Anybody with brains would be worrying about Aruba.
The van was a world unto itself, housing a range of weaponry that included MKs, AZs, and the weapon of choice, MPS submachine guns. There was a Remington 11-87 semiautomatic shotgun, tools for the sniper on the team, silencers.
Sonora shuffled her feet, toes sticking on the metal floor. It was claustrophobic inside, too many people crowded too close together, Whitmore up near the front with Captain Taleese and the driver, who had the only roomy seat in the van. Blackout curtains muzzled the windows. A phone system—the command center—was installed behind the driver, just under the television and the microwave oven. The team could survive long stakeouts and watch the action on television if the raid was complicated by the predatory press.
The guys across from Sam and Sonora had the worst seats—bench bolted in front of slots for the shields.
Outside, Sonora could hear the frizzy noise of tires on wet pavement. Still raining. Sam had accused her of bringing the rain back from Cincinnati, but as far as Sonora could tell, Kentucky had plenty of its own.
The weather was a mixed blessing. It would give more cover, less visibility, and muffle some of their noise. But it would also make the ground slippery and spread wet misery over the team, who were technically not supposed to care. And Sonora had always been of the opinion that weapons did not function as well in heavy humidity, though Sam was prone to arguing the point.
She had missed the run-through, being tied up in Boone County on Mom-duty, but Sam had been impressed.
The van slowed. Sonora hoped they were close. She was getting very carsick, riding sideways, with no window to see out of. Captain Taleese was on his feet; they must be close. At his command, the team stood up and grabbed plastic straps that hung from the roof. They were like a parachute team, readying for a jump.
The van shifted sideways and stopped, resting at a tilt that said they had pulled off the road. The neighborhood dogs sounded the watch, background music to every raid Sonora had ever been through. No doubt the rottweiler was a member of the chorus.
Sonora thought of the children in the tiny white house, uneasy in their sleep. She thought of Aruba, edgy now that Kinkle had not returned, alerted by the barking dog.
Someone once said that massacres were all the same.
The back of the van opened with the creak of a metallic hinge, and things happened quickly. Sonora felt oddly detached, with a panicky sense of being out of control. Each man jumped out, shouting, Off the truck. She followed Sam, Whitmore, and Taleese out of the front of the truck, around the side to the teams filing out the back doors, moving toward the house in a stylized shuffle step. When the last team was out of the truck and in the lineup, Taleese gave the signal and the teams broke into a slow jog, heading in a direct line toward house number four, like a line of black army ants after a picnic, ground giving wetly beneath their heavily booted feet.
Sonora looked up to the wet mist of rain, feeling it settle on her face, knowing that it would make her hair curl. She was damp all over. They’d smell like wet dogs by the end of the night.
She imagined looking out one’s living-room window, spotting the white van and the line of darkly dressed men and women, intimidating in helmets, equipment, with that confident and inexorable threat that emanated from well-trained men on a mission.
Call the police would be the first thought. The second, sinking, helpless—this is the police.
There was a surreal quality here, the men and women jogging in the rain, the first team, the ones with the sledgehammer and ram, turning now, veering across the dormant grass to the tiny house, which showed not a light to the face of the world. She felt uneasy. A sense of dread. She felt as if she and she alone had set this in motion, as if she would be responsible for what would happen next.
She thought of the three children and the sister. Were they all that different from the Stinnets? Lower on the socioeconomic scale, with the unsettling vulnerability of a family in the orbit of predators. In the back of her mind, she could hear Joy Stinnet, Hail Mary, full of grace, as the ram thundered into the flimsy front door of the small row house and knocked it splintering backward off the hinge.
The house erupted in an explosion of noise, men in heavy boots, clustering for a critical and vulnerable three seconds as they all tried to fit through the gaping door.
The dog howled, a bay that set the hair rising on the back of Sonora’s neck. A little girl screamed Mommy, and Sonora heard a shout go up: He’s got a gun!
She stood outside the house, feeling the straitjacket of her disinvolvement, no choice but to stand and wait, while rain ran over her hair and down her face, mixing with tears as she listened to the dog yelp and squeal in macabre harmony with an infant’s wail.
Was this what it had sounded like the night Aruba and Kinkle invaded the home of the Stinnets?
48
Sonora heard the fight all the way out in the front yard. She looked at Sam, who nodded, headed in through the busted front door. She followed without hesitation, and they made two unnecessary people in an overcrowded house.
A woman in a white nylon nightgown, heavy breasts loose and in motion, was wrestling the dog into a tiny bathroom. Sonora got a quick glimpse of curling linoleum and the white flecks of liquid nitro on the dog’s muzzle, where he had been sprayed with CO2. The woman’s hair, pale reddish gold, like Aruba’s, swung in a plait down her back. Her eyes were large and dark, the right one swollen shut and purple and black with a brand-new bruise. The rottweiler showed the face of a dog with a dilemma, but thankfully it listened to the woman’s whispers of reassurance and entreaty, as she ignored the man with the submachine gun and locked the dog away.
The front of the house was partitioned into two rooms, a living space on the left, dominated by a big-screen TV, kitchenette on the right; a tiny room in the back, a closetlike bedroom. The couch was upended—one officer going through the cushions. Sonora counted the children. All three were safe in the arms of men who were fathers in their off-time.
The action was in that back, dark bedroom, and Sonora could hear the shouts of the officers—down, now; you are under arrest; cooperate and we will not hurt you. Words tossed like pebbles into the abyss of Aruba’s rage. If he saw the officer training the submachine gun on his midsection, he gave no sign, and it took a fiveman pileup to get the arms locked behind the body, working pressure points and using brute force to get the leg hobbles tight around the ankles, and still one man got caught by Aruba’s powerful kick.
But at last Aruba stopped moving, his breath coming like a tornado through a sieve. The couch had been searched, set upright, and the woman sat in handcuffs, head turning, as she tried to keep an eye on all three of her children.
A blessed sort of quiet began to descend, the baby soothed by the rocking of a muscular man, six foot if an inch, mustached. The keloid tissue of the scar that ran down his left cheek wrinkled as he smiled down at the baby.
The toddler, a golden-haired girl with blue eyes and a white-lipped look of shock, reached for her mother, and the police officer sat her on the couch. She lay sideways, thumb in her mouth, head on her mother’s lap. The woman stroked her head carefully, keeping the slender cuffed wrists a safe distance from the child’s flushed, delicate skin. The five-year-old boy buried his head in one of the men’s shoulders, legs wrapped around the officer’s waist, and the man made no move to peel the boy away but carried him wherever he went.
Captain Taleese called an ambulance and Whitmore read the search warrant word for word to an uninterested, shell-shocked audience, with background chants from Aruba, complaining, “You fuckers broke my fucking arm.”
49
Someone had given Lanky Aruba’s sister a raincoat, which had almost gone double around her thin angular body. She held it tightly across her chest, arms folded. She had nodded once, when Mai Yagamochi asked her to confirm that her name was Belinda Kinkle. She had asked twice about her children and, when no answer was forthcom
ing, had set her lips and found a place, inside herself, to go into full retreat.
Sonora handed her a chemical ice pack for the black eye. “Who gave you that?”
Belinda Kinkle spoke through clenched teeth. “Ran into the door.”
“What is Aruba to you?” Mai asked.
“He’s my stockbroker,” Belinda said. Her thin face seemed ready-made for pain, so quickly did it settle into lines of stress.
Mai, sitting upright in her chair, ran a pencil through her slim fingers, tapping the eraser on the edge of the desk. Sonora wanted more than anything to smack her hand. “Let me explain what will happen to you, Miss Belinda, if you do not care to answer my questions.
