Shield of Justice, page 7
She gritted her teeth and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
*
Catherine glanced at the clock. It was close to eight p.m. It wasn’t late by cop standards, or by doctor standards either. She knew from experience how often an unexpected phone call or a last-minute meeting could disrupt even the most important plans. She had a feeling that she was on the verge of being stood up and knew better than to take it personally. But she couldn’t help the sharp, stark pang of disappointment.
Chapter Ten
When Rebecca entered the squad room, the noise level suddenly dropped. Feet shuffled, someone cleared his throat, a few people looked away. Everyone knew what she was feeling—her anger, her helplessness, her fear—and no one quite knew what to say. So they handled it the way they always did, by doing the job, by carrying on. Someone put a lukewarm cup of coffee in her hand and mumbled a halfhearted, “Don’t worry. He’s probably off with the old lady getting his pipes cleaned.”
She nodded back, sat at her desk, and began making calls. A half hour later she had ascertained that no one had seen or heard from Jeff Cruz after he left the squad room at 1:30 p.m. She tried his pager and cell phone and contemplated calling his house. But she knew he wasn’t there, and so did everyone else. He wouldn’t have gone home for the night without checking in with her first. Yeah, maybe now and then a cop disappeared for an hour in the middle of a slow day, and nobody commented on it. But not at end of shift. Everyone checked back in, cleared the day’s work, touched base with their partner, and then checked out.
Finally she just sat, fists clenched in her lap, and watched the clock. The men from the day shift stayed, even though many of them had been on duty for close to eighteen hours by that time. Gina Simmons, a young rookie, came in silently, piled boxes of pizza on the littered coffee counter, and left without saying a word. But she scored points, and someone, someday, would remember and give her a break. Rebecca shook her head when someone offered her a slice. Everyone stood around in groups eating and spilling bits of oil and cheese on the floor.
The call finally came in at 10:30. A cruiser had spotted Jeff’s department sedan on a deserted pier at the waterfront, tucked under an overhanging abutment, where it hadn’t been seen before from the road. Rebecca was on her feet and halfway to the door when a hand on her arm restrained her.
“I’ll ride with you, Sarge.”
Rebecca turned toward the stocky man beside her, shrugging off the hand impatiently, and when she saw to whom the hand belonged, she had to struggle to control her temper. She had never liked William Watts. He was a cynical, sarcastic cop, who didn’t seem to give a damn about his job. She couldn’t figure out why he was a cop, and she didn’t want to deal with him now.
“Not tonight, Watts,” she said.
He was trying to step in front of her as he jerked his head toward the closed frosted glass door at the far end of the room. His face impassive, he said flatly, “Captain’s orders.”
“I don’t have time for this bullshit.” She turned on her heel and headed toward the stairs. Watts hurried after her.
Rebecca gunned her Corvette out of the station house lot and slapped the flashing red light onto her dash. When the traffic ahead didn’t yield fast enough, she veered around it into the oncoming lanes. She and Watts didn’t speak, but when he reached into the inside pocket of his rumpled, out-of-style sports coat and pulled out an equally battered pack of cigarettes, she gave him a look that made him wince. He slipped the pack back into his pocket and stared out the window.
They were the first detectives to reach the scene. Half a dozen cruisers were pulled off the four-lane highway at odd angles, and men with dogs were moving along the waterfront. Flashlight beams sent fleeting beacons of pale light skittering across the river’s surface.
Rebecca parked and climbed out at the entrance to a huge, deserted, blacktopped parking lot. She stood in the semidarkness and surveyed the area, her nerves settling as her cop instincts kicked in. Do the job. Just do the job.
The halogen lights spaced along the highway behind her penetrated the darkness for a fair distance into the lot, enough to make out Jeff’s car parked under the overpass fifty yards away. The river on the far side looked nearly black. To her right, a huge crane loomed like a lonely sentinel over the abandoned site of someone’s waterfront dream. To her left, facing the water, stood a cluster of darkened buildings—the maritime museum, an attached souvenir shop, and a curbside food stand.
