Tough Customer

CHAPTER 26

DODGE CAME TO THE END OF HIS LONG STORY.

"This pharmaceutical executive thought he was smarter than everybody else. He robbed the first bank as a lark, just to see if he could get away with it. When he did, he tried it again. And again. He said it got addictive.

"I guess that young guard he killed gave him an extra-special rush. I wonder how much fun he had on death row. I'm sure he's been executed by now, unless he received a pardon. When I moved to Atlanta, I lost track." He shifted on the faux leather bench and, in a lower tone, added, "But for you, that's probably the least interesting part of the story."

Berry had been listening for almost an hour without speaking a word. She cleared her throat and took a sip from the water glass that Grace had refilled without her even noticing. "What happened to Franklin Albright?"

"ATF caught him and his so-called cousin conducting a lucrative business in automatic weapons. They were selling them to drug cartels across the border."

"Crystal?"

Dodge sighed and shook his head ruefully. "I guess she finally figured out that Marvin wasn't coming back to rescue her from the motel. I lost track of her, too."

"You never saw her again?"

"No. Marvin vanished from her life."

Berry hesitated, then asked in a quieter voice, "And Mother?"

"I'd failed to uphold every promise I'd made her. So I did as she ordered and was out of the house by the time she brought you home. I didn't see her again until last Saturday. Or you, either." He gave her an appraising look. "Your hair's still red, but your nose is no longer flat."

She returned his wistful smile. Her moods had shifted a dozen times while he'd been telling his story. She'd gone from curiosity to anger to heartache. She wasn't sure which emotion she should land on, so she let them ebb and flow as they would without making a conscious effort to claim one.

She said, "The task force was disbanded."

"Yep."

"And you made detective."

"No. My reputation with HPD fluctuated somewhere between a laughingstock and a fuckup. I was assigned to another beat, another partner. Actually, I had a series of partners because I was a shit-heel to all of them, and nobody wanted to ride with me.

"I got sloppy on the job. Bad attitude. Surly to my supervisors." He tapped his shirt pocket. "Started smoking because I was searching for something, anything, to occupy my thoughts and dull the pain of losing Caroline and you, and nicotine wasn't as risky as cocaine or booze.

"About six months into this self-inflicted purgatory, I went on a screwing spree. See, the self-blame phase had worn off, and the I'll-show-her one had set in. So I went on a sex binge. After months of one-night stands, all I'd proved was how much I loved your mother.

"One morning I woke up and realized I'd never get her back if I stayed on that rail, so I switched. I turned over a new leaf. I cleaned up my act and began trying to salvage my job, which I was on the brink of losing. The cigarettes I was hooked on, but I went cold turkey on women. I lived like a freaking monk." He stopped, and the lines in his face settled heavily into an expression of abject sorrow.

Berry asked softly, "The reform didn't last?"

"Not past the day Caroline's marriage to Jim Malone was announced."

"You read it in the newspaper?"

"Yeah. Came like a bolt out of the blue. Shows how cruel Fate can be. I had no idea she'd even been seeing him. Not that way, I mean. And then there it was in black and white. She was married to him."

Berry could tell by the ragged sound of his voice that, even after all this time, it hurt.

He sat for a moment, staring into near space, then said, "Through lawyers we settled on Malone adopting you and giving you his name. I caved on that without really putting up a fight. I had nothing to offer. You had a new daddy who seemed a decent sort, who would give you a good life, one I couldn't come close to providing." He paused a beat, then said, "I left, and never went back."

After a time, his gaze refocused on her. "That's it, Berry. Not a very pretty bedtime story for a man to be telling his daughter, is it? Not exactly Goldilocks."

"It's a sad story. Particularly for you."

"I didn't tell you so you'd feel sorry for me. Last thing I want you to do is make me out as some kind of woebegone hero, a tragic figure. I made bad choices and paid for them. The only reason I told you is so maybe you'll take a life lesson from it. That's the best I can do for you. God knows I haven't done anything else."

They exchanged a long look, which was interrupted only when Dodge's cell phone rang. He pulled it from his belt and checked the number calling. "It's Caroline." He answered, listened, then said, "Okay, we'll be right there."

