The Dirty Secrets Club (11 page)

So he'd been breathing smoke before he died. "And the other?"

He glanced at nearby tables. None of the other customers was listening, but he lowered his voice.

"Burned beyond recognition. His body was half buried under debris, still smoking."

"Pugilistic position?" she said.

"Yes."

Burnt corpses often curl into a boxer's pose, with arms and fists tucked under the chin. It doesn't mean the victim had retreated in pain to a fetal position. The heat of the fire dehydrates the body's muscles and causes them to contract, often after death.

Quintana looked at the train tracks, and then at her. He had stopped looking at his food.

"I've seen choppers that were downed by enemy fire. They'd burned, the crew was injured or dead from blast wounds and shrapnel—" His voice stayed steady, but he seemed to be growing ever more still. "I know what various catastrophic wounds look like."

PJs were trained paramedics, experienced at performing triage and minor surgery in the field. She let him talk his way to the issue. A man at the next table eyed him.

"But it didn't take a medic to see what had happened on the boat. The fire didn't kill either of them."

"Smoke inhalation?"

"Smoke exhalation, maybe."

She gave him a quizzical look.

"From the shotgun," he said. "The one that blew their heads off."

10

" They were shot to death?" Jo said.

Quintana eyed her carefully, as though framing his words to protect her from them. Or to protect himself from the memory.

"Blood and brain matter was sprayed all over the cabin wall. The shotgun was propped on one guy's lap, with the barrel jammed under his chin."

"And the other man?"

"Side of the head, close range."

It sounded like a classic example of murder-suicide. "You're sure?"

"The shotgun was a twelve gauge. Ever seen
Terminator
2?"

The man at the next table stood up. "That's it." He grabbed his plate. "What's wrong with you people? You have any idea about how to behave around folks who aren't body snatchers?"

He stalked off in disgust. Abashed, Jo gave Quintana an
oops
expression. He raised a hand, chagrined, and called, "Sorry." The man kept going.

Quintana put a hand to his chest and feigned hurt feelings. "I don't snatch bodies. I return them, almost always. And you only excavate their brains."

"And not even with a shovel," she said.

He smiled, but only briefly. She set down her fork. She wasn't hungry anymore.

The burning boat: two men, two blasts to the head. Paired deaths, Lieutenant Tang had called them.

Could it be anything besides murder-suicide? Double suicide, or perhaps double murder? Could the boat have been boarded by attackers? Had somebody else killed Maki and William Willets and staged it to look like a lovers' death pact?

She took out her notebook and a pen. "What did he look like—the man holding the shotgun on his lap?"

Quintana raised an eyebrow.

"Aside from dead," she said.

"Forties, East Asian. Shaved head, what was left of it."

Maki. That suggested the fashion designer had shot Willets, then himself.

"Did you see anything else onboard—anything that could help explain what happened?" she said.

"Saw it, smelled it, felt the heat."

"Of what?"

"Gasoline."

"From the fuel tank?"

"Everywhere. On the deck, in the cabin."

"Arson?" She wondered if Maki had shot Willets, set the boat on fire, and then ended his own life. "You think the gasoline was used as an accelerant?"

"And more. I think somebody was playing a game."

"What?" she said.

"We got off the boat, and fast. We couldn't help the victims, and it was clearly a crime scene. We checked that nobody else was aboard, then swam clear and the Pave Hawk hauled us out."

His eyes were sharp, with the black gleam of arrowheads. "Smoke was billowing from the boat, but the downwash from our rotors blew it away and made the flames kick up again. I looked down and saw it. On the deck of the boat. A word had been written in gasoline and ignited."

She seemed to feel a sharp finger scrape down her spine. "What word?"

"Pray."

She felt clammy.
Pray.
It hit such a wrong note that she could practically hear it, low and nauseating. And then the sound turned real. It rolled under her thoughts and shifted the concrete beneath her feet.

Her drink hopped. The picnic table slid sideways.

"Gabe."

The table jerked back the other way. The corrugated roof began chattering.

She jumped to her feet. So did he. The roof flexed and bounced on the poles, keening as if in fright. She grabbed his arm and pulled him with her as she moved. Zero to outside, outside
now,
in two seconds. Into the sun, toward the parking lot, away from roofs, walls, power lines. The ground spasmed, back, forth.

"Jo. Whoa. Slow down."

His arm was around her shoulder. He pulled her to a stop in the parking lot. She felt her fingers digging into his forearm, but couldn't get them to let go.

"Ride it out," he said. "We're okay."

On the street, cars pulled to the curb. Telephone poles swayed. Phone lines and electrical cables swung back and forth as if playing a giant's game of double Dutch.

She planted her feet wide, ground-surfing. Under the sawblade moan of the corrugated roof, glass crashed to the concrete and shattered.

As quickly as it had started it faded away, until they were left standing tight against each other, holding their breath.

"Four pointer, max," she said.

The quake had been nothing but a baby. At the taqueria the other customers crawled out from under their tables. A young cook tentatively peeped over the counter.

"You don't go for duck and cover?" Gabe said.

Standard procedure was to dive under a table, or plant yourself in a doorway. Don't run outside, where falling masonry might kill you. But there were no bricks here, nothing to come down on top of them.

"Claustrophobia. I count on it as a self-preservation instinct," she said. "Experience."

"You'll have to tell me about your experience sometime."

Her experience was that catastrophe can happen, and to you. Reacting immediately when it hits puts you halfway to getting out alive.

