“Probably an assault rifle. It’s a high-muzzle velocity weapon.” When I stood there, open-mouthed, he added. “It causes major damage. Obviously.”
The soccer ball bounced off a knee and skittered out of bounds as Levi moved past me toward the man, his footsteps weighted with dread. Back in play, the ball propelled toward the net, only to be swallowed and spit out by the goalie’s frantic hands.
“There are two,” Levi said.
“Two guns?”
“No.” The ball rested on the turf, waiting, accepting its fate like me. “Two men.” Surprise compelled me to look, but Levi’s back shielded me from the worst of it. Only the man’s splayed legs, his feet bare. The blood spatter that could’ve been paint if I didn’t know it wasn’t. I noticed it now in the television’s glow—a fine spray, up the drywall like mice footprints. “And Sam … ” He paused for a heartbeat, and I prepared myself. “They both have tattoos. They’re EME. It looks like somebody surprised them.”
While Levi busied his hands, rifling through a backpack propped in the corner, I sank against the drab wall behind me, wishing I could blend into it. Disappear. “What does Rodney Taylor have to do with the EME?”
Levi turned around, his face drained to a sickly color, the hue of chalk and revulsion. “One guess,” he answered, presenting me with a brick-shaped package covered in brown paper and plastic. “There’s more where this came from. At least five kilos.”
“Drugs?”
“That’s their thing. The Mexican Mafia controls most of the drug trade in and out of prison.”
I took the package in my hand, felt the weight of it. It seemed innocent enough. But I imagined a dark heart pulsing underneath the ordinary wrapping, and I couldn’t wait to be rid of it. Like it might bite if I held it long enough. I tossed it onto a small wooden table in front of the nearest cot. “It smells like … ”
“Coffee.” Levi finished my thought. “They package it that way for transport. In coffee grinds, detergent, cheese. Anything to throw the dogs off the scent.” Before he stood up, he swiped a blanket from the floor and covered the dead men. For me, I thought. Then he motioned me to fall behind him as we headed back toward the door.
“Are you ready?” he asked. I wasn’t. Not at all. But I nodded. Two more buildings, I told myself, and inside one of them, my mother. She had to be. And that comforted and terrified me all at once.
“What about the gun?” I asked.
“Not here.” Out there, then. Levi turned the handle. His boots crunched the grass. I found his freckle and followed.
december 24, 1996
Briggs pointed across the yard, puffing his chest the way he always did when he thought he was being helpful. “That’s him. Raul Torres. They call him el Oso—the Bear. Want me to wave him over for you?”
Torres moved like a bear on the handball court, slow but fierce, his paw strikes packing a wallop on the small blue ball. He carried all his weight in his stomach. It extended past his shoes and shifted when he moved. The rest of him was dense, muscles wound tight as rope. Winnie the Pooh on steroids, Clare thought. “No, I’ll catch him later.”
“Are you sure he requested a psych? Doesn’t seem like the chatty type.”
“Fitzpatrick told me he put in a request. But I’ll double-check before I call him in.” She marveled at the ease of her deception. Clare could be a good liar when her life was at stake. “Does he speak English?”
“As well as you and me when it suits him.” Stern-faced, Briggs guided her off the yard onto the dirt path at its perimeter. “Be careful, Clare. He’s hardcore NF. They’ve never been able to prove it, but he’s probably a shot caller. You know what that is, right?”
She rolled her eyes and laid on the sarcasm. “Yes, Sergeant Briggs. I’m familiar with the term.”
He scanned the yard for onlookers. Finding no one of importance, he tapped her butt with a flick of his wrist. “Careful, Doctor. Insubordination will get you called into my office.”
“I hope so.” She elbowed him playfully in the side, seeing the panic in his eyes one second too late. Bonner greeted them both with a gotcha smirk.
“Good morning, Dr. Keely, Sergeant Briggs. You two sure have gotten friendly.”