When he disconnected, he told Berry that Caroline and Ski had finished their business at the sheriff's office. "That Mercury cretin got his check. She says Ski needs to stay there. Everybody wants him for something. Caroline asked if we could pick her up."

Berry grabbed her handbag and slid from the booth. "You can drop me at the hospital."

"Wrong. I'm taking you home. No argument," he said sternly, cutting off her protest. "Like it or not, I'm your old man, and I'm telling you now that you're going home and getting some rest."

On the drive out to the lake house, Dodge watched his daughter in the rearview mirror. Her expression blank, she stared through the window into the night without making a movement or a sound. He would have given a thousand dollars to know what she was thinking. About him? About Starks? About her lost job? Maybe she was just pining after Ski. Who the hell knew?

Whatever was on her mind, he wanted to help her with it. But this parenting thing was tough even when your child was an adult. Possibly it was even more difficult because Berry was an adult. He'd put his foot down about her standing vigil over a felon who was already brain-dead. But after that, he couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound stupid, banal, unnecessary, or a combination of all three, so he hadn't said anything. Caroline must have been of the same mind, because she was subdued when they picked her up at the courthouse and remained silent for the duration of the drive.

Once inside the house, he followed them upstairs. When they reached the gallery, the two women went one way, he went the other. He showered in the bathroom where it all had started. He even turned down the bed. But he couldn't rest until he knew Berry was okay, so he put on fresh clothes and went back downstairs to wait for Caroline to come down.

He'd been waiting almost an hour when he heard her light tread on the stairs. She didn't notice him sitting there in the dark living room as she passed it on the way to her bedroom.

He gave her a couple of minutes, then went to the door and tapped softly. "It's me."

When she opened the door, he could tell by her expression that she immediately assumed another tragedy had befallen them. "What now?"

"Nothing's wrong. Before I cashed in for the night, I just wanted to make sure that Berry's okay. She looked pretty ragged."

Caroline motioned him into the room and closed the door behind him. He looked around. It wasn't a fussy room, but it was totally feminine all the same. There were an unnecessary number of pillows piled against the iron headboard of her bed, and gathered fabric framed the three windows. The walls were painted what looked to him like the same color of pale yellow that he'd painted Berry's nursery all those years ago. Most everything else in the room was white, including the terry-cloth robe wrapped around Caroline's slender body.

"Berry's exhausted," she said. "Upset."

"Over? Not Starks, I hope. He's getting what he deserves. Unless he dies peacefully, in which case he's getting better than he deserves."

"As cruel as that sounds, I agree. He continues to torment Berry even as he's dying. She's carrying the burden for everything that happened."

"Know what I think?" Dodge said. "I think Starks played her like a fiddle. He kept her feeling sorry for him."

"I'm sure of it," Caroline said. "He's a manipulator."

Dodge went across to one of the windows and looked out across the back of the property, at the dark forest, the swimming pool and terrace, the lake beyond. It was a pleasing view. The moon was sparkling on the water that gently lapped the lakeshore. The reserve deputies had been withdrawn, returning the landscape to serenity.

Thinking out loud, he said, "I still don't get why he went into that frigging swamp. Ski's confounded by it, too."

"I suppose we'll never know. I'm just glad he's where he is now."

"I'll feel better when he's in the ground," Dodge said with feeling.

He gave the rear of the property one final, searching survey, then turned back in to the room. Caroline had sat down on the end of the bed. He hesitated, then said, "Berry and I talked." He backed up to an upholstered chair and sat down. "Over cheeseburgers, while you and Ski were dealing with Mercury."

"She figured it out."

"I don't think it took her too long."

"What did you tell her?"

"Everything. The whole ugly truth."

"You didn't have to, Dodge."

"Yeah, I did. Not for her, but for me. I needed her to know everything."

"Why?"

"First off, so she would never blame you for splitting us up. Not that she would ever have a mind to, but I wanted to ensure she wouldn't. Secondly, so that whatever she feels for me is grounded in the cold, hard facts, not some fantasy daddy. I didn't want her view of me to be romanticized.

"By telling her the truth, I took a risk on her despising me. But maybe she'll see some redemption in my not trying to pass myself off as anything other than what I was. What I am. I hope she'll at least give me credit for being honest."

"I believe she will. She's always been fair. She's not one to hold grudges, either. Besides, she's told me she likes you. She thinks you're cute."

He guffawed.

"In a scruffy sort of way."

"See, that's what I'm talking about," he said crossly. "She's seeing me better than I am." He looked at Caroline and, for the millionth time, felt a shark's bite of regret. "Not you, though. You saw me for exactly what I was."

"And loved you anyway."

A long silence stretched between them. Neither moved or looked away. Eventually she said, "You didn't knock on my door only to talk about Berry."

Dodge took a deep breath and expelled it, looked aside, and then came back. "I never told you I was sorry, Caroline. Talking about it tonight brought back to me..." He stopped, sighed. "As soon as it was done, it was too late to make it right. Fucking Crystal was the least of it. I know that sounds like a cliche, but I swear to God, it meant nothing. I went through it mechanically, the whole time planning what I was going to do as soon as it was over.

"I didn't betray you with my dick. I betrayed you with my ego. Nothing I said then, or say now, will make any difference. I did it. But I want you to know how sorry I am about it all. When you told me I'd hurt you worse than Roger Campton had, I hated what I'd done. Hated myself for doing it to you and destroying what we had." He paused, took another soughing breath. "I've wanted to say this to you for thirty years. I'm sorry for the pain I caused you."

Her chest stuttered a little when she inhaled. "Apology accepted."

"Thank you." Before he made an utter fool of himself, he slapped the tops of his thighs and stood up. "I'm beat. I can't even remember this morning."

"You came into our hotel room in Houston and woke us up."

"That was today?"

"It's been a long one. But at least Oren Starks was caught. We can rest without worrying over our daughter's safety." As he made to move past her, she reached for his hand and pressed her fingers around his. "Thank you, Dodge."

"I didn't do all that much."

"You answered my call for help."

"I'm glad you asked for it."

"You were the first, the only, person I thought to ask."

A moment ticked by, then another. She didn't release his hand. Instead, she studied the back of it and traced the ropy veins with her fingertip. Then slowly she turned it over, raised it to her lips, and pressed a kiss into his palm. She held his hand against her mouth for a long time, then looked up at him with eyes he could drown in.

"All these years," she said huskily, "and you're still so familiar to me. I would know this hand out of every other hand in the world."

He just looked at her, not daring to move, or to believe that this was really happening.

"You've had a lot of women since me. Two wives. And many others."

He made a motion with his shoulder.

"Do you..."

"What?"

"Do you remember anything about me?"

Gruffly, he said, "Only everything."

She smiled with uncertainty and a trace of sadness. "I'm not young and lithe anymore."

He'd restrained himself for as long as he could, for as long as he was willing to. He pulled her up and clutched her to him. No hug had ever been tighter. He rubbed his face in her hair and poured out the words he thought he'd never have another chance to say.

"You're the only thing I ever loved. God knows." Placing his finger beneath her chin, he tilted her head up. "I made such a goddamn mess of it, Caroline, but I wanted you the minute I saw you, and that's never changed."

She lay across his chest, her cheek pressed against his heart, his chin propped on the top of her head. "You're quiet," she whispered.

"I'm old. You wore me out."

She nudged his crotch with her knee. "You're a stud."

"You think?"

She came up on her elbow to look into his face. "Um-hmm." He smiled, and she smiled back. She ran her finger across his chin, her eyes moving lovingly over his face. "Until tonight, you hadn't told me you were sorry. And, until now, I never thanked you."

"Thanked me?"

"For Berry."

His throat grew tight. He combed his fingers up through her hair. "Yeah, you have. Every time you look at her, I can see how much you love her. That's thanking me, Caroline."

They kissed. She was the first to pull back. "When are you going to tell me?"

He kept his expression blank. "Tell you what?"

"What's on your mind."