"You can let go of my arm any time you want," he said.

"Oh." She forced her fingers to release him.

He took out his cell phone and hit a speed-dial number. Jo brushed her hair off her face. Adrenaline had flooded her system. She seemed to feel each air molecule that brushed her skin. And seemed to feel Gabe's arm around her shoulder, warm and solid, though he had stepped away.

He left a message on the phone. "Sophie, I'm okay. Just making sure you are. Text me," he said. "Love you. See you at home." He hung up. "Listen, I should head back to Moffett in case they need me.

"Of course." Why didn't she like hearing that? Why did her face feel so hot?

He stilled, looking at her with concern, and put a hand on her arm. "You all right?"

"I'm rockin'. Stick a quarter in the jukebox and let's shake, rattle, and roll." She smiled ruefully. "I'm fine. But before you go—are you sure about the word you saw burning on the deck of the boat?"

"Sure as God made Sikorsky helicopters. P-r-a-y. I study the subject, so I'm positive."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm in the doctoral program at USE Theology."

"You?"

His mouth skewed to one side. "You mean, a killer like me? Hombre jumps out of planes with an M16 strapped to his back?"

"No. I mean—" Crap. What did she mean?

He smiled. "My daughter's living with me. It's just the two of us, so I want to be in town and on the ground." He got out his wallet and handed Jo a snapshot. "Sophie."

She was about nine years old, with hair the color of Hershey's Kisses and a smile that showed missing teeth. Her eyes were bright but shy.

"She's awesome." She handed the photo back. "I didn't know you had a daughter."

He slipped it into his wallet. "Like I didn't know you were going to go into forensic work." He paused, and his voice quieted. "You miss working in the ER?"

That's not what I miss.

The words were close enough to taste, and she bit them back. "No. This is what I want to be doing."

He put on his sunglasses and shoved his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He paused another long moment.

"How are you?" he said.

In the crisp October sunlight, his black shirt seemed a hot void in front of her. She watched the rise and fall of his chest. For an overwhelming moment, she wanted to lay her head against his shoulder and whisper the truth. What did she miss? Waking up every morning next to a man she loved.

But her husband was dead, and neither prayer nor the firepower of the Air National Guard could bring him back.

"I'm good. I just miss Daniel like hell."

She smiled and waved good-bye.

T
he network is busy; try again later.
The phone lines had gone schizo. Like always—shake the ground, people panic. The dial tone turns into
circuits freaking.

Irked, Perry snapped the tiny phone shut and glanced at the walls. He saw no damage. Nothing on his desk had spilled or broken. The bay was a few yards away, but he didn't hear waves lapping. Nobody was going to surf a tsunami through the building and sweep them all away.

The door was closed. Voices passed along the corridor outside. He eyed the door tensely, willing them to move out of earshot. He had only a five-minute window to contact Skunk. The voices faded and he flipped the phone open again. Redialed.

Ringing, finally.

"Boss?" Skunk said.

Perry pressed the voice synthesizer to his throat. He kept the volume low, so that the flat buzz wouldn't carry.

"The names. Did Harding give them up?"

He was owed. Harding and her playmates owed him. But he would never get what was due to him unless he discovered all their names. Harding had known—he was convinced of it—but she played things close to the vest. Prosecutors held on to information like it was gold—evidence, witnesses, everything.

"Skunk?" he said.

The line crackled. "We got a problem. Harding took out two people in the airport shuttle van, but Angelika Meyer's alive."

He closed his eyes and sat down. "How did that happen?"

Skunk paused, almost like he had fumbled his voice, maybe along with his balls, into the backseat of that outrageous Cadillac. Having Skunk frightened of him was a good thing. Having Skunk cringe like a small mammal was not. Perry needed information and he couldn't linger on the phone. Time was short.

"All I can think," Skunk said, "is that Harding was trying to protect the club. Hush-hush, keep these people out of the limelight—"

"But we're going to find them."

"I know we are. I tried, boss; I did. I got to the scene of the crash quick."

Perry just breathed. The robotic drone of the voice synthesizer stripped most emotion from his words. "In the Cadillac?"

"Course not. I parked it out of sight and got down to the street on foot. I was the first one there." Skunk's voice got stronger. "I played Good Samaritan. Like I was the one willing to get up on that mess and check whether people were alive."

"That was a risk."

"Harding was no question dead. Couple guys in the airport van were moaning. Meyer was barely there."

Perry stood up. "Did she talk? Did you get anything from her?"

"I tried, but she just looked at me."

He said nothing. Skunk didn't get it. "So she saw you."

Skunk hesitated, and then his voice had a splinter in it. "I tried to fix that. I got the gun. I almost had time . . ." He exhaled. "Cop came running up the street, looking freaked out and asking if anybody was alive. Man in the airport van started screaming. So I told him the women in the BMW were dead."

"Did you think you were casting a spell? Telling him didn't make it happen."

"The cop was right beside me, calling for doctors and backup and shit. I couldn't fucking shoot her in front of him."

"That's good. We want Meyer alive."

"Alive—why?"

Briefly his anger jumped up. Skunk didn't need to know everything. "Alive for
now.
She might be useful. Leave it at that."

"It wouldn't have worked anyway. The cop was totally freaked out, took a half-second look into the Beemer before he ran to the van. By then other people were coming. It was too late."

Perry pinched the bridge of his nose. "The first cop on the scene saw you?"