But Giant didn’t want to give up. It wasn’t in his nature. Look long enough and he knew they’d find the lead they were looking for and, if nothing else, at least ID the actual killers. But he was overruled. ‘You’ve got to learn to let things go, Ty,’ his boss, a thirty-year veteran, told him. ‘If you carry too much, it’ll break you eventually.’
The case hadn’t broken Tyrone Giant, but it had steadily eaten away at him. He’d seen the torn-apart bodies of the Hernandez family in his dreams; he’d lost his Christian faith. He had intense mood swings, and periods of black depression. He had to fight just to get up in the morning. His fiancée left him.
Although he never gave himself credit for it, a lesser man would have collapsed under the strain, but Giant fought his way out of his depression and nine months earlier had taken a transfer out of Oakland to Monterey, where he was now. He still had to deal with some serious crimes, including homicides, but nothing like what he’d seen in the Hernandez household.
But neither did he forget about Tony Reyes, who’d moved out of San Francisco himself and now lived in a huge house with a ranch attached, down in the Carmel Valley, right within Giant’s jurisdiction. Except that Reyes was still untouchable. Now a construction magnate with a reputed net worth of close to a hundred and fifty million dollars, he paid his taxes and, if he was on the FBI’s radar, they didn’t seem to be doing much about him, because he seemed to be living very happily and still having people killed at will. There was the case of the financial advisor with unproven links to the cartel, who’d gone missing from his home in Salinas along with his wife six months earlier, never to be seen again. Then there was the old lady, two years back, who’d refused to sell her home over near Modesto to a development company owned – in all but name – by Reyes, thus holding up a multimillion-dollar housing project, and who’d subsequently been found dead on her yard patio with serious head injuries (the coroner ruled it an accident, and the development went ahead). The way Tony Reyes flouted the law pissed Giant off mightily, but he’d also learned not to carry the burden and to bide his time. He watched and he waited, and when his opportunity came, it was completely by accident.
He’d been driving not far from the beach in Santa Cruz when he’d seen Reyes’s wife, Maria, get out of her car. He recognized her instantly, having made it his business to know everything there was to know about Tony Reyes. Maria was a thin, elegant Hispanic woman, somewhere at the upper end of her forties, and the way she was looking round furtively set Giant’s alarm bells ringing straight away, because it was clear she didn’t want to be seen. The traffic was heavy, so he had time to watch in his rear-view mirror as Maria walked down the street in his direction, pretending to look in shop windows, before heading into the entrance of the kind of hotel that looked beneath her.
And that was when he’d known she was having an affair. Maria and Reyes had been married for twenty-six years. They had two adult sons, both attending good universities, and Reyes had a reputation as something of a ladies’ man. Maria was probably lonely and looking for some excitement. That had been Giant’s theory anyway, and he’d spent the last month looking to prove it, knowing that here was a potential chink in Reyes’s hitherto impenetrable armour.
Which was why he was here today, sitting on a bench in the shade of some trees, waiting as Logan Harris said goodbye to the latest bored housewife he’d been coaching at tennis and headed back towards his car. Giant waited until Harris was putting his kit onto the back seat, before emerging from the trees and, as Logan climbed in the driver’s seat, Giant got in beside him.
‘Hey, what the hell’s going on?’ demanded Harris, looking shocked and angry.
He was a lot bigger and stronger than Giant, who’d long ago stopped going to the gym every day, now that he had less to prove, but Giant already had his badge out. ‘Police, Mr Harris. I’d like to speak to you.’
‘What the hell about?’ demanded Harris, staring at the badge and then at Giant.
‘Maria Reyes,’ said Giant, watching as Harris turned a whiter shade of pale and seemed to deflate in his seat.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ he said.
Giant couldn’t help it, he was enjoying the power he wielded over Harris, who was exactly the kind of jock who’d have ignored him in school. ‘I think you do,’ he said. ‘You’re having an affair with her, and I’ve got proof.’ He pulled the A4 envelope out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket, unfolded it and threw it on Harris’s lap. ‘Have a look.’
At first Harris didn’t move, but then slowly, reluctantly, he opened up the envelope and stared at the black-and-white photos Giant had taken of him and Maria kissing each other in Harris’s Toyota 4Runner. They’d been taken in a quiet parking lot at Pfeiffer State Park a week earlier, where Giant had followed them on one of his days off. They were good shots, too, but then Giant had had plenty of time to take them, from his position in the trees barely twenty yards away.
‘I’ve got film as well, from the Elliot Hotel in Santa Cruz,’ Giant lied, using the location where he’d first spotted Maria the previous month. ‘That footage is a little more explicit than those, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
Harris looked like he was about to be sick and his hands were trembling. He might have been a big man, but at that moment Giant could have flicked him on the nose and he’d have gone over. ‘What do you want?’ he said eventually, his voice hoarse.
‘I want you to tell Maria Reyes what you’ve just seen, and I want you to persuade her that it’s in her best interests to help us bring her husband to justice. You know who her husband is, don’t you?’
