Kevin checked his watch. “How long ago did he call?”
Jocelyn put her hands on her hips. “It wasn’t that long. Maybe fifteen minutes.”
They’d been having lunch when Knox called her and asked her to pick him up on her way back to the office. She planned to meet with Anita and Trent to hammer out the final details of Sydney Adams’ fundraiser. Knox wanted to be there, and she had told him if he needed a ride he should call her.
She scratched her temple. “Well, I guess I should have known he was drunk. He did butt-dial me three times before he finally got on the phone. I just figured it was because he had a new phone.”
Kevin squatted down, keeping one palm on the top of his cane to steady himself. He checked for a pulse. “Still alive.” He jumped back quickly when Knox stirred, moaning and rolling from his stomach onto his side. His white hair stuck out every which way. He curled his body around his oxygen tank, a dying man’s teddy bear. Kevin stood up. “He usually wakes up swinging.”
“I know.”
Kevin looked down at Knox. He brushed a hand through his thinning hair. “I think he’s just drunk.”
Jocelyn sighed. She pulled out her phone and checked the time. She was due to meet Trent in fifteen minutes. “All right,” she said. “Help me get him into the car.”
“You want to take him to a hospital?”
Jocelyn frowned at her former partner. She knew she should be disgusted or, at the very least, annoyed with Knox’s drunkenness and his total inability to control it. She could do without the smell, and her job would be easier if he wasn’t falling down drunk. But she liked Knox. She understood his need to clear this case on a deeply personal level. “He’s dying, Kev. What are they going to do for him at the hospital? He wanted to be involved in this case. Let’s take him to my office.”
Kevin shook his head and sighed. “If you say so.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s your car.”
It took five solid minutes of shouting and careful nudging to wake Knox. People passing in cars slowed to see what was going on. A few pedestrians stopped to watch them try to rouse him, one woman offering to call 911. Kevin flashed his credentials, thanked her for her concern, and sent her on her way. Knox rolled onto his back and sat up slowly, blinking at them and looking very much like a man who had no idea where he was or how he had gotten there.
Kevin watched the good Samaritan lady disappear down the block. “Nice to know there are still decent people.”
“Yep,” Jocelyn agreed. “It’s shocking but a nice surprise. Now help me get him up.”
They each took an arm, lifting Knox to his feet. His oxygen tubing was wrapped around his torso. Kevin propped him up while Jocelyn untangled it. “Nice shirt,” she told him as she put the cannula back over his ears, tucking the nasal tubes along his upper lip.
Knox blinked again and glanced down at his bright blue, button-down Hawaiian shirt. Its red and yellow flowers were like bursts of fireworks. “I like this shirt,” he said. “This is my shirt, right?”
Jocelyn picked up the oxygen canister. It felt twice as heavy as Knox himself. “I wouldn’t know,” she said, smiling grimly. “You got a coat or what?”
He looked around as if seeing the outside world for the first time after many years. His rheumy eyes widened. “Do I have a coat?”
“All right,” Kevin groused. “This whole twenty questions thing is pointless. Let’s just put him in the car.”
They hobbled over to Jocelyn’s Ford Explorer. It was old, but it had served her well. Kevin held Knox up while Jocelyn transferred Olivia’s car seat from the backseat to the very rear of the vehicle. Then she helped him stuff Knox inside. He curled up on the backseat, hugging his canister once more.
As she drove, Knox snored loudly, his booze-laced breath filling up the car, hot and thick. She and Kevin both cracked their windows. She was feeling queasy. To keep her mind off the smell, she asked Kevin, “How long have you known Knox?”
He gazed out the window, watching houses, stores and apartment complexes fly past. “Most of my career,” he said. “I ran into him a lot when I was with Center City Detectives. We kept in touch, would grab a beer now and then.”
Jocelyn glanced at Kevin. “What happened to him?”
Kevin shrugged. “The Sydney Adams case wrecked him. I mean he worked homicide a lot of years. Saw a lot of shit, but he was fine. Then the Adams case came along. He couldn’t clear it. He went from being a regular old depressed detective to being a raging alcoholic at a hundred miles an hour. He just fell apart. Couldn’t stop drinking. His wife left him, brass tried getting him to go to rehab, but it didn’t take. The story goes that one day he showed up for work drunk off his ass, covered in vomit, and then he whipped out his dick and took a piss all over the water cooler. That was his last day.”
“Jesus,” Jocelyn said.
In the back, Knox stirred. They waited to see if he would wake, but he simply rolled over onto his other side and resumed snoring.
“That’s nothing,” Kevin said. “You remember that drunk dad wedding video? It was on YouTube a few years ago?”
“Which one?”
“Guy walking his daughter down the aisle, stumbling, passes out—”
“Oh God,” Jocelyn cut him off. She knew exactly the video he was talking about. It had gone viral four or five years ago. It was on all the major television networks after it caught fire on the internet. “He passed out at the altar and when the groom tried to help him up, he woke up swinging. Oh my God.” She palmed her forehead. “He was the drunken father of the bride who cold-cocked the groom?”
Kevin nodded. “Yep. That was Knox. Knocked the groom out—gave him a nice gash that bled all over his daughter’s wedding dress.”
“Holy shit.” Jocelyn looked in her rearview mirror at Knox’s back. She hadn’t known him long, and she certainly didn’t know him well, but the man she knew was frail and desperate to do this one last thing before he passed. It was hard to imagine him as the drunken father of the bride from that video. Then again, he was practically black-out drunk in the back of her car.
“They went through with the wedding?” Jocelyn asked.
“They had to. Weddings are expensive. They couldn’t do it twice.”
Jocelyn had never been a fancy wedding type of woman. In fact, she’d never even dated anyone she might actually consider marrying. Until Caleb. She had a sudden flash of standing at some kind of altar with him, wearing a dress that was like a thong for her whole body—uncomfortable. She pushed the image away. It was too soon. He hadn’t even met Olivia yet and that was a crucial step in the evolution of their relationship.
“His daughter has never forgiven him,” Kevin added.
“I guess not.”
From the back came the sound of retching, then the smell of hot vomit wafted up to the front seat. Jocelyn’s heart sank. She had hoped to get to her office vomit-free. “Son of a bitch,” she said.
Kevin snickered. “I told you—it’s your car.”
She punched him hard in his arm. “Yeah, but I’m driving, so you can climb back there and make sure he doesn’t choke to death on his own vomit.”
Kevin sat perfectly still, staring at her. “Are you serious?”
She shot him a deadly look. “What do you think?”
He sighed and unbuckled his seat belt. “Fuck,” he said. He leaned between the seats, wrestling Knox into a seated position. Jocelyn heard the click of a seat belt as Kevin latched the man in. Kevin sat back in the passenger’s seat, a look of disgust on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “You might need a new car.”