The Assassin

by Rachel Butler

  “Did you check with Arias to see if he’d referred someone to Dwayne?”

  “Him and me ain’t buddies. We just knew each other in the system. I ain’t had no contact with no one down there since I got out.”

  Why bother? Tony thought. Spradlin had probably known he would be going back before long. “Did Dwayne agree to meet with this guy?”

  “Said he hadn’t decided, and then he didn’t mention it again.”

  Tony gazed into the distance. Odds were pretty good that Mr. Arias didn’t have a clue he’d supposedly put together a joint business venture, though Tony would make a call to McAlester to confirm that. He would bet the elusive Marcell Napier didn’t know anything about the call to Grover, either. Which told him what?

  That the vigilante likely wasn’t a vigilante. He knew who the major players in the drug trade were. Knew who they associated with. Knew names to drop that were likely to inspire some measure of trust.

  Not things an avenging civilian would know. In fact, only two types of people knew that kind of stuff: criminals . . . and cops.

  “So . . . you gonna talk to the DA?” Spradlin asked.

  Tony refocused his gaze on the man. “I said I would. Is there anything else?”

  When Spradlin shook his head, Tony signaled the guard they were through. He left the conference room, retrieved his weapons from the lock box, and returned to his car, where he sat for a moment, making notes of the conversation.

  Criminals and cops. They seemed polar opposites, but in truth they went hand in hand. Without one, there would be no need for the other. Of course cops would know the sort of stuff the vigilante knew—as a rule, cops knew even more about crime and how to commit it than the criminals. But if their killer was a cop . . .

  Jeez, all he’d ever wanted to be was a cop, like his dad, his uncles, and Henry. If he had to start investigating his fellow officers now . . .

  His jaw clenched, he started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. If he had to investigate his fellow officers, he would do it, and if one of them was guilty, he would damn well see that he paid for it. That was his job.

  He grabbed one of the reserved parking spaces in the Civic Center lot and was on the phone to McAlester less than five minutes later. It took a while, but eventually he hung up with the confirmation he’d expected. Juan Arias knew nothing about any business deal or meeting, had never heard of Dwayne Samuels, hadn’t known Spradlin was working for him, and for damn sure never would have sent any business Bucky’s way.

  “So what now?” Simmons asked after Tony filled him in on everything. “Please don’t say we gotta go looking for that car again. We’ve done more knock-and-talks on that alone than I’ve done in the past year on everything else combined.”

  “That’s because you’re lazy, Frankie. Remember, most crimes are solved by the soles . . . the soles of your feet.” Advice from a detective they’d both worked with, now retired.

  “Yeah, well, too bad my feet get dragged along with yours.”

  “Hey, you don’t want to follow up on the car right now, we won’t,” Tony said as they headed out the office door and toward the elevator. “We can go to Lewis McElroy’s funeral instead and stand out in the hot sun for a few hours before we try to interview his mama.”

  “Bullshit. Darnell’s already there. He don’t need our help. Besides, I’ve done enough funerals for a while.”

  They took the elevator to the garage level, where they ran into Henry and one of his deputy chiefs. “How are things going, Detectives?” Henry asked as they stepped off the elevator.

  When Simmons remained uncharacteristically silent, Tony replied, “We’re keeping busy.”

  “I imagine so. If you get too busy, you can probably give up a case or two.”

  Tony forced a smile. “We’ll never be that busy, sir.”

  Forcing a smile of his own, Henry stepped into the elevator where the deputy chief waited.

  Simmons remained silent until they were pulling out of the parking lot. “Chief still wanting to pull you off the Hayes case?”

  Tony grunted.

  “Any other detective currently working nine homicides, in addition to his old cases, would be happy to give one up. Not that it matters to me either way. You want to add to our workload, hey, I’m there. I’m happy to follow wherever you lead. It don’t make me no never-mind. I’m—” Simmons broke off as the radio crackled, dispatching units to a shots-fired call. The address was in north Tulsa. “That sounds familiar. Weren’t we over there just the other day? Doin’ a knock-and-talk or—no, your C.I., ol’ Javier, lives in that area, doesn’t he?”

