Nick greeted him at the front door and led him out to the patio. They sat together beneath a striped umbrella that shaded the wrought iron table where Nick had laid out small plates of pintxos, chorizo, and angulas from the Usategui, a pitcher of tinto, and another of iced tea. Alvarez chose tea, guzzled an entire glass, and poured himself another.
“First time in Spain?” Nick asked him.
“Way back when, my first wife and I took a bus tour for an anniversary, our fifth I think it was. Didn’t visit anywhere around here. Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, those were the places. It’s a pretty country.”
Nick tried to make more small talk, burn up some time, but Alvarez simply grunted when it was his turn to reply. Ready to get to business.
“I’m short on time,” he said. “Got to fly out tomorrow. This is strictly a courtesy call. More courtesy than you probably deserve.”
Nick nodded. “So I guess we should start.”
“Tell me about Jackson Sharp.”
Nick glanced at Harper. If Sharp came up, they’d planned to deny knowing anything about him. Alvarez caught the look, read it correctly.
“You tell me everything you know about Sharp, I give you some good news. An even trade. Otherwise, I head back to the train station.”
Harper shrugged a question at Nick. He shrugged back, go ahead if you like.
So Harper told Alvarez about finding Ross’s research notes, her trip to Sharp’s Edgewater Apartments, seeing him dead in the recliner, her fight with Mullen. And stopped there.
Alvarez shook his head, not satisfied.
“After Sharp’s name came up in Ms. Bixel’s report, we tracked down his address, had a look inside the apartment, Edgewater, that place. Very curious scene.”
“How so?” Nick said, his tone a trifle too breezy. Not a good liar.
“The place was disinfected, totally sterilized. We got one of the best forensics squads in the country. Plenty of practice. But in this case, they found no blood, no hairs, no bodily fluids, spit, sperm, zero.
“That never happens, an apartment where someone was living, it’s not possible. Even a crime-scene cleanup crew, a good one, after they’re done, there’s going to be some microscopic this or that left behind. But not in Sharp’s place. Rent paid in advance for six months. But no clothes in the closet, no food, no personal items of any kind, not even hangers, mirrors clean, not a spatter of toothpaste, a flake of snot. Even the drains were sterile, the traps, the toilet. Furniture was scrubbed, cabinets, refrigerator. That just doesn’t happen.”
“Maybe Sharp was OCD,” Nick said. “A clean freak.”
Alvarez gave no sign he’d heard, looking past Nick into Harper’s eyes.
“Share what you have,” she said. “We’ll give you the whole story on Jackson Sharp.”
“Including where you disposed of the body?”
“That we don’t know,” Nick said.
“We’ll play fair,” said Harper. “You have my word.”
Alvarez considered that for several moments, looking down at the harbor where a container ship was idling through the channel a half mile north of the small bay of Algorta, heading into the bustling Bilbao port.
The detective dug through his overnight bag and drew out a file folder. He slid it across the tabletop to Harper. She opened the folder, looked at the photograph, closed the folder, and slid it to Nick.
“The mask,” Nick said. “You found it.”
“A kid, eight years old, pulled it out of the trash the day after Ross and Leo were murdered. A dumpster behind a Coconut Grove restaurant. He took it home, put it in a drawer, forgot about it. His mother came across it two weeks ago, remembered hearing about a mask in the news, called one of the TV stations, WSVN, the blood-and-gore guys. They sent a camera crew out. Called Miami PD on their way to the kid’s house so they’d get a big scene, full of cops.
“When we got the results back from the crime lab, there were fingerprints, the kid, his mother, others we couldn’t identify, and a lot of smears of this and that. Mixed in with all that there’s Albion’s DNA, saliva around the mouth hole, more DNA around the eyeholes. So there you go.
“Federal prosecutor filed extradition papers immediately. I’m on my way to Zurich to give a statement in the first hearing. Prosecutor warned the case could take six months, a year, to work through the appeals process. But he’s confident the Swiss will comply. There’s a solid treaty with the United States, and this case satisfies the dual-criminality statute, which means the Swiss treat murder similar to how the United States does. So it might take a while, but Albion’s going down.”
