“I appreciate the compliments, Mr. Burkhart.” She grabbed the gin and refilled his glass.
“They’re meant sincerely, I assure you. But my reading habits aren’t what I came here to talk to you about either.” He wafted the glass under his nose before setting the drink on the table and straightening up.
“I don’t know what’s got Rachel Little wound so tight, but I can tell Hildon has got a hell of a scandal waiting in the wings. Something that’ll bring on a changing of the guard as soon as it goes public—and despite any threats, you can rest assured that any juicy little secret will squirm its way out into the wild eventually.”
Tamara shrugged. “Ms. Little runs a tight ship. I will too.”
“Darling, I’ve been in business long enough to know that only dead men keep secrets. Markel might not talk anymore, but there simply isn’t a person in the world who can convince me he hadn’t talked before his untimely death. Which is why I want to know your thoughts on an insurance policy, of sorts.”
Arlen’s eyes settled on her. Was he testing her, or was he being genuine? To his credit, he did have a considerable sum tied up in Hildon. Still, Tamara had learned never to do anything for free.
“I think I owe Ms. Little some amount of loyalty,” Tamara said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to question your loyalties. I meant what I said back in that boardroom. But are you for the name on the back of the jersey or the one on the front?”
Tamara knitted her eyebrows. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Be loyal to Hildon, not Rachel. She’ll be gone soon, and you’ll be captain of this ship.”
That’s what this was about. He was offering advice—he wanted to get in Tamara’s good graces early. She kept her face blank.
“Rachel’s making a mistake if she thinks she can play this cleanly. A good leader knows when it’s time to fight dirty. Word’s already out there. Yesterday it was Markel, tomorrow it might be someone else. You gotta watch out for your flock, understand?”
His point couldn’t be argued. Months ago, Tamara knew this thing with Markel might sink the entire company if Rachel didn’t play it right.
“I appreciate the advice, Arlen.”
Burkhart rose, walked toward the door, then stopped in front of her desk. He picked up the lone picture frame sitting there and cut a bemused smile at the photo of Tamara and her niece, who everyone said resembled her more than her brother, Andre. Burkhart stared at the picture, seeming to get lost in it.
He grimaced at the photo before returning it to her desk. Even then, he seemed to dote on it until he turned his back.
“One more thing, Tamara,” he said, walking toward the door. “I suggest you pay a visit to Gabriela Ramos. See how she’s holding up.”
I was sacked out in Wayward’s master when my sat phone buzzed on the desk near the foot of my bed. I sprung up, startled, and before I blinked the sleep out of my eyes, my hand latched onto the phone and pulled it to my ear.
“This is Jerry.”
“Jerry! Jesus Christ man, I’ve been trying to call you all morning!” DJ shouted over blaring trop rock music. I figured he was at the helm of Reel Fun, skipping over the waves while he ran from one ass-kicking to the next. Most guys on a rampage preferred heavy metal, but not DJ.
“I’m here now.” I slid out of bed and glanced into the salon. The door out to the cockpit was closed. I left it that way—I didn’t want Alicia and Flor to overhear me.
“Where were you four hours ago when I called the first time?”
I checked my watch. It was just after 2 p.m. “I was in a meeting with Collat. Or sleeping.” Alicia had caught me as I boarded Wayward and ordered me to get some rest. Arguing with her never worked.
“Sleeping? Nobody’s got time for you to sleep, man.”
“I’ll sleep when I have to. And this morning, I had to.” I flexed my fist until my knuckles popped. “I was up all night with Gabriela and her daughter making sure they were safe. I was doing our job.”
“No, I was doing our job,” DJ barked. “I found our guys.”
My ears perked up. I was fully awake.
“Who is he?”
A few seconds passed before DJ finally said, “There’s more than one. And I don’t know all their names.”
“More than one? That doesn’t follow what Gabriela told us.”
