Raney let his hand rest on the small of her back.
“What is it?”
“Daniel’s my brother,” she said. “My half brother.”
“Okay.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not okay.”
“Why not?”
She took up a juniper needle and rolled it between her palms.
“I think I know why Daniel’s always reaching for your badge,” she said.
“Why?”
“One of my first memories is of my father nearly beating a man to death. This was in the trailer park where I grew up. I was watching from a window. He was out of control, pounding this guy in the head when he was already unconscious. There were people gathered around, most of them cheering. The sheriff drove up. My father didn’t stop. The sheriff grabbed his neck, pulled him off, put a knee in his back, and cuffed him. No baton, no pepper spray, no gun. I remember my father screaming into the dirt. The sheriff just looked annoyed. He wasn’t afraid of my father. He was the only one.”
“And Daniel has similar memories?”
“The man with the badge makes his father stop doing scary things. I wasn’t there for the first years of Daniel’s life. I didn’t even know he’d been born. But I know my father.”
“When did you find out?”
“That I was a big sister?”
Raney nodded.
“I was interning at a museum in Baltimore. I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen since high school. She’d just moved to DC. She asked me how my brother was. I said I didn’t have a brother. I thought she must be remembering someone else. ‘Holy shit,’ she said. ‘You don’t know.’
“Two days later I was on a plane to California. I rented a car and drove straight to the trailer. Nobody was home. The door was open. It was always open. My father ripped out the doorknob. According to him, a man with a reputation doesn’t need a lock. I found Daniel sitting naked in a dog pen, slapping at puddles of urine. He had bruises all over his back and thighs. He wasn’t crying. He didn’t seem to notice me. I took him. I just took him and left. Neighbors saw me. I don’t know if my father tried to follow us. Last I heard he was back in prison. This has been the perfect hideaway. There’s no reason he’d look here. And now…”
“And now?”
“I have to leave. I need a job. An income for two.”
She slid back beside him.
“Unless you plan to arrest me for kidnapping.”
Raney kissed her forehead.
“The truth is,” she said, “I don’t know what Daniel remembers. Maybe nothing. Maybe just an impression he can’t get past. When he tries to talk, it’s like there’s an image in his mind blocking the words. It’s more than a stutter—it’s like he’s choking to death. It’s horrible. The sign language is supposed to take the pressure off.”
“He’ll be all right,” Raney said. “He has you as a mother now.”
She turned toward him, traced his lips with her fingers.
“I wish we’d met under different circumstances,” she said. “But these will have to do.”
In the dark, Raney felt years fall away.
19
It was the Mexican who turned up first. He’d driven a hundred miles, bleeding, looking for the closest doctor on the cartel payroll: a veterinarian with a back room. He landed in the right town, stumbled into the wrong clinic, soaked in sweat, muttering, half exsanguinated. The vet in charge sedated him, called nine-one-one.
“Now he’s in some backwoods hospital,” Bay said, “surrounded by feds. They’ve ID’d him as Mongo Rivera. Dumbest goddamn name I ever heard. Apparently he’s a mainstay on their watch list. They’re willing to let us talk to him so long as he’s conscious. Let’s hope the bastard doesn’t check out before we get there.”
Bay broke a hundred on the speedometer, ran his siren whether or not there was traffic. The country seemed to deaden a little with each passing mile, the mountains growing leaner in the rearview mirror, the colors fading, the scrubland flattening.
“It’s my turn to take lead,” Bay said. “Junior was my man.”
“Just make sure you know what you want from him.”
“I want him to confess.”
“A confession won’t change anything. He’s in fed hands now. What we need is information. We need to know who he fought with. We need to know if he killed Mavis or if she was dead already when he got there. We need to know what kind of operation Jack was running.”
Bay smacked the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.
“For a detective,” he said, “you have a real tendency to leap out ahead of the facts. You can’t say that because the son’s room was messy someone else fucked up Rivera. It’s too big a coincidence. Mavis has a mobbed-up kid whose record says he’s plenty good at killing folks. There’s a bloodbath in her living room. Two plus two is four. Case closed.”
“Then who took the Jaguar? The DNA hasn’t come back yet. Rivera hasn’t ID’d Kurt. We don’t have forensics on his vehicle and clothes.”
“Is this you telling me to keep an open mind? That’s rich. You’ve convinced yourself there was a third man. You want everything good and complicated so you can be the one to sort it out.”
“Let’s see what Rivera says.”
“You tie me up in knots, Raney. Honest to God you do.”
It was a small but state-of-the-art hospital, built just a year earlier with funds raised in part by the archdiocese. Three flags hung out front: American, Roman Catholic, Mexican.
“Looks like he wound up in the right place,” Bay said.
A nurse directed them to a third-floor suite. Two feds in custom suits flanked the door. Two more sat in the waiting area, watching the news on a wide-screen TV.
“He must be a four-star prize,” Bay said.
“They think they can squeeze him,” Raney said. “By now the cartel knows he’s in custody. He’s damaged goods. The feds will offer him protection in exchange for information.”
