The Blue Hour

Twenty-Three

Hess was still at his desk late that evening, on the phone with the head of the mortuary sciences department of a local college, fishing for something he couldn’t articulate yet. Something to do with Deer Sleigh’R, formalin and missing women.

Brighton, who rarely came in on Sundays, appeared in the bullpen and waved him over. Hess made the appointment with the mortuary sciences director, then hung up and followed Brighton down a short hallway into his office. Brighton waited for him, then shut the door.

“Three more?”

“Two look real likely. The third, probable.”

“He’s been at this for two years?”

“Just over. The first went missing twenty-six months ago. Car trouble. The next was last seen, guess where — at a mall.”

“Oh, good Christ. No break this morning? Nothing?” He pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

“No.” Hess sat.

“He’s thorough and careful, isn’t he?”

“I think he’s using chloroform to put them out. One of the CSIs recognized the smell from his vet. It makes sense. There’s been some struggle in the cars. But not a huge amount. No blood.”

“Can Gilliam verify the gas?”

“Not with the blood we’ve found. Chloroform metabolizes out real quick. But we think he’s driving a silver panel van with a set of mismatched tires. It’s the best thing we’ve got.”

“Jesus, Tim. Six.”

Brighton sat back and crossed his arms. He was a big man with a rural face and a cool intelligence in his eyes. Hess had always liked the way Brighton made ambition for power look easy and natural. He shared the spoils. He wasn’t the kind of man always looking around corners at you.

Then again, Hess had little idea what the sheriff did with his spare time, though he did know that like a lot of ranking law enforcement people in Southern California, Brighton owned a house and property somewhere in Wyoming or Montana. Hess had rarely visited Brighton’s home, never dined there or associated with the sheriff outside of department functions, never learned the names of his children. Those intimacies had been shared over the decades with more family-oriented men and women on the force — the ones who, like Brighton, had kids to raise. Children and the raising of them seemed to adhere the parents to each other in ways that didn’t stick to Hess and his childless marriages, ugly divorces and the long stretches of aloneness that separated them.

Hess was drawn to people more like himself: on the make for something they might understand but often didn’t, either recovering from or searching out the next romantic disaster. It always seemed to work out that way, but it was never how he planned it. He saw that you needed to put aside that selfishness if you wanted to fit in with the department pack, otherwise you were perceived as a danger at some point. A family made you understandable, declared your values and your willingness to sacrifice.

Hess hadn’t wanted children with Barbara — who was willing — because he was young and hogging his liberties. The world seemed huge then, though his place in it with Barbara — who was insecure and jealous as time went on — seemed constricted. He was stupid to leave her but only realized it later. His guilty conscience had left everything of value to her and to this day he was thankful for that.

He was willing and interested with Lottie when he was in his thirties, but she was young and enjoying her liberties. They drifted away from each other in the classic fashion and parted with minimum drama and no rancor. What amazed Hess more than the divorce was the way a decade could come and go so quickly.

Children hardly seemed to matter until he was halfway through his forties and married to Joanna. His paternal instincts crept up on him like a big cat: a bold but calm desire to guide his blood into the world, to give life. He actually began looking at other people’s babies, thinking of names he liked, picturing himself with an infant in his arms. Doted on his nephews and nieces. Thought a lot about his father. And his mother. Something inside him was changing for the good.

Joanna was younger than him by fifteen years, quite beautiful and willing to have a family. These were three of the reasons he married her. Hess suspected a child would help keep them together because they actually shared little in common outside the bed. After five years of trying and failing to conceive, countless consultations and tests, then three increasingly heartbreaking miscarriages, Joanna gave up on doctors, children and Hess. On the dismal March night of his fifty-first birthday, both of them drinking at high velocity, Joanna surprised him with a tearful confession that she was in love with another man. With one of the doctors who had failed to help her, in fact. It was with extreme and surprising anger that Hess imagined this man with Joanna on his examination table. She said he had his own children and with him she felt less like a failed breeder and more like a successful woman. She took half of everything and dropped all contact with Hess. He rented a room to a young deputy so he could keep the house.

By the time he realized he had pretty much missed his chance to be a father Hess was three times divorced and pushing fifty-three years old. Did everyone know he was a fuckup? He felt like an ostrich with nowhere to hide his head.

Now, sitting in Chuck Brighton’s office, Hess considered all of this to be nothing more than the ancient history of an everyday life. His. And this is where it had led him — semi-retired and sixty-seven years of age, alone again, afflicted by cancer and by treatments for cancer, shadowing a murdering phantom through what could have been one of Hess’s golden years. So you don’t always get what you want. But grace grows in the cracks sometimes.

You have work to do.

“That must have been bad this morning.”

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it, Bright. I mean, it was so... deliberate. Deliberate and disgusting and just really mean. All at the same time. This guy’s got some snakes in his head.”

“He’ll make a big mistake. You know that.”

“When, is what bothers me.”

“Tell me about Rayborn, Tim.”

“There’s not much to tell. I think she’s doing well.”

“Good, good. Do you get along with her?”

“She’s honest and to the point.”

“Like you.”

Brighton could be obtuse and Hess figured it was his right.

“What about that sketch of hers?”

Hess shrugged. “The witness needed to be hypnotized. Merci got good results.”

Brighton nodded. Old news.

“It was her call, Bright. That sketch is getting hits.”

