Out at Night (28 page)

“CAT?”

“Cargo anti-theft team, FBI—don’t slow my story down, Grace, it’s too long as it is—they’ve been after this gang for almost a year. You take a regular-sized boxcar. Inside, it can pack twelve thousand dollars of merchandise easy, and that’s the low-end. You empty a boxcar carrying—say, computer chips or authentication certificates for a Microsoft Windows program, you’re looking at millions. Pretty good for sixty seconds’ work.”

He shifted on his elbows.

“This gang is so cocky, it actually wears monogrammed face masks with their initials. RD. They’ve even shown up on eBay. Not the gang. Face masks. One guy, sometimes two, runs along the tracks. The trains go slow, coming in and out of the yards, down to about twenty miles an hour, and they’ve timed it so they can get somebody up there with a pair of bolt cutters and—”

“RD.” It sunk in. The backs of her knees felt clammy. “Radical Damage.”

Her uncle nodded. “It’s a sophisticated cartel, Grace. And we’re busting its chops tonight. This is one of their drop spots. We’ve got teams set up to take them all at the same time. It’s money laundering.”

“Through Andrea’s company. Square Pegs.”

“They’ve been using the money to fund eco-terrorism. Paying for safe houses. Guns. Bombs.”

Her stomach felt hollowed out. “Jeanne made an early mistake, that’s all. She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

Her uncle looked at her. Through the night-vision goggles, his eyes looked dark, somber.

“We found the site of the soybean rust spores. Where it was being cultivated.”

Grace dug her fingers into her scalp, massaged her head right along the scalp line, where she could feel the muscles bunched.

“The desert’s a lot more beautiful than I imagined, seeing it this way.” She pressed a knot in the back of her neck and felt a pain dart down her shoulder blade. “Everything all glittery and alive.”

“You know that row of plants she had on that high shelf at her shop? Most of them tulips. But you look behind that row, it’s agars of spore. It’s right there on the shelf. She’s been feeding it for months.”

She wasn’t going to show him how much it hurt. “Cultivating. That’s what they call it.”

“What?”

“Cultivating. Not feeding.”

The rim of the San Jacinto Mountains glowed bright orange, the thinnest of lines, barely there, as if somebody had taken a fine-pointed pen and outlined the edge of the cliffs.

“I don’t believe it.”

“Uh huh. And that’s going to change it. Good luck with that. I was doing some work in St. Paul, Minnesota, when Symbionese Liberation fugitive Kathleen Soliah was arrested driving a minivan on her way to school to watch her daughter get a sports award. Her doctor husband—who’d only known her as Sara Jane Olson in the almost twenty years they’d been married—claimed to be totally shocked—his words—at the arrest. Oh, and get this, besides being known for her cheese and noodle casseroles and hosting African orphans through her church, she had a reputation as a fine actress in Little Theatre—specializing in those high-strung, difficult, and intense characters that are so hard to get right.”

Crossing lights flickered to life; a distance away a train whistle shrilled. Her uncle glanced at her, his mouth expressionless.

“At least I told you. It wasn’t like me, finding out by accident my only daughter’d given birth.”

“She didn’t want me to tell.”

“Works for me.” His voice was crisp. “Cute little guy. Doesn’t look a thing like me or anybody else in the family. Maybe that’s a good thing. Start fresh.”

She was too tired for this; cold and tired and angry. “You don’t know your impact on the people you love, Uncle Pete.”

“I don’t? Well, maybe it’s an inheritable genetic flaw, Grace. Might want to think about that when you’re so busy grading, which seems to be most of the time.”

He inched forward, his head still. Below them, the truck pulled in and parked behind a rusted-out boxcar. Exhaust fumes curled into the sky.

“Stay put.”

She nodded.

“And stop nodding your goddamn head when you poke it around the bush. That’s like a mirror flashing; you want to send up a flare?”

Through her goggles, a man carrying bolt cutters, his body lime green in the light, detached from the boulder where the truck was parked and trotted forward along the tracks. In the distance, she saw the bulky metallic girth of a Union Pacific freight train bearing down.

Everything happened at once. The man’s legs pumped faster as the train slowed. The engine seemed to pass inches from his body, the floodlights illuminating the two dark lines of track. The man lunged for a metal rung on a third boxcar and swung himself up.

