I looked over at Kate. She was trembling, shaking her head, back and forth.
“You killed your husband because he was against this deal? Against breaking the law?”
Her answer was flat, unfeeling of anything. “He was already dead by then. His brain hadn’t passed the message to his body, that’s all. I did him a favor.”
I put a hand on Kate’s, human reassurance.
“That bank account of Jerome’s. That was your doing, wasn’t it? Everything with Jerome was your doing.”
She nodded.
“Once Juarez was dead, I had to figure a way out, some donkey to pin the tail on. Jerome was the perfect ass. I discovered the background of him and his sister and Juarez, it set him up beautifully, particularly since he’d hidden it from his agency and they’d never known about it. The money was the clincher. Sure, it was a lot, but it had to be, so it couldn’t be explained away. Fifty thousand wouldn’t have caught your attention, Luke. Five hundred thousand had to. I could afford it. Juarez had made me rich. I still have plenty left. Which no one’s ever going to find.”
She paused. “I put in half. Louisa Bearpaw put up the other half. It hurt—a quarter million apiece is a lot of money, but the way we looked at it, it had been free. It was an expensive insurance policy. And it worked.”
She smiled. “We even got lucky with things we didn’t plan, like those bullets Jerome bought. The way he said it happened is true, I’m sure. One more lucky coincidence in a perfectly planned piece of work.” She frowned. “Almost perfectly.”
There was one question left unresolved—the most important one, for me.
“Why did you bring me into this?” I beseeched her. “Why didn’t you leave it alone? Why take the chance of exposing yourself? Nobody suspected you.”
She stared at me like I was the village idiot.
“The DEA wasn’t going to give up. Sooner or later, they would have found a weak link. The tribe, probably. Do you think Louisa and Wayne Bearpaw would have protected me? They would have thrown me to the wolves.”
Her eyes were gleaming now, like she was rabid.
“I had to deflect it. I knew I could pin it on Jerome, if I had someone smart enough ramrodding the case.”
She smiled tenderly at me. “That was you, Luke. I knew you’d find all the clues I’d sprinkled around. And I knew you’d feel so sorry for poor Nora, your old friend, that you wouldn’t quit until you did.”
I stood there, swaying. She’d been conning me from the beginning, and like the trusting sap I am, I’d flown right into the center of her web.
“Let’s go, Nora.”
She ignored me, turned to Kate.
“Luke loves me. We’re lovers. Do you know that?”
Kate’s jaw dropped. She looked at me in shock. I shook my head sadly—
she’s crazy, can’t you see that?
“We’ve been in love since we were in law school. It wasn’t meant to be, then. Dennis swept me away. But then, when Luke came up here, it was like we had gone back in time.” She smiled dreamily, her eyes closed. “We became lovers, the very first night. And we’ve been lovers ever since.”
This was painful, for reasons beyond Kate’s knowing.
“Nora.” I was pleading, with her and for myself. “Let’s go.”
She wasn’t here. Wherever “here” is.
“He was going to leave his wife. We were going away together, me and him and his son. Where no one would ever find us.”
“Nora…”This was horrendous now, made more so because of that tiny kernel of reality I’d been a part of.
She looked at me with an otherworldly expression. “I lied to you, Luke. I told you there was no one else but you, except for Dennis, and he didn’t count. But I lied. There was someone else.”
Don’t say it, I thought. You’ve already said too much. Way too much.
“Reynaldo was unbelievable. Such a man. When we started, it was business. I didn’t even meet him for over a year. But once we did, we couldn’t get enough of each other. While his men were screwing around out there, he was here with me. In my bed.”
She laughed, an insane braying. “Jerome was in town once, looking for the legendary, elusive Reynaldo Juarez. Who was in bed with the district attorney.” She laughed again. “We thought it was the most delicious thing in the world.”
Her eyes were open now. She was looking at me, but she wasn’t seeing me, not the me who was standing here in front of her. She was seeing something else—her fantasy.
“I thought he was the best I’d ever have. And he was, Luke. Until you. You’re the best. The best there ever was. The best there ever will be.”
She moved toward me, as if to wrap me in an embrace. I recoiled in horror.
“Nora. For God’s sakes…!”
A guttural sound came from deep in Kate’s throat—she couldn’t handle the sickness anymore. Stepping between us, she hauled off and slapped Nora across the face, as hard as she could.
