Blood and Sand Page 5

I laugh. I don’t mean to, but I can’t help it. Gus, acting like all this is a video game, shoots a bona fide professional killer in the back.

  But I’m a pro: I grab the wound, and I shove my fist in it to keep as much blood as possible from flowing out.

  I go to the hall. There’s a trail of red sprinkles down the back stairs.

  “God, yuck,” I say, going back in, being Gus. Gus going to Polly’s room, finding her under the bed, getting her ankle, dragging her out, and shooting her once, right here. No wonder this scene is such a train wreck — it’s part rank amateur, part seasoned professional. No wonder, also, that body disposal turned into a one-man episode of Laurel and Hardy: the pro must have abandoned Gus and sought medical attention. He probably had a separate car they were going to use for their victims, meaning Gus had to improvise. And when idiots improvise, it can sometimes wind up looking very complex and inspired and ingenious, merely because it’s so random.

  I kneel to the floor and put my hand in Polly’s blood, dried tacky and tough. “I’ll find you, kiddo. I’ll find you and I’ll make sure the lotto covers a plot for you and Grandma, the best spot in LA.”

  I’m there a while. A mouse comes sniffing around, but before I can lock my knife open, he’s fled. I’m about to get up when a clicking sound starts downstairs. I know it by now. It’s a key getting wriggled in one of these wretched locks.

  I go stone still. I don’t dare hope it’s Gus. At the same time, I’m sure it is. “Come on in,” I whisper, and whoever it is, does. The back door sneaks shut with a soft thud. Heavy, sloppy steps plow up the hall, to the right. I count them going past the laundry room, up at least two doors.

  I left Gus’s door open. Hopefully he’s assuming the cops did that.

  Five seconds later, I can hear him barreling through the living room. I stand. I try to distribute my weight evenly across my feet to keep floorboards from creaking, then scoff. Gus wouldn’t hear if I started yodeling; the building superintendent’s unit now sounds like a rock concert without the music. He’s crashing through the desk first — and I’m slithering down the back stairs, not taking the care I typically would to be quiet but not doing a drum solo with my feet either. He goes to the toilet next, splashing into it like an orca at Sea World executing its big finale.

  I’m right outside, in the hall, doing some decision math.

  The most important rule of fighting is: don’t wing it. It looks easy in the movies, but the reason it looks easy in the movies is because those scenes are choreographed, rehearsed, and the actors and doubles get numerous chances to nail it. Life is not like that. If you go up against somebody who’s untrained, you might get lucky, but if they’ve had even a month of intensive instruction in any martial art, you will get very unlucky, very quickly. I did the standard program at Quantico, plus krav maga for nine years and muay thai for seven, with some judo and kung fu and a baker’s dozen other styles thrown in. That sounds like I should be an incredible fighter, but I’m not. I’m away too much; my instructor tells me this all the time. I am good, and he tells me this too, and the fact that he’s a former Army Ranger tells me that his standard for “good” probably slides closer to “quite good” for civilians.

  Meaning, if it’s me versus somebody untrained or less trained, I should be fine as long as I don’t make a stupid mistake.

  The second most important rule of fighting, and I’d put it dead-even with the first rule, especially when it comes to women, is: do not think of the other person as your “attacker”. They are your opponent. They are your equal. You must not embrace the victim role, and this is hard for the ladies, since we’ve been raised in a culture that says we’re automatically weaker, wimpier, more emotional, less violent, etc. Trust me, we’re mean. And every single aspect of our character or physicality that we want to count as a disadvantage in a fight can be parlayed into an advantage if we’ve had a little basic guidance from someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m not big. But I’m quick, and I have zero problem fighting dirty. You’d be surprised how many men — even deeply disturbed men with demonstrated criminal tendencies — have an innate hesitation about hitting a girl. It might be a split-second, but that’s all I need. My knees practically have a missile guidance system for testicles.

