Warren turned the computer back, pushed some buttons, closed the lid. “We’re going to do this one more time, Jones. But we’ll have a polygraph examiner ask the questions. I’ll let you know when.”
He stood up and walked out. It was dark already and the night-shift deputies were rolling into the employee parking area in their pickups and Mustangs and Camaros and SUVs. He got into his Porsche Cayenne Turbo and gunned it when he hit the avenue.
His hands were tight to the wheel. His shirt billowed in the blast through the open windows and when the winter air had cooled his skin and calmed, if only a little, his riotous heart, Bradley pressed the back of his head into the rest and drove fast.
Three hours home in the evening traffic. And another hour forty to Erin, heavy with his child. Erin, fire of his life, his sin and soul.
5
Hood slowly climbed the dirt road to his Buenavista home. A sliver of moon faced him through the windshield and the serrated tops of the Devil’s Claws reached into the black sky. The stars were radiant. He heard the gravel hitting the undercarriage of his car and when he topped the rise he saw that two of his three housemates were home tonight: Erin’s SUV and Gabriel Reyes’s pickup truck both sat in the dusty vapor lights. Beth would be home from her nightshift in the Imperial Mercy ER soon, unless catastrophe came knocking late as it often did.
Hood took his war bag and purchases and walked toward the stout adobe home. The night was cold by now and smoke rose from the chimney. Gabriel opened the door and two black mongrels heaved out.
“Bradley’s on his way.”
“This is twice in one week.”
“I tried to talk her out of it but she agreed to see him. Beth’s still at work.”
Hood called the dogs and followed them inside. He set his gambler on the rack while Reyes took a quick look at the parking area, then closed the door and slid the deadbolt.
They sat in the near darkness by the fire, Hood with a large bourbon on ice, Reyes with a beer.
“We’ve got some new bad guys in town, Gabe.”
“Tell me. I miss the action.”
Reyes had been Buenavista’s police chief when Hood moved here three years ago but he was retired now. He was a heavy-bodied man and he limped from a rattlesnake bite suffered years back. A widower. Hood had asked him to stay here with Erin while he and Beth were working. After the Yucatan fiasco, Erin had left Bradley and moved in with Hood and Beth to recuperate and have the baby. But Hood didn’t want to leave her alone all day, pregnant and still half terrified by her kidnapping and bloody rescue. Thus Reyes. He was garrulous, alert, excellent in the kitchen, and capable with his old service revolver, on the off chance that Erin’s tormentors might return. Gabriel said he spent his time hovering about the house as Erin wrote and recorded her songs, and joining her on walks in the pleasant mornings and evenings. Hood understood that these unusual living arrangements, coupled with her intense work in the ER, were taking a toll on Beth.
He told Reyes about the Russell County entrepreneurs leading him to Israel Castro.
“I’d like to pinch all four of them,” said Reyes.
“Wouldn’t that be fun? What do you know about Castro?”
Reyes recited the basics: Castro had grown up in Jacumba, saw his father shot down in front of his own restaurant, drug trade suspected but never proved. Family on both sides of the border. Relatives tight with the Arellano-Felix cartel in the early days. Castro into construction then building then real estate and property management. Later the Ford dealership in El Centro and a Kia-Hyundai place in Brawley-always does his own TV commercials, wears the sport coat with the fake jewels on it. Still has the restaurant in Jacumba-Amigos. Belongs to service organizations, big on charity.
“My San Diego cop friends suspect he’s been laundering drug money for decades, but with so many legit businesses. . hard to prove. He’s smart guy, not a violent one. People like him. He was a San Diego Sheriff’s reserve deputy for years. They also think he moved tons of heroin and cocaine north through Jacumba and Jacume back in the nineties when it was easy. They say Amigos used to crawl with narcos. Later he teamed up with Coleman Draper. But you know more about all that than I do.”
Coleman Draper, thought Hood. An LASD reserve deputy who, along with his patrol partner, murdered two cash couriers up in the bleak Antelope Valley desert and framed an innocent man for the killings. All to take over a very lucrative cash run from L.A. to Mexico. Hood had trailed Draper to Castro in Jacumba. And almost caught up with them and the drug money that rainy night five years ago, but had gotten a bullet instead. A few days later Draper tried to finish him off and Hood shot him dead.
The past again, he thought. Barreling right in like it’s welcome. “So what does Israel Castro need with stolen drugs and small-time crime-scene guns? These Missouri guys aren’t going to make him noticeably richer.”
“Something more’s going on.”
Hood considered. He heard Erin in the back of the house, a door shutting and a sink running. Daisy and Minnie climbed off the couch and trotted down the hallway. The pipes in his adobe were old, and they telegraphed with groans and shudders the presence of those within. Erin was due in weeks but she still refused to see Bradley except for very brief visits, which she only allowed with Hood, Reyes, or Beth in attendance. The dogs invited themselves to all such meetings, positioning themselves between Erin and her husband, always facing Bradley, never quite sleeping.
Hood knew that Bradley despised him for this arrangement, but the whole thing had been Erin’s idea. Although he did think it was a good thing. He himself despised Bradley’s reckless endangerment of his wife, his prodigious greed and dishonesty, his crimes and arrogance and luck. Just four months ago he’d gotten her kidnapped and nearly skinned alive. Now it looked like LASD was about to cancel Bradley’s ticket, and that was fine with Hood. Still, this was Bradley’s second approved visit in a week. Erin was softening. Maybe ready to forgive, if not forget. He sipped the bourbon and looked out a window at the distant peaks faintly brushed by starlight.
“Got pictures of these new creeps?” asked Reyes.
Hood gave him his phone and while Reyes pawed back and forth through the pictures with a thick finger, Hood thought of Mary Kate Boyle and her big plum shiner, disappearing into the millions of people in Southern California. He had the nagging bad feeling that somehow she and Skull would reunite.
“When bad cops take over, it’s the end of civilization as we know it,” said Reyes. He handed back the phone.
“They’re not taking anybody over.”
“Too bad the girl won’t cooperate.”
“She’s done enough if you ask me.”
Reyes stood and yawned, then limped to the front door. He opened the deadbolt and looked outside for a long beat. Past his round shoulders Hood saw the stars flickering in the desert night. Reyes closed the door and locked up. “Anything new on Mike Finnegan?”
“Not for months.”
“You’ll find him again.”
“Well, I won’t stop.”
“I believe in evil.”
“I know you do.”
“I saw it in him. You young people might think that’s quaint. But I grew up with idea that evil walks and talks. It’s a good way to see the world and the things that happen in it. And don’t happen.”
“I don’t think of evil as quaint.”
“They’ll say you’re crazy.”
“Who will?”
“Everyone. The distracted and ignorant public you protect and serve. Your bosses and associates. You’ll have to fight them off. And you still might end up believing them and not yourself. All you have is yourself and your faith.” Hood saw the darkness brush Gabriel’s face. “I like the way you hold on to things, Charlie. I like the way you grab on and worry them over and over again. I don’t know about the diamonds in your tooth, but you’re a good man and a good cop. You’ll find him again.”