The Rook

by Steven James

  “I just ate here at the hotel and then I wrote for a little while, read some stuff, and went to bed.”

  I waited, wishing she would just tell me. I wanted to hear it from her. “So that’s all you did, then?”

  “What is this? Like, an interrogation?” Her voice was becoming surly. “I told you. That’s it.”

  I took a tense breath. “Can I at least see the tattoo?”

  Confusion ghosting across her face. “What?”

  “The tattoo on your arm. I’d like to see it.” I felt my anger rising, not so much that she’d gotten a tattoo—I’d been expecting that for months—but I was getting fed up with her half truths and evasions and disobedience. “You got your nose pierced without asking me. You got your eyebrow pierced without asking me. And now you get a tattoo, which is, by the way, illegal in this state unless you’re eighteen—and not only did you not ask me, just now you lied to me.”“I didn’t lie to you!”

  “You told me you just went walking around.”

  Her eyes flashed with resolve. Independence. “Oh, so I get it.

  It was a setup, huh? Your nice little questions about what I did yesterday. Silly me, I thought you were actually interested in my life. Well, I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Stop it, Tessa. It wasn’t a setup. I was giving you the opportunity to tell me the truth. To be straight with me.”

  “Oh. An opportunity. Is that what you call it? And how do you know I went to a tattoo place anyhow?”

  “I was worried about you after that deal at the aquarium—”

  “I told you that those sharks ate this fish and I went looking for you! Why won’t you believe me? All I knew was that you were in the back somewhere and I was scared.”

  “So I decided to check on you,” I continued. “To monitor where you were.”

  “To monitor me? Ex cuse me. Am I two years old?” She paused to regroup. To catch her breath. She only needed a moment. “Oh!”

  Then, she smacked her satchel into my side, sending her personal items scattering across the sand. “You had me followed!”

  “No, Tessa. I didn’t have you followed. Nothing like that.” I bent down to help her gather her things, but she pushed me away.

  “Oh, you didn’t have me followed? Then how did you …” As she was sliding her things back into her purse, her hand fell on her cell phone. “Oh … You didn’t … Tell me you did not … Yes, you did—you tracked my cell. The GPS!”

  “I wanted to make sure you were OK.”

  “You didn’t trust me. I cannot believe you!”

  “Trust you? Why should I trust you? You wander around in places I specifically tell you not to go in. You sneak off to get a tattoo. You don’t tell me where you are. You don’t return my phone calls. I’m concerned about you. Don’t you understand? You’re my responsibility.”

  “I am not your responsibility!” She snatched up her satchel.“I’m my own responsibility, OK? I grew up without having any dad around to tell me what to do or where to go or whether or not I could get my nose pierced or get a tattoo or whatever. I did fine without a dad before, and I can do fine without—”

  “Don’t even say it. Do not say it, Tessa. I thought we were trying to rebuild a family here, and a family depends on trust.”

  “But you don’t trust me!”

  “Because you haven’t earned it.”

  The air bristled between us. She grabbed her sleeve, yanked it up to her shoulder. “You want to see my tattoo? OK, here it is. I got a raven, OK? I got a raven because you sometimes call me Raven and I like it, ‘cause it makes me feel special—or at least it used to.

  But now, you know what?” Her words were filled with so many kinds of pain. “I wish I would have gotten something else.”

  My heart felt like it was going to explode and wither at the same time. “Tessa, I’m sending you back to Denver this afternoon.” The words felt like acid against my teeth.

  “What?”

  “I already talked to my parents. They’ll pick you up at the airport.

  I’ll fly home at the end of the week, and we’ll deal with all this then.

  I can’t leave today. I would if I could, but I have to complete my obligations on this case, and I can’t do that with you here in San Diego if I can’t trust you.”

  “Oh, really?” She swung her satchel over her shoulder and set her jaw. “Well, you know what? I’m glad you want me to go back to Denver because I’d rather go there than spend another minute here with you.” Then she spun and stormed off.

