White Ghost Ridge Page 17

  “Do you believe her? Lewis said Whitefeather wrote to Walsh.”

  “I don’t have any reason not to. Torres wrote to Walsh asking for her dishonourable discharge to be retracted but the army refused. Walsh brought the case up as far as she could but she came up against a brick wall. She wrote to Torres and said there was nothing she could do. She never heard from Torres again.”

  “I guess that’s when Torres gave up and hit the bottle,” Mendoza replied. “Does she know anything about this Rosenberg guy or that Braff had been working in the university with him?”

  “She said she never had any contact with Braff after he left the army. Said she’d no idea where he was or what he was doing.”

  “What about our ‘weird ghost’ dude?”

  Locklear shook his head. “Susan was upset for most of the time I was in there. When I mentioned our ‘White Ghost’ she smiled a little. Maybe it was even a laugh. Looked like she thought I’d gone mad.”

  “She’s hardly a beacon of sanity herself. Jeeze, sarge, she went from 0 to 90 when she saw you.”

  “She has good reason.”

  “You going to tell me about it?” Mendoza asked as Locklear shoved his plate away.

  “I’m tired, Mendoza. I think I’ll go back to the hotel and lie down,” he said as he stood and threw a $20 bill on the table.

  She stood to follow him. “Sarge? Are you OK?”

  “I’m alright, Mendoza. I just need time to think.”

  By late evening, Mendoza had tired of wandering the streets of D.C and took a long walk back to the hotel where she hoped she’d find her boss in better mood. She had not enjoyed seeing the White House for the first time as she thought she would nor was she overwhelmed by the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial. Her thoughts were not with her surroundings but with her boss and the dark mood his visit to Susan Walsh seemed to have provoked.

  She stopped off in the hotel’s bar and drank four beers slowly before taking the elevator to their adjoining rooms on the sixth floor. She went into her room and took her time showering, hoping that by the time she’d finished Locklear would be ready to talk, but when she finished there was no still no sign of life coming from his room.

  She walked to the door that separated them and knocked lightly but he did not answer.

  “Sarge?” she said as she turned the handle but the door was locked. “Sarge?”

  “I’m OK, Mendoza. I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  Mendoza waited on the other side of the door for a moment or two, thinking about what Locklear needed right now as opposed to what he wanted. And what he needed, she reasoned, was someone to tell his sorry tale about Kate Walsh to. Something he had obviously not done in the thirty or more years since the woman had died.

  She left her room and tapped lightly on the door leading into Locklear’s room on the hotel corridor. She heard rustling and then the sound of feet coming towards the door. She heard the lock unclick and footsteps moving back across the room. She turned the handle, pushed the door in and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkened room.

  “Are you OK?” she asked the still body which lay fully clothed on the large bed in the middle of the room, facing away from her.

  Quietly, Mendoza crept to the bed and put her hand on Locklear’s shoulder. He flinched and tensed so she backed off and sat on the hard chair in the room.

  “Can I do anything for you?”

  “No,” he replied quietly.

  “Did you eat?”

  “Not hungry,” he replied.

  Mendoza remained in her seat and rested her eyes on the loud patterned carpet beneath her chair.

  “Do you want me to go?” she asked.

  She heard him sniff the air and sigh – a sign, she assumed, of his displeasure that he could smell beer off her.

  “Kate was twenty-three the day she died. June 21st,” he said.

  Mendoza did not move.

  “She’d only been with the force two years. She’d joined shortly after her 21st birthday. I was a few years older and there was a world of difference between us. I’d joined the army when I was not much more than eighteen years old. Left three years later and joined the police in Rapid City. My mother died and I travelled around, eventually got a post in New York. I was already a heavy drinker and Kate hardly drank at all. She was innocent until she met me. She’d moved to New York from New Jersey to attend college but had dropped out and joined the force. She’d had a settled, safe, typical childhood whereas I’d had the opposite. Her dad had been a cop in her hometown. Her mom was a full-time homemaker. Susan was her older sister and was already in the army when I met Kate. When Kate graduated police training, she was sent to the same station as me. I spent most of my off-duty time drinking but somehow she was interested in me. We start dating, if you could call it that. She thought there was more to the relationship that there was, and I didn’t have the guts to tell her otherwise. I was having too much of a good time. Most of the other cops at the station couldn’t believe she chose me. She could have had any of the guys there. She was beautiful. She and Susan looked nothing alike. Kate was short with black hair, brown eyes. She was much softer in temperament than Susan, who took a fairly instant dislike to me when she visited Kate in New York. Anyway, one night I was following up on a case and I was due to meet Kate later on at a restaurant. It was June 21st. We have the same birthday and she had planned a special night. She’d planned it a week or so beforehand and just kept talking about it like it was important to her. I went along with it even though I hate birthdays. My mom always hated my birthday coming up and I guess it rubbed off on me. She always went into a morose state. I never found out why. Anyway, there was this black kid, Tyrone Johnson. His mom was a heroin addict. She took off, left him alone. I think he was only fourteen or fifteen years old at the time. Kept running away from social services, foster homes, juvenile residential services. Every time they picked him up on the streets and took him into care, he ran away and got back to the only life he knew. Eventually he got hooked himself. He was probably born hooked. It was only a matter of time before he started using. He began pushing for this guy Lombardi.”

