by Wendy Heard
The beige sedan flies right onto the 101 South on-ramp. I ignore the light that mandates one car every green and floor it. The rental car’s tiny engine whines in protest. “Patel, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I think I’m tailing the Blackbird murderer in my car. I just watched her shoot a guy with a shotgun, my friend’s ex-husband, Charles, so I decided to chase her, and I’m following her car, but I don’t know—”
“Where are you now?” Her voice is hard, her British accent sharper than usual.
Traffic comes to a screeching halt, and I slam the brakes, almost rear-ending an Audi. The beige Chevy is a few cars ahead of me. With cars all around, I almost worry the woman will get out and come shoot me through the window.
To Patel, I say, “I’m on the 101 South. I just passed the Woodman exit. Traffic’s really slow.” As soon as I say it, traffic picks up. The beige car changes lanes, gets one lane farther to the left.
“One moment.” It sounds like she puts her hand over the phone’s receiver and yells orders at someone. Then she says, “Do you have a make, model or license plate number of the car you’re following?”
“It’s a beige Chevy, kind of older... I can’t see the license plate. Do you want me to get closer? She might see me. Or shoot me.”
“No, do not do that. Four-door or two-door?”
“It’s a four-door.”
“One moment. Putting you on a brief hold.” The line goes silent.
The beige car changes lanes again, getting in the far left lane like she plans to head downtown.
Patel comes back. “I have units getting on the 101 at Normandie,” she says. “I want you to get off at Western and park in the Pier 1 lot on Hollywood Boulevard. Do you know where that is?”
“Yeah, but what if she gets away?”
“We’ve got her, don’t worry. But you are not the person to apprehend an armed killer. Can we agree to that?”
“When you put it that way.”
“I’m going to meet you at that parking lot myself, and I want you to be very careful. If anything seems strange, or if a suspicious car enters the lot, go ahead and take off. Keep your car on while you’re parked. Do you hear me?”
“Got it.”
“I’ll have a red police light on top of my car. If you do not see the light, pull out of the parking lot and call me.”
“Got it.” I get into the right lane. “I’ll be at the parking lot in a minute.”
“I’ll see you there.” The phone disconnects.
It takes twenty minutes to get to the Western exit. I take a wrong turn off the freeway and have to backtrack down Hollywood Boulevard. I pass Thai restaurants, gas stations, and I only see Pier 1 at the very last minute. I turn hard into the empty parking lot and park in the back corner facing out so I can see any cars that enter. I slump down in the seat, pull my purse onto my lap and wait.
It feels like forever.
At last, a set of headlights bumps up the driveway into the parking lot. My heart stutters, but then I see the red flashing light, and relief floods me like a drug. It’s almost over. Thank God. Maybe the police will help me find Joaquin since I helped them catch their Blackbird Killer. I turn the car off, put the keys in my purse and get out of the car.
The car pulls to a stop right in front of me. The driver’s side window rolls down, and Patel waves to me from behind the wheel. “Get in. You can sit up front.”
I hurry to the passenger’s side and slide into the seat. Shutting the door feels amazing, like closing myself off from danger and fear.
“Are you all right?” Patel asks. “Get your seat belt on. I’ll take you back to the station.”
I reach for the seat belt. As I twist to my right, a hard, painful pinch in my left side makes me gasp. I think I’ve pinched myself in the space between the console and the seat. Patel looks me in the eye. She withdraws a little clear syringe from my side, and the pain stops. I open my mouth to say something. The car swirls around me. It’s an ocean. I’m underwater, being tumbled by a wave.
I reach for the door. My hand fumbles for the handle and falls to the armrest.
“It’s locked anyway,” she says. Her voice sounds far away.
I try to turn and look at her, but my face is stuck staring out the window. The car is moving. Pier 1’s blue-and-white sign swims lazily by, acid trails connecting it to the horizon.
37
JAZZ
IT’S A HEAVY ascent back to consciousness. I’m being jostled, like I’m on a bus.
I want to go back to sleep. My whole body drags me back into unconsciousness, down into a deep, dark river.
I try to roll over. My arms don’t obey. They’re dead.
I panic, try to retract my arms. I can’t; they’re above me, pinned by something. I struggle, trying to pull them free. They won’t come loose. The world bumps again.
Patel.
I gasp. My eyes fly open.
Blurry. Dark. Flying lights with phosphorescent trails—jellyfish in a midnight aquarium.
I stare at the jellyfish. They swim closer, get sharper, come into focus. A car. A street sign. A gas station.
My forehead is pressed to the tinted glass of a back seat car window. We’re stopped at an intersection. I try to free my arms, banging my elbows on the window.
“Stop. You’re handcuffed,” a voice says nearby. It’s husky and more familiar than my own.
Joaquin.
He’s next to me in the back seat. His hands are raised like he’s stretching, but then I see that he’s handcuffed to the grab handle above the left window. I look up at my own hands—I’m shackled in the same way. I’m behind the passenger’s seat, which is separated from the back seat by a tinted window like in a limo, and Joaquin is behind the driver’s seat.
“You okay?” Joaquin asks.
I try to clear my head. My legs feel heavy. I try to move them, but they feel stuck together somehow.