  And my heart broke to splinters.

  And I was thankful she didn’t turn around.

  Because that way she couldn’t see the hot tear sliding down my cheek.

  69

  Victor Drake parked his Jaguar in front of the seedy boxing gym where Suricata and Geoff normally worked out. It was time to dissolve the team, but first, he needed to make sure that all the jobs were satisfactorily completed.

  This whole part of town disgusted him. It wasn’t for people like him, and he could hardly believe that he was even here. What if someone saw him?

  But then again, since no one would expect a man of his stature to show up here, it was less likely anyone would recognize him.

  He didn’t bring the money with him, of course. He wasn’t going to drive into the heart of Barrio Logan with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars cash in the trunk of his car.

  Victor locked his car and then slipped inside the crusty building. The place was just like he expected it would be: dark, rank, and filled with the barbaric sounds of large men pummeling each other into unconsciousness. What a wonderful place to spend your free time.

  Geoff and Dr. Kurvetek were already there, waiting for him beside a large punching bag. Suricata was finishing battering the face of a man fifty pounds heavier than him. Victor had always known Suricata was good with knives, but he’d never seen Suricata box before. It was disturbingly impressive.

  “Do you have the money?” asked Geoff.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. No. Not with me.”

  An edge of anger. “I thought you were bringing it?”“I’ll get it to you, OK? But first I want to know if you can keep the cops off my back and tell me where the device is.”

  “The cops won’t bother you. I took care of all that,” Geoff said.

  “And Hunter didn’t have anything with him when he was killed.

  I looked all over the area, the pier, everything. It wasn’t there. It’s gone. And I checked his body. There’s nothing to connect him to us.”

  By then, Suricata had joined them. Victor allowed him a brief glance. The man was panting. Perspiring. And he smelled revolting.

  What else was new.

  Dr. Kurvetek peered at Victor through the sweat-soaked air. “It appears the device truly was destroyed in the fire. Hunter didn’t know anything about it. Why would he have removed it? Everything ended with his death.”

  “Yeah,” snarled Suricata. “Now, what about our money?”

  “Tonight,” Victor said. “I’ll have it at my house. All of it. Be there at 8:30. I’ll give it to you then. But for now, bury all the evidence, the reports, do what you need to do to pin everything on Hunter.

  No slipups.” And then, before the three men Victor had grown to despise could respond or object, he strode past them and removed himself from that filthy place.

  He would have the money for them tonight. Yes. After all, he was a man of his word. But then, as soon as this nightmare was wrapped up, he was going on a little vacation until the dust settled again.

  He finished off his bottle of pills, pulled out his cell, and called his travel agent. Then he drove as quickly as he could away from the part of town he never should have ventured into in the first place.

  I was standing in the hallway outside Tessa’s door waiting for her to get her suitcases packed when Ralph called. I answered, hoping maybe he could encourage me that I was doing the right thing by sending Tessa home, but before we
could even get to that, he said, “Pat. Nothing more on Drake. He looks clean.”“What else?”

  “Margaret’s taking over the case. Suddenly, she seems very interested in it. We have a briefing at police headquarters at two o’clock, and she’s insistent that you be there.”

  Executive Assistant Director Margaret Wellington was the last person I wanted to see right now. She doesn’t believe in environmental criminology or geospatial investigation and tries to discredit me and cut funding for my work every chance she gets. Needless to say, we don’t get together to play Scrabble on the weekends. Having to deal with her would put me right over the edge. “Listen, Ralph.

  You tell her I’ll be late, if I come at all. You tell her that, OK?”

  He processed that for a moment. “Didn’t go so well with Tessa, huh?”

  “Not so good. We’re heading to the airport in just a few minutes.”

  He paused, probably to weigh what I’d just said against the con-sequences of me not showing up at one of Margaret’s meetings. “All right. I’ll cover for you. And if you can’t make it to the meeting, I’ll tell Margaret you’re on an assignment from me.”