"On my mind? Right now, you. You naked. What a turn-on your freckles are. I'm especially fond of the ones on your tits."

She laughed but wasn't dissuaded by his joking. "You're not going to tell me?"

"Nothing to tell."

She searched his eyes for a moment, then murmured, "Okay," and returned her head to his chest. Except for a few whispered endearments, their conversation ended there. Occasionally Dodge would say something coarse that caused her to sigh, laugh, or blush. Or they used no words to express what they were feeling, and that was the most meaningful communication of all.

Finally she nuzzled his throat and mumbled sleepily, "I don't want this to end, but I can't hold my eyes open any longer."

He kissed her lips softly, then turned her away from him, pulling her hips up against his lap. "I know you like to spoon."

"And I know what you like." She drew his hand to her breast and covered it with her own. "They're not as pert as they were."

"Pert is overrated. Now sleep."

She did, falling quickly under. Dodge lay awake for a long while. He was bone tired, but, like Caroline, he didn't want to miss a nanosecond of this night together. He wouldn't waste a moment of it sleeping when he could be holding her, feeling her soft warmth, and listening to every dear breath she took.

And then there was that other thing, that niggling discontent that she had sensed in him, that unidentified something that lurked unseen at the back of his mind, gnawing at his subconscious like an insidious rodent, denying him physical repleteness and making peace of mind impossible.

In spite of her emotional turmoil, Berry had slept deeply and dreamlessly. However, she woke up at sunrise. She showered, dressed, and went downstairs to make coffee. Just as it finished brewing, Dodge joined her, looking sheepish and defensive at the same time. She looked past him toward the direction from which he had come--her mother's bedroom.

She curbed the temptation to tease him and instead offered him a cup of the fresh coffee. "Thanks." He added two spoonfuls of sugar, sipped, then said, "That bracelet with the heart charm. Tell me about it."

"It was one of several gifts Oren gave me over time." She told him what she'd told Ski and Sheriff Drummond about Oren's refusal to take back his unwanted gifts. "To avoid seeing him, I gave up trying to return them. Why do you ask now?"

"It crossed my mind that we never talked about it once we determined that Sally Buckland was wearing one identical to it. You didn't know that he'd given her one, too?"

She shook her head.

"Do you have yours here?"

"Upstairs. I brought everything Oren had given me when I came to Merritt."

"Seems like you had an intuition. Like you might need this stuff for evidence."

"Maybe that's a trait I inherited from you."

The remark seemed to please him immensely. But he kept to the subject. "Mind if I take a look at the bracelet?"

She went upstairs. When she returned a few minutes later, her mother was in the kitchen pouring herself a cup of coffee. She was disheveled but positively aglow. She gave Berry a shy smile and a mellow good morning, but rarely did her eyes wander from Dodge.

Berry had collected all the items Oren had given her into one small duffel bag. She unzipped it and dumped the contents onto the kitchen table, then sifted through the articles in search of the bracelet. When at first she didn't see it, she sorted through everything more carefully.

Then she looked at Dodge and Caroline with misapprehension. "It's not here. How could it not be here? The last time I saw it, it was with all this other stuff."

"When was that?" Dodge asked.

"I don't remember exactly."

"Before you moved here, or since?"

"Since. I was trying to talk myself into making a clean sweep, getting rid of any reminders of him. I changed my mind, but the bracelet was here, I'm sure of it. It was the most personal of the gifts."

"Maybe you removed it at some point and just don't remember."

"Of course I would remember!" Then, immediately sorry for taking out her rising anxiety on her mother, she reached for her hand and gripped it. "I would remember, Mother." Sinking down into one of the chairs at the table, she moaned, "You don't think--"

"That it was your bracelet on Sally Buckland's wrist?"

Dodge had finished the awful thought for her. She wanted to nullify it before it could become fact. "It couldn't possibly have been. When would Oren have taken mine?"

Dodge cleared his throat. "It's possible--just possible--that Starks was here."

"Here? You mean, in this house?"

Berry and Caroline listened with incredulity as he told them about the photos that had been discovered in a trash can not far from the motel where Oren had been hiding until Davis Coldare walked in on him.

