The Janes

by Louisa Luna

  Mia finished wiping the cut clean and tossed one of the washcloths behind her into the bathtub. She unzipped her case and removed a syringe and a small glass vial, stuck the needle in the top and pulled the plunger back. She pulled the needle from the bottle and squirted a drop out.

  “Ready?” she said to Vega.

  Vega nodded.

  Mia gave her five small shots, right under the bottom flap of skin. Vega stared at the crimped light fixture on the ceiling. Cap looked away but only for a second.

  “So,” said Mia, putting the vial and the needle back in the case. “So this,” she said, removing a gray circle of thread, “is from my office. It’s thicker than what you’re used to because it’s usually used to hold together dead people skin.”

  She unspooled the thread and attached it to an inch-long needle.

  “You might have some scarring, might be more difficult to remove, et cetera. It’s usually not removed is all.”

  “I’m okay with it,” said Vega.

  “Great.”

  Mia went to work. Cap watched for a few seconds and then averted his gaze. It actually wasn’t the puncturing of the skin that bothered him, but the blood swelling and dripping down every time Mia cinched the thread. In most situations he wasn’t skittish, but he felt it getting to him. Best to leave, he thought, instead of pretend to be a tough guy and end up passing out.

  “Could we borrow some of your girlfriend’s clothes?” said Cap, to McTiernan.

  “Yeah, downstairs in the basement she’s got her gym stuff—that’ll probably fit Vega.”

  Cap jogged downstairs, saw an elliptical and a rack with hand weights next to a small dresser. He opened the drawers and sorted through stacks of spandex clothes, picked out a pair of gray leggings and a dark blue racer-back tank top that appeared loose around the abdominal area. He also found a thin gray hoodie to match the leggings, a balled-up pair of socks, and neon green sneakers, then headed upstairs.

  Back in the bathroom, Mia was finishing up, tying a knot at the end of the thread. She snipped the end with a pair of scissors from her kit, then patted the cut with the fresh washcloth.

  “So just take it easy today, okay? No strenuous activity,” Mia said in a doctorly voice.

  Vega lifted her head off the floor to stare at her. Cap and McTiernan gaped.

  “JK,” said Mia, holding her hands up in surrender. “You need to stay in that position for at least thirty minutes, though, let it clot up.”

  Vega gave a nod, leaned her head back down on the tile.

  “Okay,” announced Mia, wrinkling up her squirrel nose. “Does somebody wanna tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  * * *

  —

  Forty-five minutes later Vega emerged from the bathroom in McTiernan’s girlfriend’s activewear, having taken the Cipro tablet Mia had brought. The lidocaine was wearing off but Mia had rebandaged the cut tightly and securely, so now all Vega felt was a dull ache and the occasional twinge of pain when it throbbed.

  She went into the kitchen, where Cap and McTiernan gulped coffee and Mia tapped and scrolled the screen of her phone.

  “Fit okay?” McTiernan said to Vega.

  She looked down to the bottom of the leggings.

  “Just had to roll them up a little,” she said, wiggling her toes inside the slightly oversize sneakers.

  “How do you feel?” said Cap.

  “Better,” said Vega. Then to Mia, “Thanks.”

  “Any time,” said Mia, tapping one last letter on her phone and then lifting her gaze.

  “So,” said McTiernan. “Word’s probably gotten back to Otero that Cap went with me. They’ll head to my place first.”

  “They know you have a girlfriend?” said Cap.

  McTiernan shrugged.

  “A few people. But that will slow them down. I give them,” he said, pausing to check his watch, “an hour, maybe.”

  “There’s two ways to do this,” said Vega, gingerly perching on one of the counter stools. “We avoid them or we run at them.”

  “Didn’t we just try running at them?” said Cap. “Didn’t turn out so good.”

  “Running at one of them,” said Vega. “Otero’s the one who doesn’t fit. Up to this point, he’s been solid.” Vega then addressed Mia: “Rowlie, right? Police commanders up to their necks in crooked shit don’t get nicknames.”

