“But she went with them? Voluntarily?” Could they be some of Janet’s men? No. That made no sense. There was only one group of Latinos interested in the Christies. “When was this?”
“Just a bit before you showed up. That’s why I was being so careful and all.”
“Do you know which way they went?”
Porsche stepped onto the porch. She leaned over the railing and pointed to where the open pasture rose into a stretch of woods. It was just visible in the gap between house and barn. “Up that way. There’s a sort of a road up into the mountain, leads to the high meadows. Same way Dad and the others went.”
“They’re all up there? Together?” Jesus wept! This mental midget is who Russ almost died for? Clare passed her hand over her face. That was unworthy. “Porsche.” She tried to project patience. “Do you have a phone I could use?”
XXVI
“Chief? You awake?”
“Mmm? C’mon in, Kevin.” He opened his eyes. He’d been drifting, not dozing, wrapped in a warm Percocet-flavored cloud. He wanted to dial down the dosage this morning, to take back some small measure of control over his life, but by the time the nurse got around to him, he needed those two little pills rattling around in the plastic cup more than he wanted any sort of self-sufficiency.
Kevin’s face came into view. “Hey.” The kid smiled down at him like a proud dad looking over a newborn. Which, until he got the okay to get up to pee, wasn’t too far off the mark. “Wow. It’s sure great to see you.”
None of the hospital staff had told him, yet, how close he had come to checking out. The heart surgeon and the orthopedic surgeon and the internist had gone over the technical aspects; right lung, pericardium, hip joint; the bottom line was he was going to be lying here, hurting, for a long time. After that, he’d be in rehab, hurting, for another long time. But no one said, You nearly died. He was learning that from his visitors’ faces.
“Not as great as it is to see you,” he said, getting a laugh. “What’s happening at the station?” Kevin obliged his weak lungs by taking over the conversation at that point, rattling on in his usual Energizer Bunny way, allowing Russ to float in and out of awareness, until he connected the words twenty-two and ballistics test and confirmation. “What?” he said. “Go back.”
“The ballistics test matched up one of the Christies’ twenty-twos with the bullet that killed John Doe number one.”
“We didn’t have a warrant for their twenty-twos.”
“Since there were multiple shootings from several firearms in the incident where you . . . you . . .”
“Got shot.”
“. . .the state required ballistics tests on all possible weapons. MacAuley figured that ought to include all the available guns in the Christie house.”
“Did he, now?” It hurt to smile, but in a good way.
“Well, as he said, how did we know the Punta Diablo guys didn’t use one of the Christie guns and then replace it? Of course, there’s no way of telling who might’ve used it, but it gives us something to hang our hats on.” That last phrase was pure Lyle.
There was a knock at the door. Kevin turned, and from his prone position in the bed, Russ could see the slice of his face where his smile cut out.
“Oh,” the kid said. “Hi.”
“Am I interrupting?” Russ could hear Hadley but not see her.
“No, I was just—”
“Because I can—”
Russ hoisted one hand to a ninety-degree angle with the bed. His exercise for the day. “I think I can stand the excitement of both of you.”
“I don’t know if you can stand this excitement.” Hadley replaced Kevin at the bedside rail. “Look at this.” She dangled an 11-by-14-inch evidence bag over his bed. It contained a kid’s composition book. “I know I should’ve taken it straight in, but I wanted you to see it before it goes to CADEA.”
Kevin got it first. “Is this it?” He leaned over her shoulder. “The dealer list?”
Hadley looked at him, lit up like the Fourth of July. “It is.”
“Oh, man. CADEA will be shining their noses on our backsides for this.” Kevin grinned at her. They bumped fists together, something Russ would look like an ass doing; then there was a confusion of looking down and stumbling around, and next thing Russ knew the notebook had dropped onto his bed and his two youngest officers were a good five feet apart, so he had to crane his neck to see both of them. Hadley launched into an account of how the thing came into her hands, word-spinning as much as Kevin was prone to do. The part about Amado-Octavio-Amado clicked for him—that was why the boy had been so nervous during questioning—and he brushed past her apologies for handling the notebook without gloves on—“I didn’t have them in my pocket, Chief, because I was just there to translate.” He threw the brakes on when she said she let Amado—the real Amado—go. After he’d just proven he’d been in possession of the Punta Diablo’s distribution list.
