Mission Road (18 page)

Madeleine stared at the letter jacket on the security camera. “I hate this room.”

“Your father put you in that treatment facility partly for your own protection,” I guessed. “He was worried what Frankie might do to you.”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t try to please your dad,” I told her. “Don’t try to follow in his footsteps.”

“Who says I am?”

“Walk away. Move. Go out of state. Wouldn’t he let you?”

Madeleine smoothed the quilt over her lap. “You moved to California for a while, right?”

“Yes.”

“Did that work for you—just leaving?”

Direct hit.

“Alex is jockeying to take over the operation,” I said. “Once your dad dies, he’ll either force you to marry him or kill you. He’ll have to.”

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“He as much as admitted it,” I said.

Madeleine stood, steadied herself on the bedpost. “Your friend’s wife, the cop lady—she’s getting better.”

I had to make an effort not to look at the hole in the wall. “Is that what the call was about?”

“The call? No. Her condition is a secret. My dad has strings he can pull. Even with doctors. Well . . . especially with doctors, these days. They’re keeping her sedated to keep an eye on her heart rate, but they’ll probably try to bring her around late tomorrow, maybe Monday.”

“And she’ll tell who shot her.”

Madeleine nodded. “And maybe who shot Frankie.”

“Who else knows this?”

“Just the cops, I guess.”

That didn’t make me feel better, after all the things Maia had told me.

“The lady who was here earlier,” Madeleine said.

“Maia Lee.”

“You two . . . serious?”

I nodded.

Madeleine said, “Oh.”

She picked up her champagne, staggered toward the door.

“That’s who called,” she threw over her shoulder. “She wanted to talk to you. I said you were busy.”

“She must have loved that.”

“She sounded pretty desperate. Guess that’s why she trusted me with the message.”

“What message?”

“‘The news is coming early.’ ”

“That’s it?”

“I thought she meant the news about the police lady in the hospital getting better. But now . . . I’m not sure. She said you needed to meet her as soon as possible. I got the feeling she wanted you out of here—fast.”

I tried to look puzzled instead of scared for my life. I’m not sure I pulled it off. I glanced at the bedroom door behind Madeleine, and wondered, briefly, if she were drunk enough for me to overpower her and make a break for it. Probably she wasn’t.

“Why would your girlfriend want you out of here?” she asked.

“Jealousy,” I speculated. “Because I’m having too much fun.”

Madeleine studied me. “You’re weird.”

“You wouldn’t consider letting Ralph and me out?”

“Another two prisoners running across the lawn in the middle of my dad’s party? I don’t think he’d like that. I delivered the message. That’s my risk for the evening. G’night.”

“Thanks, Madeleine.”

“Hope it works out with you and Maia. Depending on this . . . news.”

She closed the door behind her.

I waited for five seconds, then checked the deadbolt. Blessed be the inebriated. She’d forgotten to relock the door. I was thinking about how to jam it open when I heard Virgil’s voice outside, talking to some other guy.

I stayed still, waited.

The guys were right outside the door. Virgil grumbled something about Madeleine. The other guy laughed.

Neither of them checked the lock.

I could bust out and surprise them, but two against one, me with only a baseball bat and fashionable silk pajamas—I didn’t like the odds. I could take down two men, maybe, but the house was still full of people. Armed people. I wouldn’t get far.

I went back to Frankie’s bed. Ralph was calling my name through the hole in the wall.

“You catch all that?” I asked.

“Most,” he said. “Ana—she’s—”

“Gonna make it, yeah. But the news coming out early—”

“The DNA.” He hesitated. “
Vato,
I was about to tell you before . . . something I gave Maia, from Titus Roe.”

He described the police printout with Maia’s personal information and my address.

Once the news sunk in, I was tempted to put a few more holes in the wall. “Goddamn it.”

“I’m telling you,
vato.
It’s Kelsey.”

I tried to wrap my mind around the idea. It still seemed wrong. But who else? Hernandez? I thought about the lieutenant in his Armani suit and his fatherly smile. It seemed even more unlikely.

Then again, I thought about the client I’d killed a couple of days ago, Allen Vale, the well-dressed physician with the friendly smile and the loaded shotgun.

