A Steep Price (The Tracy Crosswhite Series Book 6)

by Robert Dugoni

  Faz thought of Vera, about leaving her alone to face her cancer, and felt a profound sadness sweep over him and tears pool in his eyes. The sound of men’s voices outside the room and keys in the lock focused his thoughts. The overhead fluorescent lights flipped on, sharp and painful, like shards of glass in his eyes. He tilted his head so he could look up through his one good eye.

  “Detective Fatso. You look like shit, man.” Little Jimmy crouched and grabbed Faz’s face, producing a searing pain where his fingers dug into the flesh. He turned Faz’s jaw so he could look at him. “So, Detective, you feel like talking or do you want to tell some more jokes?”

  “No point, Jimmy,” he mumbled. “My jokes are obviously over this crowd’s head.”

  “Then you feel like telling me what you’re doing here?”

  “I told you. I came here looking for you,” Faz said, his voice barely a whisper. “And my partner knows that I did.” There was no sense changing the story now.

  Little Jimmy smiled. “And you found me. I guess that’s why you’re a detective, huh? But I told you, I checked your phone and I don’t think your phone lies. ¿Entiende? I don’t think you told anyone why you’re here. You’re alone. You’re on an island.”

  “You said that. You need another metaphor.”

  Jimmy paused. “I need a what?”

  “My luck I’m stuck on the island with you,” Faz whispered.

  “You got me thinking, cabrón. You got me wondering why you’re here and why would you have come alone. So I had to check the videotape, you know? To see if maybe you were following someone.”

  Faz felt his stomach grip.

  Little Jimmy stood and nodded to the door. Hector—Steroid Boy—and the third man dragged a body into the room, but the head dangled so Faz could not see his face, though he had a pretty good idea who he was. They dumped the body at Little Jimmy’s feet. Jimmy used his boot to roll the man onto his back. Faz had to tilt his head to see. He recognized Francisco, though barely. Francisco’s face was swollen and caked with dried blood. His nose shot off at a right angle, and he looked like he had a golf ball beneath his left eye. “You see, Detective, I’m like a plumber—I’m always looking for leaks. And I think maybe I found one.”

  “Never saw him before,” Faz said.

  “But you see, it’s like I said—the tape don’t lie.”

  “Did you say that? I don’t recall.”

  “You’re going to tell me why you followed Francisco, why you took pictures at the fairgrounds, and who’s the woman he was talking to? Hmm . . .”

  Faz had forgotten about the grainy and unfocused photographs he’d snapped at the outdoor fair before he’d been bumped. He took a moment and came to another realization. Little Jimmy needed information, and that just might be the one thing to keep Faz alive, at least for the short-term. Despite all of his bravado, Little Jimmy was scared. He knew the consequences if he screwed up the cartel’s shipment. In the end, he was just as Faz had believed—another punk.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Faz said.

  Little Jimmy lifted Faz’s head by the hair, yanking it back so Faz could see him. A sharp pain radiated across his scalp and down the back of his neck. Jimmy crouched, eye to eye. “Do you think I’m stupid, Detective?”

  Oh, how Faz wanted to answer that question. Instead, he said, “I was coming back to Eduardo Lopez’s apartment and I saw him on the street. So I followed him.”

  “Really? What, you follow all us Mexicans now? I think they call that racial profiling, Detective. I think it’s illegal. I’m going to have to call my lawyer.”

  Faz wasn’t sure what to say, though he knew not to say he’d seen the man, Francisco, at Eduardo Lopez’s apartment. “I recognized him from the party at your house.”

  That answer seemed to catch Little Jimmy off guard. He smiled, like a cat before eating the mouse. “And you remembered him? What, you gringos think all us Mexicans look alike?” Jimmy lost his smile. “You’re a terrible liar. Francisco wasn’t at my party. Francisco was at home with his wife and kids.”

  “I guess I was wrong. You all do look alike.”

  Jimmy pulled something from his pocket, a cell phone, though it didn’t belong to Faz. “I don’t know who Francisco has been texting, but I think maybe it is you? So I check your phone, but no, he’s not texting you. So who’s Francisco texting, cabrón? Hmm? Who is he texting?”

