Payback (17 page)

I bit back a sob. The sob surprised me. I didn’t see it coming. I took another sip of beer to wash it away completely. I prayed to God Chris hadn’t heard it.

“Answer me. Please,” he whispered. “Tell me the truth.”

Spence’s face stared back at me from a picture on the end table. I squeezed my eyes shut to block it out.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I—I don’t know why I called. I should let you sleep.”

“Have you thought about what I said the other night at the bar?”

“Yes. I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

I began to feel penned in, herded. “Detective—”

He sighed. “Don’t call me that. Call me by my name. All right?”

“All right.”

“Tyler, tell me what thoughts you’re having. Please. I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too.”

“Why is it hard for
you
?” I asked. Again I heard the anger creep into my voice. I didn’t mean for it to be there. It just came.

Another silence fell between us. It lasted until he broke it. “You’re in my head all the time, Tyler. I think you know that. And when you’re there, I feel guilty that I want to take you away from Spence. But Spence is gone. So why should I feel guilty? Is it because it’s too early to expect you to… move on? Tyler? Are you there? Please tell me what you’re thinking.”

I lifted the picture of Spence from the table and held it in my hand as I stared at it. Spence was smiling in the picture. In life he had always been smiling. It was the first thing people noticed about him.

It took a moment for me to find my voice. When I finally did, I could sense Chris hanging onto every word. “It’s all wrong for the two of us to be playing this game.”

“I’m not playing a game,” he said. “Don’t ever think I’m playing a game.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”

I heard a rasping static on the line, and I knew he had brushed the receiver against the stubble on his cheek. I immediately wondered how that stubble would feel against my lips. Again I pushed the thought away.

He didn’t let me finish. “Sometimes I think this would be easier if I wasn’t in charge of your case. I’m aching to solve this one for you, Tyler. Don’t you know that? I’ve never been invested in a case as much as I’m invested in this one. I’ve never really had anything to lose before, you know. All my other cases were important, but they didn’t touch me personally. I did everything I could to solve them, but I never figured my happiness lay in the outcome.”

“Your happiness?”

“Yes. My happiness. Don’t make me explain that. Please.”

I thought about what he’d said. “You said you’d never had anything to lose before. What is it you think you might lose if you don’t solve this case?”

I could imagine him wiping the sleep from his eyes, trying to focus, trying to make me understand. “You, Tyler. I might lose you.”

I heard a soft exhalation. Petulant, maybe. Frustrated certainly. “I know you’ll never be able to open yourself up to anybody until this case is solved, Tyler. You’d be less of a man than you are if you did. I’m not trying to ride in on a white horse and rescue you. I’m not trying to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I’m also not ready to simply turn my back and pretend I don’t have feelings for you. I’m not sure why the feelings are there, but they are. They started that day months ago when they carried you into the ER. You were in such a sorry state that night, Tyler. Something about you pulled at me. I had never in my time as a detective been so touched by a victim of violence as I was when I saw you lying there on that gurney. Bloodied. Unconscious.”

I set Spence’s picture aside and strode to the living room window, the phone still at my ear, to look out on the darkened street in front of the house. I spotted a coyote walking along the sidewalk as if out for an evening stroll. He looked up when I moved the curtain to peer outside. The beer bottle was cold in my hand.

“Did you ask for my case?” I asked. Somehow it seemed important for me to know the answer to that question.

“No,” he said. “It was assigned to me. I wish it hadn’t been, Tyler. I wish I could have reached out to you in other ways. But it is what it is. I have to make the best of it.”

“So you have a crush on me,” I said. I knew the words would hurt him the moment they were uttered. But it was too late to take them back.

To my surprise, he laughed. “We’re not in high school, Tyler. Let me just say I’m intrigued by you and leave it at that.”

“Intrigued.”

“It’s as good a word as any.”

I let the silence intrude just long enough for me to brace myself for what I was about to say. It was the real reason I had made the phone call. I knew that now. It had just taken me a while to come to grips with the truth—to admit it even to myself.

