Red Light (9 page)

Gilliam looked at
each of them then nodded, as if he were answering a question. Neither Merci nor
her partner had said a thing.

"Look," he
said. "We got two, maybe three different people whose prints were in that
place. Two of them might actually be the same person—they're partial, unclear,
iffy. Not enough to take to the registries But the other one left his sign all
over. Flatware, tabletop, doorknob, coffee cup. And,
well...
CAL-ID's got him. They've got all of us in enforcement,
living and deceased. They're Mike McNally's."

Merci
felt feel her heart beating under the windbreaker.

"Coiner
knows," said Gilliam. "But I've got to go to Brighton it. Soon."

Zamorra
looked at Merci.

She
looked back, then to the director. "Let me talk to him first."

Spahn, the vice captain,
told her that Mike had called in sick. He looked surprised she didn't know. All
the sworn people in the department knew they were more or less together, and
most of them, like Spahn, assumed more. The younger deputies treated them as an
item—respectfully. The oldsters had begun asking about wedding bells. To Merci
it was all a flagrant violation of her privacy but there was nothing she could
do about it.

"I'm sure he's
at home," said the captain, helpfully. She drove to his place out in
Modjeska Canyon. The afternoon had gone dark and windy, with enormous cumulus
rotating in from the northwest. She thought they were like God glowering at
you, getting ready to teach you something. The storm was supposed to hit by midnight.
She drove fast with her 9mm on the seat beside her, left hand on the wheel
straight up, the other free for the shortwave or the phone.

Mike's was a small
home on a big lot, plenty of room for kennels in the back, neighbors not too
close. The canyon was named after the opera star who had built a summerhouse
there in the early 1900s. The house was set back off a dirt road, surrounded by
tremendous oaks that cast the lot in eternal shade. The place was still heated
with a woodstove in the fireplace. It was quaint to look at but even colder
than her house, and never seemed to get any sunlight. She'd never liked it.

Mike had moved to
this dark home about three months back, corresponding to his darker prevailing
moods. Corresponding to joining his church. Corresponding to more direct talk
of marriage and more evasion on her part. He said he felt empty. He said he
wanted to feel the spirit of God in him. He said he wanted security in his life
with a woman, with her.

Merci
respected his confessed darkness and emptiness, though she wondered at their
causes. He'd never lost a loved one to death. His parents and siblings were all
alive and kicking. He hadn't gotten a partner killed. He had never been made a
fool of by a psychopath. Career on track:: healthy, nice looking, plenty of
friends.

She
had a hard time believing in things that were shapeless rather than specific,
emotional rather than tactile. She believed that things made feelings: Tim, Jr.
= Happiness; Too Much Scotch = hangover; Judgment = dysfunctional memory and
nightmares. Sometimes she wondered if Mike was looking for things he wasn't
ready to find.

She
parked by the woodpile and noted the fresh cord of eucalyplus stacked under the
eaves, a plastic tarp roped over the top. His van with the built-in dog crates
was up beside the house. The bloodhounds were already barking when she got out.
Smoke rose from the chimney until the breeze tore it against the branches of
the oaks.

When
he answered the door she could tell Mike was drunk. She’d seen him drunk maybe
three times in her life, so there was no mistaking it. He was a lousy drinker.

"Thought it
might be you," he said.

"Three martini
lunch?"

"Bottle
of Scotch some jerk gave me for my birthday. Hits you hard. Come in."

She
stepped in to familiar sights. The braided rug on a hardwood floor scarred by
dog nails. Non-matching green couches at right angles and big enough to sleep
on. Steamer trunks used for coffee tables, littered with magazines and coffee
cups and some of Danny's toys. Danny’s king snake in a glass tank by a window.
The oak and glass case filled with long guns against one wall of knotty pine.
And the framed reproductions featured in all the outdoors magazines Mike
subscribed to---dogs, birds, trout.

"I guess you
talked to Gilliam," said Mike.

"Yep."

"Want
to tell me what he found?"

"I
want you to."

"I figured you
would. You want some of this shit?" He waved a tumbler at her.

"No.
Talk to me, Mike."

They sat on different
couches, a traditional sign of contention between them. Merci preferred it that
way, but Mike, unless he was pissed off, liked being close. She noted the hairs
on the couch fabric, just like the ones Gilliam had described—bloodhound hair.

He leaned forward on
the couch and set his glass on a trunk. "I was there Tuesday night. Got
there around eight-thirty, left around ten-fifteen. At that time,
incidentally,
she was still alive."

Merci heard the dogs
still yapping back in the run, some jays cawing out in the oaks.

"Start
at the beginning."

He sighed, swept up
his glass, took a gulp and looked at her. "It was strictly business."

"Whose?"

He glared at her.
Beneath the boyish forelock of blond hair his eyes looked small and viperine.
"Don't read shit into this that isn't there."

"I'm
just listening."

He drank again.
"I wanted to get some things straight on the Epicure Services sting. There
were a couple of things we needed to agree on, get in place. We were going to
wire her for a meet with Moladan."

"You
take in your piece for dinner?"

He nodded. Merci knew
Mike carried a .45 automatic. It was the gun the old-timers liked, known for
its alleged stopping and knockdown power. Most of the younger guys used hot 9mm
or .357-Magnum loads, known for
their
alleged stopping and knockdown
power. The difference was about three hundred feet per second, which meant you
could silence a .45 auto, whereas with the others you got a sonic crack that no
silencer could suppress. Mike, low-tech and fond of the past, had opted for the
bigger, slower load.

