Blood and Sand Read online

  “How would they know that? How could they possibly know that?”

  “Because they were going to have you and Gus killed as soon as they had their money. And I hate to break it to you, but because you were an associate of Gus’s and he’d been a thorn in their side for years, it was probably going to be a very slow, unpleasant death.” I sit down, across from her this time. “Could still happen once we let you out of here.”

  She looks nauseous.

  “But you know that, don’t you? It’s why you weren’t talking. It’s why you haven’t called a lawyer.”

  She grabs her elbows like she’s cold. “He’s a monster.”

  “Who? Gus?”

  “No, the man they sent. The man with the —” She reaches a trembling hand to her forehead and lowers the brim of an invisible fedora. “He never said a word. Lani couldn’t look at him. She grabbed on to me and wouldn’t —” Doris cuts herself off again.

  “Lani.”

  Doris is silent.

  “Jane Doe’s name is Lani.”

  She tries to move on, to give me something juicier. “They butchered that woman. When Gus threw her in the van, I couldn’t believe —”

  “Pause, Doris. Back up. The scary man Lani couldn’t stand, what did he look like?”

  She shivers. “Anyone. No one. I don’t know.”

  I guess I was hoping for a neck tattoo or an ever-present monocle or a third eye on his chin or something. But a total lack of description? That’s rare. I decide to let Doris continue in her favored direction. “Okay. Gus threw Hattie in the van, and you couldn’t believe what?”

  “I couldn’t believe the state of her. The bodies weren’t supposed to be in there. The man, the — Nothing Man, he brought his own van. When he came out of the building, walking like he was hurt, that’s when I knew something had gone wrong. He’d parked right next to us, and he jumped in and drove away.” She swallows like these words want to come up with a heaping helping of vomit. “We were supposed to sneak inside, Lani and me. Once they’d taken the bodies out and cleaned up, we were supposed to get in the beds and go to sleep. We were supposed to wake up the next morning and watch the mail for when the check came.” Her face contorts. “Poor Lani was in the back, playing with her dolls when Gus threw the body in. She froze.”

  “And what did you do?”

  Doris bites her lip.

  I kick the table.

  “I ran,” Doris says. “I ran away. I called a cab from a diner a few blocks over, and I went home. Gus found me there the next morning and said he had some money. He said we could get out of this.” She whimpers, “Why would he do that? Why would he come get me?”

  “Because you were going to get questioned, and he wanted a head start. Once the two of you made it to Mexico, he’d have shot you and dumped you somewhere.”

  “I wondered about that. That’s why I —” She lifts her chin proudly. “I called ShockNews. When Gus thought I was packing, I called them and tipped them off.”

  ShockNews must have called the lotto to confirm. That would explain how I got hired so fast. “Hang on while I call the queen of England so she can knight you, Doris.” I take Polly’s photo off the table and zip it up. “What’s Lani’s last name?”

  “She’s safer if I don’t tell you.”

  “No, she’s not. Nothing Man ransacked Gus’s office and stole her file.”

  “No. He didn’t.” Doris gives me the smallest, most hopeless smile I’ve ever seen in my life. And that’s saying something. “I destroyed her file.”

  “Good for you. A very, very little good for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Did Lani come here with a parent?”

  Doris drinks some soda.

  “I will knock that can into your mouth and make you eat it.”

  “He can’t find her,” Doris says. “If I don’t tell you, then Nothing Man can’t find her.”

  “You just did tell me. Lani came with her mother. Got it. Here’s the problem. Nothing Man? He’s extremely good at finding people.”

  “But you’re better. You’re a star at it.”

  “Don’t flatter me. Bigger brown-nosers than you have tried and failed.”

  “You’d better be better.” Doris’s eyes plead with me. “You’d better be, or she’s dead.”

  Chapter 14

  I’m out of the interrogation room and across the floor and going down the stairs before my thoughts can catch up to my legs. I’m periodically swatting the wall as I go, hearing the reverb down the staircase, following like I can catch it. I get to the bottom, and there’s nothing to catch but the push-bar on the exit, delivering me into a level of heat and light that can only mean noon.