“What you said, Chris. About me being in your head all the time.”

“Yes?” There was a catch in his voice. I could picture him leaning forward, anxious. Waiting for me to either give him hope or toss him to the wolves. His eagerness and dread to hear what I had to say was so intense I could feel it coming through the receiver like… like an actual physical presence. Like white noise. I could sense him frozen in anticipation, his back ramrod straight, waiting for me to decide his fate.

I knew once I said the words there could be no taking them back, but somehow it seemed right to say them. So I did.

“You’re in my head, too, Chris. All the time. I’ve tried to push you away, but you keep coming back.”

After a moment of stunned silence, I heard relief in his voice. There was a smile there too. “I’m stubborn that way.”

I didn’t return the imagined smile. I couldn’t. I tried to clarify my confession, maybe even make it a little less than what it had sounded to be. “But you have to understand. These thoughts are tearing me apart. Spence has been gone less than five months. Thinking these thoughts about you is like turning my back on him completely.”

Chris spoke slowly. Carefully. Like a man treading on ice. Afraid to fall through. Afraid to plummet into the icy depths below just when he saw the possibility of rescue, of salvation. “I don’t want to replace Spence in your heart, Tyler. I just want you to maybe make room for me too. I can move in slowly if that’s what you want. I have all the time in the world. I can wait. Don’t you see? I’ve proven that already.”

I nodded as if he could see me. “I know. I know you have.”

Suddenly there was hope in Chris’s voice. More hope than I had ever heard there. “But you do think about me? Is that what you said, Tyler?”

Again I stupidly nodded, as if he could see me. I still stared out into the night. The coyote was gone. The street outside was empty. I pressed the phone to my ear close enough to hear Chris’s breathing. A chill of anticipation went through me at the sound of it. A chill of excitement. Was he lying in bed naked? Was his angular body soft and warm? Were his eyes dimmed with sleep? And how would they look if they were dimmed, instead, with passion? Would the honey in them erupt into flame?

That last thought was too much. I shoved it away. “Yes, Chris. That’s what I said. But don’t ask me to say it again. I don’t think I can.”

“All right, all right,” he breathed into the phone as if placating a child. “Once is enough. At least I know now that I’m really there. In your thoughts. Inside your head. Thank you for that, Tyler.”

“I—I have to go now. I need to sleep. So do you, I imagine.”

He laughed. “I may never sleep again.”

“Good night, Chris.”

“Good night, Tyler.” His words were soft and muted. A tremor swept through me at the sound of my name on his lips. My eyes opened up a little bit wider, just like he told me they did.

Gently, I disconnected the call.

In the distance, somewhere out in the darkness, far from the house now, down in the canyon, maybe, the coyote gave a plaintive howl. I dropped the curtain to seal out the night and retreated into my thoughts.

For the first time, I admitted to myself I was happy Chris was in there with me. In my head. Maybe even in my heart.

But would Spence ever understand it?

T
HE
NEXT
day a call came from the lady in the office at Holy Cross Cemetery to inform me the tombstone was up. She apologized for the delay, assuring me these things take time and she hoped I understood. I immediately brushed aside her apology, and after thanking her, I grabbed my car keys and was out the door. I chewed my lip as I drove, wondering how the stone would look. I tried to block the memory of last night’s phone call with Chris. It felt too much like cheating.

As I stepped from the car at the curb closest to Spence’s grave, my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I fished it out and read the display. It was Chris. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket unanswered. Walking across the dew-soaked grass, I approached the grave.

The grass was filling in now, the sod had taken root nicely. Spence’s new tombstone stood at the head of the grave. A simple stone. Spence’s name, date of birth, and date of death were carved across it in a square of polished marble. The rest of the stone—top, sides, back—was rough and unpolished, the stonecutter’s chisel marks still there to see. It was a beautiful marker.

Unlike the person it honored, it would last forever.

Fresh flowers stood in a vase alongside the stone. White lilies. I wondered if Janie had placed them there. I berated myself for not thinking of bringing flowers myself.

