The Good Byline

by Jill Orr

  Understanding clawed at the edge of my brain. The reason the government had never been able to pin any charges on Romero was because he really was running a legitimate business—as far as he knew, anyway. It had been Mateo pulling the strings from New Jersey all along. I’d bet anything Mateo got Gonzalez the job as head of security for Tacos Los Locos. It put him in the perfect position to gain access to the trucks and plant the drugs.

  And then a thought shot into my head like it had been fired from a cannon. I ignored Gonzalez and looked directly at Kevin. “It’s Tackett, isn’t it?”

  His eyes rose to meet mine. He nodded.

  I should have known. That dirty sonofabitch. It wasn’t so much that they had a mole in the sheriff’s department as they had the sheriff himself in their back pocket. Owning the sheriff and the county prosecutor…it’s no wonder they were able to get away with such brazen criminal activity.

  “Enough!” Gonzalez yelled. “You’d better give me that code right now, or else you’re going to die with a lot of blood on your hands.”

  Holman ignored him, his hunger to tell the story stronger than his fear. He must have figured this out earlier. “It all clicked when I was going through Jordan’s notes. Remember she had all those citations in her file?”

  I nodded.

  “She was checking arrest records against evidence logged into the sheriff’s department. There was a suspicious lack of guns and drugs being reported. Jordan must have suspected something wasn’t right. My guess is she told Kevin about her suspicions—after all, he was the prosecutor, not to mention her boyfriend.”

  Kevin picked up Holman’s thread. “The irony was, she didn’t even know about the taco trucks yet. I figured if I tipped you off, it’d send your investigation in another direction, away from me. I waited until I knew Mateo had product in the truck onsite at LJP and then sent you the letter. I had no idea that Jordan was going to intercept it.”

  “Stop. Talking.” Gonzalez said through a clenched jaw.

  But Kevin didn’t stop. It was like he couldn’t. He was unburdening himself in the way a guilty man does when he knows he is about to die. “She wasn’t supposed to find out,” he said to Holman. “It was supposed to be you. I didn’t know Jordan would go in to work that night or that she’d open it. God, if I’d had any idea.…”

  “Since you obviously couldn’t go to the police, you came to me,” Holman said, putting the last piece of the puzzle into place.

  Kevin nodded silently.

  “I knew it.” Gonzalez was now suddenly interested in Kevin’s confession. “But your girlfriend wasn’t as smart as you thought. She went out to the truck like she was Nancy fucking Drew, rolled up on us as we were loading the truck. She tried to run, but we caught her. When I saw her insulin pump, it didn’t take long to figure out how to get rid of her without raising suspicion.”

  It was as if his words shot a hole through Kevin four inches wide. He groaned in agony, finally letting go the anguish he’d bottled up all this time.

  Gonzalez ignored him and looked to Holman. “You have a decision to make.” He held up the bottle. “What’s it going to be? I’m sure the sheriff would have no problem declaring that Kevin Monroe, the county prosecutor, went on a murderous rampage, killing reporter Will Holman and two former students, just before blowing up the Tuttle Corner Library. Motive unknown.…”

  “Just give him the code, dude!” Ryan pleaded.

  Holman shook his head. “I can’t do that.”

  “We’re all gonna die if you don’t!”

  Fitzgerald pulled the truck into the library parking lot. I saw Dr. H’s gold Ford Crown Victoria, Tabitha’s BMW convertible, and nearly a half dozen other cars. There was no telling how many people were inside. Or who those people were.

  “You can’t do this,” I said to Gonzalez. “Think of all those innocent people—you can’t—”

  “There’s about ten minutes left on here,” Fitzgerald said, looking at the phone with the video feed of the bomb-strapped meth. “I thought the boss told you to get the drugs?”

  Gonzalez turned on him abruptly. “The boss isn’t here, is he? I’m in charge. I’m running this!” In that moment, he looked like a true madman. Holman had hatched his plan assuming Romero was in charge. He’d counted on him being a good businessman above everything else, and because of that, he wouldn’t allow his meth to be destroyed. But Mateo was another animal, and Gonzalez was wilder still.

