Critical Pursuit (5 page)

“We’re not just on cloud nine,” she told Hero. “We’re on cloud K-9.” Chuckling to herself, she turned up the radio and sang along when she knew the words of a song, happy to have the Utah desert fading behind her.

JACK STOOD
just behind the twenty-yard line, waiting for the range master to check the line’s readiness and start the course of fire. Downrange, he imagined Gil Bridges’s face plastered to the bull’s-eye on his target.

The order given, Jack pulled the slide back and slid the first round into the chamber of his automatic. He stepped up to the line to begin the qualification course. The shooting line was full. Jack had waited until the last day in the quarter to qualify.

Officers on his right and left began to shoot as he sighted the target. He shut out the noise and concentrated. All four of his first rounds went dead center. Into Gil Bridges’s drunk face. The remainder of the fifty-round course continued in the same manner. At the fifteen-yard line, the seven, and the five, Jack imagined pumping rounds into the man who’d killed his wife.

When everyone finished firing and the range master cleared the line, Jack stepped forward to collect his target. The bull’s-eye was a gaping hole, Jack’s cluster of bullets
neatly destroying the center of the target. Officers on either side of him congratulated his marksmanship.

“Good shooting, O’Reilly,” the range master said when Jack handed him the target to score. He scribbled
100%
on the cardboard and reminded Jack to fill out a qualification slip. “It’s a nice feeling to know you’ll hit what you aim at.”

Jack nodded and filled out his slip. As he cleaned his gun, he considered the fantasies running through his head. Fantasies of chasing Gil Bridges down and shooting him dead in the street. The closer the sentencing drew, the darker his thoughts became. They fascinated him as much as they disgusted him. For sixteen years he’d carried a badge to protect life, not contemplate taking it.

Somehow his fantasies sent the message that Gil Bridges’s death would ease his own pain, make Vicki’s death more manageable.

“You have to let go of the bitterness you feel toward Bridges,” Doc Bell had told him. “It’s eating you alive.”

“I can’t help it,” Jack had said. “Why did Vicki have to lose her life to a worthless drunk?”

“There’s no answer to that. No way to change it and bring Vicki back. Grieve, Jack
 
—that’s normal
 
—but don’t brood. Don’t let hate fester. It will poison you. You’ll never forget, but you must try for some level of forgiveness. Have you contacted any of the support groups I suggested?”

“No, I’m not ready for that. I just need to work, get out of the house. I think patrol will be a good change.”
I’ll never forgive.

When Doc Bell was silent for a minute, Jack had feared
he’d failed the interview, feared Bell would see through him and take away the gun, the badge.

“I agree a change will be good for you,” Bell had said finally. “And patrol was something you excelled at five years ago.” He’d tapped on his chin with his ballpoint pen. “I’m going to approve the transfer, on one condition.”

“Condition?” Jack swallowed.

“I want you back in my office after you’ve been in patrol for a bit, and after the sentencing. I want to hear from you how patrol has been and I want to see how you handle whatever sentence Bridges is given. Agreed?”

Jack had let the thinnest of smiles cross his lips. “Sure, Doc, two weeks.”

Now Jack reassembled his gun and loaded it for duty, wondering what on earth he’d have to say to Doc Bell after Gil Bridges received his sentence.

* * *

Brinna stopped again in Mesquite, desperately wanting a long, hot shower. She felt she could take her time getting home. She even had a plan about a place to go before she went directly home. She and Hero left Mesquite early and were back across the California border that afternoon. They stopped for lunch in Baker. Brinna eyed the pay phone and thought about calling Milo. His fishing trip would have ended two days ago.

“How about we surprise Milo?” she said to Hero as he sniffed around a vacant lot. “We haven’t done that in a while. I need to talk to him.”

Hero responded with a wagging tail.

Milo’s home wasn’t exactly on the way to Long Beach, but Brinna had plenty of time for the detour. Still pumped with adrenaline after the successful search, she felt like she could drive to the moon and back.

It was a couple of hours before she reached Highway 138, which cut across the Mojave Desert through Palmdale, very near where she’d been found by Milo twenty years previous. The highway connected with the 14 freeway, which took Brinna to Santa Clarita, where Milo lived.