  “Truth,” said Mia. “He’s a good guy. And he’s got, like, a hot grandpa thing going on. But that’s neither here nor there.”

  “But what about Posada?” McTiernan said. “That makes no sense either.”

  “Okay,” said Cap, talking it through. “Their story was they didn’t have the resources to investigate the deaths and the potential missing Janes, so they pay you, us, under the table.”

  “Shit, they wouldn’t even know about the missing Janes if it wasn’t for me,” scoffed Mia, back to her phone.

  “That’s right,” said Vega, realizing something. “Back it up. Mia—you said Otero told you not to wait for him if you’ve got a lead.”

  “Yeah,” said Mia, remembering. “So when I saw the thing with the IUDs, you know, the sequential numbers, I sent him an email, and he didn’t get back to me right away, which was weird. He usually gets back within an hour or something.”

  “What did he write when he got back to you?” said Vega.

  “He didn’t. I mean, he didn’t write.”

  “He called,” said Cap.

  Mia nodded.

  “Do you remember if you talked to him right away?” asked Vega.

  “No, I think he left me a voice mail,” said Mia, squinting, trying to recall.

  “You still have it?” said Vega.

  “Think so,” said Mia, tapping and scrolling. “Yeah, this is it.”

  She held her phone out so they could all listen. Tapped the speaker button and clicked up the volume.

  “Hi, Miss Mia, it’s Commander Otero,” said Otero, sounding congenial and like he was walking up stairs. “Thanks for the email, that’s a find. I’m bringing on a potential consultant for this, so please keep your work with the Janes confidential for now, and if I can ask, hold off on the log until you hear from me.”

  The voice mail ended and Mia said, “I forgot about that—he didn’t want me to log it in the system.”

  “Did you eventually?”

  Mia tilted her head, thinking about it.

  “Well, all bodies get logged coming in, but I never put the IUD in the notes. And bodies get logged when they go out, but Jane One and Maricel Villareal are still in the coolers downstairs.”

  “So what happens in the hours between Mia sending the email and Otero leaving the voice mail?” said McTiernan, capping and recapping a pen in his hands.

  “You cc anyone?” said Vega. “On the email.”

  “Shit, yeah, I did,” she said, looking back to her phone. “Any time we get any deceased, any remains of anyone that might be connected to anything tunnel-related, we’re supposed to cc DEA.”

  “How long has that been enforced?” asked Cap.

  “A few months,” said Mia, still scrolling. “Since they found the big tunnel. See, here, this is the contact,” she said, holding up her phone again for them to see the screen. “Michael Mackey.”

  “Boyce’s partner slash toadie,” said Cap. “So in the time between the email and the voice mail, Mackey and Boyce go to Otero.”

  “Say what, let’s keep this off the books?” McTiernan asked.

  “But the bodies are already logged in,” said Mia.

  Vega found that the cut had begun to pulse with a little more frequency than before. She carefully crossed her right leg over the left, and the pain abated a bit.

  “So he says, ‘Going forward, the IUDs, off the books,’ ” she added.

 
“Why?” said Mia, exasperated. “What do Mackey and Boyce have to gain from hiding it?”

  “Wrong why,” Vega said, shifting on her stool.

  Cap crossed his arms and stared his partner in the eyes. Although, Vega thought, he seemed to be deep in his own head, gazing way past where she sat.

  “Why does Otero say yes,” Cap said. A statement, not a question.

  “We’ll get to Boyce and Mackey,” said Vega.

  “First we got to get to Otero,” said McTiernan, with an air of resignation. He capped his pen one last time and stuck it in his breast pocket, got a quizzical look. “So when they called you in originally,” he said to Vega. “How’d they say they found you?”

  “The note in Maricel’s hand,” said Vega. “With my name on it.”

  “Didn’t they admit that was their reason for hiring you?” said Cap.

  Vega nodded. “They needed a freelancer, why not pick the one preferred by the victim.”

  Cap appeared lost in a cloud of thought again.

