It was just before midnight. The marine layer had rolled in, low and thick and burying the City of Angels in the clouds. Rhodes was wheeling the Crown Vic back to Parker Center so that Lena could pick up her car. Forty-five miles an hour on the Hollywood Freeway. It felt like they were alone on the road. Just those occasional beams of light zipping by like UFOs, the sound dampened by the heavy steam.
“It’s my fault,” Lena whispered. “You were away. You didn’t know.”
“It’s not your fault or my fault. It’s Klinger’s.”
“I should’ve paid more attention,” she said. “I lost my focus.”
“Klinger did this, Lena. And he should pay for it.”
Lena slipped her hand into her pocket and wrapped it around the pack of cigarettes she bought Sunday night. She wouldn’t light one. She’d save that for later. It was enough just to know that they were there.
She turned and looked at Rhodes. “Klinger won’t pay for this, Stan. The chief won’t, either. That’s not the way it’ll work.”
“Then how the hell is it gonna work?”
She paused for a moment. She had spent the last three hours grappling with it. Seeing what happened for what it was and what it would be. They had searched Poole’s apartment and found things-medals, honors, remembrances. But it was the letters they recovered from his desk that told the real story and defined the man. Letters written by soldiers whom Poole had risked his own life to save. Letters from their wives and parents, their husbands and children. A diary that he’d started after a roadside bomb wounded more than a hundred civilians and Poole was the only one at the scene with medical experience. Poole had been a combat surgeon with enormous talent, but also a medic in the field. He was someone who gave it his all, but then buckled under the strain. Someone who had given, then given even more until he reached the point where he needed something back. But no one answered the call. No one lent him a helping hand. All they did was write scripts and feed him more pills.
Lena let the thought go, staring into the wall of fog but not seeing it.
“One of two things are going to happen,” she whispered from a place deep inside herself.
“What things?”
“They’re going to say that we cleared the case tonight. That we got our man. That Albert Poole was Nathan Good and everything ends with him. Poole will take the fall so there won’t be any reason to pursue Fontaine, or Justin Tremell, or whoever’s put the fix in with the chief and the DA. They’re gonna close the case, Stan. It’s either that or they’re gonna say that I’m the one who totally fucked things up. That I killed a war hero tonight without justification. A man who helped others and didn’t deserve to die. It’ll be one or the other or some combination of both. Either way, the chief can do whatever he wants to me now.”
Her voice faded into the muted sound of the Crown Vic cruising through the clouds. Floating in the dark mist. After a long moment, Rhodes broke the silence, his voice barely audible.
“Poole may have been a war hero, Lena. But we didn’t start shooting. He did. And Klinger probably knew enough about the guy to guess that he would.”
Lena didn’t say anything, even though she agreed that Klinger and Chief Logan had done their homework. The setup had been perfect. Barrera had warned her on the first call. She had known that something was coming all week. And when it finally did, she missed it. Now an innocent man, however troubled, was dead.
“What’s important,” she said, “is that you need to distance yourself from me.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
“Yes, it is. You’re gonna keep your job and let me take the fall. And you’re gonna stay away from Klinger.”
Rhodes looked at her with those eyes of his. “Fuck you,” he said.