Deputy Brian Callahan stood at the door of George Pope’s hospital room when Fenway strode down the hallway with her legal pad. After she’d dried off—again—at her office, she’d written out everything she’d heard George Pope say in the front seat of the crashed beige sedan—except the paternity of Scott Behrens.
She stopped at the door. “Everything okay?”
Callahan nodded. “Sounds like it. We let his wife be with him until he goes in for surgery.”
“Not worried about him escaping?”
Callahan shrugged. “Broken collarbone? He’s not going anywhere. His wife is a little in shock. Maybe she didn’t think he had it in him.”
“Thanks, Brian.” Fenway knocked and opened the door to the hospital room. George Pope lay on the hospital bed, his right arm in a sling, held tight against his side. Hope Dunkelman sat on his left, holding his hand.
“I have the confession for you to sign,” Fenway said.
Pope nodded, trying to scoot himself up in the bed. He yelped.
“Don’t do that,” Dunkelman admonished. “You had a concussion when you said all those things. It can’t be used against you in court. We can fight this, baby.”
“I said no.” Pope smiled sadly.
“At least let me call Tyra. Get her lawyer to give us a consultation.”
“The ADA might be interested in negotiating,” Fenway said.
Dunkelman stood up and shook her head. “He’s not signing anything today. Besides, the doctor just put him on a drip. Painkillers. He wouldn’t know what he’s signing.”
“It’s—” Pope began, but a look from his wife silenced him.
“We’ll be here when you’re out of surgery.” Fenway placed the legal pad on the wheeled hospital tray. “Make any changes you need to.”
Pope reached out with his good arm, cringing in pain, and grabbed the legal pad.
“Don’t read that.” Dunkelman’s voice went up an octave. “It’ll upset you. You need to rest.”
Pope blinked and dropped the pad. “She’s right. I’m not signing that.”
Fenway flinched; he’d been so ready to confess. “Why not?”
“You wrote that I killed Mathis Jericho.”
Fenway clenched her jaw. “I see. You think a jury might sympathize with you for—”
“No!” Pope shouted, then yelped in pain.
Aha. Pope was afraid Fenway would reveal Scott Behrens’ paternity. She’d have to talk to him about it later—if the ADA didn’t get a confession out of him first.
“Get that paper out of here,” Dunkelman said. “My husband isn’t signing anything.”
Fenway turned her head to look at George Pope. Was that resignation or determination in his eyes?
She thought back to his car wreck. She arrested him for both murders. He’d confessed.
He must have thought that a jury would have sympathy for him murdering the man responsible for the death of his son. But juries wouldn’t be so understanding in the murder of the person who’d uncovered the truth.
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Pope had driven the Corvette in which Mathis was found dead. The evidence for Mathis’s murder might be circumstantial right now, but they’d find something. Maybe ADA Pondicherry could make a deal for manslaughter instead of murder in the second degree. Maybe Pope would get lucky, and he’d get an offer for the sentences to run concurrently. And besides, Fenway—and Pondicherry, by extension—had a great bargaining chip. Scott’s DNA, and what Pope had done with Tyra Cahill, would come out at trial. So Fenway knew there wouldn’t be a trial.
Fenway felt a little gross holding that over Pope’s head. But Pope was a killer. He’d have to pay for his crime.
“You don’t have to sign it,” Fenway said, “but the two of you should talk about it. Know what your options are.” She looked at Pope. “We know you killed Mathis Jericho, too. Things will go a lot easier for you if we don’t have to prove it at trial.”
Dunkelman narrowed her eyes at Fenway, then turned back to Pope, who closed his eyes.
Fenway walked out of the hospital. The rain had slowed to an insistent drizzle. She sloshed through the parking lot and got into her Accord. San Vicente Boulevard was flooded a block to the west of the hospital—only the street itself, not the buildings, fortunately. A few inches of standing water covered the bottom of the tires of all the cars parked on the street.
Fenway took a different route to avoid the flooded street. She couldn’t get onto Ocean Highway, but she took surface streets to get onto Estancia Canyon Road to get back to her apartment. It wasn’t yet eight o’clock when she pulled into her apartment complex.
She opened the door and was greeted with smells of cooked tomatoes and garlic. McVie stood in front of the stove, two bowls on the counter beside him.
“Oh, good,” he said, turning his head from the pots on the burners. “Your timing is perfect. Just another couple of minutes.” He put down the wooden paddle onto a spoon rest and stepped over to Fenway.