  “The guy you met up with again in Harrisonsburg?”

  “Yeah,” Locklear replied quietly. “My partner and I had got Tyrone on board as an informer. We worked with social services, got him a small place to live in the projects but we knew that some nights he was still sleeping in this squat with a few other kids. It was like he didn’t know any other kind of home. But it looked like he was going to make it. He was about seventeen or eighteen by then. I’d been trying to get Lombardi for months. I was supposed to meet the kid that night before I met up with Kate. He had phoned the station earlier to say he had big information on a shipment coming in. The kid never showed up. I checked his apartment but he wasn’t there so I walked down to the squat. I found him there with a bullet in his chest, a look of surprise on his face. I sat with him until the ambulance arrived but he was already dead. Probably died instantly alone in a dump with rats crawling all over the place. He never had a chance. From the moment he was born he was fighting to stay alive and his life was cut short that day because Lombardi obviously found out that Tyrone was ratting on him. I felt responsible.”

  “Did they ever get Lombardi on it?”

  “No. He had a watertight alibi. Three other hoodlums said they were playing pool with him from earlier that evening until the early hours of the following morning.”

  “That’s pretty sad,” Mendoza offered.

  “Anyway, I forgot all about Kate and found myself a bar to drown my sorrows in. Six whiskeys later my partner came in to tell me Kate had been killed by a mugger. Took her purse, shot her in the stomach and left her there to die in an alleyway. When the autopsy results were released to her parents, her dad phoned me to tell me he was sorry for me, for Kate and for the baby.”

  “Baby?”

  “The coroner said that Kate was about two months pregnant. I didn�
��t know. No-one did. I think she must have been going to tell me that night. I ... I didn’t know.”

  “You couldn’t have known that would happen, sarge. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

  “Maybe Tyrone would have ended up dead from heroin eventually – but Kate, I should have been there. If I had been there no-one would have tried to mug her. She’d still be alive.”

  “You don’t know that. Maybe you’d both have been shot.”

  Locklear made no reply.

  “So Susan Walsh feels you are responsible for her sister’s death and for the death of the child?”

  “I guess so. But it was what happened after that I think she’ll hold against me forever.”

  Mendoza waited for Locklear to tell her the rest of the story. She stood and turned on a soft lamp on a table by her chair and watched as his body rose and fell and his breathing became heavier. She knew this part of the story was the hardest part for him.

  “Her funeral was back in New Jersey. There was a wake in the family home. I couldn’t bring myself to go there. I couldn’t face seeing her in a coffin. I checked into a local hotel and started drinking. The next morning I was still drunk and wisely decided not to attend the funeral. I had met her father, Brian, a few times when he came to New York. He was a good guy. I think he thought I was going to ask Kate to marry me. I wasn’t. Anyway, you heard Susan saying Brian was looking for me at the funeral. He didn’t have any sons. I think ... I think he liked me and I Iet him down. I let Kate down and Tyrone. I let the force down and I let myself down. I hardly remember those first few weeks after the funeral, I was drinking so much. I’d arrive to work, do my shift. Go to a bar afterwards and didn’t leave until I was so drunk I couldn’t remember getting home. A lot of the guys at the station stopped talking to me. Word had got around that Kate was waiting for me and had left the restaurant to head back to her apartment alone when I didn’t show. I didn’t blame them. I was drinking so much in the end that I don’t know how I didn’t lose my job. Eventually I got a transfer to Richmond. I got sober and, well, here I am.”

  Locklear fell silent, his story now complete.

  Mendoza stood and moved to where her boss lay. She leant over and kissed the back of his head.

  “Don’t, Mendoza. Please don’t,” he whispered.

  Mendoza lightly brushed her lips off his temple.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Just being your friend,” she replied.

  Mendoza ran her hand through his thick black mane and tried to suppress the urge to lie down with him, to hold him, to have him hold her. She took her hand away and looked at him. He had not turned to meet her eyes.

  She walked to door and turned the handle.

  “Night, sarge. See you tomorrow,” she said as she walked out of the room and left her boss to his memories.

  Chapter 18

  “You ready for breakfast?” Mendoza asked as she opened her door to Locklear who came in and sat in the only chair in her bedroom.

  “Yes,” he responded quietly.

  Mendoza moved to the bathroom, applied her make-up and tied her long hair into a tight bun on top of her head. He watched through the open door as she deftly applied pins into her thick mane and hung the silver cross, which she wore most days, around her neck. She eyed him through the mirror as she tucked stray wisps of hair into place.

  She turned on her phone. It beeped twice but she had something on her mind that she needed to say now before their focus returned to the case and off their troubled personal lives.

  She took one final look at herself in the mirror and walked into the room.

  “I think we need to talk,” she said.

  She sat on her bed which faced the chair Locklear sat in. He turned the chair slightly sideways, moving his body away from her.