  The first thing I see is a falafel truck. I get a gyro the size of my whole head and eat it on a bench in front of the field office, glowering like a monster in a cave devouring its prey. What a noble old lady, withholding the whereabouts of Lani’s mom and pretending it’s about protecting her. It’s not about leverage. It’s not about having some small morsel of information the authorities might want, oh no.

  I hear nice shoes. More than that, I hear the rhythm of the walk, and I know it’s him. You learn that when you’ve worked dark alleys together, gauging threats by the sounds of steps.

  “You’ve still got it,” Dane says.

  “Do I?”

  “Without a doubt. But I can’t believe you’re still surviving on street food.”

  “Everything a growing girl needs.”

  He walks away from me, to the falafel truck. He comes back with a gyro of his own. “Shut up,” he says preemptively.

  I’m treated to five minutes of Dane’s decidedly sexual groans at the taste of the first fried food he’s probably eaten since we worked together. I finish and tell him, “They hired Jones.”

  When I say nothing else to Dane’s obvious confusion, he remembers. He swallows hard. “You’re kidding.”

  “Yeah, this is definitely on the list of things I find hilarious. It’s Mr. Jones and shark attacks and getting sucked into a swimming pool drain where my intestines are vacuumed out of my body.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “I saw him.” And I add, before Dane can counter that it is patently impossible I saw him, since I am sitting here, alive, “Not his face. He was at the office park. He kept his distance, but it was him. Not too many guys running around in Humphrey Bogart hats these days.”

  Dane throws away the rest of his lunch. “He’s cleaning it up, isn’t he?”

  “Yep.”

  “But there’s no way Lani’s mom knew about any of this. Why kill her?”

  “He’s a neat freak. It galls me to admit this, but that was pretty smart of Doris, keeping the mom’s whereabouts back.”

  He’s about to ask why, then rolls his eyes. “Fell, I don’t have a mob rat on my team, okay?”

  “You’re willing to stake an innocent woman’s life on that? Because Doris wasn’t.”

  “Yeah, she’s a real model of integrity.”

  “I’m not nominating her for a Nobel Peace Prize anytime soon, but torching Lani’s file says to me she knew how deep she was in and how bad it was going to get. She figured it out way too late, but she figured it out.”

  He makes a frustrated sound and pops off the bench. He goes back to the truck, returning with two lemonades, one of which he hands to me. “Wouldn’t Lani’s mom have reported her missing by now?”

  “Not if Doris said they had three days’ worth of auditions lined up for her.”

  “Three days of auditions?”

  “I know that’s not how it works, but a starstruck mom from Buttcrack, Michigan doesn’t. In a lot of ways, it was a great plan. It was simple, as I’m sure Gus’s plans always are, but in this case, it could have worked for them. Doris and Lani take Hattie and Polly’s places. They lay low, keep the door locked, check the mail every day, and when the money comes, it gets divvied up per whatever agreement they had in place.”

&nb
sp; “But they’d have all been rubbed out anyway.”

  “Damn right. It’s Jones, Dane. He’s not the guy you call when the job is easy. He’s the guy you call when the job is impossible. The men who hired him, who knew what a screw-up Gus was, they were willing to roll the dice one last time for eighty-million, but they saw the possibility coming that it would go ten kinds of wrong. They saw it coming from a mile away. So they sent the A-team.”

  Dane nods at the traffic. “He’s like you.”

  “Well, you can cram that compliment back to wherever it came from.”

  “No, hear me out. Maybe that’s why — I heard what Jones did, that kid in the — that box he sent you. I was going to call.”

  “I’m touched. Go ahead.”

  Dane fiddles with his straw, an old habit. It’s his tell for sincerity. “You’re both the best at what you do.”

