Tradition of Deceit (29 page)

Forty-Seven

Ariel had left for
work, and Chloe was dozing on the sofa that afternoon, when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and saw Roel­ke McKenna on the front step.

“I looked up the address.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hope you don't mind.”

“Did you find Rick's killer?”

“I did. Last night.” He noticed the cast on her wrist. “Wait. What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

“You better come in. We have a lot to talk about.” She led the way into the living room and settled into a chair.

By the time Roelke had heard a condensed version of Chloe's week, he'd gone from sitting rigid with knee bouncing to pacing furiously with fists clenched. “So I'm going to be fine,” Chloe concluded.

He turned on her. “I can't
believe
you didn't tell me what was going on up here!”

“It's not like you gave me much chance. You had all you could handle after Rick died.”

“I don't care. Holy toboggans, Chloe! I don't think it's too much to ask that you tell me if you get mixed up in a murder investigation!”

Chloe wasn't in the mood for a lecture. “Would you sit down? I can't stand you looming over me.” She waited until he dropped onto the sofa. “Besides, you're really not in the best position to accuse
me
of keeping secrets right now.”

He scrubbed his face with his palms. “Yeah. I called Libby early this morning. She said she'd told you about Patrick. And that you're pretty angry.”

“I am. How could you keep a secret like, you know, having a
brother
?”

“It's complicated.”

“I don't care! Couples don't keep secrets like that.”

“I never meant to deceive you,” Roelke said. “I don't like to think about Patrick. So he just sort of … never came up.”

“Still—”

“Can you look me in the eye and swear that I know everything there is to know about you? That you've never not mentioned something important to me?”

Chloe opened her mouth. Then she shut it again. How could she argue? She had promised not to reveal Mary's complicity in Whyte's murder. Chloe had also promised Ariel that she wouldn't reveal Toby's role in Whyte's death.

Roelke's eyes narrowed, and he flipped from defensive to suspicious. “What?”

“I'm looking at the situation from both sides,” Chloe hedged. “I
was
really angry at you. But … I do get that there are times when it may be really hard, or even impossible, to talk about something.”

Roelke leaned his head back. After a long moment he said, “I got really pissed at Rick because he'd kept secrets from me. Then I ended up not telling Dobry some stuff. I was trying to protect him.”

Like Ariel was trying to protect her brother, Chloe thought. She looked at Roelke, trying to figure out what should come next. He is profoundly exhausted, she thought. Roelke's best friend had been shot less than a week ago, and he'd nailed the killer late last night. Nonetheless, he'd hit the highway
very
early this morning. As soon as he could, he'd come to find her.

“We need to talk about Patrick,” she said, “but not today.” She hesitated, then left the chair and snuggled on the sofa beside him.

She hadn't yet heard the details of Roelke's week. She still needed to sort out her own feelings about the promises she'd made, the secrets she had to keep, and what that meant for her and Roelke. Maybe it meant bad things. Maybe when they did talk, she'd realize that much as she cared for Roelke McKenna, she wasn't up for cop life. But right this moment, she was just too tired to figure it out.

A week later, the funeral for Rick Almirez took place with all the love and honor his family, friends, and the law enforcement community could provide. Chief Bliss did not attend. To Roelke's enormous relief, Captain Heikinen also did not attend. Heikinen had admitted to an affair with Lucia Bliss. He'd admitted that after Rick was killed, she'd threatened to expose the relationship if he didn't give her a chance to pull Rick's FI cards, just in case—she claimed—he'd mentioned talking to someone about her own arrest for domestic abuse. Heikinen swore that he hadn't given Bliss the key to Evidence and hadn't had a clue that she had stolen the gun she used to kill Rick. Heikinen had not yet resigned, but Roelke figured it was inevitable.

Some of Rick's friends shared memories during the memorial service. Roelke wasn't up for that, but he did read a quotation from the Bible: “
I consecrate this house you have built, I place my name here forever; My eyes and my heart will be here for all time.
That's from the First Book of Kings. The Polish people in Rick's old beat chose that verse for the Basilica of St. Josaphat. I like that last part especially.”

Ten days later, a much smaller group gathered at Jody's apartment to watch the final episode of
M*A*S*H
. “I hope Jody doesn't regret holding what she and Rick had planned as a fun party,” Chloe murmured before they went in inside. But as they watched B. J. Hunnicutt struggle to say good-bye to Hawkeye Pierce after so many shared experiences, Roelke decided that the gathering was perfect. The friends who had shared so much with Rick Almirez laughed a little and cried a lot, and somehow they all felt better.

“That was good, don't you think?” Chloe asked, when she and Roelke settled into his truck afterwards.

“Yeah,” Roelke said. He started the engine but didn't put the truck in gear. He knew Chloe had been giving him time, but there were unspoken things hanging between them. For some reason, this seemed like the time to confront them.

Chloe gave him a sideways look. “It seemed like you and Dobry were avoiding each other tonight. Are you two okay?”

“No,” he admitted. “Dobry was too quick to believe that Rick was careless. And if he hadn't kept Bliss's affair with Heikinen secret from me, maybe I would have figured stuff out quicker. It's hard to just go back to the way things were.”

Chloe sighed. “Yeah. I'm sorry that's the case.”

“Me and Dobry will patch things up. Compared to Bliss …” Roel­ke let that trail away. He didn't want to think about Bliss, so he changed the subject. “I got a letter from Erin Litkowski today.”

“You
did
? Where is she?”