“What, the bus driver, that car thief out in Elsinore?”

“And a sporting goods store clerk said it looked like a guy who bought some hunting supplies out of season.”

“The question is, why’d she wait so long to get it done — hypnosis or not?”

“Some time to consult with the DA. A day to do the hypnosis and the sketch. She thought it over, wanted to make the right move. More time to get copies, get them out to Press Information.”

Hess understood that what kept Merci from acting quickly on the sketch was her doubt about Kamala Petersen’s reliability. She’d hesitated on instinct. The margaritas seemed to have justified that doubt, but Hess said nothing. The booze was going to make Merci look bad.

“And Merci paid out of her own pocket for that psychiatrist to hypnotize her, didn’t she?”

“I really don’t know. But she told me she bought some Point Blank body armor with her own money.”

“What’s wrong with our PACAs? They’re rated to threat-level Two-A.”

“I guess she thinks they could get her killed.”

Brighton raised his eyebrows. “She lost a potential witness.”

“Yeah, she knows that. She knows it was a gamble.”

Hess suddenly felt his tiredness slap up against him. It was like a big wave of cold water that sucked the warmth right out of you. It usually happened when he was sitting down. Like Friday, when Merci had to help him out of the chair. Maybe the secret of life was to keep moving. Hop ’til you drop.

“How did she miss those Jim marks on the car windows?”

“Well, they were below the door frame.”

“That’s absolutely not what I was asking.”

“In that case, it was Kemp who missed them.”

“I’d taken Kemp off the case by then, Tim. You were on it.”

“The damage was done. She couldn’t redo every bit of his work. Ike would have found them sooner or later. Or she’d have thought it through and had a look for herself. Really, Bright, that wasn’t the kind of thing you’d think of unless you’d run across it before.”

Brighton nodded, unconvinced. “It’s basic car theft, is what it is.”

“Well, she’s Homicide.”

“Maybe that’s what worries me. Besides, it took you about thirty seconds.”

“I’m old.”

“Tim, I’d like you to document what you think of her performance on this case so far, just something brief, in writing.”

“What about it?”

“How she’s handled it — the privately funded hypnosis, not taking the Da’s advice about the legal fallout. The car windows — whose decision it was to remove the glass and have a real thorough, old-fashioned look at it. Just a note for my files, nothing elaborate. A quick and dirty.”

Interesting use of words, thought Hess. “I’m sure she’ll put all that in her report,” he said.

“Her reports are evasive, partial and uninformative.”

“The kind I always wrote.”

“Those were different days, Tim. We were small and tight and we hung together. Anyway, I want your angle on it.”

“That wasn’t exactly in my job description, Bright.”

“It is now.”

Hess said nothing.

“Is this LaLonde creep a suspect or not?”

“Riverside is watching him for us. So far, nothing unusual. My guts tell me no.”

“How did Merci handle him?”

“Well. He built this override device for our man. It works on most car alarms, or so LaLonde says. He can ID our guy if we can deliver him.”

“Nice work.”

“Rayborn called the shots. I just held up a wall.”

“She really carry a switchblade in her purser?”

Hess looked at the sheriff, then slowly shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“I’d be curious. Look, Tim, I’ve got some problems here. Merci’s lawsuit accuses Phil of potty-mouth and grab-ass, but it accuses me — between the lines — of looking the other way. In fact, if she wants some kind of monetary damages, she’ll eventually have to name the department, and probably me.”

“Then she must not want money, Chuck.”

“You know me, Tim. I don’t look the other way. I’ve worked hard to make this a good place for men, women, the best sheriff department in the state. Now Merci files this suit out of the blue and three more women have come forward, talking to the press, getting their own suits ready, I assume. One says Kemp raped her. Merci opened the floodgates.”

“Damn it, Bright. Maybe you should be glad she spoke up. If you’ve got house to clean, you’ve got house to clean.”

“And I’ll clean it. But I feel like I got a gun to my head. And she never once came to me about any of this.”

A long silence then.

“What does she want?” Brighton finally asked.

“How would I know? She hasn’t said one word about Phil Kemp to me.”

“Find out.”

“That in my job description now, too?”

“Absolutely. Find out what she wants, Tim. I’ll accommodate her if I can get this snowball stopped.”

Hess nodded. He felt exhausted.

“Ever heard of a friend of hers named Francisco?”

“She mentioned him.”

A long pause then, during which Hess deduced he was supposed to make something of this friend. He sensed the amount of brainpower necessary for such a formulation would be a lot more than he wanted to spend.

“McNally told me she’d mentioned a guy, is all. Never introduced them. I’m curious if she might be sleeping with this man.”

“I’m not.”

“Find out about it and let me know. You can add that and the switchblade to your job description too, if you want to. Help me, Tim. I’m helping you.”

Hess looked at him.

Brighton sat back. Hess felt the resentment stirring inside — resentment that his own stupid cigarette addictions had led him to this position, and resentment that Chuck Brighton had allowed peevishness to bloom in his old age. I got cancer and Bright got petty.

“How are you feeling, Tim?”

“Strong as an ox. A little tired now and then.”

“I admire you.”

“Thanks.”

“And that has nothing to do with feeling sorry for you.”

“I hope not,” said Hess, but in fact he knew it did, and it broke his heart in a minor way to hear it from an old friend who was ordering him to piss on a fellow deputy half his age.

Hess stood and shook Brighton’s hand.