Make Them Sorry

by Sam Hawken

  He commanded the space, backing Camaro toward the end of the kitchen. Camaro shifted the chef’s knife from hand to hand, watching for his shoulders to betray the next strike. When he moved, she moved. She opened up his knife arm from elbow to shoulder. The man made a single bark of pain. Perspiration soaked his face and flung away in droplets.

  Camaro let him come. His blade darted in. She deflected it with the flat of her knife, pivoted, and cut him deeply across the wrist. His fingers opened. The knife fell again. Camaro saw the look of recognition on his face when she threw her weight against his, and sent him reeling backward. One foot slipped behind the other and he fell with Camaro on top. She put both hands behind the chef’s knife she drove into his chest.

  The knife stopped at the handle. The man grabbed for her hair. Camaro leaned against the handle protruding from his chest. The man keened when the blade shifted. He tried to roll away. Camaro took his back, coiled her arm around his throat, locked his hips with both legs. She put one hand behind his head, tucked the other under the bar of her arm. She closed the noose. The man struggled.

  She held on until he passed into unconsciousness. She kept holding on until he was dead.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  IGNACIO PULLED UP outside the house in Allapattah and into a thicket of flashing lights and emergency vehicles. There were more here than had been on the scene at Faith Glazer’s apartment. He’d gotten the basics from Detective Fletcher, the cop who caught the case, but he was still taken aback by the commotion in the street.

  Despite the hour, neighbors were out in force, lined up on the side of the street, held back by yellow crime-scene tape. They were ghostly in the flickering red and blue illumination. A uniformed officer lifted the tape for Ignacio to drive through once he flashed his badge. Inside the circle of trust, he killed the engine and took a deep breath.

  He stepped out into the humid night. He wore no hat when the sun was down. He looked at the gathered people, then toward the cop who had let him in. “Everybody inside?” he asked.

  “You looking for Fletcher?”

  “She’s the one.”

  “I think she’s around back with the lady.”

  Ignacio took a step toward the house. Someone called out, “Hey! Hey, cop!”

  “Calm down over there,” the uniformed officer said. “I told you I’d run you in if you kept yelling.”

  Ignacio looked. He saw a young man in his early twenties, hair falling around his ears and onto his neck. He had a sharply pointed beard. “There something you want?” Ignacio asked.

  “Yeah. I’m wondering when you’re gonna do something about that chick.”

  “I’m going to tell you one more time—” the uniformed officer began.

  Ignacio held up a hand. “It’s all right. I’ll talk to him.”

  At the police line he stayed an arm’s length away from the young man, who glared at him with dark eyes. “You folks gonna cover it all up?” the young man demanded.

  “Cover all what up?”

  “Hey, man, we heard the shooting. She killed somebody in there.”

  “We’re looking into it.”

  “Start by looking into whatever she’s up to. She’s some kind of survivalist or something. Back at Christmastime, she beat David Rosales down the street so bad, he had to come home from the hospital in a wheelchair.”

  Ignacio shook his head to clear it. “Listen, it’s late. I don’t know who David Rosales is.”

  “He lives two doors down, man! Don’t you people know anything? She beat him bad.”

  “You know this for a fact?”

  The young man glanced toward the ground and moved his feet. “Not exactly. But she had a beef with him, and then he turned up wrecked. She took his car apart, too.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  A woman nearby spoke up. “Rosales was beating on his kid. She knew about it.”

  “Sounds like you knew about it, too.”

  “Yeah, but I never attacked nobody. You seen what she’s got out back? She’s out there on her patio getting ready to kill someone.”

  “That’s right,” the young man interjected. “She’s dangerous.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ignacio said. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry? She went and killed somebody, bro,” the young man said.

  “You know, speculation like that causes panic,” Ignacio said. “You don’t know what went on in there. I don’t even know what went on in there. So until we ask questions and do our investigation, nobody knows for sure. I’m sorry one of your neighbors was assaulted, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with anything. It could have been anyone.”

  “It was her!” the young man said. “She’s crazy.”

  “Calm down,” Ignacio said. “I’ll look into it. Okay? I’ll look into it.”

  “Yeah, you do that, asshole.”

  “Hey, watch your mouth,” Ignacio replied. He gestured sharply with his finger. “I’m still a cop, and this is police business. You don’t like it, go home.”

  No reply came. Ignacio walked away. “Sorry about that,” the uniformed cop called after him, but Ignacio said nothing.

  He was one step inside the front door when he saw the bodies. The house was as he remembered it from the one time he had visited before. It was small, but good enough for a woman living alone. Everything blended into everything else, with the back of the front room letting into a dining area, which in turn let into the kitchen. Only the bedroom was offset with a door. One body lay there. The other was in the kitchen. Empty shell casings were everywhere, and blood. A whirlwind had passed through, and left death behind.

  Crime-scene technicians took photos of splatter on the walls and floors and marked out every expended shell. Tags were appended to bullet holes in the shredded couch, the floor, and the cheap wooden paneling. No one paid Ignacio any mind as he negotiated the front room for a better angle on the action. He saw the two dead better. Both of them wore black, one had a balaclava still in place, the other had discarded his, or maybe the EMTs had taken it off.