  “Maybe he’s having an affair,” Faz said. “And didn’t want his wife to know.”

  Jimmy stepped back, reached behind his waist, and pulled out a handgun, a shiny silver piece that looked like a small cannon. “Hold him up,” he said, gesturing for the others to lift Francisco from the ground.

  Faz figured this was it. He was going to die in the back room of a storage facility and likely end up dumped in some body of water with weights around his legs. Vera would never know what had happened to him. Shit, he wondered if Vera would even have the cancer surgery if Faz died. Faz wasn’t sure he’d want to go on living without her.

  Hector and the other man lifted Francisco under his arms to a more or less kneeling position. His head flopped between his shoulders.

  Jimmy put the barrel of the gun to the back of Francisco’s head. “I’m going to ask you one more time, Detective. You tell me a joke or you say ‘I don’t know’ and I’m going to blow off the back of Francisco’s head. And then his death is going to be on your conscience, just like my father’s. So I’m going to ask you again, and if you don’t tell me, I’m going to kill Francisco. Then I’m going to kill you, grind you up and feed you to the pigs.”

  Little Jimmy stepped back and racked a bullet into the chamber of the silver pistol. He again pressed the barrel to the back of Francisco’s head. “So, last chance, cabrón, who is he texting?”

  CHAPTER 53

  The park held a quiet tranquility, the way the North Cascades had once felt when Tracy had been a young girl and walked through them early on weekend mornings. Tracy’s father had told her that people referred to grottos of trees as God’s cathedrals. She understood why. Mornings, when the sun streamed between the trunks, the shafts of light looked like descending angels. Not tonight. Tonight, the remnants of light colored the park in muted grays. No angels here, not in this place, which would be forever marked by evil.

  Tracy followed the same trail she’d taken the night she and Pryor ventured into the park, though this time without the blinking blue light to guide her or the ominous feeling that she was about to stumble onto something horrific. Tonight, she knew the way, and she had a different sense of horror, one that she continued to chastise herself for not seeing sooner. Pranav and Sam had not been home Monday night, nor had his parents, not until late. Only Himani and Nikhil had been present.

  Tracy veered to her right at the first fork in the road and continued along the outer trail. Bullfrogs croaked, as if alerting one another to her presence. She slowed her pace as she approached the path leading to the hole in the ground, though the hole had since been filled in by the park ranger. The trail crested. Tracy stopped atop that knoll, looking down upon the person standing at the edge of where the hole had once been.

  Himani Mukherjee looked very much like a penitent at what would forever be a grave site in one of God’s cathedrals.

  As if sensing Tracy’s presence, or perhaps expecting it, Himani lifted her gaze and turned, but her glance was brief. She let her eyes drift back to her daughter’s grave.

  Tracy had been thinking of a number of things to say, but now that she had arrived, she didn’t feel the need to say anything. She stepped forward and stood at the edge of where the hole had been and waited, nearly a full minute, before Himani finally spoke.

  “I don’t expect you to understand, Detective.” Her voice barely carried over the sounds of the forest.

  And on that point, Himani was correct. Tracy did not understand. “Why don’t you try and explain it to me,” she said.

  Himani smiled, though it had
a forlorn and defeated appearance. “What would be the point?” she said.

  “Closure,” she said. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, looking for closure? Was there a reason?”

  “There were many reasons,” Himani said, recovering some of her anger and bitterness that Tracy first had detected the night she went to the Mukherjee home. Then it was gone again. Himani exhaled, and the air shuddered in her chest, but she did not allow herself to cry. “Many reasons to be upset with Kavita,” she said softly, as if speaking to herself.

  Tracy waited.

  “She disrespected her family. She disrespected herself. She embarrassed us in front of all our relatives and friends. At first, her father and I agreed that it would be best to just wait for her to come to her senses. We figured that, in time, she would come home, that she would ask me to find her a suitable husband. And if that didn’t work, we thought a more practical reason would bring her home.”

  “She’d run out of money,” Tracy said. “But she didn’t come home and she didn’t run out of money and you began to wonder why not.”

