How many crawled up onto the sand and died? Thousands? Millions? Billions?
But one didn’t. He lived. Thrived. Emerged. Made the great leap forward that would affect the course of all life on the planet going forward.
The first.
Did he will it to be that way? Force it by sheer focus of all of his energy?
Probably. Probably.
Some beings are wired differently, he knows. Intense, like him. Ripe for change. Born to make things happen.
The vivid ones. The sharp ones. They dream the impossible until they make it real, until they can touch it, until they live and breathe it.
And it suddenly occurs to him how he can right these wrongs, how he can get back on the attack, back on that climb to where he wants to be.
Again he flicks his cigarette butt toward the gutter, and again he lights another. All of this in one motion, like if his hands work quickly enough, he can never stop smoking. Never ever.
The night is young. It’ll be dark for hours still, he thinks. Time enough to make something happen before dawn.
No rest for the wicked.
Chapter 43
Darger tapped her boot against the dull tile floor, her stomach a bundle of nerves. The hallway outside the interview rooms at the station was lit by harsh fluorescent fixtures that reminded her of being at the dentist’s office for some reason. This would be about as enjoyable as getting her teeth cleaned, she figured. The vending machine in the corner clicked on, filling the air with a low, steady hum.
“You ready for this?” Luck asked.
“Not really,” Darger said. “But we’ve kept them waiting long enough. Let’s do it.”
Both Camacho and Murphy had been brought down to be interviewed, and efforts had been made to keep the men separate. It’d taken some time to convince Chief Macklin that Darger and Luck were his best choice for conducting the interrogation. The cynical part of Darger thought he was probably still worried about who’d get credit more than he was trying to protect his men. But finally he’d seen reason. He couldn’t argue against the fact that Darger and Luck were infinitely more impartial than any of his own people, all of whom were Murphy’s colleagues.
They pushed into the first room. Murphy sat hunched over the table, but he pushed himself upright immediately as they entered.
“Finally. I feel like I’ve been sitting in here forever. No one’s told me what’s happening.”
He kept his voice light, bordering on jovial. And though he smiled, it looked forced to Darger. A man trying his damnedest to appear innocently curious about why he’d been hauled down to the station with no explanation. Sat down in an interview room and left to stew for a while.
It smacked of guilt, especially for a cop. He should know better than anyone that they didn’t pull this kind of maneuver without good reason.
“Sorry about that,” Luck said. “We’re just trying to figure some things out. Establish a timeline.”
Murphy blinked.
“Timeline for what?”
Luck took a deep breath and leaned forward.
“There’s a leak. On the task force.” His voice was low, like he was sharing some big secret.
She saw Murphy relax then. A tenseness in his neck and shoulders that seemed to melt away.
It was a lie, of course. As cops, Murphy and Camacho would be instantly suspicious at being brought in for questioning. Darger and Luck needed a plausible explanation that pointed away from the notion of Murphy being the arsonist. They needed Murphy and Camacho to think they were being questioned about something else entirely. The idea of a leak on the task force had been Luck’s idea.
With a hand on his chest, Murphy’s eyes went wide.
“You don’t think it’s me, do you?”
“No, of course not,” Luck said, shaking his head. “But we have to talk to everyone, you understand.”
“Right. Of course.”
Luck sat back, crossed one leg over his knee.
“The thing is, chances are it’s something innocent. A guy talking to his girlfriend. Maybe giving a little more information than necessary when he mentions the investigation.”
“Sure. Right.” Murphy swallowed. “So what do you need to know?”
“Take us through your day. What time did you get up?”
It was the same thing Darger had told the task force to do with the witnesses: get the statement in chronological order. Liars had a tendency to jump around in their story. To skip ahead to the dramatic bits. The parts they’d spent time embellishing. When you forced them to tell you what they ate for breakfast and when they took out the garbage, it was a chance to trip them up. To catch them in the web of lies they’d spun.
Murphy was starting out rough right from the gate.
“What time did I get up?” he repeated. “Geez, I guess it was… 9:30 maybe?”
“You don’t set an alarm?”
“Usually I do.”
“But not today?”
“Actually, I did have an alarm set, but I turned it off. Slept in.”
Luck nodded, as if this made perfect sense. But it didn’t. He was already contradicting himself. Over whether he’d set an alarm or not. He was hiding something.
“And what’d you do then? Shower? Breakfast?”
“Shower, yeah. Then breakfast.”
“What’d you have?” Luck asked.
“Scrambled eggs,” Murphy said, then scratched his head. “Sorry, what does this have to do with a leak on the task force?”
“Nothing really. But I haven’t eaten in hours, and I’m starving.”
Murphy chuckled. Darger could sense him wanting to believe this was nothing serious. That this was a routine interview everyone was going through.
“After breakfast? When then?”
“I, uh… think I did a little puttering around the house. Loaded the dishwasher. Folded some laundry. Boring stuff. And then I went over to Camacho’s place.”
As he spoke, Darger noted that Murphy was suddenly gesturing a lot with his hands. It was something he hadn’t done before that she could recall.
“Who called who?”
