Terminated (7 page)

The pressure in the line forced the kink open and life-giving oxygen flowed back to his father. After three ragged inhales, he began to recover. Tarbell patted his cheek.

“Good boy. Lesson learned, I think.” He returned to the sofa and picked up his coffee mug. No tremors now. He blew at the steam still curling off the surface. “I’m the head of the family now.”

P
etersen sat at the bar watching the Sunday
night football game and nursing a beer. This was how he’d conducted his surveillance on Tarbell since Friday night, hiding out, leaving Tarbell free to do whatever he wanted.

He was careful about his private arrangement. He relieved Reggie Glover at the scheduled time, checked in with Tarbell, gave it half an hour, then left. When it came time for Reggie to relieve him, he made sure he was in the right place for the handover. The time between, he found somewhere out of the way to kill time and file bogus surveillance reports. He chose places like this sports bar in a neighborhood where nobody from PSI would turn up. There was still a risk of being seen, but he didn’t want to take the safer course of just staying at home. He just couldn’t face Lynette.

His cell phone sat dormant alongside his beer glass. He kept it on for Tarbell to call if he had any instructions. It hadn’t rung. That was a good thing. If Tarbell didn’t call him, it meant he hadn’t done anything to this woman he had it in for. In Petersen’s mind, it didn’t make him any less of a scumbag for not doing the right thing.

“Coward,” he murmured.

“What was that?” the bartender asked.

“Can I get a Coke?”

“Sure. Do you want to see a menu too?”

“Maybe later.”

The bartender nodded and went off to pour
his Coke.

He couldn’t keep doing this. He’d only been doing it a couple of nights and it was already driving him crazy. His mind continually churned about what he was doing or not doing, to be more exact. He’d been a cop, sworn to uphold the law. Now look at him.

Fuck Tarbell
, Petersen thought,
the guy’s on his own after tonight
. He was telling Ingram everything first thing Monday morning. He picked up his beer. “Here’s to you, asshole.”

He chugged half of his beer down. For the first time in the last couple of days, it tasted like beer and not like poison.

The sourness in his gut that had been with him since Friday dissipated, succeeding where a fistful of antacid had failed. He ordered an appetizer and took an interest in the football game playing on the flat screen.

All that ended when his cell rang partway through the second quarter. Thinking it was Tarbell, he felt his stomach clench around the beer and bar food, but the feeling passed when he saw Lynette’s name displayed on the caller ID.

“Hey, what’s up, babe?”

“I need you to pick me up from the emergency room.”

“What happened?”

“I fell down an escalator at the mall and twisted my ankle. Nothing serious, but I need a ride.”

“What the hell were you doing at the mall?”

“Tom, you’re working nights and asleep during the day. I need to do something when you’re not around.” There was a smile in her voice. It took the tension out of his. “Can you pick me up?”

“Sure. Shouldn’t be a problem. Where are you?”

“Kaiser in Vallejo.”

“I need to clear it with PSI, but I should be over there within an hour. OK?”

“OK.”

He hung up on his wife and called Tarbell. It
sickened him that his first call was to him, but at least it kept the son of a bitch on his toes. More importantly, it neutralized him tonight, leaving it open for Petersen to confess all to Ingram in the morning.

“It’s Petersen. You need to get home or tell me where you are.”

“Why?”

“My wife was in an accident, and I have to pick her up from the hospital.”

“I hope she’s OK.”

Like you care
. “She’s fine.”

“I’m at home.”

“Good. Stay there. Someone will be replacing me.”

He hung up on Tarbell, dropped cash on the bar, and left. He waited until he was halfway to Tarbell’s house before calling Gonzalez, who said he’d finish up the night shift.

Petersen was parked innocently in front of Tarbell’s house when Gonzalez arrived. He recognized the handler’s familiar Buick sedan when it pulled up on Tarbell’s street. After a brief call from Gonzalez, he drove off to collect Lynette.

He found her waiting for him with her foot bandaged up and one shoe missing. Her hands were pretty grazed up from the fall. He stopped in front of her and smiled.

“Does Cinderella need a ride home?”

“Yes, she does.”

