by Graham Marks
“No…” Gabe was beyond caring what happened to him and looked away from Rafael. The man’s face was not the last thing he wanted to see before he died.
Staring over Rafael’s shoulder, across into the small park opposite, Gabe thought he must be delirious. Right there, on the other side of the street, a pale grey Chevy van was pulling up.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Gabe watched as Benny, a lit cigarette stuck in his mouth, turned round and looked out of the van’s side window at nothing in particular. Saw Benny catch sight of him, his jaw dropping in total cartoon style, the cigarette falling out. All the time Rafael, wild-eyed, was still yelling and shaking him like he was some raggedy fairground kewpie doll.
As Benny scrabbled to find the cigarette that was now down between his legs, the van’s sliding rear door opened and Gabe watched Stella, holding her camera bag, being pushed out by Nate. Disoriented, she looked around to find out where she was. Her eyes locked on to Gabe’s and she screamed his name.
Rafael stopped yelling and cocked his head to one side, listening intently, like a bird. Letting Gabe go, he turned on his heels and walked towards the van.
“Something is there, this I know – and you have it!” Rafael pointed a blood-stained finger directly at Benny. “You have something that is mine, give it to me now!”
As fried as Gabe’s brain cells were, a few still functioned well enough to work out that Benny had found the medallion. And Rafael had zoned in on the fact that there was a piece of his gold somewhere in the van. Which, unlike the rectory, was not protected by any prayers that Father Simon might have said.
“Man, I don’t got nothing in the world you need.” Benny, cigarette back in place, blew smoke out of the window. “What you look like you need is a trip to the ER, guy, blood dripping off of you every damn where. My man Gabe do that to you? He must be a whole lot more of a dangerous-type person than I thought.” Benny looked away. “Right, Scotty?”
“Give it to me now!”
“Screw you, mister…”
As Gabe bent down to pick up the gun he caught sight of a silver car … a Toyota. Stella’s Toyota? He shook his head. No it couldn’t be as he’d driven her car to the Mission, where it still had to be. Then the Toyota was forgotten, his attention grabbed by a wailing sound in the distance… OK, this was good. Sirens. At last, the real cavalry. He stood back up, holding the gun loosely, and felt someone’s hand on his shoulder. Stella was right there, staring at him. She looked pale and very scared.
“Gabe… What happened to you? Is Father Simon here?”
Gabe shook his head. Relief that Stella seemed to be fine hit him like a shot of adrenaline, clearing his head.
“Where is he?”
“It’s, you know, kinda complicated…” There was no way he could even begin to tell her about the incident at the old San Sebastian chapel, not right now. “Are you OK, did Benny hurt you?”
“No… No, he didn’t—” Stella broke off mid-sentence, registering what Gabe was holding. “Where did you get that?”
“That’s kinda complicated too.” The sirens were getting nearer. Across the street the coyote had appeared next to Rafael, and from the shouting and the ruckus, the confrontation with Benny looked like it had ratcheted up and was about to go nuclear any second.
There are moments when panic takes over and rational actions don’t have a rat’s chance. And there are times, in the middle of total chaos, when there’s a moment of clear, lucid thinking.
In that moment Gabe figured the next move. They had to leave before the cops arrived, and before Rafael turned his attention back on to him. Because if the cops found him at the scene of a break-in, a burglary and a shooting there was no way he wasn’t going to be in the deepest of deep shit.
And if Rafael got him, he’d be a dead guy.
Simple choice.
“We have to go, Stella, right now!” Gabe slipped the safety catch on and shoved the gun down the back of his jeans. Like it was something he’d been doing all his life. “Is there another way out of here, like through the garden?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise, but we have to go. It’ll get real bad any minute and the cops can’t find me here…”
Before Gabe could say any more the coyote leapt into the van. At the same time, Rafael reached through the open passenger-side window. The air was filled with tortured screams, snarls and bright flashes of light. Then it was all over, the violence quick and very bloody.
