Ransom River (16 page)

“I saw the siege on the news.” His voice, always deep, had a new edge. “I saw you.”

She didn’t answer. He glanced at her shirt. It was an old cross-country T-shirt that said,
My sport is your sport’s punishment.
It was stuck to her with sweat.

“You—” He cleared his throat. “You ran long this morning?”

“Six miles.”

He nodded. “Glad you’re—good to know you’re running. Great. A hundred percent great.”

The last time she’d seen him, he was on his knees in the middle of the road, covered in glass and blood, much of it hers. She had a crack in her femur and a compound fracture of the tibia. He had a gash in his forehead. He’d cut it on the frame of his pickup when he climbed out through the
window. Climbed without looking, without thinking about broken glass. That was him back then: rash. Throwing himself into things wholeheartedly, foolhardily, was his modus operandi. That’s why he’d answered a police emergency call in the first place, with her in the truck. He had turned his entire existence into a police emergency call.

She hadn’t spoken to him since that night, since the minutes after the crash when he tried to rescue and comfort her. Worse had come, she had heard, though Petra had only vague details.
Nearly killed,
Petra had said. End of his career in the Ransom River Police Department.

Where have you been?
The question caught in her throat. She wasn’t going to ask. Not when she had been the one who bolted town without telling him good-bye. Not when she’d gotten over him. She took a tall glass from the cupboard, filled it with water, and poured it into Chiba’s dish. The dog put his head down and drank noisily.

Seth said, “Where’d you run?”

“The river trail.”

A wistful smile crossed his face. The river. The old times, the
back before.
The smile quickly ebbed, as if caught in an undertow. The place had dark memories too.

“How are you, Aurora?”

She set the glass on the counter. How much courage did it take for him to ask that question?

“I’m broke,” she said. “I just got canned. The charity I worked for lost its funding. I’ve got steel screws in my right leg but last week I clocked five K in nineteen minutes. Yesterday I watched Judge Wieland get shot by a vigilante with shitty aim. That guy then got a hole blasted through his chest by a shotgun. One of the gunmen had his head blown out twelve inches from my face. The cops think I was doing a Texas two-step with the guy and that I’m in his rooting section. And just before you turned up, Grigor Mirkovic’s pot roasts tried to scare me into confessing I screwed the trial over out of love for the cops.” She smiled. “I’m great.”

His face was grave. “Grigor Mirkovic’s men?”

“For carnivorous worms, they looked good in coat and tie.”

He said nothing. Her pulse had picked up. She was on a roll.

“I missed the bar exam,” she said. “The hospital wouldn’t discharge me in time to take it.”

“I realize.”

“That cost me the job with the firm in San Francisco.”

“I wish it hadn’t.”

“They said the job offer was contingent on me being up and running with a law license in my back pocket. They couldn’t wait for me to take the exam the next winter.”

He nodded. Was he telling her he already knew? Or was he urging her to go on—like a man being whipped, saying
Please, sir, may I have another?

“It blew me out of the water,” she said.

She couldn’t tell him the rest. It had lodged so far down in her chest, and felt so sharp for so long, that letting it heal over had taken every effort to be still, to let scar tissue tighten around it. It had become a flaw in her heartbeat.

Quietly, he said, “I’m sorry.”

But
sorry
didn’t cover it. And he knew that. He didn’t plead, didn’t expand on those two words. He waited, unarmed, for whatever she dealt back at him.

She waited until her breathing calmed. “Where have you been?”

He hesitated. Like he couldn’t believe she was letting him off the hook. He gave her a quizzical look. “What have you heard?”

“You left the force and moved away.”

“That’s all?”

“I heard that you were injured,” she said. “In the line of duty.”

The quizzical look on his face remained. As did the tilt in his shoulders, and a tightness, maybe an ache. He looked toward the kitchen. Maybe he wanted coffee. She didn’t want him to feel at home. She didn’t want him to know how goddamned awful it was that he looked so amazing, so present, so alive, so near.

He said, “I saw you talking to Detective Xavier. Who else have you spoken to in the police department?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“It’s important, Rory. Please.”

Please?
Seth had never been good with asking nicely. Not with suspects, not with drunks in biker bars, not with anybody who crossed him. And she assumed that he regarded her as having crossed him. Telling him,
We’re done. Period. Permanently,
would seem to fall in that category.

“You don’t work for the police department anymore. You’re not investigating the courthouse attack. Why should I divulge anything to you?”

“Fair enough.”

She calmed herself. “Seth. Why are you here?”

“To warn you.”

“About what?”

He took a moment. “Don’t count on the Ransom River PD to properly investigate the attack. Don’t trust anybody from the department.”

“What?” She heard the incredulity in her voice.

He turned, slowly, from the fireplace. “Don’t talk to the cops anymore. The department’s bent.”

For a long moment she didn’t move. Then she said, “I’ll make coffee. You talk.”

“T
he Ransom River PD is corrupt,” Seth said.

He stood with the morning light slatted behind him through the kitchen shutters. Hands in his pockets, for something to do with them. Cops on duty never put their hands in their pockets or laced their fingers together. They needed them free to react to threats. Rory guessed that said something about how he saw her.

“There are officers in the department on the take. Some who sell information to outside organizations, and I don’t mean the media.”

“Which officers?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re certain?”

“It’s why I quit.”

She had the coffeepot in her hand. She stopped. “What happened?”