She headed deliberately toward the buildings with Watts close behind. She neither spoke to him nor acknowledged his presence.
“Why not the crane?” he asked, out of breath from the pace Rebecca had set.
“Too obvious during the day. There wouldn’t have been enough people around for cover. And Jeff and Jimmy would have wanted to keep their meeting private, just in case someone was tailing Jimmy,” she answered, still not looking at him.
“Yeah, but the way I see it—”
She turned so fast he collided with her, his bulky form bouncing back a step off her surprisingly hard body. “Look, Watts,” she seethed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what you think. I know my partner. So just keep out of my way, or better yet, get lost.”
Watts held both hands up in the air in front of him. “Okay, Frye, okay. You’re the sergeant. I’ll just tag along like a good little boy.”
Wordlessly, she walked away. If Jeff had met his contact in the late afternoon, there wouldn’t have been much activity anywhere except at the museum. They wouldn’t have needed much time together. He hadn’t left voluntarily; he would have taken his car. Something went wrong, and it happened right here. She tried not to think about what might have happened, focusing on her search.
She walked around the maritime museum, a square concrete structure with a jutting upper level that was probably supposed to resemble a ship. It didn’t. She was looking for an alleyway, or a loading dock—some secluded area. She reasoned that someone had surprised the two cops in the middle of their rendezvous, and she doubted that anyone would have tried to move two uncooperative men very far in daylight. So whatever went down, they would have needed an isolated location nearby. But for what purpose? It was unlikely that anyone would hold two cops hostage or try to extort information from them. She didn’t want to think about the most likely reason—that someone was sending them a message to stay clear of Zamora and his organization.
There was nowhere to hide two men anywhere around the museum. She shined her flashlight on the beer and burger stand, closed and shuttered for the night. There was a large green commercial dumpster behind it. Rebecca approached it slowly, sweeping the ground around it with her light. Holding her 9mm automatic in the other hand, she illuminated bits of refuse, a soggy cardboard box, a dented milk crate—nothing unusual. She looked at the dumpster, a knot of tension burning in her gut, slipped her weapon into her shoulder holster, and pushed the top up. Taking a deep breath, she played her light over its contents. It was half full of crushed boxes, rotting vegetables, and broken bottles. That was all.
“Uh, Sarge…” Watts said from the spot where he had been standing in the shadows.
“What?”
“There’s a shipping platform just north of the marina, about a hundred yards from here. It’s below ground level. They used to use it to tie up the tugs. Can’t really see it from the pier unless you know it’s there.”
“Show me.”
He led her along the edge of the pier; the water, ten feet below them, rolled against the huge wooden pilings and concrete walls with a surprising degree of force. An occasional spray of water, redolent with diesel fuel and river life, misted their faces as they walked. Almost exactly where Watts had predicted, there was a narrow set of stairs barricaded by a length of chain. The stairs would be easy to miss unless you were looking for them. The chains were rusted from years of disuse and exposure. Rebecca could make out moss-covered stone steps and some kind of platform anchored against the pier, floating unevenly on the water. Carefully, she stepped over the chain and started down the steps.
When she reached the bottom, she stepped gingerly onto the slippery, water-soaked, ten-by-twenty-foot dock and stood for a long time, playing her flashlight back and forth over the scene. She took a few deep breaths, wondering why everything had gotten so quiet. Her heart pounded in her ears, and she heard the breath moving in and out of her chest. She focused, taking in the tableau before her.
They were lying side by side—no apparent sign of a struggle. Hogan and Cruz had each been shot once in the back of the head. There were dark stains on the dock in irregular patterns spreading out from under both men. Rebecca noticed that Jeff’s tie was neatly knotted under the button-down collar of his light blue oxford shirt. His gun was still in its holster. She wanted to reach down and close his eyes, but protocol dictated that she couldn’t touch him. She put her hands in her pockets and looked away, her eyes burning but dry.
Standing at the edge of the dock, she could see across the water to their sister city. The shoreline sparkled in the moonlight. The river churned two feet below her, and the cold wind off the water whipped her light jacket around her. She didn’t notice the cold or that she was shivering. It was so quiet.
