Mercy Dogs Page 5

  “Do you know Rob Kessler?”

  “Used to be in Narcotics? Yes. Not too well. Isn’t he out in Riverside now?”

  “San Bernardino.” Ben told him the story of how Rob had heard about the rental and referred Grace, and how Ben and Peter had grown close to her.

  “So you don’t think of her as just a tenant. It’s friendlier than that?”

  “I’d call her a friend, yes.”

  “Do you know any of her family or other acquaintances?”

  Ben thought about it. Grace didn’t talk about her family very much. He told Becerra that.

  “What about friends?”

  “Not really. I just briefly met a woman from her work who came over two or three times.”

  “Did they seem like close friends?”

  “Yeah, they did.”

  “Maybe something more?”

  “I don’t think so. She went through a bad breakup with a guy before she moved. But she didn’t talk much about that.”

  “Do you know his name, by any chance?”

  “No,” Ben said. “Actually, I think it was Rob who told me about that.”

  “Have you tried to get a hold of Rob?”

  “Left a message. Haven’t heard back.”

  Becerra asked him a dozen more questions. Nothing that surprised him. Routine stuff. Trying to get an idea of who Grace was, what useful information Ben might have. All he had was the red Camaro. If that concerned Becerra, he didn’t show it. “Did you check out her apartment?”

  “Through the window,” Ben said. “I wasn’t sure if I should go in, if it was appropriate.” He looked down at his hands. “I’ve never been a landlord before.”

  “Can we go take a look? You have a key?”

  Ben got up, grabbed the key, and led him outside to the studio.

  When you go out into the alley to bring in the trash cans, there’s a U-Haul truck, one of those big Ford pickups, parked in front of the garage door. The front end is pointed at you, and someone is trying to unload something from the back. You take a few steps around it to see what’s going on and see Grace, all by herself, standing behind the tailgate and trying to slide a sofa out of the truck bed.

  She’s surprised when she sees you, but her expression quickly turns to one of amused embarrassment. “Oh, hi,” she says. “A friend of mine from work gave me this. It’s a sleeper. I hope it’s okay.”

  “Of course it is,” you say. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

  There’s a furniture dolly on the ground by her feet. “I know the daybed has sentimental value for you.”

  You haven’t given much thought to that. Mom put it in the studio years ago, though, so Grace is right, even if you’ve never really considered it before. It makes you feel odd, Grace realizing something about you that you didn’t realize yourself. “Don’t even worry about it,” you say. “Can I give you a hand?”

  Shit, Ben thought as he followed the detective into the studio.

  Oh fuck.

  No.

  His head was spinning. He’d decided not to let himself into Grace’s room. He was sure of that. But now that he was inside, memories were popping into his head. Images, feelings, flashing brightly and then disappearing before he could catch hold of them.

  “You okay?” Becerra asked.

  “Yeah.” But he wasn’t okay. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. “I’m just worried.”

  “I know. It’s natural. But statistically speaking, everything’s probably going to be okay.” He looked around, then turned back to Ben. “I don’t need to tell you that, I’m sure. I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “Talking to you like a civilian.”

  That just made him feel worse. Was it more patronizing when someone admitted they were patronizing you or when they pretended like they weren’t doing it at all?

  Ben stood by the door and watched Becerra survey the apartment.

  How could he have forgotten that he had been here and done the same thing himself? It was hazy in his head. Almost like trying to remember a dream. Had he seen something? The harder he tried to recall his actions, the more slippery and distant they became. For a moment, he tried to convince himself that he had not been in there at all. But he knew that wasn’t true.

  He had been.

  What had happened?

  It had been almost four years since the last seizure.

  No.

  If the seizures came back, he couldn’t—

  No.

  Fuck.

  Just no.

  Stop, he told himself. Focus. He had another concern now. The lie he’d inadvertently told to Becerra.

  When they got back inside the house, Peter was standing nervously by the table. When he found out the police were on the way, he’d gone into his bedroom to clean himself up and change his clothes. He still hadn’t come out when they went back to the studio.

  Ben had mentioned his father, the dementia, so Becerra was prepared when he shook Peter’s hand. “Hello, Mr. Shepard. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “You too,” Peter said. He looked uncertain and confused, but Ben was confident that he remembered the police were coming. “Is she there?”

  “No, sir, I’m afraid not. But we’re going to try to find her, okay?”

  Peter nodded. “Okay.”

  Outside on the front porch, Becerra said to Ben, “I’ll run the Camaro right away and start looking at a few more things. I really don’t think there’s any reason to worry yet.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said.

  Becerra was halfway to the sidewalk when Ben called after him. He turned around.

  “They sent you because of me, right? Because of my history?”

  Becerra came back and looked up at him standing on the porch. “Yes, Detective Shepard, they did. The watch commander asked for me specifically.”

  “Because he thought I was delusional again?”

  “No. First off, Lieutenant Hinsley’s a woman. But that’s not it at all. She told me not to let you down.”

  “Why?” Ben asked.

  “Because you’re a hero.”

