In the Night of the Heat (16 page)

Marcela grinned, walking up to me. She spoke more loudly. “Captain Hardwick wants to see you. What are you two plotting?”

I slid my arm around Marcela's shoulder and steered her away from my computer screen, toward the doorway. My voice hid my frustration. “Sorry, darlin'. Can't talk about it.”

“Whatever it is, keep it up. It's good for him to engage,
comprende
? He needs to feel invested in the world outside. You're a good son, Tennyson.”

“Wish I could claim I'm doing it for him,” I said. “It's strictly selfish. My last resort.”

Marcela laughed and wagged her finger at me. She thought I was joking. “A good son. Admit it, just once.”

I winked scandalously. “There's nothing good about me, Marcela.”

In Dad's room, I saw that a few of the pages I'd given him had fallen to the floor, scattered beneath his desk. One page had flown as far as his bathroom doorway. As I picked it up, I tried not to notice the smell of pissy clothes hanging in Dad's bathroom. He might have wet himself overnight and tried to wash out his clothes in the sink; I'd
done that at camp when I was eight, afraid the counselors and other campers would learn my secret.

I gathered the pages without comment and pulled up a chair beside him.

“How's it look?” I said.

“Padded.” The word sounded gummy, so I didn't understand. He tried another: “Thin.”

“Thin how?”

Dad consulted his yellow legal pad. I saw several lines of handwriting, but he didn't show me his notes. “Nothing…on…Hankins. No…inter-view.”

Dad thought Donald Hankins could be a suspect, too.

“What do you know about him?” I said.

“Gets…what he wants.”

“Except a conviction in his daughter's murder,” I said. “How dirty is he?”

“More'n…most.”

Then he ripped the page out of his notebook and handed it to me. He'd written a virtual report himself, one painstaking line at a time:

1999: HANKINS ACCUSED OF RIGGING A CAR ACCIDENT. NO FORMAL CHARGES, NOTHING IN THE NEWS. HEARD THROUGH THE LAPD GRAPEVINE. BUT SOMEONE SAID HE TAMPERED WITH BRAKES. A FATALITY.

“There was a lawsuit around 1999,” I said. “Kevin Wong?”

Dad shook his head. “Diff'rent…case.” He motioned for me to read on.

HANKINS HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF STRONG-ARM POLITICS. HE DOESN'T FORGET HIS ENEMIES AND HE KNOWS WHERE THE BODIES ARE BURIED. THAT'S HOW HE BUILT UP HIS COALITION FOR THE GOVERNOR'S RUN. HE'S TIGHT WITH CHIEF RANDALL, AND
HE TAKES CARE OF LAPD. T.D. JACKSON WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DELIVERED GIFT-WRAPPED TO HIM AFTER CHANTELLE. DIDN'T HAPPEN. NOW THEY HAVE ANOTHER CHANCE TO MAKE HIM HAPPY.

“Could it have been a police hit?” I said.

Dad's face soured. He thought about it, but he shook his head. “Don't…think so.”

“But it's possible.”

Dad shrugged. Then, reluctantly, he nodded.

“What about Dolinski?” I said.

Hal Dolinski was a cop my father had known for years, still on the job but holding his breath until retirement. If not for Dolinski's help on the inside, I would have faced worse than prison after Serena was murdered—I would have died. Dolinski had warned me that I was a target for dirty cops. Two cops who had kidnapped and almost executed me in the desert were still out working the streets. From time to time, I still dreamed about them.

Dad held out his hand for his pad, Sharpie ready.

FORGET DOLINSKI. THIS IS DYNAMITE. I DON'T WANT HIM IMPLICATED.

“We don't have to say why we're asking,” I said. “But he might know something about the investigation. Isn't he Robbery-Homicide?”

With an annoyed sigh, Dad underlined the words FORGET DOLINSKI. I understood. Dad was protecting his friend. We were the ones who owed Dolinski, not the other way around.

“There's no one on the inside we can go to?”

Firmly, Dad shook his head. “Find out…what hap-pened…in '99.”

“You said it never made the news. No police report. Where would you start?”

“A…reporter,” Dad said. “
Times
. Made…calls. Ask…April.”

Somehow, Dad always knew the one thing I didn't want to do.