She wrapped her arms around him. “Did we lose power?”
“For only about fifteen minutes, right around five o’clock. I already reset the clocks.”
“Thanks.”
McVie kissed her forehead. “You’re soaked.”
“I dried off at the office.”
“Why don’t you go change while I finish up?”
Fenway nodded, broke from McVie’s embrace, and walked into her bedroom. She peeled off her clothes. McVie was right: everything was still damp. Her underwear clung to her body. She wondered if she should take a quick shower, then her stomach rumbled. No, no time for that. But she flitted across the hall to her bathroom and grabbed her towel, drying off. She looked in the bathroom mirror: her hair, which had mostly grown out since her adventure in Los Angeles, was a nightmare of frizz.
She finished toweling off, then went back into the bedroom, tossing her towel in the hamper and grabbing a pair of gym shorts and a tank top out of her drawers.
She walked out to the kitchen. “Now I feel less sticky.”
McVie grinned as he closed the oven and turned down a burner.
“Thanks for cooking.”
“It’s nothing fancy. I didn’t think we should go out in this weather—plus, I thought most places would be closed.”
“What are we having?”
“You had pasta and red sauce in the pantry, and there was a package of ground turkey in the freezer.”
“Did you use the mushrooms in the vegetable drawer?”
“And the zucchini.”
Fenway sighed. “Thank you.”
“It’s no problem.”
Fenway walked up behind McVie and traced a line down his left shoulder blade. “You think you should wait another couple of days before you leave?”
McVie bobbed his head. “Not sure. Payback Systems wants me there on Monday.”
“But the storm is moving inland—and that’s the way you’re going. You don’t want to catch up to it tomorrow.”
“No. But I have to drive twelve hundred miles. If I leave Saturday, that’s nine hours on Saturday and nine hours on Sunday. I’ll be exhausted on my first day at my new job.”
Fenway lowered her eyes.
“I’ve gotta call movers, too, since I won’t be able to drive the U-Move-It truck next week. They didn’t have anything on such short notice. So much for saving money on the move.”
“Did you cancel the U-Move-It?”
“Not yet.” McVie stepped back into the kitchen and lifted a lid on a saucepan. Steam wafted up. “I canceled the vehicle moving company, since I’ll be driving the Highlander out instead of the U-Move-It.”
“That sucks. It’ll be a pain to coordinate everything.”
“That’s part of the reason I didn’t cancel the truck rental. Maybe I’ll ask for the day off on Friday and fly back. Payback Systems can’t expect to ask me to start a week early without giving me a little leeway.”
“Well,” Fenway said, “demanding you start early wouldn’t be fair or ethical. But they might expect you to do it anyway.”
“Really?”
Fenway looked at McVie out of the corner of her eye. “How long has it been since you worked for a private company?”
“What do you mean?” McVie took a colander out from a bottom cabinet—he knows where all my stuff is in the kitchen—and set it in the sink.
“Like, outside the public sector.”
“Oh.” McVie turned off the burner under the bubbling sauce. “Uh—it’s been a while.”
“Like five years?”
McVie grinned. “Like twenty.”
“Oh.” Fenway sometimes forgot their fourteen-year age difference. “Right. Well, a lot of companies think they can mistreat their employees. And they set up that expectation the first week you’re on the job, so you don’t expect anything better.”
McVie stirred the sauce for a moment, not saying anything. Then he set the spoon down, grabbed oven mitts, and lifted the pot off the stove, dumping the pasta and water into the colander in the sink. He set the pot back on the stove. “It’s only for a year.”
“A year of hell,” Fenway said.
He shrugged. “If I can survive my year of patrol in Bakersfield, I can survive a year at Payback Systems.” He opened the oven, mitts on, and pulled out a sheet pan with garlic bread, golden brown on top. Perfect.
Fenway took a step into the kitchen. “Can I do anything?”
“You’ve been busy meting out justice. Sit at the table. I’ll bring this out in a minute.”
She hadn’t noticed he’d cleaned off the small table in the dining nook. She stepped back, hung her purse—the only thing that hadn’t gotten thoroughly drenched—on the corner of the chair.
“Any more news on the Celeste situation?”
Fenway closed her eyes. “No.”
The sounds of McVie dishing out food. “Want a beer?”
“Absolutely.”
The sound of a can popping, the cabinet opening, the pour of beer into a pint glass. “Are you sure,” McVie said, “there’s no more news?”
Fenway paused. “What have you heard?”
