If Jean had still held any loyalty at all for Freelander, it had just switched to Sam.
“Do you know if he’s acted on any of those plans to go after his ex-wife?” he asked while his having her was still fresh.
“Yeah. I know he did.”
Bingo.
“Tell me about it.”
She shrugged. “He had this plan to intimidate her. To show up at her work. Her house. Things like that. He was going to have some guys mess up a car at that shelter that turned her against him in the first place. He was not happy with them. Said if she didn’t have them feeding her shit and giving her a false sense of strength she’d still be his.”
“What guys?”
She looked away. Stared down at her fingers. “I don’t know. Someone he met in prison knew someone was all he said...”
She was hiding something. Protecting her brother? Sam wasn’t sure.
“You said you knew he’d done something...”
“I...kinda...followed him one night last week. I thought he was going to see this new bitch and I wanted to know who she was...but instead he drives to Santa Raquel. He goes to his old house. I’m thinking he lied to me about ditching his wife, too, so I follow him in. No one’s home and I think he’s going to leave, but he lets out this, like, growl sound and goes berserk. He takes out a knife from the kitchen and starts slashing all of the paintings in the place. Made no sense to me. But it sure cured me of wanting to be with him.”
She still wasn’t looking at him. And Sam had a feeling the woman still cared about Freelander.
Funny how the heart didn’t always follow what the head knew it should...
A thought for another time.
Or not.
“You saw him slash the paintings.”
“Yeah. I was hiding in the laundry room and could see through the crack where the hinges go.”
“What did he do with the knife when he was through?”
“Put it back in the drawer.”
Slashed paintings hadn’t been enough to warrant forensic testing of possible weapons. But if he knew where the weapon was, he could get an order for tests.
Freelander, you’re mine.
He’d lock the bastard up for breaking and entering and destruction of property, and go from there.
He wasn’t stopping until he’d kept his promise to Bloom. She was never going to have to worry about her ex-husband again.
Jean’s thumb rapidly moved back and forth on the table. “You know anything about a security guard or cop uniform?” he asked, on another hunch. Did Jean know more than she was saying?
Had she been in that house to help Freelander, not to spy on him? And had she been with him other times, too? Like at Bloom’s office?
“I know while Ken was in prison he got this uniform fetish,” she said. “He kept talking to me about how he’d lie awake at night and fantasize about me in one of the guard’s uniforms.”
“And you didn’t think that was...” He stopped. It wasn’t for him to judge.
“I thought it was a sign that he really loved me,” Jean said, looking him in the eye again. “He was fantasizing about me. And wished that I was the one in charge of him. So to speak.”
“So you bought a uniform and...”
“Noooo. I didn’t.” Jean was upset. “He said that when he heard he was getting out, to celebrate he ordered one out of some catalog. He said that it was going to be his coming home present to me.”
“But you never got it.”
“No. But I’ll bet his new girl did. And more power to her, as far as I’m concerned. I want nothing to do with the jerk.”
There was a ring of truth in what she said.
“Seriously, Detective,” she added, hands calm now as she sat up. “I’m lucky that I saw what he was before I was married to him. I’m getting my life together now. Going back to finish my degree and go to grad school. I want nothing more to do with Ken Freelander.”
“Would you be willing to testify against him?” He was serious. And testing her, too.
“About what?”
“The break-in at his ex-wife’s home in Santa Raquel. His statements to you that he was going to get back at her. The slashed paintings.”
“Absolutely.”
No hesitation.
“So you really were hiding that night? He didn’t know you were there?”
“Do you think I’d be sitting here talking to you right now if I was working with him? I was hiding, Detective. I was so afraid of him finding me that I stayed for a long time after he left, just sitting there behind the laundry room door. I didn’t want him to find me there. Then, when I finally decided it was safe to leave, I was creeping out the back, and I see this flashlight, like someone’s coming around the house. I bolted so fast I left the back door open...”
Sam believed her. The flashlight had most likely been that of an officer doing a check on the place as ordered.
“And you’re sure your brother has never met him.”
“I didn’t say that. I said Juan didn’t know we were seeing each other. He knew about him, yeah. I told him about this professor who stood up for me when some guys were giving me a hard time. And he knew the same professor helped me out once when I was struggling in class. Helped me get my grade up. Juan did go see him after he got out and I found out he was seeing someone else. I lied to Juan about him, told him that Freelander was bothering me. I just wanted to scare him. Anyway, I know Juan told him to stay away from me.”
“Did your brother hurt him?”
“No. I told you. Juan’s not that way.”
“How do you know your brother saw Freelander?”
“He told me.”
Before or after Sam had told Juan Cordoba he was looking for his sister? How much of what she’d told him had been coached by Juan?
Sam wasn’t sure it mattered. She’d given him enough to arrest Freelander and had agreed to testify.
