The Collector

Erika looked up. She recognized the ring and knew what it meant. “I can take care of things here,” she said.

He wanted to ignore the call. He didn’t want his life to interfere with his work. He wanted to escape, run away from his own drama and disappear into the facts of the Tran murder.

He didn’t want to see that other dead body in his head.

“Don’t be stupid,” Erika said, reading him. “Go.”

He fumbled with the cell phone, but didn’t take the call. Erika shook her head, walking away, making it clear she was washing her hands of him.

The ringing stopped. But he knew she would call again.

Turning for the door, homicide detective Seven Bushard went to deal with his own ghosts.

3

Seven sat in his car, staring at the LCD screen on his cell phone. Three missed calls, all from the same number.

Beth was nothing if not persistent.

He slid back against the headrest of the Jeep Cherokee, the unkind thought ringing with guilt. After eight months of this crap, he knew the drill: Beth couldn’t handle the giant slice of reality being shoved down her throat. Not alone.

And he was Ricky’s brother. Nick, his nephew, depended on him. Beth was family. End of story.

This time, when the phone rang, Seven picked up.

“I’m fifteen minutes away, Beth,” he said, starting the Jeep.

He drove past the crowd gathered around the Tran place and headed out of the housing track. Beth had recently been diagnosed with panic disorder. Seven shouldn’t have let it go to the forth call.

Only, he couldn’t help wondering if maybe Erika was right about his relationship with his sister-in-law.

If you just let Beth get through the damn panic attacks by herself—without stepping in and making it all better…

Erika thought Beth needed to learn to stand up for herself. What the hell had she called it? Some psychobabble about him being an enabler?

“It’s just guilt, Seven. Pure and simple,” he could almost hear Erika saying in his head.

Getting off the freeway ten minutes later, he was still wondering how much longer he could keep dropping the ball into Erika’s lap. The chief had told Seven to take more time. As long as you need… But Seven needed to get back to normal, and that meant work.

He was lucky to have Erika covering for him, that was for damn sure. There’d been a lot of carping about how fast she’d come up the ranks to detective. Some finger-pointing about the fact that she was a Hispanic woman, as if somehow she’d hit the job lottery being a double minority. But all that mattered to Seven was that she was a good cop—the best damn partner he was likely to have.

Unfortunately, he’d messed up there, too. After a night of tequila shooters, he’d gotten a little too familiar with that gorgeous body. It was a testament to their partnership that they’d made it through the morning—and months—after.

Going south on Bolsa Chica, he headed toward Huntington Harbor. His brother lived in a posh neighborhood where half the homes were on the water. He’d heard about this list on one of the news shows. Huntington Beach was number eight in the country when it came to homes selling over a million dollars.

Ricky had made a killing on the place, buying it when the market had taken a dip. A million-dollar teardown. Now the place was worth well over five million. Not that it mattered. Ricky had it all leveraged. Beth would probably lose everything.

Seven tried not to imagine her reaction when she discovered that the one thing she’d relied on from Ricky—money—was gone.

Well, they’d manage. Seven had some money put away. By summer, Beth and Nick could move into the rental property Seven had bought with his dad some years back. He did the mental math, moving the pieces of their lives around like chessmen. Imagine, the family fuck-up in charge, while Ricky, the “good son,” the plastic surgeon, did time. It was freaking biblical.

The whole thing sounded too damn much like a soap opera. Ricky having an affair with his male nurse at his plastic surgery practice. The affair going sour—Scott wanting Ricky to leave Beth.

Ricky offered money, undying love. It wasn’t enough. Scott wanted it all. The fights grew more abusive. Scott started making threats, tailing Beth. He knew where Nick went to school, that sort of thing.

It was made to look like a car accident. Only Ricky had done a pretty lousy job of covering his tracks. It was clear from the blood evidence that Scott had been dead before the crash. There had been a curious L-shaped blood spatter on the window. Apparently, Scott’s blood had splashed against it long before the car came to an abrupt stop. Momentum kept the blood slipping across the glass.

When faced with the evidence, Ricky confessed. He’d put a full two hours on tape with homicide in Laguna, where the “accident” took place, before asking for counsel.

Seven remembered it almost as if the whole thing happened yesterday. Erika had called bright and early.

Sit down, honey. This is going to be bad….

You knew it was something when tough-as-nails Erika tossed around words like honey.

The cherry on top? Laurin, Seven’s ex-wife, also got in touch…right after Ricky hit the six o’clock news. Here he was in the middle of hell, and his ex-wife calls to tell him, Jesus, Seven, I’m so sorry…. Is there anything I can do? And by the way, she’s expecting twins with her new husband. Twins, for God’s sake. Seven took the news like two shots straight to the head.

He was happy for Laurin, sure. But he couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for himself. Like he’d been left behind because Laurin, bless her heart, had moved on. She was leading this totally normal life with a real family…while he fought to keep the pieces of his from slipping through his fingers like sand.

Seven punched up the music, The Beatles belting out the end of “Hey Jude.” He reminded himself this wasn’t about him. It was about the people he loved. Nick and Beth.

When he turned up Ricky’s street, he saw Beth was waiting for him out on the driveway. She was wearing a baby-blue sweater set and ankle-length pants. She had on ballet slippers and her shoulder-length blond mane was held back by a black hair band. She hugged her arms across her chest as if trying to hold everything inside.

They’d made a pair, she and Ricky. Both blond and blue-eyed, they looked like god and goddess. If the brothers stood next to each other, no one could imagine they were related. Just under six feet, with brown hair and hazel eyes, Seven was everyman to his brother’s golden boy.

Out on the cul-de-sac, Nick played basketball. Looking just like his father, the kid put everything into his hook shot.

Seven slowed down, just watching what, for all intents and purposes, was the perfect picture of domestic bliss. Ricky had installed the hoop on the curb last year. Just eight months ago, Seven had been working up a sweat with his brother on the drive, giving as good as he got.

As soon as he pulled up and stepped out of the Jeep, Beth came up to him, throwing herself into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I shouldn’t call when you’re at work. But I just couldn’t deal anymore.”

He could smell the alcohol on her breath—not that he blamed her. Beth had been self-medicating with alcohol for a while now. Seven watched his nephew over her shoulder. Nick just kept bouncing the ball, pretending Seven wasn’t standing just a few feet away, trying to hold his mom together as she fell apart.

That’s how Nick was getting through the crisis. Pretending.

Abracadabra. Nothing’s wrong. I don’t feel a thing.

Seven felt a rare surge of anger. He wished Beth could be stronger for Nick’s sake. The kid was hurting, too.

But it didn’t help to start throwing around blame. That’s why he wanted to get back to work. Investigations like the Tran case took a dispassionate observer. He could crawl inside this cool place he’d carved out in his head, where nothing but the evidence mattered.

He wouldn’t have to think about Ricky and the shit he’d dumped on the family. Wouldn’t feel his guts getting ripped out every time he saw his ten-year-old nephew and thought about what the future held.

“I was making this pact with God,” Beth said, still clutching him. “If everything turned out okay, I promised I’d be stronger.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Seven said, putting his arm around her and steering her back toward the house. “You got some coffee?”