A day later the district attorney finally filed murder one charges against them all.
Alexa and Shane had been released, then went back to L. A. and watched the rest of it on her TV, since he didn't have one. She had cooked a remarkably good Italian dinner for them, and after they had two glasses of red wine, Shane was lying on the sofa in her anally neat living room, watching Dan Rather talk about him. Alexa was in the kitchen doing dishes, hoping her mother was watching over them all.
Shortly after the news ended, an investigator from IAD knocked on the door to pick up the files Alexa had gathered for Shane's BOR. The IO notified her that she was no longer the advocate prosecuting Scully's case.
"What case?" Shane asked, coming up off the sofa like a Harrier jet. "You mean, after all this, they're still planning to terminate me?"
"Just because you two turned this department upside down doesn't mean your unnecessary use of force on the Molar shooting goes away," the IO said. Then he took the four crammed case-file boxes and left.
"When will it end?" Shane growled.
"Shane… you'll prevail at that board. With all this going on, believe me, their case won't stick."
He looked at her and again felt something stir inside him. She saw it in his eyes. "I know, but this time let's wait," she said. "Let's not do anything again until all this calms down and we know if it's real, or if we're just pulsing 'cause we're glad to be alive."
"It's real," he said. But she was right, now was not the time.
Shane had heard that Chooch was being held under IDC Intake and Detention Control at Juvenile Hall. So he called Captain Halley and had Chooch moved to PNP USCMC, which was the patient-not-prisoner section of the Juvenile Detention wing of the USC Medical Center. They were talking about assigning him to a foster home.
Shane slept on Alexa's couch, and the next morning, after she cooked him breakfast, he had her drop him off at the police impound garage, where he reclaimed the rented Taurus he had left on the movie set the night he got kidnapped. Then he drove down and gave blood at the USC hospital. He couldn't see Chooch, by order of the district attorney, who was still interviewing him as a witness, so Shane found an old friend named Ellen Webb, who worked in PNP as a nurse. He gave her his blood sample number and asked her to get a match from Chooch.
"How come?" Ellen asked, brushing a wisp of honey-blond hair out of her eyes. "According to the news, he's Hispanic."
"His mother was, but I think I may be the father."
She looked at Shane for a long moment and smiled. "Can't keep the little head from controlling the big head?" she said playfully, so Shane stuck his tongue out at her and left.
He had one more stop to make before he went home and slept for a year.
The freeway was crowded, and he was locked in bumper-to-bumper five o'clock traffic. He finally got to the end of the 10 and found himself back on the Coast Highway. He didn't have his badge, so this time he had to pay for parking. He left the Taurus, walked onto the bike path and up to DeMarco's house.
For once it was quiet out front. The blond beach ornaments were all gone, off playing with somebody else's mind. Shane passed through the gate and walked up to the front door. He tried to look through the front window, but the blinds were pulled and he couldn't see anything. Finally he reached into his back pocket and fished out his trusty collection of picks. The lock was an old brass Yale and was a bitch to open, but after five minutes he turned the tumblers, went into the house, then closed and relocked the door behind him.
He stood in the living room, looking around, remembering his trip here two weeks days agoHe had stood in this very same spot, watching DeMarco play with his speakers while Snoop Doggy Dogg spewed race hatred. It seemed as though that had been in another lifetime. He walked softly through the place, looking into each room. No one was home, so he entered the office at the end of the hall, walked across the room, then sat at DeMarco's desk. His defense rep's case material was sitting there in one half-filled file box. DeMarco had been on Shane's case for almost ten days, and as Shane went through the material, he was surprised by the lack of evidence he'd collected to support Shane's position. The defense rep hadn't yet received all of the discovery items, and there wasn't even a copy of Barbara Molar's statement. There was a halfhearted, half-full spiral notebook… It was all damned puny compared with the mountain of stuff that had been carted out of Alexa's house.
He finally stopped looking at the case files, leaned back in the chair, and waited.
An hour later he heard the front door open; DeMarco was talking to someone. He heard a young boy's laughter, and then the music came on. Shane waited for a minute, then got out of DeMarco's chair and continued silently down the hall, into the living room.
What he saw didn't surprise him as much as it sickened him. On the living room sofa, DeMarco Saint and one of the fifteen-year-old surfer boys were lying in a romantic embrace. They were both naked.
"What a total shitbox!" Shane said.
DeMarco snapped his head around and glowered up at Shane. Then he scrambled up into a sitting position and grabbed for his underwear. The boy made no move to cover himself. Instead he remained lounging on the sofa, glaring his indifference.
"You didn't get thrown off the job for drinking. You got thrown off for pedophilia," Shane said.
"Nobody ever proved anything," DeMarco said, now reaching for his beach shorts.
"I should've seen it. First you turn me down, then a day later, all of a sudden, you're taking on my case. Mayweather got you to do it, didn't he? He wanted somebody on the inside of my defense. He wanted to find out what I was up to. He knew about this thing you've got for underage boys. He could've still filed criminal charges and gone after your pension. He forced you to reconsider."
"That5 s nonsense," DeMarco sputtered as he got his shorts on and rose to his feet. He was flushed, his complexion a ruby red. Sweat was slick on his skinny white chest.
"Nonsense?" Shane said reflectively. "I only told one person that I went to the Long Beach Naval Yard. Two hours later I'm kidnapped and taken up to Arrowhead, and Coy Love knows about it. The person who told him was you!"
"Whatta you… whatta you… gonna…" DeMarco's lower lip was quivering.
"Do?" Shane finished the sentence for him. "I'll show you." He grabbed DeMarco's arm and jerked him off balance. As his defense rep fell forward, Shane swung, landing a left hook square on the side of Dee's face.
DeMarco went down in a slump and began to weep. The naked teenager was on his feet now, his hands up, fists balled.
"Don't try it, Jocko. I'll make fucking hash outta you." Shane walked to the door, then turned. "By the way, Dee, you've got a subpoena coming. I'm putting you in the mix." Without saying another word, he left.
Shane drove back to Venice. The incident hung with him and poisoned his mood.
He worked hard to shift his thoughts and finally tried to contemplate his future. He thought about his life, about Chooch, and whether he was truly the boy's father. Shane had been looking for a deeper meaning in his life. Chooch had begun to fill that emptiness.
In the past two weeks, Shane had had two big surprises, both from unexpected places. Chooch had been one; Alexa, the other.
He was paralyzed with fear that the blood test would prove that his one intimate moment with Sandy would turn out to be just what he'd always believed it to be a mindless mistake instead of what he hoped it was now, a chance for a different kind of future. He parked the Taurus in the garage at his Venice house on East Canal Street, walked past his ruptured Acura, and went into his kitchen. Longboard had slipped a note under the door: