The Zen Man, page 6
“I was wondering—”
“That sonofabitch D.A.,” she said at the same time.
We both paused, looked expectantly at each other.
“Go ahead,” I said, tugging on the metal tab. The drink opened with a fizzy pop.
“His holier-than-thou act in court pissed me off. He acted as though you’d already been tried and convicted.”
“Dude and I share a history. He still nurses bad vibes.”
“Lawyers,” she muttered, extracting a silver shaker from the bar cabinet. “Back to your case. I’ve been thinking about that photo of Wicked in a bathing suit. It seems…” She dropped clattering ice cubes into the canister. “Intimate. Not the suit itself—that black one-piece is actually quite sedate.”
“She hated swimming, or any kind of exercise for that matter. She’d spend a quarter of an hour driving around a parking lot, waiting for a space directly in front of the store to open up so she didn’t have to walk too far. I once calculated she’d wasted two months of her life looking for parking places.”
“Interesting,” she said in a not-very voice. “Anyway, maybe the picture was taken at a party.”
“Why?”
“That look on her face. She seemed almost…vulnerable.” She poured vodka into the shaker and vigorously shook it. “I think she was looking at the picture taker with affection,” she said loudly over the rattling and slushing, “you know, somebody she was dating…maybe they went to some party together where people were lounging around a pool or something.”
“Think Iris took the photo?”
She paused. “Hadn’t thought of that, but now that you mention it…” She poured the liquid into a martini glass. “Was Wicked bisexual?”
I flashed on Iris’s arm protectively around Wicked as they walked out of the kitchen. “She never expressed an interest in women, but considering her penchant for living behind smoke screens, who knows. But if they’d had a fling, why did Iris throw away the photo?”
Laura gave me a get-with-it look. “Because the fling ended. Probably badly. I’ve done worse to pictures of boyfriends after they did me wrong.”
I didn’t want to ask. “But if they’d had a fling,” I continued, “it obviously didn’t end this week. After all, she was shtooping Sam.”
“Right. Iris didn’t seem grief-stricken at the party, and Wicked was definitely an item with Sam.” She took a thoughtful sip, swallowed. “Maybe Iris got miffed hearing Wicked would be Sam’s date?”
I thought about that.
She carefully carried the martini to her chair, pausing in front of mine. “You said earlier you were wondering about something.”
“It can wait.”
“Not like you to hold off talking about something.”
“With you.”
“Right, with me.”
She took another sip, her left eye squinting slightly.
When Laura and I first met, I thought that squinting thing meant I’d said or done something to upset her, until she’d explained it was due to minor nerve damage, the result of a teenage motorcycle accident. Although she’d said her eye twitched with a schedule of its own, that she had no control over it, I sometimes thought it happened when she felt stressed or unsure.
About us?
Time to get clear. “Why’d you say ‘no’ when I asked you to marry me?”
Jerry’s folksy, thin voice kicked off a new tune. Dire Wolf.
She studied my face. “You were seriously asking me?”
I nodded.
“While wearing that orange jumpsuit? Behind bullet-proof glass?” She gurgled a laugh. “No way.”
“Way.”
Her mouth curled down. “Hey, we agreed we didn’t need a piece of paper to make what we have any better.”
That talk had been on the eve of our decision—well, technically her decision—to buy this place. We’d been talking about the new responsibilities we’d share as bed and breakfast owners and live-in lovers. Although marriage had surfaced in our talk, we’d done the cliché yammer about a piece of paper not making us feel any more committed than we already were. That neither of us were interested in having children.
Problem was, I lied. At the time I gave it a five on the lie scale. But since then, I’d realized it was more like a eight-point-six. If there was anything I regretted, it was missing out on being a dad. But I didn’t want to push the issue with Laura because I knew, after raising her troubled kid sister in the vacuum left by their parents, she’d had her fill of motherhood.
“I know we said we didn’t need a piece of paper,” I agreed, “just felt differently the other day, sitting there on desolation row.”
She took another sip of her drink, then set it on the butcher block table behind her. Turning back, she stared at me for a long moment, her lower lip thrust out in vague annoyance.
A wave of cold rushed through me. Bad news was on its way.
She’d had it with this current mess of affairs. She wanted out. Maybe she’d be generous and offer to stand by me throughout the trial, a figurehead of comfort—like those heartbroken, stiff-faced senator’s wives who stand by their husbands despite their wild cavortings with prostitutes and campaign aides—but with my verdict also would come my walking papers.
“I’m committed to you, Rick,” she said quietly. “There’s no one else for me.”
Took me a moment to realize I’d heard what I’d heard. My heart plummeted, bouncing hard on my gut before soaring back to its rightful spot. But the silver cloud still had a dark lining.
“I may spend my life behind bars.”
“I can’t believe a jury would find you guilty.”
“Even twelve righteous people can be wrong. DNA tests have cleared men who’ve spent decades in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.”
“Well,” she said quietly, “considering our business…” She gestured broadly, indicating the lodge. “…is tanking, time for us to dedicate ourselves to investigating your case.”