“I saw that guy,” DJ said. “Same slicked-back brown hair, chiseled face—all that Hollywood crap. That boat I chased outside the doc’s house last night came from a marina owned by a friend of mine.” DJ’s voice hitched. “So, I went and visited him, but he—they—”
Was he getting choked up?
Thoughts ricocheted back and forth in my brain—should I comfort him? Tease him for crying? Remind him that if he’d listened last night, things would be different now?
“DJ?”
“They killed him in his own house,” DJ said. “They flashed their badges, marched into the garage and strung him up from the rafters.”
“Who?”
“Blunt!” DJ hissed. “The cops hanged him!”
I heard the unmistakable clatter of dirty glasses being plopped into a bar sink. Then a woman’s laughter.
“Are you at a bar? How much have you had to drink?” I bounced up the stairs from the starboard hull and came into the salon.
He didn’t answer.
“The job doesn’t get done if you’re drunk off your ass, DJ.”
“Get over yourself,” DJ said. “Mr. Boy Scout! I bet if you saw one of the few friends you had left on this Earth get strung up in his garage, you’d be quivering like a pile of spat-up baby food.”
My jaw clenched tightly. “Tell me where you are. I’m going to get you. We have a job to finish.”
“And I’m gonna finish it.” DJ sucked in a loogie and spat. With the phone up against Jerry’s ear, the sound was unmistakable. “Keep babysitting those girls on your boat.”
He hung up.
Everything in front of me flashed red. Before I knew what I was doing, I hurled the sat phone into Wayward’s bulkhead. It shattered into a dozen pieces.
In all her twenty-eight years, Gabriela Ramos had never seen the inside of a jail. On TV they were always shadowy, skittering places, every actors’ footsteps ping-ponging off the tall, cold walls, with prisoners leaning against the bars like starving beggars intent on ripping the flesh off the guards.
The jailhouse in Bayamón was not that. It was small. Just small. No steel bars, no inky corners, nothing cold. It was unbearably hot; in fact, the air was thick with body odor like salted onions.
Time was hard to gauge, but Gabriela assumed that, for at least two hours, she’d been stuck in a shared cell with half a dozen other women. All waited to move on to some other place while the police did whatever they had to do. In her case, Detective Collat was almost certainly poring over the conversation he’d had with Gabriela in a debriefing room in another wing of the building.
“Ramos, Gabriela!” a man’s voice boomed from somewhere down the hall. The cell door clicked as a pair of guards arrived, then it slid open.
“On your feet, Ramos.”
Gabriela’s eyes met another woman’s. A woman she didn’t know, hadn’t said a word to, but was drawn to by an intelligent spark behind the honey-brown flecks in her eyes. Gabriela had always thought the people in jail were criminals, but this woman reminded her of her sister, Maria.
“Pick it up,” the guard repeated.
She looked away from her cellmate and stepped through the open door. The guard slapped a pair of restraints on her wrists. To her right, standing just beyond a steel door at the end of the hall, Detective Collat watched Gabriela, his eyes scanning her from toes up, then back down again.
The guard brought her to Collat. And he, in keeping with the precedent he’d set since she’d been put in his custody early that morning, said nothing. He took her from the block of holding cells, down labyrinthian cinder block hallways painted gutter gray, past
more steel doors, more bars, more glass crisscrossed with steel wire, until he finally spoke.
He pointed at a white line painted across the colorless tiles. “Stand here, ma’am. Feet on the line.”
Gabriela did as instructed, keeping her heels together and her hands down in front of her.
A pair of heavy double doors blocked the way. A small box clung to the wall to the right, at about chest height. Collat pushed the only button on the box. It bleated.
“Detective Antoine Collat, dropping off one detainee,” he said toward a camera hanging from the ceiling to the right. He pulled his badge out of his pants pocket and held it up.
The doors clicked.
Collat grabbed her by the handcuffs, pulling Gabriela forward before she had a chance to pick up her feet. She stumbled but caught her balance.
Ahead of them, a man in a gray uniform sat behind a large, circular desk encased in glass, like the checkout counter at a gas station. His silver badge flashed under the oppressive lights as Gabriela and Collat approached.