Nick laid a hand on Harper’s arm. “That’s good news, very good news,” he said. “Isn’t it, Harper?”
“We’ve seen Swiss justice in action already. Why should this time be different?”
“Judge that freed Albion has nothing to do with this case. It’s going to happen, trust me, Albion will serve serious time.”
“Okay,” she said. “One down.”
Alvarez gave her a careful look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
When Harper didn’t answer, Nick jumped in.
“She’s not satisfied the whole truth’s being told. She thinks Mullen is their scapegoat. They’re using him to cover their own tracks.”
“Oh, sure, I get it. You’re still on a vigilante kick. Going to be like old Grandpa Sal when he was a kid. What was it? Killed like six, seven guys, mutilated their corpses. That’s your agenda now, pull a Leonardi, take out all these guys?”
“You want to hear what I have to say about Jackson Sharp or give me a lecture about genetics?”
She told him about the hostage video of Sharp and Naff and Spider. Three guys who knew each other. Naff going off to a legit job, Spider freelancing his paramilitary skills, Sharp partnering up with Helmut Mullen. She told him about the video that showed Sharp in Africa alongside Helmut Mullen, the two of them murdering the Fordhams, the husband-and-wife aid workers who were filming the child slaves. Sharp was along for the massacre at Soko too, used the video the aid woman was shooting in an extortion scam against Albion. He decided he needed someone who could put the screws to Albion. Somebody to get their attention and make them hand over a pile of cash to Sharp to keep it all quiet. His home base was Miami. He looked around him, thought Ross fit the bill, a bulldog with a megaphone.
Alvarez said, “A lot of bad guys in this story. But for my money, Sharp’s the sleaziest. Knew he was putting Ross in Albion’s crosshairs but didn’t give a shit what happened to him.”
Harper watched Alvarez look off at the harbor. Saw in his eyes a flicker of anguish she hadn’t noticed before. This was the world he’d chosen, where every day the crimes of the past worked on him like a dark, relentless undertow as new crimes came crashing ashore, one after the next after the next, piling atop him. Alvarez out there in the deep water, struggling to free himself from the awful tidal pull that threatened to drag him under while more waves kept pounding the beachhead.
“Where’s his body?” Alvarez said at last. “Can you give me that much?”
“It’s gone,” she said. “Disposed of. A cleanup crew sanitized Sharp’s apartment. A friend of a friend suggested their services.”
“A friend of a friend?” Alvarez said. “That would be Sal.”
“Friend of a friend.”
“That’s it, all you’re going to say?”
“All there is to say.”
“Well, they did a damn good job. You get a chance, send me their business card.”
Maybe it was too little, too late, but Harper drew a deep breath and went with it.
“I’ve given you a hard time,” she said. “From the first night on, I made you an adversary. I’m sorry. And I want to thank you, Alvarez. For your work, for not giving up, and for not throwing the bunch of us in jail. I was wrong about you. You’re a decent man.”
He brought his eyes back from the distance and looked at her with a half smile. His eyes had closed off.
The cool dispassion she’d seen in them that first night had returned. The detective was back on the job.
“A little friendly advice,” he said. “From here on, watch yourself, Ms. McDaniel. Because I will be.”
She gave a quiet sigh.
“Is there anything else, Detective?”
There wasn’t.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Mid-May, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain
Ben Westfield arrived late morning on Friday. He was walking with a cane, a gift from the ingenue costarring in his latest movie. Though he claimed he didn’t need it anymore, that his left leg was fully recovered, he’d said he’d become fond of the sleek wooden stick during his six-week recovery. Good for fending off overzealous fans and yappy dogs.
After a shower and a light lunch, Ben asked if they wanted to go with him to see the Guggenheim Museum. Because the weather was still clear, they decided to make the half-hour trip into town.
