No one wants to believe that their child could kill himself, or herself, as the case may be.  But the thing was, Hope’s son was only nine when he supposedly jumped off the pier during a storm just before his tenth birthday.  My court appearance went long and continued until the next day. Back home, I put a pot of brown rice on the stove, put on some music, and when half a beer was gone, I sat down with her file. What I first saw took my breath away, because what I saw was Hope when she still had some, smiling with her son on a beach blanket, then more photos of them together or just him alone, smiling or waving to his mother.  He had his mother’s green eyes, but his features were a mix of Asian and Latino, and his skin was a deep brown.  In some of them, part of the picture had been cut out.  I assumed that was the father.  Under the photos was the certificate of death.  I read his, Hope’s lost son’s name:  Skye David Gonzalez.  A beautiful, golden-brown boy.  He would be almost fourteen now.  I looked through the rest of the documents.  There wasn’t much.  A report by the coroner that it had to have been suicide – the rail was too high for him to have fallen accidentally.  And a homeless man and an old fisherman who claimed to have seen him on the pier alone, no one around.  There was one document, though, at the back of the file, one which I’m sure the police never read.  It was a detailed chronicle of everyone that Hope could remember having contact with her son for the six months leading up to his death, ten or twelve typed pages, single spaced.  By the time I got to that, I was taking the first swig off of my third beer, one more than my usual for a working night, and the rice was ready for beans.  I put Hope’s report down for the night, promising myself to read it carefully the next day.  But when I put it down on the coffee table and slipped it inside the folder, my cat, Gray, a dark gray stray with yellow eyes I adopted a couple months after my wife – ex-wife – was gone, jumped up on the coffee table, which is an old door and some milk crates, knocked over my beer and scurried off yowling.  I cursed, grabbed for the folder, righted the now half-empty beer, and went for a towel.  This time, I put the folder in my file cabinet in the corner of the living room.

The next day I was done in court by noon.  I knew what was waiting for me when I got home.  I was already being sucked into Hope’s world, and it was happening as fast as that – a disarming smile, the curve of a perfect breast under colored fabric, the touch of a hand, the magnetic pull of hand to hip with a kiss on the cheek just inches from your lips in a darkened doorway that burns.  It made no sense to me, but I already believed her.  Her son had been killed, by some….Thing.  What did she mean by that?   I didn’t want to read her notes.  I didn’t want to be pulled in any further, but it was already a done deal.  I stalled as best I could, completely aware of what I was doing.  I stopped for grilled fish tacos and two beers at South Beach.  Then I took a walk the length of the pier, came halfway back and stood and watched the surfers for nearly an hour.  They were all in wet suits, but they were out there.

“Hey Blue!” yelled Mike, one of the guys from the old days, as I made my way back along the sea wall to Newport.  Now married and selling houses, he was coming toward me from the water, wet and sandy board in hand, “You ever coming back in the water?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Sorry to hear about you and Sara.”

“Thanks, I’m over it now.” I lied.

“Well now that she’s gone, maybe you should come back in.  Seriously,” he said scrutinizing me for a moment, “You look like you could use it.”

“I’ll see.”

“All right.  Sorry about Sara again.  See you around.”

“See you.”

After that I got a coffee at Jungle Java, and having stalled all I possibly could, headed home.  When I got there, I found Gray curled up in front of the filing cabinet, as if guarding it. I had to shoo him away to open it. He meowed at me once, as if in warning, then moved on. I ignored him.

When I finally sat down at the Target special kitchen table and three chairs with my cup of coffee and the folder, there was a knock at the door.

I pushed away from the table and walked across the small living room, expecting to see Jehovah’s Witnesses, or something.  Instead I was greeted by a couple of goons I recognized who hung out in one of the bars by the seawall. 

“Can I help you?” I asked in a way that said more like What the fuck do you want? and wishing that my gun wasn’t safely tucked away in my night table.

One guy was tall and tan, with gelled blonde hair, and could have been good looking if it hadn’t been for the fact that all the gentleness had been sucked from his cold features.  The other was almost my height, stockier, with a goatee, bad teeth, and a disgusting bit of sneer.

“As a matter of fact,” said the goatee guy, pulling back the leather jacket that was totally unnecessary in the 60 degree day to show me his weapon in the shoulder holster, “we think you can.”

“That’s right,” said the tall guy, smiling a smile that would have frozen Medusa.

I waited ten seconds, and then getting bored, pushed the conversation along.  “So how exactly would that be?”  By that time I’d shifted my weight, instinctively remembering the martial arts training I’d done in my early years on the force, another thing I’d given up for my wife, and wondering why I had.  As I did it, I started chronicling exactly all the things I’d given up for my…..ex-wife, and as I was doing this, the burly guy apparently found more words to say.  “You see, as concerned members of this community…”

“Christian members,” added the tall one.

“That’s right, concerned Christian members, we’d like to say that we had properly warned you about certain other Non-Christians.”

“That’s right, non-Christian members of the community,” added the tall one again, and this time trying to push past me to get a look inside my living room.  Remembering a dark doorway from the night before, the touch of my hands on hips, warm lips on my cheek, and my balance now completely under me, I slid to my right, shoved him back and he landed six feet away from me, half on the walk and half on the gravel lawn.  The goatee guy looked quickly back to his buddy sprawled out and dazed, then looked to me and began to flinch for his pistol.  I closed the distance between us before he could blink and pinned his arm to his chest.  “Get the fuck out of here.  And don’t come back. I have a gun, too, and next time I’ll be wearing it,” I half-whispered, half growled.  Then I gave him a shove, too, and slammed the door.  Back inside, my heart beating up in my throat, I went into my bedroom and strapped on my revolver, and, for the first time since I’d quit the force, I actually felt ready to use it.

Chapter 6 coming 2/1!!