“Yeah,” Trudy said. “As if something had… caught it.”
“Then what happened?”
“It dropped to the ground after a minute or two. Megan flipped and ran out of the house.”
“And Cindy?”
“She opened her eyes and just stared at me. Like, really intently for a bit. Then she snapped out of it. We left the house together, but didn’t say a word about it. None of us did. At school or anywhere else. But, and this is really gonna sound whack, you know what?”
Parker and Napoleon answered in unison. “What?”
“After that? A black cat, no shit, it starts showing up everywhere with her from that day forwards. She carried it around with her like Paris Hilton does one of those damn little Chihuahuas. Megan was never our friend again, and when she saw that cat hanging around school every day, waiting for Cindy to get out, she flipped and went hard core Christian. Me, I just didn’t want to believe it. Any of it. Then? One day, right before graduation, I went by Cindy’s house to borrow some earrings and that cat… You know, looking back now? It always, always, always looked at me weird whenever I was over at the house. But that day it didn’t just look at me.”
The motel room was quiet except for the blunted sound of traffic through the window and the small hum of the heater. Napoleon waited and so did Parker.
Finally, Trudy continued. “It… tried to do something to me. Possess me or something. I felt it, ya know, just pure evil there in the hallway, while I stood waiting for those damn earrings.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I never saw Cindy again after graduation. She moved off, with the cat, to college. But I never forgot that feeling. Of evil. Never felt that feeling again. Until today. In that parking lot. The guy with the beanie on? He looked at me the exact same was as that damned cat. So you know what, Detective Villa?”
“What?”
Trudy sighed and wiped her eyes quickly with the back of her hand. “Push comes to shove? I believe you.”
CHAPTER 21
BACK IN THE TRUNK. Back on the road. But it was different this time. Tamara climbed right in—let him tie her up with no struggle and no study of how to escape. She simply took up residence again with the musty rag and can of WD-40 that was in a small net bag just inside the lid, the “Instructions for Use” listed there like the shortest story ever. It was her only reading material, and it helped pass the time, the road bumping and rolling along beneath her head for hours on end. She read and re-read it with an eye of how it could have been written better, or what it might look like if it were in Spanish or German, or why they hadn’t just cut to the quick and in big, bold letters written: POINT. SPRAY. YOU DIPSHIT. End of instructions.
When she was bored with the WD-40 can, she would begin reading her heart, taking notes on the state of her belief that she was not, in any way, resigning herself to any sort of fate. What she was doing was coming to terms with the idea that she would have a part to play in that fate, maybe big, maybe small. It didn’t matter. If she were to believe Troy the Monster, then Kyle was coming and that meant he’d survived hell, which probably also meant The Gray Angel was coming with him.
She took comfort in that. Help was on the way. Maybe her part, her job now, was to stay alive until it could arrive.
Right about now, though, Tamara felt like the Vegas odds on that weren’t so good. The way he was up front, behind the wheel, screaming and yelling and crying between spaced out sections of silence that were almost worse to listen to, it could break either way, at any moment. His… master, or whatever the hell that thing in the mirror was… could decide any second that it was time for him to pull over and slit her throat, and she had no doubt Troy would do as he was told, like a good little servant.
She wondered, for the thousandth time, where he was taking her, except this time she let the thought percolate a bit. When they had left the house she had the sense they were headed north. Yet, first time out of the car they were in the desert. She’d seen no freeway signs or numbers though, but really, out of Los Angeles the main corridors east were Interstate 15 to Vegas or Interstate 10 to Arizona. The former would be north-east, the latter a bit south-east.
The other morning when he’d fed her Donettes she’d watched the sun rise in the east, then took note of the road they were near. If he made a left turn upon leaving they’d be going west, right meant east. After he’d packed her back up to continue their journey she’d felt the car turn right.
There was just one problem with that idea: they’d stopped three times, once briefly and twice overnight, with a couple of hours or so of driving each time in between. Now they’d been on the road again for at least an hour, more likely longer. It didn’t take seven or eight hours to get to Vegas from her home. It took four on a good day. Five tops.
Which meant they’d already passed through Vegas.
So where the hell was he headed?
She was ashamed to admit it, but well, she had no idea what was after Vegas. She’d never gone that way. Lake Tahoe? Maybe. Salt Lake City perhaps? But that was Utah. Denver? After all she’d been through the last few days she could cut herself some slack for having a hard time with her States map right now. Try as she might to recall it, there was no seeing it in her mind.
She blinked against the darkness of the trunk. Soft moonlight gave just enough illumination for her to see her knees, one on top of the other, legs half curled to her chest, and her bound hands stretched out in front of her, the fingers of her right hand playing absentmindedly with a loose thread in the carpet.
She chastised herself for not listening more intently to any of his ravings earlier. Had he given a clue? Mentioned a state? A city? Shit, even a landmark of any kind? Reminding herself to calm down, Tamara arched her back and craned her neck from side to side. Her headache was gone. Her muscles felt alive again. Her exhaustion had finally overtaken her, and she could at least feel the benefits of a good sleep, still lingering there, across her body. Her eyelids were still a bit heavy but her mind was firing away with new resolve.
