When he came to next, he was being unloaded from the ambulance. He had a mask over his face that smelled vaguely of sweat and vomit. Something was strapped to his wrist. Every time he tried to take a breath, his chest burned and shards of raw pain scored his nerve endings.
“You’re at USC county, sir,” the paramedic said. “I’ll need your insurance information—”
“He’ll get it to you when he can. Trust me, he’s good for it.”
Chris couldn’t believe it, it was David. He crouched down beside Chris’s stretcher, his normally dark face parchment white.
“Chris, honey, you’re going to be okay,” David said. “Don’t try to move. Stay still—”
“How—”
“The paramedic recognized my name on your contact card.
I guess being infamous has its benefits.”
“Des?”
“Is okay. Trust me. He’s fine.”
Of course he trusted him. David had never lied to him, not in all the years they’d been together. It wasn’t in his nature to lie. Someone came up behind David, a lean, dark man in a black, long sleeve shirt, equally black pants and cheap sunglasses. Another cop?
David saw him looking. “My new partner, Jairo Garcia Hernandez. Remember I told you Martinez was being reassigned for six months.”
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57
Chris didn’t know where the words came from; he was probably in shock. He smiled, though it hurt like hell. “He’s a lot better looking than Martinez.”
And damned if David didn’t blush.
Chris struggled into a sitting position. He ignored David’s efforts to get him to lie back down. He looked over at Des on a gurney beside him. His friend’s face was nearly as ashen as David’s, and a scratch over his right eye had bled freely, staining his hairless head, and dappling his Christian Dior shirt. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing normally.
Then Chris remembered what he had seen in front of his ruined vehicle.
“Oh God, did I hit someone?” His voice was edged with hysteria. “Did I kill her? Oh, God, David—”
“Shh. No. Hush baby. You didn’t hit anyone.
Someone...someone threw her off the overpass into the path of your vehicle.”
“S-she was murdered?”
“Yes,” David said grimly. “She was murdered. A CHP
officer saw it just before she landed in front of you.”
Chris grasped David’s hand. “Who was she? You have to tell me, David.”
David gently disengaged his hand. “I don’t know, hon.
When I find out more, I’ll let you know. Now,” he said sternly.
“You have to go to the hospital. I’ll come around later and check on you.”
“Take care of the dog? I called, but it was a wrong number, so I couldn’t take him back like you wanted. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” David put his finger on Chris’s lips, stopping his words. “I don’t care about the damned dog. I’ll take care of him, okay. We’ll both be all right. You just get better and come home to us.”
Chris subsided back on the gurney. “Okay.” He closed his eyes. “I love you, David.”
“Love you too,” David whispered.
58 P.A. Brown
Chris smiled and let his muscles go slack as the doors rumbled open and the gurney rolled into emergency.
Sunday, 5:50 PM, USC County General, North State Street, East
Los Angeles
At the hospital David wasn’t allowed to see Chris after he was checked in and the emergency team took over. He would have to wait until he was out of surgery and in ICU. Even then he could only stay ten minutes.
Jairo took him back to the station, though he would rather have stayed at the hospital. “Come on, I’ve got a brother who’s an emergency doctor, he hates it when family won’t give him any peace.”
“I thought your brother was a taxi driver?”
“Big family. What can I say? Devout Catholics, and all that.”
Back at the station David made sure he put Jairo to work on his autopsy report. At seven they called it a night. David would have just enough time to make it out to the hospital before visiting hours were over.
He found Chris dozing in a semi-private room with an empty bed by the door. A flat screen TV hung over his bed, and a set of earphones were plugged in. A tray with a can of ginger ale and a half-empty package of digestives had been pushed to the side of the bed. An IV was taped to the back of his left hand, pumping a clear liquid into him, and an oxygen line was inserted in his nose. He started when David gently tugged the phones out of his ears.
“Wake up, sleepy head.”
“David.” Chris smiled, eyes still at half mast. “What time is it?”
“Seven-twenty. How are you feeling?”
60 P.A. Brown
Chris reached over and picked up David’s hand with his unencumbered right, holding it in his lap. “Tired. Sore. Did I really hit that woman?” He sounded plaintive.