Within seconds a wide door slid open and he heaved a sturdy box over the side of the train. It bounced twice and cracked open, scattering what looked like, at that distance, Nintendo PlayStations. Before the second bounce, he’d tossed off three other boxes. The truck hidden behind the boulders rumbled down to the tracks and parked not far from the first box. New boxes continued to bounce off the train like boulders, cracking loose from a mountainside.

The truck idled and two figures burst out the cab doors, scampering to the first box and heaving it into the back of the truck. They ran to the second box and picked it up, their movements synchronized, effortless. The driver was already repositioning the truck at the third drop site.

A boxcar siding slammed open, revealing in Grace’s goggles a crowd of bodies, all wearing guns.

Her uncle rolled to a crouch, slid his gun out, and danced down the hillside, sluicing gravel as he skidded down the hill with what sounded like the cavalry right behind him. Grace covered her head and hoped they could see her through the dust they were raising.

The two crouching over the PlayStations looked up the hill. They were in face masks. One of them raised a gun.

In that instant, the train came to a grinding stop, brakes screaming on metal tracks, boxcars lurching. Another door slammed open. Union Pacific policemen poured out of a boxcar. It looked like one of those telephone booth tricks; they kept coming.

They jumped down, flattened the pair by the box, ripped the driver from the truck, cuffed all three. Somebody’s gun went off and Grace tucked herself into a ball. The small of her back felt clammy.

The man with the bolt cutters didn’t have them anymore. Agents lifted him like cordwood off the train, ankles and wrists cuffed.

Grace sat up. Stretched her back. The sun washed the top of Mount Jacinto in golden light. She took off the goggles and rubbed her eyes.

Daylight was a mix of soft light and gray shadows. She clambered down the hill and found her uncle standing outside the circle of agents, talking on his cell. On the ground lay Tony, Sarah’s husband. Grace resisted the urge to step close to his face with her boot.

He looked blankly up at her, through her. He smiled. It was still a chilling thing. He lay cuffed on the ground, hands behind his back, next to three prisoners still in face masks. An agent squatted and peeled back a mask. Sarah’s curly red hair glinted in the morning light. She spat.

“Pig.”

Her uncle covered his phone with his hand. “Yeah, Grace.” He was distant, his mind on the case.

Two more faces to go. Pete studied the prisoners and in a moment of tired understanding, Grace knew it was because he feared which face would emerge when the last mask was peeled back.

Andrea. Her face looked bruised from the ribbing of the mask. She smiled up at the agents, as if they were old friends.

“Call you right back,” her uncle said into his cell. He snapped it closed, waiting for the last mask to come off.

It was Nate. He grinned, the gap between his front teeth winking with saliva. Grace wondered if grinning was part of the terrorist playbook.

Her uncle exhaled.

“You were afraid it was Stuart.”

“Wait until it’s your turn, Grace. Then we can talk about fears. What do you need?”

“Can we talk? Someplace private.”

He glanced at the busy swarm of agents and Union Pacific policemen. He turned toward the boxcars and motioned her to follow. His shoes crunched the gravel. They passed a dead-bolted boxcar with serial numbers dripping paint into the dirt. They kept walking. Up ahead was the whine of metal slicing metal.

Her uncle stopped at the boxcar that had recently held the crush of Union Pacific policemen and FBI agents. Above the boxcar on the roof, two yard workers squatted down and adjusted a heavy sheet of metal. It clanged down hard on the roof and a drill rattled, the whine of the drill changing as it pierced the metal.

“They’re securing a roof plate. We modified the boxcar for the raid.”

“Where does this boxcar go when it’s not being used for the Ringling Brothers telephone booth trick?”

“No idea. Just know it has to be fixed; schedule to keep.” Pete grabbed hold of the first metal rung and climbed.

She hated heights. She was tired and cranky.

“Wait. It doesn’t have to be that private, our meeting.”

Pete kept climbing. He swung his foot over to the boxcar floor and jumped free of the rungs, settling onto the floor and dangling his feet. Clouds of dirt misted the air. The air rang with the clang of feet on the roof, the drill slicing through metal and popping free, the sharp, swift clamp of a bolt piercing the roof.