“Stand there.” Collat motioned at another white line on the floor.
While she stayed put, he stepped to the desk, then leaned his shoulder against the glass, hunching forward to talk quietly with the desk officer, never leaving her unwatched for too long.
Sweat slithered across her upper lip. Her heart tapped against her ribs. What was Collat saying? What did he want to do with Gabriela?
Before her mind went too far down that road, a lock snapped open, then a motor hummed beyond the desk, off to the left. A door opened somewhere Gabriela couldn’t see, and a pair of hard-soled shoes clicked against the floor.
Ahead of her, Collat mouthed the word “thanks” and nodded at the man behind the desk, who returned the gesture. He pushed off from the glass and came to her, wrapping his fingers about the chain between her wrists.
“Nervous?” he asked.
She kept her chin high. She wanted to slap him.
“Don’t do anything regrettable, and you’ll come out of this just fine.” Thin, red veins spiderwebbed across the whites of his eyes, and wetness clung to the corners of his mouth. She wasn’t sure she could take his advice for anything.
The footsteps to her left belonged to a tall man with a shaved head, his shoulders stretching the shirt of his guard’s uniform. The way he carried himself reminded Gabriela of a boy she used to know back in Santo Domingo, a head taller than the others. He used to push the other boys around.
“Antoine!” His voice was the sound of a baseball bat breaking in a backdoor. His hard mouth stretched into a big, warm smile.
“Good afternoon, Miguel.” Detective Collat shook his hand.
The two men stood face-to-face for a moment before Collat spoke up.
“You have my sincerest thanks for doing this for me. These last few weeks have been…” Collat’s voice faltered. “They’ve been very challenging.”
Miguel folded his arms and averted his eyes. Gabriela never understood why it seemed impossible for one man to look at another when emotions were shown. How hard was it to share someone else’s grief—because whatever weighed on Detective Collat’s mind brought along a good helping of sorrow.
“I know you were close with him,” Miguel said. “But he’s the lucky one—he’s in the Kingdom of Heaven. The rest of us here.”
Someone Collat knew had passed away. That’s the best Gabriela could figure.
Collat swallowed down a lump and nodded. Then he brought his eyes up to Gabriela.
“This is Officer Oliveria.” He jerked his head toward Miguel. “I’ll ask you to please not cause this man any trouble. He’ll take care of you.”
With those parting words, he walked past Gabriela—or tried to. She grabbed him by the arm. “What about Jerry?” she asked quietly.
Collat gave her a stare that could’ve put a chill in the devil.
“You’re very skilled at manipulating people into taking pity on you, Miss Ramos.”
The chill dragged its fingers over Gabriela’s back. “I’ve only told the truth.”
“You convinced Mr. Snyder with your ghost story about a hidden murderer who managed to erase any evidence of himself. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Snyder said he’ll find something to clear your name. We’ll see.”
Gabriela straightened her spine. We’ll see. Didn’t matter one bit if he thought she was innocent, or if she’d wiped Dr. Markel’s blood across her cheek, and howled her throat ragged at the moon, because God wouldn’t have brought her this far to drop her off here.
“Have you asked Christ into your heart, Detective?”
He narrowed his eyes. Collat wasn’t a man of faith. The way he looked, the way he listened impassively, sunk back in his chair, while she’d laid her whole life out for him this morning had made that patently clear.
Were she convicted of the Markels’ murders, Gabriela wouldn’t hate Collat. She would only ever pity him.
“Someday, I hope you do,” she said. “If not for your sake, or mine, do it for the next person you bring in.”
He opened his mouth to say something but chewed his tongue instead. Then, he ripped his arm out of her hand, and walked away. Gabriela watched, hoping he’d say she was right or curse her for being so wrong—hinting at an ember in his cold, dead heart.
As the security door closed behind him, he did neither.
“Come on.” Miguel—Officer Oliveria—engulfed her little wrist with a single baseball mitt of a hand, but unlike Collat, he didn’t tug her along. He waited for Gabriela to take the first step, then he took a big stride, keeping in front of her.