  “Not just any freelancer. An ex–bounty hunter, mercenary type,” he said, pointing at Vega.

  “The note wasn’t a plant,” said Vega. Then to Mia, for confirmation: “Right?”

  “I took it out of Maricel’s rigored fingers myself,” she said. “It was tight in there, too. Even the killer might not have seen it.”

  “Okay,” agreed Cap. “All I’m saying is that they had the idea and then got lucky with the note. The perfect person handed to them—you don’t get any more off-the-books than Alice Vega.”

  Vega raised her eyebrows in concession.

  “But why does Otero do it,” said McTiernan, his face genuinely pained with dilemma. “Why does he say, ‘sure’?”

  “Why does it take Boyce and Mackey less than an hour to convince him?” said Cap.

  “Got something on him,” Vega suggested.

  “Yeah, but what?” said McTiernan, still not convinced. “Not his job—DEA doesn’t have authority over PD.”

  “Not in chain of command, maybe, but federal always outplays police,” Cap said to him. “Same all over.”

  “Then it’s not professional,” said Vega. “So it’s the other thing.”

  McTiernan opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by the phone buzzing in his pocket, radar beeps for a ringtone. He took it out and examined the screen, then flipped it so they could all read the name of the caller: “COMM. OTERO.”

  “Y’all are burnt,” said Mia after the phone stopped ringing.

  “We have to leave,” said McT.

  “I have to get to work,” said Mia, digging around a tote bag she’d left on the counter. “But you can go to my place.”

  She produced a ring of keys and threw them to McTiernan.

  “They won’t look for you there,” she added. “Not yet anyway.”

  “Where do you live again?” asked McTiernan. “By the beach?”

  Mia nodded.

  “How long’s the drive?” said Vega.

  “Half hour, no traffic.”

  They all thought about that. Vega envisioned her face on a Wanted poster from the Old West.

  “You have a garage?” said Vega.

  “No, carport.”

  McTiernan aggressively tapped the voice mail button on his phone but the message was taking its time.

  “You’ll draw more attention getting in and out of the trunk,” said McTiernan. “Besides, you’re not wearing a bloody hospital gown anymore, and there’s no APB as of yet. Just emails.”

  Vega picked up her own phone and started writing an email to the Bastard.

  “That’s because he thinks it’s contained. That voice mail is him being nice and easy. Giving you an out,” she said, pointing to McTiernan’s phone. “Another hour, you’re going to get a meaner one.”

  McTiernan tapped his phone, the voice mail finally delivered, and clicked up the volume on the speaker. Otero’s voice filled the room and reverberated off the cabinets.

  “Detective McTiernan, this is Commander Otero. Please call in when you get this message, to me directly. I realize you may be acting on former orders, but we have a lot of new information that I’d like to discuss with you. Please call.”

  That was it. McTiernan tapped his phone, puffed his cheeks a little, blew some air out.

  Cap tilted his head to one side and shut his eyes.

  “Anyone else hear something in that, ‘Please call’?” he asked the room. “Just that last part.”

  “Always professional,” McTiernan suggested, shrugging.

  “Sure,” said Cap, smiling like he had a secret, showing his teeth. “But he’s desperate, too.”

  McTiernan shook his head quickly, like he was trying to knock something out of it.

  “Why?” said McTiernan. Then, as an afterthought: “What do Boyce and Mackey have on him?”

  “Maybe Otero’s wife knows,” said Vega. “I say we ask her,” she added, her voice taking on a guise of innocence.

  McTiernan and Cap stared at her. Mia began to laugh.

  “This bitch is crazy,” she said.

  Vega smiled at her, then shifted her eyes to Cap. He leaned against the sink and rubbed his chin and cheeks. Vega imagined what it felt like, the short wiry hair, two days without a shave.

  He had worry in his eyes, though. Skepticism.

  Vega nodded at him quickly, almost imperceptibly, tried to tell him without saying the words. Keep going. Right up to the front door.

