Port City Crossfire (A Brandon Blake Mystery, Book 1) Page 13

  Danni reached back and gathered her hair, doubled the elastic with a flick of her wrist.

  “So I’m on your side, Chris. Or Brandon Blake.”

  “Thanks,” Brandon said.

  They sat, but not awkwardly. They were more like two people who had known each other a long time. Brandon was thinking this, wondering how it could be, when Danni said, “Why did you come? Not having the book and all.”

  He took a bite of doughnut, washed it down. Looked out at the terra cotta wall of Starbucks, the yellowing trees. The answer was coming to him as Danni waited.

  “I guess I needed a break, from being Brandon Blake. Chris Craft is way easier.”

  She looked at him.

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “About wanting to be somebody else.”

  Brandon thought of the passages in the diary. My birthday sucked as usual.…I am ready to give up and surrender.…I am confused. I am tired.…I would like to settle down and have children. I’ll probably be a crappy mother.

  “Why’s that?” Brandon said.

  Danni didn’t answer, just stared straight ahead. She took a breath, stopped. It was like she was trying to say something and couldn’t figure out how.

  “I don’t know.”

  A pause.

  “My life, it’s pretty shitty sometimes.”

  Brandon waited, finally said, “Problems with your boyfriend there?”

  “Oh, jeez. Problems? I don’t know. More like the whole thing. It’s not like something happened. I mean, like, lately.”

  She took a quick sip of coffee and it spilled a little on her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand.

  “It’s just…I don’t know. It is what it is. I mean, why should I complain? Doesn’t change nothin’, right?”

  She smiled, the moment passed.

  “Anyway, listen to me. You’re the one with the shit coming down.”

  “All around me,” Brandon said.

  “You know, I don’t know how much you get paid to be a cop, but whatever it is, it don’t seem worth it.”

  Brandon shrugged. “Most of the time it is.”

  “But not now.”

  “No,” he said. “Not now.”

  “And you know what’s hard about stuff like that?” Danni said.

  She looked over at him, like she expected him to answer, at least hazard a guess.

  “No,” he said.

  “There’s no way to get away from it. It’s always there. It’s like you wake up and there’s this, like second or two, where you forget. And then it comes back to you. Like wham. Piling back on. You’re like, fuck me. Can’t I have just a minute of freakin’ peace?”

  Brandon was staring at her and she looked at him, caught herself.

  “Sorry. I get wound up sometimes.”

  “Sounds like you know the feeling,” Brandon said. “Shoot somebody?”

  Danni looked down at her cup, raised it to her lips but didn’t really drink. Put it back on her lap. “Yeah, right. What was it my father used to say? Life ain’t a bowl of maraschino cherries.”

  He waited. Danni was back on the verge of saying something, teetering on the edge.

  When her phone buzzed. She looked at it.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  She put it to her ear. “Hey.…No, I’m still in Portland.…Half-hour…I thought you were gonna be at the auction all day.…yeah, well, wouldn’t be the first time you bought crap....”

  Then a longer pause. Her expression hardening.

  “Yeah.…No.…I told you.…Right. I don’t know. Twenty minutes. Listen, I said I’d get to it and I will.…I know.…Yeah.”

  She pressed the phone, ended the call. Looked at Brandon and smiled. Sheepish.

  “Clutch. It’s like, if I’m not home right on time, he goes ballistic. Probably thinks I’m bonkin’ you. Going out and getting myself a piece of younger ass.”

  “Right,” Brandon said.

  “Yeah, for a while he had this tracking thing turned on in my phone. He’s like knowing everywhere I’ve been. Finally I say, ‘What? You following me?’ He goes, ‘No, the phone does it for me.’ I got a phone downgrade after that. Said the other one broke. The fucker.”

  He looked at her more closely, saw a faint purple splotch under the pinkish white stuff on her cheeks.

  “Does he beat you up?” Brandon said.