“The undercover op I was working when you left—guy got killed. An ATF agent.”

He said it without emotion, but it packed a punch.

“That’s terrible,” she said.

Chiba walked over to him. Seth crouched and scratched the dog behind the ears.

“I’d set up a meeting with the sellers. When the ATF guy and I got there we were ambushed,” he said.

She didn’t move. “Oh my God.”

“I don’t know who, but one of my brother cops tipped the sellers off.”

He stood and sauntered to the window. The sun striped his face.

“Seth…”

He stared out at the trees and foothills.

Rory said, “Detective Xavier asked me about you.”

“Did she, now.”

“Like a kid poking an animal with a stick. Asked if I knew why you quit. Said people in the department would like a clear explanation.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Xavier came by to twist your hair over it? Interesting. So they really won’t be happy to see me.”

“Why would the police department be unhappy to see you? Because you moved away? You’re the son of a much-decorated detective.”

“They distrust me.”

“So the feeling is mutual.”

He stared again out the window. “If you let Xavier talk to you again, she’ll probably channel some talking points and gossip. Colder’s assignment blew up in his face. Colder allowed another cop to get killed. Colder lost his nerve. And so he quit.”

Coming in a flat, dispassionate tone of voice, it sounded brutal.

“That’s preposterous,” she said.

He shrugged.

She felt indignant. “No—Seth, that’s…Christ, is that what people actually believe? Or is it a snide lie somebody’s deliberately spreading about you?”

He tilted his head and for a second, the well-trained neutrality slipped from his expression. He looked at her with gratitude and warmth. Then, as though a painkiller had abruptly worn off, he glanced away.

She swallowed. “The bent cops—they’re spreading this story?”

“I don’t know. Guy quits the force when he leaves the hospital—people draw conclusions.”

“Hospital.”

She said it as an opening, but he shut that door.

“Nobody comes out of an ambush pretty.” He turned from the window. “So I quit. And then I went looking for work someplace else. I blew town. You’d had it right all along.”

“How’s that?”

“What you always said. ‘Don’t look back—something might be gaining on you.’”

Acid rose in Rory’s throat. “Did you tell anybody?”

“In the department?” He smiled. “Ms. Mackenzie, you can try to convince the world you’re completely cynical. But I am on to you.”

Heat spread across her cheeks. Of course he hadn’t told anybody. He didn’t know who to trust.

“The rot in the department is deep,” he said, “and goes way back.”

“How do you know?” she said. “
What
do you know?”

“I haven’t been ignoring the department these past two years.”

“You’re convinced.”

“You have no reason to trust me, but I’m asking you to.”

It felt like a slap. “I trust you.” Oh, how her heart twisted. “Do you think the department—crooked cops within the department—are, what, selling information to whoever was behind the courthouse attack?”

“Behind the attack?”

“Nixon and Reagan weren’t the only people involved. I’m sure of it.”

He walked to the kitchen counter. “Let me make the coffee. You do the talking.”

She explained what had happened during the siege, what she’d seen on the courtroom CCTV video, and the accusations Detectives Zelinski and Xavier had made during interrogation.

“How’d it end?” Seth said.

“I said I wanted a lawyer.”

He smiled sourly. “Saved and damned in one sweet statement.”

“I know.”

“They’re trying to scare you,” he said.

“It’s working.” She pressed her fingertips to her eyes. “I’m convinced
somebody besides those two gunmen was behind the attack. The thing is, whatever they wanted, they didn’t get. That means they still want it. And they’re still out there.”

“A criminal attorney won’t be able to help you with that,” he said.

“I know. So I’m going to need to turn to another law enforcement agency for help—the FBI? The U.S. Attorney’s Office?”

“Are you asking me?”

“Yes.” She felt angry now. “Yes, I’m asking you for help. Unless you drove out here just to tell me I’m in deep shit and sayonara.”

He didn’t flinch. “Hold fire. If things get bad, we’ll call in the feds. But for now, we lack proof.”

We.
“How are we going to get proof?”

“Rory, I know you hate to fight. You’d rather walk away and let idiots scream and swing at thin air. But when you get backed into a corner, you battle your way out.”

His view surprised her. She thought she ran, not walked, from hopeless battles. “Is that where I am? In the corner, backed against the ropes?”

“And it’s time to come out swinging.”

“With what? You have ammunition?”

“Yeah. To start with, I found out Nixon’s real identity.”

F
rom his shirt pocket Seth took a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to her.

She unfolded it. It was a rap sheet that summarized a long criminal career. She inhaled.

“Sylvester Church. Recognize him?” Seth said.

In the mug shot Church had unkempt brown hair and a droopy biker mustache. Down his cheek ran a scar, like the track of a tear. His eyes, gleaming from the flash, were hot and confrontational.

“It’s him,” she said. “The guy who called himself Nixon. I saw his face when SWAT pulled off the ski mask. He’d shaved the mustache and his head. But it’s him.”

She was both baffled and impressed. She pored over the rap sheet. “How did you find him?”

Sylvester Lyle Church.
Age forty-five. Five foot eight. A hundred ninety-two pounds of larded muscle and cruelty. His sheet went back twenty-seven years. Burglary. Possession of stolen property. Possession of crystal meth with intent to sell. Armed robbery. He had done time in county lockups and state penitentiaries. She counted nine and a half years incarcerated.