He got into the car and drove her home. She hadn’t been able to drive her own car. He’d have to pick that up from the mall in the morning. He put her in front of the TV and elevated her foot.

“Do you need anything?” he asked. “Coffee or anything? Ice?”

“No, I’m good.”

He sat down next to her.

“You’re not going back out?”

He slipped an arm around her
shoulders. “No, Gonzalez has things covered for tonight. Tell me what happened.”

“I just fell. I was riding the escalator with everyone, and I had my hands full. The escalator was packed. Someone bumped me and I fell.”

“I can’t let you go anywhere alone,” he said with a smile.

J. Edgar, their black Lab, loped in from the backyard with his tail wagging. Petersen patted the dog on the head, and it settled down on the floor underneath Lynette’s feet. Although it had only been days since Petersen had enjoyed this type of domestic bliss, it felt like an aeon ago.

“Is everything OK?” Lynette asked.

“Yeah.” He didn’t leave himself open to a follow-up. He was starting to act like a guilty suspect.

“You haven’t seemed yourself.”

“It’s the nightshift. It’s hard adjusting to the hours. I’m not a kid anymore.”

Lynette nodded, processing the information.

“I heard a TV and voices playing when I called you. You were supposed to be on a stakeout.”

He cursed himself. He should have taken the call outside. Life with him had rubbed off on Lynette. She was a good detective. “Yeah, I had to follow the suspect to a bar.”

“And you complain about working the nightshift.”

He smiled at her. When she smiled back, he noticed worry underneath it. She picked up the remote and silenced the TV.

“There’s a problem, isn’t there?”

She’d seen through him. He thought he’d done a good job shielding her from the mess he was in, but she knew him too well. He could deny there was a problem, but thirty-two years of marriage made it impossible to lie to her. She’d only believe the lie if she wanted to, and she didn’t. All he could do was deflect.

“It’s just the work. The guy’s a scumbag. He’s threatened a woman he works for.”

He could tell from Lynette’s expression and silence she
wasn’t buying it. He refrained from making the situation worse by talking even more.

“Are you sure it’s just that? Nothing has happened, has it?”

“No, I’m fine. I just want to get this assignment out of the way. I’m going to tell Ingram I don’t want these kinds of jobs anymore. If he wants me to interview witnesses or carry out background checks, I’ll do it, but I’m not doing any more surveillance work. I don’t want to spend my nights cooped up in my car when I could be spending them with you.”

She frowned.

He took her face in his. Gray had crept into her hair and lines marked her mouth and around her eyes, but she was still the woman he fell in love with an age ago. When he kissed her, her lips were still as soft as they were when he kissed her after the birth of their first child, Lee. “Seriously, everything’s OK. I’ve had a rough couple of days on this job, but I’m over the hump. Tomorrow’s going to be better. If you can keep from falling down.”

She smiled this time and meant it. He’d kept the problem from her, but he hadn’t kept his true feelings from her. Tomorrow, he would explain himself to Ingram. She picked up the remote and unmuted the TV.

Later, when it was time for bed, he made her laugh by carrying her to bed, although it killed his back to do it. He slept well that night.

The next morning, she was up and walking, albeit with a limp and not well enough to drive yet. He wanted to see Ingram, but he needed to claim Lynette’s car first. He arranged with an ex-police buddy living in Vallejo to drive her car back and he’d drive him home.

A few minutes before his buddy was scheduled to arrive, he went outside to wait. It was a beautiful sunny fall morning, crisp and clear. He found a flyer jammed under the windshield wiper of his Audi, which was parked in front of the garage. He yanked it free, cursing the jerk who’d put it under there, no doubt while he was in the sports bar last
night. Just as he was about to screw it up and toss it in the trash, he remembered there’d been no flyer under his windshield when he’d rushed to the hospital to get Lynette. He opened up the twice-folded sheet of paper.

It wasn’t a flyer. It was a printout of a digital photograph featuring Lynette sprawled out at the bottom of an escalator surrounded by her a tumble of shopping bags. There was nothing written or typed on the image. It wasn’t needed. Petersen knew exactly who’d sent it and what it meant.