Harris nodded weakly. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘Then you also know that if he found out about the two of you, he’d have you fed to his dogs. Alive. You’ve got a family, haven’t you?’
‘You know I have, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking.’
‘Well, at the moment you’re putting them at risk just as much as yourself. These Mexican cartel guys enjoy punishing the wives and children of their targets. Yours aren’t safe while you’re carrying on like this. If we can find out what you and Maria are up to, then so can Tony Reyes. It’s not like you’ve even been that subtle. I mean, he might even know already and be planning something.’ Giant paused to let the words take effect – which they duly did – before producing his carrot. ‘But you’ve got a way out, Mr Harris. Persuade Maria to meet us. We can guarantee her security. You tell her to say she turned up voluntarily and to make no mention of this meeting, or these photos. We’ll take things from there and let her know what we need her to do.’
Harris looked at him suspiciously. ‘Are you sure you’re a cop?’
‘Look at the badge, asshole.’ Giant held it up again, for longer this time. ‘I’m a cop.’
‘Maria won’t agree to it. She’s terrified of her husband.’
‘Not terrified enough, if she’s prepared to sleep with you. Show her these photos. I think that’ll help persuade her. Then shred them. Because we don’t want them falling into the wrong hands, do we?’
‘Are you blackmailing me?’ Harris looked again at the badge. ‘Is that what you’re doing, Detective?’
In reality, that was exactly what Giant was doing. And he didn’t like it, either. He had no fight with Logan Harris and, if Harris hadn’t been a married man having an affair with a married woman, Giant would almost certainly have left him out of it. But Harris was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now he was going to have to be the fall guy. Although if he played his cards right, he’d escape from this situation unscathed, which was exactly what Giant told him now. ‘I’m giving you an out, Mr Harris. You deliver Maria to us and then you go back to your wife and daughter, with no one any the wiser. Or you can ignore what you’ve heard today and take your chances. But in my experience, every risk-taker’s luck runs out in the end, and the end for you isn’t going to be pretty.’
Harris stared down at the incriminating photos on his lap, t
hen gave Giant an imploring look. ‘Can I have some time to think about it?’
Giant wasn’t in the mood to be charitable, but he also knew better than to force things. ‘I’ll be back in touch in a week. By then you need to have talked to Maria Reyes and got her to agree to the meeting. Otherwise all bets are off.’
He put away his badge and got out of the car without taking the photos, knowing that he’d crossed a major line here. He was working alone, breaking the very law he’d always sworn to uphold, and if he was caught, then his career – indeed his whole life – would be over.
18
The police interview room
Now
As he sat in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the interview room, the ramifications of the line that Giant had crossed the previous week were suddenly as clear as day to him. The revelation, right in the middle of the interview, that Brook Connor had not only recognized him from the photo at the tennis courts, but was prepared to identify him, hit him with the same kind of physical shock that a decent head-punch in the boxing ring used to do. It had never occurred to him that Brook Connor was having her husband followed as well. Jesus, who hadn’t been following that clown? The most important thing now, though, was for him to take possession of the photo that the PI, Cervantes, had taken of him with Logan Harris, and make sure that no one else saw it, because that photo was going to be very hard to explain away.
He kept his cool now, just as he’d been taught to do in the boxing ring, and immediately went on the attack, conscious that Jenna was also looking at him, evidently seeking answers herself. ‘I think you must be mistaken, Ms Connor,’ he said evenly. ‘I’ve never met your husband.’
Brook Connor met his eye with the kind of gaze that was hard to hold without exhibiting signs of guilt. ‘I’m not mistaken,’ she said. ‘It was you in the photo in the parking lot.’
‘And have you got the photograph in your possession?’ he asked, calculating (and desperately hoping) she hadn’t.
‘No,’ she answered, still looking at him. ‘But I know what I saw.’
Giant gave an exaggerated shrug, although his insides were churning as the fear and shame of potential discovery ate away at him. ‘Well, that may be so,’ he said, somehow still managing to keep his voice even and authoritative, ‘but I can tell you quite categorically that I have never met you or your husband before.’
‘It was you,’ repeated Brook firmly. ‘Why were you with him?’
Giant knew he had to move things along. Leaning forward in his chair, he glared at Brook and her lawyer in turn. ‘We’re going around in circles here, and I’m not going to keep repeating myself. You, Ms Connor, are meant to be the one answering the questions. So would you mind continuing with your story?’
She held his gaze for another couple of seconds, then turned to her lawyer, who gave her a little nod.
And with that, she continued, leaving him safe for the moment.
19
Friday
Two Days Ago
After she left Chris Cervantes’s house, Brook had no idea what her next move was going to be. Logan’s body was still lying in the trunk of the car in the garage at home. She now had three missed calls from Angie Southby as well as a message, delivered in exasperated tones, telling her to get in touch immediately, and warning once again that the longer she left it to report Logan’s murder, the worse it would look for both of them. Angie had concluded the message by saying urgently: ‘We need to get this over with, right now.’
