Senora Valdez’s hands grasped Rafaela’s arms. ‘Tell me she’s safe.’
In such circumstances there was a procedure to follow, a series of steps, a liturgy of words to mouth. Rafaela believed in none of this. When she had to arrest someone, or interrogate someone, or shoot someone, she was a cop. But at moments like this she was a woman.
Rafaela touched Senora Valdez’s hands, feeling the calluses on her palms and the tips of her fingers, the result of all those hours in the factory. ‘She’s with the angels, Senora. I’m so sorry.’
The woman’s body slumped, her chin falling on to her chest as she began to sob. Rafaela put her arms around her. They stayed like that for a long time. Rafaela spoke to her gently, as she would to a child. She had never known what it meant to cry your heart out until she had made the first of these calls. Then she had been brittle, detached, professional. Afterwards she had realized that there was no harm in showing her humanity. If nothing else, she reasoned, it must comfort the bereaved a little to know that one other human being cared.
Slowly, the woman’s sobs ebbed away as, over her shoulder, the soap opera continued, with beautiful, wealthy people grieving over a missed promotion, perhaps, or an extra-marital affair. She peeled herself away from Rafaela, eyes puffy and glistening. She glanced at the photographs of her murdered daughter and something new came into her eyes, something far worse than the grief. Surrender. It disturbed Rafaela more than the blood and mayhem. Your daughter left the house. She never returned. And that was life in this city.
‘Shall I take you to see her?’ Rafaela asked.
The woman looked around the room, searching for her coat. Rafaela helped her put it on and then they walked out into the night.
Seventeen
Rosary beads clasped in her right hand, Melissa’s mother, Jan, sat quietly by her daughter’s bedside. Although her face was lined with worry and her eyes were pouched from lack of sleep, Ty could see where Melissa had got her looks from. Watching her vigil, he was glad that she had her faith to sustain her.
Part of him wished he believed more than he did. His mother was a churchgoer and, as a child, he had gone with her on Sunday, sitting there listening to the preacher, swinging his legs and counting the minutes until he could get home and change out of the suit she insisted he wear. He had never really taken to it.
A nurse flitted into the room to check on Melissa. She spoke to Jan, scratched some notes on the chart at the bottom of the bed and made for the door.
‘How’s she doing?’ Ty asked her, as she left.
The nurse smiled. ‘All her vital signs are stable and she’s not bleeding now. That’s all in her favour.’
‘How long until she can leave?’
‘It’ll be a while,’ the nurse said, heading past him and into the next room.
Ty rose from the chair and stretched his long, lean frame. He tapped gently on the door and Jan Warner glanced up from her prayers. ‘If you need to take a break at any time just let me know,’ he said.
She smiled, got up and walked to the door. ‘Can I ask you something, Tyrone?’
Ty smiled. He probably only ever heard his full name from ladies who went to church, and Lock when he was being sarcastic. ‘Sure.’
Jan’s gaze fell away to the bed where her daughter lay sleeping. ‘Why are you doing this for us?’
Ty could have given her some story about how he was happy to help, but he wanted to be honest. Much as he felt for Melissa, he hadn’t welcomed her arrival in Lock’s life. ‘Because Ryan asked me to.’
Jan gave a tiny nod, apparently satisfied. ‘You must be good friends.’
He shrugged. ‘We’ve been through a lot together. Makes you close, I guess.’
‘Not one of Melissa’s college friends stayed in touch with her after what happened.’ Ty noticed that Jan’s eyes were moist. ‘The damage that man did to her. She was such a beautiful young woman.’
‘She still is,’ Ty said. ‘That don’t change.’
Jan took a pack of tissues from her handbag, took one out and dabbed at her eyes. ‘But it does. Not on the outside, maybe. But inside. She trusted people. She assumed they were good. He robbed her of that.’
‘You know she wants us to go after him? She talk to you about finding Ryan?’
Jan nodded again. ‘She thought he’d understand.’
‘She tell you why she thought that?’ Ty pressed.
‘She said his fiancee had been killed by a man like Mendez. Is that right?’
Ty tilted his head so that he was staring at the ceiling. ‘There was more to it but, yeah, I guess that’s what it came down to. Ryan and I were looking after a woman who was being stalked. One of them kidnapped Ryan’s fiancee as a way of getting him to back off. He didn’t and she ended up dead.’
Jan Warner didn’t say anything.
‘We were out trying to find her,’ Ty went on. ‘It was dark and the weather was real bad. She’d escaped from where he was holding her. She ran out into the road in front of our vehicle. I was driving but Ryan still blames himself.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jan.
Ty rubbed his face. ‘I sometimes think that if she hadn’t escaped, if the guy had killed her before she had the chance to get away, it might have been easier. Then I hate myself for thinking that.’
Jan reached out and touched his arm. ‘Life doesn’t always give us nice neat endings.’
‘But that’s what your daughter’s looking for,’ he said. ‘An ending.’
‘I suppose it is. She feels that until he’s behind bars she can’t move on with her life.’
‘And what do you think?’ Ty asked.
Jan blew her nose. ‘I just want my baby back to the way she was before. I don’t care about Mendez or what happens to him. I’m not interested in revenge. I only care about Melissa.’
Of course she did, thought Ty. She was a mom. But, sadly, the people who were hunting her daughter, who were seeking vengeance for her continued pursuit of Mendez, saw it differently. For whatever reason they believed that the only way of stopping the pursuit of Mendez was to murder his victim. Even if Melissa or Jan could speak to them directly and tell them that Melissa was scared enough to drop their crusade, Ty doubted it would have any effect. Once the word came down to street level that an individual was to be taken out, nothing else mattered. When you were marked, you were marked, not because the people giving the orders were unable to change their minds but because word came down and was difficult to reverse.
Ty was wary of Melissa overhearing them. He took Jan’s elbow and moved her a little further down the corridor. ‘You know these people aren’t going to stop now.’
‘But if I take her home with me…’
‘The kid who came in here to finish the job, she was a gang member. They got gangs all over the country. Every city, every small town, there’s no hiding-place if they want someone.’
‘You’re saying there’s nothing we can do?’
Ty looked at her, his jaw tight. ‘Nothing you can do. But we can find Mendez.’
‘And Ryan? What does he think?’
‘I think your daughter did her homework pretty well.’
Eighteen
The sun set low over the Pacific as Lock threaded his way back down the Pacific Coast Highway towards Los Angeles. His mood was lighter. He knew a lot more than he had before he left, and Ty had called with the news that Melissa had regained consciousness. She had been able to tell him a little of what had happened to her up to the night she’d been shot.
After months of trying to contact Lock and getting nowhere, she had seen a paparazzo picture of him escorting members of Triple-C into a West Hollywood restaurant. At first she had tried to get in touch with him via the group’s management, who had given her the brush-off. When she had seen they were playing a gig in LA, she had bought a ticket.