“LIFE AIN’T NOTHIN’ but a cold, hard ride,” Amos Cline said.
We were standing under the railroad trestle on the western fringe of downtown River City. This was one of many places people like Cline called home during the day. Traffic slowed enough for drivers to get a look at his sign, which was etched with bold, black strokes proclaiming “God Bless.”
A classic.
Cline was a thin, grimy man with a short grizzled beard. His sunken eyes stared out at me from his skull-like face with a mix of hatred and weary resignation. His age was difficult to determine at a glance. Years of living rough made for harder mileage.
I’d been looking for Cline and his old running buddy, Marco Federici, for over a week now. Both were material witnesses in a homicide case that my employer, Joel Harrity, was defending. If they’d been witnesses for the state, there’d be material witness warrants out for both of them. But since they were being called by the defense, Harrity was left to his own devices when it came to finding and corralling these witnesses.
I was one of those devices. Armed with a subpoena and scant information, and after spending most of another day hunting for the man, I’d just finished telling Cline the whole situation, more or less. That was when he sprang that little nugget of philosophy about life on me.
“Don’t get all poetic, Amos.”
“Life ain’t nothing but bad poetry, too,” Cline said. He hacked up some phlegm, turned his head, and spat. “Believe it.”
“Grab your stuff,” I told him. “Come with me.”
“I don’t wanna.” He motioned around the dirty ground beneath the trestle. “This is my home.”
“It isn’t going anywhere,” I assured him.
“Maybe not, but someone will squat.”
“I can’t help that. You’re a witness. So, let’s go.”
“No,” he said.
I frowned. “Amos, don’t make this difficult.”
“I’m not going,” he insisted.
“I’ve got you set up at the Super 11 motel.”
“That place is a dive.”
I raised a brow and glanced around at the dirt and concrete he called home. “The room is nice,” I assured him. “It has a bed and everything.”
“I have a bed here.”
“You’ve got a bed roll. I’m talking about a real bed.”
Cline scratched his dirty beard. “I can’t sleep on beds no more,” he said mournfully.
“Pack up,” I told him.
“What if I don’t?”
We stared at each other for a moment. He looked me up and down, appraising me. I had no illusions about what he saw. A smaller than average man, pushing forty. No badge, and presumably no gun. No doubt, he’d clocked my limp when I walked up to him, too. I was wiry in build, but Cline looked like he had the rangy strength that someone who lives in the elements develops over time. I read the confidence in his eyes. He was still trying to decide if he could win a scrap if it came to it, but it was clear he was leaning toward yes.
I hadn’t been in a meaningful fight since I lost the lower portion of my left leg two years ago, and I was looking to extend that streak for as long as possible. So, I appealed to Cline’s good nature.
By which, I meant greed.
“There’s a per-diem,” I said.
“A what?”
“Per-diem,” I said. “In addition to staying at the motel on our dime, you get a per-diem to pay for meals and incidentals.”
He squinted at me. “In cash?”
“If you want.”
“How much?”
I told him.
He narrowed his eyes further, suspicious. “And that’s free and clear?”
“It is.”
“Swear it,” he demanded.
“I swear.”
“Swear on your mother.”
“She left when I was young,” I said. “My grandmother raised me.”
“Swear it by her, then.”
“I swear on my grandmother’s grave, Amos.”
He stared at me, still working out the cost-benefit of the situation. I decided to make it easier for him. I reached into my pocket and held up a document.
“This is a copy of the subpoena you were served three months ago. It’s still in effect.” I held up my cell phone with the other hand. “If you refuse, I call the police, who come down here and grab you up for contempt of court. Then you sit in jail until you’ve testified. All your stuff goes into police property, which we both know is a pain to get back.”
“You’re threatening me,” Cline growled. “I don’t like threats.”
I had a guess that he lived with them a lot out on the street, but saying so wasn’t going to do any good. “It’s not a threat,” I said. “It’s reality. But you do have a choice. Clean sheets and a per diem, or a six-by-eight and bad food.”
Cline glared at me for a little while. I got the sense that this was mostly for show. Then he grunted, “Fine, goddamnit.”
I put away the subpoena and my phone and waited while he gathered up his meager possessions, muttering the whole time. Then we walked together toward my car. He started off striding quickly, but then noticed my slower, limping stride.
“Just my luck,” he grumbled. “Caught by goddamn Hopalong Cassidy.”
I didn’t reply. I’d gotten used to the prosthetic, though the truth was that I still didn’t entirely trust it. To compensate, I walked a little slower than I used to.
Most people didn’t complain.
AFTER I GOT CLINE SETTLED at the Super 11, I headed to Harrity’s office. I could have phoned it in, but Harrity preferred I come by the office at least once a day when I was working a case for him, and this seemed as good a time as any.
Joel Harrity was the premiere defense attorney in River City. There were others who had some notoriety, or advertised on billboards, but Harrity was still king. When I was a cop a lifetime ago, his name was the boogeyman criminals dropped to try to scare us. I remember being unimpressed and even a little resentful. The general consensus was that Harrity represented scumbags and looked for every loophole possible to subvert justice.
Later, though, when I needed an attorney myself, Harrity was who I chose. The irony didn’t escape me, not then or now. Harrity got me out of the jam I was in, which is why I’d called him. Less than a year later, I needed his help again. In both cases, I was innocent, or at least mostly so.
