Blood and Sand

by Cameron Cain

  He looks at his shoes.

  “No, look at me. You look at me and answer. What did I say? What do you never tell a stranger?”

  In my periphery, I see his mom getting up, charging past Dane and toward us.

  Hector says, through hitching breaths, “Where I live.”

  His mom snatches him up. “I think he’s had enough for one night.”

  “You think whatever you want,” I say, and leave them behind, crossing paths with the EMTs rolling their gurney back to their rig. One of them tosses something at me. I catch it.

  “For the pain,” he says.

  It’s a scrip sample. I flip it over, read fast, and toss them back. They land on the gurney’s mattress.

  Dane jogs up beside me. “Why is it your life’s mission to prove you’ve got a bigger dick than everybody else?”

  “If you think that’s my life’s mission, then your attention-paying skills royally suck.”

  “Go to the hospital, Beth.”

  “Or what? You’ll make me?”

  “At least take the meds they give you.”

  “They’re low-dose Darvon. Brain fog’s a side effect.” I take out my keys. Even that movement is agony. “By the way, hot tip for you. Jones has four guns on his person. Four.”

  “I did say ‘at least’.”

  “My mistake. Context is a bitch, isn’t she?”

  Dane gets in my way. Talk about mistakes. “Look, you can knee me in the nuts if you want, but listen. Listen for ten seconds.”

  I set my watch. “Go.”

  “You need a partner on this. You can’t keep going at it alone, all right? Not this one. I’ll be another twenty minutes getting this scene settled, and then I’ll come with you. Wherever you want, and we’ll do whatever you think needs doing. I won’t second-guess you or hinder you or anything, I’ll just be there.”

  I hide a wince that has nothing to do with my injury. My watch beeps. “Time’s up,” I tell him, and get on the bike, firing the motor when he tries to keep arguing, driving away like he’s not shouting at me now, fragments of things he has no business saying: “care about you,” “miss what we had,” “don’t want to lose you to this.”

  My thumb aches, the way it does sometimes when rain’s coming. But the sky is clear, and I’m sure it’s my body sending me a loud telegram about what happened the last time I trusted him. I return to the memory, to drive the point home. Another car, another long stretch of hours — but on this occasion I was in the driver’s seat, feeling steel chafe around my wrists.

  It doesn’t sting so badly anymore. I understand. Dane had been fielding offers for different promotions for months when it happened, and busting this high-powered attorney at his eight-thousand-square-foot lake house with iffy cause would have meant a legal shitstorm Dane couldn’t afford. It wasn’t personal.

  Then again, that’s the part that does still sting. I didn’t think he was like the others. I thought there was a deep-down good guy under all his pretensions at goodness, and I was wrong. I fell for it, same as the long line of dippy Bambi girlfriends who passed through his bedroom like a knock-off love parade, and I promised myself — I promised myself in a way I hadn’t promised anyone anything in a long, long time — that I would not forget.

  I intend to keep that promise.

  I’ve put some good distance down when I pull into a gas station and go inside. I purchase a gel pack and some medical tape. I throw the pack in their ice chest outside and google ShockNews so I can watch the rest of Tina Taylor’s report, in case there was anything of use. I fume at the sight of her bending down to Hector, and I feel a few moments’ regret that I was so hard on him. But now he’ll remember.

  I take the gel pack out and tape it under my shirt, getting some looks from the cashier and a guy by a truck that’s filling up with diesel. The cold’s taking the edge off as I get back on the freeway, and most of my pains are annoying little hums by the time I exit at Zuma. At least, I’m trying to pretend they’re annoying little hums. If I weren’t more practiced at ignoring injuries, I’d be forced to admit they’re more like a death metal concert.

  It’s midnight. The streets by the beach look cooked and forgotten under streetlamps. I park in the south lot, standing and doing a quick three-sixty to see how many cameras I passed, how much surveillance you’d have to wipe.

