Three Shirt Deal (2008) (29 page)

"I think Brian Devine is crazy. I wouldn't put anything past him."

We sat for a moment thinking about that, and then, almost in unison both turned and looked back at the house.

"How do you want to do this?" she asked.

"You take the front rooms, I'll take the back. Meet you in the middle."

We got up and went inside. I started with our bedroom, looking for anything that was out of place, or might have been moved. I knew it wouldn't be an obvious mistake. Brian Devine was a pro and had probably done his share of unauthorized, warrantless shakes. He knew how to toss a room and not leave any obvious telltale signs. But no matter how careful someone is, there's always something.

The closet looked okay. The medicine cabinet and bathroom drawers checked out. I looked in Alexa's alcove at her desk, but decided I'd have to leave that to her. It was so messy these days it was hard for me to tell what, if anything, was out of place.

In the kitchen, the scratch pad I'd used to write down the names of Church's crew was missing. I wondered if, after the attack in the mountain, Brian had removed those names so they wouldn't become part of a future investigation. Then I pushed a button on the phone caddy. It opened to the W's. The last number I had looked up was the Police Officer's Association. If Alexa hadn't moved the dial, and if Chooch and Delfina hadn't been here, then maybe Devine had been checking out my phone numbers. Nothing else seemed out of place. I couldn't shake the strong suspicion that Brian Devine had been in here poking through our lives during the ten days Alexa and I were up in Santa Barbara.

I walked into the front room to ask Alexa if she had changed the phone dial or removed the scratch pad. I found her sitting in a chair at my desk. She had one of my spiral notebooks in her lap. As I got closer I saw that it was my Alexa Journal. I had recorded all my doubts about our relationship on those pages, remembering as Dr. Lusk had instructed to include my innermost feelings.

She heard me behind her and turned to look up at me, a stricken expression on her face. "Oh my God, Shane, is this what you really think?"

Chapter
43.

I REACHED OUT AND TOOK THE NOTEBOOK FROM HER.

"I'm sorry you saw that," I said gently. "I was so worried after you crashed the car that I went down to the Support Services Division and they recommended a psychologist named Eric Lusk. He told me he couldn't treat you through me, but suggested I keep a journal. I've been doing that in the hope that it will somehow help us."

Alexa sat in silence for a moment longer, then stood up and walked into the kitchen. I heard her rummaging around and after a couple of minutes she returned with two glasses of champagne in long, stemmed flutes.

"Here," she said, handing one to me.

"I think we need to discuss this."

"You were right to get help, Shane. I should have gone to someone myself. It's time I faced up to the fact that I'm different. I hear things coming out of my mouth and half the time I can't believe it's me saying them. I'm not sure how many men would have put up with what you did this past year. But I don't want to talk about that now." Alexa clinked her glass on mine. We both took a sip. Then she set down her flute, and drew me to her. "Practice time," she said softly.

She kissed me tentatively at first, then deeply. Her tongue slipped into my mouth and her body pressed hard against me. I felt the sudden driving heat of shared passion. We fumbled with buttons and zippers, pulling off our clothes in a desperate attempt to find each other. She was quickly down to her bra and panties and unbuckling my belt, helping me shed the rest of my clothes. Then we were naked, on the floor.

"You are everything to me," she whispered.

She held me tightly and guided me into her. Her breath quickened, warm against my ear as she began to move with me, dictating the passion and the pace of our lovemaking. Tonight was no dutiful performance. She was in control escalating us higher and higher, from one orbit to the next until we both climaxed. She moaned in pleasure as I released inside her. We smothered each other with kisses, inhaling each other, holding tight. Something valuable that once was lost had just been found. We lay like that, out of breath for several minutes.

"Practice, practice, practice," she whispered.

I had a friend who once explained his successful thirty-year marriage to me this way. "It's like team sailing," he'd said. "But you are never in the same boat. You are never one craft, always two. You sail along without problems the first few years after marriage, lust and love at the tiller, your two boats easily staying side by side. But as time passes you inevitably encounter strong winds or bad seas, and your two boats start to drift apart. The careless sailor pays no attention. He kids himself that a little separation doesn't matter. It's healthy. No need to smother one another. But soon you are so far apart no line is long enough to pull you back together. The good sailor senses the danger the first moment the boats separate and throws a line." My friend said that conversation, lovemaking, and vacation time are the ropes that keep a marriage together.

I knew that during the past year, Alexa and I had drifted far apart, but a line had just been thrown and caught. I was determined to pull with all my strength until our boats were again side by side.

Chapter
44.

SOMETHING WOKE ME. I ALMOST WENT BACK TO SLEEP, BUT some instinct, bred from four years of marriage, told me that Alexa was out of bed. I opened my eyes and saw her moving around our darkened bedroom. It was still the middle of the night. I lay quietly and watched while she dressed, putting on black jeans, a dark sweater, and tennis shoes. She clipped her backup gun to her belt, and then slipped into a black windbreaker.

"Better take a mask," I said, and she jumped, letting out a little squeal.

"Shane, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"Right, thanks. So what's all this?" I pointed to her outfit as I glanced at the clock. It was only twelve-fifty a
. M
. She was obviously heading out somewhere.

"Just taking a little canal walk," she said. "Couldn't sleep."

"You always dress in black and pack a gun when you take canal walks?" I sat up and squinted at her.

"Shane, I . . ." She stopped and then gave me a sheepish smile. "Go back to sleep."

"Come on, babe. We just got our mojo back. Don't run off and ruin it."

"I'm not ruining it."

