The Pain Scale (42 page)

I called Jen.

“You’re there right now?” she asked, the exasperation thick in her voice.

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you even bother calling me?”

“Just in case.”

“Just in case of what? In case somebody finds you floating in the harbor tomorrow?”

“No, I just wanted to—”

“I don’t fucking believe you.”

She ended the call.

That went well, I thought.

I put my phone away, brushed my hand across the grip of my Glock, and started walking toward the water’s edge.

Soon, I saw a figure I couldn’t yet recognize step out from behind a dirty-gray shipping container. He was silhouetted against the pier lights that gleamed from the other side of the channel.

He kept his hands in his pockets. Probably just to make me nervous.

I wasn’t in the mood to dick around. My hand slipped under my coat, and I drew my gun, switched on the tactical light, and lit up Yevgeny Tropov’s face.

Fear might have flashed in his eyes, but if it did, it disappeared too quickly for me to be sure. By the time I could focus clearly, his expression was all dull arrogance.

“You going to shoot me, Danny Beckett?”

“I wish.” I turned off the light and lowered my gun. “What do you want?”

“Some information,” he said.

“And you think I’m going to give it to you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not giving you shit.”

He smiled his cocky little Russian smile. “I think you will.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Your investigation is not so well, yes?”

“It’s just fine.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself by saying things we both know are untrue.”

I didn’t respond to that.

“All your murders, you have the triggermen, but not the people who made them happen. That’s why I think you will want to help me.”

I was curious. And he knew it. “Do you know something?”

“No,” he said. “But you do.”

He was right. I had no proof and probably never would, but I believed that Margaret Benton and Roger Kroll had conspired to kill Sara Benton. And that every murder that followed had resulted either directly or indirectly from their actions. They had more blood on their hands in this than anyone else.

“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said.

“That’s okay, Danny. You can pretend however you want it to be. I just have to ask you a few questions.”

I waited.

“I know what you think of me,” he said. “I do. So I’m sure it will surprise you to know I need to be sure of certain things before I take action.”

“Take action? What are you talking about?”

“It’s the mother and her boyfriend, yes? They are the ones responsible.”

That was it.

The moment I knew.

I turned my head and looked at the water.

“Nothing to say?” he asked.

The digital recorder in my pocket felt heavy against my chest. I took it out and hurled it into the water. The splash was small and quiet.

I could feel him smiling as I walked away.

Jen’s rented Infiniti was parked between my car and a silver Taurus. She leaned against the fender and watched me walk toward her. The closer I got, the more I could make out the disappointment in her eyes.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

Marty Locklin stepped out of the shadows between two shipping containers with a scoped AR 15 in his hands. He looked at me, looked at Jen, opened the back driver’s-side door on the Ford, took out a black ballistic nylon case, slipped the rifle into it, looked at the two of us, gave us a single nod, got behind the wheel, and drove away, all without a word.

We watched him go and then stood there in the weighted silence for what seemed like a very long time.

“You hungry?” she asked.

“I could eat.”

N
INETY-FOUR DAYS
later, after Enrique’s had succumbed to the lack of interest in its morning menu and stopped opening before lunch and I had fallen into a deep and profound mourning for the world’s most amazing breakfast burrito; after Jen had signed the mortgage on her new home and started warming her parents to the idea of moving to Long Beach, after Patrick had healed enough to return to the squad from his modified desk duty and he’d grown back enough hair so that the shaved spots in his scalp were no longer visible; after Harlan had his surgery and most of his first course of chemo and had somehow forged a stronger relationship with his daughter than they had ever had before; after Bailey and Jacob had lessened the frequency of their nighttime visits to once or twice a week and had stopped imploring me to find a way to use my father’s saw to cut away their pain in addition to my own; after I had started to let them go and long for another case that would compel my attention powerfully enough to awaken my obsession and assuage my pain to even the smallest of degrees, we heard the news that I had been expecting.

On their way home from a very successful fundraiser for his upcoming reelection campaign, the congressman and Margaret Benton were both killed when their Mercedes-Benz was struck by a hit-and-run driver as they drove north on the 405. And even though I knew better, the Benton curse was also held responsible
a week later when Roger Kroll passed away after an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and sleep medication.

“What do you know about all of this?” Jen had just gotten off the phone with an acquaintance from the Huntington Beach PD who’d looked into the Kroll case for her. She’d also talked to the California Highway Patrol, who had jurisdiction over the investigation of the Bentons’ deaths. There were irregularities in both cases, she’d found out, but nothing anyone believed was worth pursuing.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to take some comfort in the knowledge that I did not, in fact, know anything at all about the deaths.

But I suspected things. She saw that.

And even though I wanted to know, even though I needed to know, I couldn’t bear to ask her if I was able to see the disappointment in her eyes so clearly—the disappointment that pained me more than my injuries ever had—because she wasn’t able to hide it, or because she didn’t even want to try.

