“Jess Junior, do you recognize me?”
His son stared at him dully. The medication he was on that allowed him to work while incarcerated rendered him passive and emotionless. But without it, he would hurt himself and others.
“Dad.”
“How are you doing, son?”
A slight, simple smile. “Not good.”
“You’re working hard, it looks like.”
J.J. nodded. “Jes’ moppin’.”
Jess tried to sound encouraging. “Are things going all right?”
It took a moment, but J.J. began to sweep his woolly head from side to side. Jess stepped forward, but J.J. held the mop out to keep him back. “Don’ you touch me.”
“I won’t, son. I remember how you hate that. What’s wrong?”
Jess waited a full minute for his question to penetrate and for J.J. to form an answer. His struggle to put thoughts together to speak broke Jess’s heart.
“There’s some bad men here, Dad.”
“In the jail, sure.”
“No,” J.J. said, making his eyes big, shaking his head from side to side in an exaggerated way.
“Do you mean the ex-cops?” Jess said, and withdrew the sketch Annie had made and unfolded it, showing it to J.J. “Is this them?” Jess asked, already knowing the answer by the look of alarm in his son’s face.
J.J. gave an exaggerated nod. “They’re really bad.”
“Son,” Jess said, feeling his eyes mist, “I believe you.”
“Don’ touch me.”
“I won’t, son.”
AFTER RETRIEVING his possessions, Jess found a pay telephone in the lobby of the county building. He tried to shove aside his devastation from seeing Karen and their damaged son on the same morning. He dug Villatoro’s card out of his pocket while he dialed, and was transferred to the motel room. The line was busy, so he left a message.
“Mr. Villatoro, this is Jess Rawlins. I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe you should check on another name. It’s another ex-cop. I’ve got his name here…”
As he spoke, Jess thought things had become much more clear and much, much worse. He knew for sure now which side he was on.
Sunday, 11:40 A.M.
NEWKIRK ROOTED through Monica Taylor’s refrigerator not because he was hungry but because he knew he should eat. His body was starved for something besides Wild Turkey. His hands shook as he pushed a half-full gallon of milk aside on the shelf and looked for something he could warm up. He checked the freezer. Aside from containers of juice and ice trays, there was only a large, aluminum foil-covered pan. He tapped it: frozen solid.
He was unsettled from a telephone conversation he had just had with his wife. She was coldly furious with him when he told her he likely wouldn’t be home for a while. She reminded him of their son’s spring baseball practice, and of previous plans to spend the day preparing her vegetable garden. It all sounded so trivial, he thought, given the situation right now. It reminded him of the bad old days on the force, when he was on a high-stakes assignment and she would be angry with him because he wouldn’t be home to watch television with her. Now, it was happening again. It was exactly what he thought he had left behind in L.A., the tension, the resentment, the fights. Everything was back again. As for his wife, who was showcased in a home she could have only imagined years before, who didn’t have to work outside the home, whose idea of a tough day was to take an exercise class at the gym or turn over the soil in her vegetable garden, well, fuck her. She didn’t know what he was going through-she couldn’t see any farther than her own false eyelashes.
Monica Taylor was in the living room, sitting alone and alert on the couch, staring at who-knows-what. She seemed frustratingly serene. There was something wrong with her, he thought, to be that way, given the circumstances. She was also more attractive than he thought she would be. Now that she was so sure that her children were alive somewhere, she was intolerable. Plus, he didn’t trust her. It was almost as if she knew what they were up to, but there was no way she could know that.
He slammed the refrigerator door shut so hard that he heard a bottle break inside. “Don’t you have anything here to eat?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m starving,” he said, charging into the living room. “I haven’t had a normal meal in two days. All you’ve got in the refrigerator is milk, salad, and eggs. Do you have something I could eat?”
She said, distracted, “I think there are some cans of soup in the pantry.”
“What’s that in the freezer? There’s something in a casserole dish. Is it something I can thaw out?”
She turned and looked directly at him. “Leave that alone. It’s lasagna I made yesterday and froze. Lasagna is Annie’s favorite, and I’m saving it for when they’re back. The first one got burned up Friday night.”
Newkirk snorted, “Jesus, lady.”
His cell phone burred and he drew it out and looked at it. Singer calling. He went back into the kitchen and closed the door.
“How is it going there?” Singer asked.
Newkirk sighed. “Okay. She’s nuts, though. She insists her kids are coming back.”
A pause. “They aren’t.”
Newkirk felt a flutter of both terror and relief. “Did something happen?”
“No, not yet. But I have confidence that you and Gonzo will find them. The more I think about it, the more I agree with Monica Taylor. Those kids are somewhere hiding out. We’ve got to find them.”
“I thought for a second there…”
“No. But we’re in control. I just heard from Gonzo. The package was delivered to Swann, and Swann is overseeing disposal. He should be heading back to the house within an hour or so to relieve you.”
Newkirk tried not to think of what Swann was disposing of.
“I told Gonzo to start on the house-to-house. He’s got a couple of good maps from the sheriff’s office, with every residence and building in the county. He’s going to start visiting people one by one, working out from Sand Creek. When Swann gets back, I want you to recon with Gonzo and do the same.”
“Do you want us to work together or separately?”
“I’ll leave that call up to Gonzo,” Singer said. “My guess is you’ll split up but stay in the same vicinity. That way, you’ll be able to cover twice as much ground, but you’ll be close enough to each other to provide backup if necessary. I think it’s just a matter of time before we find them.”
Newkirk didn’t need to ask what would happen if they did. As he listened, he cracked the door to check on Monica Taylor. She was still sitting there, hands in her lap, relief on her face.
“I’m kind of looking forward to getting out there,” Newkirk said. “This lady is creeping me out.”
Singer laughed softly. “Swann can handle her. Don’t worry.”
“I wish this thing was over with,” Newkirk said, immediately regretting he had confided in Singer. “You know what I mean.”
A long pause. “Are you still solid?”
“Sure, it isn’t that.” But it was.
“Stay tough, Newkirk. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”
“Believe me, I know.”
“It’ll be over when we find those kids,” Singer said. “So let’s concentrate on that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, I nearly forgot. I heard back from my contacts about your guy Villatoro.”
“And…”
“You’re right. We may have more trouble than I thought. He was the lead investigator for the Arcadia PD on the Santa Anita robbery. That’s where I’d heard his name. He used to give our guys headaches.”
“Fuck.”
“No doubt our former friend’s indiscretions brought him here. So we were right about that.”
Newkirk didn’t care whether they’d been right or not. What’s done is done, he thought. But now they had a new, serious problem, one Singer had predicted long before if anyone went off the reservation and got sloppy.