“No, hon, you didn’t. And I don’t want you thinking like that.” His voice hardened and he clutched Chris’s hand when thoughts of what might have happened invaded his waking nightmare.
“But she’s dead, isn’t she?”
David raised Chris’s palm to his mouth and kissed it. “Yes, she’s dead. But that’s someone else’s doing. Not yours.”
“You’ll catch him, won’t you?”
“I’ll do everything in my power to do that. But meanwhile, I need you to concentrate on getting better.”
“Sure.” Chris yawned, his eyes blinking as he fought sleep.
“Can you find out how Des is? No one will talk to me. I hope Trevor was called. He’ll be worried sick if Des doesn’t come home.”
“Shh, I’ll call Trevor and let him know, and I’ll talk to the doctor about Des. Being a cop has to have some advantages, right?”
When Chris didn’t answer, David stooped down and kissed Chris’s forehead. Chris’s eyes fluttered open again, and this time David kissed his mouth. He ran his thumb over Chris’s lips. “I love you hon, no matter what, remember that.”
Chris fell asleep smiling.
And David had never felt like more of a shit heel.
David talked to Chris’s doctor and found out that they wanted to keep him for observation. He’d broken a rib, which had punctured his lung. They wanted to monitor him for a couple of days, to be on the safe side. The doctor assured him it wasn’t life threatening, but he needed to be watched. His friend, Desmond Hayward, was listed in stable condition and would probably be released later that day, pending test results.
L.A. BONEYARD
61
Back home, he called Trevor, and told him what the doctor had said. Trevor was just on his way in to see his lover. Was there anything he wanted him to take to Chris?
“Sure,” David said. “A big hug and kiss.” Then he had to add, “But not too big a kiss,” in case Trevor wondered at the lack of his normal jealousy towards the man who had almost been Chris’s lover.
“Sure,” Trevor said easily. “I’ll let him know you’re thinking of him. What’s this I hear about you guys getting a dog? Where did that come from?”
“Long story. I’ll let Chris explain it to you.”
Sweeney came into the room and insisted on being picked up. David let the tension flow out of him as he stroked the purring cat. The next morning he and the dog spent a tension packed hour staring at each other. David would have called the pound then and there, but he remembered Chris begging him to take care of the dog. Finally he gave up the uneven battle, heading back in to work. Jairo was already at his desk, a half-eaten bear claw beside the dregs of station coffee.
David eyed the cup. “That stuff will kill you.”
“What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” Jairo pulled a pencil out from behind his ear. “How’s Chris?”
“Fine. They’re keeping him in a few days for tests.”
“Bet he’s a happy camper.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“So, what’s on tap for today?”
“I want a report on that overpass toss job. ID, anything the M.E. can tell us. Who was she and why did someone throw her onto a busy freeway.”
“Isn’t that Central Division’s radio car area?”
“Let me worry about that. Just get the data for me.”
Jairo grabbed his bear claw, and crammed it in his mouth, scooping his jacket off the back of his chair. “What are you going to be doing?”
62 P.A. Brown
“I’ve got some reports to finish up. If you want, we can meet up for lunch.”
“Sure, Little Thailand again?”
“One?” David asked. “Make sure you start a murder book on the autopsy you attended. I started the initial incident report, and the one for RHD, you can finish them up. I’ll warn you now, they expect details. Don’t try to bluff through it. They’ll see through it and nail your scrote to the wall. Then they’ll tell you to write it again.”
Jairo grimaced. “Later.”
David called CHP and got the name of the first responding officer. From him he found that the case had been assigned to Central division; a Detective Yamagata was the lead.
He called Central, only to find that Yamagata was out. He left a message to call him, then waited to hear what his protégé was up to. He would have been more than happy to hear Jairo had asked for a transfer to another division, but he doubted Jairo would be so accommodating. For some reason, he seemed determined to disrupt David’s life as much as possible. It didn’t help that Chris wasn’t around to buffer his clumsy seduction attempts. And that thought enraged him. Since when did he need someone to run interference with his honor? He wasn’t a slave to his libido. Chris was the only one who had been able to insinuate himself past David’s defenses. He’d damn near given up everything for Chris, his job, his future, his life. Surely what they’d forged was stronger than a casual lust from an almost perfect stranger.