  The third most important rule is: you’re usually going to get hurt. Even if it’s just bruised-to-shit hands the next day, which I’ve had, and iced, and it’s not fun, and as you’re crying while trying to brush your teeth, you vacillate between promising yourself that next time you’ll find a spare second to slide the brass knuckles on and consoling yourself that, this pain notwithstanding, you won the goddamn fight.

  Which leads neatly to rule number four. Don’t fight if you don’t have to.

  I’ve got a jacket pocket that holds a nifty baton, which retracts to the length of an average chicken drumstick. I take it out, flick it open, and put on the brass knuckles as a fail-safe. Gus is saying, “C’mon, c’mon, where are you?” the same way he probably does when he’s looking for a clitoris. I’ve actually begun to examine my nails when he starts back toward the hallway. His footsteps telegraph his position so loudly it almost seems unfair.

  Almost. I wind up and give him one clean swat to the nose. He falls, the floor shakes, I get his wrist in a set of cuffs and lock him to the radiator outside the door. He’s making these hilarious weeping-drowning-swearing combo sounds and digging in his cargo pants with his free hand. I catch that arm, press it to his side, and rabbit-punch it until he lets go. He howls, and I steal the gun he was going for, a dainty revolver with a pearl handle.

  “What are you, an old west hooker?” I say, dumping the bullets and checking him for any additional weapons. “Are you alone, Gus? Or Josh, or whatever you’re going by?”

  He’s saying, “Hnnnn, hnnnn,” while staring at his arm. This close, his mugshot seems absolutely flattering. His hair is a colorless, shaggy grease stain. His complexion bespeaks a diet of endless fried foods. His body bespeaks his complexion. And he smells like the toilet he just got done diving in. “Hnnnn, hnnnn.”

  I think of Polly and Hattie, and I swing the baton again, giving him a crack on the hardest part of his head. He sags over, unconscious.

  “Don’t go anywhere.”

  There’s no question where he’d park. The only window in here that gives on the church’s lot is in the bedroom. I grimace at Gus’s sheets, which look like they were last washed about a presidential term ago, raise one slat of the blinds and see a van. There’s someone in the passenger side. I give it a second, and the passenger peeks out, eyeing the building nervously.

  My breath catches. It’s Hattie.

  “No, it’s not,” I say, nipping that hope in the bud right now.

  I go to the closet, where I pull a giant hoodie off a hanger. I slouch into it, step over Gus in the doorway, and try to mime a morbidly obese walk as I pull the hood low. There are smarter plays here, a dozen of them: calling Laughlin and getting the van surrounded is the main one on my mind while I’m thundering out the back door, purposely making my feet loud, clodding into dry city grass and asking myself how many guns Granny might have in there.

  But there’s no time. I’m officially at the twenty-four hour mark. The odds of finding Polly are shrinking with every minute that ticks by. It’s not completely insane to think she’s still alive somewhere, but it’s close. She was shot, and she was tossed into this van for disposal.

  So why wasn’t she found alongside Hattie?

  Because the current took her. She’s nine years old, she’s lighter than her grandma, and she washed out to sea. Sure, she did.

  I’m five feet from the van when the window rolls down. Fake Hattie hisses, “Hurry, Gus.” I get around the back, go to the driver’s side, and take another set of cuffs from my jacket. I always carry four. I’ve learned the hard way how much it sucks to run out.

  “Did you get it?” she asks. I nod, reaching out as if to hand it to her. I slap the steel tight and tug for the st
eering wheel, where I lock the other bracelet. It’s harder to pat someone down when they’re sitting, but not impossible.

  “What’s happening?” she says, over and over. “What’s going on, what is this?”

  I flip the hood back. “Can I just say? It really hurts my feelings that you bought that. I weigh one-forty on a chubby day.” I check the glove compartment, the console, the floor. “Any guns in here? If you say no and you’re lying and you take a shot at me, I’ll make you piss blood for a month.”

  She’s not Hattie. She’s taken incredible pains to look like her — even shaving her eyebrows and drawing them back on in pencil — but at this distance, the resemblance falls apart.

  Her lip wobbles. “Please,” she says. “You don’t understand, you don’t —”

  “Make me understand, then.”

  “And you’ll let me go?”