“They’re tied up,” he says. He squirms a little to show me his own feet, which are wrapped around over and over with thin, synthetic blue rope.
“Patel,” I start to say, but I can’t talk. I thrash, panicked, thinking my tongue has been cut out, and then I realize my mouth is duct-taped shut.
Joaquin smiles at me ruefully. “I got carsick and almost died inhaling my own puke, so she let me take the tape off. It hurt. I was just starting to grow a mustache, too.”
“What’s going on? Why are you here?” I ask, but it just comes out as humming.
“I don’t know who she is.” He nods to the invisible driver. The car slows down, and outside the tinted rear windows, the shadowy shapes of cars slow to a stop. I try to elbow the window and get someone’s attention, but I’m too close to it to get enough force into the blow. I curl my knees and try to bring my feet up to kick out the window. I can’t. There isn’t enough space.
“I already tried that,” says Joaquin. His hair is tangled over his right eye, but he looks wonderful, beautiful, skin glowing in the filtered city light, brown eyes huge and gleaming. “Hey, you know what this car reminds me of? It reminds me of Carol’s car.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about. It is an old American sedan, sure, but why—
He looks frustrated. He looks up at my hands, tied to the grab handle. He makes a point of looking intensely at them, like this is supposed to mean something to me.
He sighs. He slumps back against the seat.
“Hey. I love you,” I hum through the tape. It’s four syllables: “Hm hm hm hm.”
He gets it. One side of his mouth crinkles in a crooked smile just like mine. “Love you, too.”
A crackle, like feedback, and then a voice blares out of the speakers behind us. “Jasmine, please hold still. You don’t want to distract a driver.” It’s Patel’s voice but not; she’s faking a Southern accent. The speaker goes qui
et.
Joaquin says, “I left the police station—someone got murdered at church when I was there with Carol—and I went to your house to see you. And she was there, pretending to be your neighbor. Do you know who she is?”
I nod frantically.
“Do I know her?”
I shake my head.
“Does she work at Trader Joe’s?”
I shake my head. My ponytail is loose and flops around behind me.
The speakers crackle to life. “I hope you’re happy to see Joaquin. He’s been keeping me company today. I’ve been taking real good care of him. I gave him his insulin. Can’t have him fainting dead away.” She laughs lightly, a fake, stupid sound.
I know this voice. Even with the fake accent, I recognize the way it sounds through the speaker. This is the voice on the flip phone.
It’s so much worse than I’d imagined. Patel is in charge of the investigation into the same killings she’s organizing. Even if I got Joaquin out of this car right now, we are so, so fucked. I’m so terrified of what she has planned for us that I feel like I might actually shit myself.
She says, “Let’s talk about our little field trip. Joaquin here’s gonna help us with a few things. Joaquin, you wanna be a real big helper?”
He says, “I’m cool. Thanks, though. If you could just let us off at the next stop, that would be great.”
“Joaquin, you’re funny like your mama. It’s endearing how much y’all have in common. You look alike, too, with those big brown eyes and those pretty crooked smiles. Lady-killer smiles, right? Your mama could teach you a few things about that, couldn’t she?”
Joaquin’s face is blank. My heart is dead with panic.
He looks at me, confusion in his eyes. “How does she know our bio mom?”
I shake my head. I feel my eyes welling up with tears. I hate Patel. I fucking hate her.
The car pulls to a stop on a side street. Outside the window I see a bank of planters and a backlit apartment sign. The speaker crackles. “So, Joaquin, here’s the thing. Your mama’s in some trouble. And she owes me. You’re going to help dig her out of the hole she’s gotten herself into.”
Joaquin’s face is changing. He’s starting to understand. “Jazz, what—is—she—talking about?”
I beg for his forgiveness with my eyes. I will him to be able to read my mind.
“Oh my God.” He doubles forward as far as his pinned-up arms will allow, his face contorted into a grimace of pain.
I’ve pictured this moment a hundred times, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I try to tell him things through the tape that covers my mouth. His eyes are squinched shut, and in profile against the night, a single fat, glimmering tear drips off the point of his nose.
The car shudders into silence; she shut off the engine. “Don’t be mad at her, Joaquin. She was a kid. Can’t you see she’s tried to make it up to you?”
He blinks his eyes hard to clear them of tears, a gesture that tweaks my heart. At last he looks at me. No kid’s face should look this old, this pained. “You should have told me.”
I nod. I know. He’s right.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice cracks.
I force myself not to look away. In the streetlights, his irises are liquid and beautiful. I say the only thing I have for him. “I love you.” Mm mm mm.
Patel says, “So, Joaquin, your mama has created a mess for me, and you’re going to help me clean it up. You’re going to be my little child soldier. How does that sound?”
“Child soldier?”
“You’re going to tie up a loose end. Jasmine, you know where we are.”
I look out the window again. Through the tint, I see flowers, a side street... We’re on a small side street off a major boulevard.
We’re in front of Sofia’s apartment building.
I shake my head frantically at Joaquin. I don’t know what Patel has planned, but it isn’t good.
