I GOT INTO the back seat when my Uber arrived. That way, the hole under my left eye would be at a distance and require the driver to peek in the rearview mirror to look at. I didn’t want to frighten the driver. I just wanted to go home.
There wasn’t anything more I could do for Turk. Elk Fenton was already on his way to the Brick House where Turk would be deposited into LJPD’s holding cell before he was transferred to the San Diego County Jail. He’d be arraigned the next day and, unless he made bail, would have to spend upwards of a year in jail before his case went to trial.
“Are you all right?” A female voice pulled me out of my head. The driver.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I graded on a curve.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you to the hospital instead of the address on Cadden Drive?”
My nose. The blood had dried but I didn’t have anything to use to wipe it off. I was worried about an old scar and forgot about my fresh wound. I couldn’t hide either.
“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Once again, even in the violent whirlwind of my life, I was reminded there was still goodness in the world. Strangers willing to help the injured, the helpless, and the innocent. There’d been times in my life when I’d been all three. Even innocent.
The driver dropped me in front of my house. I got out of the car, but something wasn’t right. There was a large rectangular form in the driveway. A car. The car I still owned and never used was in the garage collecting dust. Maybe the driver dropped me at the wrong address. I knew I was on the right street because the last three months of being driven in the dark in my hometown had carved the turns and sequences into my memory. But the car in the driveway made me reshuffle. The shapes seemed right for my house. My front yard had a lawn and the house I stood in front of was flat in front. Both my neighbors had succulents in their yards making for greater variety of shapes. No, I was at my house.
I tapped my cane along the driveway and bounced it off the wheels and undercarriage on the vehicle. Some kind of SUV, I guessed. I knocked on the front-seat passenger-side window. No noise inside. Leah drove an SUV, but she wasn’t due home for four more days. Plus, I’d talked to her last night and she hadn’t said anything about coming home early.
I made my way up the walk and was about to put my key in the lock when the door opened. Citrus and sandalwood scent. A willowy shadow.
Leah.
“Rick! Oh my God! What happened to you?”
Arms around my neck. Lips against mine. Tender, careful of my latest injury. A wet nose snuffled my hand. Midnight. Home. With my family. I melted into Leah’s arms. She walked me over to the couch with Midnight prancing at my side and I sat down.
“What happened to your face?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. I want to breathe you in first.” I pulled her down into my lap and her lips met mine again. We embraced, tight and warm. Silence. Time stopped. The last week faded away.
Leah finally rose from my lap and time started up again.
“We have to get some ice on your nose. Right away.” Her slim outline rushed into the gray background of the kitchen.
Leah. We’d been together for less than two weeks when I was shot. We weren’t even really a couple yet. Desperate circumstances forced us together and our relationship didn’t have a definition when Leah stopped her life to help me start my new one. I hadn’t seen her face in almost a year but I still saw her sunrise ocean blue eyes and warm blanket smile every night I closed my eyes in bed. Honey blond hair and square-chinned beauty. Smart, funny, and loving.
A gift. I believed her when she told me she loved me, but I’d never know if we would have survived this long together if I hadn’t almost died.
Midnight’s head pressed against my hand. I scratched him and heard the vacuum of the freezer door opening, the clank of ice cubes, then a splash of water from the faucet. Leah’s shadow came back to me and sat down on the couch.
“Here.” Firm cold cloth placed gently against the bridge of my nose. Pain vibrated along my nose and under my eyes. “Lean your head back and hold the ice. I’m going to clean the blood off your face.”
I did as told with the ice and felt a warm damp cloth wipe my face. She had to use some pressure to get the dried blood off.
I used to keep ready-made pain-portioned bags of ice in my freezer when I was a private investigator. They came in handy every few months. After Santa Barbara and the loss of my vision, I thought all that was behind me.
Leah cleaned me up, went back into the kitchen, and returned with a bottle of water.
“Do you want me to take over on the ice?” A sweet upturn in her voice.
“I’m good. Thanks.” I reached out my free hand, and she filled it with her own.
Leah was the first woman I’d been able to love completely since Colleen died. A true partner who’d been forced to handle too much of the burden of everyday life over the last nine months, while I rehabilitated, drifted, and avoided making a decision on what to do with my new, different life. How would she react when I told her I’d finally decided the next stage was going to be the same as the last stage? The one that had gotten me shot and stolen my vision.
Leah rested her head against my chest for the next ten or so minutes that I iced my nose. The pain numbed a bit, and I loaded up with 2,000 mg of Tylenol that she grabbed from the medicine cabinet.
“Maybe we should go to the emergency room?” She moved her head close to my face like she was examining me.
“Let’s give it a day or two.” I tried to inhale through my nose. A sliver of air twisted through my left nostril. Nothing through the right. I’d had my nose broken before. Sometimes all it takes to mend is ice and time. “If it’s not better by then, I’ll go to a doctor.”
“Okay. I guess.” She leaned back against the couch; her face still pointed at me. “Now, tell me what happened.”
That would be tough to do, but I couldn’t lie to her like I did to the police. She already knew about Shay’s murder from an earlier phone call. I told her about Turk’s kick to my face and his arrest.