  In desperation to save his failing plan, Holman said, “What do you think Tackett will do when he sees he has to clean up another one of your messes? And how will Mateo feel when he finds out that you allowed hundreds of thousands of dollars in meth to be blown to bits?”

  “Give. Me. The. Code.” Gonzalez pointed his gun at Holman.

  “No.”

  “Will,” I said, “maybe you should just tell him? It may be too late for us, but it isn’t too late for all of them.” I nodded my head toward the building.

  “I can’t, Riley.”

  “Don’t be reckless here—remember what happened to Alex Wright?”

  “Who?”

  “Alex Wright—from the Blexor story.”

  “What are you talking about? I wasn’t on the Blexor story.”

  I don’t know why I was surprised. The whole story had been just another lie Kevin told me to try to turn me against Holman. There probably was no Alex Wright.

  “Um, guys, maybe you could have this little argument when you’re dead. Right now, we’ve got to figure out how to get out of here.” Ryan’s biting sarcasm brought us back to the moment.

  “We have nothing to discuss. No code.” Holman’s eyes found mine and held steady there for at least two full seconds. He was trying to tell me something with that look—but I couldn’t figure out what. An apology? Goodbye? You have a little something on your face?

  My heartbeat thundered. This was really happening. This was really how I was going to die. Now that the moment was here, I had no pithy obituary ready in my head. Only fear and shock.

  “Okay, Sherlock,” Gonzalez said. “If this is how you want it, fine. Dickens, do the girl first, then the others. Holman last. Let him watch what he did. Put the gun in Monroe’s dead hand—get the prints on there real good. Not that we’re going to need much proof—but just in case Tackett has to answer any questions.”

  “Are you sure?” Dickens looked scared, like he knew Gonzalez had gone off course. “Maybe we should just take them back to the warehouse and wait for the boss to—”

  “I’m the only boss who matters right now.”

  Holman sat, expressionless, as if sitting in a van awaiting his imminent death was nothing out of the ordinary. I couldn’t decide if it was bravery or Holman’s unique brand of idiosyncrasy that kept him from panicking.

  Ryan started crying. “I want you to know I’ve always loved you, Riley,” he said through tears. “No matter what. It was always you. I need you to know that.” He fought back a sob, and with no hands free to wipe his face, the tears and snot ran down his cheeks. I thought of the baby who would grow up, probably in Sweden, not knowing his father. It was so unfair. Ryan had nothing to do with this and was only taken hostage because of me. A torrent of guilt, shame, sadness, and anger raged inside me.

  I looked at Holman, hoping to catch a glimpse of some emotion from him—sadness, fear, even a shared sense of guilt? As much as I’d involved Ryan in this mess, Will had involved me. Did he feel anything about that? His vacant expression suggested no.

  Kevin seemed barely conscious, as if he was resigned to death, even welcoming it. He wasn’t fighting against his restraints or trying to escape. He just lay there on his side, staring into nothing. I felt a tiny scrap of pity for him in that moment. I could tell he meant it when he said he hadn’t meant to get Jordan killed.

  “Will,” I said urgently, “Do something!”

  Just then we heard a knock on the window.

  CHAPTER 40

  Everyone froze. The knock
came again. Gonzalez nodded to Fitzgerald, who was the closest. The order window was on the side of the truck directly above my head. Fitzgerald leaned over me and opened the window about four inches. He bent his head down. “Yeah?”

  “Yes, I’d like a pollo chimichanga, hold the onions, please.”

  I couldn’t see anything but knew in an instant that it was Dr. H’s voice. I started to scream his name, but Fitzgerald kicked me hard in the stomach with the pointy end of his boot.

  “We’re closed,” he growled.

  “Fitzgerald?” Dr. H asked. “Is that you?”

  “Huh?” Fitzgerald said, leaning down to peer out the window.

  “I didn’t know you worked in the food-service industry!” Dr. H sounded delighted. “Does this mean you’ve decided on a more meritorious career path than stringing old men up by their wrists?”

  “Meri-what?” Fitzgerald tried to slam the window shut, but Dr. H must have shoved something under the screen.