“Yes, sir.” Briggs fell right in line like a good soldier. “Sorry, sir.”
“J. D. is awfully fond of you, Doc. In fact, he made a special appointment with me just to talk about you and your little problem with the Board of Psychology. Seems you’ve made quite an impression on a lot of menfolk around here.”
Clare fought the urge to slap him senseless. She bit the side of her tongue to distract herself. Now was not the time to be blunt. “Not intentionally.”
“Of course.” He patted Briggs on the shoulder, making him look about five years old. “J. D.’s always been a sucker for a pretty face.”
“And a sharp mind,” Briggs added, with a little too much enthusiasm. “Clare … uh, Dr. Keely, is the whole package.” El paquete. Only this package—her—was full-on Unabomber. And she delighted in the knowing, even more in their not knowing, that she was rigging an explosion.
****
Clare studied Raul Torres’ face with the dispassionate calm of a practiced surgeon preparing for the one-thousandth incision. The fear in her belly simmered at a low burn.
She felt it.
Acknowledged it.
Ignored it.
She could do that now. Because fear is like pain, she thought. The scars build up thick like calluses, until a cut that would bring anybody else to their knees ached like nothing more than a sore tooth.
“We both know you’re not here for therapy.” She spoke first. That seemed important with a guy like this.
The Bear shifted forward in his chair, leaning toward her desk, one elbow on each knee, his tattooed hands nearly resting on his oversized stomach. “No sé ingles, Doctor.”
“That’s not what I heard. You speak English just fine.” Torres shrugged one shoulder, almost bored. But his eyes followed her with purpose. And he’d come here voluntarily when she summoned him from South Block. A curious bear, that’s what he was. Sniffing the air, trying to decide whether the sweet taste of honey justified the long climb up the tree. “Mr. Torres, I have a proposition for you.” A slight raise of the eyebrows confirmed her suspicion.
“Proposición?” He sat back and stretched his legs, leering at her. The tip of his tongue lingered on his lips, then circled his mouth, wetting them. A sound came from the back of his throat—thick and guttural—halfway between hunger and desire.
“Not that kind of proposition.” Clare listened to her voice. Steady. Sure. Convincing, even to herself. “I have something you want more than that.” She paused to meet his eyes, round and cold as marbles, and didn’t look away. “El paquete.”
The Bear didn’t startle easily. He didn’t jump to his feet or cry out or shake her until her spine cracked—the way she imagined Rodney Taylor would’ve reacted to the word pregnant had she ever dared to speak it. Not that Raul Torres wasn’t capable of violence. Those hands were most certainly as red as Cullen’s. As red as her own. But he took a measured approach. And even so, that word leveled him. Clare knew it. His deception wasn’t as necessary as hers, and his face gave it all away. The muscles in his jaw, buried somewhere under those thick jowls, tensed. His forehead creased ever so slightly. And for an instant, just that one, he stopped breathing.
“If you don’t want to lose it—whatever it is—to the EME, I suggest you hear me out. You can have your cake plus the icing on top. And it tastes a lot like revenge. Sweet revenge.” However bittersweet, however poisonous, there were few things so irresistible. Clare knew that firsthand.
Silence squatted in the space between them, tricky and tense. A staring contest, and Clare wouldn’t lose. Finally, the Bear stood up and considered the door, then her. “No sé ingles,” he r
epeated with less conviction.
“Mierda,” she snapped back. Bullshit. The rowdy boys in the back of Señora Costilla’s class had taught her that one. “This is a one-time offer. Are you interested or not?”
His hand swallowed the doorknob and started to turn. Clare’s skin prickled with panic. She had figured him wrong. All wrong. I blew it, she thought. Not even beginning to contemplate what that meant. For her. For Cullen. For her plan to save them both.
“Posiblemente.” From where she sat, possibly sounded a lot like yes.