I haven’t been out to his house in a while,
she thought. In truth, Milo had been distant since his retirement. He’d hung up his badge and gun about the same time Brinna had been partnered with Hero. Brinna got the feeling Milo had a difficult time saying good-bye after his thirty-two years on the job. In the two years since his retirement party, she’d only been out to see him twice, each time on his birthday. His calls were few and far between, and Brinna detected boredom and frustration in his tone when they did speak.

If he had a good fishing trip, his spirits should be high, she decided as she took the off-ramp toward his house. At eight thirty the summer sun had set, and Brinna smiled, happy to see lights on as she approached Milo’s small tract home. She parked in front and made a lot of noise as she let Hero out of the truck, wanting to give Milo a heads-up.

Hero bounded up to the front door, sniffing and wagging his tail. Milo’s last service dog, a shepherd named Baxter, and Hero were great friends. When Brinna reached the porch and rang the doorbell, the absence of Baxter’s bark struck her as strange. The TV was on, so she knew Milo was home, yet she
and Hero stood on the porch for a good five minutes with no response.

Brinna punched the bell again, hearing the tones echo inside the house. “Milo, it’s Brinna. You there?” she called out, briefly wondering if she should have called first. Maybe he wasn’t home.

About to give up, Brinna knocked a couple of times, then stepped off the porch. The dog kept sniffing the bottom of the door.

“Hero, come,” she ordered. He turned and jumped off the porch just as Milo opened the door.

“Hey, you are home.” She stood with her hands on her hips. “I almost gave up and decided this surprise visit was a mistake.”

“I was in the back of the house. Got home day before yesterday.” He covered his mouth and coughed a rib-shattering smoker’s cough.

Brinna clenched her teeth, hoping to hide the surprise on her face as she took in Milo’s appearance. The ex-Marine, ex-cop used to be meticulous about his dress and personal grooming standards. She noted his normally neat flattop needed a trim as badly as his jaw needed a shave. As he waved her into the house, she didn’t miss the bloodshot eyes, the soiled T-shirt, and the odor of cigarette smoke mixed with unwashed body.

“You catch a cold in Mexico?” Brinna asked as she took a seat on his couch.

“I caught something,” he wheezed, coughing again before sitting in his recliner and chugging from a bottle of beer.

“Where’s Baxter?”

Milo put the bottle down and picked up a smoldering cigarette. “Dead.” He took a puff.

“What?” Brinna jerked forward in her seat.

“It happened just before I left for Mexico. Took him to the vet to check out a limp. Doc said he had bone cancer. I had to put him down.”

“I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you call me, let me know?”

Milo shrugged. “Wasn’t anything you could do. Doc couldn’t help him, and I didn’t want the dog to suffer. He was hurting bad the day I took him in. Doc said he could live on pain pills for a while, but I couldn’t dope the guy up, have him live his last days in a stupor. I had too much respect for him.” He emptied the bottle of beer.

“Wow. That must have been hard.” She absentmindedly scratched Hero’s head. Baxter had worked with Milo for his final years on the job. Brinna knew it must have been like losing a kid.

The untidy living room did not escape her notice, and she wondered if Baxter’s death had sent Milo into a tailspin. She spotted a pile of books on the table in front of Milo, some open as if he’d been studying.

“Looks like you’re doing some homework.” She nodded toward the books.

“Passing the time. You want a beer?” He stood.

“You got a Diet Coke?”

Milo nodded and walked into the kitchen. He came back with another beer for him and a Diet Coke for Brinna.

“What brings you out this way?” he asked as he opened his bottle.

Brinna leaned forward in her chair and told him about the kid in Utah. “It was such a great feeling, rescuing that kid out of the desert,” she concluded. “Man, it brought back memories. I’m glad you were such a great teacher.”

Milo grunted and gulped some beer. “I taught you to trust your instincts.”

“Yep.” Brinna relaxed in her chair and sipped her Coke.

“What if instincts fail you?” Milo asked.

“What?” Brinna frowned. “Has that ever happened to you?”

Milo set his beer down and picked up a book from the table. To Brinna, it seemed suspiciously like a Bible, but she said nothing and waited for Milo to speak.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”

“That what the burning smell is?” Brinna gibed, grinning.

