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  Once in the hall, she unloaded. “This is because you insisted on interviewing her. Without that, it would never have happened.”

  I saw Marsha Russo heading in our direction. I introduced her to Mrs. Lincoln, who ignored her.

  “What exactly happened?” I asked.

  “You can see for yourself,” Selma Lincoln said. “A pair of thugs beat the crap out of her.”

  “Who were they?”

  “They were wearing ski masks. Steffi couldn’t identify them.”

  “Were they swim team members?”

  “I just told you, she doesn’t know who they were.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “They said for her to keep her mouth shut. If she didn’t, next time would be a whole lot worse. This is all your fault. Steffi was right about you.”

  She turned on her heel and headed back to the ICU.

  Jill MacDonough sidled over to me. “Such a special woman,” she commented, with the hint of a smile. “And so smitten with you.”

  Jill always had a smart mouth on her. “When do you think I can talk to Steffi?”

  “Too soon to tell. She’s pretty gaga. How about I call you when she’s more compos?”

  “Okay.”

  “Unless, that is, you wanted to stick around and keep the mother company.”

  I stared at her.

  “I could probably scare up a private room for the two of you.”

  “Jill,” I interrupted.

  “Give you a chance to patch things up.”

  “Jill.”

  “Yes?”

  “Quit it.”

  She grinned at me. “I’ll holler as soon as she’s awake.”

  “Something’s wrong here, Fred,” I said to the Freedom High swim coach, Fred Maxwell. “People talk but don’t really say anything. There’s a schism between team members. And now one of the girls has been assaulted because she spoke with me. Tell me what you know, Fred.”

  “I’ve already told you.”

  I had caught up with him as he was leaving the gym. When he spotted me, he became nervous. His eyes were unfocused, darting every which way. A thin layer of sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “What’s a play party?”

  “A what party?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, Fred. You’re the cheese here. You know each one of these kids. There’s something insidious going on. Something that separates the good-looking kids from the less attractive ones. It’s caused a serious rift that appears to have infected the entire swim team.”

  “Look, Buddy, if I knew anything, I swear I’d tell you.”

  I was having trouble believing him. My gut was screaming there was no way Fred Maxwell wasn’t aware that something untoward was going on under his nose. Perhaps he didn’t know all of the details, but a cagey veteran like him surely knew that something smelled bad. And if he refused to acknowledge it, it was because he had chosen not to. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “If you’re involved in this, Fred, even if only implicitly, and I find out you’ve been looking the other way in an effort to escape accountability, I’m going to nail you for it. I don’t give a rat’s ass how long you’ve been here.”

  He glared at me.

  “Think it over. One person’s already lost his life. A girl has been brutalized. It’s your show. It’s time you produced answers to just what in the hell is going on here. And real soon, Fred,” I emphasized. “Real soon.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Judy Nicholas phoned to inform me the owner had returned. She had spotted him that morning carrying groceries into the house.

  Later that night, I parked my Wrangler within sight of the Meeker Street bungalow, tucked between two other cars. Rather than listen to talk radio or randomly selected music, I had the audio version of Elmore Leonard’s action-packed Western, Last Stand at Saber River, plugged into the car’s speaker system.

  I also brought two thermos jugs filled with black coffee, a box of Snackwell Devil’s Food cookies, and a package of Nips Chocolate Parfait sucking candies. I figured that between the caffeine and the sugar, I’d stay awake and wired.

  It was around eleven-thirty when I spotted a young man exit the bungalow, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He opened the garage door and stepped inside. After several minutes, a slate gray BMW M14 sports coupe backed down the driveway, turned left and drove past me, gathering speed as it did. After a while, with my lights switched off, I followed.

  The BMW drove aimlessly through the sparse late night traffic, turning onto side streets and sliding into main drags as if in search of something elusive. This went on for some while before the BMW made its way onto Highway 101, heading south toward Los Angeles. I quit following once we crossed the county line.

  It was close to two a.m. by the time I got home. I poured myself a Jack Daniel’s and collapsed into an armchair in my darkened living room.

  My thoughts turned to the young man I had followed. Was he a candidate for closer inspection? He seemed a fish in unlikely waters, which heightened my suspicions. So, what were the facts?

  A real estate trust fund represented by a high-class Beverly Hills law firm purchased a heretofore hard to sell bungalow in a low-rent section of Freedom. A young man moves into the bungalow and instead of improving the property, he lets it slide deeper into disrepair. Turns out the young man drives a top-of-the-line BMW sports coupe and seems to be a nocturnal creature. And the house purchase coincides with a sudden outbreak of graffiti vandalization in Freedom.

  What’s wrong with this picture?