  “Even when Aditi returned from India, married, Kavita still refused. She became even more defiant.”

  “You and Kavita seem very much alike in that regard,” Tracy said.

  Himani glanced at Tracy, the same look she’d given Sam when he’d confessed that he and Kavita had exchanged text messages. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand what it feels like to know that your daughter is a whore. I know about hotel rooms, Detective, and about the man she met there. I know why she didn’t run out of money, and why she didn’t need to come home.” She turned and stared at Tracy, and Tracy couldn’t help but think again of that word, defiant. Himani’s voice hardened. “You didn’t have to listen to Aditi’s parents go on about Aditi and Rashesh and the money his family has, about the beautiful home in London where they would live, and about all the grandchildren they will soon have.” She shook her head, the anger in her voice continuing to build. “You do not understand the humiliation.” She spoke the last words through gritted teeth. Then she closed her eyes and her nostrils flared and her breathing became heavy. She gave Tracy a dismissive wave, like she was just a nuisance. “You don’t understand. Our ways are not your ways.”

  “When did you realize you could follow Kavita using Sam’s phone?” Tracy didn’t believe Himani had learned this on her own. She believed she learned from someone younger, someone more familiar with technology. Nikhil.

  Himani shrugged, just a small acknowledgment. “I’ve monitored Sam’s text messages since we bought him the phone and I’ve tracked his phone to see where he goes. Tracking Vita’s phone was not difficult.”

  “So you saw the text Sam sent Kavita Monday night.”

  “And Vita’s reply,” she said. “It was just another of many messages, Detective, and always on a Monday night.” It confirmed that Himani had detected Kavita’s routine with Shea. For a long moment Himani did not speak and Tracy thought that perhaps she would choose not to say anything more. Then she said, “I had just left the Dasguptas’ home. They had a party for their friends who could not go to the wedding in India. Kavita was not there, though I was not surprised. I had to listen to them brag about Aditi and about their new son-in-law. Pranav was gone, traveling. He did not have to listen to it.” She raised her hands and curled her fingers into her hair as if to hold her skull together. “Their voices rang in my ears like splinters of glass. By the time I got home, my head was pounding.” She gave a wistful sigh. “I went on to my computer and I pulled up the app, and I saw the messages between Sam and Kavita.” Himani looked at Tracy. “Even on the day Kavita learned Aditi had married, Kavita refused to change her behavior. She continued to humiliate us. It was like she took joy in twisting the knife in our backs.”

  “She wasn’t going to continue seeing him,” Tracy said. “She’d told him she was through. She was moving on. She was going to attend medical school.”

  This seemed to give Himani pause, but only briefly. “It doesn’t change what she had become,” Himani said. “It doesn’t change the fact that she had defiled herself and no self-respecting man would have her.”

  Tracy looked at the disturbed soil, bits of broken branches and bruised and battered leaves atop the dirt. Then she looked back to Himani, watching her carefully, waiting for her to continue. When she did not, Tracy said, “Did you send Nikhil to the hotel intending that he kill Kavita?”

  CHAPTER 54

  Kins told Sam to wait outside and not to enter the house. Then Kins went inside. The lights were off, the house quiet. He removed his Glock, holding it at his thigh.

  “Nikhil?” he called out. “It’s Detective Kinsington Rowe from the Seattle Police Department. I’d like to talk to you.”

  No answer.

  “Nikhil?” Kins said again as he stepped from the foyer into the living room. The grandmother and grandfather were seated there. They looked at him with a quiet terror.

  “Where’s Nikhil?” he asked.

  The grandfather’s eyes shifted to the kitchen but he did not speak.

  Kins and Tracy had discussed the possible scenarios on the drive from the airport to Bellevue and agreed that Himani could not have carried Kavita to the hole alone. So, either Himani had killed Kavita and then enlisted Nikhil’s help hiding her body, or Nikhil had killed his sister.

  Kins moved across the foyer and dining room and stepped slowly to the doorway. He peered into the kitchen. Nikhil sat at the table in the far corner with the lights off, but Kins could see the large kitchen knife, the point pressing against the young man’s throat.