I saw something in Harrity I didn’t expect—honor. He didn’t lie or deal in bad faith. He didn’t break the law. Sure, he exploited the details of the law and the mistakes people made, but he was a different man than the one who I’d spent time bad-mouthing as a patrol cop.
So, when he offered me contract work as an investigator for his office, I took it. Thus far, the arrangement has worked for both of us. He hasn’t pushed me to get a private investigator’s license, and I haven’t pushed him for full-time employment. Between what he paid me for ad hoc work and my meager medical pension, I got by.
My phone rang. I pushed the button without looking to see who it was.
“Kopriva,” I said, by way of greeting.
“Hey, Stef.”
The voice was female and despite the grogginess of it, one I recognized instantly.
“How are you?” I asked Annabel.
“Just woke up,” she croaked. “Coffee’s still brewing, in fact.”
I glanced at the digital clock on the dash. It was late afternoon. But she worked graveyard, so for her, it was morning. I remembered those days well, even though I was a decade and a half removed.
“I’m off tonight,” she said. “I thought I might come over.”
“That’d be great. I’ll cook for you.”
She hesitated. “Maybe we can cook together.”
I smiled. “Everyone’s a critic.”
“I’m not a critic. I just have taste.”
I didn’t argue. All those years of living alone, I didn’t worry too much about cuisine. Food was necessary fuel. Since I’d been with Anna, I’d learned to appreciate it a little more.
“Hey, if I was a sensitive guy, that would hurt.”
“Good thing you’re not,” she teased.
I sniffed at that. “Well, if I was romantic, I’d be wishing you a happy anniversary.”
“Anniversary?”
“Yeah. It was around this time two years ago that you were saving my life.”
She was quiet on her end. A sense of awkwardness descended on me. I shouldn’t have joked about what happened. I opened my mouth to apologize, but she spoke first.
“If I was a romantic,” she said slowly and carefully, “I guess it’d be me wishing you that happy anniversary.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I guess so.” We were quiet for another long moment. Then I said, “Sorry for saying that.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, I—”
“Stef, it’s all right.”
I drove in silence for a block. Harrity’s office was just ahead. I slowed down and started looking for a parking place along the
street.
“I’m glad for one thing,” Anna said, her tone still subdued.
“What’s that?”
“You said happy.”
“That’s because I am.” Sappy, too, I thought, but I didn’t say so.
“Me, too,” she said.
“Good.”
“Yes. Good.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “Coffee’s done.”
“Get yourself a cup, then. I’ll see you later.”
“Around six?”
“Works for me.”
“See you then.”
I reached for the cancel button.
“Oh, and Stef?”
“What?”
I could almost hear her mischievous smile. “Happy anniversary.”
She clicked off before I could reply.
I grinned slightly. These days, Amos Cline’s sentiment about life being a cold, hard ride didn’t ring true for me. Sure, I’d been through a cold, hard decade after I left the job, riddled with self-destructive behavior, including painkillers and booze. Then I spent another couple of years working through the addiction and the reasons for it. The truth was, I’d never be through everything. Some events leave wounds that scar, and some wounds just never entirely heal. But you learn to live with them.
You even learn to be a little bit happy.
I found a parking spot just around the corner from Harrity’s office. It had thirty minutes left on the meter. I plugged in a couple of quarters just to be safe. Then I trudged up the sidewalk in the slow, limping gait I’d adopted. It sometimes reminded me a little bit of how a hockey goaltender walked down the tunnel on the way to
the ice, clad in all those bulky pads. If he only wore the pads on one leg, that was.
The prosthetic itself made barely a sound as it flexed and flowed with my steps. When I first started walking after the amputation, I hated that slight delay and the tiny scrape and click. Now, though, I looked at it differently.
I was lucky to be alive.
Thanks to Anna, mostly. And maybe a little bit due to my own stubbornness.
I’d spent the better part of a decade trying to destroy myself, and the years since trying to rebuild some of what I’d broken. And maybe find some measure of redemption. I could never make up for the mistake I made. I knew that. It was there, forever etched on my history, just like her name was etched in stone up at Forest Lawn cemetery.
Those thoughts sapped the smile from my face that Anna’s call had given me. But that was all right. I didn’t need to be a grinning fool. Just a content one. I couldn’t change the past. But I could stop living in it.
Besides, I’d found one of our two outstanding witnesses, and I was looking at an evening alone with Anna. Things were good.
At Harrity’s office, I opened the front door and went inside. The small bell dinged lightly to signify my arrival. Kylie, Harrity’s receptionist and personal assistant, looked up from her desk. Her elfin features were accented by perfectly coifed blond hair. She flashed me a smile, but there was something off about it.
“Hi, Kylie,” I said. “Is he in?”
She nodded. “Yes, but...”
“Good. I need to update him on the Brashear case.”
“I’ll tell him,” Kylie said. “But... there’s someone here for you.” Her eyes drifted to her left and the small waiting area nestled in a nearby corner.
I took two steps forward and followed her gaze.
Then I froze.
Seated on one of the benches, her hands folded primly over the purse in her lap, was Sharon Kopriva.
My mother.
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