Chapter Eighteen #2
Gonzo pointed to the three-inch scar on his neck that served as a reminder of another day he’d much rather forget. “My war wound. Ironic that Arnold was the one who saved my life by applying pressure to the wound, huh? I couldn’t do a fucking thing for him, but he saved me.”
“In addition to that, your lieutenant was kidnapped and tortured by the man who used to command your squad. Detective McBride was kidnapped and raped. The mother of a son you didn’t know you had until he was several months old was murdered, and you were briefly considered a suspect.”
“What’s your point, Doc?”
“You’ve been through a lot, Tommy. Any one of those things would be enough to rattle the strongest person. Taken together, and I wonder how you’re still soldiering through on the job.”
A twinge of discomfort rose above the numbness. Gonzo didn’t like where this was leading. “What would you have me do, Doc? I have a family to support—or I did until last night anyway. I don’t have the luxury of walking away like Will did.”
“Let’s talk about Will, shall we?”
“What about him?” What the hell did his former coworker have to do with anything?
“Were you close to him?”
“Not particularly. We were work colleagues. He was a good detective. I was sorry to see him go. He was Arnold’s closest friend.
I didn’t even know that until after Arnold died.
” Gonzo let out a huff of laughter. “Some sergeant I turned out to be, huh? I don’t even know that my partner’s closest friend was someone who sits right next to us every day. ”
“Why did Will leave?”
“You know why he left. He couldn’t deal with the way Arnold died and what happened to Sam and Jeannie and me getting shot. Police work lost its luster for him. He’s a single guy with no responsibilities to anyone but himself. He can do what he wants.”
“What would you do if you could do anything you want?”
“What does it matter? I can’t do anything I want.”
“Roll with me. What if you could?”
“I’d go to the Florida Keys and spend a month fishing.”
“Why don’t you do it? You have forty days of sick leave on the books. What’re you saving it for?”
“I don’t take sick leave when I don’t need it, Doc.”
“I think maybe you need it, Tommy. It might do you good to get away from it all for a little while. Your girlfriend takes good care of your little boy, right?”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “She adores him.”
“Maybe if you told her you need a little time to get yourself sorted, she might understand.”
Gonzo shrugged. “I’ve already asked too much of her.”
“What’s one more thing? I assume she loved you at one time, and she’s proven she loves your son. You ought to take a break from the pressure cooker for a while and see if you can’t find a productive way to cope with what’s happened.”
Gonzo took note of the way he said that. A productive way. Did that mean Trulo knew about the decidedly unproductive ways he’d been coping? “I’ll think about it.”
“Do I have your permission to speak with Christina?”
He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I guess. Knock yourself out. She’s fucking furious with me right now. Good luck.”
“She’s not furious with me. I’ll be fine.” Trulo stood and handed Gonzo his card. “Call me if I can help. Day or night. If you need me, call me. Nothing that happens between us will ever affect the status of your job unless I feel you’re a danger to yourself or others. Okay?”
Gonzo nodded and took the card. “Thanks for coming by.”
“Go easy on yourself, Tommy. As crappy as it might seem to you, what you’re feeling is perfectly normal after what you’ve been through. I want you to consider some time away. I think it might help.” He extended his hand.
Gonzo returned the handshake.
“I’ll check in on you later.”
He was almost out the door when Gonzo said, “Hey, Doc?”
Trulo turned back, eyebrow raised.
“Thanks again.”
“Any time, Sarge.”
For a long time after he left, Gonzo stared down at the business card in his hand, thinking about what the doctor had said.
The idea of getting away appealed to him but going away without Alex and Christina didn’t.
Maybe it was time for all of them to take a break—together—and see if they could somehow put their family back on track.
First, though, he had to get Christina to talk to him. That would take some doing.
With Nick sequestered with his team in the dining room and the kids upstairs watching a movie with Shelby and Noah, Sam dug into the Beauclair case reports her squad had put together yesterday, thoroughly reviewing the principal players in the case—Jameson Beauclair/Armstrong, Cleo Beauclair/Armstrong, Duke Piedmont, Margaret Armstrong and others associated with the now-defunct APG.
Sam was thankful for the break in the action that gave her time to read early in the day rather than later when she was tired, and her dyslexia tended to kick in.
More than one thousand employees had been let go when APG shut down, and Sam wrote down the name of the human resources director in case they needed to look into who, if anyone, might’ve been out for vengeance on the guy who’d done the right thing and cost a lot of people their jobs.
It was a stretch, but Sam had learned to pull every thread and stretch in every direction when investigating a homicide.
Jameson had been a rock star. There simply was no better way to describe his meteoric rise in the high-tech industry, which began with work on what would turn out to be APG’s signature product while he was still living in a Stanford dorm room.
With the help of his friends, Piedmont and Gorton, he’d built APG into a Fortune 500 powerhouse and made himself and his partners billionaires with software that had revolutionized the way products were moved around the country.
Anyone with a warehouse and shipping function had adapted APG’s software, and it had become state-of-the-art within three dizzying years of its initial launch.
The company had been among the darlings of Silicon Valley, with their employees housed within a one-million-square-foot campus that teemed with innovative hipsters in hoodies and Chuck Taylors.
The APG principals had been on the covers of Forbes and Wired and had been featured no fewer than six different times in the Wall Street Journal, once in a story about self-made billionaires.
They’d had the world by the balls. Until one of them got greedy.
She read the reports in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and many other publications that chronicled the company’s downfall.
They’d gone from Silicon Valley darling to pariahs, with the SEC, FBI and other regulators swooping in and shutting them down so fast employees hadn’t even been able to retrieve their personal belongings before being locked out of the office.
One high-tech publication had called it “A Dizzying Fall from Grace,” noting how the company had gone from one of the top ten most buzzed about companies to ruin, literally overnight after Armstrong reported what he’d uncovered about his partner, Piedmont, to the SEC.
The downfall had been swift and merciless, with Piedmont charged with insider trading days after the company was shut down.
Again, she was struck by the obvious decline that played out in Jameson Armstrong’s appearance.
He went from a handsome, dark-haired, smiling, youthful man to a gray-haired shell of his former self in the span of six months.
The change in him was startling and told the true story of the strain he’d been under as he put together the case against his former partner, friend and Stanford roommate.
Piedmont, on the other hand, had remained larger than life through it all, smiling and deflecting and generally claiming it had all been a big mistake, and the truth would come out when he got his day in court.
Except, long before that day arrived, he took off, and no one had seen or heard from him in more than three years.
He’d since been connected to criminal enterprises that ran the gamut from drugs to prostitutes to gambling to murder.
Before it all went bad, he could’ve been the star of a reality TV show called Rich Guy Gone Wild.
His playboy lifestyle had been a source of tremendous interest. Pictures of him with women hanging from him had appeared in newspapers, on entertainment shows and gossip websites.
Sam couldn’t help but sympathize with Armstrong, who’d remained faithfully devoted to the company while Piedmont went wild, his behavior eventually leading to their downfall.
Her phone chimed with a text from Avery.
Sent you an email. You didn’t get this from me.