****
The first week of grad school Clare’s clinical psych professor had passed out sheets of paper and asked them to draw a house. Clare practically groaned out loud at exactly the kind of mumbo jumbo she’d promised herself she’d never do. While everyone else including the boy-next-door-type to her right—Neal, she found out later—pored over their work, she’d sketched hers as quickly as possible.
“Lots of openings,” Neal had whispered across the aisle as she ran her finger over the spacious picture window she’d drawn, the oversized door left ajar, the paned opening in the attic. “Interesting.” In that pointed way that really meant weird. Later, back in her apartment, she’d thumbed through her textbook searching for the interpretation. The deep significance of her scribbled pencil strokes. Strong desire to engage others. Neediness. Possible boundary issues.
Clare laid her cheek against Cullen’s bare chest and thought of that house. The wind would whip through it from end to end, the rain coming as it pleased. Strangers would too. The sort of people no one else would invite in. Vagrants. They’d sit at her table, put their grimy hands all over her things. Clare’s house had so many openings, there was no room left for her.
“You’re being quiet.” Cullen’s breath tickled her hair, stirring up a heady mix of leftover lust and unease.
“Just thinking.” Of course she was. How could she not be? Though neither of them had mentioned it yet. Too busy undoing buttons, pressing mouth to skin, body to body. Every time with Cullen it felt hurried, like making up for something. “Ruminating, I guess.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Am I crazy?” she asked him. “Do you think this is crazy? Us?”
When Cullen laughed, sea-blue eyes crinkling, everything else about him faded to wallpaper. And the laundry closet felt more like home than any place she’d ever been. He gestured to himself. “Crazy patient, remember? Are you sure I’m the right one to answer those questions?”
“No, but I want you to anyway.”
He sat up against the wall, leaving her cold beneath the thin blanket. “Sometimes people are drawn to each other, Clare. Like you and me. It’s not crazy. It just is. You can fight it … and lose. Or you can ride the wave.”
“I think I might love you.” It had been so long since she’d said it to Neal, it sounded strange. Her voice a child’s, she couched the words in uncertainty just in case.
“Don’t say that. Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I do mean it.” Whatever it meant.
She heard his breath catch the way she gasped when Neal gave her that ruby. Face-to-face with something she wanted and didn’t want all at the same time. Cullen didn’t say it back, but he touched her cheek with tenderness. “What’re we going to do?”
A loaded question. Clare chose the simplest answer. “Ramirez wants you here on Saturday at 7 p.m.”
Cullen gave a solemn nod. “It must be a cover for something. A distraction, you know? If all the guards come running, they won’t be there. Wherever there is.”
“The kitchen,” she said, certain now. “El paquete. I overheard Bonner telling Torres about a package, a delivery on Saturday.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He sounded more hurt than angry, and Clare winced at the thought of disappointing him.
“I guess I didn’t think it was important.”
He frowned as if he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t say so. “That’s why Ramirez wanted those keys. That SOB. is planning to steal it right out from under them while I’m bleeding to death on this floor.”
“Steal what?”
“Drugs. A shitload of drugs. There’s nothing else it could be. Un-fucking-believable.”
Clare felt Cullen warming beside her, as if his belly had filled with glowing coals. Each word spit from a fire of rage. She turned his face toward her and kissed him, half-surprised when his lips didn’t sear her own. “I have a plan,” she said, but it didn’t soothe him the way she expected. Flames—sudden and intense—lit behind his eyes like they’d been there all along, simmering.
She held herself as still as she could against him, trying not to be afraid. Why should she be? He wasn’t upset with her. But she saw Rodney Taylor. She heard him too. You ungrateful little slut. I should’ve done this a long time ago.
Clare did the only thing she could do. Play offense. She slipped her hand beneath the blanket and pulled his mouth onto hers.
“Stop. Clare, stop.” Cullen held her by the wrists, then moved away from her, releasing. The empty space between them felt brutal. He reached his hand across it and brushed her hair back from her face. “I’m sorry. You just seemed … out of it.” She wanted to explain, but it seemed impossible. Impossible to say out loud. Impossible that he already knew. So she turned away. “So what’s your plan, Doc?” he asked finally.
