“Don’t flatter yourself Leon. You’ve got a score to settle with Milner. That’s why it’s you. We both get what we want.”
“Still, it sits right with me. You asking for my help, and all. You got that boy started on those drugs, Frank. Now it’s become a problem. His problem and yours. Ain’t that right?”
“Is Lucinda on board?” Cole asked.
“Girl do as she’s told,” Leon said.
“Good. Then twist it up tonight.”
“Can do.”
Cole reached into his leather jacket and removed a letter size envelope and handed it to Leon. Leon opened it and flipped through the cash. He sealed the envelope and slipped it inside his coat pocket.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yeah?” Cole said.
“It’s Dani. Artie sent me,” a voice answered.
Leon and Cole exchanged looks.
“Come on in,” Cole said.
The door swung open and a petite little redhaired teenager entered the room. She was wearing a blue bra and matching blue panties, had a pale blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders, and moved cautiously on blue high heels. She looked from Frank to Leon and back to Frank.
Leon stood up from his chair and laughed. “She afraid she got to do us both.”
“Leon’s leaving, honey,” Cole said. Dani looked relieved and moved toward the couch when Frank patted the cushion next to him. “Here sit down next to me.”
“Some other time Dani. I like redheads,” Leon chuckled and rolled the toothpick in his mouth from one side to the other. “I surely do,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
Edwin Tetlow telephoned me at five forty five in the morning to tell me Marty Milner had been found dead of a drug overdose in a Tenderloin motel.
“It was a speedball,” Tetlow said, referring to a dangerous blend of cocaine and heroin. “Syringe was on the fl…floor. He was s…s…still in a chair. Be…belt around his a..arm.”
“How did you hear?” I was sitting on the edge of my bed.
“Friend of a f…f…friend. Was at t…the scene.”
“It’s Cole, I bet,” I said.
“Why? It was an ov…overdose. Why C…Cole?”
I filled in Tetlow with the details of the previous twenty four hours.
“And y…you to…told McNamara this?” Tetlow asked. “You still n…n…need proof to help Ra…Ray.”
I had walked into the kitchen with the phone and pouring water into the coffee maker.
“I’ll get it,” I said.
“Does C…C…Carol know about Co…Cole’s role in this?”
“I doubt it. There’s no reason Cole would tell her any of it. He spins it out to her that he’s trying to help Ray.”
“Sh… she doesn’t st…st…still believe that does she?”
“I don’t know what she believes.” I added coffee to the coffee pot and flipped on the power switch and headed toward the bathroom.
“Talk to McNa…McNamara again. After this…”
“We’ll see. Thanks for calling.” I hung up the phone and turned on the water in the shower. Returning to sleep wasn’t going to happen and I figured I might as well be clean if I had to be awake.
I soaped and shaved and dressed and put away two cups of coffee with toast and eggs. Then I got my gun. I checked the load and dropped it into the side pocket of my London Fog windbreaker. I set some food and water out for Lou, backed the Buick from the garage, and went to find Frank Cole.
The drive across town gave me time to think about Keith and Kathleen and the kids. I was supposed to be retired, taking the kids to ballgames and the zoo. We were supposed to be eating cotton candy and riding the ferry up to Sausalito. Taking train trips through the Napa Valley. Instead I was driving to confront a cop gone off the rails who had become a killer, and who, if left alone, would probably try to kill me.
I’d been to Cole’s place frequently enough there were neighbors beginning to recognize me. After I parked the car and was crossing the street Dino’s wife waved at me as she set out the morning newspapers on the rack. I waved back.
As I approached the front steps to Cole’s building the garage door swung open and a bronze Honda Accord pulled out and turned up the street. Before the electronic door closed I hustled into the garage. There were two other cars parked in the garage, but not Cole’s Corvette. Was this guy ever home? I didn’t care. This time I would wait as long as it took. Through the rear of the garage was a door that led to a stairwell that led up the outside of the building to the back doors of the various flats. I located Cole’s door, worked the lock and went in.
