Gecko

by Ken Douglas

  “ I just wish I could have lived back then. The cars were simple. The music was better. You didn’t have to lock your doors. What can I say? They were better times.”

  “ Before or after Mrs. Brown’s little girl was allowed to go to that white school, or Rosa Parks rode that bus?”

  “ Yeah, there was a bad side to those times. I guess I tend to forget.”

  “ Why are we going to Monday’s?” Walker started the car.

  “ Because we have to start somewhere.” Washington’s voice trailed off as he let his head sink back into the plush leather headrest. He closed his eyes.

  “ But if Monday was the intended victim and not Askew, aren’t we looking in the wrong place?”

  “ We only have Monday’s word. For all we know, he set up the whole thing.” Washington kept his eyes closed.

  “ But the shot in the alley?” Walker said.

  “ We don’t know for sure that was related. We think it was, but we don’t know for sure.”

  “ So we’re going to treat Monday like a suspect?”

  “ We’re going to treat everybody like a suspect.” Washington opened his eyes. “The trail to our killer starts at Monday’s. I feel it and I’m usually right about these things.”

  “ Okay, boss, if you say the trail starts at Monday’s, it starts at Monday’s.”

  Washington smiled. Before his trouble his comrades regarded him as nothing short of brilliant. They called him the department’s Canadian Mountie, a nickname he loved, because like the mythical mountie, he always got his man.

  Ten minutes later they turned off of Anaheim onto El Jardin.

  “ Wow, nice area.” Washington whistled and seconds later he whistled again. “And a nice house. You know, Walker, you could afford a place like this if you wanted.”

  “ Actually I live about two blocks from here.”

  “ Really? Nice house? Like this?”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ Sometimes I forget about all your money.”

  “ I try not to let it get in the way.”

  “ I’ll try to keep it out of the way too.” Washington laughed.

  “ How you want to do this?”

  “ Pull up in the driveway like we belong,” Washington said and Walker obeyed, turning his car into the circular driveway, bringing it to a stop by the front door.

  “ Now what?”

  “ We go inside and have a look.” Washington fished into his jacket pocket, withdrew a set of keys. He turned to Walker, raised them above his head with his left hand and jiggled them.

  “ You stole his keys?

  “ A good scout is always prepared.”

  “ You don’t mean we’re going to enter the premises?”

  “ I do.”

  “ Without a warrant?”

  “ I thought you wanted to move up and get out of the uniform, maybe even make Homicide?”

  “ I’m not going to this way. Christ, we could wind up in jail if we get caught.”

  “ Highly unlikely.”

  “ That we’ll get caught?”

  “ That we would wind up in jail. A slap on the wrists, maybe, but jail? I don’t think so.”

  “ I don’t feel right about this.”

  “ You want to wait in the car?”

  “ No, I’m with you.”

  “ Because if you want to wait, I won’t mind. I’ll understand.”

  “ I said, I’m with you.”

  “ It’s okay, you know, if you don’t go in.”

  “ I said I was with you and if we don’t do something pretty damn quick, someone is going to get the wrong idea about us. They have a neighborhood watch here.”

  “ Bad guys don’t usually drive right up to the front door in a spanking new Mercedes.”

  “ Some of these old gals got nothing better to do than to wait by the telephone with their gnarled fingers ready to dial 911. If we’re going to go in, let’s get it over with.”

  “ Come on, Tonto.” Washington opened the passenger door, slid out of the car. “It’s starting to get dark and I’d like to be home in time for the evening news.”

  Walker jumped out of the car, followed Washington to the porch. Washington rang the bell.

  “ No answer. Looks like nobody’s home.” He tried one of the keys. It didn’t work. “Wrong key, must be to the condo in Huntington Beach.” He tried another. The locked turned. “Had to be the one, only two others and they’re car keys.” He opened the door and went in. Walker followed, closing the door after himself.