“You mean they’ll put him up in a shiny cell with a television and a private shower.”
“If they don’t find him a house in Alaska.”
“I’ll kill him first.”
Raney flashed his badge to the feds outside the door. One was tall and lean with coat-hanger shoulders and a severe widow’s peak; the other was short and stocky, his scalp shaved to the bone.
“I’m Detective Wes Raney. This is Sheriff Joshua Bay. We were told we could have a few words with Rivera.”
“You better hurry,” the stocky one said.
“That bad?”
“It’s a miracle he’s talking at all,” the tall one said. “Someone tore him from the floor up. Punctured this, fractured that. He left more blood in his car than he had in his body. I guess killing people for a living teaches you how to survive. The interpreter is sitting with him now, in case he mumbles something in his sleep. They’ve got him doped up pretty good, which should work in your favor.”
“Thanks,” Raney said.
“I hope he makes it,” the stocky one said. “I really do. He could be a gold mine.”
Bay grunted.
“We’ll be gentle,” Raney said.
“And brief,” the tall one said. “Doctor’s orders.”
The interpreter was sitting at Rivera’s bedside, filling in a crossword puzzle. He looked up, nodded. Rivera’s eyes were shut. A morphine drip and a sack of blood hung from metal hooks on the wall behind him. His hair was long and greasy, his face a patchwork of old scars and freshly stitched gashes. Whoever he fought with had missed his right eye by a centimeter, jerked the blade straight down his cheek.
“Tough bastard,” Raney said.
“I’d be more afraid of the guy who did this to him,” Bay said.
The interpreter placed a hand on Rivera’s shoulder, said his name. Rivera’s eyes opened in slow motion. Raney and Bay stepped closer, stood hovering over the bed. Bay glowered.
“All right, gentlemen,” the interpreter said. “Best make this quick. He
’s in and out.”
Bay had three photos in his hand. He held up Adler’s mug shot first.
“Ask him if this is the man he fought with. The man who put him in this bed.”
Rivera tried to speak, tried to cough, found his mouth too dry. The interpreter picked up a Styrofoam cup and slid an ice chip into Rivera’s mouth. Rivera moved it around with his tongue, swallowed.
“No,” he said.
“He sure?” Bay asked.
“Sí,” Rivera said. The man he’d fought with had blue eyes and a square face. He was short and thick and bald, like the man outside the door.
“Shit,” Bay said. To Raney: “You ever get tired of being right?”
“Had he ever seen his attacker before?” Raney asked.
Rivera answered no.
“How badly did Rivera hurt him?”
Translation: “He jumped me from behind. When he left, he had my knife in his thigh.”
“Can’t you afford a gun?” Bay said.
The interpreter smirked. Bay held up a second photo: Mavis.
“You kill her?”
Rivera shut his eyes.
“No,” he said in English. “Already dead.”
“But you were sent to kill her?”
“Sí.”
“By who?”
“You know who.”
“Tell us anyway.”
“Gonzalez,” he said.
Bay showed him Junior’s picture.
“What about him?”
“Sí,” Rivera said. “I did that one.”
“You take over, Raney,” Bay said. “I feel my objectivity slipping.”
“He won’t last much longer,” the interpreter said.
“Just a few more questions,” Raney said. “How did he get to the Wilkins ranch so fast? How did he know already that things had gone bad?”
Translation: “Someone called up Gonzalez, said the kids are dead and I got your stuff.”
“Ask him if he found the drugs at the house.”
No, Rivera said. There hadn’t been time to look.
“Did he know where the drugs were supposed to end up? Did he know who Wilkins sold to?”
Rivera nodded off. The interpreter tapped his shoulder, asked the question. Rivera shook his head no.
“She never said.”
“She?” Raney asked.
“Sí.”
“Who?”
Translation: “The woman in the picture.”
“Bullshit,” Bay said.
Rivera’s eyes shut. His mouth hung open.
“I’m afraid that’s it,” the interpreter said.
The tall fed had been right: whatever cocktail they were serving Rivera worked like truth serum. Or maybe beneath the narcotics he was running scared, playing model snitch, looking ahead to his new government-sanctioned life. Assuming he survived.
“We got what we came for,” Raney said. “Thank you for your help.”
They sat in the cafeteria, eating breaded pork chops and canned green beans.
“This tastes about how I feel,” Bay said.
“I know it,” Raney said.
Bay snapped the tines from his plastic fork, one by one.
“It’s taken me this long to realize I’m just a guy with a badge who likes to fish,” he said. “Usually that’s enough out here. The peace more or less keeps itself. But I got lazy. I stopped knowing the people around me. I stopped believing anything very bad could happen. That’s why that piece of shit they’re keeping alive up there was able to kill Junior like it was nothing. Twenty years old. That boy had family in his future.”
“You’re talking about things beyond your control,” Raney said.
“It don’t feel that way.”
“I know.”
“I’m not sure I want it to, either. This is it for me. The town needs fresh eyes. And my eyes need a rest.”
“Then go out on top. Help me solve this one.”
“You believe the Mexican when he says he didn’t kill Mavis?”