“Sarge?” Watts called from above. “Frye? You find anything?”
“Yes,” she answered hollowly.
“You want an ambulance?”
“No.”
Chapter Eleven
Rebecca finally left Shelley Cruz at three in the morning. There hadn’t been any way to make it easy. There never was. She had held her, rocked her silently, her own tears unshed. The last time she had seen Shelley had been at a barbecue in the Cruz’s backyard, one Saturday after she had finally succumbed to Jeff’s relentless pestering to visit. She remembered Jeff in a police academy T-shirt and jeans, movie star handsome, smiling at Shelley with a look that said he considered himself the luckiest guy in the world. His young blond wife had returned the gaze with equal intensity. Now he was dead. The fairy tale was shattered, and Shelley Cruz’s life would never be the same.
Rebecca still felt cold. She was glad for that. She couldn’t afford to let the pain surface. If she did, it would break her. She was a cop, and people died on the street every day—needlessly, senselessly. This time it was her partner, her best friend. She’d handle it like she knew Jeff would have if it had been her—like a cop. But first she needed to obliterate the image of him lying so still, and so damn alone, out on that dark, cold dock. Just for a little while. Then she’d be ready to carry on.
She drove to a run-down bar on the fringe of the Tenderloin, an eight-block section of the city where the bars were open all night, solace was for sale on the streets and tendered in dark alleys, and nobody cared about your name. No one wanted to, and even if they did, the rule of the streets dictated that your identity and your particular brand of need would be forgotten in the morning. The bar was nearly deserted, as she expected it to be. No one who had anywhere to go, or anyone to go to, was still about. Like her, the few people at the bar, leaning protectively over their drinks while staring into the glass searching for answers, sought no company. She didn’t bother to check the shadowed corners for anyone who looked like trouble the way she normally would in a place like this. She didn’t care. In fact, a little trouble would be welcome. She’d have an excuse to strike out, to vent her rage, and release the terrible ache in her chest that had nowhere to go but inward.
The bartender looked up disinterestedly from the girlie magazine lying on the long counter in front of him. Nothing surprised him anymore, not even the appearance of a good-looking woman in a dive like this. Besides, this one didn’t look like she wanted anything but a drink, fast. “What’ll you have?”
“Scotch, double—straight up.”
He poured it neatly, slid it in front of her, and moved away.
Rebecca stared at the glass for a long moment, then reached for it with a steady hand.
*
Catherine woke instantly at the first buzz of the doorbell. Her ability to move from deep sleep to instant attentiveness was ingrained from years of medical training. She sat up, glancing at the digital clock beside her bed. It read 4:53 a.m. She reached for the robe that lay across the foot of the bed, swung her long legs to the floor, and pulled it on. She had been naked under the covers. Hastily, she tied the belt as she hurried through the living room, snapping on a table lamp in passing.
As she fumbled with the deadbolt on her front door, she asked, “Who is it?”
“Rebecca Frye.”
Catherine hesitated, surprised. She had assumed when Rebecca neither showed up for dinner nor phoned that she had been detained at work. At least that’s what she had hoped. There was always the chance, of course, that Rebecca had simply forgotten about their…date. Or she had changed her mind and wasn’t interested in pursuing anything personal between them after all. Whatever brought the detective to the door at this hour must be serious, and Catherine felt a quick surge of anxiety.
“Just a second.” She slid the chain off and hurriedly pulled the door open. Rebecca was slouched against the doorjamb. She looked terrible. She was in the same clothes that Catherine remembered her wearing at the hospital nearly eighteen hours before, and the previously impeccable charcoal linen suit was now grimy and wrinkled. That handsome face, starkly illuminated by the security light above the door, was white and drawn, and there was a frightening vacancy in her normally vibrant blue eyes. Her short, thick blond hair was disheveled, as if she had run her hands through it countless times.
Catherine grasped her arm and pulled her inside, closing the door soundly behind them. “What is it?” she asked, leading Rebecca to the sofa. “Are you hurt?”