  “Thanks. And, hey, tell me I’m doing the right thing here with Tessa.”

  “You’re doing the right thing, Pat.”

  “Thanks, Ralph.”

  “I think.”

  And before I could say another word, Tessa’s door swung open and she stepped past me, carrying her hastily packed bags. After she’d taken four steps, she called over her shoulder, “You can take me to the airport now, Patrick. I am so ready to be out of here.”

  Ralph and I ended the call, and I led my stepdaughter and her illegal raven to the car.

  70

  12:39 p.m.

  Neither Tessa nor I spoke much on the way to the airport. I’m sure we both had things we wanted to say, needed to say—I know I did—but the conversation just never got started.

  We parked. Unloaded her stuff. Walked inside, all in silence.

  Finally, at the ticket counter I said, “Tessa. You know I love you and I want what’s best for you.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll be home sometime in the next couple days. We’ll straighten this all out then.”

  “OK,” she said. And that was all.

  After she had her boarding pass, I walked with her to the security checkpoint, although she made sure she was a few steps ahead of me the whole way. The line was short, and before she could enter it, I stepped in front of her and said, “Good-bye, Tessa.”

  I didn’t think she would reply, but she did. She said one simple, final word: “Good-bye.” Then she brushed past me and walked over to show her driver’s license and boarding pass to the TSA agent.

  The words “I’ll see you soon” didn’t quite make it to my lips.

  I wanted them to, but they didn’t. I couldn’t stay and watch her walk away like that. I just couldn’t do it.

  So at last, without saying another word, I returned to the car.

  Tessa dropped her satchel onto the conveyor belt, emptied her pockets, and waited for the bored-looking TSA guy to motion for her to step through the stupid metal detector. She’d avoided eye contact with Patrick so he wouldn’t see that she was about to cry.

  She didn’t want him to know how much she hurt.

  Hurt because of what she’d done.

  Hurt because of what he’d said.

  He didn’t trust her. She wanted him to, but he didn’t. And it was at least partly her fault.

  The security guy waved her through. The way her day was going she expected the thing to beep. That would have been just brilliant.

  But it didn’t.

  Thankfully.

  But then, as soon as she got to the other side, one of the other worker guys picked up her satchel, shuffled through it, and took out the antibacterial soap for her tattoo because he said it wasn’t 3.4 ounces or less and besides it hadn’t been placed in a quart-sized resealable plastic bag and he threw the soap into the trash and all that did was make her think of the tattoo again and of Riker and Patrick and what had just happened between them and how badly she just wanted to be alone, alone, alone.

  Tessa plucked her satchel from the TSA guy’s hands and huffed past him to the gate. She escaped into the restroom, locked herself in one of the stalls, pulled out her notebook, and let the words that were raging inside her bleed onto the page: in the bin of a thousand heartaches, i place

  my feathered pain.

  Then she stuffed her notebook back into her satchel and snapped rubber bands against her wrist until all the ones she had with her were broken. And then Tessa Bernice Ellis began to cry where no one else could see her, locked inside the shiny steel walls of the bathroom stall.

  71

  It was hard for me to leave the airport.

  After dropping Tessa off, I’d sat in the parking garage for nearly fifteen minutes, wondering if I should go back inside to try and talk with her some more. But I finally realized that I was doing the hardest thing, but the best one. If I went back in there, she wouldn’t learn her lesson. I needed to be firm and stand my ground. Over this past year I’ve been learning that being a dad is a much harder job than catching serial killers. Much, much harder.

  And sitting there in the parking garage, I began to realize something else: sometimes when you’re a parent, your love has to be tough and uncomfortable, and it has to sting if it’s going to prove to be real and last for the long haul. Love that’s too timid to ache isn’t love at all.

