“The Carreras have intimidated and coerced and threatened. They zero in on their next real estate acquisition and drive everyone out. They don’t care how. They pretend to offer a fair price, but they never follow through. Anyone who thwarts them ends up in some kind of ‘accident,’ or some other misery befalls them. That’s what I know.”
“You can’t be a one-man vigilante on this. The judicial system will get them eventually. Go back to Portland PD, or finish with that law degree. Luke, come on ... don’t let this get in our way.”
He yanked open the bathroom door so hard, she fell forward and had to catch herself. “I’ve got a different job now.”
“Private investigating?” she said with a sneer. Her eyes widened a moment later when he clamped his hands on her shoulders, turned her around, and steered her toward the front door. She actually tried to dig in her heels and grip the sides of the door frame. “My purse!” she yelled and, with a pungent swear word, he was forced to let go of her.
“Don’t move,” he warned in a cold voice as he turned back and swept the purse from the nightstand, returning a few moments later and slapping the clutch bag into her hands.
She gripped it in one hand, then raised up both in surrender. “This is ridiculous. Honestly, Luke. Come on.”
“You don’t like what I do. You don’t like my friends. You don’t really like me.”
“That’s not true—”
“Darlin’, this is over.”
To his consternation, her skin pinkened and he sensed that she was about to cry. She didn’t do it often, but she was about to do it now. “I love you,” she said tremulously.
He shook his head, unable to come up with an answer to that one. The movement aggravated the headache forming like a storm. He eased Iris out the door, and this time she went meekly, as if all the stuffing had been smacked out of her. It made him feel bad, but not bad enough to change his mind. He needed to be separated from her. For good.
Turning the lock on the door, he headed back to the shower, stripping off his jeans. He stood beneath the hot spray for a good ten minutes, then dressed in the fresh clothes on the counter. He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt to midforearm, then combed out his wet hair, the light brown strands unnaturally dark from the water. He stared into his own blue eyes, registering how harsh the light felt. Evil drink. What good had it gotten him? Bolchoy wasn’t going to go free. Iris had been right about that.
“Rule number one, buddy,” the older detective had told Luke when they’d first been partnered. “Stay the fuck out of my way.”
Luke had been taken aback. It was his first job as a detective and he’d been assigned to homicide, a real coup. Or, at least he’d thought so in the beginning, until he realized everyone was having a good old hah-hah at his expense because he was teamed with Ray Bolchoy. Nobody, but nobody, wanted to be partnered with the gruff old-timer. Better to stay back in robbery or work missing persons, or vice . . . anything but homicide with the stubborn, single-minded detective.
In those early days, Luke had learned that Bolchoy had a lot of rules, although most of them were superseded by rule number one. Luke tried hard to stay the fuck out of his partner’s way, though a few times he’d made the mistake of getting underfoot in an investigation, at least according to Bolchoy, and then there’d been hell to pay. It took years before Bolchoy trusted him enough to truly treat him as a partner, so many in fact that Lucas’s brother, Dallas, had urged him to quit long before he actually had.
“Be a writer,” Dallas had told him. “Your partner’s a crackpot who’s nearing retirement but won’t retire. Unless they force him out, you’re stuck with him for more of your life than you need to be. It’s worse than a marriage. Go back to writing that stuff you did in college.”
Easy for Dallas to say. Yes, he liked writing, but he wasn’t a great writer. He knew that. His best attempts were filling out reports. He had a technical mind, and it was restful putting things down in chronological order. But a writer? Of fiction? Yeah, sure, Dal. I’ll get started on that right away . . .
He drove to his office in a dark mood, annoyed by the uncommon humidity that seemed to hang in the air like an invisible shroud. It wasn’t his nature to be gloomy, but Iris, and the hovering hangover that hadn’t fully presented itself yet, was getting to him. He parked his truck in the spot behind the back door that led to his office. The door was rust-colored, from paint and maybe just because it was, and it was one of many other rust-colored doors that lined the back of the strip mall. He’d rented the one-room space alongside the Asian fusion restaurant for next to nothing. The scent of curry occasionally wove through the air, which had a tendency to draw him like a cartoon finger of aroma, beckoning him inside, but otherwise his office was exactly what he needed.