Milo ignored her. “Your mom always said it was prideful that I trusted my instincts, that a person should trust God. She sincerely believes there is a God up there
 
—” he pointed to the ceiling
 
—“controlling everything.”

Brinna squirmed in her seat, suddenly uncomfortable. “My mom means well, but I thought we agreed that was all nonsense?”

“As I get older, Brin, I wonder if it really is nonsense. I’m closer to the end than the beginning, and I wonder what waits for me when I die.” Milo turned his gaze to the front window, a faraway look in his eyes.

“Come on, you’re going to live forever. Why so morose all of a sudden? Is it Baxter?”

He shook his head. “I miss him, but I couldn’t watch him
suffer. It’s just that . . . Well, what if there is a God and I’ve ignored him all this time?”

He turned back toward Brinna, but she couldn’t read his eyes.

“You know, when I met your mom twenty years ago, she told me that she prayed I’d find you and I did. She was so certain that God led me to you. Even though I didn’t believe, she said God used me to answer her prayer.”

Brinna waved a hand, searching for the words to get Milo off this subject. Her mother always told people that Brinna’s rescue was divine. God had his hand in it, Rose Caruso insisted. Brinna loved her mother, but this was one subject they couldn’t talk about without arguing.

“If her prayer was so effective that day, why doesn’t prayer work for all the other kids who go missing?”

“I asked her that.” Milo crushed out his cigarette. “She talked about God giving man free will. Because of that, there is evil in the world. If God pulled everyone’s strings all the time, we’d be puppets.”

“I’ve heard that and don’t buy it. If we were put here by an all-powerful God, couldn’t he stop the suffering, the murder?” Brinna bit her bottom lip, unable to process her mentor’s demeanor and mind-set.

“He will when he returns. That’s what your mom says. She also says that heaven is a perfect place, a place without murder and pain.”

“You believe that?”

“I want to.” Milo covered his mouth as another cough shook through him. “For thirty years I’ve witnessed the worst
people can do to one another. I’ve always tried to solve things with these.” He pointed to his head, his chest, and held up his hands. “Right now, you better believe I hope there is someone stronger and something better somewhere else.”

He sat back and took a deep drag on his cigarette, blowing out a plume of smoke. “Your mom makes sense about some things.” He nodded to the book in his hands. “I’ve even been reading the Bible.”

Suddenly frustration bit Brinna like a snake. The two people she loved most in the world suffering from the same delusion? What was going on here? “No, Milo, no. You’re too strong for that.”

Milo sighed as if the world sat squarely on his shoulders, then put the book down. “Am I? All I know is that you and my son are the only people in this world I care about. I’ve taught you everything I know. But what if some of the things I passed on were wrong?”

NIGEL DIDN’T MISS
the next article about the dog cop. She’d actually shot someone. He whistled in admiration. He’d taken the paper to work with him and left it with his lunch. Right now his rent-paying job was in beach maintenance, a fancy name for outdoor custodian. He kept the beaches and marinas clean during the summer months. It was only a seasonal position, but it worked for Nigel.

No one noticed the guy picking up trash from the sand and off the docks. The job facilitated his favorite pastime
 
—little-girl watching. He could snap a surreptitious picture now and again with his digital camera.

It was a great gig.

Careful not to linger because that might arouse suspicion, Nigel couldn’t help but notice a group of five little girls playing in the gentle, breakwater-regulated waves Long Beach was known for. They were all wearing two-piece suits, his favorite, and they were running in and out of the water, squealing with delight. Nigel loved to hear little girls squeal like that.

The two moms weren’t watching very closely. One slept while the other had her nose buried in a book.

Nigel emptied his trash bag into a bin without taking his eyes off the girls. He then ventured somewhat closer, picking up trash along the way. When neither mom reacted, he brought out his camera. Very carefully Nigel snapped three pictures, then slid the camera back into his pocket.

Moving away, he kept watching the little girls from the corner of his eye. Would one of them be special enough for his dog-cop plans? he wondered. He doubted he’d be able to snatch one of them today. It’d be too hard to take one out of five, even if the moms were totally clueless. Instead, he decided he’d take his time, snap pictures, review them, and pick the next Special Girl very carefully.

The dog cop deserved his best work.