He wanted her to smile. And she wanted to feel relieved, but she didn’t. She kept her gaze on the door, not because she worried about being discovered. She’d left that line in her rearview mirror. She just couldn’t look at him and tell him. It felt too raw, too desperate. Like he’d blown all the walls of her house down, obliterating all the intruders with one gust. And it was just her at the table now. All that was left was to wait for him to come inside.
“I want to help you escape.”
“Why?”
She hadn’t expected that. The how, she knew. The when, the where to. But the why stretched out as blank as that sheet of paper before she gave herself up on it without meaning to. Neal had seen right through her and her house drawing, before she’d even gotten his name. “I don’t know, but I’m going with you.”
chapter
twenty-seven
game show
I felt like a game-show contestant, sidling up next to Levi as he unlocked the second metal building with the key he’d pilfered from the lockbox. What’s behind door number two?
Biting cold air. That’s the first thing I noticed after he cracked the door. “It’s freezing,” I whispered, following Levi’s finger to a portable air-conditioning unit, humming just inside the threshold. The dark was the second. It cloaked the whole room. Even with the sunlight streaming in, the color stayed a muted shade of gray. Like the sky in winter.
The best part about door number two—no dead bodies. Only wooden crates. Rows of them and a rusted file cabinet at the back.
“I have a feeling I know what’s in here.” Levi slid the top off the closest crate, the potent smell reaching me before he could say it. “Coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.”
“Does that mean … ?”
“Only one way to find out.” He plunged his hand elbow-deep inside the grounds and fished out another brick-shaped package like the one we’d found.
“If this guy, Rodney, was a drug kingpin, why is this place such a dump?”
Levi didn’t answer right away. He split the rows of crates, heading toward the file cabinet with intention. He pulled on the first drawer. It didn’t budge. “I think it’s intentional,” he answered. “He didn’t want to attract too much attention.” He yanked again to no avail. “Come help me turn this thing over.”
The file cabinet reminded me of one I’d seen in Bellwether High’s administrative office. The paint was chipped and faded, its brass handles dulled, the corners corroded with age and neglect. Heavy, but frail someho
w. Like a tired old cow put out to pasture. We flipped it over and Levi examined the bottom. “Can you open it?” I asked.
He nodded. “See that hole. Once I push on it … ” He slid his finger inside. “ … and raise the catch … ” I heard a promising click. “ … the drawers should open.”
“Is there anything you don’t know how to break into?” He smirked as he fumbled through the file folders. “It’s a little unnerving, Officer.”
“Unnerving or indispensable?”
I shook my head at him. “Both, I suppose.”
Levi plucked a paper from the innards of the cabinet. “Take a look at this. Rodney Taylor was no struggling businessman.” The sheet had a bank logo at the top and a list of deposits and withdrawals. Mostly deposits. Mostly cash. And a lot of it. Roughly a hundred thousand dollars a week.
“Holy cow. Do you think my mom … was she in on it?” I waited for Levi to say yes. Nothing surprised me anymore.
“I doubt it. But who knows?” At least he was honest.
“What’s that?” I asked, peering over his shoulder into the open mouth of the drawer. The tab read Classified.
“We’ve gotta go, Sam.” He shut it, expecting me to follow.
“I know, but … ” He made it halfway to the door when I’d opened the folder, spreading its contents on top of the crate. I’d been wrong. This surprised me. Shocked me, even. “Levi? You might want to take a look.”
“Sam, seriously.”
“Fine. But don’t you think it’s a little strange for a trucking company to have classified FBI documents laying around?”
I held the cover page up to him, watching his eyes scan it and get wide.
Operation Candy Man: FBI Multijurisdictional Task Force
Mission: To stop the illegal transport of narcotics from Mexico to California
Special Agent in Charge: Katherine McKinnon, San Francisco
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 28