  Ben watched Becerra pull away from the curb. He couldn’t tell if hero was just the lieutenant’s word, or, because he managed to say it with a straight face, if it was something Becerra believed, too. Hinsley. Not a name Ben recalled. Had he ever met her? He didn’t think so. Was she one of those high-ranking flacks who throw that word around every time they mention a cop, or did it really mean something to her?

  Jesus. Hero. If that’s what they really thought, it was worse than them thinking he was crazy.

  SIX

  Ben left his father with a cup of coffee and Boost and went to Ralphs. Peter was okay on his own for a few hours at a time. Really, all he needed Ben for was to help with fixing meals to keep his calories up and making sure he didn’t eat too much at one time. Or if he needed extra medicine for his stomach or anxiety. Still, Ben worried when he had to be gone for more than two or three hours.

  But he thought it would feel good to get out of the house for a while. It usually did. They only lived three blocks from the Ralphs on Cherry and Carson, but Ben usually drove the extra ten minutes to the one down on Lakewood off of the traffic circle. That store was smaller and had a crappy parking lot, but it was the closest location with self-checkout lanes. If anyone asked, which no one ever actually did, he would tell them that it was about convenience, that he hated waiting in line, which he almost always had to do at the closer location, and that he liked to bag the groceries himself. All of that was more or less true, and that was the rationale he used to justify the extra time and distance to himself. Really, though, he just preferred not to have to talk to anyone. Every interaction with anyone, even the smallest and most trivial, made him self-conscious and reminded him that he wasn’t who he used to be. He didn’t want anyone to see him now. The old Ben, the real Ben, had liked people. Liked to talk. Didn’t worry about slurring his speech. Didn’t have to write down everyt
hing he needed to remember. Didn’t mind being seen.

  He sat in the old Volvo XC with the two paper grocery bags on the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, tracing the depression in the back of his head with his index finger, and worrying. About Grace, mostly, but also about his father and himself. They’d been doing pretty well. Renting out the studio had worked out better than he ever thought it would. The bone-deep fear he’d had of it irreparably upsetting their comfortable routine had proven to be unfounded, and they’d settled into something even better. He told everyone that it was really good to have Grace around for his father, because more interaction was good for him. It made him more alert and engaged. His stomach and his memory both worked better. But Grace was good for Ben, too. There were only a few people he could talk to and spend time with without worrying about embarrassing himself. There were Bernie, his father, and Emma. That was pretty much it. And Emma didn’t even really count, because not embarrassing him was part of her job.

  Peter wasn’t the only one who needed Grace.

  Bigmista’s Morning Wood was a relatively recent addition to the neighborhood. It was a spinoff of Bigmista’s Sammich Shop. The owner had gained a local following, selling ribs and brisket and anything else that came out of a smoker, before he finally opened his own shop. That did well, so he branched out. The city was chock-full of breakfast places, but as far as Ben knew, Morning Wood was the only place that specialized in breakfast barbecue. And the name still made him chuckle.

  He didn’t really like to eat out much, not like he used to. And he made a point of not going anyplace so often that the employees would get to know him well enough to stop treating him like a stranger. Morning Wood was the exception. Peter loved the biscuits and gravy. Ben had to admit they were good, but the reason he came to order them twice a week was the fact they were one of the only really calorie-dense foods his father could eat without his stomach hurting.

  He didn’t know the name of the big African American woman behind the counter, and he was pretty sure she didn’t know his. All the same, she greeted him with a broad smile and a friendly hello. “How’s your dad doing?”

  “Pretty well.”

  “Oh, that’s good. He’s a sweetie.”

  Ben had brought Peter in a few times, but more often than not, they both preferred takeout. He smiled back at her. “Yeah, he is.”

  “The usual?”

  Ben nodded. The usual was an order of biscuits and gravy for his father and a breakfast bowl with tater tots and brisket for him.

  “Just give us a few minutes, okay?” she said, handing him his change.

  At one of the tables, he checked his phone. No new messages from Grace or Rob. He wished he could remember what it had been like before, what normal was like. How worried should he be? It felt like he was close to Grace, like she was more a friend than a tenant. But was that true? Was it just his limited frame of reference? There wasn’t really anyone in his life anymore except his father. Not in any significant way. Grace had people in her life. So he and Peter were surely much less central to her than she was to them. He thought of her as a friend, but she wouldn’t be likely to think that way of him. He was her landlord. Maybe her neighbor. But that was the extent of it, right? If she went away for a few days, would she even feel obligated to tell him? He tried to remember the days when he’d been a renter, before he bought the house with—that was so long ago. It was hazy, but it didn’t seem like he would have felt the need to tell anyone about his plans. Was this just all a massive overreaction?

  “Here you go,” the counter woman said.

  It didn’t register at first that she was speaking to him. But he looked around and realized he was the only one waiting for an order. “Thanks.”

  “Tell your dad hi for me.” She smiled again.

  “I will,” he said.

  On the way home, he circled around the block and then cut through the alley, looking for a red Camaro.