  I listen to the chorus of car horns. Dane’s silent. It’s not uncomfortable; we’ve shared a lot of silence. Stakeouts and workouts and marathon paperwork days with our desks facing one another, high-fiving at the end and maybe getting a meal, if we could compromise between the fried food I liked and the rabbit food he’d sentenced himself to. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to not be in the quiet alone. I’ve been hoarding mine for a long time now.

  There was a pool going in our office for how long it would take Dane and me to be burning up some serious sheets. Neither of us took sex too seriously, and it didn’t take a trained investigator to see we were attracted to each other. I won’t lie; I came close to making that call a dozen times. That’s all it would have taken — one call — and there were plenty of female agents who pulled me aside at this or that office party, asking what was up with us, is he only your work partner, tee-hee. Like we were girls gabbing at the hair salon. I couldn’t help but think of them as counterfeit career women who were really just husband-shopping, and a lot of the male agents they had their sights set on as high school players who never grew out of the game.

  All I wanted to do was find missing kids. Everything else the job required — the office parties; the paperwork; the having a desk, period— it felt like unnecessary weight. So when my only reason for staying stabbed me in the back, I dropped him along with all the rest of it.

  In the seven years since, I haven’t once doubted my decision. But I haven’t shared a silence with him either, and now that I am, I realize how much I’ve missed it.

  Dane bends, reaches for his pants-cuff.

  “No,” I say.

  He takes the gun from his ankle holster and sets it on the bench between us, covering it with his hand so as to remain inconspicuous. “Take it.”

  “Not happening.”

  “Rumor has it Jones carries three guns on his person at all times.”

  “Good for him.”

  Dane tries to stare me down. I look at him blandly. He stuffs the glock back in his ankle holster, fuming. “I don’t get how you think a four-inch butterfly knife stands a chance against a hitman with three guns.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “You were first in your Academy class for marksmanship, you stubborn-ass shrew.” He slaps the seat of the bench. His face is red.

  “What’s an ass-shrew?” I say, feigning confusion.

  He’s fighting to look stern.

  “That sounds like the worst kind.”

  He hangs his head, holds his face, and laughs exhaustedly.

  I throw him an elbow of commiseration and stand up. “When I’ve got a location on Lani’s mom, I’m going to need you to get her. Just you, and bring her to Cedars Sinai.”

  “Is that where you’re headed next?” Dane says.

  “Damn it.” That reporter’s back. She’s in a banana yellow ensemble today, the skirt too high, the neckline too low. She’s dragging her cameraman toward me with a hungry look. I feel like I’m being cornered by a starving highlighter.

  “Tina Taylor,” Dane says. “Features anchor for ShockNews.”

  “What in God’s name is ShockNews?”

  “Imagine if Howard Stern thought of himself as a hard-hitting journalist.” He stands. “I’ll be waiting by the phone, Beth. As always.”

  I get moving, but Tina’s coming on strong. She’s keeping her mic at a safe distance so I don’t tear off the top again. “What’s being done to find Polly Turner? There are reports that a girl fitting Polly’s description was found last night, is that true? Is it her?”

  The cameraman’s not as careful. He’s over my right shoulder, grape-vining sideways to keep his shot. I reach, untwist his lens, and flick it into the street. I get one beautiful second of his mouth dropping open, and then they’re receding behind me into a chaos of honking horns, Tina’s voice rising above them: “What is wrong with you? What is your problem?”

  I climb on my bike and notice my phone’s vibrating. “This is Fell.”

  “Ms. Fell, this is Dr. Atwater, the crime scene technician you so charmed earlier this morning.”

  “I can’t help it. Charm leaks out of me. What’s the news?”

  “The blood under the seat matches Hattie Turner, as expected.”

  “And the ceiling?”

  “That matches Polly Turner. I ran it twice before calling.”

  I feel deflated, reduced. Some orphan granule of hope inside me apparently still believed that Polly might not have been hurt. “Thank you. Thanks for calling, thanks for running it twice.”

  “You’re welcome. Please call me directly if I can be of any further assistance. I’ll make myself available at any hour.”

  Before I can ask Techie the Grouch why he’s decided he likes me, he hangs up.