What had Maia said?
Tres Navarre, impeccable judge of character.

“We gotta get out of here,” I said.

“
Claro.
You got any ideas?”

I told him about my door. “You want to try it?”

A long pause. “Yeah, but wait a few hours. Let the party die down.”

His voice sounded heavy.

It made me realize how tired I was. The long day was catching up with me—too much adrenaline, too much worry. As dangerous as it was to wait, if I tried to pick a fight in my present condition, I’d be committing suicide.

“You’re right,” I said. “A few hours sleep.”

I lay back on Franklin White’s bed and stared at the ceiling.

I told my body to wake me up at 3:00
A.M.
Then we would make our escape. With luck, Ana would be conscious tomorrow. She’d get us all off the hook.

I had a bad feeling in my stomach as I fell asleep. Maybe I knew, even then, how incredibly wrong things would go.

ETCH WAS UP WHEN THE CHURCH BELLS STARTED RINGING.

After thirty years in the neighborhood, he could anticipate St. John’s sunrise service. Every Sunday, he rose before the bells and dressed in coat and tie, though he hadn’t been to mass since Lucia died.

It wasn’t that Etch had stopped believing in God. He just figured the two of them had nothing more to say to each other.

Still, the bells comforted him, the way watching family picnics comforted him when he was riding in a police car. He liked knowing some people could have a normal life.

He chose a brown wool Italian suit, teal shirt, mauve tie, leather loafers. The temperature outside had dropped below freezing. He could tell from the knock in the water pipes, the color of the sky out his window. A Blue Norther had rolled in—a snap of Arctic air that had no business in Texas.

He turned and stared at his empty living room.

He was down to a coffee table and sofa. No television. No knickknacks. No photos.

Over the last year, anticipating retirement, he had slowly pared his possessions down to nothing. Every week, another box went down the street to the church’s donation bin, until his entire life seemed to have dissolved.

Travel had been the idea, originally. Etch told his colleagues he was buying an RV, striking out to see the United States. Except for his college years, and a few business trips here and there to pick up fugitives, Etch had never left San Antonio. He deserved to travel.

The problem was Etch never bought the RV.

He kept just minimizing his possessions without making preparations for anything new. He felt like he was erasing himself, a little at a time, and something about it felt satisfying.

He loaded his nine-millimeter, attached the silencer.

Not many people in San Antonio owned silencers, but Etch had a collection. He enjoyed shooting in the early morning.

The parishioners didn’t want their prayers interrupted. The neighbors didn’t want their dreams punctuated by small arms fire. Etch tried to be sensitive to their wishes.

He loaded a fresh clip. He went out the back door.

Etch’s house sat on a stretch of Basse Road that hadn’t changed much in the last three decades. To the north, the city grew like a cancer, eating up more rural land every year, but here on the West Side, nobody much cared about progress, or strip malls, or adding a Starbucks to every block.

The boulevard was lined with weeds and cactus and scraggly live oaks. The houses on either side were shotgun shacks on huge lots. Etch’s own was a two-bedroom clapboard, painted the color of provolone cheese. It wasn’t really so small, but it looked that way surrounded by fields of spear grass.

In the spring, the back acre would be flooded with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush, but now, in the winter, there was nothing but yellow grass.

Etch’s target range was an old olive Frigidaire, sitting in the field between his house and the church. At least once a week, he opened the refrigerator and loaded it with cans, bottles, boxes, whatever he had left in the pantry. Etch still did grocery shopping, though somehow he never got around to eating much. He liked to shoot the contents of the refrigerator, then hose out the remains.

He worked his first clip. He took out three cans of sardines, blew up a two-liter soda bottle, plugged a few shots into the door and watched the recoil whap it back and forth on its hinges.

He knew he was putting off what he had to do this morning. Eight o’clock already. He had to get going before people started waking up and the hospital shift changed. He had arranged to take over starting at nine. That would give him a good hour before the doctors came in to check on Ana—plenty of time to make his decision.

He imagined Lucia, sitting just behind him. If he looked back, she would be there at the picnic table under the huisache tree. She’d be holding a cup of coffee, wearing her patrol uniform.

