Vertical Coffin

Chapter 31

I was back in the tiny den waiting for her, thinking: She must have remembered me from the Iron Pig's rally. But, just like me, she wanted to pretend to have emotional distance on Emo's death. If I'd known they were friends I would have questioned her objectivity, as she had undoubtedly been questioning mine. It explained some of her argumentative attitude. At least, I hoped it did.

After a while she came out of the bedroom and sat in the swivel chair across the room, maintaining a careful physical distance from me. She looked crushed. Emotionally shattered.

"Look, Jo, this is probably a bad time to work on this. I could come back tomorrow."

"No. No, we have to do it now. There's a lot at stake."

"Right. But I can see you've just-I don't want to add to your emotional problems."

She looked at me, then shrugged her big shoulders. The motion said: I don't count, I'm nothing. Don't worry about me.

Then she added, "My brother sheriffs want this solved. I'm getting threatening calls at work."

She went to her desk and sat looking down at the papers. I decided not to complicate things by telling her Alexa was being threatened, too. I needed to get her focused on something else for a minute.

So I said, "I saw your bike in the garage. Why didn't you tell me you were on that ride?"

She shrugged again. "I didn't like you. From the first moment I saw you up in Trancas Canyon you sorta pissed me off. Sitting on that big Roast King that wasn't even yours, acting like some bullshit Willie G, high-siding and countersteering every turn. You ride like a girl."

"Jesus. That bad?" I smiled at her.

"Hey, I have female issues. I won't deny it. I also make snap judgments, so I'm wrong a lot. I've befriended a lotta assholes, alienated a lotta friends." She rubbed her hand under her one green eye, taking away some excess moisture. "Look, I do the best I can. Everybody doesn't see my virtues."

"I do," I said softly.

"Gimme a fuckin' break, Scully. I piss you off. But that's okay, I piss everybody off. If you could throw me overboard ten miles out, tied to an anchor, I'd be strolling the Catalina Trench right now.

"Don't be so hard on yourself."

"Right." She shook her head in bitter frustration. "Bridget says deep down I'm cold. I don't let people in. I suppose she's right, but I never know what to expect from people. I get scared, so I play a lot of defense."

"Me too."

She spun the swivel chair around and regarded me with frustration. "Don't try and get inside my head, Shane. It'll scare the hell outta you."

"What's in your head probably wouldn't scare me, Jo. My own devils seem worse than yours, because they're mine."

"I'm sure," she said skeptically.

For some reason, at that moment I needed to get something off my chest. Maybe I was feeling guilty and isolated over Alexa, or maybe it was that I sensed that in her current state, Jo wouldn't judge me. Whatever it was, I took a deep breath and let go.

"Most of the time I feel pretty lost and unsure," I said softly. "And deep down I usually don't think I'm worth very much."

She was watching me carefully now, waiting for a punch line. But there wasn't one. This was one of my dark spots, a place I rarely go. Her mismatched eyes softened, so I went on.

"That can happen when you're left at a hospital when you're six weeks old, and the county can't give you away, even if they're paying people to take you. I'd go with somebody for a week and they'd spit me back-too fussy, too hyperactive, too old, too hard to handle. Mostly I was raised by the county. So, like you, for most of my life I never let anybody get close.

"I wanted to be a cop because cops got respect just by wearing a badge. Being a cop gave me standing in the community. It made me part of a brotherhood-a family. I stood for something important that didn't have to be explained to be understood. But there was something else-something less noble. As a cop I didn't need to have a personal relationship to affect the relationships of others. I was great at police work, but as a person I was hiding out. I was good with assholes, because at least I understood them. I knew what to expect. Nothing. And I was used to getting nothing."

She sat quietly listening, so I went on.

"But in the last few years I've been trying to change that, to take more chances and be more vulnerable. I'm learning that vulnerability doesn't have to signal weakness. In fact, it draws people to you. Little by little, my personal life is getting richer. But it's like everything is balanced on some kind of complicated teeter board. The more vulnerable I become the happier I am personally, but the more inept I feel as a cop. I'm getting played more, and I'm having trouble finding a reason to care about anything on the job. This case we're working is threatening to end my career because it is the ultimate breakdown of everything I once believed in."

"So you're taking a chance with me now. Is that what this is? Showing how open and nonjudgmental you can be?" She was sort of sneering as she said it.