  A blonde woman appeared from the bedroom. She was in a linen pantsuit that looked freshly pressed. She spotted Ignacio immediately. “Detective Montellano?” she asked.

  “That’s me,” Ignacio said. He reached for his hat and instead touched his bare brow. “You’re Fletcher?”

  “Kate Fletcher. Pleased to meet you. I don’t get to see you daytime guys very often.”

  They shook hands. Fletcher’s palm was dry and cool. She was younger than Ignacio by twenty years, but he saw lines creeping into her face. They were mostly hidden by makeup, but eventually they would be impossible to disguise. He had similar lines himself. “Thanks for calling me,” Ignacio said.

  “It wasn’t my idea. It was hers.”

  “Camaro Espinoza?”

  “Our woman of the hour.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Out back with my partner. We needed to clear the scene for the techs. Medics have been in and out, checking on her.”

  “She’s hurt?”

  “Not really. Bumps and bruises. Cut on the arm. But these two…She killed the hell out of these two.”

  Fletcher indicated the bodies with a wave of her hand. Ignacio looked at them again. The way they slumped in ugly, boneless heaps on the floor. One had been shot repeatedly. The one in the kitchen seemed almost as if he’d fallen asleep in an uncomfortable position, a knife protruding from his chest. “Who are they?” Ignacio asked.

  “No idea. They aren’t carrying ID and they didn’t identify themselves to Espinoza, which isn’t surprising. They had a rental car they left on the street like they owned the place. Came in through the front door. She managed to disarm one and kill him with her gun. She fought it out hand-to-hand with the other one until she got a knife into him and strangled him to death.”

  Ignacio made a face. “Yikes.”

  “Yeah. She probably didn’t need to bother. The stabbing looks like it would have done the jo
b all by itself.”

  “Don’t play with sharp objects.”

  “They picked the wrong house, that’s for sure. She has an arsenal in her closet, a couple of knives, and a pistol for carry. If you look out back, she has a whole gym setup that looks like Bruce Lee meets Rocky. I’m all for empowered women, but she’s something.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. Can I talk to her?”

  “Sure. What’s your take on this?”

  Ignacio paused. “I can’t say until we get more info on our two shooters here. You mind passing anything you find out my way? I’ll keep it to myself, and if it turns out to be connected to something I’m working, I’ll let you know. But tell me if these guys have any tattoos on them that might be Armenian, or if either one of them turns out to be from Armenia.”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Honestly? I have no idea. But when I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”

  They parted. Ignacio went out onto the back patio through a door in the kitchen. He found Camaro sitting on a weight bench while an older man in a loose suit stood over her. They weren’t talking. Camaro rubbed the knuckles on her hands, one followed by the other, while staring into space. She had a fresh dressing on her arm. When Ignacio appeared, her gaze flicked over him without her expression changing at all.

  Ignacio extended a hand to the detective. “Hey, you’re Shane Abbott, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. You’re Montellano?”

  “Nacho. Call me Nacho.”

  “Sure, sure. We met a little while back when we were working both ends of that Haitian thing.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember. Nice to see you again.”

  “Same here. You just show up?”

  “I got here as fast as I could. Your partner gave me the rundown inside. Hell of a night.”

  Abbott cast a frowning look at Camaro. “I was having a great conversation with Ms. Espinoza about it.”

  “She’s not a talker.”

  “I got that.”

  “Can I get a few minutes with her? Afterward I promise I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Take your time.”

  “Thanks.”

  Abbott went inside. Ignacio stood in silence, looking down at Camaro, until finally she said, “What?”

  “I thought we had an agreement about not killing anybody.”

  “They came into the house. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Maybe you could have left somebody alive to question?”

  “That wasn’t on the table.”

  Ignacio nodded. He wandered the patio. He touched the worn equipment and took in the weights. He passed under the pipe in the ceiling, grabbed it with a hand, and yanked. The metal didn’t shift. “You got a real setup here,” he said. “This where you trained Faith?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hey, what is this thing? I’ve seen it in a million kung fu movies. It’s like some kind of wooden scarecrow.”

  “It’s called a muk yan jong. It’s a Chinese practice dummy.”

  “I didn’t know you did all that kung fu stuff.”

  Camaro shrugged.

  “I guess they do a little of everything in those cages where you fight. Got to hurt, punching this wood.”

  “It hurts to punch anything.”

  “True enough.”

  “You want to talk about my equipment all night?”

  “No, I’m just warming you up.”

  “I’m warmed up.”

  “You got some people on the street talking about how this isn’t the first time something like this has happened around here. You know I’m not gonna bother you about it, but there are a lot of cops around, a lot of detectives, and one might listen.”

  “You can charge me for it if you want.”

  “I would have charged you by now if I was going to. Besides, Rosales isn’t dead, so it’s not my department. But you might want to take it down a notch if you want to live in this city. When you’re dropping bodies in your house…”

  “I didn’t choose what happened tonight.”

