The Darker Side

  He’s gazing at Jesus again. He doesn’t seem to be finding that same peace and contentment I’d seen earlier.

  “Do you?” he asks. “Do you really?”

  “Yes. You feel violated. You feel like the one thing you could always count on has been shattered.”

  He turns to look at me, still troubled but intrigued. “That’s a fair assessment.”

  “I know all about it. My profession betrayed me, led a killer to my house who took away my family and my face.” I open my jacket to show him my weapon. “I always believed in my gun and my FBI ID. I was sure they’d keep me safe. I was certain of it, no doubt allowed.” I shrug. “I was wrong.”

  “So what do you do then, when that happens?”

  “You go to sleep, wake up the next morning, and get back to work. The work matters, Father.”

  He smiles now, and I’m glad to see it. He’s still sad, but this is better.

  “You’re saying that my work matters, Smoky. Does that mean you’ve reconciled with God?”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’m still plenty pissed at God. I don’t know about”—I gesture to indicate the church that surrounds us—“all of this. What I do know is you helped me. Real help, no bullshit. So yes, if that’s any indicator of what you do, your work matters.”

  Those troubled eyes, again. “I let the devil into my church.”

  “So? The first time you get knocked down you give up? Where’s the tough guy from Detroit? Yes, it’s fucked up. Acknowledge it, take a drink or pray or whatever it is that priests do to blow off steam, and then get back to work.”

  Another smile. I get the feeling it’s in spite of himself. “I’ll consider what you’re saying. In the meantime, you need to stop swearing in my church, Smoky.”

  “I’ll promise to stop swearing if you promise to stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

  He actually laughs. “It’s a deal.” His face gets somber. “Please catch this man.”

  “I’ll catch him.”

  “Good. Now, leave me alone. I need to pray.”

  ALAN IS LEANING UP AGAINST the car, staring up at the starless LA sky.

  “Ministering to the minister?” he asks.

  “He’s okay.”

  “How do you want to play this?”

  I glance at my watch. It’s after eleven.

  “Let’s wrap it up for tonight. I’ll call Callie and James and tell them to go home. We’ll hit the ground running in the morning.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’m beat. You call, I’ll drive.”

  “MR. HARRISON BESTER IS APPARENTLY not a security-conscious Internet user,” Callie says. “I’m sitting in front of his home right now, choosing the paper stock for my wedding invitations.”

  “Did the surveillance show up yet?”

  “No.”

  “They’ll be there soon, I imagine. I need you to stay put until they arrive.”

  She emits a long, loud, noisy sigh. “You really have no respect for the pressure I’m under. Planning a wedding, working this case, riding herd on Kirby, and trying to fit in my nightly sex-a-thon with Sam. Very stressful.”

  “Poor baby.” I smile.

  “Thank you, honey-love. That’s all I need, just a little sympathy now and again. How did it go with Father Yates?”

  “It was positively enlightening. I’ll fill you in tomorrow. We need to start early.”

  “I’LL GO TO BED WHEN I feel like it, thanks. You’re my superior, not my mother.”

  “Have it your way, James. I have a lead, though, a good one. I want everyone in early.”

  “I’m always early,” he retorts, and then hangs up.

  I shake my head as I close the phone.

  “How’s Damien?” Alan asks.

  “Charming, as always.”

  “You know what the strangest thing is for me about James being gay?”

  “The idea of him being intimate with anyone?”

  He grins. “That’s right. Before he said he was gay, I honestly kind of thought of him as a eunuch. Sexless. I can’t imagine anyone putting up with his shit long enough to hop in the sack with him.”

  “Takes all kinds to make the world go round.”

  “I’m glad about it.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s an irritating little fucker, and sometimes I want to punch his lights out, but he’s still family. I’m glad he’s got something going on in his life besides the j-o-b.”

  I smile at him as he drives. “You’re a big old softie, Alan.”

  “Don’t tell anyone. Hey, I was watching Father Yates when you were telling him about Rosemary and the video clip. The guy is good. Really good. I couldn’t read his reaction at all.”