The flat was quiet, almost too quiet, and it was unsettling. I tried sitting down, but was too anxious, too juiced. I moved through the rooms, ending up in the bedroom. I opened and closed some closet doors and the two drawers on the small bedside dresser. I rolled over the bed to the matching dresser on the opposite side. For some reason I had not looked through these drawers during my first visit. Nobody’s perfect, I guess. The top drawer was packed with a variety of pornographic magazines. In the second drawer there was a photo album. On the outside of the leather bound album, in raised letters, was the word: Family. I opened the album. The pictures were of Frank and Carol, but they were far different from the images on the video tape. These photos were five years old, ten years old. There were pictures of Frank and Carol with another woman. I pulled a couple pictures out of their protective sleeves and flipped them over. On the back of the pictures it said: Frank, Peggy and Carol. I stared at the photographs.
Jack Tanner told me Cole had married his former partner’s wife and adopted her ten year old daughter. I flipped through the pages of the album. There were nude shots of Carol at different ages. There were photographs of Carol and her mom, nude on a bed. They were supposed to be laughing, but if you studied their faces it wasn’t difficult to see the sadness behind their forced smiles. There were other photos of Frank and Peggy and Carol naked together, posing for the camera. A family album, indeed. Cole raped his underage adopted daughter and got his wife to participate. And when she could no longer stand it she killed herself. Carol at some point ran away, but Cole found her. He moved to San Francisco and back into her life. I replaced the photographs in their sleeves and put the album back where I’d found it. I stood up from the edge of the bed, angry and disgusted. I exhaled a deep breath and heard a sound. Someone was whistling. The front door opened and Frank Cole walked in.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I moved from the side of the bed to the bedroom door. I could see into the living room as Cole dropped his jacket over the back of a chair and flopped down on the couch. He reached behind his back and unsnapped from his belt a small leather holster holding a gun. He set the holster and gun on the couch and stretched his legs across the top of the coffee table. For someone who was involved in the murder of a civilian and the drug overdose of a fellow cop, Cole was remarkably at ease. He kicked off his shoes and rubbed his feet against one another. He rubbed at his face and yawned. I took the Smith and Wesson from my jacket pocket and left from the bedroom.
“Exhausted Frank?” I said. I leaned against the doorframe separating the bedroom from the living room.
Cole sat up, startled for a moment, and then leaned back against the couch. He was cool, had to give him that much.
“You?” he said.
“Me.”
“You have become a real pain in the ass, you know that? How come you’re such a pain in the ass?” He spread his hands out in front of him. “What’s Ray Rhodes to you?”
“Nothing.”
Cole turned his head slightly, glancing at the gun next to him on the couch. “Then explain it to me. Why are you even involved?” Cole pulled his legs from the table and leaned a bit forward in the couch.
“Family,” I said. “You’re sort of a family guy, aren’t you Frank?”
“What’s that mean?”
“I saw the pictures in the family album, Cole.
Of you and Peggy and Carol. Saw the DVD with you and Carol, and I know about Peggy’s suicide. Or did you kill her because maybe she couldn’t take it any longer and threatened to tell someone. She wanted one last chance at saving her daughter from you. That close?”
“Fuck you.”
“Tough talk, Cole. Charlie Ramus start talking to you that way? Everything began to spin out of control, didn’t it? Escalated. First it was just Ray. Then Ramus and Lee Wong. And finally, Milner. Of course you didn’t have to kill Wong. And your hired hitters left my house in body bags.”
“Carol and I are family,” Cole said. “This punk Rhodes is nothing. Carol needs better. I can take care of her. She’s mine.”
“People can’t own other people, Cole.”
For a moment Cole’s concern sounded genuine, like the concern any father would have for his daughter, but it couldn’t stand up. It wouldn’t hold. Cole was a pervert who used his daughter like a slave, and possibly killed her mother. He was evil, and yet like others of his ilk, he could mask that evil from most of those around him. He could be a good cop, a stable cop, a widowed cop dealt an unfortunate hand. But he was also a killer, and his true self had no restrictions when his selfish desires were threatened.
“You shouldn’t have broken in here, you know,” Cole said. “You’ve got no authority. I came home and found you in my house. It’s breaking and entering, and you my friend, broke and entered the wrong house.”