They walked through another set of steel doors, her heart pounding, and her knee bones like her grandmother’s starfruit jam. Another hallway stretched out before them. Same off-white wallpaper, same gray and beige tiles.
“Heard you killed a doctor and his wife,” Officer Oliveria said, like he was impressed.
“I didn’t.”
“Of course not. But he died while you were at his house, no? Did you try calling an ambulance?”
“I couldn’t.” Her mouth almost felt too dry to answer. She knew she didn’t sound convincing.
“Yeah? How about the doctor’s house being on fire? You didn’t think about calling the fire department?”
“Another man was there,” she said.
Officer Oliveria’s whiskered cheeks spread apart for his wide grin. “Funny. From what I heard, nobody found anything that says another man was there. But they did find your wrecked car.”
“Where did you hear all these things?”
“Do you think I escort everybody who comes to Bayamón?”
She didn’t understand his question. He must’ve read the confusion on her face.
“You listen to me and do what you’re told, you’ll be fine. First thing: don’t go talking about how innocent you are. It makes you look guilty,” he said. “Second thing is I’m going to put you in your own cell block. For your protection.”
“Protection from what?”
He shrugged.
They marched toward another set of gray double-doors, which opened without Officer Oliveria having to break his stride or lift a finger.
Behind the doors a path branched three ways. She heard women’s voices down the right-most, chattering like some of the busier Bible study groups she’d been to.
She followed Officer Oliveria’s lead, going left. The voices grew fainter the further down the hall they went, disappearing entirely when they passed through another set of automatic doors.
In this new area, rows of steel doors ran along either wall, spaced five or six feet apart. There must have been two dozen, each painted dark as a hurricane wall.
“How long am I going to be here?” Gabriela asked.
“That depends on you,” Officer Oliveria said. “You want to cooperate? You’ll be outta here a lot quicker than if you lie to us or cause trouble.”
He motioned to the first door on the right. A rectangular
slit of glass started a few inches below the top edge, then stopped around the middle somewhere. Through it, she saw unpainted walls, a bare mattress with linens neatly folded on top. The bedframe’s steel legs were bolted into the floor. On the wall opposite, a small desk.
“You’re lucky,” Oliveria said. “This is Bayamón’s newest wing. The girls who lived here before you had to spend their last three months in knee-deep water.”
The door slid open. The concrete under Gabriela’s feet, clad in drab gray jailhouse-issued shoes, vibrated like a big rig was rumbling past. She approached the open door slowly. Once she crossed the threshold into a cell with two walls just a foot or so further apart than her outstretched arms, she might never come out again. Collat didn’t believe she was innocent. He seemed to be a friend of Officer Oliveria, who also didn’t believe her.
But Gabriela Ramos didn’t wilt. Shaky knees or not, she walked into the cell, rested her right hand on the top of the steel desk, and let it cool her sweaty palm. God would protect her. This was a test of her faith.
Through a small window ahead of her she saw another squat building, lined with the same kind of narrow windows as the one she looked through now.
“Is that more cells?”
“That’s Block B,” Officer Oliveria answered. “You won’t see them much. You won’t see much of anyone, aside from me and maybe a couple other guys working here. That’s the way it’s gotta be for now.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.” She turned around to face him. He barely fit inside the room. “Even if you don’t believe me, I never had a trial. No judge put me here.”
He pursed his lips, thinking.
“You aren’t wrong about that. Collat asked me to make sure you were safe,” he finally said. “Best way to do that is to keep you away from everybody else. You’ll have some books brought to you here and you’ll get half-an-hour a day to walk the yard.”
“Can’t I get more than that?”
“Probably not,” he said. “Got a lawyer?”
“I don’t have money for one.”
Her answer gave him pause. He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and shifted his weight. “It’s probably better that way. What we’re doing isn’t how this is supposed to work. But my friend asks me to make sure you’re out of danger, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
Wayward Sons Page 25