Gabe saw Rafael step back from the van, his hands red, his smile like a cut. Benny had slumped forward, his door freshly decorated with a dribbling crimson splatter. He also caught a glimpse of Scotty and Nate abandoning ship like the rats they were.
For the longest moment nothing happened.
Stella clung to Gabe.
The coyote reappeared, glaring daggers.
Rafael leered.
And the pain came back. Gabe doubled over, clutching his head.
Screeching brakes announced the arrival of the cops. A squad car pulled up, two officers jumping out of the black and white. Definitely time to be elsewhere.
“Gabe? We have to go!” Stella grabbed his arm and started to run, pulling him after her.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Gabe and Stella hadn’t even made it to the back of the Father’s house.
When the cops had finally turned up it wasn’t in a solitary black and white, more like a squadron of squad cars. They’d been stopped by a heavily armed member of the SWAT team that had also arrived and it wasn’t long before someone noticed the gun.
Gabe had been at the police station for twenty minutes, possibly half an hour now, most of the time spent sitting on his own in a holding cell. He couldn’t see a clock anywhere and they’d taken his phone off him. He was surprised he still had his shoelaces and belt. The uniform cop had told him he’d be dealt with ‘as and when’. Scare tactics, he assumed. And they were working, like being put in handcuffs had.
He was managing to hold it together. Just about. He wished he knew what had happened to Stella as they’d been put in separate cruisers back at the rectory. But he figured, as she wasn’t the one who had been found with a recently fired handgun stuck down the back of her jeans, she’d be in a whole heap less trouble than he most assuredly was.
There were definite advantages to being behind bars, though. Like the fact that he was safe and there was no way Rafael could get to him. He wasn’t going to die. Not today, anyway. Gabe wondered where the man was now. Hopefully strapped into a straitjacket, locked up in a padded cell. He was responsible for at least four murders, maybe more if Scotty and Nate hadn’t made it. He was an evil, evil sunnuvabitch and should never see the light of day again. Hopefully, he’d be headed directly for Death Row and a one-way ticket back to where he’d come from.
Back where he’d come from… The words made Gabe think about Father Simon. About how the priest had told Gabe that he was probably responsible for Rafael being here. He did not want to believe that was true, but wondered if he’d ever be able to convince himself it wasn’t. What did he actually believe in? All he had believed, before, was that he had to try and help his family out of trouble, and it had got him into more strife than he could ever have imagined. He wondered if Stella, because she went to church, would look at this any different.
Whatever there was in store down the road – whatever charges the police threw at him, whatever his parents decided was an apt punishment – it would be a walk in the park compared to the heinous things Rafael had threatened to do to him.
Through the bars, in the larger cell next to his, he could see a trio of Saturday night drunks sprawled on the benches, sleeping off their respective big nights out. Two of them looked and smelled like they were regulars. The third not so much, as he must have started the night being dressed quite smartly. His evening had obviously not ended in the way he had originally intended it to. All three were mumbling and dribbling. With
intermittent raucous snoring and the occasional loud fart thrown in for good measure. It was like he was in a ‘Please drink responsibly’ alcohol awareness advertisement.
Gabe, sitting as far away as he could get from his neighbours, stared through the bars of the cell at a large room with a grid of untidy desks and cubicles. It was empty at the moment, though that was probably because it was a Sunday. Saturday night it must’ve been a zoo, and where he and Stella could have ended up if they’d been caught breaking into Morrison.
Father Simon came to the front of Gabe’s mind again. None of the people Rafael had killed had deserved to die, except possibly Benny, but the Father least of all. Gabe thought about him, lying on the floor of that old chapel, another dead body in the Mission graveyard. What a waste. He had been a good man and had not deserved to end his life like that. Gabe wished he’d been a better shot and managed to do more than just wing Rafael.
