Red Light (22 page)

If he had not, his
firearm would vindicate him, thanks to the precious brass from 23 Wave Street.
She'd never have to reveal herself as the distrustful, prying, bitter bitch
that she was. Reveal how furious she was at him.

The
key was Mike's Colt. For him and for her.

One of the cadets
brought around the afternoon mail. Merci got her monthly copy of the FBI
Law
Enforcement Bulletin,
a pitch from a credit-card company, and a white
envelope with her name written in a very simple, childlike hand. No return
address, and the postmark was Santa Ana. The stamp pictured a top hat in stars
and stripes. There was something hard inside, on the bottom, something that had
creased the paper around it.

She opened it carefully,
using her pocketknife. The one sheet of white paper read:

For P. B.— 23974 Tyler #355 Riverside, CA 92503

There
was a key taped to the bottom of the sheet.

The writing was the
same as on the envelope. It looked like a righty had done it left-handed, or
the reverse.

For P. B.

Merci rolled back in
her chair, spun around and looked around the detective's pen as if she'd get an
explanation if she scowled hard enough. Dickinson was at his desk, lost in
paper. Arbaugh had his feet up while he talked on the phone. Two uniforms sat
with Metz, drinking coffee.

For Patti Bailey? What in
the hell is going on?

•
• •

Zamorra walked in at
quarter to three. His face was pale and whiskers were dark but, as always, his
black suit and white shirt looked crisp. No lipstick on the collar this time,
she noted.

He nodded at her,
sat. "I just dusted the hell out of Aubrey Whitaker's kitchen. Down low,
where all the action was."

He
swiveled his chair and held up the fingerprint cards.

"Coiner
or O'Brien can—"

"No.
I'll run them myself."

"Why?"

"I don't trust
them. I don't trust anybody. Not lab techs, not brain surgeons, not God
almighty on His tin throne in heaven. I'll have to trust me."

And I thought I got
pissed off, thought Merci. "Fine. Run them yourself."

He looked away.
"Sorry I'm so damned gone all the time. How do you like having an
invisible partner?"

"I
understand."

"The
flowers were nice. She always liked, uh, whatever they were.”

She felt shallow and
inconsiderate. She felt worse than that for Paul, but what was it—sympathy,
sorrow, fury?

"Mums,"
she said. "Take a walk with me, will you?"

They headed out of
the Sheriff's Building on the south side, past Forensic Sciences Building and
the jail. The day was bright, soaked and scrubbed by the storm, with a chill in
the air and a cap of snow out Saddleback peak.

They got coffee from
a vendor. Merci scorched her lips. She watched Paul drink his without even a
wince. Merci was a fast walker but Zamorra kept getting up ahead.

"Look,
partner," he said, turning. "I'm just so damned sorry I haven't been
here. It's my job, it's the second most important thing my life, but I can't be
here."

"Paul,
I
understand."

"Yeah,
well I don't."

They walked past a
row of big magnolias with leaves green and waxy in the breeze. Zamorra crumpled
his cup and dropped it in a trash bin. Merci still hadn't taken a full sip.

"What
happened to her, Paul?"

"They put in the
radiation and chemo seeds. Supposed to kill the tumor, spare the good brain
cells. But the tumor is near the motor center—the part of your brain that
tells you how to move your body. Well, she walked into the hospital at seven in
the morning for the procedure. By seven that night she was in her room, losing
. . . losing . . .
herself.
First her toes went, then her feet and
ankles. Then her calves and knees. Then her thighs and her hips."

Zamorra stopped and
looked back. When she caught up to him she saw the tears welling in his eyes,
and the tremendous distance he seemed to be looking through.

"The movement
just went away, one inch at a time. All she could do is watch and try to move
and scream. Scream like nothing I've ever heard. And those fucking doctors,
they came by to tell us, yeah, the pellets are turning you into a paraplegic,
too late to do anything now, guess we missed the spot or maybe used too big a
charge. Sorry, honey, but you'll never walk again. The thing that really
rattles them is, was the radiation too strong, or the chemical too strong?
That's what they're really worried about. I almost actually killed one of them,
but I didn't want Janine to see it. Had his temple all lined up. Didn't want to
lose my job. It wouldn't have mattered. Nothing fucking matters now, nothing
you fucking do."

Merci
said nothing.

"And you know
what, Merci? I want to be here. I love this job. It matters. The last place in
the world I want to be is in some hospital room watching my wife get paralyzed
one inch at a time. I sat there watching her go and I just wanted to fly away,
man, grow wings and just jump off the fifth floor neuro ward and never come
back. She sees that in my face and it breaks her heart. It breaks her heart to
be doing that to me."

They walked in
silence. Merci's duty boots were quiet on the sidewalk, Zamorra's hard-soled
brogues clicked with a martial sharpness.

"It
breaks her heart to lose herself. She's got a bunch of wigs—all different
styles and colors. She's got a new wardrobe. She's always her face made up and
her lipstick on and perfume dabbed on her wrist. She's fighting every step of
the way. She's saying, 'you can kill my body but you can't kill me.' It's so
graceful. So absolutely, beautifully hopelessly graceful."

Merci was
unexpectedly relieved to know that the lipstick Zamorra's shirt collar had been
Janine's. The lipstick had become important to her, for reasons she had not
allowed herself to think about.

"She knows you
love her, Paul. That's what she's got to hang to now."

"Fly away, fly
away," he muttered. "That's what I'm good for. When this is over,
I'll do it."

It seemed to her a
witless invasion to ask,
What will you do?
They headed up Civic Center
Drive, then down Flower. The sun was already lowering and Merci felt the
night's cold creeping across the city. A string of Christmas lights went on
around one of the bail bonds offices. Merci wondering what the point of such a
cheery veneer was. Did it you more business?

She came close to
telling Paul what she'd found at Mike's, but didn't. What she'd done wasn't
just illegal, what she found wasn't just inadmissible. It was a betrayal of
trust, pure and simple, and she'd did it willingly and she'd do it again. That
didn't mean Paul had to know. She believed in the right to keep and bear
secrets.

She'd already decided
what to do about it. She had the gun from range. All she had to do now was call
Mike and make the arrangement. This time tomorrow she would know for sure if
Mike's .45 had done what she thought it did. She'd never wanted so badly to be
proven a fool, but she could hardly talk herself into believing there was even
chance of that.

So
why burden Zamorra with it?

"Do
you remember the Jesse Acuna beating?" she asked.

"People
from the
barrio
remember it. I was ten. Why?"

"Patti
Bailey told her sister she knew who did it."

"Customer?"

"That's
the assumption."

"Acuna
said it was cops."

"That's
right, and Bailey lived in a room at the old De Anza—popular with law
enforcement and certain ladies of the night."

Zamorra
looked at her, a frown on his face. Somehow, it was a lighter expression than
she'd seen on him in the last half hour. Something to think about except his
wife, she thought, a distraction.

"When
I was a kid, everybody assumed the cops did it. The
barrio
was smaller
back then. When a Mexican got beat up we figured it was because he was a
Mexican. The cops were either indifferent or they hated us. Take your pick. We
weren't supposed to be doing anything but picking fruit or washing
dishes."

"What was your
take on it?"

"I
thought Jesse Acuna was probably right. It wasn't until I started studying for
the Sheriff Academy exam that I realized the obvious."

"Which
was?"

He
shrugged and looked at her again. Some wicked amusement showed through his
pain. "The issue was his land, right?"

"A hundred acres
between two big parcels."

"Well, who ended
up with it, Merci?"

"Orange Coast
Capital. For 4.2 mil."

"What did they
do with it?"

"Turned it into
housing tracts."

"Not
all of it. They donated thirteen acres to the county, and the county turned it
into a new facility."

"What
kind?"

"It's
ours. You're walking on Acuna's old orange farm every time you step inside the
South County Sheriff Substation."

Merci felt the cool
surprise of truth inside her. Acuna to Orange Coast Capital to Meeks to Owen,
she thought: thirteen of the choicest acres in the county. 1969. And a dead
hooker near the corner of My ford and Fourth who said she knew the truth.

• • •

She said good-bye to
her partner on the building steps, then walked around the block again. The day
was fading with a whimper, night closing strong, and she wished that God was
prouder of the light He had created. Was it only there to separate the
darkness? She tried to look on herself like God would, from way up there,
trying to view herself as of many human beings faced with tough questions and
no good answers.

Looking down on herself she saw a
woman looking for the truth. She knew the value of truth because she'd been
taught to believe in it. It had occurred to her more than once that the truth
was often dismal sad. Look at Janine Zamorra. But at least the truth came with
an end: like a case that was finally solved. While lies seemed to go on
forever, unsolved and fertile, breeding more and more lies to choke the world.

• • •

She went to the Vice
Detail and found Mike at his desk, on the phone. His eyes lit up when he saw
her, his face colored. Within a minute he hung up and waved her over. He held
out the extra chair for her like maitre d', but Merci didn't sit.

It
was hard to get the words out, but she managed.

"How
about dinner at your place tonight?" she asked. "We can talk."

"You
got it. I'll get steaks for us, kid stuff for Tim, Jr."

"No
Tim, Jr. Just us."

Mike
smiled. They agreed on seven.

He walked her out of
the pen. In a quiet place along the hallway he asked her if she'd been thinking
about what they talked about last night. She said she had, but nothing more. He
smiled and took her hands, squeezing gently. "Bring your overnight things
if you'd like. We can build a fire and keep the cold away. I'm so sorry for
everything. I've missed you so damn much."

"I'll be going
home. But that doesn't mean we can't have a fire."

He nodded and smiled
again. It reminded her of Tim, Jr.'s, smile---it was all in the moment,
irrespective of history or consequence.

"That's okay, too.
See you then."

• •

She left headquarters just
before five, drove to the Newport Beach office of Dr. Joan Cash. Cash was a
psychiatrist and a friend, in that order. They'd roomed together in college,
Cash having seen Merci's "room-mate wanted" posting on a Cal State
Fullerton bulletin board.

Years
later Merci had helped get Cash onto the county's subcontractor's list because
Cash could hypnotize subjects so adroitly. Merci thought of it as a gift. She
had actually let Cash experiment on her—just once—back in their undergraduate
days, using all her might to keep from being put under. She'd chewed the inside
of her cheek while Joan asked her to picture a lake in the mountains; she'd
bitten the end of her tongue when Joan asked her to imagine clouds. One second
she was tasting blood and the next she was talking in a dreamy but lucid hypnotic
state, fully aware of herself but astonishingly relaxed and disinterested in
saying anything but the truth. The things that came to her mind!

The friendship had
grown distant over the years, as all of Merci's friendships had.

Once inside the
consultation room, they hugged rather formally, smiled at each other, then
hugged again harder.

"Thanks,
on the short notice," said Merci.

"Just
doing the billing. How are you?"

"I'm
fine. This is about my partner."

Dr. Cash looked at
her askance. Merci knew that Cash was displeased with her as a patient. For
one thing, Merci's reluctant participation in her own Critical Incident Stress
Management program made things difficult. Dr. Cash had told her as much.
Cash—and a few fellow deputies with the boldness to say so—thought that Merci
must be carrying an unbearable psychological load, given her use of deadly
force, the death of her partner, the death of her mother and the birth of her
son, all within a few short months.