She studied me for a moment. “I know. I can see it in your face. I saw it the second you came into Chuck’s hospital room.”
I always assumed I hid it well. I cut people off when they began to pry. I didn’t talk about my daughter with anyone. I tried to compartmentalize the hurt. But maybe Lauren simply knew me too well.
“I’m not saying I wanna be married to you again, Joe. I can’t go back to that,” Lauren said, her eyes bouncing from me to the window and then back to me. She reached over, laid her hand on top of mine. “But I think I’d like to spend the night with you tonight.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Nine beers and a couple of tequila shots.
Those were my thoughts as I pried open my eyelids and squinted into the sunshine that seemed to be burning a hole through my hotel window. That’s what I remembered drinking at the hotel bar. I was pretty sure I'd put away more than that, but those were the numbers that stuck before the rest of the night went hazy.
I pushed myself out of bed and stumbled toward the window. I pulled the curtain closed, shutting out the bright light that threatened to scorch my retinas. The floor wobbled beneath me and I teetered back into the bed before it spun me out of control. I placed my hands flat against the sheets, bracing myself, and looked at the clock. It was ten in the morning. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d slept that late. Couldn’t recall the last time I’d had that much to drink, either.
A nice, rhythmic pounding started in my temples and the aroma of stale beer cloaked the dark room. I rolled out of the bed, stumbled to the shower and turned the water on.
Cold. Full blast.
I stood under the icy water for a minute, letting the low temperature shock me back to life before turning the water up to a more tolerable degree of warmth. Slowly, the pounding subsided, my tongue shrunk from the size of a rug to its normal size and I got out, feeling almost normal.
I stood at the mirror, the towel wrapped around my waist, my hands on the cold marble counter and wondered how angry Lauren was with me now.
“Not a good idea,” I’d said when she brought up spending the night together.
She'd blinked several times and pulled her hand away from mine. “Why not?”
“Come on, Lauren.”
“What?” she asked, anger sweeping across her face. “You think someone’s gonna find her while we’re fucking and you’ll miss the call?”
I held up a hand. “Don’t do this.”
The anger intensified and her eyes lit up. “Do what? Admit that our relationship didn’t end for me just because you left? That it didn’t end for me because someone took our daughter?” Her mouth puckered up in disgust. “Sorry, Joe. I guess I just didn’t love her like you did.”
“Whatever, Lauren,” I said. “I’m not having this conversation.”
I stood and walked out of the cafe.
She came out on my heels. She grabbed me by the arm, her nails digging into my skin. “The hell you aren’t. You owe me at least that.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
Her eyes widened. “Are you serious? You seriously believe that?” She gripped my arm harder. “You were half a day away when you called me to tell me you weren’t coming back. And you don’t think you owe me anything?”
People walking past were giving us a wider berth.
I yanked her hand off my arm. “Our marriage was over, Lauren. We both knew it.”
“You knew it,” she said. “You knew it and by default, it was over for me. And you ran away like a scared little kid. You think it didn’t hurt me to see her empty room every day?” She hiccuped on sobs as she spoke. “You think you were the only one torn apart by that? My God! I told you that I still sometimes blame you. But even with that, I wasn’t ready to give up our marriage. You didn’t come back, so I had to.” The anger melted from her face and her mouth opened. Her eyes were unfocused, like she was trying to come up with an answer she didn’t have. “I mean, how did you just stop loving me? How did it change overnight? How did…”
“I saw her,” I said, cutting her off.
Her expression froze.
“Every time I looked at you,” I explained, the words coming out of my mouth like they contained jagged edges. “I saw Elizabeth.”
She took that in, started to say something, then stopped. Then she pivoted and walked off in a rush.
I didn’t go after her, just stood there as still as if I was standing in front of the mirror after a shower. I'd told her the truth. It had become too much to look at my wife every day and see my daughter. I held no illusions that that was my problem and no one else’s. But I hadn’t figured out a way to fix it and that was one of the reasons why I had stayed away from Coronado for so many years.
Seeing Lauren at the hospital, at dinner and in the cafe, I knew that nothing had changed for me.
Every time I looked at her, I saw my daughter who wasn’t there.
TWENTY-SIX
I dressed and went downstairs. I found a deli counter, bought the last bagel they had and drove back to the island so I could push Lauren out of my head and focus on Chuck.
I had purposely avoided looking into Chuck’s assault because I knew that was going to take me to the Coronado Police Department. If my old home was number one on the list of places I did not want to visit, CPD was number one-and-a-half. But if I was truly going to help Chuck, there was no way I could get out of it.
I’d been an officer in Coronado for nine years when Elizabeth had disappeared. It was my dream job. I’d gotten my degree in criminal justice from USD and then gone right into the academy with no intention of working anywhere else. I’d grown up on the island and it was a small enough place that the police officers were actually a part of the community rather than people who passed through it.
It was a tough post to pull because if you wanted to be a cop in San Diego, there was no more idyllic place. The residents were happy to see you, the department was well-funded and you rarely had to deal with more than drunks on the beach. But it was a small department and the open spots were limited and much coveted.
So I worked harder at the academy than I’d ever worked at anything else and graduated at the top of my class. Along the way, I made sure that the CPD brass noticed me. It was the only job I wanted, the only job I interviewed for and the only job I held as a cop.
It just hadn’t ended the way I’d envisioned.
I parked the car across the street from the CPD offices and paused on the sidewalk, taking in the building.
It looked nothing like a police headquarters. Single story, open archways, smothered in towering palm trees. It resembled a rec center more than a government building and blended into the rest of the architecture of the island. I used to love going into that building every morning, ready for the tight camaraderie of a small department.
As I crossed the street and opened the glass door, I knew that I’d still feel the tight camaraderie.
I just wouldn’t be a part of it.
I didn’t recognize the desk sergeant, a guy in his early thirties with close-cut brown hair, squared-off shoulders and a friendly smile. “Morning, sir. How can we help you?”
“Detective Lorenzo in?”
He glanced down at the desk log, then shook his head. “No, I’m sorry, he’s out this morning. But maybe I can help?”
He was pleasant, eager, happy to be of service, the same way I had been trained to treat the island’s citizens. The department wanted the residents to feel comfortable around the police officers and it had been drilled over and over into us that we served the community and our jobs were to help them in any way possible.
I realized I was tapping my foot to a silent beat and I pressed my foot to the floor to make it stop. “Is Lieutenant Bazer in?”