He knew he was going to be asked so many questions, and that the truthful answers to some of them were going to make him sound like the crazy person. Right now, he couldn’t care less if it did. Maybe it was him who was the mad one. But at least he’d stepped up and managed to stop Rafael from getting his hands on the gold artefacts, whatever he wanted them for. They were back in Father Simon’s safe and there was no way Rafael was going in there. He began to rerun what had happened at the rectory, trying to imagine what it might look like to the cops.
Gabe wondered how he was going to explain what he’d been doing there – how he’d got the gun, why he’d shot Rafael and a coyote. He thought about what Stella might’ve already told the cops. Would their stories match up? Somehow he doubted it.
Gabe heard a door open and looked over to see a uniform ushering in a guy, late twenties maybe, spiky, pale ginger hair and a close-trimmed beard, sunglasses pushed up on to his head. The door swung shut behind them, the uniform directing the guy over to one of the tidier desks about eight, maybe ten metres away. The newcomer had a surly look about him and it seemed to Gabe that this wasn’t the first time he’d been in this situation.
“Siddown.” The cop nodded at a metal chair by the side of the desk.
“What?”
Gabe saw the guy’s annoyed expression as the uniform cuffed one wrist to the desk.
“I said, you sit your ass down there. Detective Baring told me to tell you, don’t touch nothing, don’t do nothing, don’t speak to nobody don’t speak to you first. Clear?”
Not waiting for an answer, the uniform walked off and Gabe saw the guy nod and slowly sit down on the chair, facing away from him. After angrily yanking at the cuffs he finally turned round to check behind him. Taking in the cell with the sleeping, snoring drunks first, he finally looked at Gabe.
“What the hell you do to get locked up?” The man sat back, lightly drumming his fingers on the desk.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“Really, I don’t have the energy right now…”
The man was about to reply when the door he’d been brought through was pushed open again. Gabe watched a plain-clothes detective stride into the room and make a beeline for the cells. He recognized him as somebody he’d seen, fleetingly, outside the rectory, but there was something else about him that definitely made him kind of eerily familiar. The man was staring at him in a very off way as he came across the room.
Those eyes…
Gabe couldn’t believe what he was thinking. It wasn’t possible. Except that should have been true of so much of what had already happened.
Those eyes…
There was a fire in them that he’d seen before. Gabe pushed himself as far back in the cell as he could.
Somehow it was Rafael Delacruz.
Gabe shot a glance at the man sitting over by the desk, but what could he do? Then Rafael was opening the cell door and coming in. Gabe wanted to shout, but the sound stayed trapped in his throat. Without a word, Rafael walked over and grabbed Gabe’s arm, pulled him upright and started to drag him out of the cell. One of the guys in the tank stirred, but then turned over and began to snore even louder than before. It was like some kind of surreal mime performance, in an almost-empty theatre.
Helpless, there was nothing Gabe could do but go where Rafael was taking him. He tried to look over at the guy cuffed to the desk but his head wouldn’t cooperate. And the next thing he knew he was out in the corridor.
Chapter Forty
The door to the squad room banged open and a plain-clothes officer, along with a couple of uniforms came into the room. Their jokey, light-hearted banter stopped dead and in the silence the trio stared at the empty holding cell, its sliding gate as wide open as their mouths.
“Haskins?” The plain-clothes turned angrily on one of the uniforms, his arms spread out. “Huh?”
“I locked that, sir! Honest to…”
“He did, Mr de Soto.” The other uniform pointed to his colleague. “I was there. I saw him, sir.”
“Then how the hell…?” The detective, de Soto, caught sight of a bored-looking man, sunglasses pushed up on his head, sitting cuffed to a desk. “Who’re you, what’re you doing here on your own? You know anything about this clusterdump of a disappearing act?”
“Me?” The man shook his head. “No, I got brought back to the station and told to wait here for Detective Baring.”
