23.
I was sitting with my hands behind my head and feet up on one corner of my desk. This is a classic detective pose, and I struck it as often as I could. Mostly because it was a good way to take a nap without appearing to do so. I did my best to keep my shoes off the desktop's gold tooled leather.
There was a knock on my office door. Thanks to Fuck Nut, I kept the door locked these days. I took out my Browning, held it at my hip and opened the door.
The man I found standing before me was perhaps the last person I expected to see. Hell, I hadn't seen or spoken to him in two years. It was my father. His name was Cooper Knighthorse.
* * *
He studied me for a few seconds, then looked coolly at the gun in my hand. "You could scare off clients with that thing."
"Yeah, well, you're not a client, and someone's sicced a hitman on my ass."
He stood easily six inches shorter than me, which put him around five ten. His shoulders were wider than mine, and he had freakishly large hands, hands which had pummeled my backside more than once. But it was his eyes that drew one's attention. Ice cold and blue. Calculating and fearless. Devoid of anything living. Eyes of a corpse.
He smiled slowly, the lips curling up languidly. When most people smile their eyes crinkle, giving them crow's feet over time. My father would never have to worry about crow's feet. His eyes didn't crinkle. Hell, they didn't know how to crinkle. When he smiled, as he did now, it was only with the corners of his mouth. Needless to say, the smile radiated little warmth.
"Well," he said. "Are you going to invite me in?"
I stepped aside and he moved past me smoothly, carrying himself easily and lightly. He stepped into my four hundred square foot office which paled in comparison to the monster he oversaw in L.A. He stood in the middle of the room, surveying it slowly, taking in the pint-sized refrigerator on one wall, the well-stocked trophy case adjacent to it, my sofa, the sink, and finally the desk.
His assessment was over embarrassingly quick. He turned to face me with no emotion on his face. Did he approve of the place? Or not? Was he proud of his only son, or disappointed? Impossible to tell. Did I need his approval? Impossible to tell. But probably, and it galled me to admit it.
He was wearing a western-style denim shirt and khaki carpenter pants with a hammer loop. There was no hammer in the loop. His evenly-distributed silver hair was perfectly parted to one side. He was the picture of fitness and vitality, health and ruggedness. Just don't look at the eyes.
"So," he said, "who wants you dead?"
I stepped around him, slipped into my leather seat and motioned toward the Mr. Coffee. He shook his head and eased himself down carefully into one of the three client chairs. The chair, which usually creaked, didn't creak this time.
"Someone wants me to back off a case."
"Any idea who that someone is?"
"Not yet."
"Would be good to know that. Better for your health. Who's the hitman?"
"Older guy, wears a hoop earring. Hell of a shooter. Eyes like a shark." I neglected to say: eyes like yours.
My father leaned back a little and allowed his cold eyes to spill across my face. They settled on my damaged ear. "He do your ear?"
"Yes."
"He's one sick motherfucker."
"You know him?"
"Runs a kiddie porn magazine. Would be good for society if he disappeared." He paused. "I can take care of him."
"No."
He studied me for a moment. I refused to turn away from his gaze. "Is he a better shooter than you?" he asked.
"We'll find out."
"Or you can just drop the case," said my father. "And he'll leave you alone."
"Or not."
He smiled. "Or not."
We sat together in silence. Muted street sounds came through the closed window. My refrigerator kicked on and hummed away. My father lifted his gaze without moving his head and scanned the wall behind me. He was looking at the pictures, the articles, the bullet holes in the wall. I could kiss my security deposit goodbye.
"I watched every game," he said.
This was news to me, but I remained silent.
"I was there for every game. At least every home game. I always sat in the back rows. How did you get so goddamn good?"
"Must have been all those special moments we spent playing catch in the park on Sunday afternoons."
"There are some things I regret in this life," he said. "Not being a father to you is one of them." He reached inside his pocket and removed a pouch of photographs. "These were taken on the last day your mother was alive."
Something froze within me, as if my stomach had suddenly been dropped into a bucket of ice. My father, the great Cooper Knighthorse, detective extraordinaire, set the packet on the table.
"I loved her the best way I could, Jim."
"Why are you giving me these pictures?" I asked.
"Because I want you to see her happy. I want you to see us happy. We were trying, Jim. I was trying."
"You were trying to fuck anything you could get your hands on."
If I shook him, he didn't show it, although the corners of his lips quivered slightly. His pale eyes stared at me.