Fifteen years earlier

B
rats catered to the college crowd with its
buck-a-beer policy that went easy on student finances. It was a no-frills place with bare wooden floors and no real seating to speak of, but that didn’t matter since the a plastic cup of beer only cost a buck. Everyone in Davis knew this place was a college hangout. Those over the age of twenty-five never bothered with the place, but there were always a few older guys who thought they could fit in with the young people and maybe pick up some pretty young thing. That fateful night had been no different.

He looked like an AC/DC refugee, with way too much denim for Davis in the May heat. He stood head and shoulders taller than most of the guys. He cut his way through the sea of bodies with a smile and gentle shove. Gwen made the mistake of making eye contact and groaned inside when he made a change in course toward her and Judy at the bar. Moments later, he’d squeezed into the bar alongside them.

“Can I buy you lovely ladies a drink?”

“Sure,” Judy got in before Gwen could shut this guy down. Judy never turned down a free drink.

He peeled a twenty off a roll of bills and
held it high for the bartender to see. It was supposed to impress, but Gwen fought the urge to roll her eyes. She was sure this crap worked with a lot of women, but he was paddling in the wrong pool.

The bartender came over and got their order in. Gwen stuck to beer, but Judy, being Judy, went with a Long Island Iced Tea that put a dent in the twenty. Mr. Denim went with a beer and a shot.

“I’m Desmond Parker, but my friends call me DP.”

“Judy Brent.”

“Gwen.”

“No last name, Gwen?” he asked sipping his beer.

“Not yet, no.”

“Don’t be like that, Gwen. I’m just being friendly.”

He was right. She wasn’t being fair. She had no interest in Parker, but there was no reason to be rude.

“Litchfield.”

“Gwen Litchfield,” he said, sampling each word. “I like it.”

“And my name?” Judy pitched in without malice. She just didn’t want to be excluded from the fun.

“Equally as nice.”

“Thank you.”

Parker cast an appraising gaze over them. It picked their clothes off, long and slow. Gwen fought the urge to shiver.

“I’m guessing you go to school here.”

“You guess right, DP,” Judy said. “Seniors now.”

“Seniors,” Parker said, feigning shock. “It won’t be long before you’re taking the world by storm.”

“You got that right,” Judy said.

“What is your major, Gwen?”

“Genetics,” she said curtly. The man’s domineering conversational style was getting to her.

Parker put down his beer. “Wow, no one told me I was in the presence of genius.”

“It sounds more impressive than it really is,” Gwen said.

“You’re being modest.”

“She is,” Judy said. “What about you? What do you do?”

Parker smirked. “A little of this. A little of that.”

Gwen tried pounding down her beer to
give her the excuse to lose Parker, but she couldn’t choke it down. She didn’t have a talent for it and wished she’d gone for a cocktail like Judy. Judy made her drink disappear with a few gulps. Parker paced himself after killing off the shot with a single swallow.

Gwen feared she and Judy were stuck with this guy for the night, until Zach came to the rescue. Parker was in the middle of a story intended to impress them when Zach called out, “Where’s my girl?”

He waded through the throng toward Judy, Gwen, and Parker.

Zach sidled up behind Judy and looped his arms around her waist so they hung low across her belly. Judy turned her head and kissed him.

Zach’s arrival forced Parker to take a step back. He was athletically built, possessing both power and speed.

“You’re late, lover,” Judy said.

“I’m in demand. What can I say?” Zach said. “Who’s your friend?”

There was no malice in Zach’s question. He’d stated his claim to Judy quite clearly. Sadly, Gwen didn’t have the luxury of a boyfriend for protection.

“This is DP.”

“Hey,” Zach said to Parker.

Zach changed the mood. College life dominated their conversation, and Parker lost his dominance. It didn’t take long before it became evident to everyone, including Parker, that he didn’t belong. There was no opportunity for him to make himself seem important in their world. Gwen almost felt sorry for the guy. But Zach’s arrival didn’t dislodge him, it only forced him to couple up with her.

Brats’ owner, Jason, leaned across the bar. “Gwen, it’s zero hour. You ready to sing?”

She nodded.

“You’re a singer?” Parker said.

