Cold Hit

Chapter 45

It was almost 2 A. M. when I finally flopped down on my bed in the sparsely furnished safe house. I closed my eyes, but my mind wouldn't shut down, so I lay on top of the covers, picking at an array of troubling self-doubts. When I'm in these self-analytical moods, attempting to dissect my confusing life journey, I often start with my police academy graduation, the most fulfilling day of my life to that point. I stood at attention in Elysian Park and received my badge, full of pride and a sense of accomplishment. But as the years passed, my pride dissolved in a brutal mixture of street violence and bad rationalizations. As my pride left, the sense of accomplishment I'd won disappeared with it. Then came the drinking.

But in the beginning, right after graduation, I felt very righteous in my new uniform, armored by its ironed blue fabric and the LAPD badge. It gave me a stature I'd never had before, and I was comforted by the ballsy sound of my own gun leather creaking. I rode the front seat of a department A-car, secure in the belief that my turbulent upbringing had taught me how to survive. I also knew that loners rarely got double-crossed, so I affected a carefully orchestrated isolation. If I didn't depend on anyone, even my partner, I reasoned, then I was in complete control of my environment. But the obvious flaw in this thinking was since I didn't depend on anybody, nobody depended on me. I told myself that I treasured that. I was a lone gunman.

What I had really become was an afterthought on the job. Underneath my strutting arrogance were hidden doubts and a lurking suspicion that I had chosen to isolate myself because I never really mattered to anyone and couldn't figure out how to change that. I thought if I just didn't look inward, I wouldn't have to deal with the insecurities and could believe in that uniformed power image that looked back at me from my mirror each morning. But I was wrong.

As I stared up at the exposed beams in my borrowed bedroom, I realized that in the last four years I had made a complete transformation. Now I depended almost too much on others.

I had Alexa and Chooch to share my feelings with. Broadway and Perry were becoming more than just case-mates. I could bask in their banter. It felt good, but I had sacrificed control. This all happened because I opened myself up; made myself vulnerable to others. But just when I finally reached the point where I was maturing into someone I could actually respect, I found myself miles from my wife and son. I was back where I'd started. It surprised me that my new, hard-won sense of self lay behind such a transparent veil of doubts.

At that moment, my cell phone buzzed. I looked over at the bedside table, watching it pulsate every two seconds doing a little vibration dance. I didn't give this number out, and Alexa would use the SAT phone, not my cell, so I knew who it was. The phone just kept taunting me, moving stupidly to its right, every time it buzzed.

There's a difference between being cautious and just being a pussy, I thought. So I rolled over, opened it, and put the cell up to my ear.

"Shane," I said, and waited for Zack to reply. "We need to talk, Bubba."

His voice sounded tight.

"Turn yourself in, Zack. Then we'll talk."

"You need to meet with me, just us, face to face." "I'm not meeting with you."

"I know what you think. That's why I jumped you. I had to get outta there." Then there was a long pause before he said, "I didn't kill Vaughn Rolaine. You owe it to me to listen. You've got to hear my side. I know how it looks. You're my last chance."

I took a deep breath and decided to press him hard and see what happened. "I've been wondering about something, Zack. You were getting into a lot of shootouts back when we were in the Valley. How many perils did you light up? Three or four in twelve months? Wyatt Earp didn't drop that many guys in Dodge City."

"We had big problems in that division. IAD investigated. You know they wouldn't rate them clean kills 'less they were."

"Were you covering my ass because you were trying to help me, or because you wanted to keep me on the street 'cause you needed a partner who was too out of it to hurt you at any of those shooting review boards?"

His pause seemed a fraction too long.

"Come on," he finally said. "Whatta you talking about? That's nuts." Then he lowered his voice. "You gotta help me. I can't explain how Vaughn Rolaine ended up in both my cases. It makes me look bad. You gotta help me come up with something."

"I'll meet you in Jeb Calloway's office anytime you pick," I said.

"Get serious. I ain't goin' nowhere near Mighty Mouse till I got some answers. I'm not some drooling monster. How can you think that?"

"It's there, or nowhere." Another long silence stretched between us. "Turn yourself in, Zack. If you're straight on this, then it's gonna all come out fine.

Nobody is out to sink you, not Alexa, not Jeb, and especially not me."

"Yeah, right. Fuck you very much, asshole."

Then he was gone and I was listening to a dial tone. I closed the phone and turned it off.

I got up, went out onto the deck, and sat on one of the canvas chairs under a three-quarter moon. When I looked out at the beautiful canyon, I noticed a pair of feral yellow eyes turned up at me from the sagebrush. They glinted gold in the moonlight for a flash, before disappearing.

Probably a mountain lion or a coyote. But I'd been on the street long enough to recognize a killer's eyes. There was predatory hunger in that crafty yellow stare.

Then a strange thought hit me. When that beast looked up at me, what did he see in my eyes? Was there nobility and honor, or did he see another killer?