  Not as much as you’d assume. This isn’t the sexy part of Zuma. It’s not where you go to night surf or tryst on a beach towel. It is, by consequence, a hot spot for homeless people to roll out a sleeping bag. I see one such intrepid soul burrito’d under the southernmost tower.

  I step onto the sand, beyond the reach of the parking lot’s light. I dial Nico. I’m aware that I’m a woman on her phone in the dark, but really, I’ve used up my fear budget for the night. Jones is somewhere getting his scapula popped back into place. That makes me smile, but the smile hurts. I explore with my tongue and find a cut on my lip I didn’t know about.

  “Hey.” Nico doesn’t sound tired. I wonder how much of what I pay him goes to Red Bull.

  “What did you find?”

  “DOT’s wrong. It was an inside job.”

  My feet skid to a stop in the sand. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. There’s no trail. Somebody with a login and a password deleted the time that’s missing.”

  “Can you tell who did it?”

  “No, it was a dummy account. It was created at least four months ago; that’s when the DOT did their last system update. When the software got overwritten, the source code of that account was designed to get — think of it as absorbed — into the new program. No way to trace it back.”

  I can’t believe this. “How hard is that to pull off?”

  “Not hard at all, but they’d need to know the system. As in, really know it. As in work there.”

  “Okay.” I gawk at the ocean, collecting my scrambled thoughts.

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “No, not right now.”

  He hangs up.

  I sit down hard. It’s a terrible idea. That spot on my back where Jones’s knee kept kidney-diving screams bloody murder, and I go sideways, groaning. I remain there, because the sand is soft, if butt-cold, and the ocean from this perspective makes a kind of nonsense I find comforting. I decide to try a few ideas on for size, saying them aloud to hear how they sound.

  “Jones has somebody at the DOT.”

  Ha. Ha ha.

  “The mob has somebody at the DOT.”

  Better, but still problematic. For all the films and TV portrayals that would seem to suggest the opposite, the mob is mostly composed of people who have the work ethic of — well, of Gus. They rub out witnesses, yes, but in the case of traffic cam evidence, they usually trust their lawyers to get it thrown out. Organized crime isn’t quite organized enough to employ moles in governmental departments. Though they do love to bribe police officers.

  “A cop’s got somebody at the DOT.”

  I push off the sand, making old man noises. None of this is even my job. I’m here to find Polly, and the odds are incredibly high that she’s out there, in the ocean, dead.

  I shuffle down-shore until the lifeguard tower behind me is at the right distance. Hattie was found about here. I lie on my back, gazing at the dozen or so stars bright enough to shine through LA’s light pollution, and I try to think of something else I could be doing besides playing dead. There is one thing: I pay attention to the sounds of engines from the street and crane my neck around to monitor how often a patrolman rolls by this particular stretch of Zuma.

  Roughly once an hour, is the answer. And by five a.m., when the homeless guy under the lifeguard tower rouses himself to go wherever he has to go, I’ve gotten a little damp on my calves, but that’s it.

  I sit up. No way. No way Polly got washed out to sea.

  Unless Gus threw her a few feet closer. Which is possible.

  I take a handful of sand and toss it wildly. “Fuck!”

&nbs
p; “You okay?”

  The homeless guy is looking down at me. His sleeping bag is rolled on his back. He looks like a snail with an undersized shell. He’s thin and bearded and sunburned and used-up. What must I look like, that he’s asking me if I’m okay? “Yeah, pal, I’m super.”

  He frowns from me to the water, his eyes rheumy and boozed.

  “Question for you,” I say, with no hope.

  “You a cop?”

  “No, I’m just a wet, beat-up woman in black leather camping out on the beach. That age-old story.”

  He extracts a bottle from his breast pocket and nips, holds it out to me in offering.

  “Trying to quit,” I say. “A van came here the other night. Did you see it?”

  “No,” he says. Too fast. Too definite. He turns to leave.

  “Hang on.” I stand, feeling twists and tugs that make me bend double. “I’ll buy you breakfast!”

  The sound of his steps kicking sand is as good as a ‘hell, no.’

