Be Mine (19 page)

Beamon covered his face with his hands. Tears filled his eyes. He
stared at the white cinder-block walls. Time ticked by. He blinked at Turgeon,
at Sydowski.

“Ray,” Sydowski said, “you spoke at his funeral. Placed a rose on
his casket. Now’s the time to unburden yourself. Ease your conscience. Be a
man. Do the right thing. For you. For Cliff, for everyone.”

Beamon stared at the walls for the longest time before he cleared
his throat.

“Walt.” His voice was a whisper. “You haven’t Mirandized me.”

“You’re not in custody.”

“Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

“You going to charge me?”

Sydowski waited a beat before he said, “I’d like you to take a
polygraph first. Then we can help you to help yourself. We can talk to the
district attorney, explain how it was self-defense, no special circumstances.
No death penalty.”

Death penalty.

Beamon’s head snapped up.

“I want a lawyer and I want my rep.” Beamon’s voice grew louder as
he stared at the mirrored observation window, knowing he was being watched.
“Hear that, Leo? I want my lawyer and I want my rep.”

“We understand.”

“Nobody knows what happened. I’m not telling you another thing until
I have my lawyer and my rep beside me,” Beamon said.

“I understand. We want to help you do this right.”

Beamon left. Turgeon shook her head as she finished taking notes.
Gonzales stepped into the room.

“You did good. I know it was rough, but you did good.” Sydowski
shoved a Tums into his mouth, nodded while chewing on it. Then he headed for
the elevator.

Tom was at his home
near Golden
Gate Park studying his options and frustrating his son.

“There’s nothing you can do, Dad. You’re trapped.”

He didn’t respond.

Staring blankly at the chessboard, he’d lost sight of the game, for
he was ruminating upon another battlefield. It was getting late and Molly had
not returned his call. His cell phone was on. Fully charged and waiting for
calls among Zach’s throng of captured pieces.

“Dad, it’s been five minutes. Come on. It’s your move.”

“Mmm.”

He wanted to listen to his tape of Ray Beamon again. He had a bad,
bad feeling about this. Beamon sounded as if he was hiding something. And why
hadn’t Molly called, or answered the messages he’d left?

Tom looked over to Ann curled up on the sofa reading a book. It
struck him to ask her about the meaning of roses when their home phone rang
with a call for her.

“Time for bed, Zach,” she said after cupping her hand on the phone.
“Let’s go.”

Zach pulled himself to his feet and kissed his mother.

“Good night, champ. We’ll do more work on the battle-ship tomorrow.”
Tom rubbed Zach’s hair, reached for his cell phone, then headed to his study.

After closing the door he sat in his chair, slipped on headphones,
and played his interview with Beamon. Through his home system he could enhance
the sound and adjust the speed so he could concentrate on every word and the
tone.

He was convinced there was a better story than Beamon’s emotional
vow to kill his partner’s murderer. While Tom was no expert on stress and voice
analysis, he’d conducted enough interviews in his career to develop strong
instincts about what people told him. And Beamon sounded as if he was under
extraordinary stress. Not grief or mourning, but as if he was facing some
overwhelming crisis.

It was during the segment where Tom had asked him about Molly. He’d
missed it the first few times. It was quick, subtle, almost lost when Tom had
started the next question.

“And what about the relationship with Molly Wilson?”

“What about her? What did she tell you?”

That was it. Tom replayed it.

“What about her? What did she tell you?”

What did she tell you?

Beamon’s tone was guarded to the point of deception, as if he was
trying to hide something about Molly and himself.

Tom needed her to hear this tape.

He reached for his phone and tried her number one more time.

Beamon could run to Canada
, or Mexico,
he thought. But he didn’t like his odds. It was time to face the truth. He owed
it to Hoop.

After Sydowski had taken a run at him, Beamon had left the Hall of
Justice. He got in his Barracuda and just drove, south along the Pacific Coastal Highway. He was north of Los Angeles when he realized it was futile. Deep in
his heart he knew he couldn’t run. It was just that Sydowski had gotten to him.

In a roadside diner near the ocean Beamon nursed a black coffee,
admitting that Sydowski had the key pieces. And he’d put most of them in the
correct place. The only thing he didn’t possess was the truth. Beamon held on
to that card, reluctant to play it because no one would believe it. Not
Turgeon. Not Sydowski. Nobody, except one person.

Maybe.

Molly would believe him. What choice did she have? She was the spark
that ignited this inferno, he thought, returning to his car, heading it to San Francisco and his chance at redemption.

Night was falling when he rang her bell.

“Ray, where’ve you been?” Molly said, opening the door. “I went to
your house. You weren’t home. I’ve been trying to reach you. What the hell’s
going on with you?”

“Sit down. I’m going to tell you everything.”