 

Melanie was waiting at the curb, leaning on the hood of her silver Volvo. She'd shed her at-home clothes, back to pinstripes. Her skirt wasn't long enough to hide her bare legs; I peeked even when I knew I shouldn't. Melanie's eyes wrestled mine away. Her tears were gone, iced over. She walked toward the house, her arms crossed as if she were walking into a wind.

I followed her, keeping pace. I wanted to say something, but I wasn't as good at reality as I was at role-playing. My stalking clothes smelled like her bedroom, so I had changed into my suit. “Melanie…”

“Proud of yourself?”

“Not even a little.”

She shot me a glare over her shoulder. “Imagine how it feels on this end.”

“I probably have no idea.”

She climbed the Jacksons' porch steps, her walk brisk. “Lucky you.”

I could feel a physical force field radiating from her, prickling my skin. The same day I had touched and tasted her, the sensation was like a blow. I'm sure I was thinking about April, but it hurt. I never want to make a woman unhappy, much less one I've made love to. Melanie and I had broken up, and we'd never dated.

“I'll bring the money back,” I said. “I don't want to cause you problems. I mean that.”

She opened the door. “Don't flatter yourself. Just get your head on your fucking job.”

Don't shit where you sleep.

The Jackson living room was bursting with even more flower arrangements, some of them already wilting. Melanie led me past the living room toward the long kitchen with its gleaming black floor, where the granite countertop was stacked with wrapped foods, offerings from well-wishers. The stool where T.D.'s mother had sat for my first visit was empty. Judge Jackson's study was dark through the closed glass double doors.

Melanie pointed toward sunlight from an adjacent room, the family room. “Wait in the back garden,” she said. “Judge Jackson will be right down.”

She didn't even want me in the house. Melanie peeled off, her heels rapidly retreating against the floor. In the dimly lighted family room, the back door was half-open, waiting.

I let myself out. The courtyard behind the Jacksons' house had an aged coral fountain at its center, atop a patio of coral stones speckled brown. The fountain's water dribbled from an overflowing stone chalice, a soothing sound. Beyond the fountain, there was a rain forest of palm trees, bougainvilleas, and rosebushes. A stone path led to the backyard's tall fencing, with a latched wooden gate door. Long ago, I mused, that had been the service entrance.

When no one came outside right away, I drifted away to explore the quiet. It could have been a Japanese meditation garden. The neighborhood outside of the fence might as well not exist. I thought I heard a water spigot go on nearby, and I assumed it was a gardener. Out of curiosity, I drifted around the corner, which had hidden the more traditional garden's rows of sprouting vegetables in raised wooden beds.

At first, all I saw was a broad straw cowboy hat from someone kneeling close to the house wall, filling a bucket with water from a bursting spigot.

Evangeline Jackson gasped, turning around. I was quiet, but she must have sensed me standing behind her. Some people have a sixth sense. The sun was setting, so she was half in shadow, half in golden light. Her face registered no recognition. She looked literally petrified.

I stepped back to appear more nonthreatening. “I'm sorry, Mrs. Jackson. It's me—Captain Hardwick's son. Melanie asked me to wait outside. I didn't mean to startle you.”

She nodded, but her expression barely changed. A small scare in her back garden was probably a respite from the rest of her day. She turned off the gushing water flow. The smell of peat was strong from the garden.

“I'm mulching for spring,” she said. “Not enough rain. I thought it would rain more.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Last year, it rained more.” She sounded like the lack of rainfall would make her cry. As she picked up her bucket, I saw the trembling of her gloved hands. Water spilled. Evangeline Jackson's face looked no older than her early sixties, but her body behaved as if she were twenty years older. She looked too frail to stand.

“Let me,” I said, walking toward her to take the bucket. “Just show me what to do.”

After taking off her muddied gardening gloves, Mrs. Jackson led me to the neat rows of raised beds, jabbing her hoe to show me where she wanted more water.

“Not too much,” she said. “Don't drown them. They'll…”
They'll die
, she wanted to say. She couldn't bring herself to utter the word. “…They won't grow.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She stumbled on a stone, and I instinctively held her arm to steady her. Just as instinctively, she pulled her arm free. “Thank you, I'm
fine,” she said curtly. I would have to handle her with care, gaining her trust. She didn't like to be touched.