  “I haven’t finished giving you my order yet, young man,” he said with his trademark cheeriness. “I’d also like a number three combo with beef—”

  I was pretty sure Fitzgerald had broken, or at least bruised, several of my ribs. I pushed past the pain and yelled, “Dr. H, evacuate the libra—”

  He kicked me again in the same spot. I cried out in pain.

  “What was that? Not the pollos, I hope!” Dr. H laughed merrily. The pain in my ribs stole my voice, but I silently willed him to run far away.

  “We’re closed,” Fitzgerald said again.

  “If you’re closed, why would you pull into my library?” There was now an edge to Dr. H’s voice.

  Fitzgerald and Dickens looked to Gonzalez. “What do we do?” Dickens whispered, holding his gun down by his side.

  Gonzalez ran a hand through his black hair. “That old man has to go. Get out and pull him in. What’s one more?” He said this like he was adding another item to his to-do list. He really was insane.

  Fitzgerald threw the back of the taco truck open. Bright light streamed into the dark cabin, temporarily blinding us. Without thinking, I took the opportunity to throw myself at Dickens’ exposed ankle and bit down like I was Cujo. He cried out in pain and dropped his gun, but not before kicking me in the cheekbone. I felt the bones in the side of my face crack like an egg.

  Kevin, the only one of us whose hands were not bound, grabbed the gun and swung the barrel around till it pointed directly at Gonzalez’s heart. “You killed her!” he shouted, his hands shaking with rage and fear. He blinked back his tears. “I loved her and you…you—”

  Before he could finish his sentence (or pull the trigger), I heard a voice call from the outside of the van: “DEA—drop the weapon, and put your hands on your head!”

  It was Ajay.

  “I get up every morning at nine and grab for the morning paper. Then I look at the obituary page. If my name’s not on it, I get up.”

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  CHAPTER 41

  A few days later, I stood outside the federal building in Richmond with Ajay—or whatever his name actually was. Holman and I had just been through a lengthy debriefing, and I was still struggling to piece together all that I’d learned since my near-death experience inside the taco truck. I was exhausted not only from the meeting, but also from the pain medicine I was taking for my shattered cheekbone. My left eye was puffed up and red from where the capillaries burst when Dickens’ boot made contact with my face. It hurt, and while I didn’t like taking medicine, I didn’t like being in excruciating pain even more.

  Ajay, who had not been a part of our debriefing, met us after it was over and offered to walk us out of the building. Once we were outside, true to form, Holman said, “I think you two need some time to clear up all the lies you told each other. I’m going to go find a vending machine.”

  We both kind of nervously laughed as he walked away, and then an awkward silence settled around us. He broke it first. “Are you in much pain?” Ajay touched his own face at the same place mine was injured.

  “It looks worse than it feels.” I shrugged, playing the part of the stoic hero.

  “C’mon now.” He arched one of his eyebrows. “Is that full disclosure?”

  I laughed and the tension receded. “Speaking of that,” I said, “Ajay Badal isn’t your real name, is it?”

  Ajay shook his head, the ghost of a guilty smile on his face. “It’s Jaidev Burman. I go by Jay, though.”

  The DEA agents we had spoken to in our debriefing were far more interested in getting information from us than in giving it out, so I knew some of what had happened but not the whole story. From what I was able to piece together so far, Ajay Badal—or rather, Jaidev Burman—was a DEA agent working the case against the Romeros. The Feds had suspected Romero was involved in his uncle’s criminal activity, specifically drug trafficking, for a long time. About four months ago, they started to believe that Tackett was also involved but were having a hard time proving it, because Mateo’s operation was so well insulated. So they decided to send in an undercover agent to gather intelligence locally. Enter Ajay Badal.

  Turns out Jay really was a certified forensic geotechnical scientist, and he really had been teaching classes at Cardwell College, as well as acting as an explosives consultant for the sheriff’s department. That much was true. But he was doing all of that to get into position to either be recruited by Tackett into the organization or to find someone who could inform on him. Jay had tried to connect with Jordan when it became clear she was investigating Tackett’s arrest records. He said his higher-ups had told him to befriend her and see what information he could glean. But he hadn’t been able to learn much before she was killed.