  “Last night, when I kissed you, I felt something,” she said. “Something I shouldn’t. When I was comforting you, it felt good, it felt right ... I think that I’m beginning to develop feelings for you.”

  “Mendoza, don’t say that,” he pleaded as he shifted uncomfortably his chair.

  “No, hear me out. Please.”

  Locklear looked at his shoes and thought about how much they needed to be polished.

  Mendoza persisted. “I think I know what’s going on.”

  Locklear looked up and glanced briefly into her eyes. He looked away.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  Mendoza sighed. “I think it’s because of Manuel’s marriage. Not that I still have feelings for him. I don’t. But I think it’s because he’s moved on and I haven’t. I think it’s because I’m alone. I’m lonely, actually. I’ve seen the way you look at me sometimes and I guess it stirred something in me. Something inappropriate. I never set out to make you uncomfortable last night. You’re my boss and I respect you. I don’t want to lose that. These feelings are confusing for me and I don’t know what to do with them but please don’t let me push you away. I need to work through this. I need you in my life. I need your respect.”

  “Mendoza. I –”

  “I know. You’ve built this wall around yourself because of what happened to Kate and the rest of the women you feel you let down. So I have something else to say to you, sarge. You’re wrong. You need friends. We all do. You need affection, physical affection. It’s a human need. The need to be touched. Don’t shy away from it if it presents itself. Don’t be afraid of what it will bring. You’re stronger now. You’ve put your drinking behind you and you have a lot to give. Don’t waste the rest of your life because of one mistake. Don’t do that to yourself.”

  She stood and stretched out her arms towards him. Locklear stood and gently accepted her embrace. Three seconds later he had returned to his seat and fixed his eyes on the window.

  Mendoza began to throw the last of her clothes in her suitcase.

  “I need us to be OK,” she said. “I hated seeing you like that yesterday.”

  “We are OK, Mendoza.”

  “I think there’s something you need to do before we leave DC.”

  “What’s that?” he asked without moving his eyes from the window which he was pretending held something of interest for him.

  “You need to go back to see Susan Walsh. You need to at least try to make your peace with her.”

  “No way, Mendoza. Look, we almost didn’t get onto the base yesterday. I can’t ask Rubin to get me inside again. He’s a much lower rank that Walsh. She’ll have him crucified.”

  “I’ve thought that out,” she said.

  A small smile washed over Locklear’s tired face. “You have?”

  “Yes.” Mendoza grinned. “We’re going to go to the base together. I’ll wait in the cab while you ask to see Walsh directly. If she says no, we’ll head to the airport, but at least you’ll know you tried. Might be the only chance you get to do this, Locklear. Don’t pass on it.”

  Locklear groaned. “OK, I’ll try.”

  When the cab reached Fort Lesley J McNair army base, Mendoza, good to her word, sat in the cab while Locklear spoke with Private Valentine again. From the rear passenger-seat it looked to Mendoza as if Locklear was telling Valentine the truth about why he wanted to see Walsh. Valentine stood with a deep frown on his face for the entire conversation without moving. When Locklear stopped talking, the army private left him standing on the curb and phoned from his hut.

  Locklear glanced towards Mendoza and she smiled reassuringly at him. It was the least confident, most nervous she had ever seen her boss. There was something so lost in the expression on his face that it hurt her to watch. This was clearly unfamiliar territory for Locklear who was not used to apologising for his mistakes, past or present.

  A minute later Valentine exited the hut and pointed in the direction of the building, obviously giving Locklear the same directions as he had given them the day before. The second guard frisked Locklear before he was allowed to head in the direction of the double doors.

  Mendoza, bored and
anxious to know what was happening, tried to chat to the cab driver who was listening to a radio programme. He gave her two or three short polite replies before glancing backwards at her with a look that told her he wasn’t looking for conversation.

  Mendoza lifted her phone out of her bag and noticed the small envelope on the screen which told her she had messages. She dialled in and listened as O’Brien told her to call him, urgently.

  She got out of the car and walked twenty feet in the direction of the roadway. She phoned O’Brien’s cell phone.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “Wait.”

  She assumed he was moving to a more private location.

  She listened as O’Brien whispered to her. The information he had for her was upsetting and she was not looking forward to dampening Locklear’s mood, especially if the meeting with Walsh didn’t go well.

  She returned to the cab and thought about her conversation with her boss that morning and wondered what he had made of her revelations. He had not said much but, then, he never did. It was hard to know what was going on inside his troubled and lonely head, but she hoped what she said in some way eased his mind. It had not, she felt, eased hers. The feelings of attraction she now had for him continued and she had played down their impact on her for his sake. She hoped her feelings would fade as these kinds of feelings tended to do with time, or sooner if Locklear managed to piss her off which he was more than capable of doing.

  When Locklear finally arrived back at the cab, Mendoza looked at the clock on the dash and noticed that he had been gone for over half an hour. She hoped this was a good sign. He slid back into the front passenger seat and glanced quickly at her. She tried to read his face but all she could see was that her boss looked less anxious coming out of the base than he was going in.

  “It went well?” she asked.