crumpled. “I can’t believe he’s dead.”
Thank goodness he already knew. Evans asked the sister to give them a moment alone.
“It was an accident,” she said on her way out.
Logan or Trey? Evans started to call her back, then changed her mind. Just a family member being protective. She moved closer to the bed. “Let’s get right down to business. I want a sample of the cocaine you and Logan were snorting.”
He started to deny the accusation, but she held up a hand. “Don’t bother. It’ll be in your blood work. And Logan snorted some before he died.” She didn’t know that for sure yet, but the nosebleed made her think so. “I want to know what it was cut with and who sold it to you.”
“You think the coke killed him?” His doubt was obvious.
“Logan had a heart attack. Can you think of another reason why he would?”
For a long moment, he stared at the wall behind her. “My lawyer told me not to talk to anybody. Not the media or the police. I still have a football career, and I’m not blowing it.”
Deadly Bonds (A Detective Jackson Mystery) Page 11