“I thought it would be okay, Chief. Reverend Clare promised to bring him to the station after they’d spoken to Isabel Christie.”
Clare. Godamighty. He was going to have to get out of this hospital a lot faster than predicted, or she’d be running the damn force.
Kevin’s phone rang. “Sorry.” He checked the number. Flipped it open. “Kevin here.” Harlene, he mouthed. “No, I’m visiting the chief.” Hadley shut up. “What?” Kevin said. He glanced at her. “Yeah. I will. Hadley’s right here with me, I’ll tell her.”
He closed the phone. Looked at Hadley. “Reverend Clare called from the Christies’. A group of Latinos in a Hummer just picked up the sister and went up the mountain after the brothers. We gotta hurry. She said”—he looked at Russ for the first time, as if he just remembered he was lying there—“she’s going up after them.”
XXVII
Branches twisted and whipped at the windshield. Clare gripped the steering wheel and eased off the acceleration as her Subaru humped over another kidney-jarring tree root. How far did this goat path go? How far did they dare drive? The last thing she wanted to do was burst onto the scene like a clown car driving into a circus ring. “Amado . . . ?”
He leaned forward in the passenger seat as if the extra inches would help him see their destination. “Isobel,” he said, in an unarguable voice. “We go help.”
From the moment she had conveyed, in Spanglish and sign, who Isabel Christie was with, Amado had been dead set on following her. She couldn’t let him go alone, she argued to a mental tribunal consisting of her bishop and Russ. It wouldn’t have been—
Consistent was the bishop’s word.
Stupid enough, Russ said.
“Stop.” Amado raised his hand. She braked, pitching them forward. “I think . . . close.” She inched the car as far off the trail as she dared and killed the engine.
Amado opened his door. “You stay!” Shades of Russ. God, she wished he were here.
“Sorry, no.” She stepped out, latching her door with a click. The decaying leaves beneath her sandals had been compacted into two tire tracks leading upward, disappearing from view as the old road twisted behind a clump of beech trees. Amado frowned but waited for her to catch up. He gestured, hand flowing over the ground, finger to his lips. Slowly. Silently. She nodded.
She toiled upward, through shafts of sunlight and patches of shade, listening for a sound other than the song of warblers and the cry of jays. A decayed stone wall, tumbled by frost heaves and oak roots, showed the overgrown track had once been a real road. She spotted small, burly apple trees among the maples and red spruce; an orchard overgrown centuries ago, or the accidental fruit of farm boys playing Apple Core.
Apple Core!
Baltimore!
Who’s your friend?
She heard a sound. She and Amado both stopped. It came again, muffled by leaves and misdirected as it bounced from hardwood to hardwood. Voices. Men.
And then a shot.
She hiked her skirt and ran. For a dozen strides, maybe two, Amado outpa
ced her, but the Guard didn’t give pilots a pass on PT, and her conditioning kept her moving, churning up the leaf-spumed road, reaching Amado, drawing past him, leaving him behind.
The voices were louder, even over her sawing breath and pounding heart. No more shots, thank God. The road curved past a chunk of bedrock granite and she made the amateur mistake of rounding it at top speed, only to see the trees peter out, a sunlit meadow, a barn, a white van, a Humvee.
She threw herself behind the nearest maple with enough force to jar the air out of her lungs. Try not to be dumb, Fergusson, Hardball Wright said. You might live longer.
She dropped to the ground and crawled forward. Between the trees and the open field, a massive rhododendron flourished. She took refuge behind its glossy, impenetrable leaves.