I put down my drink, stood. Sometimes a thoughtful man has to cut to the heart of the matter, offer a satisfactory resolution for all parties involved.
“Let’s go to bed.”
We didn’t quite make it there. Not sure if we even tried.
All I knew was that we were in each others’ arms, clutching, clinging, our mouths damn near devouring each other. I’d never kissed her like that—hell, I’d never been kissed like that. Like two drowning people clinging to the only rock—us—in a turbulent ocean. At one point, she pulled back her head, those violet eyes wet with emotion, and started to say something, but I claimed her again with my mouth, didn’t want to hear words, only wanted to feel, to drown all the pain and hurt and fear…
Ten
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own unguarded thoughts.
—Buddha
“I hate lawyers. You guys expect everybody to jump when you want them to jump, and if they don’t, you subpoena them.”
Brianna Shephard felt better getting that off her chest, the same one that Mike Dowling, the Jeffco Deputy D.A. who sat across the desk from her, was staring at. She toyed with zipping up her leather bomber jacket, but with the heat cranking in here, she’d be broiling.
He managed to lift his gaze. “But I didn’t subpoena you. Just left a message that I would if you didn’t call me back.”
“I always do my duty on behalf of those who can’t speak.”
“That’s what makes you a great coroner.”
“Deputy coroner.”
Leaning back in his ergonomic chair, he stroked his wispy goatee. “C’mon, you and I both know you should be the big cheese. And when Ralph finally steps down, you’ll be a shoe-in to take his spot.”
“I’ll get there in due time.” She glanced at his notes, wishing she could read upside down. “I’m here because you said you wanted to prepare me for the Williamson case testimony.”
“Did I mention you look nice today?”
Her stretched goodwill snapped. “Let’s get something straight, Mike. It was just one night.”
“But…I thought…after this past year…maybe you’d want…”
It’d been a long, hard year since her husband’s murder. Nobody expected Lieutenant Joe Shepherd, one of Arapahoe County’s finest, to die. Didn’t make sense, never would, how a punk tweeker could snuff out his life like that.
She nodded to the papers in front of him. “Jefferson County Coroner was overwhelmed. Another murder on a summer weekend night. We got borrowed. Your vic, Jerry Williamson, had a forty-five degree angle of a gunshot wound, from a distance. Went into the chest, pierced the aorta, and he bled to death. And there you have my testimony for trial next week.”
“Right.” He ran his forefinger down the page, stopped. “In your autopsy report, you also noted he had…”
Mike finished counseling her on her testimony, they made small talk about their plans for Christmas, then she stood and picked up her bag. Mike had gotten the message she wasn’t interested, they’d made nice, time to split.
She was almost to the door when he spoke.
“I suppose you heard about the murder at Rick Levine’s place.”
Her breath froze in her lungs. “Rick’s…dead?”
“No!” Mike laughed uncomfortably. “His ex-wife is, and he’s been charged.”
She frowned, slowly turned. “Deborah Levine was murdered?” She remembered her—a loud woman with brassy blond hair who seemed to think squeezing her fleshy body into designer suits gave her class. When she wasn’t bragging about herself, she engaged in vicious repartee about others. All mouth, no substance. She’d never understood how Rick the Deadhead had hooked up with someone like that.
“Stabbed to death in a hot spring pool at Rick’s new place.”
“What new place?”
“Some bed and breakfast in Morrison. Seems he and his girlfriend were throwing a grand opening for the criminal defense attorneys association, lots of boozing, and Deborah was murdered in the midst of the partying.”
She was silent for a moment. “I thought Rick had cleaned up—what was he doing throwing such a party?”
“Don’t know. A lot of the attorneys at the party witnessed him holding a knife on Deborah earlier in the evening. Same knife was used to kill Deborah, or so the scuttlebutt goes. You know, it’s always someone the victim knows.”
“So…he was charged?”
“First degree. I have the crime scene photos.”
Their eyes locked. Lots of people knew she and Rick had been an item after his divorce from Deborah, and that Brianna eventually dumped him for Joe. One of those ugly, messy breakups that had fed the gossip machine for months.
Mike knew she’d stay longer to see those pictures. She hated that he knew that. Hated that he could use it to rein her back in. Hated it almost as much as she hated her reaction to the mention of Rick’s name.
She forced a small smile.
“Let’s see them.”
Eleven
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
—Zen proverb
The next day I was sitting in my armchair—only because Mavis was preoccupied elsewhere, jotting witness questions on a yellow writing pad when I heard a familiar male voice.
“My man, good to see you back!”
In the open kitchen door stood Garrett, wearing a dirt-colored T decorated with Bob Marley strumming a guitar. Some of Marley’s kinky locks stretched into the cursive words “Is This Love That I’m Feelin.” How Garrett had made a success of his one-man business, We Rock, where he created rock designs for pools, waterfalls, and gardens escaped Rick as the twenty-something guy had taken months designing—or planning the design—of a currently empty hot spring pool on their property.
“Come on in,” Laura said from her chair, the laptop precariously balanced on her lap, “and close the door. It’s chilly this afternoon.”