David sighed and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel. The late morning sun had already heated the leather wheel cover to an almost scalding level. He welcomed the burn.
Monday, 8:15 PM, Cove Avenue, Silver Lake, Los Angeles
David spent a short twenty minutes with Chris at the hospital, but he was heavily sedated and barely aware of David’s presence. He tried to talk, keeping his tone chatty and full of funny happenings about the dog and his day, but his heart grew heavier as the evening wore on and Chris never responded.
Finally he gave up, kissed Chris’s slightly parted lips and left, promising to return the next day.
David let himself into the house, receiving a noisy greeting from Sergeant. They stood in the foyer staring at each other across the tile floor. David held himself stiffly. The dog glared, posturing.
Finally David said, “We’re going to have to come to an understanding here. Right now it’s just you and me. Chris is gone and much as I’d like to drop kick you into the nearest pound, I promised him I’d take care of you. But you better behave. Besides,” he said in the same voice he used to talk to armed punks. “I’ve got a gun. It’s a .40 caliber Smith & Wesson, with 15 rounds and one in the chamber. You do not want to mess with me.”
Maybe the dog knew what a gun was. Maybe he knew a threat when he heard one. For whatever reason, Sergeant turned his head, and after another tense few seconds, padded back into the kitchen. One problem solved, now what was he going to do with the thing? He personally wanted to do nothing more than sprawl in his lounger and watch a game that didn’t require any thought. But he could hardly leave the dog to his own resources. Not unless he wanted to clean up a different kind of mess.
He changed into sweats, grabbed his LAPD jacket out the hall closet and scooped up the new leash. Sergeant bound
64 P.A. Brown
toward him, clearly having forgiven all their beefs. When David, determined to drive himself to exhaustion, took up a ground eating jog, the dog smoothly fell into step beside him. They trotted over the crest of the hill and headed down toward the reservoir. He couldn’t help notice, with some amusement, that a lot of people crossed the street when they saw the two of them coming.
He glanced down at the trotting dog at his side. “You’re a scary guy, you know that?”
He slowed to cross Silver Lake Boulevard so they could head across to the meadowland, the area some local committee was fighting DWP over. The first time he spotted the white car, it didn’t click. But when it became obvious the all too familiar Firehawk was trailing them, he slowed, and eventually stopped.
Sergeant fell to sniffing around the grassy verge, but he looked up eagerly when Jairo climbed out of the car, a large chocolate lab trailing after him.
“Thought you could use some company since you’re flying solo these days,” he said as he came alongside David.
The two dogs greeted each other cautiously, which quickly degenerated into play bowing and leash tangling lunges.
“Do you know the definition of stalking?”
“Sure.” Jairo grinned easily. “I’m not stalking you. We’re partners, remember.”
“Somehow I don’t think this is part of the definition of what partnership is supposed to mean.”
“Hey, I need the exercise, you need the exercise and the dogs... well, look for yourself.”
It was hard to deny the two dogs were ecstatic. Jairo tugged at his dog’s leash. “Come on, Popeye, let’s blow off some steam.”
“You call your dog Popeye?”
Jairo grinned. “The kids came up with that. Could have been worse. Could have been SpongeBob SquarePants.”
David blinked at him. “You’re serious?”
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65
“You don’t hang around kids very much, do you?”
They jogged north along Silver Lake Boulevard and cut through to the park that bordered the reservoir there. Though it was dark, the park was still active with other joggers and dog walkers.
They ran until all four were forced to stop, sucking in great drafts of air. A cold breeze off the water fanned the sweat off David’s forehead. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his jacket.
“That does it for me,” David said. “I’m heading in. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He tried to be forceful with his words. The last thing he needed was Jairo following him.
“Sure.” Jairo did some leg stretches, baring the bronze skin of his belly, where a thin line of hair snaked down into his track pants. “I guess I’ll see you
mañana
.”