  “Yeah. I’ll let you go.” I’m a rotten liar. I’ve stopped trying to improve.

  Fake Hattie presses her lips together and faces forward.

  I look in the back. There are no seats, and the floor, despite being hosed, still glows red by the streetlamps. It stinks, too. “Did they beg?” I say. “When you shot them?”

  Tears roll down her cheeks, but she doesn’t speak.

  I get out of the van and pull up a number in my contacts that I thought I’d never dial again.

  “Who is this?” he says, groggy.

  “Up and at ‘em, Dane. It’s douchebag hour.”

  Chapter 7

  One good thing about Dane, he always knew how to follow instructions. He wakes up the best tech he’s got and sends him ahead so we can start processing the van before a bunch of agents and cops and neighborhood birdwatchers come to contaminate it. I assure him that I’ve got both suspects contained, though one might need medical attention. I hear him laugh at that over the line. I close my eyes, feeling a stab go through me.

  He sends ahead the grunts, too. Gus and Fake Hattie are taken into federal custody by a quartet of junior agents who look like they haven’t started shaving yet. The tech is a grouch who tells me to get lost. This is a good sign; the best techs are always grouches. I take a walk around, getting the measure of this place at o’dark-thirty. I even poke around the church a little, checking the boardings on the windows for anything loose. My job sometimes amounts to a very high-level form of hide n’ go seek, and gigantic, abandoned structures are prime real estate for kids on the run. But this place is solidly locked up, and there are so many abandoned structures around here that it boggles the brain. Besides, I doubt Polly had a whole lot of run in her when she was dragged out of her building.

  “Confessing?”

  I spin so fast that the wood I was touching leaves a splinter. I shake the hand out and sneer at Dane. “No priest has that kind of time.”

  Dane looks like the Dutch boy on the paint cans, except all grown up into an amateur competitive kickboxer. We used to argue all the time about whether kickboxing counts as a martial art. It doesn’t.

  “Sorry if I scared you,” he says.

  I go to pass him, knowing he’ll keep pace. “Is Laughlin here yet?”

  “Not yet. But word on the street says he’s lead detective again.”

  “That’s a trick.” I ignore Dane holding the crime scene tape for me and lift my own section of it, going under. “Fair warning, he’s going to try and cock-block you on this.”

  “Already did. I got my SAC to run interference.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Of course I did.”

  I ignore that, too.

  The tech is latching his case shut. He notices us, and gives his grudging attention. “I assume you want these rushed.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Dane says, the tone of his voice going pitch-perfect politician. “Anything you can tell us now?”

  “It’s been cleaned. They removed the carpet from the van’s rear, but they underestimated the mobility of fresh blood. The underside of the driver’s seat was splashed, as was the ceiling. I should have results for you by the end of the day.” He says to me, again grudgingly, “You resisted pawing around back there. It made my job slightly easier.”

  “Jeez, man, don’t come in your pants.”

  The tech looks at me like — well, like I just said what I just said. Then I’m watching Dane’s arm get between us so he can escort the tech away.

  This suits me nicely. Now I can paw around back there.

  I crawl in. I’m immediately struck by the claustrophobia of it — the ceiling’s low, the walls are close. It smells like a butcher shop that’s been doused with Pine Sol. I peep under the seat, and Techie the Grouch was right. Some gobs of blood collected there.

  I look to the ceiling. I frown.

  “Tell me,” Dane says.

  “Tell you what?”

  “I know that face. It means you’re seeing something everybody missed.”

  “Maybe it’s my who-farted face.”

  “That, too.”

  “I did eat entirely from taco trucks yesterday.”

  “Beth. What don’t I know?”

  Where to begin? “Hattie’s body didn’t wash up on Zuma. She was dumped there.”

  His eyes widen. “Are you sure?”

  “Low tide is around three a.m. in spring and doesn’t go high again until seven. The lifeguard found her at six. Consult an expert if you want, but I’m right.”

  “So tracing boats was a waste of time,” he says, taking out his phone and typing some notes.