  “I’m sorry I had to lie to you,” Jay said.

  I shook my head to indicate that it was no big deal. “I understand. You were just doing your job.”

  As it happened, his job was not going particularly well until I bumbled onto the scene. More specifically, when I managed to get myself kidnapped by Kevin Monroe.

  “I’m not sure how much they told you in there, but we weren’t even sure Monroe was involved until you’d been taken hostage,” Jay said. “It was our first big break in the case.”

  Holman had the brilliant idea to call Ajay as soon as he found out Gonzalez had Ryan and me in that warehouse. Obviously, Holman had no idea Ajay was DEA, but he’d come up with the crazy idea of strapping the meth to a bomb and thought Ajay could help because of his explosives background. And because of his feelings for me. It was really all just dumb luck. It terrified me to think of what would have happened if Holman hadn’t called Ajay. We’d all probably be dead right now.

  But being who he was, Ajay/Jay didn’t hesitate. He called in his DEA team, seized the meth, set up the dummy bomb with the live timer, and set up the phone—which of course had a tracking device implanted in it, so the DEA was watching our every move. No one counted on Gonzalez going rogue and deciding to kill us all and blow up the library. The plan was for him to let Ryan and me go free, and then Holman would lead them to the meth, where the authorities would be waiting. But when Gonzalez made up his alternate plan, they tracked us to the library and sent Dr. H in to distract our captors long enough to evacuate the library and surround the taco truck.

  “I’m still a little confused on what was really going on. I mean, I get that Gonzalez was selling drugs for Mateo out of the trucks, and Tackett was smoothing their way, but how exactly was Kevin involved?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said, “so that’s interesting. Monroe, as the county prosecutor, was taking money in exchange for not bringing charges against certain people who were arrested for guns or drugs. See, Tackett had a side business selling the weapons collected from evidence on the black market. So when Tackett arrested someone for illegal possession of a firearm or small quantities of meth or oxy, he’d just ‘forget’ to log the evidence, call Monroe, and Monroe would make sure not to file charges, effectively making whatever they conf
iscated disappear without a trace. Then Tackett got to keep the stuff, and Monroe could extort cash payments in exchange for no charges.”

  “So that explains why Jordan had been checking the evidence logs from the sheriff’s department.”

  Jordan had been on the brink of busting open the biggest corruption scandal this town had ever seen. But she’d put her faith in the wrong person. If only she’d gone to Holman instead of Kevin. But knowing what I know about Jordan, I could see why she didn’t. It made perfect sense that she’d go to her boyfriend first, particularly since he was the prosecutor, and going directly to him meant she didn’t have to share any credit for the discovery. The Jordan I’d known was competitive as hell. It was one of her best qualities.

  “So what happens now?” I asked. “The guys inside wouldn’t say much.”

  “Well, it’s early days, but I can promise you that Fausto Gonzalez will be locked up for a long time,” Jay said. “We have him dead to rights. We’re working on getting him to roll over on Mateo.” Jay explained that Mateo, at the top of the food chain, had put into place measures to ensure that his involvement would be difficult to prove. “If we can get Juan Pablo Romero to officially press charges, that would help a lot.”

  “Will he?” I asked. I still found it hard to believe that Mateo’s nephew was an innocent in all of this.

  Jay shook his head. “I doubt it. Family is family. He claims he had no idea what was going on, but my gut is that he chose to look the other way so he could claim plausible deniability. That way, he doesn’t have to implicate his uncle.”

  Two men in gray suits walked past us to enter the building and we fell silent. Jay looked down at his watch. “You look tired, Riley,” he said kindly. “Anything else I can clear up for you before I get back in there?”

  This conversation, while enlightening, hadn’t provided any of the answers I had really wanted from Jay. “Um…” I screwed up my courage and forced myself to ask the one question I hadn’t yet, “are you really married?”

  Jay laughed, his wide smile lighting up his handsome features. “No,” he said. “Some guy named Ajay Badal is, though. When you confronted me at your house that night, I scrambled to make up an excuse that wouldn’t blow my cover.”