“J
ESUS,” I SAID
to Harlan as he handed me another beer. “I thought you moved like an old man before.” He’d insisted on getting up and going into the kitchen to get me another Sam Adams even though he wasn’t drinking any himself.

“I am an old man,” he said. “I earned this hobble.”

The surgery had gone well, the doctors said. If the chemo did what they expected it to do, he’d be out of the woods. For a while, at least.

“Where’s Cynthia today?”

“I don’t know. She’s a grown woman. I’m trying to give her some space.”

I wondered if that was how he’d drifted away from her the first time around, but I didn’t say anything. But maybe I was wrong and it was a good sign that he was trying to respect her needs.

“You been practicing?” he said.

“Practicing what?”

“The banjo,” he said. “Don’t go pretending like you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“No, not really.”

“Goddamnit, Danny. Why won’t you take this seriously?” He started to stand up again but stopped with a grunt. He put his hand on his side and sank back down into the couch.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded.

“What do you need? I’ll get it.”

“Go back to my bedroom and get me the banjo on the stand by my bed.”

I looked at him.

“Go on,” he said. “Do it.”

As I walked down the hallway, I glanced into the guestroom that Cynthia was using. Next to the window on the far wall hung a pencil sketch of her father. I’d never seen it there before and wondered if she’d drawn it. If so, she’d managed to capture the odd sardonic warmth of his expression just about perfectly.

In his room, I tried not to but couldn’t resist my natural inclination to nose around a bit. He kept things neat and orderly. The row of medicine bottles on his nightstand was arranged by size. I pulled open the drawer just enough to see the walnut grip of the Smith & Wesson Model 66 he had pointed at me the first time we met.

The banjo was perched upright in an oak stand. It looked even nicer than the one he had given me. Polished dark wood, carving on the neck, mother-of-pearl inlays on the fretboard, gold plating on some of the hardware. I couldn’t help but wonder how much that one was worth.

“What the hell you doing in there?” Harlan shouted from the living room.

“Looking for your dirty magazines.”

I removed the banjo as carefully as I could and took it back to Harlan in the living room.

He plopped it down into his lap with a practiced smoothness that actually surprised me a bit.

“You didn’t bring my picks?” he asked.

“What picks?”

“Never mind.”

He eyeballed me, turned up the corner of his mouth, and started plucking out a surprisingly delicate and tender melody that became more complicated and more somber as it went
along. He never looked at his hands, and his gaze drifted somewhere far away.

He was good. I didn’t need to know much about music to know that.

When he finished, I said, “Wow.”

He smiled.

“I thought you couldn’t play anymore,” I said. “Because of the pain. It doesn’t hurt?”

“It does. But the pain’s different now.”

I nodded.

He handed the banjo to me, and I got up to put it back in his bedroom.

“Sit down,” he said.

“Sorry, I thought you were done.”

“I am,” he said. “But you’re just starting.”

Perhaps some novels result from the efforts of a lone author laboring in solitude.
The Pain Scale
did not. My most sincere and heartfelt thanks to:

Nicole Gharda, the best partner anyone could ever have.

David Aimerito, who always helps me see the art.

Jeff Dilts, who was always there when the chips were down.

Paul Tayyar and LeeAnne Langton, who not only helped Danny Beckett into the world but continued to help him grow.

Shaun Morey, who looked at some rambling fragments and helped me see a novel (and who keeps the coffee flowing).

Gary Phillips and Naomi Hirahara, who took me seriously even before I did.

Eileen Klink, Stephen Cooper, Bill Mohr, Gerry Locklin, and my colleagues in the Department of English at CSULB, whose support and mentorship has been and continues to be invaluable.

Richard Klink and Derek Pacifico, who helped me get the details right.

Zachary “Thug” Locklin, who always knows how to pass the time in 702.

Enrique and Michelle Perez, who make the best Mexican food in Long Beach and who will, I fervently hope, someday bring back the universe’s most amazing breakfast burrito.

Barry Hunn, who, in reality, is even nicer, more generous, and more knowledgeable about banjos than he seems to be in the preceding pages.

Andrew Bartlett, Alex Carr, Jacque Ben-Zekry, and the rest of the amazing crew at the Zon.

And finally, to Sharon Dilts, my mother, whose own struggle with chronic pain was the impetus for this novel.

As a child, Tyler Dilts dreamed of following in the footsteps of his policeman father. Though his career goals changed over time, he never lost interest in the daily work of homicide detectives. Today he teaches at California State University in Long Beach, and his writing has appeared in the
Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Best American Mystery Stories
, and numerous other publications. He is the author of
A King of Infinite Space
, the first in the Long Beach Homicide series.