Shaped like a surreal schooner, the wildly eccentric structure was built along the Nervión River near downtown Bilbao in what had once been a seedy part of the port area but had become gentrified in the years since the museum’s construction.
Harper reluctantly tagged along, telling herself to relax, embrace the experience, get to know her father better, this kind, honest, talented man who was trying his best to make peace. But for reasons she didn’t fully grasp, she was sulky and unforgiving, although she could not name exactly what it was Ben Westfield might be guilty of.
To make matters more distressing, since exiting the train, she’d had several brief flutters of panic, an uneasy sense that once again she was being spied on. She kept glancing around to locate the stalker until Nick asked her what was wrong.
She told him it was nothing. After so many weeks of living in near isolation at the cliffside villa, she’d become oversensitive to crowds. And maybe that was truly the reason for her jitters.
When they arrived at the Guggenheim, the three of them cruised the spacious plaza that wrapped around the museum, stopping to admire the enormous sculpture of a long-legged spider made of iron. Once inside the museum, Ben led them directly to the Richard Serra permanent exhibit in a cavernous exhibition hall with rounded corners and a towering ceiling.
This exhibit had been on Ben’s wish list since meeting Serra at a Malibu party years earlier. The two men had hit it off and stayed in touch ever since. Fast friends now, Westfield visited Serra in New York and in his San Francisco home, and on several occasions Serra had stayed in Ben’s La Jolla estate. In the last few years, Ben had traveled to several of Serra’s US exhibits and was awed by his new friend’s talent. But so far he’d not found a free moment to see Serra’s premier work, The Matter of Time, which was a centerpiece of Bilbao’s Guggenheim collection. It was, Ben informed them, seven interlocking sculptures, large-scale abstract sheet metal assemblies that were constructed of weathered steel.
“That’s an alloy,” he said as they stood at a distance taking in the dramatic sculpture. “That reddish patina is a kind of organic secretion that the steel creates to form a protective layer. It looks like rust but in fact it retards damaging corrosion. And as that top layer wears away, it regenerates continuously. Living steel.”
“Like a callus,” Nick said.
“More like a kind of molting,” said Ben. “Even metal can change, grow, develop.” He winked at Harper.
To her the towering sculpture with parallel wavy walls that snaked halfway across the hall was less beautiful than it was menacing. Groups of people were entering its narrow, sinuous lanes, walking warily between the warped and tilting high walls of the sculpted sheet metal, navigating its serpentine paths as if the sculpture were a carnival spook house. She watched a young couple disappear into the maze of elastic curves, then reappear in an unexpected location further on.
“I’m going back,” she announced.
Ben peered into her eyes.
“Back to the villa?” Nick said. “You’re not feeling well?”
“No, I’m okay. I’ll just wait outside.”
“We’ll all go,” said Ben. “Come back when you’re feeling better.”
“No, no, go ahead. Explore all you want. It’s a pretty day. I’ll just sit out in the sun.”
“You’re sure?”
She said she was.
“Okay, if that’s what you want. We’ll be out as quick as we can.”
“Don’t hurry, please. You came all this way. Take your time. I’m just feeling . . . I don’t know. Claustrophobic or something.”
Nick gave her a buck-up pat on her good shoulder and headed off, following Ben into the interior of the sculpture.
She found a spot outside the front doors with a view across the river toward the Universidad de Deusto, a Jesuit college that was reputed to be the Harvard of Spain. She watched the flow of tourists and locals strolling along the waterfront. After a few minutes, the smell of tortilla española from a nearby café enticed her to rise from her bench and wander in that direction. Maybe she was only hungry.
She was on the steps down to the riverfront walkway when she heard the first screams.
A throng of people, women wailing, men barking at their children to keep up, were flooding out of the front doors of the museum. Harper trotted back against the flow of the panicked crowd. She stepped in front of a college boy, blocked his way, and asked what was going on.
“Terroristas,” he said and tore away from her.