“Her wound didn’t match the others.”
“Then how do we track this bald fucker?”
“We start with the forensics.”
“They’re slow as shit around here.”
“You’ve got someone on Mavis’s computer?”
“Yeah. I had to send it to him. He says he’ll drive it back tomorrow, but it’ll more likely be a few days.”
“Keep on him.”
“I will,” Bay said. “And I’ll find out who Mavis was if it takes me from here to my grave.”
“It almost doesn’t matter now.”
“It matters to me,” Bay said.
20
Raney couldn’t shake the sensation of being caged, locked in his own skin. He rolled onto his side, switched on the light.
Two in the morning. He glanced around the room: Bay’s Scotch on the windowsill, his suitcase on the floor beside the nightstand. Why had he swiped the coke? Impulse? Reflex? He remembered one of Stone’s edicts: We enter law enforcement to police ourselves. Raney had gone eighteen years without an infraction. Stone would say he was due.
He sat on the edge of the bed, unlocked his suitcase. Nobody, he told himself, made it from day to day without some kind of help. Bay had his liquor; Clara had her pot. Were they addicts? Junkies? People are ill equipped for the demands placed on them, the demands they place on themselves. We’re the only animal, Raney thought, who believes survival isn’t enough.
Still, something held him back. A distant awareness of what he was talking himself into. A fear that the decision would be irreversible.
He slammed the suitcase shut, slid it under the bed. Tomorrow, he told himself, he would make a double offering.
He lay back down, replaying his date with Clara, angry with himself for fantasizing, already, about their future together, about the young man Daniel would become.
In the morning, everything seemed a little quieter, a little more real. He showered, shaved, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. No blazer. The thought of eating alone depressed him. He called Clara.
“I would,” she said. “But we’ve already had breakfast. And you know how I feel about the food in this town.”
“Okay,” Raney said. “How about a late-morning hike? There are some beautiful trails on the other side of the reservation.”
“A hike?”
He felt her searching for a reason to say no.
“Did I call too soon?”
“No, but I have Daniel today.”
“Even better.”
“Shouldn’t you—”
“We’re waiting on forensics,” Raney said. “I need some air.”
A slight pause. Then:
“All right. Daniel will love it.”
“I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
The day was mild, the sky a single, piercing shade of blue. They chose a trail a mile or so below the tree line. Raney parked in the small space allotted to hikers. Daniel jumped out, charged for the woods. Clara called him back.
“Hey, Daniel,” Raney said. “I’ve got something for you.”
“Oh, really?” Clara said. “I wonder what it could be.”
Daniel sidled forward. Raney reached into his blazer pocket, drew out a blank shield.
“It’s a clip-on, like mine. No pins or needles.”
“His head’s going to explode,” Clara said.
Raney crouched down, held up the badge, pulled it back when Daniel swiped for it.
“I don’t give these to just anyone,” Raney said. “If you take it, you have to promise to look after your mother and do what she tells you. You have to be kind to people and animals, and you have to help anyone who needs it.”
Raney caught himself speaking at half speed, as though the boy were deaf and just learning to lip read. Daniel didn’t seem to notice. He nodded, crossed his heart, reached again for the badge.
“All right, then,” Raney said. “I hereby name you Junior Deputy Detective Daniel Remler.”<
br />
He clipped the badge to Daniel’s belt. Daniel tapped Raney’s chest three times.
“A friend for life,” Clara said. “He made that one up himself.”
The trail followed a creek for the first quarter mile. Daniel ran out ahead, brandishing a stick, ready to fend off all comers. He startled a dusky grouse, gave a small scream as it darted into the woods.
“Careful, Deputy Detective Remler,” Clara called. “Stay where I can see you.”
Daniel sprinted forward, waited, sprinted again. Clara took Raney’s hand.
“What kind of cactus is that?” she asked.
“Fishhook.”
“And that tree?”
“Mesquite.”
“You know,” she said, “I just realized I’ve made this hike before. If you climb to the summit at night, it’s like you’re face-to-face with the moon.”
And who made the hike with you? Raney wondered.
They were resting, lingering in the shade of a large outcropping. Daniel sat a few yards distant, straddling the low-lying branch of a cottonwood. Clara tied her hair back in a ponytail, wiped a faint sheen from her skin. To the west, a vista of peaks and foothills marred by the top stories of the casino.
“What are you thinking?” Clara asked.
“That people belong in cities,” he said. “They don’t know what to do with a place like this.”
“You’re talking about the casino?”
“That’s part of it.”
“Mavis is another part?”
“Yes.”
“I thought this was supposed to be a reprieve.”
“You’re right,” Raney said. “I’m sorry.”
They started walking again. A gentle pace, upslope into the last stretch of forest before the tree line. Daniel continued scouting, ducking behind rocks and tree stumps, then darting forward.
“So if people belong in cities,” Clara said, “why are you here?”
“I guess I’m trying to prove myself wrong.”
“Most of us go through life trying to prove ourselves right.”
“Either way, it’s a full-time job.”
He felt her palm against his, the tips of her fingers pressing into his skin.
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