He would have to pull over soon. Maybe she would get a good peek at a road sign. Or maybe she could get a good look at the night sky? The stars could tell her something, but not much. She was never much for astronomy. There was the North Star, but in the desert all the stars were so big it wasn’t so easy to pick out.
Shit. Why did you fall asleep? You may have lost…
Then she realized it would be very unlikely that the car would’ve come to a complete stop, or been turned off, without waking her. More than unlikely. It would have been impossible. Because even in the deepest of sleep every cell in her body was well aware that the next stop could be her last.
No. He hadn’t stopped. There was no way.
So. Soon then. Unless he was pissing in a bottle up there—something that was, sadly, a distinct possibility—he would need a bathroom break.
Then, without much fuss, she realized it was probably futile anyway, a last-ditch effort to exercise some sort of control over her situation. She was headed where she was headed. She would get there when she got there. Who really cared anyway?
Something inside her heart rejected this last thought immediately. Someone did care. Her Lord. He cared immensely. She knew it in her bones. And something in her told her that the very worst thing she could do, ever, but especially right now, was to lose her faith in that. But why?
Because that’s how they’re tracking you. The stronger your faith, the stronger the signal.
The voice in her head was her own, but the words were not.
A faint smile stretched out over the dry skin of her face.
So that was it. She could help her own cause by staying firm in her faith and by… praying.
What had her dad always called it? “The Morse code of the hopeless.” Yes.
So she closed her eyes and began to tap away.
IN THE MORNING, with the kids only briefly immersed in cartoons on Nickelodeon before they began to complain about being hungry, Parker
made the decision to go out to get breakfast. Trudy was barely awake, the eyeshadow of sleep still dark in her eyes, when Parker told her of his plan: over to the corner, across the street and down a block was a McDonald’s. He would load up on grub and, more importantly, coffee and be back in twenty. She looked a bit reluctant to agree at first, then they both looked towards Napoleon, who was deep asleep on the floor beneath a blanket, his head buried under a pillow, breathing as if he hadn’t slept in years. Parker and Trudy appeared to share the same thought: It wasn’t like Parker was leaving them alone; they’d be safe with Napoleon still here.
He stepped out into the brisk morning air as a light fog meandered over the motel parking lot and the street beyond, the sun casting a half-light all around.
Grabbing his cell phone from his jacket pocket, he saw that it was 7:47 a.m. He made his way across the lot, noting the spaces between the parked cars as he advanced, realizing that old habits died hard. Be it the Taliban or demons, you kept an eye out. All the time.
The coast, as the old movies said, was clear.
Once out on the street he was comforted by the morning traffic, not yet heavy but still frequent enough to shatter the feeling of isolation that fog always brought with it.
He figured now would be a good time to check in, so he called the station house. Klink answered on the third ring. “What up, guero?”
“You’re just as much a white boy as me, Klink.”
“More so, actually, to be honest.”
“Don’t I know it. One trip to King Taco would prove that.” Parker chuckled, thinking of the restaurant they both used to frequent as foot patrol officers where they would have hot sauce duels with their carne asada tacos, the contest getting so extreme at one point that they were literally dipping them into cups of the stuff.
“Someday, man. Someday I will best you.”
“Dream on.”
“How we looking?”
“So far, so good. Got the kids on lockdown with the aunt. Getting them breakfast now.” Parker had no sooner spoke the last sentence than he regretted it. Klink was no dummy. Not by a long shot.
“You left them alone?!”
Shit. Parker weighed the idea of mentioning Napoleon and knew immediately that would be a disaster. So he improvised. “She’s got my gun and there’s a McDonald’s right across the street. I can see the room from here. I won’t be long.”
“Still. You shoulda called for backup.”
“I know. I got this, though. Don’t worry.”
“When ya wanna rotate out?” Klink asked.
Parker figured this was coming, sooner or later. As with any witness or person under police protection, the officers usually rotated in shifts. Sometimes eight hours, sometimes twelve. Again, he had to improvise. “I don’t.”
“What?”
“Yeah. The aunt is pretty adamant that I stay with them around the clock. She’s freaked out bad.”
“So? What? You just gonna get the cap to pay you a hundred hours of overtime?”
“Klink. Look. I don’t care about that. I got no one waiting at home for me, nowhere to go or be.”
“Still, man.”
“And between you and me? I know what this guy looks like. I’ve seen him.” Parker paused. It was another lie. He’d only seen the same pictures of Troy Forester that everyone else had, but he didn’t care anymore. “He comes at them? I’m the one person who will know it first.”
Klink was silent on the other end of the line for a bit, then said, “Okay. Fair enough. Not sure the cap will see it that way but I’ll let him know and—”
“He’s so damn busy he won’t even think twice about what shifts I’ve worked, man.”
“They okay? The kids I mean?”
“As okay as can be expected.”
“Yeah. Man. The shit they must’ve seen. This guy’s a real bastard, I’ll give him that.”
“Any leads?”
It was Klink’s turn to chuckle, but it was completely absent any humor. “Hell no. We pulled all his info, yanked his DMV file and put an APB out on the car. Nothing yet. We also dumped his cell phone records. He either doesn’t have it or it’s turned off. Or he has a ‘throw away.’ So… nothing there, either.”