  Alan reads people the way others read books. Pupil dilation, changes in breathing pattern, even something simple like the nervous turning of a ring around a finger, all have their place in ferreting out the truth. He’s saying that Father Yates is very, very good at restraining these reactions.

  “Kind of interesting,” Alan observes. “Maybe we should take a closer look at the priest. That kind of control is rare unless you’ve been trained to do it.”

  “He’s not the guy,” I say.

  “You sure?”

  I shouldn’t be. I’ve been fooled before, trusting angels who turned out to be devils in disguise. But I am, this time.

  “I’m sure.”

  “You seeing things clearly on this one?”

  This is as close as Alan will ever get to asking me what happened inside that confessional booth. He knows to leave it alone, just as I would if our roles were reversed.

  “Go ahead and pull his background, Alan. Dot the i’s. But I’m telling you, he’s not our guy.”

  “Okay, okay.” He goes quiet as we continue to drive through the darkness. The city lights are everywhere, like dirty diamonds on a gray velvet background. This is LA, beautiful and flawed. Rough-cut forever, somehow endearing in all its shallow fumbling for greatness. “So does this mean you’re going to start going to Mass and taking Communion and all that stuff?” he asks.

  “Watch that crazy talk. He helped me. He didn’t fix things between me and God. I have a feeling by the time this case is over I’ll have had about all the Catholicism I can stand for a while.”

  “Amen to that.”

  “What about you?”

  “I haven’t talked to God since the second time I saw a dead baby.”

  We see too much, doing what we do. The problem with believing in God, for us, is this: if God is real, either the devil’s got him on the run, or he just doesn’t give a damn. No God is better than a God that doesn’t care.

  30

  “WELCOME BACK, TRAVELER,” I SAY TO MYSELF AS I WALK through my door.

  The words don’t seem quite as futile as they had the day before. My confession left me feeling hollow, but not in a bad way. This is not a black hole inside me. It’s an empty table, waiting to be set.

  What do I place on you? New china or the old silverware, handed down?

  A little bit of both, I think.

  I open up my phone and call Tommy.

  “Hey,” he answers.

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “Nope. I was thinking about you, actually.”

  “Good. Because I’m ready to talk, and I need to tell you something. Bonnie is staying at Alan and Elaina’s. Can you come over?”

  “Silly question,” he says. “See you soon.”

  HE SHOWS UP AT MY door looking more rumpled than I’ve ever seen him. Tommy is not a neat freak, I’ve never gotten the idea that he obsesses over himself at the mirror, but he’s always brushed and shaven and smelling of soap. Right now he’s sporting a growth of stubble, his hair looks like it received only haphazard attention, and his shirt has a tiny food stain on the front. I reach out and touch his cheek with my palm.

  “You okay? You look like hell.”

  “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.”

  I step back, dumbfoun
ded. “This is about me?”

  His smile is lopsided. “Strong and silent is a cliché, Smoky. I’m Latin, we wear our hearts on our sleeves. I feel things with all of me or none of me.” He shrugs. “It’s a problem sometimes.”

  I stroke his cheek again, amazed at the idea of this man losing sleep and peace of mind over me.

  That’s because you’ve been thinking you’re worthless for a long time, my voice-friend is kind enough to point out. And maybe he’ll agree once you tell him what you told Father Yates.

  “You want a beer?” I ask.

  “Sure. But I might end up sleeping on your couch if I do. I’ve already been partaking; I was fine to drive here, but maybe not after one more.”

  I smile at him. “I’ll take that chance.”

  I grab us each a beer from the fridge and sit down on the couch, my legs curled under me. I pick at the label on the bottle with a thumbnail.

  “I need to tell you something, Tommy. It’s something I did, and it’s pretty bad. I’m afraid that once I do, you’re not going to want me anymore.”

  He gazes at me with those dark eyes and takes a thoughtful swig of his beer.