  “I’ll buy you a fifth!” I work my head up. He’s fifty yards away, but he’s stopped. “I’ll buy you two. Whether you saw jack-all or not. Just tell me the truth.”

  “You’re some kind of cop,” he says.

  “I was. A long time ago. Now I find kids, man. That’s all this is. I’m trying to find a kid.”

  “The girl in the van?”

  I try not to sound too excited. “Yeah, her. What happened to her?”

  “Big guy pulled her out. Pulled her out like firewood and dropped her. Then he pulled the lady out.”

  I bow my head. Poor Polly. “ ’Kay, thank you. I hope you’re cool with twenties, they’re all I’ve —”

  “Why didn’t he leave her there?”

  My fingers go cold around my cash. “What?”

  His feet are shifty, ready to bolt. He’s fixed on the money in my hand, but his eyes are all fear. “You’re going to hurt her. When you find her, you’re going to hurt her. That’s why the big guy didn’t leave her there, is so you couldn’t hurt her!”

  He takes off. I tell all my aches to stick a sock in it, and I chase him, not going full-out. There’s no reason to.

  Until I see the bus stop ahead, and the bus slowing for it, and this alkie from the land that time forgot is pulling a bus pass from his back pocket like magic, holding it up as I kick into my best sprint.

  “Hey! Stop! Hey!”

  The driver lets the guy on, sees me coming, and folds the doors shut even as he’s hitting the gas — further evidence that I could probably use some freshening up. I slap the tail end as exhaust fills my lungs, and I bend over again, coughing.

  “He’s probably crazy,” I say.

  Except he knew the kid was a girl. And he knew there was a lady in the van.

  I put a finger-gun to my head and fire, running to my bike and falling onto the seat like a pile of broken bones. I could chase the bus, but I don’t know the landmarks around here, or the bus routes. I could call Nico to guide me, but if the homeless guy is as paranoid as he seems, he’s probably gotten off already. I’m at a dead end, so I do both things anyway, and by the time I catch up, the drunk is indeed gone, the bus driver is bodaciously pissed I made him pull over, and Nico must be so incredibly impressed with his boss, since I’ve managed to get lost twice.

  “It’s a complicated area,” Nico says, chewing something. “Don’t feel bad. At least it’s not Damascus again. That was way worse.”

  “Ah, memories.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “No, and I’m getting another call. Bank some sleep.” I hang up. “Yeah, Dane.”

  “Get to the field office.”

  “Jesus Christ, what now?”

  Chapter 18

  I half-think Dane’s pulling some sick joke on me until I get to the building and experience the increased security. They practically give me a colonic before I’m allowed upstairs.

  It’s an FBI building, so there aren’t a lot of accommodations for prisoners — most get transferred to local jails or penal institutions pretty quickly — but what they do have is modern, high-tech, and closely monitored. The holding cells are on the third floor. There are men’s cells to my right, women’s to my left. I see the crush of double-breasted blazers on the men’s side and head the other way, finding Atwater alone in Doris’s cell.

  Sort of alone. Doris is there, but she’s sporting two bullet wounds center-mass and one to the forehead. Her eyes are closed. Her body’s in a natural sleeping position. The cell doesn’t have bars; the door is solid. There’s a narrow window for observation, plus a flap to feed in trays of food.

  I’m putting on gloves. Atwater turns at the sound. “There won’t be much here,” he says in greeting. “As was not the case in the van downtown, this cell is pristine.”

  “That’s because he didn’t come inside.” I push open the food flap and stick my finger-gun through it.

  “I’m not in the business of presuming,” Atwater says.

  I smell my gloves. Chemicals. “But you swiped it for residue first. Because you agree with me.”

  “I find it plausible.”

  I swing the door over and get a look at what the killer had to work with. The angle is perfect. Visibility’s not a problem. The problem is getting here. I took a fairly good tour of this office yesterday while searching for a soda machine, and every person I passed was clocking the badge on my jacket to make sure I wasn’t an intruder. And yeah, fine, middle of the day and all that, but there were also cameras on every stairwell landing and, of course, every floor. There were even cameras in the bathroom. I remember because I considered it an acute relief that the stalls were fully enclosed for privacy.