  Not just in the area, Tony thought grimly as he switched on the siren and the Kojak light, but at that address.

  “Damn,” Simmons muttered. “I hope it didn’t just become ten.”

  When he picked up Selena for dinner that evening, Tony looked as if he’d had one lousy day. He’d commented on the bruise darkening her cheek— Working out again?—and she had lied and said yes, followed by a suggestion that they forget the date, or stay home and order pizza. He’d politely declined, and by the time they’d completed the half-hour drive west to the small town of Cleveland, he’d obviously put his troubles aside, at least for a time.

  She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d expected the place that made the best barbecued pork sandwiches around to look like—a log cabin, maybe, with country decor and an acrid tinge from the smoker out back. The Dari Diner was old-fashioned, all right—a drive-in with a half-dozen parking spaces underneath an awning and hard plastic booths inside to seat maybe thirty.

  “How did you discover this place?” she asked as she slid onto a bench in the corner booth.

  “Cops know all the good places to eat.”

  “All the good out-of-town places?”

  “You bet. There used to be this place in Okmulgee, down south of Tulsa, that had the best hamburgers. When Dad was still in Patrol, sometimes one of the guys would take orders, then drive down and pick them up.”

  “And their supervisors didn’t frown on that?”

  “Only if they got left out.” Stripping his straw, he stuck it into his drink, then wadded the wrapper in a neat ball. “Truthfully, Simmons grew up here. He turned me on to this.”

  “Simmons . . . is he your partner?”

  “We don’t generally work with partners, but when you’ve got nine homicides—” His eyes darkened, his mouth flattening. “Make that ten . . .”

  Ten murders. More people than populated her life on a regular basis. The tenth, she suspected, had happened in the past twenty-four hours and was the reason for his subdued manner.

  “Still no suspects?”

  He made an obnoxious sound. “Only enough to fill a phone book.”

  “How do you go about weeding them out?”

  “You question everybody who might have a reason to want them dead—family, business associates, competitors, enemies. Most of them, of course, don’t like cops, and plenty of them had reasons for wanting these particular guys dead, so they’re not real cooperative. It’s tedious work, and sometimes it gets you nowhere.”

  “If it’s a vigilante—” She broke off when he scowled. “You don’t buy that theory. Why not?”

  “It’s been two months since the first murder, and it’s no harder to buy meth or crack or heroin in Tulsa today than it was before. That means somebody’s picking up the slack, which means somebody’s now supplying the markets that those guys supplied.”

  “And making the money they made.”

  He nodded. “I just don’t think it’s about justice.”

  “The tenth one . . . it happened today?”

  He nodded grimly. “The guy was one of my informants. I think the killer paid him to give me bad information about last week’s triple homicide, and I . . . I let him know I thought he was lying. I don’t know if he went to the killer and told him I was suspicious, or if the guy just figured out on his own that Javier wasn’t credible, but . .
. he was found this afternoon with a bullet in his head.”

  Offering comfort was foreign to Selena, but she made the effort anyway, and found it was surprisingly easy. She covered his hand with hers, gave his fingers a squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He rubbed his thumb back and forth over the sensitive skin between her thumb and forefinger. “I’ve known since Monday that Javier lied, but so much has happened this week that I didn’t find the time to follow up on it. If I had, maybe he wouldn’t be dead.”

  “Or maybe he would have died sooner. He had choices, Tony. He made the wrong one, and it cost him. You can’t take responsibility for that.” Just as she’d made wrong choices and paid for them, starting with stealing from that drunk in Ocho Rios. Giving William her trust, affection, and loyalty. Making excuses for him, remaining blind to the darker aspects of his character, letting him manipulate and threaten her. He couldn’t take all the credit for what she’d become. She was responsible, too, for wanting the wrong things, making the wrong decisions.

  “You look blue. Are you speaking from experience?”

  Before she could answer, the waitress delivered their order. Selena neatly folded back the paper sandwich wrapper, then took a bite. “You’re right. This is the best barbecued pork sandwich I’ve ever had.”