  “Is it something you have to tell me?”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s okay to keep some secrets, that’s what I mean. I don’t need to know everything about your past to love you right now.”

  The hand holding my bottle trembles for a moment. “I agree with that for the most part. But I need to tell you this. This is the thing that makes me feel like…” I search for the words. “Like I’m not the person people think I am.”

  Simple, succinct. He takes another swig, puts the bottle down on the coffee table, and takes my beer from me and places it next to his. He grabs my hands and traps them between his own. He looks into my eyes.

  “So tell me,” he says.

  And I do. I tell him all of it. How I felt lying in that hospital bed in the dark. The desire to die. The ultimate selfishness, killing my baby so it wouldn’t prevent me from putting a bullet through my head. He listens as I talk, doesn’t say a word, doesn’t stop holding my hands, doesn’t turn away. When I finish, he is silent for a time.

  “Say something,” I whisper.

  He brings my hands up to his lips and he kisses them slowly. It’s not a sexual act, not even a sensual one, but it’s very intimate and comfortable. He kisses every finger on the knuckle, ends with the thumb. Turns my hands over and kisses my palms with dry lips, then traces the lines in them with a finger. He brushes a lock of hair behind my ear, and smiles.

  “I love you, Smoky. Maybe you were expecting something else, but that’s the something I have to say. I need you with me, and not halfway. I want all of you, every inch, every scar, every perfect part, and all the defects too.”

  “Are…are you sure? I’m not easy, Tommy. Ten times in the last two years I’ve told myself I was all done with my past, with the things that happened to me. I’m a lot better, it’s true, but I always seem to find some new pocket of fucked-up-ness waiting to mess me up. What if that never changes? You want to love someone who might always have a little bit of her past she can’t let go of?”

  “You are who you are because of everything that’s happened in your life up to this point, Smoky. Not just the good things. I love the you that you are right now.”

  “And Bonnie?”

  “I love her too, and she knows it.”

  “She does?”

  “She told me she loved me a few months ago. We were watching cartoons, and she said, ‘Tommy, you know I love you, right?’” He shakes his head, bemused. “She didn’t even take her eyes off the TV. I acted like it was no big deal, of course I knew, and I told her I loved her too. We kept watching cartoons like nothing had happened.”

  “Wow.” I grin. “You have all the bases covered.”

  He goes back to turning my hands over in his. His hands are rough, with the calluses and oversized knuckles of a boxer.

  “I’m a decent guy, Smoky. I don’t cheat. I’m essentially honest. I’m loyal. But I have my moments. I can be arrogant sometimes, truly self-righteous. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I can guarantee you it’ll make you crazy.”

  “I know you’re not perfect, Tommy. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Let me finish. I don’t do drugs and I don’t smoke, but once or twice a year I do like to get good and drunk. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do. It’s my one excess. You’ve never really seen me like that.”

  “I’m sure I can handle it.”

  “I’m sure you can too, but you need to know about it. When I get that drunk, I get horny, but the sex is selfish, and of course I’ll throw a tantrum when you tell me you’re not interested in sleeping with a drunk. But I’ll feel bad about it the next morning.”

  “What else?”

  He’s silent. Tracing my palms, over and over and over. “I’ve killed five people doing my job, Smoky. At least twice I’ve been pretty happy about it. I’m not talking about simple satisfaction, I’m talking about something that fell just shy of joy.” He looks back up at me. “Of all my faults, that’s probably the one that bothers me the most.”

  I examine this man, finding some of myself in him. For me, Tommy has always been strong but gentle, slow to anger, prone to thinking before acting. These things are true, but he also has a little bit of savage in him, the ability to get his hands sticky with the blood of an enemy and feel well satisfied about it.

  “I can tell you from experience, so long as it still bothers you, you’re probably okay.”

  “That’s what I tell myself.”

  “Me too.” Our eyes meet again. “I do love you, Tommy.”

  Saying the words brings me a kind of bone-shuddering relief. I’ve been walking under a crushing weight, the whole time thinking I was flying. This isn’t the love Matt and I had. Matt met me before I was a killer, he knew me as a child, gave me my very first kiss. He was my tether to the world outside what I do, he and Alexa, and that was a beautiful thing.