"Looked like he was getting the lay of the land, so to speak. There are shots of the house from every angle. Some of you," he said uneasily. "To get them, even using a telephoto lens, he had to be fairly close to the house. Maybe he was ballsy enough to have come inside when you weren't here and made himself at home."

"He knew where to find your bedroom the night he shot Ben Lofland," Caroline said.

Berry hugged herself, rubbing her hands over the goose bumps that had broken out on her arms. "He went through my bureau drawers? Pawed through my things?" The thought made her physically ill.

"We don't know that he did. But it's possible."

"I want to see the pictures," Berry said.

"No you don't. Trust me."

"I want to see them, Dodge."

He cursed under his breath. Berry caught words of self-chastisement for telling her about the damn pictures. "You'll have to ask Ski," he said. "He made me give them back to him."

Just then his cell phone rang. He checked caller ID. "Speak of the devil." He answered, listened, then said, "On our way." He disconnected. "Starks is showing signs of coming around."

"It's an ugly scene," Ski told them as they joined him outside the ICU.

Inside it, the hospital bed was surrounded by an attending physician and several nurses, all doing something different, moving with a sense of urgency while trying to give assurance to their patient, whose agitation was obvious. Oren was struggling against the restraints securing him to the bed.

A nurse, noticing them, came to the door. "You can wait down the hall, Deputy Nyland. I'll come and get you if he starts to speak coherently." It was a subtle suggestion for them to relocate.

They moved as a group to a small waiting room. Berry and her mother sat down on a love seat. "This whole ordeal ...," Caroline whispered, shaking her head remorsefully. She never finished the thought. Those words said enough.

Dodge took a chair. He removed a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, fiddled with it, replaced it. Ski stood near the door, his back to the wall. He was watchful and tense, like a soldier waiting for the shot that would end a short cease-fire.

No one spoke for a time. But the pressure on Berry's chest became such that she finally blurted out, "I stole from him. From Oren."

The three looked at her with bewilderment.

Before they could speak or she lost her nerve, she plunged on.

"You know that Oren had worked on the campaign that Ben and I finished on Friday." They nodded in unison. "That was when things with Sally were coming to a head. She resigned, and it was understood that Oren was the reason."

She hesitated, then lowered her head. "No, that's not quite accurate. I made it understood that Oren was the reason."

"What do you mean, Berry?" Caroline asked.

"Management consulted me about Sally's leaving. I told them that she'd left because of Oren."

"Which was true."

"Let me tell this, Mother, please." She paused to collect her thoughts. "I led management to believe that the company had narrowly escaped a costly sexual harassment suit, when actually Sally had never suggested such a thing. I went further, intimating that other women in the office were considering taking matters to that level. This rattled them. They asked 'How bad is it?' In my opinion, as a female employee, what should be done with Oren Starks? Should they give him a warning and probation, or fire him outright? Was he or was he not redeemable, dispensable?

"It should be obvious to you what I told them. I remained silent about the excellent work Oren was doing. I didn't tell the bosses that his original idea had been the best, and that Ben and I were designing the entire campaign around it. Instead, I fed their paranoia and made them fear the worst if Oren remained an employee.

"He got his pink slip the following day. He wasn't allowed to take any of his work with him. He was escorted from the building by security guards and treated like a criminal." In a voice barely audible, she added, "He became one."

No one spoke for a long moment, then Dodge said, "Wait a damn minute here. You can't blame yourself for what Oren became. People get fired from jobs. They don't start killing. He was what he was before he got fired."

"He's right, Berry." Ski spoke more quietly than Dodge, but he was just as adamant.

"But that's not the end of it. After his dismissal, he asked me repeatedly to intercede on his behalf. I kept stringing him along, telling him that I had tried to get him his job back but that Delray's decision was firm. It was a lie. I never spoke up for him. Not once. Quite the contrary. After he was gone, I took credit for his work. Ben did, too, just by remaining silent. He knew how I'd played it, and, tacitly, he went along. He never acknowledged to anyone Oren's valuable input." In an undertone, she added, "I've since learned that he never really trusted me after that."