  “Not that you’re a connoisseur of barbecued pork,” he added as he finished squirting out packages of catsup for his fries.

  She admitted as much with a shrug. “Though pork was a mainstay of our diet growing up, barbecue wasn’t. But this is delicious.”

  “What other mainstays did you have?”

  She tore off a piece of bun and nibbled it while considering an answer. Fear, isolation, punishment, abuse—those had all been an everyday part of her first nine years. Confusion. Anger with her mother for not loving and protecting her, and with herself for not being lovable. Bitterness. Bewilderment.

  And the one thing that had seen her through—determination. To survive. To escape to a better life than the one her mother and Rodrigo had denied her.

  When she didn’t respond, Tony asked another question. “What was your life like when you were ten?”

  Better than when I was nine and not as good as when I was fifteen. But that answer would merely lead to more questions she couldn’t answer satisfactorily. “Typical. I was living in Jamaica then, going to school and playing with friends.” She’d been receiving daily lessons in the fine arts of begging, lying, cheating, and stealing, and the friends had been partners in crime or targets. Even then she’d wanted another life so desperately she could hardly bear it.

  “Why did you come to the U.S.?”

  That was an easy lie, one William had come up with fourteen years previously. “My parents died, and my uncle wanted me educated in this country.”

  As he dug into the second of his two sandwiches, Tony studied her. She’d eaten the bulk of her meal and was now just picking at what was left, spending far more time coating the fries in catsup than eating them. Her expression was serene, the lines of her face relaxed, but the look in her eyes . . . She was blue again. Was she thinking about her parents? Or those wrong choices she’d made?

  It would be more polite to let the subject drop, but he didn’t. “How did your parents die?”

  With precise movements, she gathered the sandwich wrapper and dirty napkins, balled them up inside a clean napkin, then squeezed it tightly between her hands. “In a car crash.”

  Not an unusual way to die. When he’d been assigned to Traffic, he’d worked more than his share of fatalities. Most Tulsa drivers were inattentive, otherwise occupied, and drove too fast. “You weren’t with them?”

  That brought her gaze to his. For a long moment, she just looked, as if she might find something in his face to answer the debate going on inside her. Abruptly she shrugged and offered a tight little smile. “No. They sent me to live with someone else when I was nine. I hadn’t seen them since.”

  “Why?”

  “Why hadn’t I seen them?”

  “Why did they send you to live with someone else?”

  Another of those long looks, then . . . “My mother was Puerto Rican. Her husband was also Puerto Rican.”

  And Selena’s father was black. Undeniably, couldn’t pass-her-off-as-anything-else black.

  Seeing the understanding cross his face, she smiled again, a smile that was meant to be cool and unaffected, that in fact was cool and bitter enough to hurt. “Rodrigo, her husband, didn’t like being responsible for another man’s bastard, especially a nigger bastard. Sending me elsewhere was better for everyone.”

  Definitely better for Rodrigo and his wife, and probably better for Selena, though also probably too little, too late. A bigoted son of a bitch could do a hell of a lot of damage to a defenseless kid in nine years, and her mother couldn’t have been any help. Any woman who, when forced to choose between her husband and her little girl, chose the husband, couldn’t have been much of a mother in the first place.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were inadequate, but hell, what else could he offer? Going to Puerto Rico to kick Rodrigo’s sorry ass was out of the question, since the bastard was dead.

  She inhaled, straightening her shoulders, literally shaking off the memories. “It’s in the past,” she said, her tone lighter. “It doesn’t matter.”

  He knew better than that. He’d worked enough child-abuse cases to know that it always mattered.

  And it helped explain her aloofness. When the people closest to you betrayed you, it must seem safer to keep everyone else at a distance. After all, if you never let anyone get close enough to hurt you, then you couldn’t get hurt.

  Too bad the theory didn’t work so well in practice.

