by Elin Barnes
“I’m a little busy at the moment cleaning up your mess,” Ethan said.
“My mess?” He paced along the line of cars. “My mess? Fuck you. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t killed Malik.”
Ethan didn’t respond, but Blake could hear noises in the background.
“He was the perfect target. This whole mess should have been over by now,” Blake insisted.
“You should have done better research. I would have told you it was a no-go if I’d known Malik had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.” More clinks and clanks came through the phone. “People with abnormally thick hearts don’t do well in stressful situations, especially if it involves the threat of losing body parts.”
“You only needed to threaten him.” Blake started walking between cars again, now faster.
“Your instructions were to make him agree to your proposal. ‘By whatever means necessary’ was the expression you used.” His voice was cold and had a hint of arrogance.
Blake had used that phrase. But he never thought it would get that far. He’d expected Malik to fold relatively easily, but Blake wanted to make sure he would never even consider backing out. So he asked Ethan to make sure to scare Malik so much that noncompliance would never be an option. I guess Ethan accomplished that goalall right, he thought.
“Anything else? Because as I said, I’m rather busy right now,” Ethan said, breaking the long silence.
“I don’t understand what happened last night,” Blake finally said. We had a plan.”
“No, Blake. You had a plan. I had a different one.”
Chapter 43
On the way to Campbell, Saffron listened to the message again. She should tell Darcy. Kill? She should definitely tell Darcy, but kill what? Animals? People? Aislin? What if it really was a bad joke? Leaving that kind of message in the middle of the night was a joke in very bad taste but not unlike something Aislin would do. And the alternative was much worse.
Aislin’s apartment building had two stories, a courtyard, and a small pool. It was high-end and well groomed. Saffron used a fob to get into the complex, then walked up the stairs to the second floor.
The apartment was bright and bathed in the morning sun. The open kitchen was to the left, and the bay windows faced the pool. The velvet sofa was a dark eggplant color that complemented the rich peach walls. Saffron checked the mail. There were several unopened letters, mostly advertisements from high-end stores.
She walked into the kitchen and saw the monthly dry-erase calendar stuck to the fridge. Aislin coded all of her events as “party,” followed by a dash and the time. Saffron understood what it meant.
Focusing on yesterday’s activities, she learned that Aislin had been busy. The party started at 9:00 p.m. Before that she had a haircut appointment, yoga, and one class at Stanford at 10:00 a.m. Saffron looked at the other dates and saw that there were only a few Stanford references here and there. She frowned. Aislin had told her she was enrolled full-time.
Saffron went to the closet and found many designer clothes. She was starting to realize that Aislin was a full-time call girl and a part-time student, not the other way around.
Listening to the voice mail again, now on speaker, the urgency in Aislin’s voice seemed more vivid, more real. Saffron spotted a laptop on the coffee table and opened it, hoping she could access the calendar with details of the event Aislin went to last night. The password screen came up. She entered the name of their childhood dog and she was in.
“Oh, Aislin, haven’t I taught you better?” she said, sighing.
The online calendar had a lot more detail than what was on the fridge. The party was at a house in Los Altos. But she was meeting a “B” at the Z Lounge beforehand. She wrote down the address of the house and called another cab as she walked out, locking the door behind her.
While she waited, she texted her sister just in case she wasn’t listening to her voice mails. “Aislin, I’m freaking out. Call me back ASAP if you’re okay. Otherwise, I’m going to look for you.” She followed with another one: “And if you’re okay, you better tell me now,or I’m seriously going to kill you myself!”
The taxi ride was long—it took over forty-five minutes—and when they got a few streets away, they found a police car blocking the entrance to the street. Saffron’s heart jumped, and all the hairs on her neck stood on end.
“Do you live in this street?” an officer asked Saffron when she rolled the window down.
“No, but—”
“Please move on then,” he said, and turned away.
Saffron asked the driver to let her out a few streets ahead and almost choked when he asked her for $135. That was just plain robbery.
She walked a couple blocks toward the address she had. Another police car with the lights on also blocked the street leading to the house she was trying to get to. She decided to try her luck anyway. As she walked closer, she saw a young and beautiful officer blocking her path. She was frowning, making her look menacing.
“I need to get through,” Saffron said.
“Do you live here?” the officer asked.
“No.” She didn’t want to talk about her sister. She looked up, trying to come up with something, when she saw her car. “I need to pick up my car. It’s that Mini over there.”
The officer turned to check in the direction Saffron was pointing at, and with an exaggerated expression of disbelief she asked, “What’s the license plate?”
“I don’t remember. But you can check the registration.” When the officer didn’t move, she added, “Please, I need my car.”
“Why is your car here?” The policewoman pushed her aviator glasses up her nose.
Saffron was numb. She didn’t want to tell her.
“Please check the registration.” She felt the young woman’s piercing eyes, even though they were behind mirrored glasses.
“Okay, give me the keys.”
She extended her hand, palm up.
Shifting from one foot to another, Saffron said, “I don’t have them, but . . .”
The officer puffed and turned away from her.
