Miles to Go Page 5

  Captain Williams gave Delta the next two days off, although she spent one of them with Internal Affairs filing her report and answering a multitude of questions. They drilled her for hours, focusing on every minute detail imaginable. They kept coming back to why she had never drawn her weapon. To Delta, the questions were aimed at finding fault, and finger pointing, instead of collecting enough information to go after the killer.

  Procedure was more important than outcome; tactical errors, if there were any, were their greatest focus; yes, they should have waited for backup, yes they could have pulled them over on a different, more well lighted street, yes, they could have had their weapons drawn, and yes, she should have attempted to bring them down. But none of these answers would bring Miles back, nor would they aid in finding the mysterious blue van. She also hated being treated like a suspect instead of a victim. Her partner was dead. Dead. Instead of receiving sympathy, her actions would be used as an example of what not to do. Somewhere in the process, someone had forgotten to tell these guys that police work was people oriented, not just facts and figures and product. Miles was just a sad statistic to these guys, and she knew it.

  And she hated them for that.

  When the barrage of questions finally ceased, Delta found herself preparing for a funeral she never anticipated attending.

  “You hanging in there alright?” Connie asked, handing the mascara tube to Delta. In two days, Delta had been home just once, to feed the cats. She couldn’t bear being alone. When she had been, even for a short period of time, she’d felt a combination of cold numbness and searing pain.

  “By a thread. I’ll be fine until I see Jennifer and the kids.” Delta had called the house on three different occasions, but all three times, Jennifer fell apart and her mother ended up taking the phone from her. Delta knew that seeing the three of them huddled together like fawns lost in the wilderness would rip open whatever was left of the fragmented emotions inside her. Then, her tears would not be for Miles, nor for her own sense of loss, but for them. They had lost a father and a husband. Surely that hurt more than losing a friend. Or maybe pain was an incomparable emotion that couldn’t really be weighed against itself.

  As their car rolled slowly past the church, Delta was struck by the number of blue, gray, and beige uniformed officers who were flooding into the small church.

  “Death sure brings us out of the woodwork, doesn’t it?” Gina put her arm around Delta and pulled her closer.

  Delta inhaled slowly through her nose. The last three days felt like she was walking in someone else’s nightmare and she couldn’t escape. She wanted to believe she would awaken at any moment, to find things back to normal. But she knew better. And, she knew worse.

  “Ready?” Connie asked, turning off the engine and unstrapping her seat belt.

  “It all feels so unreal.”

  Gina scooted from the seat and held the door open for Delta. “This won’t really hit you until you get back into the patrol car without Miles. You have a long grieving process ahead of you. This, I’m afraid to say, is really just the beginning.”

  “The beginning?”

  Gina nodded sadly as she lightly slammed the car door shut once Delta had exited. Gina was the head nurse in one of the operating rooms at Mt. Glenn Hospital. She had a Bachelor’s Degree in psychology, and when she spoke, which was not often, people tended to listen. Delta listened hard to her now.

  “Funerals signify the transition for the living, not, as some believe, for the dead. They’re an indicator for us to acknowledge that we are sending the individual off to a better place and that our lives must begin again, without them. Miles’s death is a time of transition for Jennifer, his children, his friends.”

  “So it’s all about accepting a life devoid of his presence?”

  Gina nodded. “Maybe not this very second, but in there, you’ll feel it working in you.” Gina tapped Delta’s chest. “You’ll feel the transition in your spirit as you learn that.”

  Delta sighed. She didn’t feel like a new beginning.

  “There’s Jennifer,” Connie said, pointing. “She looks awful.”

  Delta took a deep breath and approached her. The two women stood, not knowing what to say to ease the other’s pain. A river of sorrow seemed to flow between them, yet there was a small comfort in knowing that they weren’t truly alone in their pain. Finally, Delta looked into Jennifer’s sad, gray eyes, and saw the same fear, the same sense of loss, only deeper, more gaping; the river was much larger for Jennifer than Delta could even imagine.