You can’t murder my daughter, Etch.

“She betrayed you. She isn’t yours.”

She is,
Lucia said.
You’re not going to win, love.

He feared she was right. He couldn’t carve a victory out of this. He’d been buying time for eighteen years, but if it came down to keeping himself alive or keeping his secrets hidden, he wasn’t sure which he would choose.

Etch checked his gun. One round still chambered.

He thought about Ana lying in her hospital bed, heart monitor bleeping steadily. The more he had tried to love her, help her, see her mother’s qualities in her, the more he hated her.

He remembered a meeting he’d had with Ana, shortly before her mother died.

She’d invited him to coffee. He had gone, feeling a bit uneasy. And irritated.

Ana was twenty-six, just out of college after the Air Force, her first month into the SAPD police academy. By all accounts, she was excelling. There was no doubt she was worthy of her mother’s legacy. There was also little doubt that
Ana
DeLeon wouldn’t be spending her entire career on patrol.

It rankled Etch every time someone said that, as if the work Lucia and he had been doing since Ana was a little girl was meaningless. A job for the unmotivated.

They’d met at the Pig Stand, down the street from Lucia’s. Etch wondered if Ana had picked the spot as some kind of message. Etch hadn’t been there in almost three years. After Frankie’s death, his old routines with Lucia had slowly unraveled. Everything seemed tainted by the night of the murder.

Ana insisted on buying his coffee, as if with the seventy-five cents, she was proving her adulthood, her independence. Etch never paid for anything at the Pig Stand anyway, but he let her put down the money.

She was only a few years younger than Lucia had been when Etch started patrolling with her. Ana had the same glossy black hair, chopped short in a utilitarian wedge. She had the same plum-colored lips, the same challenge in her eyes, though that look that had been draining from Lucia’s eyes over the last few years.

“I’m worried about my mother,” Ana said.

Etch counted to ten before answering, trying to keep his anger inside.

“Maybe you should go see her,” he suggested. “How long has it been?”

In truth, he knew exactly how long. Six and a half months, since the huge fight when Ana had poured all her mother’s liquor into the river behind her house.

Ana set her coffee cup on the counter. “She doesn’t want to see me.”

“You sure? Or do you not want to see her?”

“She’s destroying herself. She won’t talk to me about it. I thought maybe you could—”

“Ana, your mother’s a strong woman.”

“With a great reputation in the department. A real role model. Yeah, Etch. I know. Everybody is so goddamn busy protecting her reputation, they’re not helping
her.
She’s drinking herself to death.”

Mike Flume, the fry cook, was putting orders on the pickup counter, getting a little too close to the conversation. Etch stared at him until the nervous bastard’s freckled red face disappeared back into the kitchen.

Ana sat forward, took Etch’s hands, which made him uncomfortable as hell. “Etch, you’re her best friend. You’ve got to talk to her. Please. Find out what’s wrong.”

“She’s a police officer. She has a lot of stress. You should understand—”

“This isn’t stress. Something’s eating her up from the inside. Something specific. For the last . . . I don’t know . . . couple of years, it’s been getting worse. She needs therapy, or—”

“Therapy?” Etch pulled his hands away. “You think she’s crazy?”

“No. I don’t mean that. But there has to be some reason—”

“I’ll talk to her,” Etch promised. “But Ana, seriously, you need to go see her yourself.”

Ana nodded morosely. Etch knew she had no more intention of seeing her than he did of talking to Lucia about her drinking.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said.

He left her at the Pig Stand counter, cradling her cup and staring out the window, looking so much like Lucia that Etch began dreading the day Ana would wear an SAPD uniform. He hoped the academy trainers were right. He hoped Ana made some plainclothes division in record time. He did not want to see her in the same uniform her mother wore.

Ana had gotten every break Lucia never had. Lucia had sacrificed so much for her, and Ana had made a mockery of that by marrying Arguello.

Not only that—she was proud of it. She was happy. She balanced a family and a career.

Etch and Lucia never got that chance.

He raised his nine, took careful aim.

