the Viking Funeral (2001) (4 page)

because Jody had committed suicide, the widow wasn't entitled to any Department loss-of-life death benefits.

He rang the bell and stood there while fear swept over him. What am I afraid of? This is all going to make sense eventually. It had to. There are no ghosts, no paranormal events. Facts were just missing, and those missing facts were creating a distorted picture. When he filled in the blanks, it would all make perfect sense.... It better start making sense, he thought.

Lauren Dean opened the door. Since he'd last seen her two years ago, she'd gained forty pounds and looked twenty years older. Cynicism and disgust had pulled the once happy curve of her mouth down into a permanent scowl that she seemed completely unaware of. Once beautiful--stunning, in fact--Lauren Dean was now plump and used up: her skin mottled, her clothing dirty, her fingernails a nerve-frayed war zone of nibbled cuticles. It was as if he were looking at somebody else--the ghost of Lauren Dean, or her ugly older sister.

"Shane?" she said, and he could smell scotch on her breath.

"Lauren, I need to talk to you about Jody."

She looked at him for a moment, not moving or breathing. "Jody?" she finally said.

Again, he could smell the liquor. "Could I come in?"

A hard question for her. He could see indecision seesaw back and forth in her pale green eyes. Then she stepped back reluctantly and let him into the apartment.

The place was a mess. Round pizza boxes dotted the living-room furniture like giant tomato-stained mushrooms. Shane picked a spot on the sofa and sat across from Lauren.

"What about Jody?
"
she challenged.

"Lauren... I need to find out something. It
'
s gonna sound a little strange, so hang with me here, but I think I saw someone today on the San Diego Freeway who looked a lot like Jody. In fact, exactly like him.
"

"Oh, Jesus, gimme a fucking break.
"
She snorted a puff of stale scotch at him.

"I know... I know..
. B
ut it's bugging me and I just wanted to get clear on this. When they called you after he... after he... did the... did the...
"
Shane couldn't say it, even now, almost three years later.

"You mean after he blew his fucking head off?" Lauren finished the thought for him, bitterness and anger stretched across her face, pulling her mouth down farther, flattening her features like a nylon stocking mask on a drugstore bandit.

"Yeah, after they found him. They called you down to the ME's office. Did you get a good look at the body? Was it him? Were you absolutely sure? 'Cause the guy I saw... I didn't talk to him, but it looked like he recognized me.... I could sorta read it in his eyes."

"I always used t'wonder about you two guys finishing each other's sentences, like you were hooked together by cable," she said, not answering his question. "After I first married him, before Jody ate the nine and turne
d m
y whole life to shit, he used to say he thought you and he had both been the same person in another life, said he could tell what you were thinking, say it before you said it."

"He could--sometimes he could."

"And now..
. I
t's hard for you without him, you miss him. So subconsciously you're trying to bring him back."

Shane started to answer, but stopped. Was that what he was doing?

"Let him go, Shane. Let Jody go. He's dead. Believe me, I know. D-E-A-D. Dead." And then she smiled at him. A ghastly smile it was, too. Her teeth were tobacco-stained, and her new double chin quivered. "Let the motherfucker go. Hasn't he done enough to the both of us? Hasn't he?"

"Did you identify the body like it says in the death report?" he persisted.

"Yeah. Yeah, I looked at him. The back of his head was gone, but it was him. It was our precious, go-to-hell Jody, no doubt about it. I don't know who you saw on the freeway, but it wasn't him. Jody walked out on us, babe. The selfish prick put that cannon in his mouth and blew all three of us away with one shot."

Shane looked at the wreckage that was now Lauren Dean. He wondered how she could have let this happen.

"I'm sorry, but you can't stay," she said abruptly. "I was just going out.... I have an appointment." She slurred the word appointment, missing most of the consonants.

She stood and led him to the entry, anxious to have him out of her house. She opened the door and stood by it as he walked behind her in the underlit hallway.

As he was about to pass by her, he saw something that stopped him, made him reevaluate everything she had just said. Jody Dean had zeroed himself out--taken a pine box retirement. Yet there, on the table in the hall, was an unopened envelope just like the one Shane got every two weeks from the City Payroll Department.

She led him out into the late-afternoon sunlight and closed the door without saying good-bye. He stood there on the porch, his mind reeling. "What the fuck is going on here?" he whispered softly. One more in a series of unanswerable questions. If Jody committed suicide like everybody says, why is his widow still getting paychecks?

Chapter
5.

MOONSHADOWS SAT above the rocky beach in Malibu. Waves rolled under it in sets, crashing on the rocks below, throwing a fine sea mist up into the air that refracted in the setting sun.

Buddy, the breakfast-food sales and marketing executive, was already there with Alexa and Chooch, telling a story. Buddy was round
-
shouldered and pear-shaped with a bushy head of hair, which salt-and-peppered his massive head, "..
. S
o the sales rep is telling me he can't sign up the tri-state area, 'cause the little guys, the minimarkets and such, won't compete with the huge category killers--the chains like Ralph's or Vons--on new product lines. I tell the guy: Stop crying, this is a candy store problem, 'cause our money is just as green as theirs, and all you gotta do is find the right palm to grease. Give the local rack-jobber his blood money."

Alexa looked up and saw Shane approach, jumping to her feet to give him a hug.

"Buddy, I'd like you to meet Shane." Alexa was trying to orchestrate everything.

Shane shook Buddy's big fleshy hand. Buddy was soft and out of shape, but he was big, almost six-four.

After the introductions, they all sat down to a tense meal where Shane felt more and more like the main course.

"So how bad did Alex's car get mashed?" Buddy asked, getting the conversation rolling. He seemed to call her Alex instead of Alexa, as if it somehow made her one of the boys.