She paused to take a breath. "As for Sally, I encouraged her to leave the company. I told her she would never shake free of Oren as long as she remained at Delray."

"Also true," Caroline said.

"In all probability," Berry agreed. "But I had a selfish reason for urging her to resign. She was good. Clients liked her unassuming manner. Management did, too. She posed a threat to my advancement. I wanted her gone. So I pressured her into leaving. I played both ends against the middle. I manipulated Sally into leaving, and I saw to it that Oren got fired. All for my self-gain."

She turned her head and spoke directly to Caroline. "No one is prouder of your extraordinary success than I am, Mother. But it's a lot to live up to. I'm equally ambitious, but when it comes to achieving goals, I don't have your patience, your style, or your grace. I'm wired differently, I guess," she said, glancing at Dodge.

"In any case, the pressure and guilt I was feeling over what I'd done intensified. That's why I launched into you that day, and then later had the scene with Oren on my porch. I came here to Merritt to get my head straight, my priorities readjusted. During that process, I realized I must acknowledge my underhandedness and rectify it. When I called Oren last Thursday night, I told him that his name would be on that campaign when it was presented." She paused, then added softly, "It wasn't enough."

The silence among them was heavy, then Dodge heaved a sigh. "You ask me, that's all bullshit. Okay, so maybe your ambition got a little out of hand. Sally Buckland had free will. You may have nudged her, but she made up her own mind to resign.

"As for Starks," he continued, making a face of distaste, "behind this guy's smarts was a weird little creep with violent tendencies just begging for a chance to get out." He pointed a stern finger at Berry and said, "Now, you've fessed up. Drop it."

She felt a rush of affection for him and would have expressed it out loud if the doctor treating Oren hadn't suddenly appeared in the open doorway. "Any of you named Berry?"

She stood up.

"He's saying your name over and over."

"Should I ...?"

He gave a pragmatic shrug. "Up to you." Then, as abruptly as he'd appeared, he vanished.

Caroline reached for Berry's hand. "Don't go in there. We shouldn't have even come."

Berry looked over at Dodge, silently asking for his opinion. "I wish he'd've died out in the Thicket, spared you this."

When she met Ski's eyes, he said, "If you go in, I'll go with you. I need to hear what he has to say."

She went to him. He placed his hand on her elbow, and together they left the waiting room and walked down the corridor.

Oren's ICU was a scene from a horror show. She approached the bed with trepidation. His eyelids were wildly fluttering. He was murmuring her name, like a chant. His hands were moving restlessly, his fingers plucking at the bedding while his wrists pulled against the restraints around them.

"Can he hear me?" she asked.

"You can try," one of the attending nurses replied.

Berry swallowed her misgivings. "Oren?" When he didn't respond, she cleared her throat and said more forcefully, "Oren? Can you hear me? It's Berry."

His eyelids blinked open, but his eyes were rolled back into the sockets, unfocused. He spoke her name in a thin, raspy voice.

"Yes. It's me." She groped for something to say that wouldn't sound entirely inane. "You're in the hospital. The doctors and nurses are trying to help you."

"Berry." Again her name passed through his lips as he blinked rapidly to bring her into focus. "Berry."

"I'm here."

"You're alive."

"Yes."

"You should be dead."

She sucked in a quick breath and recoiled. Ski put his hand on her shoulder. "Let's get out of here."

But before she could move, Oren managed to twist his hand, enabling him to grab her wrist. She looked down in horror at his cold, moist fingers clamped around her wrist. His eyes were now wide open and focused on her. The madness in them caused her to sob in fright.

"You will die," he said with malice. "You will die."

She wrenched her wrist free and stumbled backward, coming up against Ski but remaining transfixed by Oren's maniacal gaze. Then suddenly his eyelids fluttered again. His throat bowed hideously. His head slammed back into the pillow, knocking askew the gauze that had been covering the hole in the side of his skull and the brain matter bulging out of it. His body began to buck uncontrollably.

"He's seizing," one of the nurses said in an urgent voice.

Ski turned Berry away and propelled her from the room. Outside in the corridor, she fell into his arms.