“Cauliflower?” I said. I recognized the sprouts from Alice's garden, which had died soon after she did. I tried to keep her fish alive, at least, but I wasn't a gardener.

“And broccoli. You know about gardens?”

“I've had a little fertilizer under my nails.”

“I'm surprised. Young people don't have the patience. My grandmother lived in Georgia, and every vegetable we ate at her table was out of that garden. She spent so much time out there tending those plants! Now I understand her better.”

“In what way, ma'am?”

“You can control it,” she said, her voice shaky. “Some things are out of your hands—the rain, the cold. But if you mulch…if you enrich the soil…you feed them…if you do what you're supposed to do, they come out all right. They come out just fine.” She was whispering.

“Not always,” I said. “Like you said—some things are out of your hands.”

Mrs. Jackson gave me a baleful gaze. She didn't seem to mind my thinly veiled therapy, but she wanted me to know she had seen through it.

“You know why my father's hair was gray by the time he was thirty-five?” I said.

Mrs. Jackson curled her lips, glad to think about Dad. “Emory called him Cap'n Snow.”

“My fault. I ran him crazy. There was nothing he could do. He's still trying.”

Mrs. Jackson cast her eyes down. For a moment, we let the water in the fountain talk for a while, a soothing gurgle.

“Do you know the Hankins family?” Mrs. Jackson said finally.

“No, ma'am. Haven't had the pleasure yet.”

“Well, I know them
well
, or I used to. We shared fifteen years as family. Donald and Loretta are like a brother and sister. And after Chantelle…” She paused, her hands shaking again. “It's all they think about now: the hunt; the answer; the trial. Day by day, minute by minute. I swore I would never be like that. Some things don't have answers, and never will. Some things trials don't fix. Might as well let the police handle it and go on somehow. Emory can't have T.D. back. I wish you'd tell him that.”

She pointed toward the mulch again with an unsteady hand, and I flung out some water. Not too much.

“I'll make you a promise, Mrs. Jackson,” I said. “I won't look forever, but I have to look. If I don't find anything—if I think there's nowhere else to go—I'll sit your husband down and tell him exactly that. Case closed.”

Mrs. Jackson nodded. “I just don't want him consumed. And T.D. wouldn't want it. I don't know Don and Retta anymore. They're strangers.”

The question came to my lips, and I couldn't think of a reason not to ask. But I had to ask just right: My voice dipped, almost a verbal caress. I chose my words carefully.

“Do you think…T.D. ended his own life?”

Her face was suddenly caught in a ray of dying sunlight, just when I needed to see it. She made a sudden motion, and her voice left my ear. Whatever she'd said, I didn't think she would want to repeat it. But I had to ask.

“Excuse me? Ma'am, this ear is bad.” I leaned toward her.

“He may have had reason to,” Mrs. Jackson said slowly. “He may have had reason.”

Judge Jackson called to me from the back door.

“He hates to hear a word against T.D.,” Mrs. Jackson said quickly
to my good ear. “You may learn things that will break Emory's heart. Please don't tell him anything he doesn't need to know. Don't destroy him. T.D.'s memory is all he has left.”

Judge Jackson called for me again, sounding impatient.

“At the vegetable garden!” I called back, just as he rounded the corner.

Judge Jackson seemed startled by the sight of me carrying his wife's watering bucket. He walked in a gingerly way on the damp soil, lifting his pant legs, careful with his shoes. Melanie trailed him, but she stopped short of the damp soil in her heels.

“Is he bothering you, Auntie?” Melanie said.

“Not at all,” she said. “Mr. Hardwick is very helpfully watering my mulch.”

Melanie's eyes skimmed me. “A man of a thousand talents.”

Judge Jackson beckoned, and I set the bucket down where Mrs. Jackson asked me to. A little helpfulness had gone a long way. T.D.'s own mother thought he might have had a conscience guilty enough to drive him to suicide.
Mother knows best
, I thought.

Judge Jackson took me to a small round patio table at the corner of the garden, beneath the shade of an awning sagging with dead leaves from the jacaranda trees beyond the tall fence. I sat first, and he sat across from me. Melanie stayed behind him, at a distance. I tried not to look at her, but I could feel her eyes.

Judge Jackson held a smaller manila envelope this time, and dumped the contents on the clean glass table. Two keys on a SoCal State key ring jangled to the tabletop.