  I had made note of the BMW’s license plate and was hopeful it might yield the first real clue in the quest to identify the vandal or vandals.

  Flush with the promise of discovery I tumbled into bed and slept like a baby.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  My cell phone began buzzing and when I looked at it, the caller ID was blocked. I answered and the voice on the other end said, “I need to see you, Buddy.”

  “Kimber?”

  “Can you come now?”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m all fucked up, Buddy. I need to talk.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  She quickly closed the door behind me. “I heard,” she said.

  “What did you heard?”

  “About the girl who was assaulted.”

  “How?”

  “Her mother phoned me.”

  We wandered into the kitchen. I sat at the table while Kimber poured us freshly made coffee. She sat opposite me. “She wanted to tell me about her daughter and to insinuate my husband had in some way been involved.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “The cause of the beating. Look, Buddy, I told you that Henry and I had less than a perfect union. I said I suspected he was sexually involved with members of the swim team. Mrs. Lincoln added to my knowledge.”

  “How?”

  “She told me about the play parties.”

  “What about them?”

  “She insisted Steffi had never attended any of them, but admitted she knew about them. One of her teammates who participated had spilled the beans.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They took place. Frequently. And they were organized and supervised by my husband.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “As you suspected, there had been a great deal of resentment.”

  She stood and started to pace. “So, in order to insure privacy, Henry engaged a security detail. He went outside the swim team and recruited a pair of football players.”

  “To provide security?”

  “According to Mrs. Lincoln, yes.”

  “There’s more?”

  “The football players were invited to the play parties.”

  “Thereby
despoiling the swim team’s exclusivity.”

  “That’s not all they despoiled.”

  “Go on.”

  “In the weeks before Henry died, the party dynamic changed. It became rough. The football players considered themselves dominant.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The sex was no longer consensual. According to Steffi’s source, the parties had been cordial and even courtly, but once the football guys established their dominance, they took whatever they wanted.”

  “Rape,” I muttered.

  “It appears so.”

  “And your husband?”

  “They threatened him. He was a physical coward and they took advantage of it.”

  “And?”

  “I gather things went haywire. The parties spun out of control. And then Henry was killed.”

  “Did Steffi’s source identify the killer or killers?”

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “Does she know who these football players are?”

  “According to Selma Lincoln, no one is willing to identify them. The swim team kids are terrified of them.”

  Kimber left the kitchen and moved to the living room, which is where I found her, in her favorite chair, her head in her hands.

  “What do I do?” She looked up at me.

  “We find them.”

  “I meant what do I do?”

  “You’ve done your duty, Kimber. You sit tight.”

  “I’m a train wreck here, Buddy.”

  “Does your shrink know?”

  “About the football players?”

  “Yes.”

  “She does.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Almost word for word what you said.”

  “That you’ve done your duty.”

  “That and also I’m not responsible.”

  “For what Henry did?”

  “Yes.”

  “So?”

  “So...what do I do?”

  I wanted to ease her suffering by saying something that might help deflate her anxiety. She was clearly rattled and in need of support. I spoke up. “My shrink used to say that sometimes it’s best to do nothing and abide the events.”

  She looked at me. “It’s not easy to do nothing. I feel cornered...trapped.”

  “Change.”

  “Change what?”

  “Things are going to change. And once they do, you’ll be free.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “You’re not responsible, Kimber.”

  “You think?”

  “I know.”

  She stared at me and then stood. “Will you hold me, Buddy?”

  She stepped into my arms and we held onto each other for several moments.

  Then I extricated myself.

  “It would be a mistake,” she said, as if by rote.

  “It would be.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  “My bad.”

  “My bad luck,” she said.

  “You think?”

  “I know,” she said.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Sheriff Burton Steel, Senior, is something of a local legend. He fancies himself a throwback to the days when tough-minded lawmen ruled the world. His thesis, not mine. His role models include Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp.

  He is a large man, standing six-four and, prior to the onset of his illness, weighing in at two-twenty. His is a chiseled face with an iron jaw, steely blue eyes, and a thick mane of unruly black hair that he proudly boasts contains not a single strand of gray.

  He rules the San Remo County Sheriff’s Department as if it was his personal fiefdom. He demands loyalty, and anyone who chooses to defy him is quickly removed.

  Sound familiar?

  He ran his initial campaign on a law-and-order ticket, promising to protect and serve the rights and safety of every citizen. He won handily. He won a second term by an even wider margin and had achieved a third-term victory in an unprecedented landslide. As was said of the immortal Caesar, Burton Steel strode the county ‘like a colossus,’ admired and respected everywhere he went. So you can imagine his terror when his body began to break down.

  He first noticed things were not right during his third term re-election campaign. He started to experience a perplexing weakness in his arms and legs. There were times he struggled just to stand. He developed difficulty swallowing. His speech, always so forceful and commanding, failed him at times, leaving him unsteady and weak-voiced. Regina, who made frequent campaign appearances with him, became insistent he visit his doctor.

  He slipped away from the trail one afternoon to see his friend, Dr. Lonnie MacDonald, a highly regarded neurologist, who administered a battery of tests.

  As MacDonald later admitted, he had chosen specific tests for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis because he already suspected it was the cause of the Sheriff’s decline. He withheld the test results until the day after my father won re-election.

  I had driven up from Los Angeles to be with him and my stepmother on election night. I was at their home the next morning when Dr. MacDonald visited. He didn’t sugar the pill. My father wouldn’t have allowed it. The doctor informed us that although the disease was in its early stages, its progress was difficult to predict. The biggest blow was that ALS was incurable.

  To his credit, the old man took the news in his stride. He thanked Dr. MacDonald for his frankness. He vowed to fight with all his strength. It wasn’t until MacDonald left and he was alone with Regina and me that he allowed the news to sink in.

  “It’s a fucking death sentence.”

  Some weeks later, when he had formulated his argument for asking me to return to Freedom so that I might serve as a crutch for him, he summoned me back to the family manse.

  “I need you, Buddy,” he said.

  When I tried to explain that my home was now Los Angeles and I was gainfully and happily employed as a Homicide Detective with the LAPD, he refused to listen.

  “I’m not ready to throw in the towel. With you beside me covering my ass I know I can eke out some more quality time. And I can also arrange it so that when I can no longer function, you’ll become Sheriff.”

  “What if that’s not what I want?”

  “Look at me, Buddy. I’ll be lucky if I’m still around a year from now.”

  “You don’t know that, Dad,” I said. “Nobody’s put a clock on this.”

  “Listen to me, Buddy. The way I see it, you and me, we’ve never been close. But you’re my only son. If you were here, we could resolve whatever needs resolving and I could die in peace.

  “Add to that the fact you could have a far bigger career here than you could ever have down there in L.A. For someone your age, with your talent, the Sheriff’s Department could be a stepping stone to statewide recognition and office. This could prove to be a win-win for us both.”

  Despite the fact I discussed this with my sister, Sandra, and she forcefully called my attention to the self-serving nature of our father’s argument, I still fell for it.

  I guess the hope we could find common ground appealed to me.

  “I could die in peace.”

  Or maybe it was simply guilt.

  But whatever it was, here I am in Freedom. And despite his protestations to the contrary, we still have our issues and he still has the ability to press my buttons, which he does regularly.

  As he was doing this very day.

  “This thing’s gonna end sooner rather than later,” he was saying.

  We were sitting on his back porch where a brisk breeze carried with it a respite from the heat of the day. He was nursing an icy glass of Johnny Walker blue. Mine was a Beefeater’s gin and lemonade.

  “I hope you remember our deal,” he said.

  “What dea
l?”

  “I’m not playing this hand to the end.”

  I suddenly realized he had staged this little heart-to-heart so as to trump me with the guilt card. He knew damned good and well I was reluctant to assist in his suicide. What he’d have me do was to stand watch over his passing, effectively playing Cerberus, making sure he stayed dead.

  This was a whole lot more than I bargained for. Not that he cared. Things always went his way, and as such, even his final moments wouldn’t deviate from that protocol.

  Nausea flooded over me and I shuddered to think I might become involved in a deal with the devil. A reality I had feared since childhood.

  “We never made that deal,” I said.

  “Bullshit. You’re the only one I can count on to do it.”

  “But I never said I would.”

  “It’ll be easy, Buddy. I already have all the supplies you’ll need. We live in a right-to-die state. What’s your problem?”

  “Because, as usual, you’re only seeing what you want to see.”

  “Meaning?”

  “There are laws in place. A medical presence is a necessity. There has to be a certified judgment in hand proving that end-of-life assistance is justified.”

  “I’m not going through all those examinations and all that goddamned paperwork. Regina doesn’t believe in any of this end-of-life crap. She’ll be a total pain in the ass and will stop at nothing to prevent me from going through with it.”

  “But it will still be your call.”

  “Bullshit. I’ll be lying in some fucking hospital bed with every kind of imaginable tube sticking out of me. I’ll be totally gaga, stripped of any remaining dignity and my opinion won’t count for squat because Regina will bully her way into getting whatever the hell it is she believes God would want.

  “Which is why I need you, Buddy. To insure I make my exit on my terms. Without becoming some kind of vegetable or a religious football for Regina to kick around.”

  He was agitated and I was the source. I knew him for the bully he was. As was always the case, he believed he had the upper hand because he had a history of always getting his way.