Saffron pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Why didn’t I giveDarcy my spare keys? she cursed, wishing she could shove her car keys into the officer’s hand as proof of ownership. She looked back at her car. She could tell the officer she was with Darcy, but she didn’t want him to know she was there—and especially not why she was there.
Chapter 44
Ethan felt disgusting driving his M3 to the VA hospital. He had thought about renting a less flashy car for his weekly visits, but that would have made him feel even worse. Like a phony. Like an asshole.
He took the Summer Road exit off of Highway 280 and then pulled into the farthest parking spot he could find. Ethan left his leather jacket in the car, even though it was cold out. He exhaled and waited to see his breath, but it wasn’t quite that cold.
The building was gray, the windows were small, and the front entrance was drab. It felt like a second-class facility. Ethan thought about the Palo Alto and Menlo Park hospitals, which were much better. As he walked in, he wondered whether vets would be happier there if the place had more color. Maybe it needed a woman’s touch.
This made him think of Belle, the high-end hooker in his hiding place. He hadn’t expected to bring a present home from the mission, but as the saying went, “No plan survives first contact.” So when he saw her he adjusted, as he always did, and brought her home, making her a great addition to his playground.
She was so beautiful. He normally liked them a bit feistier, but her looks made up for it. He wasn’t quite sure what he wanted to do with her. Every time he thought of a toy to use, it felt somehow inadequate, making him move on to another one. Except for his favorite. Yes, the welding torch had been perfect: little tiny blisters decorated her back and thighs in symmetrical patterns. But aside from that, she was still a blank canvas.
The fat receptionist with the hairy mole on her cheek brought h
im back to the present. She had a nice smile, but he didn’t seem to be able to pull his eyes away from the mole. It repulsed him. He’d often thought of asking her why on earth wouldn’t she pluck the hair, or better yet, remove the mole? But he never did.
“Ethan Mitchell, here to see—” he said in lieu of a salutation.
“Manuel Gomez. I remember you,” she said, waving her index finger at him.
He leaned back as if her long red nail could burn him. Was she flirting with him? A rush of nausea reached his throat. He swallowed hard.
“I know the way,” he said, already walking away.
Shaking his head, he told himself to be nicer to her next time. He may need a friend at the VA one of these days.
Ethan had been coming here every week for almost eighteen months. The only exceptions had been when he was out of town on a job or deployed. He knew the place well, especially the smell of decay and disinfectant. He walked by the playroom. As always it was full of people playing games or watching TV. He’d tried bringing Gomez there a few times, but he’d refused. After a while, he’d stopped insisting.
When Ethan reached his friend’s room, he paused and looked at him before going in. The only man he’d ever been afraid of competing against had now withered to almost nothing.
“Hey, buddy, how are you doing today?” he asked after he walked in.
The Marine was lying on his back. Only his head moved to greet him. “Peachy. I’m going to start training for the marathon next week,” Gomez said. There wasn’t a hint of a smile on his face.
“I brought you a beer,” Ethan said, pulling a sweating bottle from his backpack. He twisted the top open and headed toward the bed.
Gomez shook his head.
“Come on, don’t be a prick. You know you want it,” Ethan said. “Even if it’s only to piss the doctors off.”
This brought a tiny smirk on Gomez’s face, and he relented. Ethan put the bottle in the man’s mouth and tilted it until the liquid started pouring in. After a few swallows, he stopped and dried a drop that was rolling down his friend’s cheek.
“Fucking A, man. Why do you keep coming?” Gomez faced the wall, as if that would push Ethan away.
“Because you’re my friend, and I like spending time with you.”
“I’m not your friend. When you saved my life in Kandahar, you stopped being my friend. You need to leave me alone, like you should have left me there.”
“Don’t start with this all over again. We never leave anybody behind—you know that. That’s who we are.”
“Well, you should have left me. If you were really my friend, you should have killed me. Ended my misery. I would have been much happier that way. So fuck you. Take your beer and go fuck yourself. Leave me alone.”
Gomez shut his eyes so hard his forehead furrowed.
Ethan didn’t move. Gomez had this ritual of trying to make him feel like shit before he calmed down enough to have a good time. At first Ethan had wondered if Gomez was right, if he should have let him die there with a bunch of holes in his chest and a bullet lodged between his C2 and C3 vertebrae. He wondered every time he came to see Gomez if it would have been better to end his life instead of letting him live in this hell. But he did what he had to. What his code demanded. So Ethan saved him, and now Gomez hated him for it.
Chapter 45
While Darcy waited for Madison to come to the garage, he kneeled down and checked the body.
“Is this exactly how you found him?” the ME asked from the door.
“I removed the gun, but otherwise, yes.”
Darcy watched while the doctor worked. His movements were slow, as if he were perpetually immersed in a mud bath.
“Which hand had the gun?” the ME asked.
“The right one.”
“Interesting,” he said, checking the palms of both hands.
“Why?”
Madison checked the liver temperature, then the exit wound. The bullet had taken off most of the back of the victim’s head.
“What is it?” Darcy insisted.