  Wrapping her arms around Jennifer, Delta held her in a firm hug. The moment they touched, the river burst and Jennifer began sobbing.

  After a few minutes of heart wrenching crying that wracked her body with violent jerks, Jennifer slowly pulled back and took a tissue out of her purse to wipe her eyes. “I . . . I suppose you know . . . I haven’t been willing to talk to anyone from the station.”

  Delta nodded. She looked around and caught the eye of the minister, who moved silently over to the pair of women. Delta asked if there was someplace they could go for a few minutes to compose themselves. After showing them to a sparse but comfortable room just off the main hall, the man left them alone. Delta sat down next to Jennifer and waited for Miles’s wife to continue where she’d paused.

  “You know why I haven’t spoken to them, too. They would only have fed me a line of shit. They always think us wives are too weak to handle the truth. But we’re the ones who see our husbands break down. I was the one who held Miles while he cried after that horrible child abuse case at the preschool. I may not have been there to see the things he did, but I felt what seeing them did to him. I’m stronger than that, Delta. You know it, too.”

  Delta nodded again.

  “And I couldn’t talk to you because . . . because it hurt so much. You were there. You held him as he died. It was too unbearable to be that close to his death.”

  “I understand. Really.”

  “And I knew, I know, that you will tell me the truth. You won’t hide anything from me, even if it hurts.”

  Delta reached for Jennifer’s hands. They were chilled. “I understand that you saw the whole thing.” She winced and then nodded once, feeling her jaw tighten.

  “I just want to know . . .” Jennifer struggled to maintain control. “Did he suffer?”

  Squeezing Jennifer’s hand, Delta shook her head. “No, Jen, he didn’t. It all happened so fast.”

  Jennifer fell back into the brown leather chair. “Thank the Lord. I was so afraid—”

  “We did everything by the numbers, Jen. He wasn’t careless, he didn’t screw up. No matter what the final investigation report says, you must believe that.”

  Jennifer nodded. “I do know that. He would never endanger your life with heroics or stupid antics.” Jennifer let out a deep sigh. She looked twenty years older than her thirty four years. Her eyes were sunken and dark, and wrinkles around her eyes and mouth had formed just in the short time since Delta has last seen her. Delta knew from experience she hadn’t slept much.

  Leaning over, Jennifer touched Delta’s knee. “How are you doing?”

  “I’m hanging in there. You don’t lose a friend like Miles without it tearing a grand canyon size hole in your heart.” Delta sighed loudly. “The nightmares are the worst.”

  “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you.”

  For a moment, Delta drifted off to the recurring image plaguing her; Miles alive, laughing, vibrant one moment, and violently ripped away from her the next.

  “Delta, I know how much you meant to Miles. He talked about you all the time.” Jennifer grinned, the expression tired but sincere. “As fond of you as he was, if I didn’t know you were a lesbian, I’d have thought he was having an affair.”

  Delta grinned back. Her sexuality had been a topic of conversation in the patrol car on many occasions, and Delta remembered, years ago, when Miles shared with her how relieved Jennifer was to know tha
t his partner had absolutely zero interest in him.

  Before Delta could reply, the minister poked his head around the door. “Excuse me, Mrs. Brookman, but I’m afraid we need to get started.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Turning back to Delta as she stood, Jennifer looked her square in the face. “He wasn’t, was he?”

  It took Delta a second to realize what Jen was asking. “What? Having an affair?”

  Jennifer nodded. “Or something like that.”

  Two months ago, Delta would have been taken aback by such a question from Jennifer, but she remembered her own doubts just days ago. “No, Jen, he wasn’t. And I honestly believe he would have confided in me if he had. We didn’t have many secrets.”

  Jennifer gazed searchingly into Delta’s eyes. “I believe you,” she said, bowing her head as if of her question. “I guess I just needed to hear it from you.”

  Delta followed Jennifer out the door and took her seat next to Miles’s children. They too, looked older than their pre-teen years. In all her life, Delta had never felt more pain than she did when she looked down at the two innocent faces staring back at her. They did not understand death. They did not understand what would possess someone to do what had been done to their father. Their innocence, their fragility, drove the pain deeper.

  As the Father opened to a church that was wall-to-wall with blue uniforms, Delta glanced around at the mournful faces. She had worked with many of the people there, and many of the married officers had their wives sitting closely to them, as though warding off the angel of death. There were lawyers, doctors, merchants from their beat, and people who could have been Miles’s childhood friends. All these people, most of whom Delta had never met, all shared a tiny piece of the memory of Miles Brookman. If they had nothing else in common, they had, at least, all known a very special person.

  As Delta started to turn back, her eyes remained glued to the face of a pretty young woman sitting in the back pew. Delta scanned her memory bank. With beautiful, blonde hair flowing over her right shoulder, Delta zeroed in on the red lipstick. Red lipstick. The color brought the red pumps and leather skirt to her memory. Miles had stopped to see this woman the evening that he--

  Snapping her head back to face the front, Delta’s palms began to sweat. What was a hooker doing at a cop’s funeral? And what was this particular hooker doing here? Did she know something about Miles’s activities? Oh God, Delta thought, how could she sit through the whole funeral, only concentrating on whether or not that woman would slip through her fingers? What would Miles or Jennifer think if she suddenly raced through the church chasing after a woman?

  Miles, she thought wryly, would say she was a damn good cop. Turning back, the woman locked eyes with Delta. For a moment, neither moved. Suddenly, adeptly, the woman slid off the pew and scooted out the door. A fraction of a second later, Delta tore down the center aisle in pursuit.

  Two steps from the door, six steps away from catching her, an extremely large gentleman known to all as “Bear” leapt out in front of Delta and stopped her.

  “Delta, it’s gonna be okay,” Bear said soothingly, keeping his voice low. Taking Delta into his arms, he hugged her tenderly. “We understand how hard this must be on you.”

  Delta looked up at the hulking man taking up most of the aisle and shook her head. The church had grown extremely quiet in the wake of her mad, unexplained dash, but the service quickly resumed.

  “Miles would want you to stay,” Bear whispered. A California Highway Patrolman, Bear had gone to the academy with Miles and had come as backup for Miles a couple of times just because he cared. The two men had a bond Delta always admired, and even now, Bear was thinking about what Miles would want.

  But Delta knew better.

  Thinking of the only thing that could get him out of her way, Delta stood on her tiptoes and whispered, “I think I’m going to puke.”

  Immediately, Bear stepped aside, allowing Delta to brush past him and go through the door.

  Once outside, she looked up and down the street, but the beautiful blonde with the red lipstick was gone.

  Looking into the sky, Delta sighed. “Okay Miles, she beat me this time, but I swear to God, I’m going to find out the secret you’ve been hiding from us all. And if I have to, I’m going to twist it out of your little friend in red.”

  * * *

  “Have you been back to work?” Jennifer asked, handing Delta a cup of coffee.

  “I’m on light duty until Internal Affairs is finished with their investigation. God, is it boring.” Delta not to look at the box on the floor that contained most of Miles’s police gear. Jennifer had called her earlier that morning saying that she had found some peculiar things in Miles’s safety deposit box. Delta wasted no time in coming over, but the box, small and filled with items that were once so important to Miles, struck a melancholic chord deep within her.

  “Miles used to say that Internal Affairs were like the keystone cops; they couldn’t tell the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.”

  Delta smiled. She’d heard him say that a number of times.

  “How is the investigation going?”

  Delta shrugged. “Same old stuff. I wish someone would answer my questions.”

  “What questions are those?”

  Shaking her head, Delta leaned on her left elbow. “Where the hell was our backup? We requested backup nearly two full minutes before we made the stop. How long did they want us to wait?” Delta rubbed her tired eyes. She had asked that question nearly a hundred times.

  “Miles didn’t want to wait, did he?” Jennifer knew her husband well.

  “No, Jen, he didn’t. They were very late, especially in that situation. If I were I.A., I’d be asking our backup a whole lot more questions.”

  Jennifer nodded. Her gray eyes were soft and caring. “I want you to know that I don’t blame you. I know how much you loved him, and I know you would never have let anything happen to him if you could have prevented it.”

  Delta’s eyes welled up. God, how she had needed someone to say that to her. Instantly, half her burden of self imposed guilt lifted from her drooping shoulders. “Thank you. I’ve played and replayed the scene in my head a million times, wondering what if...” Delta looked down at her hands. She felt tired and old.

  “Doing that will only make you crazy.”

  “Sometimes, Jen, I feel like I’m already there.”

  Jen leaned closer to Delta. “There’s something more, isn’t there?”

  Delta looked up from her hands and into Jennifer’s face. She didn’t wish to burden a woman who had lost the most important part of her life. “Sort of. I don’t have a handle on anything concrete yet, but when I do, I’ll let you know.”

  Turning from Delta, Jennifer pulled a small spiral bound notebook out of the box on the floor. “Maybe this will help. When I went to get his off duty weapon, I found this tucked inside a manila envelope.”

  Taking the pad from her, Delta opened it up and found a list of a series of numbers. The first number read, 7336412201. Delta stared at the list of about thirty numbers for a long time.

  “What do they mean?”

  Delta shrugged. “Beats me. I’ve never seen them before.”

  “Do you think that Miles was in some kind of trouble?”

  Delta lowered the pad and cocked her head. “What makes you ask that?”

  Looking out the window at the soft rain, Jennifer sighed. “He’d been acting so strange lately.”

  “Strange?”

  You know, not coming home until well after his shift, leaving really early for work. That’s . . . that’s why I asked you what I did at the funeral.”

  “Did you ever confront him about it?”

  “I did ask why he was getting home so late. All he would ever say was that this was his ticket to bigger and better things.”

  Delta nodded. He had said that to her as well. Whatever he had been doing, the generic story remained the same for both of th
em.

  “I wish I knew what to say, Jen.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. You being here is enough. The kids ask about you often.” Jennifer reached out and laid her hand on Delta’s leg. “I don’t think it’s quite hit them that daddy isn’t coming home anymore.”

  Delta gently laid her hand on top of Jennifer’s. They were still cold. “Is there anything I can do?”

  Jennifer pushed the manila envelope closer to Delta. “Finish what he started. He would want that.”

  Delta looked down at the worn envelope.

  “There’s one more thing I’d like you to have.” Reaching into the box, Jennifer pulled out a small package wrapped in cotton and handed it to Delta

  Carefully unwrapping it, Delta looked down at Miles’s shiny, silver shield. “But I thought...”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I only told them that I was burying him with it on. I know that he would have wanted you to have it, Del.”

  Looking down at the glittering badge, Delta could almost feel Miles’s presence.

  Wiping away a tear, Delta looked up at Jennifer through blurry eyes. “Thank you, Jen. I’ll treasure it forever.” Slipping it into her pocket, Delta grabbed the envelope and headed for the door. “If there’s anything I can do . . . anything.”

  Jennifer hugged her tightly before opening the door. “Find who killed my husband, Delta. If anyone can do that, it’s you.”

  “I’ll give it my best. I can promise you that much.”

  * * *

  Staring out the bar’s window, neon beer names flickering on and off behind her, Delta looked at their reflection in the crystal of her watch. This was the second night she’d come downtown hoping to see some sign of the red leather skirt and pumps. The earlier heavy rain had slowed to a fine mist, and the city’s nightlife bloomed. Tonight was the night, Delta told herself, that she would catch that woman and find out everything she could. Three hours later, she saw her chance to make good on that promise.

  After waiting and watching, Delta saw the blonde on the corner of the street outside. Jumping off her barstool, Delta raced through the front door and across the street, dodging two cars at the intersection.