“Huh?”
“You and Camacho. Or I guess you could have just popped in without calling.”
“Yeah, I mean, we’d talked about meeting up on our day off, so…”
“You hang out a lot outside of work?”
“I don’t know. A normal amount? What’s a lot, really?”
“Nah, it’s just cool to be buddies with your partner, I bet. When I was on the force, most of the guys were older than me. We didn’t have so much in common, you know?” Luck paused. “You remember what time you got to Camacho’s?”
“Uh…” Murphy’s throat constricted as he swallowed, thinking. “I’d guess it was around noon?”
“Noon. OK. And what’d you guys end up doing?”
Shrugging, Murphy said, “Just hanging out. Had a couple beers. Watched some football.”
Luck froze.
“You sure about that?”
Murphy blinked. “Yeah. I mean, that’s what we did.”
When Luck didn’t respond, Darger’s gaze slid over to him. His lips were pressed into a tight line.
“Come on,” Murphy said, trying to smile but not quite pulling it off. “What is this? How does what we watched on TV have anything to do with a leak.”
“Maybe nothing,” Luck said. “Let’s take a little break. You want anything? Something to drink?”
Murphy shook his head.
“How much longer is this going to take?”
“Shouldn’t be long. Just hold tight.”
Darger followed luck back into the hallway, and they put some distance between themselves and the interview rooms. They were supposed to be sound-proof as a rule, but Darger had been in many that weren’t.
“He said they watched football,” Luck said, “Only the thing is, there’s no game on today.”
Letting out a sigh, Darger said, “He’s hiding
something. And not just what he watched on TV.”
“I know,” Luck agreed. “This isn’t looking good.”
She could tell by the look on his face that he’d been holding out hope that there’d been some kind of mistake. Even though Luck was FBI now, part of him would always be a cop. No one in law enforcement wanted to believe one of their own was capable of crimes like this. The problem was that cops were only human.
“Let’s go talk to his partner.”
Chapter 44
Jim parks behind a Walgreens and exits the SUV to prowl Skid Row on foot.
He has a plan. More like the first stages of a plan, he supposes. The vaguest glimpse of a plan. He’s not quite sure where Jim is going with this one, a thought that makes him chuckle a little.
But it’s better to act. To press forward. Therapy is for fucking losers. Introspection is for lily-livered cucks. Forward. Attack. Keep attacking. Never apologize, inside or out.
It’s dark now — the night thicker than usual, almost humid for once, something that almost makes the darkness feel blacker, heavier, impenetrable — but he leaves the sunglasses on nevertheless as he moves out of the Walgreens lot and onto the street. If he’s honest with himself, this is no true choice of his: Jim simply wouldn’t have it any other way.
The vagrants stir everywhere here. Flitting in and out of alleys. Milling on the street. Clustering on the sidewalk. Circling under the gauzy light of the street lamps like moths.
Their faces always look strange. Foreign in some way he can’t pin down. Gaunt. Dirty. Lonely.
He can’t help but think of rodents, watching them all scuttle about in the dark, some of them spooked by his presence and scattering, animal instinct telling them to keep their distance. Probably not a bad idea, that.
Behold the desolation.
Such is life in Skid Row — the homeless capital of the United States.
A seemingly endless row of tents lines the sidewalk on one side of the street, the camping gear butting up against the thick steel bars of fences installed to keep the bums off private property. Tents and tarps and mobs of bums stretch on as far as he can see. It looks like a horrible concrete campground, or maybe people forming a line to get concert tickets for some awful boy band, people waiting for something special. But no. These people aren’t waiting for anything in particular, he thinks. Maybe waiting for life to magically get better. Dare to fucking dream.
On the next block, he finds shopping carts loaded with trash bags — one soul standing guard over a small fleet of carts while the owners of the others presumably scavenge elsewhere. They must work it in shifts. Teamwork.
Inside the bags? Collections of worldly possessions. Trinkets, clothes, and shoes jut out of the tops of the carts. Perhaps small caches of food and drink hide below the top layer. All of it secured in black plastic. On wheels, of course, for the mobility.
None of this provides quite what he’s looking for, so he keeps moving, avoiding eye contact. The eyes who watch him look more tired than anything. Listless.
What exactly does he hope to find? Good question, Jim. He couldn’t define it except to say that he will know it when he sees it, when it feels right.
Skid Row seems a little disturbing at night, though he’s not sure why. The homeless strike him as an overwhelmingly peaceful lot, especially compared to the gang members and random thugs that swarm in other neighborhoods. In so many ways, this place is safer than the rest of the city.
Still, the eerie feeling persists here after dark. Gives him that nervous self-conscious tingle. Like he’s always being watched, and he supposes that for the most part he is, those sleepy eyes tracking him as he passes through.
There’s something more to the feeling, though. Something strange.
He thinks maybe it’s the sheer quantity of homeless here that feels off. Of the roughly 17,000 souls residing in Central City East, a solid 5,000 to 8,000 are homeless at any one time — the largest stable homeless population in the country. Of course, they only account for 20% or so of the 60,000 homeless in Los Angeles County. Still, something about this little slice of the city draws the biggest congregation of them. The lost ones flock here and set up shop, bedding down on concrete, scraping by indefinitely.