"We've all made mistakes, Jim. There's something else in the pictures."
"What?"
But he didn't answer me. Didn't even acknowledge my simple question. He simply looked at me a moment longer, stood, then walked out of my office. He shut the door carefully behind him.
I stared at the closed door for a long, long time.
24.
I didn't worry about locking the office door after my father left. I could give a shit about the hitman. I had my Browning on the desk in front of me. Woe to anyone who walked unannounced into my office at that moment.
The packet of photographs was yellowing, the flap torn. On it was a little boy blowing soap bubbles with the word KODAK inside a particularly large bubble. The packet wasn't very thick, containing perhaps twenty-four pictures in all. I had never seen these pictures, and, in fact, did not know of their existence.
I poured myself a cup of coffee with extra cream and sugar.
Heat seeped through the porcelain cup and scalded my palms, but I kept them there, feeling the heat, ignoring the heat, unaware of the heat.
Lifting both hands, I took a sip. Tasted the coffee, but didn't really taste it. Same fucking routine.
I was ten years old when I found her dead. She had bled to death all over her new bedroom set. My father and I had gone to pick up a pizza and rent a movie. I was the first through the front door, carrying the pizza box, excited because my father was in a particularly good mood.
Once inside I called her name, told her the pizza was here and to get it while it was hot. The light was on in her bedroom, but there was no movement, no sound. I set the pizza box down on our dining room table, was about to open it when my father told me to get my mother first.
I headed down the hallway separating the dining room from the master bedroom, calling her name. There was no response. I slowed my pace when I saw her hand lying on the floor. Her hand was completely covered in something red. At first I thought it was a red glove. A wet, gleaming glove, although it wasn't entirely wet. Only parts of it were. It was blood, and it was drying rapidly, congealing over her hand.
I stepped through the doorway and into a nightmare. Blood was everywhere, sprayed across the entire room. It reached everything, touched everything, infused everything. She was lying on the wooden floor in a great puddle of it. Her pink nightgown was soaked. Face-down, her head turned away, looking beneath the bed. The last thing she had seen in the world was a box of my childhood clothing. She kept the box because she always wanted another baby. The box read: Jimmy's Stuff.
There was a bloodied hand print on the box where she had reached for it.
25.
I opened the packet and removed the small pile of pictures. A quick count gave me twenty-two in all.
On the last day of my mother's life, I had been at Pop Warner football practice, and then later at a friend's house for a pool party. I know now my parents had used the opportunity to renew their marriage and spend some quality time together. My mother wanted us to be a happy family. She wanted my father to take an interest in me, rather than viewing me as an obligation. She had gotten pregnant at a young age, and they had married in their late teens. They were not in love.
Early in the marriage, my father joined the military and spent much of that time fighting in secret wars. I would learn later that he was an expert sniper. Expert and deadly. Apparently, my own marksman skills with a gun had been inherited from him. When he came home from his various assignments, flush from his recent kills, he was never really home. He was restless and horny as hell. I had caught him in various parts of town with different women, once in the backseat of our car parked around the corner of our house. I had thrown a brick through the window and scared the hell out of them. I stood there defiantly as he looked up at me through the window. He never said a word about it, never apologized, and had the window replaced the next day.
At first glance, you would never believe that the smiling couple in the picture were unhappy, or that the man with the pale blue eyes was a trained killer or that the woman would only have hours more to live. They were both happy and carefree, hugging and waving. They could have been on a honeymoon.
The majority of the pictures were at the Huntington Beach pier, just a hop skip and jump from my condo. In one picture my mother was sticking her slender backside out seductively toward the camera. My father zoomed in on it tightly. I found myself smiling. They were flirting with each other, and it was nice to see. It was perhaps the most fun I had ever seen them have with each other. For that alone, I was thankful my father had given me the pictures.
He was wearing jeans, carpenter's boots and a yellow T-shirt that said JEEP across it. My mother had on a red blouse, jean shorts and leather sandals. Her legs were slender and naturally tan. Her hair was dark brown and cut short. Her features were slender and sharp. Full red lips and deep brown eyes. She looked like Audrey Hepburn, only prettier.
There were pictures of them along the pier, next to a statue I didn't recognize, standing next to two young men, one of whom was holding a freshly caught sand shark. In that picture, my mother secretly giving my father rabbit ears behind his back.