  Kins took a moment to regain his composure. He spoke calmly. “Nikhil, put the knife down.”

  Nikhil’s eyes found Kins but he did not respond.

  Kins slowly stepped into the room struggling with what to say. He thought of his three boys, how close they were. “Your brother’s outside,” he said. “And your grandparents are in the other room. You don’t want them to see this.”

  “Sam hates me,” Nikhil said, voice nearly a whisper.

  “No,” Kins said. “Sam doesn’t hate you.”

  The blade moved up and down each time Nikhil swallowed or spoke. “Sam loved Vita.”

  “Yes, he did. But you’re his only brother, Nikhil. He’s already lost his sister. Don’t let him lose his brother.”

  “He won’t care what happens to me.”

  Kins kept his gun at his side and stood a safe distance from the table. “He will care. No matter what has happened, you’ll always be his brother. Don’t do this to him. Don’t do this to your parents and your grandparents. Put the knife down.”

  Nikhil did not comply.

  “Then tell me what it is you want, Nikhil.” Kins wanted to keep the young man talking.

  “What I want?”

  “Yes, tell me what you want.”

  “Why did she have to do it?” he said. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Why couldn’t she come home, get married? Was it so bad?”

  “I don’t know, Nikhil.”

  “Do you know what she did? She disgraced all of us.”

  “Maybe she did, Nikhil, but killing yourself is not going to change anything now. It’s only going to make things worse. Your brother has already lost a sister and your parents have lost a daughter. Don’t make them bury a brother and a son too.”

  “Baba will wish I was dead,” he said.

  “No. He won’t. No matter what you’ve done, he will always be your father. You know how I know that?”

  Nikhil made eye contact. His eyes at least appeared hopeful, like he wanted the answer, wanted to know that his father would always love him.

  “Because I have three sons of my own. And they’ll always be my sons, no matter what they’ve done, no matter how bad it might be, I’ll always be their father and they will always be my sons.”

  “You must be a good father, Detective.”

  “So is your father. He’ll want to help you, Nikhil. Don
’t hurt him this way. Don’t make him bury two children. Put the knife down, son. Let’s all sit down and discuss this.”

  “What is there to discuss, Detective?”

  “We can discuss what happened and why. Don’t you want to tell me why?”

  “I don’t know why. It just happened.”

  “There are people you can talk to, people who can help you understand why. I’m sure you must have been very upset about what was happening. I’m sure your sister made you angry. I’m sure you weren’t thinking clearly.” Kins noticed a thin red line, then a trickle of blood down the side of Nikhil’s neck. “Let me get you some help, Nikhil. There are people who can help you. They can help you to better understand what happened.”

  “I understand what happened, Detective. And I know what I did.”

  “Nikhil?”

  Kins turned his head at the sound of Sam’s voice. The young boy stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “Stay out, Sam,” Kins said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Leave, Sam,” Nikhil said.

  Sam stepped in. “What are you doing? Put that knife down.”

  “Leave,” Nikhil said, more forcefully.

  “Sam, stay where you are,” Kins said, then again, more slowly, “just stay where you are. Everyone just take a deep breath and let’s all stay calm.”

  “Get him out of here,” Nikhil said, his voice harsh and agitated.

  Sam took a step forward. “Put the knife down. You’re cut. You’re bleeding.”

  “Get him out, Detective!”

  “Sam, your brother wants you to leave.”

  “Put the knife down, Nikhil.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve done, Sam. You don’t know.”

  “Put the knife down.”

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” Nikhil said. “I’m so sorry.”

  CHAPTER 55

  Faz didn’t have a lot of sympathy for a gang member and likely drug dealer, but he also didn’t want to be the reason Francisco died. He knew, too, because Little Jimmy had been stupid enough to tell him, that Francisco had texted someone, and that someone had to have been Gonzalez. If he was right, the longer he could stall, the better the chances of their survival. Others in the room were talking to Little Jimmy in animated Spanish, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to deduce that they were telling him they needed to leave, quickly. Little Jimmy, however, was blinded by his hatred of Faz.