  The restaurant door swung open, admitting a large group of laughing teenagers. Taking that as a sign, Tony polished off the last of his sandwich, added his trash to the tray with Selena’s, and followed her to the door. “Are you in a hurry to get home?” he asked as they walked to the ’Vette.

  “No. Not at all.”

  “Good. We’ll take the scenic route back.” He was mostly joking. There wasn’t a whole lot that was scenic between Cleveland and Tulsa. Once you’d seen one rolling hill covered with trees, you’d pretty much seen them all. But he knew a place that was sort of along the way, and it was scenic enough to suit him.

  He took a two-lane road out of town that meandered more or less eastward, passing woods, farms, and pastures, and skirting the edges of Keystone Lake. They didn’t talk much—one of the drawbacks of a convertible—but that was all right. When they got there, they would have all the quiet they could ever need.

  Tony turned off the highway onto a county road for a few miles, then left that for a dirt road that wound through the woods and blocked out the setting sun as thoroughly as turning off a light. After a time, he made one more turn, this time onto a road barely wide enough for one car. Grass grew on either side of the tire ruts and rustled against the underside of the ’Vette.

  They came to a rusted gate, propped open as it had always been and bearing a sign that stated No Trespassing, Hunting, or Fishing.

  He felt Selena’s gaze and glanced her way. “This property belongs to my Uncle John. The whole family has a standing invitation to use it, though the only time the women come is when Uncle Pete brings his RV. Otherwise, it’s just the men and occasionally the kids. We bring sleeping bags, pitch a tent, forgo little things like shaving and showering, eat nothing but sandwiches and chips, and drink nothing but beer.”

  “Sounds . . .” Unable to find the appropriate word, she settled for wrinkling her nose. It expressed a lot for such a delicate little gesture, and made him laugh.

  The lane widened into a clearing about fifty feet from the shore. When he shut off the engine, the quiet seemed to rush over them, then the night noises became noticeable. Insects buzzed, crickets and tree frogs chirped, and a few birds sang. Off in the distance a boat roared past on the lake, and, closer, the water lapped aga
inst the shore.

  He grabbed a jacket from the trunk, then met Selena at the passenger side of the car. She looked out of place, but not uncomfortable. The last woman he’d brought here for a family cookout a few summers ago had spent so much time worrying about bugs and spiders that neither of them had had any fun. Selena didn’t seem at all worried . . . but she did look entirely too well dressed to be wandering around the lake at night.

  He was about to suggest they put off the visit until she was appropriately dressed when she moved away from the car. “Can we walk down to the water?”

  “Sure.”

  The sun was setting, but enough light remained to see the path. It ended at a small beach, built by his dad and uncles when he was a kid and maintained now by the next generation.

  She stepped out of her shoes and, for a moment, just wiggled her toes in the sand that still held the day’s heat. When she started to lower herself to the ground, he stopped her. “You can sit on this.”

  She glanced at the jacket he offered, then sat down with a smile. “You must know some prissy women.”

  “My share.”

  “Well, I’m not one of them.” Drawing her knees up, she wrapped her arms around them and gazed out over the water. “You don’t strike me as the prissy type.”

  “We all make mistakes.” Tossing the jacket aside, he sat down next to her. “Haven’t you ever been suckered by a pretty face or pretty words?”

  She tilted her head to the side to study him. “I can’t imagine the woman who could sucker you.”

  “Hey, I’m a man. Of course I can be suckered.”

  For a long time she did nothing but stare at him. Then she kissed him.

  It wasn’t a tentative, exploring first-kiss sort of kiss. It was hot and hungry and demanding, as if she’d just discovered he had something she needed desperately. She twisted around, sliding her hands into his hair, sliding her tongue into his mouth, and bore him down onto the sand, her breasts pressed into his chest, her body heated and soft against his.

  It took him a moment to react—not his fault, since his swelling cock robbed his brain of the blood needed to function. He caught her wrists and guided her hands down to his chest, then rolled with her, pinning her on the warm sand. Her muscles tightened, as if her natural instinct for self-preservation had kicked in, then he thrust his tongue in her mouth and she relaxed, then stiffened again in an entirely different way.