I went through all of the pictures, my heart heavy and sad. I never recovered from her loss. Mother's Day is hell on me, and I often go into seclusion. How does one replace a mother's love? I lived briefly with an aunt and uncle and they did their best to give me love and attention, but it wasn't the same.
So what else was in the pictures?
What was I missing? What had my father seen that I was missing? Of course, the fact that he had seen it with no prompting was an irritating thought at best.
I went through the pictures again and again, almost setting them aside. Then I found it, and my mouth went immediately dry.
I carefully removed the three photographs and placed them in chronological order on the desktop before me. I noticed my hands were shaking. I linked my fingers together to stop the shaking. I'm not sure it worked.
The first in the series of three pictures was of my parents and the two young men with the sand shark. In the second, my mother was alone and waving to the camera, all smiles, enjoying my father's company for the first time in a long time. Beyond her and up the pier a ways, the two young men with the sand shark were walking away. The brunette dangled the shark over one shoulder, while the bleached blond was looking back toward my mother. The third picture had been near the bottom of the stack, thus near the end of the roll of film, and thus near the end of their day. In that one, my parents were in a souvenir shop in Huntington Beach. The shop was still here to this day. My father had on a goofy baseball cap with a big piece of dog crap on the bill - the hat said Shit Happens - while my mother was wearing a colorful straw hat. They were holding each other tight. Behind them was a young man with bleached blond hair. He was watching them, alone this time, about three rows back. He was not smiling, and he did not look too happy.
If I had to guess, I would say he was stalking them.
26.
The sun had set and the ocean was black and eternal. We were running along the hard-packed sand, passing cuddling lovers who really ought to have gotten a room. There was a dog loose on the beach and I called it over. It followed us briefly, then veered off to chase a hot dog wrapper skimming over the sand. It was humbling to know that we were less interesting than trash.
"So how are you holding up?" Cindy asked. Her breathing was easy and smooth. She kept pace with me stride for stride.
"My leg?" I asked.
"That and the news about your mother."
"Well, running on sand is a good thing, easy on the leg. As far as my mother," I paused, shrugging. Because I was wearing a nylon coach's jacket, I doubted Cindy could see me shrug, especially in the dark. "I don't know. All I have are a series of pictures featuring a young man who seemed to have taken an inordinate amount of interest in my parents."
"On the day she was murdered."
"Yes."
We were running along an empty stretch of sand now, no lovers or wandering dogs. We were alone with the crashing waves and the black sky. The moon was nowhere to be found; then again, I wasn't looking very hard for it.
"Why did your father give you the pictures now?"
"I don't know."
"Was he keeping them from you for any reason?"
"I don't know."
I was favoring my bad leg, but that was nothing new. Based on the angle and depth of my shoeprints in the sand, a good detective could probably deduce that I had once broken my right leg.
"So what are you going to?"
"There's only one thing to do."
"You're going to look into your mother's murder."
I nodded. "It's something I have always known I would do."
"But you weren't ready yet."
"No."
"Are you ready now?"
"I don't know."
"Has your father looked into her murder?"
"I don't know," I said. "We have never discussed it."
"I think, maybe, it's time that you do."
27.
I was alone in my car overlooking the ocean. I was in a turn-off above the Pacific Coast Highway. Below me was a straight drop of about five hundred feet. My engine was running.
With no leads, my mother's case had been closed. It seemed like another random killing. There had been no sign of sexual trauma, and there were no fingerprints, or blood, other than my mother's. My mother had no known enemies. The only person on the face of the earth that even remotely resented her was my own father. The source of his resentment was me, of course, but we had been together at the time of her murder.
My mother had no family. No brothers or sisters, and both parents were dead. She had only a handful of acquaintances in our neighborhood. In all reality, I was her only family, her only friend, her one true love.
She used to call me her little angel.
I gripped the steering wheel. The leather groaned in my hands. I could hear the blood pounding in my skull. I fought to control my breathing.
After her funeral, she had been all but forgotten. By the police, by her friends, the media, and even her own lackluster husband. She had been forgotten by everyone accept me.
I care that you were killed. I care that someone stole your life and cut your throat and hurt you so very badly. I care that you were taken from this earth before your time. I care that you felt the fear of death, the pain of the knife, the hot breath of your killer on your neck. You have not been forgotten, and your little angel is not so little any more.
This was going to take time, I knew. The case was cold. I would investigate it on the side, around my paying work. There was no reason to rush. It's been twenty years, and no one was going anywhere.