  Chapter 15

  The psych ward is never the nice part of the hospital. It’s not where they blow the budget on decor or pleasing architecture. Maybe it’s an intelligent move, as I do watch a woman in a pink bathrobe throw what I hope is chocolate pudding around the day room while I’m waiting for a visitors pass. Orderlies surround her. When they get a good grip on her, her eyes fasten on me at the reception desk.

  “Devil! It’s the devil!” She yowls this on repeat as they drag her away.

  I’m not overly impressed. One of the few perks of my job is that creeping me out has become a challenge on par with perpetual motion or time travel.

  “Ms. Fell.”

  I turn. The female agent from last night looks a little worn around the edges — but only a little. Tough old girl. “How is she?”

  “Calmer. We gave her some dolls, and that’s relaxed her a great deal. Anytime I try to question her, the progress is undone.” She does the FBI version of a smile — a slightly softer frown. “Do you have some magic trick to get her talking?”

  “Sorry. Lost the wand a while ago.” I’m accepting a pass from a nurse, clocking the cameras, the exits, the staff. “A doctor checked her over, I’m assuming.”

  “Yes.”

  “What are her injuries?”

  “None, other than a few bruises.”

  I wasn’t expecting that. I let it go for now. “What do you think of security here?”

  “It’s good. It’s not great.”

  I hold out my hand. “You can head home.”

  “I’ll stay,” she says, shaking with me.

  “Her parents won’t be here for a while. I got a first name, but we still don’t know who she is.”

  “Then I’ll be here for a while.”

  I nod. “What’s your name?”

  “Special Agent Sylvia Dodd.”

  “I’m Beth.”

  “Pleasure,” she says, and signals me up the hall.

  “Is there an observation room?”

  “Yes. That’s where I’m remaining, mostly. She seems more at ease when she’s by herself.” Sylvia points at a pair of doors, grasping the knob of the one on the left. “I have a question,” she says.

  “Shoot.”

  “Whoever did this to her is going to be very sorry, is that right?”

  “Yeah, he
will. Might take a while.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “RICO wants him.”

  She does the FBI version of a grimace — slightly deeper frown. “Then he won’t pay at all.”

  “Sylvia, trust me.” I open the door. “Gus threw his poo at the wrong monkey.”

  The room is padded. It’s not a movie invention; they actually do that. Partly so the patient doesn’t hurt herself, but also to make the whole place a soft, yielding womb, a room-wide bed. She’s in the corner, a line of four dolls in front of her. Another is in her hand. She’s brushing its hair. She’s humming, and I detect right away that this isn’t something I can dance to. It’s a random, “Hmmmmm.” Then brush, brush, brush the dollie’s hair. Then “Hmmmmm,” and another long rest. The vibration must comfort her somehow, the sound of her own voice countering the hum of the halogens this room is lit by. She doesn’t look up exactly; she uses my trick with the observation mirror, watching me get closer. Her head tilts a little. Maybe recognition, maybe not. When I’m ten feet away, she reaches down and pulls her dolls closer to her, to keep them safe.

  I kneel down. “Lani?”

  She looks at me — full-on, in the face.

  I could die of relief. There’s life there. There’s still a self; she’s just keeping it safe, pulling it close inside. Any impulse I had to ask her a single question withers.

  I take off my jacket and put it on the floor, unzipping a pocket on the back. “Do you like Harry Potter, Lani?”

  She looks at the mirror, looks at me. She nods like it’s a secret that she’s nodding.

  I take out the Kindle, prop it on the floor, and hit play. A pleasant British voice begins to read The Sorcerer’s Stone while colorful illustrations splash across the screen. I scoot to the wall, giving Lani her space, but before the first chapter is over, she’s inched over next to me, laying her head on my thigh. I comb through her hair with my fingers. Her thumb finds her mouth. She’s still humming a random note here and there. When Hagrid shows up at the Dursleys’ cabin to tell Harry his destiny, she remains awake, fixed on the story.