"You too, Slater," she said, blowing him a kiss. "Charles watches you like a hawk. He'll take you down if he can."
"Nah." Slater smiled. "He'd have to grow some balls first."
The phone call came while Rafe drove northeast on Interstate 80, fifteen minutes south of Placer Hills, the Bigler County seat. He glanced at the readout. Max. Icy fingers ran up his spine in spite of the sun's heat through the windows warming the car's interior. God, he hoped the detective had good news.
He pressed the receive button. "Max, what have you got for me?"
The pause at the other end of the phone told Rafe all he needed to know. Lupe Rodriquez was dead. He lowered the phone to his chest, but he could still hear Max's voice. He closed his eyes against the pain and bitterness.
When he put the phone up to his ear again, he heard Max's voice continue, "… so I guess the good news is it's not Lupe's blood in the alley."
Relief washed over Rafe. "What? I thought… Whose blood was it?"
"An ex-con named Morris Sullivan, thirty-six year old white dude, did a dime at Chino for assault, released six months ago."
"Is he dead?"
"Dunno, Hashish, no body. We don't know what happened to him, if anything, or why his blood was in that alley."
"You're checking it out?"
"Got several guys tracking him, but if he's alive, he probably went to ground."
"Connection to Lupe?"
"None, but Rafe – " Max paused. "Didn't you hear what I said about Lupe?"
"Yeah?" And that's when Rafe realized he hadn't heard the first part of Max's sentence because he'd pulled the phone away from his ear. Max had said, "I've got good news and bad news."
A mixture of sorrow and anger funneled through him like a dark, reckless tornado, but he kept his voice flat and unemotional. "What's the bad news about Lupe, Max?"
"We found a body a few minutes ago in East L.A., Obegon Park." Another pregnant pause. "I'm sorry, buddy, I'm pretty sure it's Lupe."
"Jesus Christ," Rafe whispered.
"I think you should come back right away."
Rafe paused while he shook off grief. "Why? I'm almost to Placer Hills."
"Check into a motel, park your car, and take a flight back," Max advised, his voice low as though he thought someone might overhear his side of the conversation. "If you can be here in an hour or so, I can hold off the coroner."
"Why?" Rafe repeated. "Can't you handle it?"
"There's something you need to see for yourself."
Chapter Fifteen
Rafe hadn't been more precise than to say he would arrive in Bigler County in "a couple of days," so his call caught Bella completely off guard when she answered the telephone the next morning.
"Isabella Torres," she snapped into the phone cradled under her right shoulder, both hands busy, one negotiating the lid on a huge latte, compliments of Ben Slater, and the other riffling through a stack of current-case file folders.
"Whoa there, Sparky." The intimate sound of his voice jerked her into the past where it wasn't safe to go.
"Who's this?" She kept her voice aloof, even though she knew damned well who was on the other end of the line.
"Ah, come on, Torres." An amused chuckle as if he'd read her mind. "Take a guess."
No sense pretending, just get it over with. "Agent Hashemi, how nice," she said with a false sweetness belied by her next words. "I'm busy. What do you want?"
"Make nice if you want to run with the big dogs, Torres."
"Sure, Hashemi." Pause. "What can I do for you after you tell me what you want?"
He chuckled again, and she put down both the latte and the papers, feeling ridiculously light-headed at the sound. "Cut right to the chase, huh?"
"Tell me what you want, Hashemi," she said on a weary sigh, suddenly tired. She'd been at the office since six this morning after working late last night, catching up on paperwork that'd grown like mold while she was gone. Her patience was threadbare.
"I won't get there until day after tomorrow, and I'd like you to pick me up at the airport."
Did he think she ran a cab service? "I thought you wanted your own car up here."
"Oh, my car is up there, Torres, just not my body."
"What?" She felt a massive headache coming on and reached for the bottle of Excedrin in her top drawer. "Do I need to ask how that happened?"
"Better if you don't. Here's the airport info. Got a pen?" Without waiting for an answer, he rattled off an airline flight number and time for tomorrow.
"Wait, slow down," she muttered, writing furiously. "Why the delay? What happened?"
After a lengthy pause, she heard the quiet hiss of expelled breath like a groan of pain over the line. "Lupe's dead."
She scanned her memory, recognized the name along with the mixture of grief and anger in his voice. She'd heard it often enough in her mother's voice after Maria disappeared. "Lupe," she repeated.
"Rodriquez, my confidential informant on the Vargas case."
A shudder rippled through her. A storm was gathering, and Mama would've said someone was walking over her grave. Whatever was brewing, Bella sensed trouble and pressed two fingers against her temple.
"Lupe was the guy who knocked you down at Stuckey's." The softness in his voice was gone now, replaced by sharp angles. "Remember him, Isabella?" The words burned her ears with their intensity. "Well, he's dead now."
Bella easily recognized the displacement of anger and the shifting of blame. In her family, there'd been plenty of that, too. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Me too. Just be there tomorrow," he ordered and hung up.
The corpse lay under a small clump of trees in Obegon Park, where North Mariana intersected with East First Street in East Los Angeles. The public display of the body, coupled with the viciousness of the attack, told Rafe that Lupe Rodriquez's death had two purposes: the murder of a suspected informant and the sending of a message.
The area had been cordoned off, and yellow and black crime scene tape dangled like last year's party streamers. Max had used his department connections, and the medical examiner had just now arrived at the crime scene. With the assistance of several officers, a second perimeter, approximately fifteen yards from the inner perimeter, held a growing group of onlookers at bay.
Rafe lifted the tape, moved inside the first area, and stared down at the body. He hardly recognized the mass of bloody contusions and swollen flesh as the carefree face of his informant. Lupe had been severely beaten, his neck slit open, and his tongue pulled out through the neck opening.
"Colombian necktie," Max stated unnecessarily.
Dr. Horace Gaitán looked up from where he crouched over the body. "Actually, the Colombian necktie, although attributed to Pablo Escobar and his drug cartel, has been around much longer than the Colombians as a method of punishment and warning." He glanced at Rafe. "But you probably know this, right, Agent Hashemi?"
Rafe shook his head. "No, sir."
"Humph, you'd think a high-ranking DEA agent would know something about the history and origin of drugs and their associated terms."
Max rolled his eyes behind the M.E.'s back.
Dr. Gaitán was something of a medical history buff and liked to be treated with old-fashioned courtesy, so Rafe always approached him with respect. "I take it that Escobar didn't invent the Colombian necktie."
"Right you are, Agent Hashemi."
Rafe squatted down beside the doctor. "Lupe Rodriquez was a friend of mine, sir. I appreciate anything you can tell me about his death."
The doctor snapped on latex gloves. "How are you so sure this is your friend? Not from his face, I imagine."
"No, sir. I recognize the tattoo." He indicated the black and red design of kissing angels on the right thigh, with the name Francisca in a banner below the design. "His girlfriend's name." Three lives destroyed he thought, and sighed heavily, thinking of the pregnant Francisca.