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still in
his hands. The blood had not congealed, and was dripping steadily
from the wound in his open head. His eyes were wide with the shock
and horror of what he had done to himself.
    Music thumped loudly into the office.
    No one had even heard the shot.
     
     
     
    11.
     
     
    Sanchez and I were working out at a 24 Hour
Fitness in Huntington Beach. It was mid-day, and the gym was quiet.
I had worked up a hell of a sweat, and was dripping all over the
place. Sanchez didn’t sweat; at least not like a real man. And I
let him know it again.
    “I save the sweating for the bedroom,” he
said, finishing off his third and final set of military presses.
“Women like that.”
    “You married your high school sweetheart. You
don’t know shit about what women want.”
    “Fine,” he said, wiping down the machine.
“Danielle likes it when I sweat. Shows her I take my lovemaking
seriously. Besides, Danielle is a lot of woman.”
    “Yes,” I said, “she is.”
    We moved over to the incline presses.
Together we added weight until we ran out of plates.
    “Place is going to hell,” said Sanchez,
looking around, then swiping two forty-fives from another
bench.
    “Yes, but it’s cheap. And apparently open
twenty-four hours.”
    “You sound like a goddamn commercial.” He
handed me one of the plates and we pushed each into place. The bar
looked very unstable and heavily overloaded. “We’re attracting
attention again.”
    I had eased down onto the incline bench. In
the mirror I could see that two or three young guys, including some
gym trainers, were now watching us. I ignored them. So did Sanchez,
who spotted me by standing on a steel platform. The forty-five
pound bar was sagging. Weight clanked as I went through my twelve
reps. I focused on the Chargers training camp, which was coming up
soon. This motivated me, pushed me to lift more and work harder. I
focused on looking good for Cindy. This motivated me as well. Only
on the last rep did Sanchez lend some help. Then he guided the
barbell into place.
    “Didn’t need your help on the twelfth,” I
said.
    “Sure you didn’t,” he said.
    A voice said: “Hey, man, how much weight is
that?”
    We both turned. He was a surfer. Bleached
hair and some minor muscle tone. He had a piercing in his nose, and
some idiotic Chinese pictographs up and down his arm.
    “You too stupid to do the math?” asked
Sanchez. He turned to me. “Kids nowadays.”
    “Kids nowadays,” I added sagely.
    The surfer looked at the weight we were
hefting and decided that he would not take offense. He left. Good
decision.
    Sanchez did his twelve reps, and to be a dick
I helped him with the last two. After two more sets each, we sat
down on opposing benches and sipped from our water bottles.
    “He leave a suicide note?” asked Sanchez.
    “Nothing,” I said. “But he had been fired
earlier that day.”
    “Why?”
    I shrugged. “He’d been taking a lot of shit
about leaving Derrick alone on the night of the murder.”
    “Hell of a thing to be fired over.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Papers say he was a hell of a coach,” said
Sanchez.
    “Three CIF championships.”
    “Why do you think he popped himself?”
    “Hard to say,” I said. “Detective Hanson
tells me the man was divorced earlier in the year. They say
divorced men are the highest risk for suicide.”
    “Thank you for that useless bit of fucking
trivia.”
    I ignored him, and continued.
    “Add to that your best athlete being accused
of a heinous murder, and compound it with losing your job....”
    I shrugged again.
    “You shrug a lot for a detective,” said
Sanchez.
    “I know. It’s part of the job
description.”
    We moved over to the squat rack. We slammed
on as many forty-fives as we could find, then some
thirty-fives.
    “You know,” said Sanchez, “people here think
we’re freaks. Maybe we should go to a real gym.”
    “I like it here,” I said, hunkering down
under the bar and placing my feet exactly the width of