Brook knew she was placing Angie in a difficult position but, as a mother – and that was what she was – she had no choice but to put Paige first. If she was arrested for Logan’s murder and denied bail, then who would be looking out for her? And if Paige was in the hands of this thug, Tony Reyes, and if he was as untouchable as Cervantes claimed, then the police weren’t going to be able to put pressure on him to reveal her whereabouts. Somehow, Brook herself was going to have to get Reyes to talk, although God knows how that was going to happen.
She needed to come up with a plan, and the best way to do that was to walk somewhere quiet with her phone off and think. In both of her books, Brook had written at length of the power of walking as a stress-reliever, and she knew from her own experience how effective it was, even when things were looking as bleak as they were now. It helped even more to walk in a place where nature was at its most majestic, so Brook drove north on Highway One, away from Logan’s corpse and the chaos surrounding it, past Santa Cruz and along the beautiful, rugged central Californian coastline, until she came to the Big Basin Redwoods State Park – a huge, deep forest that stretched from the sea up into the hills south of San José.
Brook parked her car down by Waddell Beach, which was the entrance point to the park. The beach was empty at this time on a weekday morning, but would be filled with kite-surfers later, taking advantage of the huge Pacific winds that constantly battered this coastline. She remembered coming here the first summer after she’d returned to the States, with her boyfriend at the time. His name had been Josh and he’d run a plumbing business. They would come down from San Francisco, then park and hike inland before returning, tired and hot, to the beach. They’d strip down to their underwear and run laughing into the waves, staying as long in the frigid water as they could manage (which didn’t tend to be that long), and then dry themselves out on the sand in the warm sunshine. She remembered how happy she’d been and, standing there now, with the wind in her hair, she regretted that they’d broken up. He’d been a good guy.
She’d brought Paige here, too, late last summer when Logan was away in San Francisco, supposedly meeting old college buddies for a reunion. Brook had taught Paige to swim when she was three years old, and the two of them shared a love for the sea. The day they’d come up here had been cool, with an even stronger wind than usual, but Brook remembered the two of them messing about together in the freezing-cold water, and Paige’s infectious fits of giggles as she’d splashed Brook with the cold salt water.
Tears stung Brook’s eyes as she walked up and down the beach, letting the memories flood over her like the tide. In many ways she’d led a blessed life, with far more ups than downs. But the downs, when they’d come, had been shocking and brutal.
Like the sudden death of her parents seven years previously. She’d always had a close relationship with her mom and dad. They’d moved to the UK when Brook was five years old, after her father had taken a teaching post at the University of Sussex, and she still had fond childhood memories of the English countryside and family vacations driving their campervan through Europe. She’d been eighteen when her parents had decided to return to the States, and it was a time when Brook had been trying to assert her independence, so she’d opted to stay behind and go to university in London. She’d stayed in London for another four years afterwards as well, working in marketing for a City bank, then as a freelance consultant, but the pull of family and sunshine had eventually brought her back to California. She’d lived with her mom and dad for a while, then got a job in San Francisco and moved out, but saw them once every couple of weeks at least. It had been a happy time.
And then it happened. Brook was at work one morning when two grim-faced male detectives had turned up at her desk. They’d told her there’d been an incident involving her parents. They wouldn’t give her any further details, but instead drove her to the police station in Modesto, close to where her parents lived, and said they were going to ask her some questions. They’d offered her a lawyer but, because she’d done nothing wrong, she’d turned it down. By this time she was frantic to know what had happened, but still no one told her. Instead they’d sat her down in an interview room and asked her to tell them where she’d been the previous two nights. They’d also wanted to know if anyone could vouch for her whereabouts. Brook had been pretty naïve in those days, but even she could guess that something bad had happened to her mom and dad, so she’d come right out and asked the detectives if they were dead.
T
he more senior of the two detectives had nodded slowly and told her that yes, he was sorry to say they were, and that the circumstances were suspicious. So that was how Brook had found out. In a hot, stifling police interview room, where her interrogators refused to give her any details about how they’d died, but instead had questioned her for the next hour as a suspect, until it became clear to them that she wasn’t going to slip up and incriminate herself as the killer.
Brook was released without charge, but she had been told not to leave the state without first getting permission from the investigating officers. And then finally, a month later, she was called back to the station by the lead detective on the case, who informed her that, after much deliberation, they’d concluded that her parents’ deaths had been a murder/suicide. Their theory was that Brook’s mom and dad had had an argument, and that her dad had struck her mom several times with a rolling pin in the kitchen, killing her, and then, in a fit of remorse, had killed himself. Her mom’s body had been found on the kitchen floor where she’d fallen, with the rolling pin a few feet from her. Her dad’s body, meanwhile, had been slumped in the chair in his study. He’d suffered a single gunshot wound to the temple, and the gun he’d used – an unregistered pistol missing its serial number – was lying on the floor at his feet. There were no signs of forced entry into the house.
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