“She’s the best,” Judy said.

“I’m OK.”

The DJ cut the music and introduced Gwen
and the band, giving her the chance to slip Parker’s grip.

She climbed onto the stage to cheers and whistles. She wasn’t with the band. They were a bunch of guys from the college who made some cash doing wedding gigs, but Fridays and Saturdays they played at Brats. She had a good voice, but not good enough to make a career out of it. She sang for the fun of it and the fifty bucks Brats paid her. She kicked off a five-song set of chart covers.

Gwen sang to the crowd, but periodically checked on Parker. Without her, he’d become a third wheel to Judy and Zach, and she watched him trawl the place for unattached girls. She noticed that each time he came up with nothing, his gaze returned to her. He latched on to a group of juniors she recognized. He slipped his arms around their shoulders, whispered something to the girls, then nodded at Gwen. His fascination with her left her cold in the sweltering room.

Partway through the third song, Judy waved at Gwen before she and Zach left, no doubt for a quiet place to indulge their desires. Gwen groaned inside. That left her alone with Parker. But when she finished the set, Parker was gone. It looked as if his act had run out of steam. His age and looks just paled against his male competition. Girls might go for older men, but they had to be the right kind, and Parker wasn’t it. The tension bled from her as she stepped down from the stage.

Jason set her up with a glass of water for her throat and to put some fluids back into her body. With Parker gone, she loosened up for her second set. She called it a night at eleven and cut through the crowd to Jason.

“Beautiful work as usual,” he said, closing fifty bucks in mixed bills into her fist and kissing the back of her hand. “Let’s do it again tomorrow night.”

She smiled. “Deal.”

She walked out into the still warm
night, but it was bracing compared to the heat of three hundred bodies pressed up against each other in a room with poor ventilation. The fresh air helped with the beer buzz she’d developed. The walk to her apartment would do the rest.

She hadn’t gotten a block before an ancient blue and gray Chevy Suburban pulled alongside her. Parker leaned across the passenger seat to talk and drive at the same time. If the fresh air had killed her beer buzz, Parker buried it. She felt alert and nervous.

“You’ve got a great voice. I’m discovering you’re definitely a woman of many talents.”

Had he been waiting out here for her? She hoped not. He was probably waiting for any girl to leave in the hopes of netting her. Having failed with his wit and charm, he was pinning his hopes to his big truck. How lame. She carried on walking.

“Hold up a sec.”

She shouldn’t, but she needed to nip this in the bud. She stopped, and Parker parked at the curb and climbed down from his truck.

“I saw your friends leave.”

I bet you did
. “Yeah, they had somewhere else to hit tonight.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No. It’s been a long week.”

“Too much work and no play makes Gwen a dull girl.”

“Well, this week, it’s true.”

Parker shook his head. “You know, I don’t like to see a girl as smart and as good looking as you sleep through the best part of a Friday night.”

Gwen guessed he’d used this line before, and it probably got him a grin nine times out of ten, but she only produced a polite smile. “Such is life.”

“Can I persuade you to stay out?”

She smiled. “Not tonight. This girl has a date with her bed,” she said and immediately cursed her
poor choice of words.

“I’ll give you a ride.”

She debated his offer. Accepting it would get him off her back, but she could see him pushing for something else when he got her home. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of this guy knowing where she lived. “No, I’m good. Thanks, though.”

Gwen didn’t give him the chance to try another avenue of questioning and said good night before walking away. She figured he would follow her in his truck, but she’d cut through the campus to lose him. It was a simple plan, but she didn’t get the opportunity to try it.

Parker grabbed her wrist and spun her around. He bear-hugged her and smothered her scream with a kiss. He drove her backward into a shop front belonging to a real estate office and smacked her head off the brick facade. The impact left her woozy and her legs buckled, but Parker kept her upright. The move was seamless. To the outside world, they were drunken lovers getting a little ornery in public.

“Gwen, you’re coming with me,” he whispered and smacked her head even harder against the building.

This time, Gwen lost consciousness.