The evening crawled by like a half-crushed bug dragging itself across a four-lane highway. By nine o'clock, Buddy had eaten his main course and half of Alexa's and was just finishing the third basket of complimentary bread, ordering his sister to get a new basket after each one was emptied.

When Buddy wasn't treating Alexa like a servant, he was patronizing her. Never once did he bring up the Medal of Valor award she was going to receive on Sunday. His sister was being given a huge honor, the LAPD's highest, yet he didn't seem to care. It was hard for Shane to believe that someone he loved and looked up to would allow herself to be so overrun by this loud breakfast-food salesman.

Chooch stayed quiet, trying to keep out of the cross fire, while Buddy switched from the subject of Alexa's car to questions about Shane's medical leave.

"So, it's like some kinda shrink deal?" he asked, a concerned frown pulling two cater
-
pillar-shaped eyebrows toward each other. "But, you're okay, though, I hope?" Smiling now. "You're not gonna snap and start comin' at us with a razor?"

"I'm fine. It's no big deal," Shane said, choking back several more confrontational replies.

"In police work, psychiatric reviews are standard," Alexa explained less than truthfully.

"But it's with a shrink, right? A psychiatrist," Buddy persisted. "The LAPD makes Shane go and see a head doctor. That's what got me worried, 'cause you don't see that happen in business unless the guy's parked out in the ozone, where the buses don't run."

By ten o'clock, it was mercifully over. Alexa drove Buddy to his hotel. Shane drove
Chooch back to their house. Alexa showed up half an hour later and met them in the backyard.

"So, what did you think?" she asked anxiously, wanting his approval.

"Quite a guy," he said evasively.

"But did you like him?" she persisted.

"More to the point, do you think he liked me?" Shane said, hedging.

"He's a little judgmental sometimes, I admit. But you'll learn to love him. He just wants what's best for me."

"He sure orders you around a lot," he finally contributed.

"I'm used to taking care of him. Mother died, so by the time I was ten, I did all the housework, all the cleaning, for Dad and Buddy. I guess he just got used to me doing things."

"Alex, can you get us tickets to The Producers?" Shane mimicked. "Can you go ask the waiter to get us more bread? He doesn't have a broken leg, does he?"

"So, you didn't like him?"

"Yeah, I liked him. It's just... He treats you a little like hired help."

Then Chooch saved him: "What Dad is saying is, we're used to seeing you be in charge. You're everything around here for us, and we always want to do stuff for you. It's a little different seeing you with your brother..
. B
ut we think it's neat the way you take care of him. That's what he meant."

"Exactly what I meant." He smiled at her.

Chooch went inside to do his homework while they sat in the backyard, looking out over the Venice canals.

Venice was located halfway between Santa Monica and Marina Del Rey. It had been built by Abb ot Kinney in the thirties, to resemble the canals and bridges of Venice, Italy, but the eight-block area had gone downhill. Just two blocks from the ocean, it still managed to retain a sense of quaint, rustic charm, but the once grand houses and reproduction gondolas had been replaced by fiberglass rowboats and a mixture of stucco houses and wood-frame tilt-ups.

Regardless, Shane loved his little house. It spoke to him in ways he found hard to describe. He and Alexa sat in his metal lawn chairs, watching the moonlight waver on the still waters of the shallow canals.

"Aside from wrecking my car and seeing Jody's ghost,
"
she said, trying to be light
-
hearted about it, "how was the rest of your day?
"

"Fine.
"

"I hope you didn't do something else--start running around investigating the Jody thing."

He didn't answer.

"I'm just interested," she said softly. "And a little worried."

"Captain Medwick is missing. He was building a birdhouse for his granddaughter, then went to the hardware store for brass screws yesterday and didn't come back."

She sat quietly, her cop instincts buzzing with this fact, just as his had. "Doesn't have to be connected," she finally said.

"I know."

After that they both fell silent awhile. Then he gave her the rest of it: "I also went to see Lauren Dean. She says that it was definitely Jody on the coroner's tray. She said the back of his head was blown off."

Alexa didn't say anything.

"Only thing wrong with that is, I think she's lying," he said.

"Why would she lie about something like that?"

"Because she's still getting paid by the city. There was a City Payroll Department envelope on her hall table. If Jody shot himself, why would the city be paying her death benefits?"

"There could be lots of reasons. She could owe money to the credit union and be getting statements, or it could be tax material..
. O
r she..." Alexa stopped and looked over at him critically as he leaned down and pulled out a blade of grass, then stuck it in his mouth.

"You're not gonna give up on this, are you?"

"I'm just telling you what I saw."

"I'm gonna set up a meeting for you with Commander Shephard."

"Why are you gonna do that?" Shane asked, instantly wary.

"I want him to show you Jody's autopsy report and crime-scene pictures. He could get those for you. He heads the Detective Services Group. They supervise SIS. Jody was in Special Investigations when he died, so Commander Shephard can pull all that stuff from the custodian of department records at the Personnel Division. He can get it for you without turning it into a three-act play. You've gotta get this off your mind."

Shane sat there, chewing on the grass stalk, turning it between his teeth, feeling it tickling his tongue. "Good idea," he finally said. "Thanks. I'd really like to see all that."

"How soon do you want to go see him?" she asked.

"How 'bout tomorrow," he answered softly.

Chapter
6.

AFTER YOU GET used to it, it's not so bad here," Jody said. "It's not heaven, but it's not hell. You'd like it, Shane. We got everything we need." Jody was talking to Shane, but he was lying in his casket. The back of his head was missing and he had on his old Pirate's Little League uniform. It was stretched tight over his adult body, his pitcher's mitt laid ceremoniously across his chest.