There would be no winning. But there might be justice, and justice was different than the law. Nobody understood that better than a cop.

Don’t,
Lucia said.
Walk away, Etch.

He shot his last round into the freezer door, opening a hole in the olive green metal at the level of a human forehead.

•                           •                           •

“LIEUTENANT?”

Etch spun, his gun still raised.

Kelsey stood ten feet away, staring down the barrel of the nine. He raised his hands slowly.

Etch lowered the gun.

His face burned. He felt like a damn amateur, getting startled like that.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Kelsey put his hands down. He pointed with his chin toward the target refrigerator. “Fucking major appliances, huh? I got a washing machine I should shoot.”

“Yeah,” Etch said. “It’s therapeutic.”

He was grateful to Kelsey, trying to defuse the situation, but he started to realize how wrong it was for Kelsey to be here.

Kelsey’s eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t changed clothes since last night, which meant he’d never been to sleep. And he had never come to see Etch at home unannounced before, even for the most urgent cases.

Kelsey picked up a clip from the picnic table, turned it in his fingers. “You didn’t answer the front door so I, uh, poked my head into the living room. You moving out, sir?”

“Travel,” Etch said. “Life on the road.”

“Must be nice.” He didn’t meet Etch’s eyes.

Across the field, the sound of the church organ seeped through the stained glass. A recessional hymn. “Joy to the World.”

“Are you going through with the DNA announcement?” Etch asked.

Kelsey exhaled steam. “Public relations signed off on it. The press is already champing at the bit.”

“But?”

“I got some news.”

Etch reloaded his pistol. “About Ana’s condition?”

“About the woman Navarre and Arguello were with yesterday. I think I got an ID on her. She’s Madeleine White.”

For a moment, Etch was too stunned to speak. Then, despite himself, he felt a little impressed. “I’ll be damned.”

“Pretty ballsy,” Kelsey agreed. “But you can appreciate, this changes things.”

“How so?”

“If Navarre and Arguello are working with White, and we make an announcement while they’re under his, uh, protection . . . They won’t last a minute.”

Etch aimed at the refrigerator. He thought about which soda bottle to shoot for. “You ever find Miss Lee?”

“Yeah. I found her.”

Etch shot the Sprite bottle. It ruptured, exploding white foam out the front of the fridge. “And?”

“She let Roe go. She said he was part of a setup. She said the DNA was, too.”

Etch studied him, trying to figure what Kelsey was holding back.

“You see where she’s going,” Etch said. “She’s going to blame you.”

Kelsey’s ears turned red.

“You and Ana have a history,” Etch continued. “So did you and Frankie White. Lee will say you have a motive for the Franklin White murder. It’s bullshit, but she’ll use it.”

Kelsey’s fingers had whitened on the nine-millimeter magazine. “Ana’s on the mend. She’ll tell us the truth.”

“I hope so. Maybe you should wait on the announcement. If Lee shook you up—”

“She didn’t shake me up.”

“All right.”

“It’s just, if Navarre and Arguello are with White—”

“They’re trying to beat you to the punch. You gave them a deadline. Now they’re trying to hand Guy White his son’s killer early. And it sounds like they’ve settled on you as a patsy. But maybe you’re right. God willing, Ana will come around and tell us the truth. Today. Or tomorrow.”

Etch could tell Kelsey was turning now, aiming his anger back in the direction Etch wanted.

“Anything else Lee said?” Etch prodded, his tone full of concern—the fatherly lieutenant, protective of his people’s welfare. “Anything that might put you in a bad light?”

Kelsey licked his lips. “No . . . no, sir.”

“You want to go ahead with the announcement? It’s your call, son.”

The
son
did it.

Kelsey stood a little straighter. He set the clip back on the picnic table. “I’ll go ahead with it. We don’t owe Arguello and Navarre anything. Nothing else we can do.”

•                           •                           •

ETCH STOOD AT HIS WINDOW, WATCHING
the parishioners leave St. John’s. The old married couple who always parked in front of his house were just getting into their car. Every year, they got a little more stooped. The old man’s coat got a little more threadbare and his wife’s hair got bluer. But they were still together. Must be pushing ninety.