One Last Look Read online

  “That’ll require some paperwork,” I replied. I wasn’t sure, since I didn’t handle immigration cases, but I figured it was safe to assume that the federal, state, and county governments would all want a bureaucratic say in the matter.

  “I know a lawyer,” Sonterra said, and managed a semblance of a grin. He rarely mentioned my hard-won career, at least in a positive way. He busted the perps, and as a defense attorney, I did my best to get them off. This did not make for domestic tranquillity.

  We got out of the rig, and he locked it up again. Inside the restaurant, I made my way through the gift shop, heading for the restroom, while Sonterra approached the hostess for a table. He was on his cell again when I came out, and he cut the call suspiciously short.

  My antennae twitched.

  “Your dad again?” I asked mildly, when he didn’t volunteer anything. It was that cop-lawyer, adversarial thing again. Sonterra and I could blister a mattress, but when it came to just about anything else, we were both pretty careful about showing our cards.

  Before he gave up an answer, we were seated, with menus in hand.

  “No,” Sonterra said. Pulling teeth. That was what it was like, getting information out of him.

  A waitress strolled over, ogling Sonterra the way waitresses almost always did. I ordered a BLT with extra mayo, clam chowder, and a side of sweet potatoes, and Sonterra asked for a burger and fries.

  “I don’t know how you can eat like that,” he observed, reaching for the little peg-board game the Cracker Barrel provided to keep hungry customers occupied while the cooks worked their magic behind the scenes.

  “I’m pregnant,” I reminded him in a righteous and moderately affronted tone.

  “Yeah,” he said, with another sparing grin. “I was there when it went down.” He paused, raised his eyebrows. “So to speak.”

  Heat flashed through my body. “You were the perpetrator.”

  He stabbed a green peg into a hole in the game board. “I’m taking the task-force job, Clare,” he said.

  My spine straightened like a dancing cobra rising out of a basket. As usual, Sonterra was piping the tune. “That means—”

  “It means a leave of absence from Scottsdale PD,” he interrupted, looking directly into my eyes for the first time since we’d left the morgue. “It means cleaning out a den of coyotes.”

  “Noble, but it won’t bring Jimmy back,” I insisted, thinking of my niece, Emma, my best friends, Loretta Matthews and Mrs. Kravinsky, and my practice. If Sonterra moved to Dry Creek, a polyp forty miles up the intestines of Creation, I would have to make a drastic choice. Go with him, or stay.

  “No,” Sonterra agreed, and waited out the food-service professional when she returned with our iced teas, lingered a little too long, and finally left. “Jimmy’s gone. But I might be able to keep this from happening to somebody else.”

  “Get real, Sonterra,” I replied, though not unkindly. I knew he was hurting, and I cared. Four months ago, he’d asked me to marry him—before he knew I was carrying his baby—and I’d said yes. I was wearing his late mother’s diamond ring on my left hand. Damn straight I cared, even if I had been dragging my feet a little about setting an actual date to walk down the aisle. “These guys are like mushroom spores. Coyotes, I mean. Pull one up by the roots, and a hundred more spring out of the manure overnight.”

  Sonterra spread his hands, and his right temple pulsed. “Oh, well then,” he said. “Let’s just roll over and let them keep right on killing people!”

  Two elderly couples, obviously tourists, eyed us warily from the next table. I half expected them to jump up in unison, make a dash for the old Winnebago, and lay rubber out of there.

  “You’ve got to choose your battles,” I argued, in a whisper, and slurped up some iced tea. I guess I thought that would make us seem more normal. Oh, that’s all right then, I imagined the retirees thinking to themselves. They’re talking about murder, but they’re drinking iced tea, so they must be all right.

  “Yeah,” Sonterra agreed tersely, “and it would be nice if half of those battles weren’t with you!”

  I leaned in a little. “Pull in your horns, Sonterra. I’m on your side.”

  “Prove it,” he challenged.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the Winnebago crowd had lost interest in our little drama.

  “Oh,” I said, keeping my voice down anyway, “now we get to the old if-you-love-me-you’ll-do—

  what-I-tell-you routine?”

  Sonterra stuck another peg in the board, hard. “Call it whatever you want,” he shot back. “You’ll put your own spin on anything I say, anyway.”