  She flinched, looked at him. “Yeah, well. I mean, not really. Not for a while. But you know, a fist fight isn’t so bad compared to just being treated like shit.”

  Brandon said, “I do know. I see it all the time, domestic calls, neighbors call the cops. Guys, even if they don’t get physical, they treat the woman like dirt. Pick at her. Emotionally, I mean. Nothing’s ever good enough. ‘How can you be so stupid? Goddamn bitch. Where would you be without me?’”

  He paused.

  “‘You cheat on me, you’re dead.’ That’s a common one.”

  Danni swallowed, looked away.

  “Shit happens, right?” she said.

  “Doesn’t have to keep happening.”

  Danni twisted in her seat, reached for the door handle. “Yeah, well. Good talking.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Listen, I can come to you. For the book, I mean.”

  She turned back to him.

  “How’s tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know,” Brandon said. “Hard to predict what’s coming these days.”

  “I’m sure,” Danni said. “How ’bout I text you? Faster than Facebook. I’m not on there all the time.”

  Brandon hesitated, then wondered, what had she wanted to tell him?

  She held out her hand. Brandon took it and gave it a shake. Her hand was bigger than Mia’s, her skin rougher. She fell back into the seat and said, “You know there’s like this march. A protest thing.”

  “I know.”

  “That must suck for you.”

  “Whatever,” Brandon said. “It’s like, bring it on.”

  “You going?”

  “Not supposed to go anywhere near any of it.”

  She looked at him.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I don’t know. First I have to go see my girlfriend. Not sure what’s happening after that.”

  “She must be worried about you,” Danni said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you know what? I am, too. Hope that doesn’t sound weird.”

  He smiled, nodded.

  “So you hang in there, Brandon. Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

  Danni opened the door and slid out. Hurried to her car, started it and sped off.

  Brandon sat in the car, half a doughnut in his hand. He lowered the window and dropped the doughnut. A seagull swooped down from the roof of the shop and snatched it up. And then Brandon was alone and it all came rushing back. Again.

  Amanda. The garage. Thatcher on his back, the blood. Tiff Rawlings screaming through the fence. Amanda’s mother, more of the same. Even Joel Fuller, the slugs pocking into his chest.

  Like Danni had said, it all comes piling back on.

  But what?

  Twelve

  Brandon thought of heading south, out of Maine. Boston. New York. Someplace where nobody knew him. He could sit in a hotel room, a Motel 8, alone with his thoughts.

  His demons.

  His nightmares.

  So he did, got all the way to Saco on the Interstate. And then he thought better of it, thought of Mia and Kat. He got off the highway and drove north.

  He took Route 1, stayed in the right lane and drove at the speed limit. Cars rushed past him as the roadside rolled by. Used-car lots, Clutch’s competition. Tired strip malls occupied by doomed businesses: computer repairs, tanning salons, swimming pool supplies. Motels with little cabins, something out of the 1930s. Chinese restaurants and go-kart tracks. A gun shop. He reached for his, took it out from under the truck seat and laid it beside him.

  The Glock looked strangely small, crudely mech
anical—but capable of unleashing such misery.

  And then he was crossing the Scarborough marsh, which stretched for miles to the sea. There were puffy clouds to the east, floating like balloons. They seemed fake, fool you into thinking everything was just beautiful here: the sky, the green scrub, the birds skittering into the air. As if any of it made any difference.

  He shook his head. Drove.

  Brandon was in South Portland when his phone buzzed. He was in traffic and by the time he answered the call had been followed by a text, then another. He pulled up to a light, picked up the phone. Mia. He glanced at the text.

  Where are you? Call me. I’m worried.

  He did.

  Mia answered with a clatter.

  “Coming into town.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You can’t be fine,” Mia said. “I heard about the girl. The one at the hospital. It’s on the news. Estusa. The connection to the shooting.”

  “Jesus, already? Who’s talking to that asshole?”

