Robert Crais - The Two Minute Rule

“I’m sorry. This really sucks. This so really sucks. Listen-”

She rubbed her eye again, then held out her hand.

“It’s good to finally meet you.”

“You really think I look like him?”

She made a thin smile.

“Clones. Donna always said the same thing.”

Holman changed the subject. If they got into talking about Donna he would start crying, too.

He said, “Listen, I know you have to get to class and all, but can I ask you a couple of questions about what happened? It won’t take long.”

“They found that man who killed them.”

“I know. I’m just trying to…I talked to Detective Random. Have you met him?”

“Yes, I’ve spoken with him and Captain Levy. Levy was Richard’s commander.”

“Right. I’ve spoken with him, too, but I still have some questions about how this could happen.”

“Juarez blamed Mike for what happened to his brother. Do you know that whole story?”

“Yeah, it’s in the paper. You knew Sergeant Fowler?”

“Mike was Richard’s training officer. They were still really good friends.”

“Random told me that Juarez had been making threats ever since his brother was killed. Was Mike worried about it?”

She frowned as she thought about it, trying to remember, then shook her head.

“Mike never seemed worried about anything. It wasn’t like I saw him that often, just every couple of months or so, but he didn’t seem worried about anything like this.”

“Did Richie maybe mention that Mike was worried?”

“The first I heard about this gang business was when they issued the warrant. Richard never said anything, but he wouldn’t have. He never brought that kind of thing home.”

Holman figured if some guy was shooting off his mouth and making threats, he would pay the guy a visit. He would let the guy have his shot straight up or put the guy in his place, but either way he would deal with it. He wondered if that’s what the four officers were doing that night, making a plan to deal with Juarez, only Juarez got the jump on them. It seemed possible, but Holman didn’t want to suggest it to Elizabeth.

Instead, Holman said, “Fowler probably didn’t want to worry anyone. Guys like Juarez are always threatening policemen. Cops get that all the time.”

Elizabeth nodded, but her eyes began to redden again and Holman knew he had made a mistake. She was thinking that this time it wasn’t just threats-this time the guy like Juarez had gone through with it and now her husband was dead. Holman quickly changed the subject.

“Another thing I’m wondering about-Random told me Richie wasn’t on duty that night?”

“No. He was here working. I was studying. He went out to meet the guys sometimes, but never that late. He told me he had to go meet them. That’s all he said.”

“Did he say he was going to the river?”

“No. I just assumed they would meet at a bar.”

Holman took that in, but it still didn’t help him.

“I guess what’s bothering me is how Juarez found them. The police haven’t been able to explain that yet. It’d be tough to follow someone into that riverbed and not be seen. So I’m thinking maybe if they went down there all the time-you know, a regular thing-maybe Juarez heard about it and knew where to find them.”

“I just don’t know. I can’t believe they went down there all the time and he didn’t tell me about it-it’s so far out of the way.”

Holman agreed. They could have sat around getting drunk anywhere, but they had gone down into a deserted, off-limits place like the riverbed. This implied they didn’t want to be seen, but Holman also knew that cops were like anyone else-they might have gone down there just for the thrill of being someplace no one else could go, like kids breaking into an empty house or climbing up to the Hollywood Sign.

Holman was still thinking it through when he recalled something she mentioned earlier and he asked her about it.

“You said he almost never went out late like that, but on that night he did. What was different about that night?”

She seemed surprised, but then her face darkened and a single vertical line cut her forehead. She glanced away, then looked back and seemed to be studying him. Her face was still, but Holman felt the furious motion of wheels and cogs and levers behind her eyes as she struggled with her answer.

She said, “You.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were being released the next day. That’s what was different that night, and we both knew it. We knew you were being released the next day. Richard never spoke about you with me. Do you mind me telling you these things? This is just so awful, what we’re going through right now. I don’t want to make it worse for you.”

“I asked you. I want to know.”

She went on.

“I tried talking to him about you-I was curious. You’re his father. You were my father-in-law. When Donna was still alive we both tried-but he just wouldn’t. I knew your release date was coming up. Richard knew, but he still wouldn’t talk about it, and I knew it was bothering him.”

Holman was feeling sick and cold.

“Did he say something, how it was bothering him?”

She cocked her head again, then put down her cup and turned away.

“Come see.”

He followed her back to a bedroom that was arranged as an office. Two desks were set up, one for him and one for her. The first desk, hers, was stacked with textbooks and binders and paperwork. Richie’s desk was backed into a corner where corkboards were fixed to the adjoining walls. The corkboards were covered with so many clippings and Post-it notes and little slips of paper they overlapped each other like scales on a fish. Liz brought him to Richie’s desk and pointed out the clippings.

“Take a look.”

Shootout Ends Crime Spree, Takeover Bandits Stopped, Bystander Killed in Robbery. The articles Holman skimmed were about a pair of takeover lunatics named Marchenko and Parsons. Holman had heard about them in Lompoc. Marchenko and Parsons dressed like commandos and shot up the banks before escaping with their loot.

She said, “He became fascinated with bank robberies. He clipped stories and pulled articles off the Internet and spent all of his time in here with this stuff. It doesn’t take a doctorate to figure out why.”

“Because of me?”

“Wanting to know you. A way of being close to you without being close to you was my guess. We knew you were approaching your release date. We didn’t know if you would try to contact us or if we should contact you or what to do about you. It was pretty clear he was working out his anxiety about you.”

Holman felt a flush of guilt and hoped she was wrong.

“Did he say that?”

Elizabeth didn’t look at him. Her face had closed, and now she stared at the clippings and crossed her arms.

“He wouldn’t. He never talked about you with me or his mother, but when he told me he was going to see the guys, he had been in here all evening. I think he needed to talk to them. He couldn’t talk to me about it, and now look-now look.”

Her face tightened even more with the hardness that anger brings. Holman watched her eyes fill, but was too scared to touch her.

He said, “Hey-”

She shook her head and Holman took it as a warning-like maybe she sensed he wanted to comfort her-and Holman felt even worse. Her neck and arms were bowstrings pulled taut by her anger.

“Goddamnit, he just had to go out. He had to go. Goddamnit-”

“Maybe we should go back in the living room.”

She closed her eyes, then shook her head again, but this time she was telling him she was all right-she was fighting the terrible pain and determined to kill it. She finally opened her eyes and finished her original thought.