“We won’t be interrupted here,” Pete yelled down at her. He checked his watch. “You have three minutes. I suggest you climb fast.”

The front of her jeans and shirt were already filthy from lying in wait on the hillside. She shrugged and started to climb.

The rungs dug into the arches of her shoes. It was like pulling herself up a cliff ladder at Mesa Verde, straight up. A narrow ledge lipped out from the open boxcar and she cautiously stepped onto the ledge, inched over, swung herself free and tumbled inside. Pete shot out a hand and broke her fall. She was facing the interior and a metal ladder welded to the wall.

A bolt pierced the ceiling and Grace heard the sound of a lug nut being clamped down. Boots scraped along the roof and someone grunted. A new bolt was drilled into the ceiling.

The boxcar smelled of rancid grease and old sweat, the suffocating odor of an ancient, unwashed room. Grace settled next to her uncle and looked around. A plastic envelope the size of a file folder had been stapled to the wooden side.

“A bill of lading goes there when the boxcar’s refilled. What do you need?”

From that angle, the boxcar was bigger, the edges harder, the surfaces rougher. It gave her a new respect for the yard workers. The corrugated sliding door was jammed open by a metal bar and Grace took a welcome drink of air.

“Hate to be locked inside here.”

“Exactly why we cut a hole in the roof. Gave our agents another exit. That door slams shut, you could be locked in here for weeks before somebody finds you.”

“I’ll add that to my must-miss list.”

“What do you need?” he repeated.

The sun beat down on the metal. From that perspective, the prisoners flat on the ground were surrounded by a swarm of blue and tan and black uniforms. Grace hadn’t realized before that Homicide Detective Mike Zsloski was going bald.

A metal ridge dug into her thighs and she shifted her weight.

She lowered her voice. “You think Radical Damage is still planning something for tomorrow night?”

“You mean tonight.”

She nodded. Time had melted.

“We got bomb-sniffing dogs in every room of the Convention Center and at the exits, surveillance teams at key checkpoints, and five of the delegates are SWAT agents, plus a portable bio-detection unit in place. We’re sweeping for bacteria, spores, fungi and ninety-five flavors of toxins. Nothing yet. I’ll know more in a couple of hours, once the arrest count comes in, but I think we nipped this one.”

“You don’t need me here anymore, right?”

“Checkout’s noon. Stick around until then, just in case.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry about your friend. None of us are who we say we are, you know?”

“Except you. You told me you were an asshole, and you were right.”

He half smiled.

“Uncle Pete. What you said. About my dad. How you think he was the guy who called CPS on my mom.” Her heart pounded and she felt her face bead with sweat. “Do you think he’s still alive?”

Pete gazed down at the group of agents and policemen and when he turned back, his eyes were sad.

“I need to get back to my tribe, Grace. We’re going to have to fix this one later. I can hook a ride for you to your room, if you want.”

“Just answer me that one thing.” She tried to keep the desperation out of her voice and failed. “You want forgiveness? Tell me. Where’s my Dad? Is he alive?”

“I wish I could say yes,” he said finally. “The truth is, I don’t know.”

___

The sky was turning pink when she returned to her motel. Her emotions careened like small, anxious children herded into a locked room. Her dad.
Daddy. Daddy Daddy I just want my Daddy
, Katie had cried, like a song, a key to a combination, a prayer.

Grace was no closer than when she’d started to earning forgiveness from her child, from Mac. Jeanne’s eyes had been huge and haunted, facing down her past, staring into the cipher of an uncertain future, maybe charged soon with the murder of a teenage girl. The murder of Bartholomew.

Grace needed sleep, but more than that, she needed answers. Absolution.

A man she didn’t know had called her name on his last day alive.

find Grace Descans

As if that were easy.

find Grace Descans

Broken, bewildered, lost.

find Grace Descanso

She took a shower, changed into clean clothes and got in the car.

Chapter 34

“Can you think of any reason why Bartholomew would have asked for me? Anything in his past?”

Grace kept her voice down. They were both in the dim cell, sitting on the hard mattress on the floor, their backs to the camera. The corrections officers hadn’t been happy to see her, but Zsloski had told them to give her whatever she needed.