Free Red Light by T. Jefferson Parker Page B

miserable?
    "There's
a lot of you in this," said Mike.
    "Please
explain that statement."
    "You
never ... you never offer me anything."
    She
looked at him. He was talking into the glass.
    "You don't
touch. You don't kiss. You don't talk. You don't plan. You don't dream. You
don't make me feel necessary or even present. You don't do anything."
    "No.
No, that's right."
    "So
what am I supposed to do?"
    "Fall
in love with someone else."
    "I
told you I wasn't in love with her! Don't you get it?"
    She finally did get
it. It had just taken a few minutes to see it. Mike was right. Mike was telling
the truth. Part of the truth, anyway.
    "You were
falling in love with her. And you were unhappy and afraid of what it would lead
to."
    He'd turned on the couch to see her, something imploring
and flagrantly juvenile in his face now. He stood, wobbly.
    "I never once
touched her with that in mind. I shook her hand. I hugged her when I left that
night."
    Strange how her heart
felt then, like it had been wrapped in an iron blanket and dropped off
the edge of a ship. She walked and over faced him.
    "But what, Mike?
You never, you never and you never. But what? What's the last sentence?"
    "I
never did anything toward her like that. I behaved just like you do."
    "But."
    "But
I enjoyed her company."
    "Enjoyed
it."
    "I enjoyed it a
lot. I... I craved it. What
she looked like and how she moved and how she talked and what she said. What
she smelled like. I wanted to be there. In the same room with her. She made me
feel like doing all the things I wanted to do with you. But I had those feelings
completely, one hundred percent under control."
    "Did
you, Mike?"
    "Absolutely.
And you're a fool if you don't believe that."
    "You
kill her?"
    He tilted heavily
around the couch, stumbled, caught her arm and threw her across the room. She knocked
into the wall but kept her balance, hands thwacking backward against the pine.
    "Yeah," he
said. "I bought a silencer. I had dinner with her then iced her. Arrest
me."
    She
glanced again toward the telephone table and he saw her do it.
    "You
know I'm kidding," he said. "Right?"
    "I'll
think about it. I'm going to go now."
    His
voice was rising now, panic and shame and who knew what else.
    "Merci, I'm
really awful damned sorry for what I just did. That isn't me. You know that
isn't me. You know, right? You know?"
    "I
know. Stay where you are."
    She
stared at him as she walked across the room to the front door.
    Mike stayed, planted
where he was, like he was surprised, like he just now realized what he'd done.
There were big tears running down his red face and his mouth was turned down
like a Greek mask.
    "I'm so fucking
sorry, Merci. I love you so much. Don't go. Don't you go away, too.”
    She trotted to the
car because to run was to admit fear. She got the keys in one hand and rode the
butt of her H&K with the other. She looked into the backseat before getting
in. Then she hit the door lock and started up the big V-8. She saw Mike appear
in the doorway, then a fan of dirt falling in the rearview as the Impala dug
its rear tires and roared off the lot.
     

     
    She stopped at a market in
Orange to get a sandwich and the day's papers. Her hands were still trembling
as she slid the quarters in machines. Her heart was beating fast and flighty
inside and it felt like it wasn't in gear. A bad taste in her mouth. A bum
asked her for money and she wanted to pistol-whip him.
    She called
headquarters for Zamorra, she had to talk to him, but he was still at the
hospital.
    She got back in the
car, drove to the far corner of a near-empty parking lot and cried. She gave
herself exactly one minute, shed her tears, then tamped them down with a deep,
shuddering breath.
    Sneaking bastard, she
thought. He doesn't have the balls to kill anybody.
    And now she had a
murder confession from him. A drunken, sarcastic one, but a murder confession
just the same. You could use something like that to obtain a warrant for
search. You could use