'Where did that come from?'
'I know you're thinking about it. I know you.'
'I'm not thinking about it.' But of course, that wasn't true.
'I know who she is,' Chooch said. 'We both do. I don't believe God makes us one way, then changes who we are. I think a person's soul is given at birth. It's specific and unchangeable. Character isn't just about brain chemistry and neurotransmitters. That's not what determines who we are.'
'Sometimes I don't even recognize her anymore,' I admitted.
'I know it's hard, Dad. But you've got to give this some time- years even. If you can't do it for her, then hang on for me. Will you promise?'
I stood looking at my son and wondering how he'd gotten so strong and so spiritual. Did that come from Alexa, or did it get passed down it genetically from his birth mother?
'Okay,' I finally said, softly. 'I promise.'
'Let's go check and see if she's called my cell,' Chooch said.
He told the assistant coach that we had a personal emergency and that he'd be right back. We walked to the locker room where he pulled out his cell phone and checked it for messages.
'Three calls from her in the last hour,' he said.
'Call her back.'
Chooch dialed Alexa back but her phone went to voice mail.
'She's smart, Dad. She knows you'd come here. She obviously doesn't want to discuss this yet.'
'Next time she calls, try and get her to talk with me.'
'Okay.'
I left Howard Jones Field and returned home. It was after seven when I got there. The first thing I did was check our home phone for messages again. There were three. One was from Secada asking me to call her. One was from Jeb Callaway-same message. The last one was from Alexa.
'Shane, it's me.' Her voice sounded guarded. 'Listen, I know you want to talk, but I need some time to myself right now. Don't chase after me. Don't make any demands. I'm in a place where I can think. I need to find out who I am and who I'm going to be. I love you, darling. Hang on and say a prayer for us.'
Chapter 29
I sat in the living room making more entries into my journal. I remembered Alexa striding into Cal's office, laying that writ of mandamus on Lieutenant Sheppard, telling him she'd drop-kick him out a window if he gave her any trouble. It was magnificent, just like the old days. But just when I thought she was back, she ran off, refusing to talk to me. Preferring to be alone.
I finally finished writing and closed the journal, then turned off the lights and lay on the sofa listening to the distant surf thunder two blocks away. The marine layer must have been rolling in because I heard the long, mournful wail of a foghorn. My thoughts turned inward.
I've never taken good fortune for granted. From an early age, my life as an orphan was a series of fistfights, manipulations, and lies. Like a wolf hovering at the edge of a campfire, I was always waiting for any sign of weakness so I could sweep in and take advantage. Cynicism was my armor, violence a reaction to loneliness, sex a physical release performed mostly with strangers. In all of this, I was only trying to survive.
After I met Alexa and Chooch, I let my guard down. I soon learned that I needed different things to survive. Respect, redemption, and love. I found myself on a new eye-opening path where good deeds were performed for no selfish reason. And finally, in the end, I developed the ability to become vulnerable to others. The next thing that happened was I began to accept love, and then even take it for granted. I never expected to experience the old emptiness, or deal again with the dark creatures that once crawled on the floor of my mind.
But now I was back where I started. All of it courtesy of one sixteen-gram hollow point round that scrambled Alexa's brain, causing a chain reaction that ended up changing everything.
I closed my eyes and wished that I could escape from all of this. Then, mercifully, I fell asleep.
The ringing of the telephone jolted me awake. I scrambled up off the sofa and snatched the receiver out of its cradle.
'Yes?' I was hoping for Alexa, but got Secada instead.
'Sorry it's so late,' she said.
'What time is it?'
'Midnight.'
'What's up?'
'Somebody got to Tru Hickman right after chow tonight. It happened in the cafeteria. Shanked. I just got a call from the prison hospital because my name's in his letter file. He's in ICU. It's critical.'
'Who did him?'
'Gang-bangers from his car.'
'Fuck!' I shouted at the walls. We'd been too slow, too predictable.
'I'm going up there now,' Scout said.
'Okay. Me, too.'
'Want me to pick you up?'
'Where are you?'
'Just leaving downtown. No traffic at this hour. I can be at your place in twenty.'
She made it in eighteen. I was waiting out front and jumped into her green Suburban, and we roared out.
It was past one by the time we hit California 1-99 to Bakers-field. Big, empty, sixteen-wheel produce trucks churned relentlessly up the Grapevine, grinding through their gears heading over the San Gabriel Mountains into the Central Valley. As Secada drove she filled me in on a few things she'd learned while I'd been in my supervisor review and chasing after Alexa.
'I ran through Mike Church's background this afternoon looking for recent deaths. His father, Juan Iglesia, died in his shower eighteen months ago. There'd been bad blood between them since Mike got jumped into the Vanowen Street Locos at age fifteen. It got worse when he changed his name to Church. After Juan's death, Mike inherited the old man's auto body shop and tow service.'
I looked over at her. 'You sure Church didn't kill him?'
'I'm having the investigators' report and the M. E.'s statement faxed over to us. According to the coroner's assistant I talked to over at North Mission Road, it was a pinpoint injury. A heavy blow, but only a few centimeters in diameter. His skull was hit with such force it exploded some blood vessels inside his head. A single, massive stroke ensued.'
'Do they know what caused the head trauma?'
'They think he just slipped in his shower and went down, hitting the faucet handle. At least, that's what the primary and the M. E. wrote. Death by accidental causes.'
'But as a result, Church inherits his father's tow service and bus company,' I mused. 'I'm not going for it.'
'Apparently, Juan Iglesia was 'El Corazon Oro,' ' she said. 'A friend with a heart of gold. I checked around. People loved this old man. He was the exact opposite of his deadbeat son. He started that little bus company and ran it as a nonprofit because he wanted to help the elderly and disabled. Kind of his way of giving back to America.'
We rode in silence for a minute and then I said, 'Okay, so what's the story on the Transit Authority Police Department then? Whose idea was that?'
'Probably Mike's. He inherited this little bus company with only one van that his father originally obtained by trading three broken motorcycles. Mike also inherited Iglesia Auto Body, which he promptly renamed the Church of Destruction. Then in September of last year the bus company bought four new Metro Coach fifty-seven passenger buses-big ones. A month later they form a transit police department and buy all kinds of topflight security to go inside the buses-elaborate, infrared cameras and state-of-the-art satellite GPS units to locate a bus if it's hijacked.
