Lost Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

held at Musso’s, renting out the whole bar and inviting everybody from Hollywood Division.
    She moved into the dining room and I saw her eyes run over the rumpled tablecloth. It was clear that I was covering something and I immediately regretted doing it.
    She was wearing a charcoal gray business suit with the skirt below the knee. The outfit took me by surprise. Ninety percent of the time we worked together as partners she wore black jeans and a blazer over a white blouse. It allowed her freedom to move, to run if necessary. In the suit she looked more like a bank vice president than a homicide detective.
    Her eyes still on the table, she said, “Oh, Harry, you always set such a nice table. What’s for lunch?”
    “Sorry. I didn’t know who was at the door and I just sort of threw that over some stuff I have out.”
    She turned to face me.
    “What stuff, Harry?”
    “Just stuff. Old case stuff. So tell me, how are things down at RHD? Better than last time we talked?”
    She had been promoted downtown about a year before I split the department. She’d had trouble with her new partner and others in RHD and had confided in me about it. I’d had a mentoring relationship with her that continued after she transferred to RHD. But it ended when I chose retirement over a reassignment that would have put us back together as partners in RHD. I knew it hurt her. Her organizing of the retirement party had been a nice gesture but it was also the big good-bye from her.
    “RHD? RHD didn’t work out.”
    “What? What are you talking about?”
    I was genuinely surprised. Rider had been the most skilled and intuitive partner I had ever worked with. She was made for the mission. The department needed more like her. I had thought for sure that she would be able to adjust to life in the department’s highest-profile squad and do good work.
    “I transferred out at the beginning of the summer. I’m in the chief’s office now.”
    “You’re kidding. Oh, man…”
    I was stunned. She had obviously chosen a career path through the department. If she was working for the chief as an adjutant or on special projects, then she was being groomed for command staff administration. There was nothing wrong with that. I knew Rider was as ambitious as the next cop. But homicide was a calling, not a career. I had always thought she understood and accepted that. She had heard the call.
    “Kiz, I don’t know what to say. I wish…”
    “What, that I had talked to you about it? You split the gig, Harry. Remember? What were you going to tell me, to tough it out in RHD when you bailed out yourself?”
    “It was different for me, Kiz. I had built up too much resistance. I was pulling too much baggage. You were different. You were the star, Kiz.”
    “Well, stars burn out. It was too petty and political on the third floor. I changed directions. I just took the lieutenant’s exam. And the chief is a good man. He wants to do good things and I want to be right there with him. It’s funny, things are less political on the sixth floor. You’d think it would be the other way around.”
    It sounded as though she was trying to convince herself more than me. All I could do was nod as a sense of guilt and loss flooded me. If I had stayed and taken the RHD job, she would have stayed also. I went into the living room and dropped onto the couch. She followed me but remained standing.
    I reached over to turn down the music but not too much. I liked the song. I stared out through the sliding doors and across the deck to the vista of mountains across the Valley. It was no smoggier out there than most days. But the overcast somehow seemed to fit as Pepper took up the clarinet to accompany Lee Konitz on “The Shadow of Your Smile.” There was a sad wistfulness to it that I think even gave Rider pause. She stood silently listening.
    I had been given the discs by a friend named Quentin McKinzie, who was an old jazzman who knew Pepper and had played with him