  Mia waited.

  “So I guess I’m not fine,” Brandon said.

  “Are you coming here?”

  “Your place?”

  “Yeah,” Mia said. “We need to talk. At least I do.”

  Brandon almost said, “About what? How I’m leaving a trail of dead kids across Portland?”

  He caught himself, said, “Okay.”

  Mia’s apartment was the third floor of a tenement on Munjoy Street. It had views of Portland Harbor and the weird guy across the street who liked to walk around his apartment wearing nothing but Speedos and a snake.

  Her Volvo SUV was in the driveway. She was at the door. The same TV crew that had been at the boat that morning was pulling away as Brandon pulled up. It was after 12:30. Time to set up at the demonstration.

  Brandon stepped inside and Mia closed the door and then hugged him tightly for a long time. He felt inert in her grasp like he was an animal playing dead. Then he hugged her back, hoping it would be enough. It wasn’t.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” Mia said, holding him at arm’s length.

  Danni’s exact words.

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t seem it.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what you’re really thinking.”

  They were still on the stairs.

  “Let’s go inside,” Brandon said.

  “I’ve been worried,” Mia said.

  “I texted you. Told you not to.”

  “I had students. I didn’t see it until a little while ago.”

  They walked into the apartment and Mia shut the door, took his arm and turned him to face her.

  “Talk to me, Brandon. Really talk to me. Please.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Kat called me,” Mia said.

  “Yeah. I saw her.”

  “At the hospital? Did you go there?”

  A pause before he could say it. “Yes.”

  “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

  “Maybe if I’d arrested her she’d be alive. Locked in Long Creek or whatever.”

  “Brandon, don’t go there.”

  Mia took him by the shoulders. Behind her, out the window, he could see rooftops and an oil tanker making its way out of the harbor. She moved her hands from his shoulders to his cheeks, made him look her in the eye.

  “That has nothing to do with you,” Mia said. “It’s the country. Everything that’s happened. You just happen to be caught in the middle of it.”

  “I just happen to be the guy who pulled the trigger.”

  “Who had no choice.”

  “Who didn’t have his camera on.”

  “It wouldn’t have made any difference, Brandon,” Mia said. “He’d still be dead. This girl would still be dead. She didn’t—”

  “Kill herself,” Brandon said.

  “Not because you didn’t have your camera on. She killed herself because her boyfriend’s dead and she’s a kid and into melodrama and filled with self-pity and she was devastated and grieving and didn’t know how to handle any of it.”

  “No, I mean I talked to her,” Brandon said. “She fit all of that when she was at the marina. That night. She didn’t sound like that this morning.”

  Mia looked at him.

  “When did you talk to her?”

  He told her when and what Amanda had said.

  “And then, a few minutes later, she just goes off the side of the garage? Takes her secret with her?” Mia said.

  “I don’t know. I can’t even try to find out. Just say what I know and walk away. Stay away.”

  Mia walked him to the kitchen. “You want coffee?”

  “No, just had one.”

  He started to say where and with whom. Caught himself. Again.

  “Kat told me about Maddie’s student,” Mia said.

  “Right. Some other kid all screwed up.”

  “And—”

  “And saying something’s wrong with the Rawlings mom and dad,” Brandon said.

  A shake from Mia, her hands gripping his. Hers were small, soft, delicate compared to—

  “Time to look out for yourself here, Brandon. Don’t get run over by all of this—I don’t know—this hysteria. Don’t let these people turn you into something you’re not. You’re a good person. A good police officer. So many people are on your side. Remember that.”

  Brandon looked over her shoulder. The oil lighter had disappeared from view. A tugboat pushed it out toward the bay. The harbor was otherwise quiet, the rain keeping boats on moorings, at their slips. He looked back at Mia, who was searching his eyes.

  “I saw somebody else who says she’s on my side,” Brandon said.

  She waited.

  “Danni. From the diary.”

  Maya froze.