  I puffed out a breath and sat back in my chair. The waitress brought our food on a tray, giving me a moderately censorious glance as she set the chowder, sweet potatoes, and BLT down in front of me. Sonterra got a sympathetic sigh along with his lunch.

  Bitch, I thought, without much rancor. If I actively hated every woman who felt sorry for Sonterra because he’d hooked up with me, I’d be one big ulcer by now. Besides, I was more interested in the sweet potatoes.

  “Are you coming with me or not?” Sonterra asked, in a tight voice, after munching a french fry.

  I guess I could have pretended I thought he was talking about the ride back to Scottsdale, but it would have been bullshit. “What would I do in Dry Creek?”

  “Relax a little, maybe. You’re expecting a baby, remember?”

  My temper flared. Sonterra wanted me to veg. Hang out at home, watch daytime TV. Knit booties. Sounded like a prescription for brain rot to me.

  “Barefoot and pregnant,” I said, aggrieved.

  Sonterra swore under his breath.

  I lost interest in the sweet potatoes. Then and there, I decided that, if I did go to Dry Creek with Sonterra, I would either start another law office or find myself a job in Tucson.

  The Winnebago people pushed back their chairs and stood up to leave, chatting amiably about the next destination. Sedona or Santa Fe? Decisions, decisions.

  I watched as one of the men dropped a few dollar bills in the middle of the table for a tip. His wife paused beside my chair, her eyes earnest behind her old-fashioned glasses, and for a moment, I thought she was about to ask if I’d accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.

  She laid a hand on my shoulder. “He looks like a very nice, steady young man,” she said, referring, I assumed, to Sonterra, and not Jesus. “Give him a chance.”

  With that, she trundled away after the other members of her group.

  Sonterra chuckled. “Good advice,” he said, looking bleakly smug.

  “Shut up,” I replied, but I couldn’t help grinning.

  His cell phone blipped. He sighed, checked the caller ID, and frowned. “Sonterra,” he said.

  I watched his face change. Dark clouds gathering over an uneasy sea.

  A little trill of fear shimmied up my windpipe.

  “What?” I mouthed.

  Sonterra shook his head, listening intently. Finally, he said, “I’m in Tucson. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Still on the phone, he signaled the waitress for the check. Clearly, lunch was over. “Tell him to hold on.” He waited. “I don’t care if he’s unconscious. Tell him anyway.”

  Two

  E ddie Columbia, Sonterra’s partner, lay still as death in his bed in the intensive care unit at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, sprouting tubes and wires like some kind of high-tech octopus. His aunt, Louise Pearson, stood next to him, smoothing back his hair.

  When we entered, she looked up, tears shimmering in her eyes. “Tony,” she said, on a relieved breath, and gave me a nod.

  She and Sonterra hugged stiffly.

  “What happened?” Sonterra asked, but it was a rhetorical question. A cop had filled him in on the details when he took the call down in Tucson—Eddie had been moonlighting as a security guard for a Phoenix nightclub, probably to meet maintenance payments to his soon-to-be ex-wife, Jenna. He’d been found behind a Dum
pster that morning, beaten to the proverbial pulp.

  Maybe Sonterra was hoping the story had magically changed, while we were making the two-hour drive north. Rewriting the script, so Eddie had taken a header down his apartment steps, or something innocuous like that. I couldn’t blame Sonterra for wanting a different reality. This one definitely sucked.

  Louise left Sonterra’s question hanging. “When it rains, it pours,” she said with a sniffle. “As if this wasn’t enough, Eddie’s divorce was final yesterday.” I picked up a tissue box from the bedside table and silently held it out to her, and she gave me a faltering smile of gratitude. “Jenna got full custody of the kids, and she’s marrying the boyfriend next week.”

  “Shit,” Sonterra said. He moved to Eddie’s bedside, looked down at his bruised, swollen face. Eddie was in his midthirties, like Sonterra and me, but he looked painfully young, lying there, and limp as a discarded glove. “Phoenix PD nailed the bastards, Eddie,” he added, leaning in. “Somebody called in a tip, and it was righteous. Three of them, out of their heads on crank, with their brass knuckles still in their pockets.”