The smoky glass divider rolls down. A silver cylinder pokes in through the widening gap. It’s a gun with a long barrel—a silencer, I think, from what I’ve seen on TV—and it’s pointed at me. Behind the gun, I almost don’t recognize Patel; she’s wearing a blond, shoulder-length wig and makeup that changes her facial contours and skin tone completely. She looks white, with bright red lips and smoky black eye shadow under black-rimmed glasses.
Is she going to kill me in front of Joaquin? Please no.
Patel says, “Joaquin, I’m interested in your thoughts on something. Would you kill a stranger to save your mom?”
His big, scared eyes are fixed on the gun. He stammers, “I don’t know.”
“You have to choose.”
“I mean, yeah. If it was to save Jazz, I’d kill a stranger. Wouldn’t anybody?”
“Would you kill someone you knew? Not a stranger, but an acquaintance? A teacher, a doctor?”
“I—I don’t know. I mean, I’d kill anyone to save Jazz. She’s the only family I have.”
“Good! So let’s get going, my little child soldier.” She withdraws the gun and gets out of the car.
As she’s coming around to open his door, he whispers, “Carol’s car! Don’t you remember?”
The back door opens. She unlocks his handcuffs and pulls him out of the car. She leaves the car door open, so I hear her giving him instructions. “Put this over your neck,” she says, followed by a pause. “I can hear and see everything you do. You understand? Do not remove this. If you remove it, Jasmine dies. If you disobey my instructions even a little, she dies.”
A long silence, and then Joaquin says, “What’s that for?”
“It’s for you. I hear you’re good with needles.”
38
JOAQUIN
JOAQUIN LOOKS DOWN at the pendant the woman fastens around his neck. It looks like a gold Aztec coin on a silver chain. “What is it?” he asks.
“It’s a camera. I’m going to be watching and listening. You understand? If you remove it, Jasmine dies. If you disobey my instructions even a little, she dies.” She pulls on a pair of latex gloves and gets an oblong plastic container out of the bag she’s carrying. The gun is stuffed into the waistband of her jeans like a cop. He wonders if he could grab it.
She pulls a yellow syringe out of the plastic container. “What’s that for?” he asks.
“It’s for you. I hear you’re good with needles. You inject your own insulin, right?”
He nods, uncertain. This is a big syringe, and he doesn’t like the look of the yellow fluid inside it.
“You’re going to put your money where your mouth is. You’re going to get rid of someone and trade a life for your mama’s. You ready?”
“Wait—with that?”
She nods. Her deranged smile is like something out of a horror movie.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’re supposed to inject it. You want to get it in the torso, not the arms or legs. You want to do it when she’s not looking. Quick and simple. She’s going to know what this is when she sees it, so you’ll need to get her to turn her back and do it when she’s not looking. This is important. Do you understand?”
“I understand, but wait. Who is she? I’m supposed to inject this into a girl? A stranger?”
“Not a stranger.” Her smile is mean. “You’ll see when she opens the door. It’ll be a fun surprise.”
“But...” He tries to gather his thoughts. When she turns the syringe over, it has a poison symbol on it, a skull and crossbones like the one on Jazz’s ring finger. “But why?”
“You don’t get to know why. You trust me that there’s a good reason why, and you rest easy that that part of the decision isn’t on your shoulders.”
“Then why don’t you do your own murder? Wouldn’t that be way easier than all this?”
“Y
ou don’t worry about that, either. You just make your choice. Your mom or this woman.”
He jumps from idea to idea. Run away right now. No, Jazz is in the car. Take the syringe and use it on this lady. No, she has a gun. Grab the gun? Try to wrestle it away from her?
Like she’s reading his mind, she gets the gun out of her waistband and points it into the car at Jasmine. She holds the syringe out with the other hand. “Choose.”
He takes the syringe from her. It’s clammy on his bare fingers. He puts it into the pocket of his hoodie. “Where am I going?”
“Apartment 215. Here’s a key to the gate, but you’ll have to knock on the apartment door when you get there.”
He accepts the key. He takes a deep breath and decides to make one last attempt. He looks her in the eyes. They’re brown behind the glasses. He says, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Can’t you just stop? Can’t you let us go? We haven’t done anything to you.”
“You haven’t, but your mama has. Now off you go.”
“So I just... I just kill whoever answers the door?”
“You got it.”
“Apartment 215?” he checks. “You’re sure?”
She smiles. “I’m sure.”
Joaquin turns. He walks away. His knees are shaking. His head feels light.
He casts a last glance back. He can’t see Jazz through the tinted window. Him looking back seems to piss the woman off. She points the gun into the back seat, and for a second, he thinks she’s going to shoot Jazz right now.
He spins around and hurries up the sidewalk toward the front gate of the apartment building.
Come on, Jazz. Figure it out.
39
JAZZ
PATEL GETS BACK in the car. She picks up an iPad off the front seat and props it up on the dashboard. She presses the home screen and navigates to an app I don’t recognize. She presses a yellow icon and enters a password, and the screen lights up to show a grainy black-and-white view of the front gate of Sofia’s apartment building. It’s from Joaquin’s perspective; his hands are visible, fumbling with the gate lock. Please, Joaquin. Please don’t do it.