"I don't care whether you're gay, Josephine. It's just a choice and it's yours to make. But if you want some unsolicited advice, don't let your sexuality define you. You're worth more than that. I have my own issues I'm working on. Nobody gets through life without getting ambushed occasionally. Stop thinking it's only you. Everybody's out there looking for their own answers."

She remained silent, her face hard to read.

"You and I are in this thing together," I said. "My wife is getting phone threats like you are. I'm worried about her safety, and now yours, too. Everybody wants us to ditch the Smiley background and start focusing on those two SWAT teams. Only, I can't shake the feeling that the answer is hiding in his past. Putting our rocky beginning aside, you've been a good partner, and I don't usually do well with partners, because trust is another one of my issues. But maybe we could develop some trust. If you wanta let down some personal boundaries, just say the word."

She didn't respond for a long moment, then finally nodded her head. "Lemme think about it. I'll get back to you."

She reached over and scooped up all of her background material on Smiley and handed me half the stack.

"Wanna get started?"

She still seemed shaken, but she had a lot of will power, just like Alexa, and I knew she wouldn't break again.

"Sure. What's this?" I said, pulling the top sheet off the stack.

She glanced at it and said, "It's a bank payout to Vincent Smiley for four hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I'm guessing it's the Firemen's Fund Life Insurance policy for Edna and Stanley Smiley. Stanley had a one-truck plumbing service, Smiley, The Happy Plumber. Both he and Edna died in a car accident in 'ninety-five. Insurance premiums were fifteen thousand a year."

"So that's where the house came from."

"Exactly."

"Fifteen thousand a year?" I said. "Isn't that a pretty big premium?"

"Why?" she wondered.

"I don't know. Guy's a plumber with one truck, pays fifteen grand in life insurance premiums? Sounds kinda high. How much life insurance would that buy?"

She scribbled a note. "I've got a friend who sells insurance. I'll check it out."

"Can't you just call the broker who handled this policy?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"You don't want to know."

I frowned. "Don't tell me you hacked this bank's computer to get this."

"Ve haff our veys," she said, using a corny German accent. "I have a friend in computer sales who doesn't mind skating the edges, and she knows how to write spaghetti codes. I'll get her to hack the insurance company's computer. Because of the medical file, all this life insurance stuff is confidential."

"Shouldn't we just serve a warrant on Fireman's Fund?"

"Smiley's dead, so whatever we find now can't hurt him. This isn't going to end up in court, anyway. You want to waste time we don't have getting a no-recourse warrant that we can't file until Vincent is buried?"

"Probably not. What else?"

She reached over and picked up more printouts. "Here's everything I could hack and track on Smiley from the county and municipal sites. Most of it's probably useless, but at least it's a start."

She divided the stack in two. "I've arranged it chronologically by date, starting with county health records, preschool, middle and elementary, his GED in 'ninety-five, on through to the shoot-out statements and death certificate. Couldn't find his birth records. What do you want, Smiley in short pants or Smiley in Kevlar?"

"Smiley in short pants."

She handed me one of the stacks. We spent the next hour reading and making notes. At midnight we were both cranking off yawns, but we had a record of his life as far as county and municipal records took it.

"I'm shot," she said. "Wanta meet first thing for breakfast? Work out a doorbell schedule?"

"Yeah. My brain is fuzzed." I closed my notebook and got to my feet. She followed me to the door. I was just starting to leave, when she reached out and took my arm, stopping me. It was the first time that she had actually touched me.

She looked earnestly at me for a moment, then let go of my arm and cleared her throat. "Listen Shane, you say you used to be a loner, that you didn't let people in, but now your personal life is richer. Exactly how did you change that? No matter how hard I try, I'm afraid to trust anyone."

"It was pretty easy once I got the knack," I said, and she leaned forward as if I was about to give her the secret of life.

"When you don't like yourself, it's damn hard to have much of a relationship with anybody else. All you've gotta do is start finding things to like about yourself. Once you learn what they are, find somebody you care about and give those feelings away. What it boils down to is: In order to get, you've gotta give."

"That sounds like New Age bullshit," she replied skeptically.

"Some of the best answers are the easiest," I said. "But at the same time, the easiest answers can be the hardest to understand."