“I will have to verify this when I get to the morgue, but my preliminary assessment is that the entry wound is not consistent with suicide.”
“How so?”
Madison extended his index and thumb fingers, pointed at himself, then opened his mouth as if he were going to shoot himself. Darcy nodded, indicating that he was following.
“When you shoot yourself, the barrel is typically angled slightly upward, so normally the upper part of the head is what gets blown off. When it’s another person pulling the trigger, the angle is much smaller. The bullet travels more horizontal to the ground.” After taking a short breath, he added, “Also, depending on whether you are left-handed or right-handed, there is a slight angle toward the opposite side. Furthermore, this man was left-handed, and yet the gun was in his right hand.”
Darcy thought about this and looked at the vic on the floor. “The watch is on his right wrist . . .”
“Yes. Though this is not always an indication, he also has a smidge of ink on his left index finger, probably from a fountain pen.”
Darcy looked at him. The ME didn’t even look smug while he talked.
“Of course,” the doctor went on, picking up where he’d left of, “if the shooter is shorter or taller, or if the victim is sitting or standing, that will make a difference in the angle of the bullet trajectory. That’s why I need to get the body to the morgue and perform some tests.”
Darcy nodded. He was disappointed. For a second he hoped this might be a murder-suicide that could be closed fast so he could go back to the bank case. He was responsible for what had happened to Jon, and he wanted to be the one bringing the assholes who almost killed him to justice.
He watched as Madison placed the Sig P226 in an evidence bag. “This may have been the gun used on the African American woman found in the other room,” he said as he was sealing it.
Rachel came in and started taking pictures. Besides the spatter from the shot, the rest of the blood had accumulated in a pool around the body. The vic had been sitting on the floor when he was killed, with his back against the wall.
When she was done taking photos of the body, she moved on to photograph everything else in the garage.
“I don’t get it.” Darcy was sweeping the floor with his Maglite on the opposite side of the garage.
“This is the eleventh victim. There may be more,” Rachel said.
“I don’t buy this staging. Somebody came in and did a number here and then tried to frame this guy but was so sloppy about it that it took Madison about thirty seconds to determine that it was not a suicide?” Darcy kneeled down to reach for the shell casing underneath the car. “Maybe the perp did this on purpose. Or maybe—”
Rachel stopped taking pictures for a second and turned to face him. “Do you always theorize out loud?”
Darcy laughed. “Sometimes. It helps me think. By the way, I found a shell casing. It’s another .40, so that’s consistent with all of the other casings. The triaging will have to tell if there are more guns.”
“We found a Beretta too,” she said.
“Was it tossed?”
“Not really. They found it under a side table in the living room,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.
After they had gone through the entire garage, Darcy said good-bye and headed out. He wanted to check with the officers to see if the canvas had turned up anything at all.
Outside the house’s fence, he spotted Diaz, the sergeant in charge. “Anything?”
“I never know if these rich people don’t talk because they really don’t know anything or because they all keep each other’s secrets.”
“That good?”
“Yeah, that good.” Diaz did a sweep, looking for someone. “Brier,” he called out. When the young officer came over, he asked, “You got something?”
“I don’t know, maybe. The people in the house over there.” He pointed to an even bigger house hidden by ta
ll trees and a brick fence. “Mrs. Hollister is not very fond of the neighbors. She told me that they host these parties every couple months. That normally they are frequented by influential people from the Valley.”
“Influential as in politicians, or influential as in venture capitalists?”
“Both, from what she was saying. But she had nothing more.”
Darcy wrote down her contact information and thanked both. “Email me the yellow sheets when you’re done,” he told Diaz before he walked away.
“You got it. I’ll collect the interview notes from everybody else.”
Darcy pulled out his phone. “Sis, I have a question for you.”
“Is it about the big case on Almond Avenue?”
“News travel fast.” Having a sister married to the Santa Clara sheriff had its perks. Sometimes. “Do you know anything about a Carlos de la Rosa and his parties?”
There was silence. After what seemed too long for her to be swallowing, he asked, “You still there?”
“Yes, I know about them.”
“Have you participated in these parties?” he teased her. Then hoped her answer was no.
“No. But I have friends who have.”
“‘No’ as in ‘no, never,’ or as in ‘I don’t want to tell you’?”
“Don’t be cute. ‘No’ as in never. But there are prominent people in the Valley who do attend.”
“So I heard. De la Rosa’s gone. You think he could have done this?”
“I don’t know him personally.”
“Anything helpful you can actually offer?”
There was silence again.
“Darcy, this is going to be really big. There’re a lot of eyes on this already, and I’m not talking about the media.” She sighed audibly for a long time. “Don’t screw up.”
“Jesus, really?” he asked.
“I’m sorry that’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, no? Then what did you mean? I’m more than a little tired of your husband’s constant worry that I’m going to give him a bad name.”
He hung up. Darcy put the phone in his jacket and felt it vibrate with an incoming call. He ignored it. He walked to Saffron’s car and when he was within a few feet clicked the fob to unlock the door.