There were three of them, dressed in urban gear so foreign to these woods they might as well have been from another planet. One, half visible around the uphill corner of a pole barn, held a gun pointed toward an unseen opening. Another guarded the downhill side, his weapon steady on a wide second-story door. The third stood at the narrow end of the barn. With Isabel Christie. She was seated on one of many bales scattered near the barn’s foundations like cornerstones. Evidently the brothers had been pitching hay when the Punta Diablos arrived.
A flicker of movement in the corner of her eye caught Clare’s attention. Amado, leaning against a tree, taking in the scene in the meadow. If he moved a few inches in either direction, he’d be spotted. She gestured for him to join her. He shook his head.
“So where is it?” the third man asked. Clare could just hear him above the insects droning over the field grass. Isabel’s answer was indistinct. She got up, walked to the barn wall, and pulled a graying clapboard away from the foundation. The man who had been speaking to her craned forward, his gun drifting down toward his foot, the bad habit of someone who carried a weapon but was never trained to use it.
Isabel’s shoulders moved, then moved again. She flattened herself against the narrow opening, as if she could stick her face instead of her hands inside.
“Where is it?” the man demanded.
Isabel whirled around. Said something. Spread her hands wide in bewilderment. Clare heard a moan beside her. She looked away from the drama for a moment. Amado’s mouth was a perfect O of despair. And Clare knew, at that moment, what had been hidden that Isabel couldn’t find.
He closed his mouth. His face set in lines of terrible determination. Ready to—what? Confess? Lie? What would they do to him to get the truth?
Clare, he was tortured.
Amado stepped out from behind the tree.
“No!” she whispered. She lunged forward, awkward on her hands and knees, and tackled him around the ankles. It was sloppy, but it worked. He went down with a crash into the rhododendron bush, setting a pair of crows cawing into the sky. From near the barn, someone shouted, “¿Qué es eso?”
She heard dull thuds, the swish of legs scissoring through tall grass. They had sixty seconds—maybe less. Clare knotted her hands in Amado’s shirt and dragged him to her. She pointed to herself. “I say I have the book. El libro.” She pointed at him. “You stay with Isabel.” She rolled to her knees. “Wait. Be smart. Um, inteligente.” She clambered to her feet and smashed through the bush before her nerve could desert her. The third man was halfway across the field, dragging Isabel behind him, waving his weapon like a machete, a .357 Taurus, just like the one she’d seen in the church kitchen, but holy God, this one looked twice as big, pointed at her.
“Don’t shoot!” Clare threw her hands up.
The guy jerked to a stop. “Who the hell are you?” He stared as if her clerical collar and cross were as bizarre as the three studs sprouting from his upper lip. Maybe they were.
She had four heartbeats to figure how to play it. Looked like Isabel had the lock on terrified, and she didn’t think the gangbanger would respond to ecclesiastical authority as well as Amado had. That left crazy.
“Hey!” She converted her upraised hands into a cheerful wave. “I’m Reverend Clare! I came to see Isabel!” She smiled wide enough to display her eyeteeth.
The guy’s mouth formed the words What the . . . then he jerked the .357 up. “Get over here.” He had a trace of an accent.
“Isabel, how are you?” Clare sauntered through the timothy and clover, smiling as if Isabel wasn’t wide-eyed and trembling, as if there wasn’t an enormous gun swinging like a compass needle between them. “Is there anything I can help with?” She hugged the startled girl. The guy opened his mouth again, but before he could order them back to the barn, she said, “Are you looking for the list of distributors? The one that belongs to these gentlemen?”
Isabel gaped at her. Then clicked her mouth shut. She nodded.
“Bitch, you said you had it!” The gangbanger lifted a fist.
Clare flipped one hand up. “I have it.” She smiled at him. “Isabel didn’t know.” She looked into Isabel’s eyes, letting her mask fall away. “Amado took it. For safekeeping. He’s alive, Isabel. He wants you to be safe.”
Isabel’s mouth opened. Her eyes filled with tears and a desperate, dawning hope.
The Taurus stopped its movement, finding true north against Clare’s rib cage. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”
“It’s a hard-covered composition book, black and white. The entries are written in blue ink.”