“I don’t suppose you know anything about Freelander giving your brother a stash of drugs in exchange for protection in prison?”
“Absolutely not. My brother doesn’t have anything to do with drugs.”
He didn’t believe her about that but hadn’t expected her to tell him if she did know. What he expected was that she’d go back and tell her brother that he’d pieced together the truth.
As far as the drugs went, he could wait a day or two to see what happened.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BLOOM AND CHANTEL sat on the beach for more than an hour. Sometimes talking. Sometimes not. They laughed at Lucy’s antics. Watched the tide come in. Talked about how picturesque the sunset was.
Bloom kept waiting for Chantel to mention Sam. As though the detective could somehow know that he and Bloom had had sex.
Twice.
To Bloom, the air in the cottage was different enough that Chantel would have picked up on the change.
Eventually Lucy tired and came to lie down next to Bloom. With a hand on the dog’s back she started to feel...better.
“I guess I should ask about the investigation,” she said now. “Since Heather’s in-laws are no longer suspects...”
Detectives didn’t report to their victims every step of the way. They briefed them if necessary. And Bloom had been too focused on other things to worry about what she could neither affect nor control.
You want to know what Sam’s doing.
Okay. Yes. He’d been up as late as she had the night before. She hated to think of him out chasing bad guys while he was tired.
And...
“Sam’s been in LA all day, following up on some things there,” Chantel said. “But I found an old classmate of one of the previous suspects who admitted that he’d heard his friend say that if
people didn’t quit messing with his wife’s head, he’d make them stop. I’ll fill Sam in in the morning.”
Bloom wouldn’t be speaking with him in the morning. She never did.
And wanted it that way.
* * *
SAM FELT LIKE he could run ten miles and then swim another ten as he turned his SUV onto the dirt road and then on through the gate. He was early by a couple of hours, but he’d called to let Chantel know that he was coming.
The detective was good at her job and he didn’t want to risk a bullet hole through his windshield. He’d told Chantel that he’d speak with her and Bloom together when he got there. Chantel would be thrilled to know that her evenings would once again belong to her fiancé and the new life they were building together.
He’d wanted to call Bloom, but knew that he could not. They weren’t...friends. He handled things professionally. As they’d agreed.
But his eagerness wasn’t exactly professional as he stopped the car and thought of the news he had to give her.
Right until his gaze landed on her car in the drive and he realized that there was no longer any reason for it to be there.
For Bloom to be there.
He’d thought there’d be nothing that could take away his pleasure at seeing Freelander back behind bars.
He’d miscalculated.
* * *
“I CAN’T BELIEVE IT.” Bloom stood behind the couch, holding it with both hands, as she looked from Sam to Chantel. Chantel had been standing by the kitchen table, having checked to make sure it was Sam’s car in the yard, when he came in. He’d come to stand straight in front of where she’d been sitting on the couch.
And when he’d made his announcement, when he’d told her Ken was in jail, she’d jumped up so fast Lucy had jumped down, startled.
“You found the drugs?” Chantel asked him. And with refreshed hope in her heart, Bloom’s gaze swung to him, as well.
“Not yet,” he told them, rubbing his hands together. “I’m still working on that. Another day or two at most, I’d guess,” he said. “Cordoba went out of his way to give him up to me on harassing Bloom, though, which tells me that he’s trying to hide more than one gift of drugs from two years ago.”
“You think Freelander’s still in their pocket?”
“I do.”
“Why?” The detectives seemed to understand something that she did not.
“Whether he’s got his medical license back yet or not, he will have it back since all charges against him no longer exist, at least until the medical board pursues an investigation on their own. And as things stood, with the conviction thrown out, it’s not likely that they’d be able to do anything. They have no proof of wrongdoing—”
She knew all of that.
“—which means that he can still write scripts,” Chantel said.
“You’d be surprised how many members of a neighborhood suddenly develop ailments that require prescriptions when they have a doctor who will write them just because he’s told to do so...”
Oh, Kenneth, what have you done?
And why didn’t she care more? She’d been married to the man for ten years.
“But you said you don’t have him on the drugs.” Bloom, all caught up with them now, wasn’t sure why he seemed so celebratory.
“I’ve got him on breaking and entering with the intent to harm, and on property damage,” he said. “That’ll be enough to hold him until I can put the rest of it together. He’s off the streets, Bloom. It’s over.”
He was so happy. She was, too.
But...over?
Over.
It was what she’d wanted. More than anything.
What she still wanted.
Something he’d just said dawned on her.
“You got him for breaking and entering and property damage? Kenneth broke into our house? He ruined my paintings, after all?” She’d known it. Standing there that day, she could feel him there. Feel his anger.
And she hadn’t buckled.
“What about the back door being left open?” Chantel asked.
Bloom listened while Sam told them about his meeting with Jean Cordoba that afternoon. Heard about the affair her husband had been having, about another young coed who he’d promised to marry. Heard about Barb Miller and two years’ worth of weekly prison visits. Heard about Ken’s latest sexual fetish—guard uniforms.
“So she was the female guard impersonator?” she asked.
At the same time Chantel said, “So she was his connection to the gang. She arranged for him to unload the drugs.”
“I don’t think she knew about the drugs,” Sam said. “She says she didn’t and I think I believe her. She was definitely Freelander’s connection to the gang. I’m certain the arrangement with her brother was made through her. I’m just not sure she knew what was going on. She thinks her brother warned Freelander off her. Cordoba thinks Freelander is far too old for his sister. But instead of Cordoba warning him off, I think that meeting was to make a business deal.”
A deal Kenneth had been stupid enough to take. And was going to pay for for the rest of his life.
“If you do get the proof of drug activity, will Jean be charged, too? Even if she didn’t know about it?”
“As of right now, Jean’s not being charged with anything,” Sam said. And Bloom wondered if he’d somehow been hoodwinked by the young woman, as well.
For a second there, she was jealous.
But only for a second.
“You said that he ordered her a guard uniform. Isn’t she going to be charged for knocking out Gomez? And the guard at the Stand? For vandalizing Lila’s car?”
Had he cut some kind of deal with the girl? Letting her off scot-free?
“She didn’t do those things,” Sam said. He’d come around the couch, taken her hands and pulled her around to sit again, beside him.
“What do you mean she didn’t do them?” Chantel didn’t sound any happier than Bloom felt about Sam’s seemingly light treatment of the woman who’d had them all in a panic.
“Freelander never gave her the uniform he’d ordered. But when we went to talk to his new girlfriend, we saw it draped across a chair in her bedroom.”
Oh.
“I take it she’s in custody, too?”
“Yes she is. Though she claims she was never at Bloom’s office or at The Lemonade Stand. Or even in Santa Raquel. She says the uniform was only for sex play.”
“But Kenneth admitted to being there?”
“No. He says he didn’t do any of it, either. He says he may have been in Santa Raquel. And might have tried to see you at your home. And that’s all. But Jean’s already given a written statement. We have him ordering the guard uniform. And as soon as the knives in your kitchen drawer are tested, when they turn up fiber residue from the slashed canvas, as well as his DNA on the handle, we’ll have them as proof of the weapon he used to slash your paintings.”
“Did you give him a chance to deal on the drug charge if he gave up the East Side gang?” Chantel asked, still standing by the front door—her bag on her shoulder now.
“I did.”
“He didn’t budge?”
“He wasn’t saying any more without his lawyer. But I don’t expect him to try to make a deal. He’s in a no-win situation. If he talks, he’s still going to do some time, and with East Side enemies on the inside, he’ll never make it out.”
Bloom was sorry for him.
But glad to know that he didn’t win.
She was also weak with relief.
She was free.
* * *
SAM GOT UP to lock the door behind Chantel. And then wished he hadn’t moved from Bloom’s side. How did he get back there without looking like he was trying to get
physically close to her?
She looked so alone, sitting there. And a little lost. Like she needed a hug or something.
Not in his department.
He’d been inside her the night before and now he couldn’t even give her a hug.
He wasn’t cut out for this stuff.
But he wasn’t married to his job, either.
The bald truth was as clear as anything had ever been as he stood there, needing to comfort her, to hold her. Maybe the sex had done this to him.
But he’d had to close the case—make the arrest, at least—before he could allow himself to know what was there.
Not for the job. Not to have another case number on his list of accomplishments. But so that he could keep his word to Bloom.
She drove him.
Not the job.
“I know it’s after nine, and kind of late, but...I’d like to go home.”
She was standing now, too. Not still, like he was. She was moving around his home, collecting things. A water bottle on the coffee table. The tablet she’d had on her lap when he’d first come in. A sweater over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. She looked toward the laundry room.
He’d stored her suitcases in the closet in there.
“You can come back for your things,” he said, suddenly in action, too. Even as he knew he was clutching at air.
She looked at him and for a second there he had hope. She’d remember the sex. Know that there was something behind it.
“You’re probably right,” she said. “I’ll just get my cosmetic bag...”
She was down the hall and back in less than five minutes, an overnight satchel he’d forgotten about over her shoulder. She’d said she’d keep the satchel in her room...
“Ready?” He pushed himself off the wall, grabbed his keys.
“You don’t have to follow me, Sam,” she said. “Remember? It’s over. I’m safe.”
“Humor me,” he told her. “Let me check out the house.”
The excuse was lame. And then he remembered.
“I need to get all of the knives out of the drawers in the kitchen and have them put into evidence before you’re back in there.” He thought about telling her that the soonest he could get someone there would be morning.
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