  “ Oh lord, look at this place, it’s been trashed,” Walker said as they crossed a tile entry way and entered the living room. Directly across from the entry way, behind a plush living room suite, was a large television. It had loose wires sticking out from behind

  “ They took the DVD player,” Washington said. “TV must have been too big.”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ Look at this.” Washington pointed to a surge protector plugged into the wall by the desk. “Got his computer.”

  The two men quickly went through the house, careful not to leave any prints. Every book in the library was open, pages torn out and thrown on the floor. Every drawer in the house was open and rummaged through. Clothes were ripped and strewn on the floor. Kitchen drawers had been overturned onto the tile, then broken on top of their crushed and destroyed contents.

  “ This was destruction for destruction’s sake, not a search, not a robbery,” Washington said.

  “ They took the computer and the DVD,” Walker said.

  “ But that’s not what this was about. Someone doesn’t like Monday. They came to destroy his home and his things. They took the DVD and the computer as an afterthought.”

  “ Or maybe they wanted to see what he had on his hard drive,” Walker said.

  “ There is that,” Washington said.

  “ Do we call this in?” Walker said.

  “ We were never here, so how can we call it in?”

  “ Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t thinking,” Walker said.

  “ Okay, let’s get out of here.”

  “ Don’t need to say that twice.” Walker turned and headed for the door. By the time Washington was on the front porch, Walker was in the car with the engine running. He’d be a good man for a bank job, Washington thought.

  Walker whipped it into drive.

  “ Easy,” Washington said, “leave slow, like we belong.”

  Walker clenched his teeth and Washington knew he was fighting the temptation to stomp on the accelerator as he eased the car round the driveway.

  “ Where do we go from here?” Walker asked as they turned off of El Jardin and back onto Anaheim Street.

  “ Home.”

  “ That’s it?”

  “ For tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to call in sick. I’ll visit Monday’s condo, then I’ll talk to some of his friends.”

  “ What about me?”

  “ You can go to work as usual. I wouldn’t expect you to get anymore involved in this than you have. You’ve got your career to think of.”

  “ Yeah and what about your career?”

  “ Mine is over. I’ll never get off the street. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.”

  “ I’ll call in sick tomorrow,” Walker said through pursed lips.

  “ You don’t have to do that.”

  “ I said I was with you and I meant it. I’m with you.”

  “ Okay, then go home, rest, enjoy your wife and kids. Pick me up at eight.”

  “ Want me to take you back to the station?”

  “ No, home’s closer. I’ll leave the car at the station. You can give me a ride to pick it up when I need it.”

  They rode in silence for a few minutes, then Walker said, “Tell me what happened to you.”

  “ Why?”

  “ I’m your partner. I want to know.”

  “ It doesn’t concern you,” Washington said.

  “ It sure does. Three years ago you were busted down from the sui
ts. Since then you can’t keep a partner longer than six months. You’re moody, not very dependable and a lot of the time you’re just not any fun. If I’m going to stick my neck out with you, I’ve got a right to know.”

  “ I said you didn’t have to come along.”

  “ And I said I was with you, but I want to know. Why did you nearly kill that child molester?”

  “ It wasn’t just the baby-raper,” Washington said, “that was just the end of a long, hard time for me.” He paused, “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “ Yeah.”

  “ It started three years ago, the end of June, two weeks into my daughter’s summer vacation. She was fifteen. Did you know I was married?”

  “ I heard you were separated.”

  “ Yeah, we’re separated,” Washington said. Then he went on with his story. “It was one of those hot days, you know the kind, you sweat like there is no tomorrow, so I came home around noon to change. I’d been out in the field all morning and my clothes were wet as a rag.

  “ Jane was at work and Glenna, that’s my daughter, was supposed to be spending the day with a girlfriend, but she wasn’t. She’d lied so she could spend the day with a boy. You know how girls can be.