  I get a little closer. “It might not be a waste of time to talk to the cops on scene that morning. Coroner, too — anyone who handled Hattie’s body.”

  “Why?”

  “Because her eyebrows were wiped off.”

  Dane looks up from his phone. “Come again?”

  I hold out my hand. That dark, worm-ish arch hasn’t gone anywhere. “This is industrial strength eyebrow pencil. The ocean would dissolve it. Not much else would, besides makeup remover. The lifeguard who found Hattie noticed her eyebrows; they were the one physical characteristic he mentioned to me. But when the M.E. let me check out the body, the eyebrows were missing.”

  He’s tracing my logic. “You’re saying a cop might be in on this?”

  I move on instead of answering. “There’s seven grand in Polly’s apartment. On the dinner table, in the fruit bowl. I found it stashed at Gus’s.”

  “Where?”

  “Toilet tank.”

  “I searched that myself,” he says, looking around at the apartment like it’s betrayed him.

  I take the ID’s from my pocket and toss them over. “Those were on top. He had a getaway plan. I’m thinking he put it in place a while ago, but this shitshow finally made him pull the trigger. Oh, and —” I take out Gus’s gun, slide it over.

  “Wow.”

  “I know,” I say. “If Little Bo Peep carried a gun.”

  Dane’s beckoning his lackeys, signaling gimme for evidence bags, and saying to me at the same time, “I meant in here. The van. You saw something everybody missed. What is it?”

  My phone rings. I hop out, fast-walking toward my bike, when a grip on my arm makes me stop.

  “Don’t pull this on me, Fell — ow. Ow, let go.”

  “It’s your pinkie, Dane. Not even on your gun hand. Guess I’m going soft. But I’ll still snap it right here in front of all your disciples. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?” I let go and march. I can feel his eyes trying to Jedi choke me from behind.

  The grouchy tech is still packing up. I catch him as he’s shutting his trunk. “Quick question.”

  He sees it’s me. “Well, I’m sure this will be . . . charming.”

  “The blood on the van’s ceiling. A body that’s dead and has bled a pretty fair amount already, would it spray like that? With nothing pumping it?”

  He’s put at ease when he hears it’s a good question. “Hattie Turner may not have been dead when they loaded her.”

  I nod. />
  “It’s my understanding that the granddaughter was transported in that vehicle as well.”

  “So they say.”

  “That’s another body that could have left the stain. We’ll know more in a few hours.”

  “Thanks. You do good work.”

  He seems blindsided by the compliment, but I’m already leaving. And dialing.

  “Nico,” I say, breaking into a jog once I’ve turned the corner.

  “Three hundred Joshua Lewises,” he says. “Two hundred more if we chop it to Josh.”

  “But you’ve got something.” Nico’s always got something. That’s why he’s my pet hacker.

  “Driver’s license number corresponds to a storage garage rented three months ago. He cut the first name off entirely and used J. Lewis. Smart move.”

  “Trust me, it was probably an accident. Where?”

  “Sending the storage facility’s address now. Unit 709. Hey, one more thing.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “This alias isn’t as flimsy as it should be. It’s using a social from a guy who died in ’84, but the trail’s been cleaned up. I almost missed it.”

  “Who could pull that off?”

  “Me,” Nico says. He’s the bassist in a ska band that sounds like a litter of newborn cats getting killed in a clothes dryer, but he’ll drop everything and hack anything when I call. I met him outside a mall when he was twelve. I was getting out of my car when this skinny boy passed by and looked at me with a wide-eyed panic that a lot of adults would write off as so much kid-dramatic bullshit. The man who had him by the hand was huge and hulking and pasty white, sharing about as much resemblance with Nico as a moose does with a baby fox. So I did the rude thing and came up behind them and barked when I got close, “Hey! Is that your kid?” The man tried to pick up Nico and run but, suffice it to say, that did not work. Seven years later, Nico tracked me down — which was definitive proof of some amazing hacking skills right there — and asked if he could help me do what I do. I was hesitant at first; I told him so.

  But it’s hard to find good help these days. “What else do you need?” he says.