She kept tapping away, researching backgrounds for the CrimDefs who’d been here the night of the murder. She was checking social networking sites, blogs, news articles, anything that might reveal a CrimDef’s reason to dislike Wicked.
Garrett’s boots clumped heavily as he stepped back and shut the door.
“I thought it was gonna snow last night,” he said turning around.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “so did the TV weatherman.”
He strolled across the kitchen floor. “Yeah. Ridiculous. So when you’d get out of the slammer?”
As he approached, I saw his eyes where a color of pink some people liked their steak cooked.
“Noon yesterday, in time to make my advisement hearing.”
He stopped at the butcher block table, snagged a stool. “What’s that?”
“It’s where they tell you your charges and set up more important hearings.”
I waited for him to ask more questions, but he didn’t. Just sat there, swinging his boots against the linoleum, staring at us. From the dining room came a low droning noise. Mavis snoring from her doggie bed.
“What’s up?” I finally asked.
He threw up his hands, the movement causing the red, green, and yellow-beaded bracelet to clatter slightly. “About the night that chick was…you know…” He squeezed shut his eyes, a pained expression on his face.
“Murdered?” I prompted.
He nodded, reopened his eyes. “Yeah. One eighty-seven.” He looked up at the ceiling, scratched his head as though confused by whatever he read up there. “I was there.”
I felt as though I’d been sucker punched. “What?”
He gestured lamely over his shoulder toward the window. “I was out there…that night.”
It flashed through my mind to grab the recorder, but I couldn’t remember if I’d left the damn thing in our bedroom upstairs or in the car. Didn’t matter. No way I’d interrupt this…confession? By the time I got back, he might have changed his mind about talking.
“When you say out there,” I asked, carefully modulating my voice, “where exactly do you mean?”
He squinted at me. “In the hot spring pool.”
“With Wicked?” shrilled Laura, half-rising. The laptop started to slide off her seat. She grabbed it and remained hunched over, clutching it to her thighs, a horrified look on her face.
“With Wi—Wicked?” repeated Garrett, also rising, looking as horrified as Laura.
“That’s the nickname of the woman who was killed,” I quickly explained. “Look…” I stood, too. Too weird. “Sit back down, everyone, let’s take this from the top.”
“Could one of you grab me a bottle of that fruit-flavored water? My mouth is, like, mothball-dry.” Garrett settled back onto his seat.
As Laura hustled to the fridge, I set my pad and pen on the table. “Mind if I take some notes?”
Garrett shrugged. “Go for it.”
I sat across from him, picked up the pen. “Take it from the beginning of the evening…” My heart jack-hammered against my ribs. Jesus, Garrett the murderer? If he couldn’t get it together to finish the rock design in that pool, how in the hell could he plan a killing?
“Word,” he murmured, accepting the bottle from Laura. He unscrewed the cap, took a long swig. Finally, he set down the bottle, burped, and looked at me dead-on.
“Well, man, I’d finished a long day at work…”
Laura, walking behind Garrett back to her chair, rolled her eyes on “long day at work.”
“Then Zig had to go to a wedding. He was the best man.”
Ziggy, Garrett’s side-kick, single employee, and fellow cannabis lover.
“What time did Ziggy leave here?”
Garrett shrugged. “Two or three, I guess.”
I thought back to that afternoon. Laura and I had been preparing for the retreat, washing wine glasses, looking out the kitchen window. I didn’t recall seeing either Garrett or Ziggy on the property that afternoon. Which seemed odd as all the hot pools were in easy view from the kitchen window.
“And what did you do after Ziggy left?”
“I was having visions of the most righteous rock design, then I crashed in the pit. You know, the unfinished pool. When I woke up, it was dark.”
“Do you know what time it was when you woke up?”
“Like, uh, six. Hadn’t slept much at all the night before. Big party at C.J.’s, had been up most of the night.”
“C.J.—?”
“Chris Jameson. Snowboarding buddy. Lives in Golden.”
I’d call Chris later, confirm the story. “So you woke up around six, and then what did you do?”
“Selected some tunes on my iPod, laid back to groove.”
“Must’ve been cold in that pit.”
“Oh no, man. I had a sleeping bag. Goose down. Good for up to twenty below.”
Considering it’d been in the thirties, he’d have been very comfortable. “Why’d you have a sleeping bag with you?”
“Thought I’d be heading up to go ‘boarding for the weekend, but felt too zonked, so thought I’d lie there for a bit, listen to some tunes and stare at the stars.”
“How long did you lie there, listening to tunes?”
“Long time, man. Probably an entire Sound Tribe show.”
I waited for more, but those glassy eyes just stared back at me.
“What time did you get out of the pit?”
“Maybe nine, ten. Not sure, exactly.”
Laura leaned forward. “Four…hours…you…lay…there?”
“Yeah. When I woke up, there was all kinds of commotion going on down by the first hot spring pool. Cops and lights and people. I saw those people with Coroner written on their jackets lifting that woman out of the water.” He squeezed shut his eyes and shuddered. “Freaked me out, man. She was so…”
“Don’t think about it. What happened next?”
He reopened his eyes. “I crawled out of the pit, walked the back way around the lodge to my ride in the lot.”