“Shit,” he hissed. Clare kept a smile pasted on her face. Finally, he narrowed his eyes at her. “Where is it?”
Isabel clutched at her arm. Clare squeezed her hand, still smiling at the man. “I’ll take you.”
He poked the gun into her flesh. “You tell me. I’ll go get it.”
She shrugged. “It’s locked in my office at St. Alban’s. I’m afraid one of the seven or eight people working there today would phone the police as soon as they see you going in there.” She brightened. “Maybe you can have a car chase through town! Now that would be something for the tourists to talk about.” She turned to Isabel. “Do you think that would make people more interested in checking out our church? Or less?”
The faint hope that had lit in Isabel’s eyes went out, quenched by Clare’s obvious insanity.
“Shut up,” the man said. He ran his tongue beneath his lip, frowning in thought. The studs rose and fell like buoys. He gestured with the .357. “Back to the barn.” Clare linked arms with Isabel and strolled toward the angular structure. She could feel the gun behind her as if it were still pressed into her skin. If she could just put a little more space between them and the gunman, she could let Isabel know that the police were on their way. That all they had to do was survive for the next half hour.
The man said something in Spanish to his two buddies. One of them asked a question. Their captor answered. Then he grabbed Isabel’s thin arm, jerking her away from Clare. The girl stumbled and went down. Clare tensed. The Taurus swung back to her.
“You and me will go get this book. She stays here. If I don’t come back in an hour, they’ll kill her and her brothers. Got that?”
Clare nodded.
“Let’s go.”
She twisted her head around as she walked back to the entrance to the road. “Be brave, Isabel,” she shouted. “Remember Revelation! God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
Mr. Personality shoved her. She stumbled, trotted forward, righted herself. “Are you a druglord?” She tried to sound like a teenybopper meeting a member of the latest boy band.
“What the hell is wrong with you, lady?”
They passed out of the sunlight into the shade of the forest.
“Do I get to keep the ten thousand dollars? You know, as a reward?”
“What? What ten thousand dollars?”
“The money that was with the notebook and the Ta—the gun. It was a big gun, like yours. I wouldn’t know what to do with the gun, but I could sure use the money.” She kept her voice loud and singsongy, copying a very sweet, very bipolar woman she had m
et during her clinicals in Washington.
“You got all that? Rosario’s stuff?”
“Yep.” She needed some way to remove him from the scene. A rock? A tree branch? She stepped over a fragrant pile. Sheep dung? The road was too wide and too clear for her to vanish into the underbrush, too twisting and uneven for her to lead him on a chase. Pick your ground real carefully, Hardball Wright said. It might be the only advantage you’ve got.
The car, then.
They rounded a bend and there it was, nose first in a stand of ferns, its rear quarter hanging into the lane, like a cow content to block the road while she grazed. The man circled around the back of the Subaru, pointing the gun toward her as he approached the passenger door. “Get in,” he said.
She braced her hands on her hips. “What about my reward money?”
He laughed, a sound like a heat gun stripping paint. “I dunno. That was the rednecks’ payment for taking out the garbage. You think you could be a garbageman for us? Take out our trash?”
Oh, God. The bodies in the shallow graves. She ducked her head, fiddled with the handle on the door. She couldn’t think about that, couldn’t think about Octavio, because if she did, she was going to lose it, and then she’d be just another terrified victim at the wrong end of his gun. She opened the door. Slid into the driver’s seat. Keeping her face averted, she busied herself with the seat belt.
He knew fear. He expected it. Her only chance of doing this was keeping him off balance—by giving him something he didn’t expect. She clicked the belt into place. He bounced into the seat next to her, sidesaddle, the better to keep the .357 aimed at her midsection.
She thumbed the audio controls from her steering wheel at the same time she fired up the car. Loud music bounced through the interior, cheerful and springy. She threw the transmission into reverse.
“Turn that off!”
“I can’t!” she yelled.
He stabbed at the controls. The stereo fell silent. She shifted into PARK and turned the car off. “You crazy bitch.” He jabbed the gun into her ribs again. “Go.”