Beach Strip by John Lawrence Reynolds Page B

at the lake. I called Mel’s name and he turned and smiled. “Hey,” he said. Mel had a way of combining two expressions in one, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing as though he were somewhere between confusion and anger. He wore that expression when he wanted to make you feel good about him, or maybe just good about yourself for being near him. He wore it now.
    Behind me, Tina made a pseudo-orgasmic sound in her throat.
    “Mel, this is my sister, Tina. Tina, Mel Holiday.”
    Mel extended a hand large enough to lift a watermelon. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’m glad you’re here to help Josie.”
    Tina said that’s what sisters were for, which caused my eyes to roll.
    “We just made arrangements for Gabe’s funeral,” I said.
    “I’ll be there,” Mel said.
    “Well, you’ll be the only one. There’s no ceremony.”
    “That’s how you want it?”
    “That’s how Gabe would want it. The force won’t send anybody if I ask them not to, right? Not as long as they believe he killed himself.”
    “The results came back from forensics,” Mel said. He glanced behind me at Tina, and I sensed the rest of his words were directed at her. “The bullet is from his gun. The guys in Toronto reviewed it, and they’re the best. So there’s no doubt about it. The paraffin test was positive, and there was alcohol in his blood—”
    “How much?” I asked.
    “Zero point five, something like that.”
    “You can legally drive with that much.” I kicked at the garden shed door. “He could have been behind the wheel of his car, and you guys couldn’t have touched him. Don’t tell me he was sodrunk he decided to kill himself, Mel. He had maybe a couple of glasses of wine—”
    “Josie—”
    “No suicide note, Mel. How do you explain that? Gabe would leave me a note when he went for a walk on the beach. Why doesn’t he leave me a note before he shoots himself in the head?”
    “It’s not me, Josie.” Mel was looking from Tina to me and back to Tina again. Tina—I know because I checked—was looking at Mel’s eyes. “Look.” He lowered his voice. “Everything you say is true. Nothing about this makes sense. But Walter and everybody else at Central, they look at what we have as evidence, and they believe he did it. There’ll be an inquest, but unless the coroner decides criminal action was involved, Walter’s not going to assign a bunch of cops to look into Gabe’s death. He’ll have no reason to. He’ll say that Gabe wouldn’t be the first cop to fold under pressure, and he’ll be right. Maybe Gabe was working on something that got him so damned depressed—”
    “Have they looked into that?” I interrupted. “What he was working on? Gabe never talked to me about the cases he had going, not until everything was settled and the trial started. So has Walter, has he and everybody else, taken a look at Gabe’s cases, the ones he was working on?”
    Mel dropped his arms and nodded. “They looked and I looked. They found nothing in his files. If Gabe killed himself, they don’t have a motive for what he did.”
    “No, they don’t,” I said. “But maybe we do, right?”
    I turned and began walking back to the house, then stopped and looked back at Mel. “What are you doing here anyway?”
    “We want the pervert who’s been sneaking into your garden shed,” Mel said. “These guys, they start with this kind of thing,” and he waved at the shed, “then move on to other things. Anybody standing at that window has a perfect view into the kitchen, and upstairs to your bedroom window.”
    “Yeah, well, apparently he liked what he saw.” I resumed walking back to the house.
    “What will you do?” I heard Tina ask Mel. “How will you catch him?”
    Mel said something about spreading crystals on the floor that would cling to the suspect’s shoes, and alerting bicycle patrols on the boardwalk. I didn’t hear the rest. I walked to the rear door, unlocked it, let myself into the