“Shut up, you sick bitch!” Kate was shaking. “Shut your filthy, lying mouth!”
I pulled Kate away. We were both shaking, uncontrollably.
“Don’t. Can’t you see?” I turned to Nora. “It’s time to go. We have to go.”
She rubbed her mouth where she’d been hit. “I can’t go to jail in something like this.” She fingered her dress, the fine material.
Her voice was matter-of-fact now—she was back in the real world. “Let me change into something more comfortable and get my toilet things. I’ll only take a minute.”
I wasn’t thinking—I was emotionally wasted.
“Go ahead.” I wanted her out of my sight, if only for a few minutes.
She walked down the hallway into her bedroom, closed the door. I sagged onto the sofa. Kate, equally devastated, dropped down next to me.
We heard drawers opening and closing. Then metal slamming against metal.
Kate leaped up before me, both of us running for the bedroom door.
The explosion from Nora’s automatic rocked the house to its foundations.
I
STOOD AT THE
prosecution table.
“The state is dropping its case against Sterling Jerome, Your Honor. We move the defendant be released immediately.”
My motion was a formality. After the ambulance came to Nora’s house, and the police, and the coroner, and Kate and I had given our statements, I went into town and met with Judge McBee and John Q., in the judge’s chambers. Bill Fishell came with me. I recounted what had happened, all the back story, up to Nora’s suicide.
They were all thunderstruck, including John Q., who really had thought he had a loser. Not only the case, the client.
It was ironic in a terrible way. If I hadn’t done John Q.’s job for him, I would have won, hands down. Now I was flushing it all away.
“You’re filing charges against Louisa and Wayne Bearpaw, I presume?” McBee asked me.
They were being held in the jail, no bail.
I looked over at Fishell.
“Racketeering and money laundering,” Bill confirmed. “Assisting in the escape of a prisoner, against Deputy Bearpaw. Resisting arrest against him, too. Whatever else we can come up with.”
“What about murder?” the judge asked.
“That was Nora’s doing. Hers alone,” Fishell said.
They wouldn’t go to prison forever. Although for Louisa, at her age, it was basically a death sentence. Maybe she’d pull something out of the hat. She was a survivor. And a great con artist.
“You’ll be the prosecutor?” McBee asked me. We’d come to like each other.
I shook my head firmly. “I’m done here.”
“This will be filed in federal court,” Fishell said. “It’s their jurisdiction.” He was happy to pass the buck this time.
Outside chambers, John Q. pulled me aside. “You did my job for me. You should get a cut.”
“No, thanks. You showed up, you did your best. He was lucky to have you.”
“I gave up on him,” John Q. insisted. In the dim light he was looking old, even older than he was. I suspected this was his last big case.
“He was a crummy client,” I said.
“Well…”
We shook hands.
I signed the release documents in open court. As I was turning to push through the gate and leave the courtroom. Sterling Jerome blocked my exit.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” he said in an ugly voice. “You fucked my life up, really good.”
I tried to move around him. He moved with me.
“You almost convicted an innocent man,” he ranted. “You ought to be sick of yourself. I ought to sue you, you cheap shyster.”
I stepped back. He was contaminating my air.
“If it wasn’t for me,” I said, maintaining my calm, which wasn’t easy, “you would have been convicted of premeditated murder.”
He wanted a fight. “If it wasn’t for you, there wouldn’t have been any case in the first place. You should have checked your facts better.”
I wasn’t going to oblige him. “I’m not getting in a debate with you. But let me ask you one question.”
“What?” he gibed.
“How many of your men died on that raid?”
The muscles of his jaw were working. His neck swelled, the veins pulsing. “Fuck you.”
I pushed him aside and left the Muir County courthouse for the last time.
Tom Miller was drunk. I don’t think he’d ever been drunk before in his life, but he was drunk now.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You couldn’t have known.”
It was small consolation.
He kept shaking his head. “I should have known,” he insisted stubbornly.
We were in the study of his house. He poured himself another shot.
“The money Louisa was giving me to invest for the tribe. I should have been suspicious of where it was coming from.”
“Where did you think?”
“From other tribes. That’s what she told me.”
“That’s what she told everyone. It’s plausible.”