“You will be charged as an accessory to murder. Your children will be put into protective custody. Your dog will be taken to the pound. If you cannot raise bail, your children will be put into foster care and eventually put up for adoption. If you are found guilty, your children will be put into foster care and put up for adoption. It may take some time to place your oldest boy, but the baby girls will find a home very quickly. Certainly the infant.”
Almost none of the above was true, and Sonora was not sure what surprised her more—Belinda’s seeming to believe every word or Mai’s clumsy handling of a woman who might have been able to give them a great deal of insight, as well as solid information.
“Sit and think, Belinda. I’ll give you some time.” Mai got up and headed for the door. She glanced backward at Sonora, who waved her on. It was clear from Mai’s expression that she did not care to be waved on.
As soon as the door shut, Belinda began to sob. She seemed exhausted, eyes bloodshot and bleary, nose red and puffy. The black eye seemed even more swollen than it had before. Belinda put her head in her arms, crying into the oak-veneer table.
Sonora had a sudden memory of the conversation she’d had with Quincy David, the expert on check-cashing sharks. Thinking that they were using pretty much the same techniques.
She rubbed her face in her hands. Maybe she was just tired, but it was getting hard to tell the good guys from the bad.
Sonora scooted her chair closer, spoke in a low tone. “Belinda? They can’t put your kids up for adoption. Not unless they prove you’re an unfit mother.”
“If I go to jail, I’m unfit, aren’t I?” Belinda looked at her with a stunned woefulness that signified a loss of hope.
“No, it doesn’t.” Sonora leaned forward. “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“You know who. Your brother. Aruba forced his way in, threatened your children. Gave you that black eye. You didn’t have a choice, did you, Belinda? Did you?” Sonora looked at her. Say yes, she willed the woman. Say yes, please say yes.
Belinda opened her mouth, swallowed painfully. “Step-brother.”
“Step-brother. You were afraid. He threatened you and your children. You didn’t have a choice. Yes, Belinda?”
She nodded slowly. “That’s right. I didn’t have no choice.”
Sonora repeated it one more time. Belinda nodded and said yes again. Sonora let her breath go, relaxed. It was on videotape, exactly what Belinda Kinkle needed to say to keep clear.
She leaned across the table. “Belinda, I want you to just listen for a minute. You don’t have to say a word, okay, just listen, will you?”
It was hard to know if she was getting through, from the stunned look, the haunted eyes. But Belinda nodded and leaned toward her.
“Lanky isn’t getting out of this one. I know you’ve heard it before, but this time, he’s really going down. This is a death-penalty issue, do you understand that, Belinda?” Sonora watched her, trying to read her thoughts.
“He could get out,” Belinda whispered.
“No, he couldn’t. But if he did? Somehow? I promise I would call you and warn you.”
“No phone,” Belinda said. Still whispering.
“I would see that someone came and told you. I’d make sure. I would come myself if I had to.”
The woman looked at her as if she were insane.
“There’s something I need to know,” Sonora said. “I need to know if your brother and Barty worked with somebody, a third man. I think there was somebody else, and I need to know who he is. Did Lanky or Barty mention anybody else? Someone they worked with? Anyone at all?”
Belinda put a hand on Sonora’s arm, and it seemed, for a moment, as if she would speak, but no words came.
Sonora patted the hand that gripped her arm. “It’s okay, Belinda. I know you’re scared. Tell you what, I’m going to give you my card, okay? If you ever want to talk to me, just call, anytime. You can call collect; I’ll accept the charges. And Belinda? We boarded up that door we broke and locked your house. And I left your dog some food and water.”
She grimaced, remembering the twine Sam had tied to the bathroom door so they could let the dog out of the bathroom from outside the house. How many times the twine slid off and they had to start over. Mai’s amused looks.
Sonora stood up and headed for the door. She could not remember being this tired, ever. “Take care of yourself, Belinda. If anybody wants to talk to you, ask for Detective Whitmore. If you can’t talk to Whitmore, don’t say word one till you get a lawyer.”