“Only that your capture of those eighteen bricks of Nyllie led to a windfall for the department. So now Gretchen shouldn’t have any problem with Celeste’s overtime.”
“Ah.” Fenway stretched her arms above her head. Usually, after she’d caught a killer, her body would relax. But tonight, her shoulders were still tight. “Turns out Gretchen already knew about the incentive money when she wrote up Celeste.”
McVie walked to the table, a flat bowl full of spaghetti in each hand, two pieces of garlic bread on top of each bowl, a fork sticking out of the pasta in each. “Then why did she do it?” He set the bowls down on the table.
Even though the sauce was from a pre-made jar, the aroma made Fenway salivate. She must have been hungry. “Maybe to flex power over me.”
“Maybe it was the ‘I need something more than that.’ She might have thought this was the way to get you to give her what she wanted.”
“But she needs to be less cryptic. And since my mind went immediately to a bribe, I’m not sure what her endgame is.”
“I’ve been thinking about it most of the afternoon, too,” McVie said. “And I don’t have anything. Nothing that doesn’t scream bribe.”
Fenway twirled her fork, then lifted the spaghetti and sauce into her mouth. “Mmm.”
“I added some garlic and onions, too. The jarred stuff doesn’t always have enough of that.”
“Whatever you did,” Fenway said with her mouth full, “It’s really good.”
They ate in silence for a moment, Fenway crunching the garlic bread, McVie taking a swig of his beer.
“You okay?” McVie asked.
“Sure.” Fenway swallowed. “Why?”
“Because you caught the bad guy. An innocent person was released from jail. You usually feel better about your wins.”
“It could be because I don’t feel like I really did anything to stop the flow of morpheranyl into the county.” She picked up another forkful of pasta.
That wasn’t it, though. Something didn’t sit right with her. Something about Mathis Jericho’s murder.
She chewed and swallowed. “But maybe Captain Alvidrez will get lucky with the information Calvin Banning gave us.”
“Calvin who?”
“One of the guys who was on the catamaran with the kilos of morpheranyl attached to the hulls.” Fenway chewed. “I suppose we at least disrupted operations a little. They won’t be able to use the Ariel. Probably not a long-term solution, but if it means less morpheranyl, I suppose that’s something.”
“Yeah.” McVie chewed and swallowed. “You beat yourself up too much.”
Fenway chortled. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
McVie grinned. “Yeah, I’m as bad as you. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to me.”
Fenway nodded.
Her phone buzzed in her purse.
“Don’t get it,” McVie said.
“If it’s important—”
“Yeah, yeah, okay.”
Fenway pulled her phone out of her purse. It was a text—from Sheriff Donnelly.
Fenway knotted her brow.
“What is it?”
“Text from Gretchen.”
“You got a text from Gretchen?”
“Yeah,” Fenway said. “She’s never texted me before.”
“What does it say?”
“‘Congratulations on solving the two murders.’” Fenway glanced up at McVie.
“Why do you think that’s weird?”
“Because I’ve never gotten any recognition from her about solving cases before. Why now? And why, after she told me she needed something from me?”
“Maybe Gretchen is trying to get better at communication.” McVie rubbed his chin. “I’ve heard she hasn’t been the best manager of people since the election. She could be giving you an actual compliment.” He raised his eyebrows. “You know, some people I know are terrible at accepting compliments.”
Fenway pursed her lips. “Do you think she still wants something from me?”
McVie took another bite. His plate was over half empty. He chewed thoughtfully. “You could go ask her.”
“I suppose.” Fenway took one last bite and sat back in her chair. She yawned widely.
“You’ve had a long day. Let me clean up.”
Fenway opened her mouth to argue—but he was right. She was exhausted. And she’d been riding full speed on one of those stupid electric scooters.
“I feel bad,” Fenway said. “It’s your last night in town. We should do something.” But as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how impractical that was.
“If you haven’t noticed, Estancia just experienced a hundred-year storm,” McVie said.
“Yeah, yeah. Everything’s closed.”
McVie grabbed Fenway’s empty plate along with his, stood up from the table, and walked into the kitchen, placing the dishes in the sink and turning on the hot water.
Fenway yawned widely. “Your last night in Estancia and you’re cleaning up after me.”
“After everything you went through at the storage unit? It’s the least I can do.” McVie opened the dishwasher and loaded the dirty plates and silverware into it. “Besides, I think a night in with you checks all my boxes for a perfect last day here.”