  “You saw her again?”

  “She texted me. Wanted to buy me coffee to make up for the rest of it.”

  Mia fell back a half step.

  “Did you go?”

  He told her he had, when and where.

  “She have a thing for you or what?” Mia said.

  Brandon shook his head. “Maybe a little lonely. I think the boyfriend is beating her.”

  “Tell her to get some help. Call a hotline. Find another shoulder to cry on.”

  “You don’t need to worry. She’s built like a linebacker. Drank coffee and ate jelly doughnuts.”

  “Would I have to worry if she was a hundred and five pounds and had a salad?”

  Brandon shook his head. “No, of course not. I was just telling you. So you could picture it.”

  Mia looked at him, her lips pursed.

  “Did you give her the damn book?” she said.

  “No. It’s on the boat. I was in town.”

  “At the hospital.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  “I don’t know what she wants,” Brandon said. “It’s like she wants the diary back but she also wants to talk. Weird mix.”

  He hesitated, then said, “They figured out who I am.”

  “So it’s some celebrity crush thing,” Mia said. “Give her the goddamn diary and tell her to get lost. Mail it to her for god’s sake. You don’t have to save her from her messed-up life. Tell her to call some other cop. Maybe she’s a uniform chaser.”

  Mia turned away, walked to the kitchen. Brandon followed, stood as she filled the kettle and put it on the stove. “I need tea before I head back?”

  The kettle hissed, the water on the bottom burning off.

  “This march on the P.D.” Brandon said.

  “Don’t you dare go watch.”

  “Amanda dying is gonna ratchet things up even more.”

  “Don’t watch the news,” Mia said. “They told you not to.”

  “But she’s gonna be gasoline on the fire. Pressure on the D.A. to do something. Somebody to throw to the mob.”

  “Stay here. Watch
Netflix.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll go back to the boat.”

  “Just let Kat and Maddie and the rest of them do their thing. Stay out of the crossfire.”

  Mia caught herself. “Sorry,” she said.

  It was 1:15, raining steadily. Brandon sat in the truck, motor running, heat on low. He flipped through his email, responded to Canavan, Beam, Harriet Foote. “I’m around. Give me a time.” He ignored the emails from the Boston Globe, the Portland Review, three TV stations, and a lawyer named Polceski, offering his services. There was a text from a woman named Addison Slate, Channel 5 out of Bangor:

  I can’t imagine what you’re going through, Officer Blake. My heart goes out to you. Can we talk?

  Brandon put the phone down on the seat beside him, turned off the heat. The rain had speckled the windows, turned the truck cab into a private capsule. It was like this was his life now—isolated, alone with his own reality. The doors were locked and no one could get in. Nor could he get out.

  He put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes. Waited for the nightmare slideshow to begin. When it did—Amanda slicing at her wrist—he opened his eyes and sat up. Started the motor and pulled out, headed east toward the harbor.

  At the Eastern Prom he turned right, rolled slowly down the hill toward the Old Port. He glanced left and caught glimpses of the South Portland shore, a smatter of boats that was his marina. He’d be there in fifteen minutes, hunkered down on Bay Witch, the rain pattering on the deck above him. He could call Mia, Kat, watch something online, read. He had a couple new World War II books—the tank war at El Alamein, the battle for Okinawa—from the South Portland library. At five he’d have a beer. Wait for it to get dark and the interminable night to begin.

  Christ.

  At Pearl Street he took a right, turned into the pay lot halfway up the block. The far end of the lot fronted Middle Street, a half block down from the P.D. He circled, found a space two slots in. Backed the truck in and waited. A few cars passed. The people with umbrellas. Then TV crews. Photographers. A few cops stood off to the side, like they were waiting for closing time in the Old Port. Brandon could hear the marching orders. Stay in the background. Don’t respond. Don’t get pulled in.

  And then the marchers, a guy playing a snare drum. People stretching banners leading the way: