“I love you, son.”
“I love you, too.”
* * *
Remy Beaudreau’s eyes were almost black, and something about them seemed chaotic, like they were barely containing mayhem. He was suffused with a manic energy even though he was sitting perfectly still. Sam would never know what his deeper waters were, but he felt an instant kinship with him—they were two men riding a razor.
“You’ve been through an ordeal, Mr. Easton. I’m sorry for that, and very sorry about your wife.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.”
“Thank you for the courtesy of stopping by. This is more curiosity than anything, so I won’t keep you long.”
“How can I help you?”
“I’m sure Maggie … Detective Nolan told you I’m working the Miracle Mile killings.”
Maggie. So that’s what her friends called her. “She did. You want to know about Rolf Hesse?”
“Actually, no.”
“You don’t think he’s the Monster?”
“As of fifteen minutes ago, I’m sure he’s not. We chased that down and he has solid alibis for all three murders.”
Sam frowned. Rolf had seemed like a blue-ribbon candidate. “He was cunning, are you sure about that?”
“Positive. He was out of the country for the first two, visiting his father in Germany.”
“What about the third?”
“He was at UCLA, filming and editing a webinar on storyboarding with several other students and two professors. Trust me, we wanted him to be good for it, too, but it’s just not possible.”
Sam felt slightly embarrassed for putting Rolf up on a pedestal of demonic, superhuman capability while at the same time impugning the competency of one of the country’s most elite homicide divisions. “But if you’re sure Rolf’s not the Monster, then why am I here?”
“I’m interested in Ronald Doerr. You served with him.”
Sam blinked at him, bewildered. “I did. He died two years ago, killed in action.”
“I know.”
“So why are you asking about him?”
“We found a piece of paper with your address and his fingerprints at a crime scene two nights ago.”
“Another Monster crime scene?”
“Possibly. At the Rehbein Building.”
“I read about that, but it sounded like a drug thing.”
“It may have been.”
“But you don’t think so.”
He shrugged.
“That’s bizarre, but Ronald Doerr obviously isn’t the Monster.”
“No.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“He was either there at some point carrying your address or he came in contact with a piece of paper somebody else dropped at the scene. Somebody who knew him. Maybe somebody who knows you, too.”
“We didn’t have any mutual acquaintances outside of our squad. Is there anything that ties the piece of paper directly to the Monster?”
Beaudreau looked down and leafed through the pages of a file. “No. But since his prints popped from his military service and there was a BOLO on you, it was something I had to follow. In Homicide, you chase every single thing down to the end, whether it makes any sense or not.”
Sam shook his head in bafflement. “I can’t explain it.”
“Did he ever come to visit you here?”
“Never. Rondo and I served together—Rondo is what we called him—but we were never close. Not even friends really, I guess. You rely on people in that type of situation, but it doesn’t necessarily make you buddies. The last time I remember seeing him was a few days before the blast. IED. They found his dog tags. That’s how they identified the bodies, it was pretty much all that was left.”
Beaudreau winced. “I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.”
“You survived. How?”
“I was on foot behind the vehicle when it was hit. Dumb luck,” he said, thinking of Nolan.
Beaudreau fixed his tempest eyes on Sam’s, then reached into his desk, withdrew a card, and wrote something on it before passing it over. “If you think of anything, give me a call. Use the number on the back, it’s my private cell. Meantime, take care of yourself, go home, and get some rest.”
“I will. I just have one more thing to do.”
Chapter Seventy-six
THE SHARP SMELLS OF FORMALIN AND death and antiseptic. The chill of the room. The ominous sound of a metal drawer sliding out on its tracks. The crackle of a body bag, the ratchet of a zipper.
And his tiny, pale Yuki, a hideous black hole despoiling the left side of her forehead. She was motionless in this desolate place of sorrows, her flesh cold and stiff, far beyond the realm of the living and hopefully somewhere much better.
Sam’s throat constricted. She was gone, truly gone. He touched her hair, still shiny in death—wasn’t that strange that her hair should look so alive when the rest of her didn’t?
The last time he’d seen her she’d been crying. Their last moments together shouldn’t have been so sad. But yesterday they’d been two islands separated by turbulent water, privately despairing over the widening gap between them, the ugly end to a beautiful thing, and neither one of them had been able to confront it.
If they’d been truly honest with each other, maybe things would have turned out differently. For all of her insights, Dr. Frolich hadn’t been able to tell him that very simple thing because he hadn’t been honest with her either. He’d lied to everybody in order to support the lies he told himself. And Yuki had done exactly the same thing. Denial had been their shared flaw and it had been ruinous.
He thought about their lives together and their dreams for the future that hadn’t included imminent funeral plans. Two entwined lives struggling with so much loss and yet always love. Even yesterday the love had been there—battered, different, but still there. It would always survive in him as long as he lived, and he wasn’t going to let either life or love go.
Sam forgave her and he hoped that she would forgive him, if it was possible wherever she was. And maybe one day he’d be able to forgive himself.
He bent, kissed her cold forehead, and said goodbye.
* * *
The sun had risen by the time Nolan dropped Melody and Sam off at the parking lot of Will Rogers State Park. She got out with them and shook their hands, which seemed like a cold and perfunctory gesture considering everything they’d been through together. She was already calling them by their first names in her mind, but business was business and they weren’t friends. It was just trauma bonding, and that would dissipate as soon as she left them.
“Take care, you two. I’ll be on mandatory leave for a few days, but you have my private number, in case…”
In case what? You want to have coffee and keep alive a horrid episode we all want to forget?
“… in case you think of something else pertinent in regard to what happened. The Monster is still out there, and although there doesn’t appear to be a connection, things can change.”
The three of them stood awkwardly for a moment, listening to the maniacal chuckling of a mockingbird, until Melody finally broke the stationary tableau by reaching out to give her a hug, which stunned her. Her arms stayed stiff at her sides for a moment, but eventually she returned the hug and felt a warmth that made her throat tighten. It was hard to know what Sam was thinking because only half of his face had expression, but they locked eyes for a moment before she left and again, she felt the strange sensation that he had brought Max closer.