“Turk did that to you?” She pulled away from the sofa back and sat erect.
“He was trying to get away from the police. He panicked. I don’t blame him. Your freedom taken away is a scary thing. Especially when you’re innocent.”
“When you’re innocent.” Her voice flat as a concrete slab.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I talked to Moira yesterday.” Another discussion that I didn’t know about.
“Okay.”
“She thinks Turk could have killed Shay in a fit of rage.” Delicately stepping over each word.
Shit. The two most important women in my life, the two most important people in my life, thought Turk was guilty.
“He’d never do that.” The throbbing in my nose, a stark counterpoint to my statement.
“Rick, you’re a fiercely loyal man. That’s one of the reasons I love you.” She took my hand in both of hers and held it to her chest. “We both know the police are wrong sometimes, but most of the time they’re right. They wouldn’t arrest someone without compelling evidence. Let the system take its course.” The cop DNA that bled through her father, brother, and sister ran through Leah’s veins.
“I know Turk. I know in my gut he’d never kill the woman he loved.” I also knew people did it all the time.
“Your gut has been wrong before.” Flat and sad at the same time.
I got off the couch and walked into the kitchen. No cane needed, no steps counting off in my head.
“I’m sorry.” I heard the release of the couch and footsteps coming toward me.
My gut had been wrong before. But it wasn’t now. Not about the man who’d saved my life. It couldn’t be.
“Don’t apologize for speaking the truth.” I walked to the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. I’d cut back on my drinking after I went blind. Getting from one place to another was difficult enough when you couldn’t see. Stacking loss of equilibrium and clear thought on top was the kind of stupid I knew to avoid. Today I needed a beer.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.” Leah.
“We’re not going to agree on this so let’s not argue about it and spoil your homecoming.”
I took a sip of beer and walked to the butcher block island in the middle of the kitchen and sat down on a wooden stool. The sun glowed in from the kitchen windows and put the island’s outline in relief from the golden background. Color I could actually see.
“Why didn’t you tell me last night that you were coming home today?” I asked.
We talked every night on the phone while she was in Santa Barbara. My daily dose of tranquility during the turmoil of the last week. When I told her about Shay’s murder, I left out the part about Turk being the prime suspect. I didn’t want her to worry about my involvement and I needed the respite. A quiet reminder of my calm life with Leah the last nine months.
Apparently, I hadn’t been the only one holding back pieces of the truth.
“I wanted to surprise you.” Leah sat across from me and put a hand on my arm.
“You did. It’s a nice surprise.” I took her hand in mine. “How long before you have to go back up?”
Silence that sucked the air in the room into a vacuum. Whatever she said next wasn’t going to be good news.
“That’s why I came back down today.” Hesitant. Uh-oh.
“I say back up. You say back down. Which is it? I thought San Diego was your home now.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Her voice lifted with joy. “I think I’ve found a solution for both of us.”
“O-kay.” Life in the dark void had made me more reliant upon people, but even more protective of the insulated world I had left. I selfishly clamped onto it and didn’t want to let it go.
“I discovered this nonprofit called DefenseAble and—”
“Defensible?”
“No. Defense and Able together. DefenseAble. They teach self-defense to people with physical disabilities.” Real enthusiasm in her voice. And a hint of desperation. “I talked to them about you and they already knew your story. They’d love to have you come work for them. It would be a great opportunity for you. You’d be able to help people. I know that’s why you became a cop and a private investigator. This would give you a chance to make a tremendous impact on people’s lives who really need it.”
“And I’m guessing this is in Santa Barbara?” My voice was less enthusiastic than Leah’s.
“Yes. People up there think you’re a hero.”
Anti-hero to hero in fifteen short years. But hero or anti-hero didn’t really matter to me. San Diego was my home. And where I was needed.
“I’m in the middle of Turk’s case right now.” Not officially, but I was all in.
“You don’t have to make a decision right this minute. But the job is there if you want it. All you have to do is meet with Mike Higginbotham at DefenseAble in Santa Barbara.”
“What’s the job?”
“You’d be kind of an ambassador for them. Meet with people and help advance DefenseAble’s cause.”
“You mean I’d be a fundraiser?”
Or a figurehead. The job I was suddenly most capable of doing whether it be for Turk Muldoon’s defense or people trying to help the disabled. I was a symbol. An icon. An emoji. A representation of what was supposed to be. Instead of what was.
“Not really.” Flustered. “That might be just a part of it. Why don’t you talk to Mike and find out? He really wants to meet with you.”
“I doubt he’ll be willing to wait a year or more, because that’s probably how long it will be before Turk goes to trial.”
“He might. You should talk to him and find out.” Zero inflection. I’d drained the enthusiasm out of her. She took a deep breath. “I just signed a contract to finish a 20,000 square foot home in Montecito.”
“That’s fantastic!”
“Thanks. This is the job that will change my business. I can’t be a one-woman shop anymore. I’m interviewing people for two associate design positions and an assistant.” Something was missing from Leah’s voice. Joy. “I have to drive back home tomorrow. This job will take all of my time and focus for the next six to eight months, at least. I’ll be living full-time in Santa Barbara.”