  “ I knew something was wrong as soon as I got to the door. It wasn’t locked and the stereo was blasting away. Jane always locked up. She was a stickler about it. And we never played the stereo that loud. So, I went into the house quiet like, but I coulda made all the noise in the world and nobody woulda heard over the Rolling Stones. It was Midnight Rambler and Mick was screaming through the speakers, ‘Rape her in anger,’ and his song about rape almost covered the sound of Glenna screaming from our bedroom.

  “ I pulled my piece, ran down the hall and burst into the room. I found my daughter, my beautiful fifteen year old daughter, beat up and bleeding, on my bed, and this big, muscular punk was just climbing off her,”

  “ Jesus,” Walker said.

  “ I let him get as far as the floor before I emptied my piece into him. Then I untied Glenna and she dashed from the room and everything was quiet as it could be with the Rolling Stones tearing the house down and then Mick hit the chorus again, ‘Rape her in anger,’ he was singing and I went a little crazy. I reached into the nightstand, where I keep a loaded forty-five auto and I went out into the living room and shot the stereo. It was like I was killing the song.

  “ Now the house is stone-cold-dead-silent, except I hear Glenna sobbing in her room. And, guess what? I hear this moan coming from my bedroom, so I go in to see what’s what and son of a bitch, if that bastard wasn’t still alive.”

  “ You’re kidding?”

  “ No, he was lying in a lake of his own blood, trying to hold on to his guts and whining like a dog hit by a car and that’s probably how he felt. I must have looked like a big black god to him, cuz he looked up at me and said out of his bloody mouth, ‘Help me.’

  “ I blew his face off. Then I went out to the living room and called it in.”

  “ Jesus,” Walker said again, “what did they do to you?”

  “ I called it into Homicide. Fifteen minutes later, Jimmy Gordon, my partner and two other guys, Sammy Powers and Steve Hodges, show up. Jimmy tells me to pack some things for myself, Jane and Glenna. ‘Go to the school, pick up your wife, take a couple of weeks. Let us handle it,’ he says. And that’s what I did.”

  “ What did they do?”

  “ I never asked. However, I did see in the Press Telegram the next day that a white male in his early twenties had been found in a condemned house, beaten, tortured and killed. The result of a drug deal gone bad, the paper said.”

  “ I didn’t know.”

  “ Nobody does,” Washington said. “That was the start of everything going wrong. Jane blamed me for what happened. She thought if I would have been closer to Glenna, she wouldn’t have lied to us that day. It was just the way she had to deal with it. And I blamed her. I thought if she wouldn’t have been working, it wouldn’t have happened. She moved out six months later.”

  “ That’s too bad,” Walker said.

  “ Yeah. Things starting going downhill after the separation. I couldn’t concentrate on my work. I was pissing off the people around me, coming in late, leaving early, drinking, then came the baby-raper.

  “ I was off duty at the time, at the Cerritos Mall. A couple of years had passed and I was just starting to get things back together. I went to the mall to get a pair of running shoes. I was going to get back in shape, quit the drinking. It was time to get my life straight again.

  “ I had just pulled into a parking place when I see this man grab a little girl and throw her into his van. I threw old Power Glide into reverse and backed down the aisle till I was behind the van. I jumped out of the car and tried to open the van door. Naturally the perp wasn’t interested in opening up, so I yell, ‘Police, I’m gonna count to three and then I start shooting.’

  “ That did it, he opened the door pronto and I could see that the little girl was crying. In just that few seconds the bastard had got the girl’s dress off and his pants down. I mean he was one jackrabbit-fast motherfucker and he really pissed me off, so I pulled him out of the van and pistol whipped him so bad that his face will never be the same. Then I started kicking him in the nuts till I was damn sure they were fucked up beyond repair.

  “ I was about to shoot him, when some guy jumped out of the crowd that had gathered and ripped the gun from my hand. I guess if it wouldn’t have been for that good Samaritan, I’d have done a second degree murder. Anyway there were enough witnesses to make sure it could never be hushed up. They busted me back to sergeant and put me back on the street again. It could have been worse.”

  “ We’re here.” Walker pulled up the driveway to Washington’s small apartment.

  “ Call you in the morning.” Washington got out of the car.

  He watched Walker’s taillights as he reached for, then rejected, a cigarette. He shook his head and stumbled into his apartment, more asleep than awake. He fell into bed without taking his clothes off.

  He didn’t see the small green gecko scurry between his feet, then dash under the bed.

  Chapter Four

  “ Hello Roma,” Jim Monday said as she rushed into his arms, no longer trying to hold back the tears. “What are you doing here?”

  “ I came as soon as I heard you’d been arrested, but they said there was no bail set. They said I’d have to come back later.”

  “ I know,” he said.

  “ Oh, Jimmy, I thought you were so close. How could she do it?” She tightened her hold on him. “What are you going to do?”

  “ We have to leave here.”

  “ My car’s over there.” She pointed.

  They walked, arm in arm, away from the police station and crossed the street. Roma led Jim to her car. A red Porsche Targa. She handed him the keys, like she used to do before he married her sister. Then she got in the passenger side. Roma hadn’t locked the doors, something his wife never would have forgotten to do.

  “ It’s horrible about David,” she said. “He was such a nice man.”

  “ I loved him like a brother.” Jim keyed the ignition, started the car.

  “ I know you did,” Roma said.

  They drove in silence for about a half mile, then Jim said. “Listen, I have to talk to somebody. I need to try and understand what’s happening. He checked the rearview, pulled over to the side of the road and parked.

  “ Why are we stopping?”

  “ So I can explain,” he said. Then he relived the horror, telling her about the gray Buick Regal. About how it looked like it might have been murder. About how he broke his arm. About someone shooting at him in the police car. About the lawyers that weren’t lawyers. About how he recognized one as the driver of the gray Regal. About how he killed them both. About how he found the dead policeman outside the room. About how he dragged him in. And about how he walked out of the police station. He didn’t tell her
about the voice in his head.

  “ What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “ I don’t know.”

  “ You can’t go home and you can’t go to the condo. The police will be waiting.”

  “ I didn’t think of that.” He knew she believed him unquestionably. Julia would have asked a million questions, doubting every answer.

  “ You can go to my place,” she said.

  “ I think the white car back there is following us.” Donna interrupted his thoughts before he could answer. He looked in the rearview and saw a white Ford parked a block behind. There were no other cars parked on the busy street.

  “ Are you sure?” he thought back. He was getting used to silently talking to her.

  “ Yes, it’s been following us since we left the police station and it parked when you did.”

  “ Roma, I think we’re being followed.” He started the car and eased back into the traffic.

  “ Police?” She turned to look behind.

  “ I don’t think so.”

  The Ford accelerated.

  “ They have a gun!” Roma screamed.

  Jim turned, saw a cannon-like shotgun sticking out of the passenger window.

  He stomped on the clutch, dropped the Porsche back into first. The rear wheels started spinning as he cut off a FedEx van in the left lane as he made a screeching left turn against the light. He heard the shotgun go off, felt the car jerk. Then he heard the crash as the Ford plowed into the van. He grabbed a glance into the rearview in time to see it bounce off.

  “ They’re still coming!” she said.

  “ They can’t keep up with us.” He checked the mirror. “Shit! We got smoke coming from the back.”

  Then they lost power.

  “ They must have hit the engine,” she said.

  “ Yeah.” He slammed on the brakes. “Come on. We’ve got to run for it!”

  They jumped out of the car as the dented Ford came screaming up behind them. The driver stood on his own brakes, but he wasn’t quick enough and the Ford slammed into the rear of the Porsche.

  “ Let’s go!” Jim grabbed her by the hand, led her, running between two houses.

  The way to the alley behind was blocked by a white, two foot fence. The gate was locked, but they didn’t know it, because they jumped the fence and headed into the alley. They had a fifty yard head start on their pursuers.