"I want to know what you're doing." I stood up, put my own jeans on, and slipped into a T-shirt. "So what's up?" I said.

"Okay, look. I can't get those M
. E
. reports out of my head. You're right. Wade Wyatt or Mike Church committed all three of these murders. And like you said, the same murder weapon might have been used on both Juan Iglesia and Ron Torgason."

"Exactly."

"Exactly." She stood with hands on her hips, not wanting to say more.

"So what's with the cat burglar duds?"

"I ... I just picked what was handy."

"I don't think so."

"Look,Shane ..."

"Alexa, I thought you said you wanted us to work this case together. Together doesn't mean sneaking off and doing something stupid while I'm over here sawing lumber."

I started looking for my tennis shoes and spotted them under her side of the bed. "Please don't tell me you were just about to sneak over to the Church of Destruction and toss that place looking for a murder weapon."

"Okay, I won't tell you that then."

"Why would you do that without me?"

"Because all of a sudden, you've turned into this nagging voice of caution and because these assholes came in here and went through our things, and because I don't know what else to do."

"Sit down."

"I don't want another lecture."

"Sit the fuck down," I commanded, pissed off this time. She finally moved over and sat on the corner of the bed. I sat facing her, our knees almost touching.

"Since Tony relieved you, you've changed again."

"Right. I already told you that. I'm finally seeing what you've been saying all these years. You should be flattered."

"It's just another version of TBI. It's not you."

"What isn't?"

"This Bat Girl thing. This don't-give-a-shit methodology."

She took both my hands in hers. "Shane, you keep telling me about how, before me and Chooch, you used to be this dark person--this negative force--and how after Chooch and I came into your life all that changed and how much better you feel about yourself now. Well, I was just the opposite. I was this boring little Girl Scout. Never broke a rule or caused a problem. I raised my brother, Buddy, after my parents died. I picked up his messes and fixed his screwups. But in the process I became this rigid control freak who was more or less living my life to please other people. Even though I criticized the way you did things, some part of me admired you for being free enough to walk your own path and strong enough to pull it off."

"So now what? In an attempt to be like me, you're just gonna crash and burn for the amusement of our enemies?"

"Who says I'm gonna crash and burn?"

"This isn't you, Alexa, okay? This new person, this gun-toting cat burglar is not you anymore than the angry, disorganized person from before. I want the woman I married."

"What if she isn't around anymore? What if she's gone forever?"

"I talked to Luther. He says these kinds of personality changes are just symptoms of the TBI. People often revert back to who they were before. I'm trying to keep you from destroying everything before that happens."

"But what if I don't want to be the old me anymore? What if I now think the old me was a tedious bore?"

"You don't know what you want," I said.

"Don't patronize me," she barked, the intense anger back in a snap.

"Okay. That didn't come out the way I wanted. But, honey, I don't like where this is heading."

"You and Scout were right to work the case. Tony, Jane Sasso, everybody up on six just wants us to go away and let Tru rot in there. But we're stuck with this because, like you said, we let it happen. We're probably both finished in the department anyway, so what do you suggest we do? Just let Tru's car up at Corcoran finish the job? I keep asking, but so far you haven't answered. You just lecture me."

"If we break into that garage and find a murder weapon without paper backing the search, the weapon will no longer be usable evidence."

"But just like you with that BlackBerry, at least we'll know we're on the right track."

"That's a terrible answer," I said.

"I want..." Then she stopped.

"Go on."

"I want to make this right. I feel responsible. I never should have put a queen bitch like Sasso in charge of Internal Affairs. Vic Terravicious warned me about her and I didn't listen."

"But an illegal search will just make things worse."

"Bottom line? I don't think we can fix this bad due-process thing or set Olivia Hickman's murder straight," she said. "Too much has gone wrong that we can't change. We've already got a big fruit-of-the-poison-tree problem." She was referring to the legal principle that states all facts stemming from illegally obtained evidence are automatically inadmissible. "All that we can do now is get enough information to keep Church from trying to kill Tru again. He won't risk going to prison for premeditated murder if we can discover what his motive is in advance. We have to forget Olivia Hickman, the miscarriage of justice, and just focus on trying to keep Tru alive."

I'd been slowly moving toward that same conclusion myself.

All of the questionable searches I did were on Secada's bad due
-
process case and they were all part of the Olivia Hickman murder. They had nothing to do with any future crime that might be committed such as a second attempt on Tru's life.

"They won't kill him if we know the motive for the murder. That's your point, right?"

"Exactly," she said. "That's why I was gonna look in that garage. I didn't think you'd understand."

Chapter
45.

WE DROVE TO THE CHURCH OF DESTRUCTION IN VAN NUYS, ARriving at a few minutes after two a
. M
. The place was deserted. I pulled Alexa's rented BMW to the curb and turned out the lights. My wife already had her hand on the door handle and was opening the passenger side when I reached over and stopped her.

"Hang on a minute," I said, looking at the dark concrete block building.

"Why? What are we waiting for?"

"It's called casing the joint," I said.

"Come on, Shane. What's to case? You're stalling. Let's jump the fence."

"Hey, you sure this junkyard doesn't have killer rots roaming around inside?"

That slowed her down and she settled back into the soft leather seat. Across the street in the tow lot, we could see the four new Transit Authority, fifty-passenger buses parked next to the original 1974 Ford van, which was the first vehicle in the North Van Nuys Transit Company. The new buses, like the van, were all painted a fresh pale blue with NVNTA in fancy script on the sides. The rest of the place looked pretty much the way it ha
d w
hen I'd been here two weeks ago--like a rusting parts farm in a Third World country.