“No,” Rebecca answered hoarsely, sinking heavily into the plush cushions, her head dropping back wearily. She took a deep shuddering breath, turning her face slightly toward the woman who sat close beside her. “My partner, Jeff Cruz, was murdered tonight. Executed. Him and another cop,” she said flatly, her pain-filled eyes not registering the psychiatrist’s shock. She didn’t feel Catherine move closer, nor the protective arm she slipped around her shoulders.
“God, Rebecca! I’m so sorry.”
“He was twentynine years old. He’d only been married a year. He was a good cop.” She thought of the five years that she and Jeff had been partners. She saw him every day, spent more hours with him than any other human being; they talked about things they wouldn’t tell their wives or lovers; they shared horrors and faced dangers that no one else could understand. There was no way to describe the hole his loss left in her soul.
“He must have been very important to you,” Catherine said gently, her hand resting softly on Rebecca’s rigid back. Tell me.
Rebecca shrugged, staring at the floor, her face wooden with exhaustion. “We’re cops. He looked after my skin, and I looked after his.” Her voice broke on the next words. “Until today.”
So much pain. Catherine remained still, resisting the urge to gather Rebecca in her arms and comfort her. That’s what she wanted to do, had an almost overwhelming need to do. But that was not what Rebecca needed. Not yet. Talk to me; let me listen.
“Tell me about him?” For a long moment, she thought Rebecca would withdraw. Holding her breath, she waited.
Finally, haltingly, Rebecca began to speak. She spoke softly, as if she were talking to herself.
“I wasn’t hot to have a rookie partner at first, especially a young hotshot like him. I figured he’d be too cocky to train and too arrogant to admit he had anything to learn. I was wrong. He wanted to be a good detective, and he’d listen to whoever could teach him something. He listened to me. He came along fast. In just a few months, we were really a team.”
“Were you friends, too?” Catherine asked quietly. Keep talking. Let me do this for you.
Rebecca clasped her hands between her knees, stared at them, thinking about friendship. Friendship between cops was a funny thing. It was something mostly unspoken, but it was the one thing you really needed—someone to count on.
“He took a chance for me a few years ago. My life was a mess. I was a mess. My lover had left me. She said I was never there for her. And that even when I was around, it wasn’t enough. She was tired of being a cop’s wife; she needed more.” Rebecca laughed bitterly. “She was right, though. I wasn’t taking very good care of her. After Jill left, I drifted in and out of affairs; none of them worked out. I was drinking. Pretty soon, I was drinking during the day—on duty—and Jeff knew it. I was a hazard—to him, to myself, to everyone.”
She stopped then and looked at Catherine, expecting to find rejection or disgust. That was certainly the way she felt about herself. Instead she found kind acceptance in Catherine’s eyes and the soft smile that welcomed her each time they met.
“What happened?” Catherine prompted softly.
“He came to me one night after a shift. He said he knew that I was drinking on the job, that he didn’t want to turn me in, but that he couldn’t afford to have a lush for a partner. I was pissed. I told him to turn me in if that’s what he wanted. I didn’t care anymore.”
Rebecca laughed softly at the memory. “Jeff is a bit shorter than me, and slim for a guy. But he grabbed me by the lapels and slammed me into the wall. His face was in my face, and he was yelling. He said, ‘Listen, you stupid fuckup. You’re my partner, and I care. So your old lady ditched you. Big deal! You think that hasn’t happened to a hundred other cops? You think you’re special ’cause you’re a dyke? Well, you’re not. You’re just a cop, just like the rest of us. So you either get it together fast, or I’m through with you.’ He shook me around a little. He was pretty hot. I just stared at him. He’d never let on before that he knew about Jill and me. I was trying to think of something to say when he stomped away.”
Catherine smiled with tender sadness at the image, thinking what a good man Jeff Cruz must have been. Then she realized Rebecca was shaking, her face a study in loss. This must be killing her. She pressed a little closer, her arm tightening around Rebecca’s waist. “What did you do?”