Why here? Maybe there’s safety in numbers. Maybe even the homeless can find support and comfort by building a community. Something very human in that notion, he thinks. Something at odds with the society the mainstream world has built. A kind of warmth that stands in glaring contrast to the city itself.
He walks on. Watches the crowd around him thin. The endless rows of tents grow sporadic and then die out entirely. Even after moving out of the main thrust of the homeless living area, he feels like he’s being watched. Strange faces tucked away somewhere, observing him from the shadows. He can almost hear them whispering amongst themselves.
He sees it then — a dark lump along the curb — and he knows he’s found what he came here for.
The human form sprawls in the gutter, a man with gaunt features sleeping there on a sheet of tattered cardboard. He looks diseased or dead or perhaps both. Probably both. Cheekbones protrude from the face like two doorknobs, the skin there pulled so taut that he looks hollow, dried out, some empty husk that probably had hopes and dreams at some point, probably seemed human at one point.
“Hey,” Jim says, making his voice loud and hard.
The figure stirs, alive after all. Maybe just diseased, then. Good for him. He says nothing as he props himself up on his elbows, the little stick arms barely enough to support the rest of him or so it appears.
Jim gets to the heart of the matter.
“You know where to score rock candy?”
“Hell yeah,” the man says, his words a little mushy in a mostly toothless mouth.
He knows by the enthusiastic response that he’s picked a winner. A companion for tonight’s big task whose services can be procured for a mere $20 in crack rocks.
“Well, ain’t it your lucky day? I’m buying for both of us if you handle the purchase for me. I can’t be seen down in, uh, those places, if you know what I mean.”
The stick man jerks up onto his feet, almost seems to levitate for a moment, suddenly animated after being so still just seconds ago.
“Yes, sir. I understand. Happy to help.” This last part comes out “happy to hep.”
Jim thinks it oddly brave for a man with such a pronounced lisp to make no attempt to avoid “s” sounds whatsoever. He holds out his hand to the stick man.
“I’m Jim, by the way.”
“Carl. Nice to meet you.”
Carl pumps Jim’s hand a few times, his own palm cool and so dry to the touch it almost seems flaky or scaly or something. Like shaking a firm iguana.
“Excellent,” Jim says, reminding himself to smile. “Nice to meet you, too, Carl. We’ll head back to my ride.”
Jim leads the way back through the slums to the SUV. The bounce in Carl’s step seems almost comical.
Of course, Jim has no intention of smoking crack himself. He wouldn’t mind getting out of his head for a bit, but he can’t risk that level of losing control for now.
Still, having a partner in crime for the night should be useful. He’s considered doing something like this before but never seriously pursued it — it always seemed just a little too risky. After the string of recent failures — the Mustang, Betsy’s place, and the cocksucker bar all providing no satisfaction — he’s ready to try anything. You know what they say about desperate times, Jim.
Crack makes the perfect bargaining tool round these parts, but Jim can’t dare buy the stuff in person. Too risky. Someone could see, could recognize him. Trouble could circle its wagons around him, focus its wandering eye in his direction and give him a good hard stare, and that would be Bad News Bears, wouldn’t it? That would spoil the fun for everyone.
But not to worry. Enter Carl. In truth, any number of bums bedding down on concrete tonight would be happy enough to perform the task o
f buying narcotics for him. They’d be downright thrilled. By and large, the homeless don’t want to hurt anyone, don’t want any trouble or conflict. They just want to get high and kill another slice of time as pleasantly as possible. Just like ol’ Carl here.
Chapter 45
Before they could even close the interview room door, Camacho was on his feet.
“You guys wanna tell me what’s going on? I mean, why am I in here?”
“We just have a few things we want to clear up. That’s all,” Darger said.
“About what?”
Camacho’s tone was combative, which Darger thought was interesting. Where she sensed an underlying nervousness in Murphy, Camacho was all fierceness.
“There’s a leak on the task force.”
“A leak?”
“Someone’s been passing information to the press. Information that could compromise the investigation. We’re trying to find out who.”
Eyes swiveling from Darger to Luck and then back to Darger again, she thought Camacho’s face softened ever so slightly.
“Good. Then you can let me out of here now. Because I didn’t leak shit.”
“I’m glad to hear that. And I’m sure it’s true. But we have to get statements from everyone.”
The heavy muscles of his biceps flexed as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Let’s get this over with then.”
Darger nodded her head once.
“I asked you earlier what you did today. You said you were home alone, watching TV.”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you watch?”
“Are you guys fucking serious? You brought me in here to ask what I was watching on TV?”
“Miguel, this is going to go a lot easier if you answer our questions,” Darger said.
With a subtle shake of the head, Camacho sniffed with disgust.
“I watched some football.”
She didn’t blink. She kept a level gaze on Camacho, determined not to lose her cool. But inside, her mind was screaming, What the fuck?
“How is it that you were watching a football game on a Tuesday?”
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 20