  “I believe it. But you and I both know this isn’t a home invasion. I saw the guns on the floor in there. High-tech and high-powered, exactly like the kind Serafian had in his place. Those guys were kitted out like commandos. They weren’t kids looking to grab some stuff they could sell and maybe introduce themselves to the lady of the house.”

  Camaro didn’t answer. She rubbed her knuckles. Ignacio saw that each was marked with light but visible scars.

  “I’m trying to put this all together. It has to do with Faith, that much I know for sure. Once we find out who these guys were, everyone will know. And I mean everyone.”

  “How many people are in this?”

  “Too many. I got a guy from the FBI who specializes in terrorism, I got a lady agent from the DEA who I can’t figure out at all, and I’ve got my own department wanting to clear the case as fast as possible. I figure I got a couple of days, tops, before my captain tells me to hand this off to the feds. They’re all over Faith. Now they’re gonna be all over you.”

  Camaro glanced toward the darkened backyard. Ignacio saw something unpleasant pass across her face, but he didn’t think it had to do with the dead men inside. It was a melancholy look he hadn’t seen before.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Camaro said.

  “Not this time, but how far do you want them to dig? They’re going to wonder about you. They’re going to ask questions about how you got mixed up with Faith Glazer in the first place. And if they ask too many questions, they might start asking me about how we go back.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “Hell, yes, I’m afraid. I’m sticking my neck out for you. It doesn’t take a master detective to figure out I’ve done it before. So we have to make good on this as fast as we can. Otherwise it’s turtles all the way down.”

  Camaro seemed to consider this. She stared at the concrete at her feet. She lifted her gaze to Ignacio’s. “So it’s ‘we’?”

  “I don’t think there’s any other option. Eight to five says the two dead bodies in there are Armenians. I don’t know what they want or where they came from, but that’s my gut talking. And if it turns out they are Armenian, this means the same people after Faith are after you. Maybe because they think she told you something, or you’re involved somehow.”

  “Involved in what? If I’m going to be in this, I need to know.”

  Ignacio checked the back door. Neither Fletcher nor Abbott appeared. “All right, I’m gonna tell you like they told me. And then we’re gonna fix this.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  IT WAS QUIET in the house. Ignacio was gone, and with him the other detectives and all the technicians and uniformed cops. The bodies had been zipped into rubber bags and carted off. Only the bloodstains remained, and the tattered carcass of her sofa, the remnants of which were scattered over every surface in the room.

  Camaro waited until she was absolutely certain no one was coming back. While the cops were there, she was dressed in sweats and bare feet. Now she changed into jeans and a T-shirt worn a little too long to hide the .45 on her hip. She nestled the karambit in its place in her left boot. She swept her hair back into a ponytail, checked herself in the mirror one time, and left the house.

  The morning sun was intense as it cleared the ocean and lanced across the low-lying expanse of Miami. The night’s humidity worsened as the air heated. The whipping wind on her arms as she rode her bike kept sweat from her bare skin, but she felt the heat on her back.

  She rode to the hospital. Inside it was twenty degrees colder than it was outdoors. She didn’t need to ask for directions. She made her way to Faith’s room directly. Questions churned in the back of her mind, driven by things Ignacio had said when they were alone.

  She opened the door to the room and knew immediately Faith wasn’t there. A different scent lingered in the air, a tang of age and infirmity. She saw the old man lying in the bed where Faith had bee
n. He was asleep, monitored by three different machines and fed oxygen through a tube in his nose.

  Camaro headed down the hallway to the nurses’ station. A round-faced Asian nurse spotted her. “May I help you, miss?”

  “Down the hall,” Camaro said. “A patient. Faith Glazer. Where was she moved?”

  “Ms. Glazer? She wasn’t moved. She was discharged.”

  “On her own?”

  The nurse nodded. “Her injuries weren’t life-threatening, and the doctor felt she was able to care for herself.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Last night. Is there something I—”

  Camaro walked away. She took the stairs instead of the elevator, stalked across the lobby, and burst out into the parking lot. Back on the bike, she skidded the rear tire pulling away, and headed south once she hit the road.

  It took too long for her to reach Faith’s apartment. She rolled into an open spot next to Faith’s car, sitting undisturbed in its place. Camaro crossed the lot. The police tape on Faith’s door had been torn down and was hanging in streamers from the frame. The door itself had been replaced. Camaro banged her fist on it.

  No one answered. Camaro tilted an ear toward the door, but there was no sound. She tried the knob. It turned in her hand.

  She drew the .45 and held it low, ready. She stepped to one side, bumped the door wide with her left hand. The front room was visible, furniture still overturned or destroyed. No one had done any cleaning. The new door had yet to be painted, the wood bare.

  “Faith?”

  Nothing disturbed the silence. Camaro glanced around the edge of the door, got a snapshot of the hallway and the dining area. No one.

  It took seconds to clear the kitchen. In the bedroom, the closet was open. Camaro remembered seeing luggage in there before, but now those bags were gone. Faith’s things were scattered, and it was impossible to tell what was missing and what was not. She cleared the bathroom.

  Ignacio answered the phone right away when she called him. “She’s gone,” Camaro told him without preamble.

  “Faith?”