  Life has hacked away at me with an axe since then. Parts of me have been amputated or crippled. I’ve done terrible things to men who probably deserved it, and I have probably enjoyed doing these things far too much at times. I’ve observed the monsters, and been observed by them. They came away unchanged. But me? There’s a little bit of monster in me now, and I doubt I’ll ever get rid of it.

  Tommy sees that in me, and in himself, and shares the burden. The understanding that all that darkness is like a drug, that taking life gives you a feeling of power like no other, that the line between good and bad can be microscopic at times.

  “Well, cool,” he replies, grinning at his own understatement.

  “But I have one other surprise to pull on you,” I say. “You might not like it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I want everything, Tommy. The whole shebang. I want my home back. So what I’m saying is, as long as all this love is in the air, then I want us to live together too.”

  He blinks in surprise. For a moment I’m afraid. Then his lips curve into a smile. He kisses me.

  “I can agree to that.”

  My turn to blink. “Really? Just like that?”

  “We’ve been together two years, Smoky. I wouldn’t call it sudden.”

  “Good point. So that’s a yes?”

  “Of course it’s a yes.”

  He takes my face in his and the kiss he gives me this time contains all the passion we’ve been withholding.

  I come away breathless and needy. “Now that the love stuff is out of the way, can we get down to the fucking?” I growl.

  “So romantic,” he murmurs, kissing my neck, feeling my breasts.

  I pull his head away and make him look at me. “I mean it, Tommy. The last two days have been rough. I don’t need tender loving tonight. Think cat in heat.”

  He answers with action, sweeping me into his arms and heading up the stairs to the bedroom. He dumps me o
n the bed without ceremony and starts to get undressed. I do the same, overwhelmed with need and the simplest desire of all: closeness.

  Within the half hour, I am using God’s name in proximity to the profane again, as I reach for more, more, more. In this moment, all things considered, I somehow don’t think He’ll mind.

  31

  THIS MORNING I WOKE UP WITH TOMMY’S LEG DRAPED across my belly and bedsheets that smelled of last night’s sex.

  Most of all, I woke up happy. I was at the crest of a case that was about to get even more explosive, chasing a killer with the biggest body count of my career, and I felt good. Focused. Ready for the challenge.

  I bounded from bed to the shower, washing Tommy off me with some regret. I was almost done when he joined me. He bumped against me with his morning erection.

  “I know what you want for breakfast,” I said, moving into him. “Make it quick. I have to get in early today.”

  He obliged with gusto and ten minutes later he was washing me off him while I ransacked my closet for clothes to wear. I pulled my hair back into its customary ponytail, and whistled while I fastened the straps on my shoes. Tommy appeared at the door of the bathroom, toweling his hair. I took a moment to look him over from head to toe.

  “Yum, yum,” I said, and he laughed.

  “You out the door?”

  I checked my watch and bounced off the bed. I went to him, leaning up to give him a kiss on the lips while letting my hand luxuriate in his chest hair for a moment.

  “Yes, gotta run.” I headed to the door of the bedroom before remembering the most important thing. I turned around. “I love you,” I said.

  He grinned, and that became the most beautiful part of him to me. “I love you too. Call me later.”

  I agreed by blowing him a kiss and went downstairs, inhaled a cup of coffee, and hit the road.

  I’m almost to work now, and I allow myself a moment to bask in the fact that I’ve told a man that I love him again, and meant it. I remember Callie’s smiling when she told me she was sure about Sam.

  You were right, Callie. It does feel great. I’d forgotten.

  The internal voice that’d been bugging me is nowhere to be found. Matt’s ghost isn’t around right now, though I’m sure he’ll show up again at some point. I understand that hoping to dispel him and Alexa permanently is an unrealistic expectation. They’ll show up forever, off and on, and not always in a good way. I imagine they’ll be there at my deathbed.