“No.” I don’t take my gaze off his face. “You wouldn’t.”
His expression flattens. For a moment I have the sense that he’s going to reply, but he holds back. He looks away, ushers his assistant into the room, excuses himself, and, without another word, leaves for his meeting.
Apparently, Emilio was too American to be investigated by the Filipinos and too Filipino to be investigated by the Americans.
Well, even if they are not going to do anything to get to the bottom of his death, I am.
On the way to the airport we connect with Fionna via another video chat and find out she hasn’t located any record of Tomás leaving the country, but that’s not entirely a surprise. He could have easily disappeared back into the population here or perhaps even left the country under an assumed name.
“I’ve been analyzing the files on Emilio’s computer and his phone.” She sighs, sounding both exhausted and exasperated. “Let me put this in an acorn for you…”
It takes me a moment before I catch on to what she’s trying to say.
A nutshell. Yes.
She’s going to put it in a nutshell.
Although Fionna is off-the-charts brilliant, when it comes to figures of speech she doesn’t always hit the nail quite on the head — or nail things right through the brain, as she once put it.
She goes on, “All I’m finding are dead ends. I contacted the Vegas police, but they told me this is out of their jurisdiction — big surprise there. Anyway, I was searching for data strings that might be related to the name of the snake wrangler, RixoTray, and so on, but I’m not getting anywhere. I’m having to rewrite the search algorithms as I go along here. I need that USB drive. When will you get to town?”
Xavier answers for me. “With layovers and flight times it’s going to be about twenty hours from now, so I guess we’ll see you tomorrow night?”
“Not quite.”
“Yesterday?”
“Actually, tonight.”
“I’m never going to get ahold of this.”
“I’ll have Maddie walk it through for you.”
“Ah. Thanks.”
So, our itinerary: fly from Manila to Tokyo to Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
Tight connections all the way around. This is going to be a long night.
Or day, depending on how you looked at it.
After checking our bags, the three of us board the plane to start our journey home to see if we can untangle anything back in the States.
I’m not about to let the death of my friend get lost in a bureaucratic quagmire or get brushed under the carpet by police who’ve been paid off or intimidated.
No.
Not a chance.
Part III
Garbage Bags
The first time Calista Hendrix killed someone, it was a mistake.
It happened so quickly, so unexpectedly, that she hardly even realized what she was doing.
It was four years ago now, when she was twenty years old and still living in Florida.
One moment she was in her living room chilling to some Lady Gaga and flipping through Cosmo, and the next moment her friend Veronica was knocking at the door and then storming in and accusing her of sleeping with Jared Thacker, the guy she’d been going out with for three months.
Calista didn’t want to hurt her feelings or anything, so she wasn’t about to admit that she and Jared had been hooking up — what possible good could have come from that? So she denied it, even though sure, yeah, okay, she’d been sleeping with him pretty much the whole time Veronica had been seeing him. Instead, she told her no, no, no, of course not, no, she would never sleep with her best friend’s boyfriend! Not ever!
But Veronica wouldn’t let it drop.
Just wouldn’t let it drop.
She kept saying that she had proof—proof! — and then she slapped Calista and screamed that Jared had told her everything.
Well, that wasn’t very helpful of him.
Calista tried to explain that this was all just a big misunderstanding and if Veronica would just be quiet for a second, just listen, they could figure everything out. But Veronica got in her face, and Calista didn’t like that at all and told her so, but it didn’t do any good because then Veronica was crowding her against the couch that was pushed up against the wall beside her kitchen nook.
This girl was out of control, so Calista did what was natural, what anyone would have done — she tried to protect herself.
Veronica was so enraged that she was going to hurt her, maybe even kill her, so Calista reached across the counter, snatched a knife from the wooden block thing, and swiped it at her friend fiercely enough to scare her off.
But that’s where the mistake part came in, because she didn’t realize Veronica was quite that close.
Roni was wearing a halter top that left her midriff bare and the blade went right through the exposed skin and left a streak of seeping red across her stomach. Calista was still telling her to just be quiet and let her explain everything as Veronica shivered and stared disbelievingly at her stomach and pressed her hand against the warm blood and tried to push back inside of herself parts of her anatomy that were never meant to unfold into the day.
Then she staggered forward and fell into Calista’s arms, completely ruining her blouse. Calista jerked back, shoving her friend to the floor and telling her great, now look at what you did to my outfit!
Veronica didn’t die.
At least not right away.
Instead, her hands started twitching in this really weird way and thick blood oozed out all across the linoleum from the place the knife had gone into her. It was going to be a real bear to clean all that up.
Thankfully, the blood didn’t spurt or squirt or anything, like it does in movies, because if it had, watching something like that would have probably made Calista throw up.
As her friend bled out on the floor, Calista tried to figure out what to do.
Mercy Memorial Hospital wasn’t far. They might be able to get an ambulance over in time. She might still be able to save Veronica if she called 911 right away.
She unpocketed her phone.
But then had another thought. And paused.
Honestly, what good would that do, calling the hospital? If Roni survived, their friendship would be over, that much was for sure, and she might even tell the cops that Calista had attacked her when all she was trying to do was defend herself. And who knows, they might even believe her. And that would totally suck.
On the other hand, if she didn’t call anyone and Veronica died, then she would have a body to get rid of and if she were somehow caught doing that, it would make her seem guilty even though she wasn’t, not really, and it would not be easy at all to explain how she came to be disposing of her best friend’s corpse.
So, really, what was she supposed to do?
She leaned over to get a closer look and smelled a strange mixture of coconut suntan lotion, fruity perfume, and fresh, tangy blood.
Veronica was just lying there breathing shallowly, maybe trying to speak, maybe not, it was hard to tell.
Calista didn’t feel sorry for her, for someone who would get in her face like that. She took a deep breath, shook her head, and told her firmly, “I’m not gonna go to jail over you, Roni. Definitely not.”
She stood again and waited until Veronica was still and stopped making those disgusting, wet gurgling sounds. Then she knelt beside her again. She’d watched tons of CSI reruns and knew cops could lift fingerprints — even from skin — so instead of feeling for a pulse, she put her cheek just above her friend’s mouth, watched her chest to see if it would move, and waited to see if Veronica took a breath or exhaled.