  I trace my way back to the holding area’s desk. There are three security guards clustered together, guarding the desk like that horse isn’t already out of the barn and out of the county and on a train to join the circus by now. I consider asking them a couple of questions, but they’re wearing facial expressions that are the definition of defensiveness. I decide it’s time to visit the men’s side.

  The agents aren’t quite shoulder to shoulder here, but I don’t like navigating crowds if I can help it. I put my fingers to my lips and whistle.

  “Let her through,” Dane says. “Cut a path, guys, c’mon.”

  They do, murmuring resentment or maybe getting a whiff of me. I smell like the ocean, but not in a good way. Plus, I still haven’t taken full stock of where my face might be cut or bruised or temporarily misshapen.

  Dane’s at the front with Fussy the SAC, who blurts, “What on earth happened?”

  I look inside the door they’re standing by. “Gus is gone. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that’s what on earth happened.”

  “I mean —” Fussy gestures at me.

  I flip back a strand of damp hair and hear sand sprinkle the floor. “It’s fine. The beauty pageant’s not ’til Friday.”

  The cell is empty. Nothing is askew — although to be fair, there’s very little to skew. The door doesn’t look tampered with, there’s no blood, there’s no nothing. It does appear that Gus forgot to flush the last time he took a piss, but I’m about as surprised by that as I am by my stomach growling. “You guys got any doughnuts or anything?”

  This is why I was never cut out for office work. Everybody’s gawping at me like I just asked Miss Manners where the shitters are.

  Except for Dane, who’s trying not to laugh. “Over here,” he says, leading back through the rabble, past the desk and to a break room, where a spread of bagels has barely been touched.

  I go blueberry with walnut cream cheese, grabbing for it like I’ll have to kill it first. Dane goes to a pot of coffee and dumps it out, starting fresh. “You look like hell, Beth.”

  “There’s a cop you should hang out with at the precinct I’m working.”

  “How’s your chest feel?”

  “He’s an even bigger coffee snob than you.”

  Dane gives up. “This has been on the hea
t since four-thirty. It’s poison by now.”

  I don’t rehash my old, well-loved argument that caffeine’s caffeine, because I’m finishing my bagel in four bites and taking another one.

  He hits the brew button and turns around. “Here are the bullet points. Electric went down in a two-mile radius surrounding this building at 0300 hours. We have a back-up generator, but that went down, too. Security protocol for that situation is for the guards to patrol the building on foot. We have at least double coverage on floors two through five at all times because of the holding cells on three, but —”

  “Lemme guess. Somebody’s unaccounted for?”

  “Security guards make good money here. How much would it take to buy one off and get him to abet the escape of one prisoner and the murder of another?”

  “I’d ballpark it in the mid-six figures,” I say, cracking a cabinet and searching for a cup. “Maybe more if he haggled.”

  Dane reaches to a high shelf and hands me a mug that says, FBI Agents Do It In the G-Spot.

  I hand it back. “No.”

  “The mob wouldn’t spend that kind of money to make this happen,” he says.

  “No, they wouldn’t. But Jones would.”

  “Why? Why bother?”

  “Because Gus shot him.” I give Dane my version of the night Hattie and Polly were killed, backing up the guess-work with the supposed anomalies of positioning and ballistics that, I’m sure, have been driving this whole office nuts for two days. He’s pouring his own mug of coffee by the end, as if this new theory has drained the energy right out of him. I don’t blame him. A vengeful hitman is the last thing this case needs. “Jones isn’t trimming loose ends anymore. It’s an ego thing. I’m guessing it’s been a while since a target has been this much trouble.”

  “Gus wasn’t the target.”

  “No, Polly was. And Jones didn’t shoot her. Gus did, while Jones was running for some emergency medical attention.”