Bear said, "Tell me why you like this guy?"
"A new friend, maybe from Tramine's time in the cult."
"You don't even know it's the same cult as Leah's. Just because Tramine was recruited off Pepperdine…"
"He did freak out when I mentioned the Teacher."
"The shape he's in, he might have freaked out if you'd mentioned the Pillsbury Doughboy."
"No, he actually responded warmly to the Pillsbury Doughboy."
"Oh," Bear said. "Well, that's cheering."
They climbed out together. Bear took up a post outside, and Tim entered, the top of the door smacking the obligatory dangling bells. Reggie tensed up. His eyes, mud brown and piercing, darted constantly – he took in Tim with abbreviated sweeps and climbs. Tim stayed focused on Reggie's right hand, out of view beneath the counter.
"Help you?"
Tim stepped up to the counter. "Are you Reggie Rondell?"
He worked his gum a few chews, then swallowed hard. "Yeah."
"Friend of Ernie Tramine's?"
"Never heard of him." His forearm tensed, indicating his hand had just grasped something.
Bear had run Reggie, and he'd come up clean, but there was no telling what crime he might have just committed, what visits he was fearfully anticipating.
"Listen. I'm only here to ask some questions about a cult -"
The hand pulled up, gripping a metal flashlight. The instant the silver handle cleared the counter, Tim's vision tunneled, the scene slowed. Tim shuffled back two steps, the. 357 up and sighted on Reggie's chest before the flashlight finished its arc.
Reggie swung the shaft into the aquarium. The glass popped and avalanched down, the water holding its rectangular form for an instant before following suit. Reggie shot around the counter. He threw the door open, but instead of daylight there was just Bear's hulking form all but filling the frame. Reggie hollered. Bear spun him effortlessly and proned him out on the carpet, his cheek pressed to soggy gravel, fish flopping next to his face.
Reggie had frozen up. "Don't kill me, man. Please don't fucking kill me. I won't say anything. I won't talk to anyone, I swear."
Tim crouched, helping Bear frisk Reggie. "Be careful of the glass."
Short of a wallet holding the same license that had graced the Cell Block computer monitor minutes earlier and a bulky ring of keys, Reggie's pockets were empty. Bear hoisted him to his feet and leaned him against the counter. "You gonna be cool?"
Reggie's eyes widened a bit as he took in Bear. He nodded.
"We're not here to kill you," Tim said. "We're deputy U.S. marshals, investigating a cult."
"Lemme see your badges." Reggie crossed his arms and squeezed them to his chest. "I'll know if they're fake." He was trying to play cocky, but his tremulous hands gave him away.
Tim and Bear laid out their stars, and Reggie took them, holding them under the dim desk lamp as if checking for watermarks.
"They check out there, Mr. Ashcroft?" Bear asked.
"Okay if I look back here?" Tim asked. Reggie nodded, and Tim walked behind the front desk, making sure there were no hidden weapons.
One of the hatchetfish quivered on the counter, drawing Reggie's attention. He watched it, head cocked like a dog eyeballing a squirrel. A good thirty seconds passed.
Bear's blue dress shirt wrinkled over his crossed arms. " 'Scuse us."
Reggie started, as if he'd forgotten they were there.
"Done with the badges? Or are you waiting for forensic analysis?"
Reggie blinked, concentrating hard. "Right, right." He leaned away from Bear as he handed him his badge. Bear started to say something, but Tim shook his head slightly.
"I…I don't know anything about a cult."
"Sure you do," Bear said. "You were in a cult with your buddy named – What's his name, Rack?"
Tim opened a cabinet, revealing a tray full of key rings. "Ernie Tramine."
"We'd like to -"
Reggie held up his hand, fingers spread, his face drawn. "Wait a minute. Wait. I can't do this with him here. You. I'm sorry. You're one of my triggers."
Bear's finger went to his chest. "I'm one of your…what?"
"A trigger, you know. A trigger. Like the queen of diamonds in The Manchurian Candidate. Something that triggers the mood they put into you during indoctrination. A paired stimulus. Three blasts of a trumpet. It puts you back, right back in it. One of my triggers is big fucking muscle. Like you. It takes me out. I can't…" Reggie rocked autistically, squeezing his right pinkie in a fist.
Bear's scalp shifted with his expression of disbelief. "You shitting me here?"
Tim said, "It's fine."
With his eyes and hands, Bear made a stage-worthy appeal to heaven before exiting.
"Did your cult have big guys guard the doors?"
Reggie recoiled, lost in memory, a snail shrinking from salt. His voice came like a child's whisper. "All the time. You couldn't leave the room during meetings or Oraes."
"Oraes?" Tim asked. But Reggie was scurrying around the small office, shoes crunching gravel, peering out the windows and closing the blinds. Pausing from his search of the drawers, Tim watched him closely. "Are you more comfortable talking to me with my partner gone?"
"I'm not talking to anyone. If I cause any trouble, they'll find me. What if you were followed?"
Light seeped in between the slats, cutting the shadows into wafer-thin planes. The dying fish flopped and shuddered, the delicate crunching of gravel encroaching on the silence. It sounded like thousands of insects feeding.
"We weren't followed."
"It's too dangerous. Why should I stick my neck out?"
The hatchetfish flipped itself over on the counter, staring up with one bulging eye.
"I'm trying to help a girl get out of a cult. I believe it's the same cult you and Ernie were members of. She's a young -"
"I don't give a shit. I've made my peace. Moved on. Put it behind."
Inside the last drawer sat a brown paper bag, top crumpled over. Tim set it on the counter and opened it. He grabbed the top orange bottle, reading the handwritten label. Xanax. His eyes skipped to the ten or so other bottles in the bag – peeling labels handwritten in Spanish and English. Klonopin, Valium, Ativan.
"Okay, great. So I've got some Tijuana meds. You gonna use them to leverage me?" Reggie slapped his forehead with his hand. "Fuck. I knew I shouldn't have let you back there."
"No," Tim said. "I'm not."
"No?" He tugged on his pinkie. "Look, I'm not gonna relive all this for you. I just can't do it."
Tim felt the hard edge of instinct rise – the need to squeeze an informant, to press an unwilling speaker – but he seemed to have misplaced the strength to resist empathy. His own pain this past year had softened him, blunted his imperatives. Too old to be headstrong but still well short of wise, he merely nodded.
He remembered Dr. Bederman's cautions about the fragility of cult members. He'd have to give Reggie his space. For now.
He handed Reggie his card, complete with penned-in cell-phone number. "This girl's in trouble."
Pausing at the door, he faced Reggie.
"I'm sorry for what you got put through. I bet it was horrible."
He walked out, and the door clicked quietly behind him.
Chapter seven
When Tim arrived home, Dray wasn't at the kitchen table or on the couch, her usual postwork sprawls, and the house was dead quiet. If it weren't for her Blazer in the driveway, he might have thought she'd decided to clock a P.M. after her morning shift.