“Friends, family, fellow psychopaths?”
“Nothing. The guy was a regular Ted-fucking-Kaczynski, minus the cabin in the woods and the manifesto.”
“No. This sick bastard had a manifesto too,” Parker said bitterly.
“How’s that?”
Parker didn’t want to answer. He didn’t even want to picture the image, but it came to his mind regardless. “You shoulda seen all the strings of hair on the wall in his garage, Klink. Like a ponytail collection, one from each of his vics.”
“Yeah. Murillo told me what you said about the ravine, too.”
More bad images: sunken eyes sockets, rotting flesh, tattered clothes wet with maggots. “Yeah. Let’s not go there, man.”
“Gotcha. Well. We’re gonna keep pulling what we can off the wire. I don’t think there’s a cruiser in the state not looking for a black Chevy Camaro.”
“Guy like him is smart enough to avoid any highly populated areas.”
Again. Silence. Then, “Yeah. I know.”
“And you can’t pull over every black Camaro in three or four states, ’cause I’m guessing Arizona and Nevada are in on this too?”
“And Washington.”
“Man. The department must be just getting laced over this. I mean, first we put out an all call for Kyle Fasano, then Nap, now this guy.”
“If I’m not mistaken, the word ‘inept’ is pretty much being used by all the news stations, and the story has gone national.”
“What?”
“20-20. Two nights ago. Word around here is that a lotta heads are gonna roll.”
“The cap?”
“Almost for sure. Ya gotta figure an early retirement announcement is coming pretty soon, just a matter of time.”
“I’m not in his fan club, Klink, but this gig has been a massive cluster bomb since day one. Doesn’t seem fair.”
“Yah. And it’s probably good that Nap isn’t around to see his name getting dragged through the mud.”
“By who?”
“Everyone. The department. The media. They all need a scapegoat.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Yep. But they can only take it so far because, well, he’s a possible victim in this too.”
Parker realized how wise his decision not to bring up Napoleon moments earlier was. “So what’s the story?”
“You know: the cop who made a misstep, the guy that got away, maybe killing him in the process, now still running around loose killing others.”
“And?”
“And how Kyle Fasano might somehow be linked to Troy Forester, because that’s the only way to explain how Tamara Fasano has now been kidnapped, right?”
“No.”
“Right. But speculation needs to be fed and anyone’s theory is as good as anyone else’s.”
“And me?”
“You don’t wanna know.”
“Yes I do.”
Klink sighed heavily. “Man, Parker—”
“Just spit it the fuck out.”
“You’re the war vet with a history of PTSD.”
“From long ago, formally treated and cured.”
“Who couldn’t let the case go… and then obviously had a relapse and should still be suspended.”
“Really?”
“They’re saying it’s because of you that Sheriff Conch in Beaury is dead. That you dragged him into an investigation he wasn’t ready for.”
“That’s bullshit too.”
“I know. To his credit, that’s what the deputy there is calling it as well and…”
“Kendall?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Kendall almost smacked some reporter in the ear hole for asking if you were involved somehow. It was classic.”
Parker smiled. “Wel
l, that’s something. Evidently it’s a good thing I haven’t had any time to be watching the news.” Parker made a mental note to make sure that the kids got only cartoons all day long. Neither he nor Napoleon needed to be seeing any of this shit, and there was a good chance it might shake Trudy’s confidence in them too, which was the last thing they needed.
“Yeah. Cap is taking a lot of heat from the chief for reinstating you. So far the press has no idea you’re the one guarding Fasano’s kids, or they’d probably have a collective orgasm.”
“Great. How’s the lid been kept on that one?”
“Cap has kept it in the squad room. Strict orders. Funny thing.”
“What?”
“He said the exact same thing you did a little while ago.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’re the only one whose seen Forester up close, that you’d see him coming before anyone else.”
“So everyone believes he’s still a risk to come after the kids?”
“Not completely. But enough for no one to want to shoot their mouths off and get two children possibly killed.”
“Hmm.”
“But, ya know, Parker, when I talked to Kendall recently for some case file info?”
Parker felt his stomach drop. That was the thing about Klink, with his surfer boy attitude and smirky face, it was easy to see him as super laid back when in truth he was a really good detective. Parker didn’t even want to respond, but he knew he had to. “Yeah?”
“He said you and he never caught up with Forester. Never saw him yourselves. Only the sheriff did.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Parker was stunned, then barely managed, “Imagine that.”
“Yeah. Exactly. But here’s the thing, Parker. I know you, man. Something’s up. Something crazy. I don’t know what it is, but it’s got Murillo lighting religious candles up here at his desk and everything.”
“Yeah?”
“No shit… and we went from Saint Michael to an entire posse of saints hanging from the rearview mirror in our squad car too. So here’s the thing: give us a check in every four hours. In the meantime I’m gonna have a black and white go by the motel on a regular basis. I got a few patrol guys I’m pretty tight with who will do it and keep a lid on it, okay? Murillo and I will swing by whenever we can.”
One Plus One (The Millionth Trilogy Book 3) Page 19