  However, as I left the airport, I knew I wasn’t ready to meet with Margaret yet. So, I decided to do the thing I do best—instead of going to police headquarters, I drove back to the site of Austin Hunter’s death to have a look around.

  When I arrived, I parked in the same place Lien-hua and I had parked the previous night when we rushed here to try and find—and then to save—Austin Hunter. I stepped out of the car and visually scanned the area, checking sight lines, comparing the scene now to what it had looked like last night.

  Why here? Why did Hunter die here?

  I closed my eyes and pictured the roads of San Diego, the arteries of the city, intersecting, interconnecting. I knew Hunter’s cognitive map of the city better than anyone, and now, despite my natural tendencies, I tried to climb into his mind, to think like he did.

  But I couldn’t do it.

  I tried layering in the locations of the fires, and the address of his apartment, and the trolley depots he’d used to leave the scenes; then I mixed in the wind conditions last night, and the most likely place he would have come ashore after swimming across the bay …

  But as hard as I tried, I just couldn’t figure out why Austin Hunter had let the police corner him where they did. He was too smart to get trapped in the middle of a road by mistake. This man had spent two years teaching survival and evasion tactics to Navy SEALs, and this location didn’t seem to make any sense. I knew he wouldn’t have led them to the rendezvous point, that much was for sure. So why here?

  I opened my eyes and studied the area again.

  The device. He wouldn’t have left Building B-14 without the device.

  But he didn’t have any kind of device with him, except for the phone, when the police surrounded him. We could certainly analyze it, but when I’d used it, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. I couldn’t imagine that all this fuss was about a prepaid cell phone.

  Austin was a pro.

  A pro.

  I didn’t know what the device was, or exactly what it did, but if Austin was going to steal it, the device would need to be mobile and, if the size of an MEG machine was any indication, the device would have to be at least large enough to be easily seen.

  So, if Austin had it with him, where would he have hidden it?

  A place it would be safe.

  A place he could get to later.

  Just before he was killed, he’d tilted his knife at Lien-hua. I walked to the place where I’d bee
n standing; I pictured where Austin and Lien-hua had been.

  “It’s over,” he’d said, but I didn’t think he was talking about his life, and I didn’t think he was threatening Lien-hua.

  It’s over.

  What’s over?

  I glanced at the empty stretch of curb beside me. A car had been there last night. The car with the parking tickets, the one Dunn kicked.

  The one he’d ordered taken to impound.

  It’s over … It’s over …

  Could Austin have been talking about the device? The device is over …

  Austin pointed. He pointed.

  Oh.

  The device is over … there.

  Austin had put it in the car.

  It was time for me to pay a visit to the police impound yard.

  When Tessa finally stepped out of the restroom and walked to her departure gate, she heard the poofy-haired airline lady who was working at Gate 24 announce that their departure time was delayed because of mechanical problems.

  Great. Just great.

  Tessa pulled out her cell phone and slouched into one of the airport chairs, ergonomically designed to cause permanent back problems. She tried not to think about how stupid the TSA rules about soap were, how stupid this whole trip had been, or how much her tattooed arm was hurting. Or her wrist where she’d snapped the rubber bands.

  Or any other part of her body, like specifically, maybe, hello, her heart.

  So some of it was her fault. So what? Patrick still wasn’t being fair. He wasn’t. He just wasn’t.She pulled out her phone, scrolled through some of her email, and was texting a couple friends to tell them she was coming back two days early when a white-haired woman sitting in the chair beside her said, “Good afternoon, dear.”

  Tessa didn’t want to be rude. “Hi.”

  “Are you going to Denver too?”

  You think? Could that possibly be why I’m sitting at this gate?

  “Um, yeah.”

  “I wonder …” The woman had tender wrinkles around her eyes and a soft grandmotherly smile. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind letting me leave my purse and my bag here? If you wouldn’t care to watch them for a few minutes?” Tessa saw a cane resting beside the woman’s leg. “It’s such a task taking them to and from the bathroom.”