I shook my head. “No. Last leg. Doing this part alone. It’ll be fine. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“If you don’t, I’ll be knocking on your door,” he said.
“Deal.”
I watched him walk into his house and shut the door behind him. The car idled at the curb for a moment and I took a few deep breaths. Then I shifted back into drive and pulled away.
The house was no more than six minutes from mine, over near the old golf course on Coronado that played out on the east side of the island. It looked more like it belonged in Cape Cod, with an A-frame roof and a white porch that ran the length of the front of the house. The rest of the house was painted a light gray with black shutters framing the windows on both floors. The lawn was neatly manicured and even in the dark, I could see the last remnants of water drops shining on the green blades. A small flower garden brimming with yellow day lilies grew on one side of the porch steps, a rock garden flanking the other side. An old, weathered, wooden rocker sat still on the porch, unmoving.
I stood on the walk that bisected the lawn for a moment, staring at the house. Part of me thought about just setting it aflame right then and there. But that didn’t feel right. Because it wouldn’t give me what I wanted.
I glanced down the street and, in the dark, I saw another car.
My other phone call.
I waited for a flash of lights or a car door opening, something to stop me, question me.
But there was nothing.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I was glad about that, but I took it as a sign that it was okay for me to go forward.
I went up the steps and knocked on the door. I put my hand in my pocket, felt around for my cell, tapped the phone screen twice with my index finger, then pulled my hand out.
Two seconds later, the porch light flashed on.
The door opened.
Lieutenant Bazer pushed open the screen door. “Ninety minutes on the button.”
I nodded and stepped past him into the home. The living room was sparsely decorated. A suede sofa. A rectangular, wooden coffee table. A flat screen television on an entertainment stand. Several watercolor paintings on the walls. Original wood floor.
Bazer shut the door. He wore jeans and a gray T-shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Both the top of his head and his face appeared to have been freshly shaven.
“I’m surprised you called, Joe,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer.”
“No?”
Bazer shook his head. “No. You’ve been pretty adamant that you wanted nothing to do with me.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess I have.”
“But I’m guessing you found something pretty significant,” he said. “Both because you called me and because it’s the middle of the night.” He paused, eyed me carefully. “And I’m genuinely hoping it has nothing to do with Mike Lorenzo. After our conversation and you were asking about him, I wondered if…”
“This isn’t about Mike,” I said, cutting him off.
He didn’t say anything.
“It’s about Elizabeth and Mario Valdez and Mosaic Farvar,” I said, staring at him. “And you.”
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, but didn’t say anything.
“We can do the song and dance,” I said. “I can tell you everything I turned up from conversations with both Valdez and Farvar. I can tell you Valdez named you as the contact in the deal that went bad in I.B. and that they demanded repayment of the money you’d taken from them. I can tell you that Farvar named you as the guy who brought him Elizabeth.” I shook my head. “But I’m not much for song and dance. Lieutenant.”
Bazer hadn’t flinched at anything I’d said. He’d just stood there and taken in my words, his hands still in his pockets, squinting at me. He had yet to move.
“So you tell me how you want to play this,” I said. “But you aren’t walking out of here.”
A sad smile crept across his face. “I know that.”
“Do you?”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I do. Because I knew when you found her that you’d find out. I actually thought you’d find out even if you never got her back. I’ve always waited for the phone call. Or for you to show up here.” He paused. “I knew when you walked in the door two minutes ago. I threw Mike’s name out there as my last hope.”
I didn’t say anything.
He stood there, his eyes staring down at the floor now. “I was going to get her back.” His voice was almost a whisper. “I was always going to get her back. Get her back to you. But it got fucked up.”
The hair was up on the back of my neck and it took every ounce of strength to stand still rather than charge at him and choke the life out of him.
“I lost Farvar,” Bazer said, his voice gravelly. “He moved and took off. I couldn’t find him. I was going to force him to tell me where he’d…taken her. I lost him and I couldn’t find him.”
“Maybe you should’ve looked a little fucking harder.”
He nodded. “Probably. But I already had IAD breathing down my neck because of the missing money. I was under scrutiny. There was only so much I could do.” He paused again. “So I let it go.”
“You let her go.”
“Yes. Her.”
My jaw hurt from clenching it shut so tightly. Sweat trickled down my back. The moment was almost surreal.
“And you turned on me,” I said. “You threw it on me so they’d look at me.”
“What’s the stat?” he asked, a half-smile forming on his lips. “About parents almost always being involved in the disappearance of their own child? I knew it would work.”
“Why?” I asked.
He cocked his head. “Because you were an easy target.”
“No. Why didn’t you have the money that Valdez paid you for coverage?” I asked. “Why couldn’t you just give it back to him?”
“It was gone.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I owed other people. It was spent before I’d even gotten it from Valdez.”
“Owed who? For what?”
He shrugged again. “Does it matter? I had irons in the fire, things that were out of bounds, bills to pay.”
“Other under the table shit?” I asked. “Like with Valdez?”
“Some of that, yeah,” he said. “I was always in the middle of something.” He paused. “No excuses. It was one of those things I got into early in my career to add to my income and it spiraled. I started filling my pockets early on and never found a way to stop. A little here, a little there. A side deal to look the other way.” He shook his head. “It finally caught up to me. I was on the wrong side of the ledger and couldn’t get back on the right side.” He blinked. “I was the clichéd bad cop. Am the clichéd bad cop.”
I chewed on my bottom lip until I tasted blood. “And you decided that the best way to get even this time was taking my daughter? That was the best way out of it?”
He stared at me for a long moment. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”
I laughed, but felt sick to my stomach. “I guess so.”
“But I was going to get her back, Joe,” he said. “Whether or not you believe that, I was going to get her back.”
“No doubt. So you could be the hero.”
“So I could get her back to you.”
“Fuck. You.”
Bazer nodded. “Yes.”
“There’s no excuse,” I said, shaking my head. “None.”
“I agree.”
I hated him more for being so goddamned agreeable. I wanted a fight and he wasn’t going to give it to me. He probably knew me well enough to know that he’d lose.
“But I’m not going to jail, Joe,” Bazer said. His voice was calm. Firm. “I’m sorry for what I did and for what happened. But I’m not going to jail. With who I am, with my job, with the people I’ve dealt with? I’d never survive.”
“You aren’t going to jail,” I said in agreement.
The same sad smile took over his mouth. “I figured.” He shrugged. “So what? You just going to shoot me? Kill me right here?” He spread his arms slowly, his chest fully exposed. “Here I am. Take your best shot.”
I’d thought about this exact moment the entire drive. I wasn’t sure if he was going to put up a fight and I was ready for one if he wanted one. But I’d also contemplated what I’d do if he didn’t want a fight. Because there was no way I was going to make some bullshit citizen’s arrest and send him to jail. There was no closure in that for me.