"Where
did you carry it?"

"Usual
place."

"What
did she say?"

"Hang
it on the chair, but I didn't."

"What
did you talk about?"

"How to wear a
wire, how to act a part, how to nail Goren Moladan, what do you think?"

"Who's
D. C.?"

He blushed. Even in
the dim lamplight of the mountain house she could see it.

He
shook his hair off his face. "Me."

"Meaning
what?"

"Just
a nickname. Aubrey had a real lively sense of humor."

Merci let the silence
work on him. She felt hollow and betrayed, and she felt the beginnings of fury.

"Dark
Cloud," he said finally. "Because I'm always serious, never
smile."

"You
sent her that card. About friendship."

"That's
what it was all about, Merci.
Friendship."

Mike took another
drink. Then he rattled the ice and got up. He had the drunk's deliberate motion
through space, the aura of numb assurance. She glanced to the little table set
up near the kitchen, with phone and answering machine and notepad on it. Mike
hung his holster on the chair there, except when his son, Danny, was around—every
other weekend—and when he went to bed at night. Then it was over a coat hook on
the back of his bathroom door. It was on the chair now.

He
sat down, his refilled glass held overcautiously out in front of him.

"Let me tell you
what I saw in her,
Merci.
What I saw in her was someone young and full
of potential and life. I saw a complete waste of a human being, doing what she
did. That was my opinion of her and she knew it. From the first time I saw her.
And she, well, she knew I was right. I was doing everything I could do, within
reason, to get her out of that world. She wanted a friend. She wanted a man who
wasn't just paying up and getting off. She wanted a father and a brother. A
friend that's what I was trying to be."

"How?"

He huffed through his
nose, stared at her. "How do you think? I took her to church with me a
couple of times. We'd pray and talk about; options, other things she could do.
We'd do everyday stuff. We walked on the beach. We went to a park. We'd just. .
.
be.
That isn't too much to comprehend, is it? Two people who are just
content to
be?"

Merci
felt as if her skin were on fire. It was actually getting hard to see well.
When she got mad her vision constricted and lost color, it was like looking at
things through the barrel of a shotgun.

"Not
hard at all. What was in it for you, Mike?"

"What
do you mean,
in it?"

"I
can't get any clearer than that."

He
drank, and set down the glass. "I liked her. I respected her, uh,
predicament. She was a sweet person, with a good sense of humor, and she'd been
screwed over by everybody she'd ever been close to, starting with her own
parents. She hadn't seen them in three years. I felt like her
...
protector. Like a guy who could give
her a fresh start on things. And what that did for me,
Merci,
was it
made me feel good about me. Because I didn't want anything back from her. I
wasn't taking. I was just giving decency and respect to her. Just common
everyday kindness. It made me feel... good. And needed. I think she needed
me."

"Was
she in love with you?"

He
looked away, at the fire, out the window, then down. "I think she was
starting to feel that way. When I saw all the trouble she'd gone to for dinner,
I realized that. Not before."

"Were
you in love with her?"

"Absolutely
fucking
not.
Haven't you heard anything I've said?"

"I
never heard you say you didn't love her."

"Don't
play word games with me. You're better at it and it's a shit thing to
pull."

"I
asked if you were in love with her."

"And
I said not. Which part of that sentence is so confusing?"

She
could feel his anger overcoming her own, nullifying it like a backfire. She
said nothing for a beat, hoping he'd cool off. But she could see from the color
of his face and the nervousness of his eyes that he wasn't.

"I'm
in love with
you,"
he said. She'd never heard those words spoken
with such venom.

"Oh
Damn, Mike," she said quietly. Then she stood and walked over to the
fireplace. She could feel the heat. The old hardwood creaked under her boots. A
gust of wind whistled through the oaks outside and she heard the plastic tarp
slapping against the firewood. She walked over to the gun case, the telephone
table, the window facing south

She'd never had her
job and her heart so mixed up in the same thing like this. Pulling different
ways. With Hess there hadn't been discord, just disagreement. The heat near the
stove and Mike's anger made her feel claustrophobic and faint. The hollowness
inside of her had replaced by a dry fire.

Was she just an
incredibly selfish bitch who made her men dead or miserable?

"There's
a lot of you in this," said Mike.

"Please
explain that statement."

"You
never ... you never offer me anything."

She
looked at him. He was talking into the glass.

"You don't
touch. You don't kiss. You don't talk. You don't plan. You don't dream. You
don't make me feel necessary or even present. You don't do anything."

"No.
No, that's right."

"So
what am
I
supposed to do?"

"Fall
in love with someone else."

"I
told you
I wasn't in love with her!
Don't you get it?"

She finally did get
it. It had just taken a few minutes to see it. Mike was right. Mike was telling
the truth. Part of the truth, anyway.

"You were
falling in love with her. And you were unhappy and afraid of what it would lead
to."

He'd turned on the couch to see her, something imploring
and flagrantly juvenile in his face now. He stood, wobbly.

"I never once
touched her with that in mind. I shook her hand. I hugged her when I left that
night."

Strange how her heart
felt then, like it had been wrapped in an iron blanket and dropped off
the edge of a ship. She walked and over faced him.

"But what, Mike?
You never, you never and you never. But what? What's the last sentence?"

"I
never did anything toward her like that. I behaved just like you do."