  15

  the air was cooler by the beach. cap could see the ocean in the short distance as he leaned his head out the window in McTiernan’s backseat. The sun was heading down but wasn’t there yet, which he couldn’t quite believe. He tabbed the day as one of the longest he’d had in a while.

  McTiernan took a left, and Cap could no longer see the water or beach, just sun-bleached condo complexes and apartment buildings, three or four stories with balconies cluttered with tropical plants and pool chairs.

  Vega and McTiernan had been talking but Cap had missed the last bit.

  “You sure she’s coming this late,” McTiernan asked, glancing at the sun in his rearview. “It’s late.”

  “She’s coming,” said Vega. “She just confirmed. Says she has a lot of clients in the evening to accommodate their work schedules.”

  McTiernan parked the car across from Mia’s building and turned off the engine.

  “Police commander’s wife,” said Cap. “Probably has a lot of lonely nights to herself.”

  “You guys should stay out here,” said Vega, getting out of the car.

  “Come on,” said Cap, getting out of the car. “We can hide in the bedroom.”

  “That’s real weird,” said Vega. “And the more normal this seems the better.”

  Cap shrugged. Suit yourself.

  “Text us,” McTiernan said, handing her Mia’s keys through the window. “Unit 3G.”

  Vega glanced across the street and nodded. She zipped up the hoodie and pulled the hood over her head.

  “Watch yourself,” Cap said under his breath, before getting into the front seat.

  He wasn’t sure she’d heard him but didn’t want to say it again, didn’t want to embarrass either himself or her.

  She turned and jogged across the street, and Cap moved the passenger seat back and shut the door. He and McTiernan watched Vega find the key to the front door of the complex and go inside. Cap leaned back in the seat, found himself feeling relieved.

  McTiernan started the engine and said, “We got to circle.”

  “Wait, no,” said Cap emphatically. “We have to stay here and wait for her. In case she needs backup.”

  McTiernan started to say something and then stopped. Then he started again.

  “She’s not going to need backup ag
ainst Otero’s wife.”

  “Probably not,” said Cap. “But it’s a thing we do. She goes in, I wait. I go in, she waits.”

  McTiernan let out a little sigh and turned to face him.

  “Look at all the windows,” he said.

  Cap glanced across the street at the windows, not knowing what he was searching for.

  McTiernan continued: “I know you’re not from here. I don’t know how it is in on the East Coast. This particular neighborhood is not necessarily the whitest, but it’s definitely not a black part of town, which means, it’ll take about ten minutes for one or more white people to look out their windows and see a black guy in a car parked on their block. Not going through garbage cans or putting flyers under their wipers or selling hippie incense. Just sitting. That’s fifteen, twenty minutes until a cop taps his knuckles on my window to ask if I’m lost and if I need an escort off the block.”

  Cap felt like an asshole.

  “Yeah, it’s the same on the East Coast,” he said. “So we circle.”

  McTiernan nodded, pulled out of the spot, repeated, “So we circle.”

  Cap watched Mia’s condo get smaller in the side mirror. He looked at his own face, the fresh burn on his temple, the gulfs under his eyes almost blue with exhaustion. But sleep and rest and exhaling full breaths from robust pink lungs were not close. In fact, they were looking more and more like animals swiftly moving from the endangered column to the extinct.

  * * *

  —

  Vega stepped through the door of Mia’s condo and flipped on the light. There was a small kitchenette to her left with some dishes in the sink and a sleek silver fridge. Ahead of her was a large living room with a sliding glass door onto a balcony facing the street. Gray carpet with a fuzzy white rug thrown over it. Nothing on the walls except a dream catcher and two small photos of birds. Also a plush white couch; in front of it a square tiled table with a purple bong the size of a desk lamp on top.

  Vega walked around the space quickly, picking up some stray socks and books from the floor, then grabbed the bong and headed into the bedroom. There was a king bed, white sheets and a leopard-print blanket bunched up in a roll, and a short dresser the width of one wall with a variety of marijuana paraphernalia on the surface: another bong, a few pipes, baggies, some full, some empty. Vega hurriedly set the purple bong down next to the other one and left.