  Louise and I both winced at the reference to the brass knuckles and took another look at the mess they’d made of Eddie’s face.

  “Why would anybody do such a thing?” Louise asked, but she didn’t sound as though she expected an answer.

  In the meantime, I watched Sonterra’s face, and it was as if I could see into his head. He and Eddie had been best friends since the pair of them made detective, eight or nine years back. They’d played on the same softball team, exchanged countless macabre jokes, and stood over the chalk outlines of more corpses than I cared to think about. Because of the bond between them, Sonterra was probably feeling every blow Eddie had taken.

  I would have squeezed Sonterra’s hand, but we were standing too far apart.

  “God damn, buddy, it hurts just to look at you,” Sonterra said, confirming my psychic abilities.

  Louise dabbed at her eyes with a wad of tissue, still holding the box in her other hand. “I wish he’d sell shoes or something,” she said. “My neighbor’s nephew makes a six-figure income doing that, at Nordstrom. Mine’s got to chase murderers during the day and get himself beat up by thugs at night!”

  Sonterra didn’t look up. “Once a cop, always a cop,” he answered flatly. “He didn’t mention taking a second job, though.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. Eddie and Jenna had sold their cozy tract house in mid-November, and Eddie had moved into a studio apartment over Thanksgiving weekend. “I should have guessed why he was always watching the clock. Lent him money.”

  Eddie wouldn’t have taken a cent from Sonterra. I knew, because I’d offered him a loan myself, after a look at his depressing apartment, furnished with lawn chairs, a rickety card table, and an air mattress. He’d bristled and told me he appreciated my concern, but I ought to mind my own business for once. Eddie and I weren’t enemies, but we weren’t pals, either. The “for once” still rankled a little.

  Eddie’s doctor stepped into the room just then. He was tall and thin, probably in his midsixties, with thinning white hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. He nodded to us, checked Eddie’s monitors, scribbled a few notes in the chart at the foot of the bed.

  I got a glimpse of his name tag. PHILLIP HAZELTON, M.D.

  “There’s a five-minute limit on visits in intensive care,” Dr. Hazelton said with kindly reluctance. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask all of you to leave.”

  I’d been easing around to Sonterra’s side. I gripped his hand, squeezed.

  He hesitated, then squeezed back. “Is Eddie in a coma,” he asked the doctor, “or is he just sleeping?”

  “There’s a gray area, in between those two states,” Dr. Hazelton replied. “That’s where he is right now.”

  “You must have run a lot of tests,” Sonterra pressed. He liked specific answers, and he was trained to pursue them in the same single-minded, ruthless way a wolf runs its dinner to ground. “And you must have a professional opinion. I’d like to know what that is.”

  Dr. Hazelton smiled sadly. “I wish I could tell you everything will be all right, Mr.—?”

  “Sonterra. Eddie’s a cop, as you probably know. I’m his partner.”

  The older man nodded. “Your friend is in critical condition, Mr. Sonterra,” he said. He inclined his head toward the machines clustered around Eddie’s bed. “We’re picking up some brain activity, and that’s a good sign. His heart rate is steady, if not particularly strong. I can’t give you much of a prognosis unless and until he wakes up—”

  There was an unspoken “or” dangling at the end of Dr. Hazelton’s sentence.

  A silence settled over all of us, heavy and electric, like the stillness before a desert storm, and so thick I could barely breathe.

  Hazelton checked his watch. “Mr. Columbia needs his rest,” he said. It was a diplomatic bum’s rush.

  Louise rose from her chair, shouldered her purse, and gave her nephew a lingering look before slipping out of the room. I let go of Sonterra’s hand and followed her into the corridor.

  “Are you all right?” I asked. Louise was in her mid-seventies, like Mrs. Kravinsky, but she looked and acted much younger. I didn’t know her well; I lived in a world of acquaintances and strangers, careful not to get too close to too many people. Except for Jenna and the kids, Louise was the only family Eddie had.

  She sighed. Her eyes and nostrils were red-rimmed. “Once I pull myself together, I’ll be fine,” she said. She started toward the elevator, distracted and still a little dazed, and I walked with her. Sonterra stayed behind in Eddie’s room, with the doctor. So much for the five-minute visitor’s limit. “I’m going home to change clothes and rest for a while,” Louise told me, as the elevator doors opened. “Then I’ll come back here and wait. Sit with him, when they’ll let me.”

  I nodded. I was deeply worried about Eddie, like Louise and Sonterra. But I also wondered, selfishly, I know, how his partner’s condition would affect Sonterra’s decision to take the job in Dry Creek. I didn’t want to pack up and move, but I didn’t want to be separated from Sonterra, either.

  Louise disappeared as the elevator doors closed, teleported to the lobby.

  I stood still for a moment, recalling another hospital, when I’d stepped out of another elevator and met myself. Not a long-lost twin. Not a clone. A hallucination to be sure, but one with substance.

  I shook my head, trying to throw off the memory. Don’t go there, I thought. It was an isolated incident, the result of head trauma, and it hadn’t happened again. It wouldn’t happen again.

  “Clare?”

  I came out of the fog and was surprised to spot Jenna Columbia standing in the waiting room doorway, to my right. Neither Louise nor I had noticed her earlier, which only added to the surreal feeling of the whole scenario. Eddie’s ex-wife looked like one of the walking dead.

  I glanced toward Eddie’s room, hoping Sonterra would go right on breaking the five-minute rule. Nothing good would come of it if he ran into Jenna before he had a chance to square things away in his head.

  “Hello, Jenna,” I said quietly.

  Her face, pretty and guileless and slightly plump, crumpled. “Eddie was beaten up?”

  I nodded, feeling wary. I knew Sonterra—when it came to marriage, he was a traditionalist. Because Eddie wouldn’t have needed to moonlight if it hadn’t been for the breakup, he was likely to blame Jenna, at least in part, for Eddie’s assault behind the nightclub. Not very sensible, I know, but since when has human emotion been sensible?

  As luck would have it, Sonterra stepped into the hallway at precisely that moment, and his dark gaze tracked and found Jenna like a Scud missile. His face turned to stone.

  I moved slightly, hoping to head him off.

  Jenna looked nervous, but she stood her ground. Thrust out her chin slightly. “I want to see Eddie,” she said, for Sonterra’s benefit.

  “Maybe you’d like to pull a couple
of plugs while you’re in there,” Sonterra bit out. “Finish him off, once and for all.”

  “Tony,” I said. I linked my arm with his, and for a moment I thought he’d shake me off, but he didn’t. I so rarely used his first name that it must have given him pause.

  “I care about Eddie,” Jenna said.

  “Almost as much as the boyfriend,” Sonterra retorted.

  I gave him a jerk in the direction of the elevators.

  “He’s the father of my children!” Jenna called after us.

  Sonterra dug in his heels. “You might have thought of that a little sooner. Like before you started fooling around behind Eddie’s back!”

  Jenna flushed.

  “Let’s go,” I urged, trying to tow Sonterra out of dangerous waters.

  He raked a hand through his hair, and Jenna nearly withered under the heat of his glare, but I felt him raise anchor. “I’ll be back,” he warned.

  The Terminator.

  The ride down in the elevator was silent. Menace rolled off Sonterra in undulating waves, almost visible in that closed space. We were on the first floor and moving through the lobby before either of us spoke again.

  “Jesus,” Sonterra grumbled, “she’s got some nerve showing up here.”

  I didn’t answer. I did hold out my hand for the car keys, and he gave them to me. Drunks shouldn’t drive. Neither should angry people.

  It took a few minutes to find the SUV. When we did, Sonterra threw himself into the passenger seat, landing with an angry flop, and wrenched his seat belt into place. The metallic snap echoed like a gunshot. “I guess some women aren’t cut out to be a cop’s wife,” he said when we were making our way toward the 101.

  The remark opened a chasm between us.

  I wondered if I wasn’t one of those women, and I knew Sonterra was asking himself the same thing.

  Half an hour later, we pulled into his attached garage. Even before the door rolled down behind us, I heard the dogs barking in the kitchen, and I felt a little better. Waldo, a one-eyed golden retriever, and Bernice, a Yorkie, could always be counted on for a welcome-home party. No matter what else was going on, or what kind of mood either of us might be in, they were glad to see us.