She was wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back into
a ponytail, worry lines pressed into her face. She wore no makeup. Her eyes
searched his with anger and fear.

“Sydowski’s probably working on getting warrants to search my house,
my cars, probably yours, too. He’s coming at me hard. He knows that I went to
Cliff’s apartment that night.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Just listen to me. This is going to be hard, but I’m going to tell
you everything.”

Molly’s phone rang. She let her machine get it.

“A few weeks back, before he died, Cliff told me he was serious
about you. He was going to propose to you. He was talking about getting a ring,
had asked me to be his best man. He wanted to marry you.”

“I never knew this. I told him all along I didn’t want a long-term
relationship.”

“I know. He was in love with you and thought he could win you over
to wanting to be with him.”

“No. No, I never felt like that, I--”

“On that day, his last day, he told me how he was going to pop the
question to you that night. How you were the best thing that’d ever happened to
him, he wanted children, he worshiped you.”

Molly groaned.

“He started going on how he had it all planned, was going to pick
you up at Jake’s in a rented limo, take you across the Golden Gate to some
special restaurant near the bay in Sausalito, then pop the question.”

“Oh no.”

“Then he bumped into Arnold Desfor from San Jose, who told him he’d
seen us at the hotel in Half Moon Bay. It destroyed him. It happened at the end
of our shift and he barely left the Hall without taking me apart.”

Molly stared at the floor.

“So I go home and work on my Barracuda. But this thing’s just
killing me. So I drive over to his place to see him.”

Molly’s head snapped up. Beamon swallowed. His throat tightened, his
eyes stung, and his voice weakened. He stared off and traveled back in time,
back to Hooper’s apartment.

“I told him that Desfor was right. I told him the truth. I tried to
couch it. I said, yes, it was a one-time thing. And he should talk to you
because maybe it showed you weren’t ready to settle down. But I’m making a bad
thing worse and I’m just babbling and he’s, he’s--”

“What--what did he say?”

“He was devastated. I’d never seen a guy free-fall so fast. He
started saying things that didn’t make sense. Then he calmed down, said he’d be
okay, just needed to think, and that I should go. We heard the phone ring, that
must’ve been you. It set him off. He disappeared into his bedroom, I followed him,
then boom, he’s got his Beretta aimed at me.”

Beamon shook his head.

“I put up my palms, walked toward him, and talked him down. He
starts crying, acts like he’s going to surrender his weapon to me, but then
whips the gun to his temple and scares me to death. I don’t know what’s going
to happen. I yell and jump him. I grab at the muzzle with my left hand,
punching his head with my right. To jolt him out of it, you know. We fall on
the bed. It takes every bit of strength to get the Beretta from him, but I do.”

Beamon inhaled, then exhaled.

“I manage to coax Cliff to his sofa, where we talk. I clean up the
place, try to be cool. Talk to him. I tell him I’m so sorry. That I thought
you’d made it clear to him that you weren’t committed to him. But he’s such a sensitive
guy. He was crazy about you.”

Molly said nothing.

“Then we hear his cell phone going, it must’ve been you again. He
doesn’t answer but we talk for a long time. At one point he says he’d suspected
maybe something was up with us but had dismissed it. He collected himself. I
know he’s got an off-duty gun somewhere, but he won’t tell me where. We keep
talking. He assures me he won’t shoot me or himself and holds out his hand for
his weapon. He’s my partner. He’s calmed down, his breathing’s fine. So I give
it to him, knowing he’s got another gun somewhere in his place anyway Then he
asks me to leave. Again, I’m wondering if I should go. I’m still a little
jumpy. But Cliff starts insisting I leave. And to be honest, I’m so torn up I
can’t bear to see his pain. By this time he seems rational, like the worst has
passed. So I leave.”

Beamon looked into his empty hands.

“I get halfway to my house and I think, I’ve made a huge mistake. I
should go back. I should take charge. I shouldn’t have left him like that. I
get home and spend the rest of the night torturing myself about leaving him.
Was it right? I wasn’t thinking clearly. Maybe part of me wanted desperately to
get away from the ugliness of the situation, maybe that’s why I left him. At
home I couldn’t sleep. I was tossing and turning until I got the call that
you’d found him.”

“Who was it?”

“Turgeon. When she told me over the phone, the first thing I thought
was that Cliff had committed suicide and it was my fault. I was overcome with
guilt. That’s why I kept everything inside. I felt it was my fault.”

A long moment passed with Molly hugging herself.

“Tell me, Ray. Did you kill Cliff, even by accident?”

“No, Molly, I swear to God.”

Absorbing his words, she paced about the room, then said, “All
right, we have to tell Sydowski. Fill in the blanks for him.”

“I know.”

“We have to lay it out for Sydowski that Cliff’s killer is out
there. We’ll tell him the truth.”

“Sydowski will think I’ve come to you to back up my line.”