“I don't know. Somewhere safe. She wanted me to know that she'd tried to get in touch with me, but when she learned I'd left the city force, she got hooked up with Rick instead. She asked him to keep an eye on her husband. I'm not clear on the details of Rick's involvement—how he got connected with Lobo, for example.”

“You may never know,” Chloe said.

“Yeah.” Not with Rick dead and Erin gone again. The loose ends bugged him. He
suspected
that Rick had quietly gotten involved in the good work being done at Eve's House—probably on his own time, above and beyond what duty required from a beat cop. Roelke wanted to step into that role, to try to help in whatever way Rick had been trying to help. That Helen woman, director at the shelter, had given him exactly zero encouragement about coming back. Roelke figured he'd give it some time and then try again. I'll wear her down, he thought. Surely a cop could help somehow.

“Did you learn anything else from the letter?”

Chloe's question brought Roelke back to the moment. “She said that Rick got her the job at Kip's. One night she happened to hear a woman talking to a friend. The woman is a secretary at the DA's office, and she was real upset about domestic assault charges against a cop named Lucia Bliss being dropped. Erin told Rick. And Rick—”

“—wasn't willing to look the other way, even for an old friend.”

“Right. After Rick got killed, Erin was terrified that any other cop she confided in might end up dead. She made Kip swear that he wouldn't admit she'd been there.” Roelke stared blindly through the windshield. Erin and Kip and Rick had tried to protect him by keeping secrets. All it had done was piss him off. And yet … “I guess sometimes people have what they think are good reasons for keeping quiet.” He realized how she might interpret that. “I don't mean me not telling you about Patrick. I do get why you were angry with me about that.”

“Okay,” she said cautiously.

This was
so
damn hard. “It's not just that I'm ashamed of him. It's also that …” His voice trailed away.

“You're not like Patrick. And it's not your fault he did what he did.”

“Maybe. But I should have been able to protect my mom. When you're a little kid, you think your dad will protect everybody, you know? And then when he fell apart, Patrick said to me, ‘Don't get into it with Dad. I'll take care of you and Mom.' And he did try for a while. But in the end, it was up to me. Mom moved out to the farm, and Dad died, but Patrick—I saw what was happening. I should have been able to stop him.”

“You couldn't have saved Patrick, Roelke. You and Patrick grew up in the same house, with the same parents. He made his own choices. You've made different choices.”

He shrugged. It wasn't that simple.

“Rick knew what kind of person you are. And you guys were best friends. That means something.”

“Maybe.” Roelke studied his gloves in the dashboard's faint glow. “You know … the week we were apart, I really thought I'd lost you, too. I want to be with you, Chloe, but I'll understand if you say it's all more than you bargained for. Me, my family, my job … all of it.”

“Jody told me that it's really hard to be in a relationship with a cop.”

“I know it is.”

“Why did you get so cranky after the wedding?”

He tried to figure that out. It seemed so long ago. “We were there with my friends, and I could tell that you weren't really having a good time. It bummed me out, I guess.”

“Well, I can't say I had a
great
time. It was overwhelming at moments. But I did enjoy hearing you play, and meeting your friends. And seeing you so happy.”

Well, hunh, he thought. “Oh.”

“Jody also said that Rick wouldn't talk to her about a lot of stuff.”

Roelke sighed.
Now
they were getting to it. “He—I—yeah. I'm not surprised she said that.”

“I know you did what you needed to do after Rick got shot,” Chloe said. “But it hurt to discover that you'd shut me out like that.”

“I know that wasn't good. But honestly, it was the best I could do right then.” He became aware of a growing ache in his chest. This is it, he thought. She's about to break up with me.

“If our relationship is going to have any chance at all, you have to try to let me in during the bad times.”

Try, Roelke thought. She just said
try
. “I will try to do better,” he promised.

“Good.”

“That has to go both ways, you know. You didn't tell me what was going on in Minneapolis, either.”

“I wasn't given much opportunity,” she reminded him. “But you're right. It has to go both ways.”

He waited, hoping she would tell him whatever it was about her time in Minnesota that she'd left out. There was something there, he knew it. But seconds passed, and he realized that even now, in the middle of this very conversation, she wasn't going to share. That didn't feel so good. But after the way he'd acted when Rick got shot, he figured he'd better let it go.

“The thing is,” Chloe said, “I need to know what kind of couple we're going to be, Roelke. Are we the kind who has fun and enjoys each other as long as nothing goes wrong? Or are we going to try for something more?”

“I want more.”

“Part of me does, too. But I've also been trying to figure out if I'm strong enough to cope with the reality of your job. Knowing that every time you go to work, I could get the kind of phone call that Jody got.”

Roelke knew Chloe was strong enough. She was one of the strongest people he'd ever met. But the answer had to come from her.

“I can't live in fear all the time,” she added.

The ache below Roelke's ribs grew stronger. He watched a city truck drive by, spraying salt on the road because more snow was forecast. “I'm a cop,” he said. “I don't want to do anything else.”

“I wouldn't ask you to. It's who you are. The whole fear thing is my problem. Something I have to try to set aside, if I can.” She looked at him. “I'm proud of who you are, Roelke. Even though it's really hard sometimes, you're the one I want to be with.”

Roelke felt a lump rise in his throat. “I'm not sure why.”

“Because you're a good man. Because you'd die for the people you care about. Because you drove to Minneapolis as soon as it was humanly possible, not even knowing I'd had a horrid week, just because.” Chloe took a deep breath. “Because I love you.”

Roelke kissed her—the kind of long, slow kiss they hadn't shared since Rick's death. Something eased inside, indefinable but good.

“I love you too,” he said, when he finally let her up for air. “Let's go home.”