She waded through the crowd and pushed into the museum. Guards stood atop the ticket counters and were calling out for everyone to remain calm, but no one was listening. A herd of Japanese tourists passed her in a tight formation, and behind them another tour group of elderly ladies were being shepherded toward the exit by an impatient Spaniard, who hurled a steady stream of curses at his clients.
Harper jogged down an empty corridor, cut through a roped-off exhibit of ancient pots and vases, and located the corridor where they’d traveled earlier, retracing their steps to the vast exhibition hall where she’d left Ben and Nick.
Screams and deep grunts of exertion led her the last few yards until she reached the spot where she’d last seen them. Deep in the interior of the labyrinthine structure, she could see the sheet metal shiver and shake, and she heard the thuds and hollow chimes of the metal ringing as if someone was hammering it with their fists.
She forged ahead, entering the closest entrance that seemed to lead toward the clamor, but after only a few steps, she was already disoriented. The high, curving walls and the narrowing and widening path before her created the sense that the ground was no longer supporting her.
She thought she heard Nick’s shout. The kiai he’d mastered as a boy on the workout mats. A deep-throated battle cry meant to release a fighter’s stored energy. Another kiai and then another.
As she hustled toward Nick’s voice, the slanted walls, the false openings, the changing light and the deceptive slants of the open spaces confused her, sent her in directions farther from Nick’s cries and the grunts and hoarse curses that answered him.
She broke into a run, but it seemed like she was getting nowhere. The walls closing in and widening, shifting right, then veering left, she made wrong turns, came to dead ends, had to run back the other direction, lost and with a rising dread that she would be too late.
She scraped her forehead on a wall, bounced off another, rounded a corner, and saw figures in the distance. She was bruised, scuffed, bleeding, and out of breath. Her injured right arm ached anew with every pump of her heart.
The light was frail and gray back there, making the shadowy figures little more than blurs of movement. They seemed to be wrestling, punching, gouging, grabbing for handholds, trapped in a tight box of steel. A body lay facedown on the floor nearby, one arm outstretched, reaching for his cane. Her father, Ben.
As she closed to twenty yards, she saw a second man lying on the floor behind the two fighters. Then a muzzle flash, and the chimes of a slug hitting the weat
hered steel and ricocheting twice more inside the tight passage.
The shooter saw her and released the person he’d been pistol-whipping, let him crumple to the floor and settle in beside the other two sprawling men.
He aimed at her as she came forward, the pistol glinting in a sudden shaft of sunlight.
“Run, Harper, run!”
Nick’s voice. She saw her brother struggle to his knees to the left of the shooter.
“She won’t run,” Helmut Mullen said.
Harper came closer.
Mullen said, “We meet for the final time.”
“One thing I don’t get,” she said. “Bixel’s the one who turned you in. Why come for us, not her?”
“Bixel’s next. You started this. You die first, you and these others.”
To Mullen’s right, the man lying on his side turned his head, a ragged gash across his forehead. Adrian Naff.
She’d closed to ten feet. Nick was wobbling upright behind Mullen. He came to his full height, drew back his right fist, and launched a feeble punch. Mullen bobbed his head, slipped the blow, and hacked Nick on the skull with his pistol. Brought his aim quickly back to Harper. She halted five feet away. Nowhere to go but forward. Dodge, feint—maybe there was a chance. But no time to chart her moves. This was about instinct and timing and maybe a lucky distraction.
Harper said, “And another thing I don’t understand.”
“We’re not doing that tired-out confession thing,” Mullen said. “I have nothing to say to you.”
He lifted the pistol a few inches to better sight along its barrel. She was watching his eyes, looking for a telltale signal that he was about to fire. Timing her dodge to that. Betting her goddamn life on Deena’s training.
When his sighting eye tensed, she ducked her head, dived, and rolled across an empty span of floor. Coming to her feet, she saw Mullen stagger to one side, the crooked handle of Ben Westfield’s cane hooked around his ankle, and Ben tugging hard.
When They Come for You Page 24