  It was sunny and cold when he got back. “Hi, Dad,” he called when he opened the door. There was no answer. Peter wasn’t sitting in the living room watching TV, as Ben had expected. He wasn’t in the kitchen or dining room, either. Ben went in back, past the office and the laundry closet to the rear bedroom. He wasn’t there.

  Ben felt a feathery twitch in his abdomen.

  He checked the bathrooms. The patio. No sign of him.

  Could he be outside?

  He put a hand on the back of one of the chairs to steady himself.

  Breathe, he told himself, breathe.

  When he was steady, Ben went out through the French doors and headed back toward the studio. It wasn’t until he was halfway across the lawn that he saw his father in one of the blue Adirondack chairs and stopped as the relief swept over him. Hands on his hips, he let out a chestful of air. He hadn’t seen him in the shadow of the cherry tree.

  Peter waved and smiled.

  Ben walked closer to his father. “What are you doing out here?” he said, his voice harsher than he meant it to be.

  “I came out to look for her?” He’d clearly heard the edge in Ben’s voice. “Did I do something bad?”

  “No,” Ben said, trying to sound reassuring. “You never do bad things. But how come you’re still sitting out here?”

  Peter pointed to the sky.

  “A plane?”

  His father nodded and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Waiting for the next one.”

  “I brought you some biscuits and gravy.”

  “Oh, I like those.” He pushed himself up on the arms of the chair.

  “I know,” Ben said. “Why don’t we go inside to eat and then we’ll come back out and watch?”

  Peter nodded.

  1/10 12:30

  Couldn’t find dad after store

  He was outside by Grace’s, watching for planes, FIRST TIME?

  Ate Bigmista’s

  Lorazepam (me, not him)

  Nothing happened all afternoon. Well, not nothing. Just the usual things. Peter watched TV. Ben sat with him when Ellen came on, trying to read the Springsteen autobiography, but he couldn’t focus. Not with Grace missing. He checked his phone every ten minutes, vainly hoping for something from anyone.

  It was a quarter to four when he got the text message.

  Don’t call the police.

  He froze. It didn’t feel like he could move.

  There was no ID and the number wasn’t one he recognized. It was from the 909 area code. Where was that? He should know. Why didn’t he know that? Nine-oh-nine, he thought, over and over again. He used to know. He used to know all the area codes for California. Now, though, he didn’t know shit.

  He had already called the police. Did someone have Grace? Had she been kidnapped? Was this some kind of threat?

  Ben was suddenly aware of his heart beating in his chest. It grew stronger and faster. He started to worry that his father could hear it, but Peter was just grinning at Ellen talking to some celebrity that neither of them recognized.

  What should he do?

  Text back?

  Call?

  His stomach knotted.

  Then he got the second text.

  This is Rob by the way

  Then another.

  Not sure if you have this number

  Fuck.

  No, Ben replied, I didn’t have this number. I thought you were a fucking kidnapper or something.

  Sorry

  I already called. Filed a missing persons report.

  Shit

  Why? What’s wrong?

  ill explain later

  Explain NOW

  Ben waited for a reply, hoping he hadn’t been too aggressive.

  Rob?

  Rob?

  Please.

  I’m sorry.

  Rob?

  ???

  Wherever Rob was and whatever he was doing, he wasn’t responding anymore.

  Why shouldn’t Ben have called the police? What did Rob know? What the hell was happening? />
  After he went into his bathroom and took another lorazepam, he called Emma’s voicemail. “Hi,” he said. “It’s Ben Shepard. I’ve got kind of an urgent situation. Could we make an appointment? As soon as possible, if you can. Thanks. Uh, did I say this was Ben? It’s Ben. Thank you. Um, have a good day?” He disconnected the call, cringing at his awkwardness.

  After Peter went to bed, Ben made another call. To Jennifer Tanaka. She picked up on the first ring.

  “Ben,” she said. “Hi. How are you?”

  “I need help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home.”

  “I’m on the way.”

  SEVEN

  Ben waited ten minutes, then tilted open the plantation shutters on the living-room window and watched the street outside. He turned off the TV and all the lights except the lamp next to the couch so he’d be able to see out into the darkness.

  He tried to remember how long it had been since Jennifer had bought the house in Belmont Heights. She’d already been working Homicide a long time. A year? Two? Even though she’d invited him a few times, he still hadn’t seen it. From what she’d told him over their last several lunches—they still got together every month or two—it was a nice place. She had a guesthouse, too, and was renting it out to a rookie cop. Was that where he got the idea? Maybe. He thought about it. It was possible that hearing about her tenant gave him the idea to look for renters through the LBPD. How long would it take to go through his notebooks and figure it out? Certainly too long to try now. He took the pen and the little Moleskine out of his pocket and jotted down a reminder to check later.

  Outside, a car pulled up to the curb, but stopped before it was in front of the house. Could it be her? What did Jennifer drive now? She didn’t have the 4Runner anymore. Ben knew that. Now she had one of those smaller SUVs. The car outside wasn’t one of those. It was a sedan, and it didn’t look like a department-issue plain-wrap cruiser. The driver got out and crossed the street. A lady, older, maybe. Not anyone he recognized.