She rose and closed the blinds and turned to me, cheeks slick in the weak light. That hard blue stare. Judgment and anger returned. Shame, too. Pupils tight and black as peep sights, aimed inward. Not at the world. Not at me.
“I hate pity, Roland. But thank you for having my back tonight. I felt that someone was watching me. I honestly didn’t think it was you.”
“You’ve never gone to the police?” I asked.
“I tried to, in Denver and Eugene,” she said. “But I couldn’t tell them the whole truth. And they couldn’t do anything with harassment and stalking accusations I couldn’t prove. I sensed intense suspicion of me. One detective was different. He informally interviewed Reggie. The detective ended up apologizing to him. Late that night, Reggie threatened to kill me if I did that again.”
“When and how did he threaten you?”
“Four times over the years. As I said. Exactly four. The first time was Denver. The most recent was Prescott.”
“Can you prove it?”
“No,” she said. “Always by phone. One time he heard me trying to record a conversation with a digital recorder. It was loud and obvious. After that, he would just listen and breathe. I knew what it meant. The four times don’t include the breathing calls.”
“Does he still call?”
“Often. He offers money.”
“What did he tell you tonight, at the cathedral?”
“That I was insane, as always, and he’d call the police on me if I trespassed there again. I thought you were listening to us with some fancy gadget.”
“I watched. I didn’t hear.”
I stood. Somehow the occasion required it. Like swearing an oath. Or paying last respects.
I was suddenly aware of how alone in her world Penelope Rideout was. A stranded creature born of a violent past, buoyed only by her own deceptions. And I felt my own aloneness, too — just a man in a small house beside a great sea, drawn by the simple need to earn a living.
“Please sit, Roland.”
She sat back down on the couch, turned off the lamp. We waited in the near dark for a good long time. I didn’t know for what. Part of me couldn’t wait to get away from this once broken girl. But part of me wanted to stay with the woman she had become. Help beat back her demons. Be there for her. I could do just that. I wanted to.
Minutes, an hour, more. A night bird in the palm with a voice like knocking wood. Another car on the street. Always another car on the street in these crowded California beach towns.
“I’ll pay extra if you stay here tonight,” she said. “I want you nearby. This couch pulls out. I’ll get you sheets and a pillow. Booze in the cabinet, ice in the fridge.”
She disappeared into the dark hall and a light went on and I heard a closet open.
I looked at the front door, the easily thrown deadbolt. Saw the glint of my truck. Saw in my mind’s eye the interior of that truck, with its familiar dash lights on and its gauges gauging and its headlights showing me the road home. Home. The Irregulars, if I wanted company. Privacy, if I wanted to be alone. The hills, if I wanted nature. All presided over by the welcome ghost of Justine. But...
I went into the kitchen, poured a long-night bourbon, and leaned against the counter with it. Fluorescent lights shivering overhead. Felt the terrible weight bearing down on the woman of this house, but couldn’t think of one useful thing to do for her or her daughter. Her daughter. Of course. Under my nose the whole time. Under everyone’s. Plain sight. You want to believe. You want to trust. You have things to do and people to deal with. So you see what you want to see. Until you don’t.
And what if she’d made it all up?
Again.
She looked in from the living room, set an armful of bedding on the couch, and turned to me.
“Thank you.”
She waved, awkwardly, as if unsure what type of wave this circumstance called for. Part “Hi” and part “See you later.” Then headed back down the hall.
I sat up late. Sipped that drink. Thought about many things past and present. How one thing leads to another, then back again. Sometimes. And other times not at all. Remembered meeting Justine Timmerman, Esq., at a holiday party in the Grand Hyatt Hotel downtown one stormy winter night. One look and a few words. The acceleration of life. Felt that acceleration again, now.
I moved the bedding to the coffee table, took the pillow, and dozed uncomfortably. Dreams vague and meaningless. Up with sunrise, rib aching. Death’s sparring partner looking back at me from the bathroom mirror.
My next move had to be Detective Darrel Walker.
22
I am actively disliked by most San Diego sheriff’s deputies because of a shooting death I was party to ten years ago. I didn’t fire, but my partner did. When the smoke cleared on that cool December afternoon, we deputies were alive, and an unarmed nineteen-year-old black man lay dead in an alley behind a strip mall. His name was Titus Miller. We knew him in the way that cops know citizens with histories of derangement, homelessness, and occasional violence.
I still replay that scene, frame by frame, though I try hard not to. It plays me. The sunlight streaming through the clouds above us like a graphic on a sympathy card. Titus combative that day, cussing our orders to stop and raise his hands. Screams and bright sun. Titus backpedaling away from us in his oversized coat and his scavenged athletic shoes, one red and one blue. Pulling something from his waistband and dropping into a one-knee shooter’s stance. This black object glinting in the sunlight in both hands and five shots from Jason punching the life straight out of him. Titus probably dead before he hit the ground. The wallet in his hands, still chained to his belt.
My partner’s name was Jason Bayless. A good enough guy, though hard to figure. Never gave up much of himself before the shooting. Nothing since. A family man. We’d worked together only a few times. Most SDSD deputies patrol solo, due to modest budgets and large territories to cover.
Jason had seen a gun in Titus’s hands and I had seen a wallet and that was the very gist of it. The complications came later, during the internal investigation. He honestly believed he was defending his life. And mine. I honestly believed Titus was brandishing his wallet, likely as a prelude to showing ID. My words damned Jason. Excessive force. He quit the department within the year and went into practice as a private investigator. Same as I did. We crossed paths just last year on a difficult case, and Jason did me a solid that helped save some lives. I owe him. We tried to talk out Titus but accomplished little. He told me that if he’s ever in the same spot again, he’ll do the same thing. I told him I would, too. Some mountains will not be climbed.
So, as a black man and a San Diego sheriff’s detective, Darrel Walker listened dubiously to me that hot, humid September morning as I told him about Alchemy 101, SNR Security, my still obvious licking at Paradise Date Farm, Reggie Atlas, and Penelope Rideout’s ugly story.
He entered something on his desktop keyboard, glanced at the monitor. All I could see from where I sat were the back-end cables and connectors of his electronics, and Darrel’s somber face studying the screen.
That screen had his full attention, interrupted by brief looks down at the keyboard. Tap. Tap. As I mentioned before, Darrel is bigger than I am. Hands like catcher’s mitts. They should make XXL keyboards for guys like us.
“What was your takeaway on Atlas?” he asked.
“Convincing,” I said. “Seemed concerned for this missing girl. Said he didn’t remember her visiting his church. He was aware of Nick Moreno, a semiregular. He wondered if my ‘car accident’ was really an accident. He asked me if he should be worried about his own well-being.”