Belinda looked like a woman whose last hope was walking out the door. “He forced his way in,” she whispered. “He hit me. He scared my babies.”
Sonora gave her the thumbs-up sign and left, wondering if she was losing her way or finding it.
50
Kinkle’s attorney arrived at a relaxed nine-fifteen the following morning, and by ten-thirty word had gone out that Barty Kinkle was ready to deal.
Sonora sat in the small interrogation room with Sam, Whitmore, and Drew Manson, Attorney-at-Law. Manson was a large man, with well-oiled black hair, thickly brushed back from a square, handsome forehead, and a broad, sad puppy-dog face that said, We’ve seen it all, haven’t we, folks?
According to Whitmore, Manson was a semicompetent local criminal-defense attorney who was well-known among local drug dealers and homegrown wiseguys.
Kinkle wanted immunity from the death penalty. His choice of prisons. And a sentence of no more than ten years. He was a victim, like the Stinnets, of Aruba’s brutality. No one was supposed to have been hurt. He had even tried to stop Aruba. He was under the man’s power—he had been a victim all his life, intimidated and pushed around. He would cooperate fully and hang Aruba for the right deal.
And, as a sign of his willingness to cooperate, to work and play well with others, he would not fight extradition to Ohio.
Sonora saw that Kinkle was looking at her. He seemed more relaxed today, more suited to the role of victim wanting only to please and be a very good boy. He gave the impression of someone who would do as he was asked for a cookie.
But he looked older up close, one side of his face a pale white webwork of scar tissue, the back of both hands a match of damaged skin, ancient history. Sonora squinted her eyes, trying to remember who it was that had told her about Kinkle being dumped in an overheated bath, a three-year-old on the way to hell.
“We’ll take your deal to the District Attorney,” Sam said, no hint in his tone that the guy was dreaming. They’d get him to Cincinnati first. “And whatever we do, we’ll want a polygraph. You going to cooperate on that one too?”
Kinkle looked at his attorney, who nodded. “My client wants to tell you the truth. He wants to help. He’s being traumatized by this guy Aruba, he’s a victim like everyone else.”
There was not, Sonora thought, looking at the faces of her fellow detectives, much flow of sympathy in the room.
“Can I ask a couple of quick questions?” she said.
“No,” from the attorney.
Kinkle balled his hands into fists on the table. He wanted to speak. But he would not disobey Manson’s command. Sonora could see the lawyer relax just a little. He seemed to be enjoying his morning. Cop a quick fee, cut this guy loose to h
is representation up in Cincinnati, who would get the glory and headaches inherent in this case.
“Look, you’re not fighting extradition,” Sonora said. “We appreciate being saved the paperwork. On the other hand, we’ve got Aruba now, and he’s not fighting it either.”
Manson watched her, wary but not particularly expecting to catch her in a lie that he could so easily check.
Later.
But he didn’t have the edge of a player who knows he’ll have to try the case himself.
“What exactly are you saying, Detective?” Manson had a nice voice, which he clearly enjoyed the sound of. He would present well in court, Sonora thought, as long as he avoided a tendency to talk just for the pleasure of listening.
“You tell me,” Sonora said.
The invitation surprised him. But she knew from the narrowing of his eyes that he would not be able to resist taking her up on it. He put his fingertips together over the steel-gray vest, pursed the thick lips. Playing out the mannerisms, to give himself some time. It would be tedious if he used this strategy in court.
“I think what you’re trying to tell us, Detective Blair, is that we’re not the only ones trying to work a deal here.”
Kinkle, staring at the center of the table, raised his head slowly, like a carrion bird interrupted during a meal in the center of the road.
“Am I right?” Manson said.
Sonora opened her arms. “You know how these things play out, don’t you, Mr. Manson?”
Kinkle watched his attorney like an acolyte before a priest. Which had its effect on Manson.
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