The tombstone was cool to the touch, not yet warmed by the rising sun. I wondered if Spence could feel the weight of the stone as he lay beneath it in the ground. Did it comfort him, and did he know I was here? Did he sense my presence nearby as he always had when he was alive? Or was his world simply darkness now? No memories, nothing. Death.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered into the morning air. “I’m sorry, Spence.”

There was no response. The silence seemed to bury me alive. I felt like I was drowning in the hush. The words might as well have not been said at all. It was as if the wind had carried them off before they could register an impression on any living thing.

I bent, pressed my lips to the cool stone, then turned and walked away. Back in the car, I punched in Chris’s number. He answered immediately.

“Good morning, Tyler.” I could hear what sounded like a coffee cup clattering on a tabletop. “You okay?”

I stared out over the forest of tombstones. Except for one, they were the stones of strangers. A black phoebe, my favorite bird with his little black tuxedo jacket and white spats, the dark feathers on his head combed back in a sleek pompadour, fluttered onto the hood of my car and preened himself in the morning sun. When I made a tiny movement behind the wheel, he spun his head in my direction before taking off with a startled chirp.

“Can you come over tonight, Chris? I’d like to see you.” The words sounded unhurried, casual, and unimportant in my ears. My thudding heart was more representative of the facts. I was not only guilt-ridden, I was scared to death.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Thank you, Tyler. I’ll be there as soon as I can get away. Probably around seven. Want me to bring dinner?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll cook.”

“Holy shit,” he said. “You can cook?”

“We’ll see,” I said and immediately snapped the phone shut.

With a final glance at the new headstone, standing on the hillside looking lonely and forlorn, not unlike myself, I twisted the key in the ignition. The morning sun had crested the treetops. The day was beginning. It would be a hot one.

“Spence,” I whispered into the silent air just to hear his name. As I gathered speed, I rolled the car windows down to let the wind blow away my thoughts.

It only confused them even more.

C
HRIS
WAS
wearing the same clothes he had worn to Hess’s a couple of weeks earlier. Faded jeans, a white tee, and tennies. Once again, he was clean-shaven. He smelled of Sea Breeze and Spearmint gum. He must have stopped at his condo long enough to clean up before coming over.

He was almost an hour late. He was already apologizing as he walked in the door. “There must be a convention of shitheels in town. They’re knocking each other over like bowling pins. Got a dead drag queen at Chee Chee’s Bar and Grill downtown and three dead druggies in a garage in Shelltown. But enough about me,” he blithely finished up, his face lit with macabre humor.

His eyes warmed, the honey in them melting to a softer shade of brown. He aimed them at me like a kid wielding his father’s shotgun. Chris had no idea how dangerous his eyes were.

“Hi.” He smiled.

“Hi,” I said back, forcing a returning smile to my face. I pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

He tossed his car keys on the coffee table and plopped down on the sofa instead. He patted the seat beside him. “Only if you’ll sit with me.”

I did as he asked but left plenty of room between us.

He gave me a hurt look, mostly for show, and gazed around the room. “So what’d you cook. It smells great.”

“I lied to you,” I said. “I’m a terrible cook. I ordered pizza. That’s what you smell. It’s probably as tough as shoe leather now. It’s been sitting on the kitchen counter for over an hour.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Great! I love pizza! The tougher the better. Hell, I even had it for lunch.”

My face fell. “Oh.”

He grinned. “Kidding, Tyler. Relax. You could be serving Alpo for all I care. Cops will eat anything, you know. No discrimination whatsoever. Bunch of animals, really. Did I mention I was sorry I’m late.”

“No. You must have forgot.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

I nodded. “Good to know.”

“Cops are always late. Socially, I mean. It’s just the nature of the beast.”

“I’ll remember that.”

He watched me to see if I was buying his rambling bullshit. Oddly enough I was. It dawned on me suddenly that perhaps he was just as nervous as I was. That little bit of insight gave me a boost. I tried to relax. I smoothed down the front of my shirt and pushed my hair away from my eyes.