The present

Jerry Naylor had called Gwen on Sunday night with the go-ahead. Earlier in the week, he’d pulled some strings and had gotten her visitation rights to see Desmond Parker on Monday morning. But it hadn’t been a sure thing because Parker himself had not yet agreed to the visit. His approval was required. On Sunday, Naylor had finally heard from Parker. The man didn’t object, and Gwen was in.

Gwen stepped out of the shower with a towel wrapped around her. Paul stood in the bathroom doorway.

“I wish you’d let me go with you.”

“I can’t. This all happened before we
even met. I need to do this myself. If I’m going to testify against him at his parole hearing, I need to look him in the eye.”

“I wish you’d change your mind.”

“I know,” she said and kissed him.

He left her alone, and she breathed a little easier. The facade she put on for Paul was thin. Facing Parker was going to hurt, and having Paul at her side would be nice, but it wouldn’t help her answer the questions she needed to ask.

She toweled off and blow-dried her hair. She tugged the towel free to slip into her clothes and caught sight of her naked body in the full-length wall mirror. She pretended she didn’t see the scar, but she did. She approached the mirror gingerly, apprehensive of her own form. She didn’t like mirrors. She saw too much in them. Today, she had to look. She had a pretty good figure for a woman entering her late thirties. Her belly was reasonably flat, her breasts possessed an eye-pleasing swell, and her legs remained toned. But she didn’t focus on any of these attributes, just the scar. It wasn’t much and few had seen it, but she always knew it existed and so did Desmond Parker.

It wasn’t the scar itself that offended her but what it represented. Parker had severed one of her fallopian tubes when he stabbed her. A lucky strike according to him. The loss would have had little effect on her chances of getting pregnant, but she already had low egg production. Parker’s knife wound halved a low percentage number. Because of his attack, she’d faced the grim reality that childbirth was a remote possibility. She and Paul had tried and tried to beat the odds and had all but given up hope when she became pregnant with Kirsten, their miracle baby.

She rubbed her fingers across the scar. It was smooth, silky compared to the rest of her skin.

“I think you should eat before you go,” Paul said entering the room. Seeing Gwen, his words trailed off, and he stopped in the doorway.

Embarrassed, Gwen grabbed the towel
off the bed and covered herself.

“You don’t have to hide it from me.”

Gwen couldn’t speak.

He closed the door and held her for a moment before pulling at the towel. She resisted, but for only a second. He tossed the towel on the bed. “You’re beautiful, Gwen. You never have to hide yourself.”

He sank to his knees and kissed the scar. She wanted to retreat but remained in place.

He looked up at her. Tears glistened in his eyes. “This isn’t a wound. It’s a scar. A scar is the product of repair. What happened to you is over. In the past. This scar proves it. It doesn’t matter to me, and it shouldn’t to you.”

She pulled him to his feet and held him tight. “I love you so much.”

“I know,” he said. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”

She watched him leave and tears flowed the moment he closed the door. They were tears of happiness and of pain. She had to pull it together. She could let Paul see the affect Parker had on her, but God knows, she refused to let Parker know she still felt pain all these years later. She had to be battle tough. Anything less would only feed Parker’s twisted ego.

She dressed swiftly, pulling on a blouse and slacks. Prison visitor’s rules stated no showy or revealing clothes. She styled her hair and applied makeup. Nothing too heavy. Again, prison rules. When she was finished, she looked ready for a business meeting. She needed to treat her encounter with Parker this way. It helped her keep it together. She forced down an English muffin and a half a cup of coffee before kissing Paul and Kirsten good-bye.

The drive to San Quentin wasn’t far and took less time than she thought. It was tough to think Parker was incarcerated within a forty-minute drive from her home. It was as if the legal system were taunting her.

As she crossed the
Richmond–San Rafael Bridge to the Marin side, the prison loomed large to her left. An unimpressive off-ramp marked the prison’s exit at the end of the bridge. Gwen had seen many vehicles take the exit over the years. She’d always assumed these people were family members or lawyers seeing their clients. It never occurred to her that they might be crime victims about to come face-to-face with their attackers.

She was the only one on the poorly kept road that ran along the coast out to the prison. A smattering of houses overlooked the road and the bay. The road dead-ended at the prison’s outer gates.