Cole moved quickly, grabbing his holster and gun and diving to the floor. He was partially obscured by the coffee table. I stepped to my right and aimed. I still didn’t have a clean shot, but Cole rose up from behind the table. He had the gun free from the holster and was raising it at me. I fired. The bullet hit Cole in the chest and knocked him back. I took another step to my right. Cole was working to recover his strength and still had the gun in his hand. He was trying to prop himself up using the edge of the coffee table. I shot him again and a large piece of his face left his head.
I moved next to Cole’s body and knelt down. His gun lay next to his outstretched hand. I felt for the pulse in his neck. There was none. I got up and moved to the couch. I closed my eyes and focused my breathing, slowing it down with deep methodical breaths. The stillness was suddenly broken by a sound at the front door. Carol Rhodes was entering the living room. She saw me and froze. Then she saw Cole. She dropped her purse to the floor and raised her hands to her mouth and screamed. She rushed to Cole’s body, and fell on him.
“No, no!” Carol yelled. “Daddy no!”
She began crying, quietly at first, then uncontrollably, hysterically. There were no moves to make. I sat perfectly still on the couch and watched and listened to Carol cry. After a minute she collapsed.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Carol Rhodes was admitted to a hospital and placed under psychiatric observation. It was three days before she was able to speak and another three days before she was willing to talk about her life with Frank Cole.
Following her mother’s marriage to Cole, life seemed a little better. Her mother learned she could be happy again and that made Carol happy. But within the second year of the marriage trouble surfaced. Cole began making sexual references to Carol that soon moved right into molestation. And there was violence. Cole could be fun and caring one day and then be mean and nasty the next day. Sometimes within the same day.
“He could come home and give you a present he bought you, and then an hour later hit you. Then apologize, and then the next day it could happen all over again. We were afraid of him. Afraid to do anything that would upset him. And there was the sex.” Carol hated Cole, but she loved him. She broke down several times as she told her story. The psychiatrists said Carol’s feelings were not unusual given her circumstances. The psychological damage visited upon families of incest and abuse runs deep and can often be permanently debilitating. It might not matter if the incest was tied to a direct biological connection. Adoptive situations could be equally contaminating. There were layers upon layers of scar tissue.
Working slowly with the psychiatrists the police were eventually able to get a sworn statement from Carol detailing Cole’s role in framing Ray. Cole had explained it to her one night, she said. “He always told me he was protecting me. Doing what was best. It was his job as my father, he said.”
Using statements from Carol, Lee Wong, and myself, Edwin Tetlow was able to get Ray released from jail. Ray was naturally glad to be out, but the experience hardened him and made him bitter. He cursed all cops and everything about a system that had let him so easily take the fall for something he didn’t do. He knew he was always just one crooked cop away from being set up and sent back to prison.
“Ex-cons have no chance,” he said. He spent two days with Carol in the hospital, visited Kathleen one afternoon, and then disappeared. Kathleen was the one who thanked Tetlow and me for our help.
Carol agreed to a stay at the Napa State Hospital, a psychiatric facility. She stayed for almost two months. She had lost everything. Her natural father, her mother, and her step-father were dead, and her husband had run out on her. She was deserving of some help.
I learned about her leaving the hospital when she telephoned me one Saturday afternoon in January. I was sitting in the back yard drinking lemonade and eating ginger snap cookies. Lou was alongside me chewing on a rubber bone.
“I wanted to call and say good-bye,” Carol said. “I’m leaving California.”
“Where to?”
“I’m going up to Washington. I made a friend at the hospital and she invited me. I’m going to go stay with her for a while and see what I think about the place. I’ve never been out of California.”
“You feeling okay?”
“Today I feel fine,” she said. “And I’ll settle for that.”
“I wish you luck, Carol.”
“Thanks. Good-bye.”
I ended the call, but a minute later the phone rang again. It was a wrong number, and the caller acted like it was my fault. I turned off the phone and decided to leave it off until Monday morning. An executive decision. I stuffed another ginger snap in my mouth and swallowed the last of my lemonade. I was retired once again and I liked the feeling.
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