“How long you been here?” Det. de Soto hurried through the warren of desks, pointing over at the holding cell. “Was he there – the kid – when you got brought in?”
“Sure.” The man nodded, looking up at de Soto, standing right next to him and glaring.
“Well, where’d he go? How’d he get out?”
“He went out the way you just came in.” The man’s neck hurt looking up at the cop. “One of you guys arrived, unlocked the cell, took him away.”
“One of us? A cop?” de Soto frowned, his lower lip jutting out like a shelf. “A uniform?”
“No, he was a suit, like you,” the man shrugged, all noncommittal, but his eyes flicked towards the door. “Had to be a cop, right?”
Gabe knew it was all over. His world had flipped back into madness and with every step he took his hopes for a future evaporated.
Rafael had somehow managed to switch bodies, find a new person to inhabit. A cop, a detective. Just an ordinary guy in a slightly wrinkled grey suit. Perfect. So he’d simply been able to walk into the station house and spirit him away.
Once Rafael had stepped out of the station house, it had been kind of a repeat performance of what had happened at the cemetery, when they’d walked straight into the traffic. There was another blurred, hitting-light-speed moment when he went all Zen and blissful, only to end up somewhere else entirely. And just like the first time, when he looked round to see where he was, Gabe found himself, once again, back outside the rectory.
The street looked like a mini war zone. Yellow and black tape had been strung across it either side of the rectory, effectively blocking off all access, and Benny’s mobile office, the blood-spattered Chevy, was still there. As far as he could see, though, no sign of Benny. Crime-scene techs were everywhere, plus various plain-clothes and uniformed officers, all the activity being watched over by a crowd of neighbourhood rubberneckers. The very same people, it occurred to Gabe, who had been so conspicuous by their absence when they might have been of some help.
“And now –” Rafael’s fingers dug into Gabe’s arm – “this time you will do what I told you to do before… You are to go and get what belongs to me.”
Gabe felt his resistance drain away as Rafael started walking towards the rectory with him. He lifted up the tape barrier with his free hand and they were in the cordoned off no-go area. On the radar. A uniform noticed them and came across, the expression on his face part recognition, part puzzlement.
“Detective Nicholls?” The officer stopped a few metres away, glancing from Rafael to Gabe, not sure what was going on. “Can I, uh… Can I help?”
/> “Yes, you can.” Rafael pushed Gabe forward. “As you know, he left something in the house, yes?”
Gabe could feel the power radiating off Rafael. He watched the cop, his name badge saying he was called Beaumont, and saw his face blanking. Right then he knew Rafael had got him completely under his control.
“Yes, sir.” Officer Beaumont’s voice sounded flat, robotic. “Of course he did.”
“Good. I have other business to attend to, so please see he goes in and retrieves it.”
“Yes, sir, right away, sir.” Officer Beaumont came over and took Gabe’s arm, firmly.
“And make sure no one stops him.” Rafael finally let go of Gabe. “No one.”
“Yes, sir…”
Det. de Soto watched the red-headed perp being led away, taken out of the squad room. He’d apparently been picked up because he was accused of running some kind of credit-card scam, and he definitely wouldn’t come high on anyone’s list as a reliable witness. But he was the only person who had seen what had gone down, seen the boy being … de Soto shook his head, not even wanting to think the word ‘kidnapped’. Removed from police custody was a better spin.
Except that the perp had pos-i-tively identified the person doing the removing as Det. Steve Nicholls, confirming beyond any reasonable doubt the video-surveillance evidence, plus the fact that the detective’s car was missing from the pool. All of which was just plain ridiculous. He’d known Nicholls for at least eight or nine years, and while the man was no Sherlock Holmes, he was a reasonable enough detective and a decent, stand-up guy. Unless he’d had a total meltdown, this was not the kind of thing he would do.
But there was no getting round the fact that the kid, a material witness who had been found with a recently fired gun at the scene of a crime, was gone, and Nicholls was the one who had taken him.