“I should have known.” He drank from his tumbler.
“She didn’t want you to know. She was protecting you.”
“I know. That makes it worse.”
He looked up. “Wayne was the son I lost. I loved him.” The despair on his face was heartbreaking. “I loved them both.”
“I know,” I said. “That makes it harder.”
“What a web of lies.” His hand was unsteady, reaching for his glass. “Even me.”
“How you?”
“I lied to you about how I got the money to pay for this.” His arm took in the room, and beyond. “I said I made it from investments. I didn’t.”
“I know.”
“You know everything.”
“More than I want to,” I said with real regret.
“It was my wife’s money. She left it to me when she died.”
The bottle of Jim Beam was over half-empty, but he was still drinking. I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. Everyone deserves one good drunk in his life, when the reasons are as good as these.
“I didn’t want to admit to that. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Pride goeth before a fall.”
He drained his glass, corked the bottle. “I’m done here. I was retiring anyway, but I’m going to quit now. I’m not going to wait.”
“You might want to give it a few days to make sure.”
“No. I’m finished. There’s no gas left in the tank.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Go somewhere else. Finish up my life. Whatever there’s left to finish.”
I got up. So did he. He was shaky on his feet. We shook hands.
“I’m glad I met you,” I said to him. “You’re a good man. A good cop.”
“I wasn’t good enough to stop this,” he lamented, flagellating himself.
“Nobody was.”
That was the truth.
“The best we could do was pick up the pieces.”
Riva and Bucky and I flew home courtesy of the state, one last time. A trucking service would drive down the stuff we’d left behind.
Everyone who wasn’t from Blue River was gone now. I didn’t think any of us would return. I knew I wouldn’t.
By the time we got home and unpacked, we were wiped out. I made a Taco Bell run. We ate out on our balcony. Riva put Buck to bed. He went without a fuss, for a change.
I’d forgotten how blissful Santa Barbara is in the evenings. Cool, clear. La Fiesta, our homegrown bacchanalia, was coming up soon. The city, spread out below our house high on the Riviera, seemed to be swaying to a cosmic rhythm in anticipation. Or maybe that was merely my imagination, a projection of my desire.
Riva poured two flutes of champagne. Veuve Clicquot, the good stuff. We always drink champagne at the end of a case. We clinked glasses.
“It wasn’t the win you wanted,” she said sagaciously. “But justice did prevail.” She drank, her dark eyes checking me out. “Didn’t it?”
“There was punishment for the crime, so you could say yes, by the book. But real justice? I don’t think so. There was too much corruption for true justice. All around.”
“I know you don’t want to hear this—but I feel sorry for Nora.”
I had told her about Nora’s final ravings, her sexual love fantasies. Riva had dismissed them as the product of a sick, sad woman. “She was so lonely and miserable it melted her mind.”
Riva was right—I didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t have to know the reasons why.
“She could have solved her problems another way, short of killing,” I said. “Not Juarez—we’re all better off he’s dead. And if Jerome’s career is finished, that’s fine with me, too. He’s shit, another rotten cop who believed he was above the law. Three of his men died to satisfy his ego.”
I sipped some champagne. It tasted great—a well-earned benefaction to myself. “But not Dennis. There’s no justification in the world for that.” I twirled the delicate glass in my fingers. The pale liquid fire sparkled.
“I remember him and Nora together, back in the old days,” I reminisced. “She worshiped the ground he walked on, and he felt the same about her. They really loved each other, once.”
“That’s why she thought she had to kill him,” my big-hearted wife said. “When it’s like that, it’s all or nothing. And if it’s nothing, it can’t exist anymore. You have to try to leave it behind, and move on. She was moving on, the best she could.”
I thought about that, sitting on my own balcony again, looking out over my city. Maybe if I tried hard enough, that’s how I’d remember Nora: as a keeper of the flame, until the fire burned out and only the ashes were left.
I spent a couple of days in Gentle Ben’s shop, tuning up my motorcycle—it isn’t easy getting parts for an old bike, they had to be shipped in from halfway across the country. When I was satisfied with my work, I drove out of town and rode over the pass into the Santa Ynez valley. Past Rancho San Marcos golf course, past Lake Cachuma, through Los Olivos and Los Alamas, all the way to Foxen Canyon Road.