The last two hours on the bus ride to Flagstaff were productive.
Follow the thought process all the way ...
He’d felt no remorse, and what if his father had been right all along? What if the people from south of the border were different? What if—by their own choices—they were intrinsically less … something … than him, or his family?
Less human?
He saw himself in a white bathrobe on the deck of the log mansion, gazing at the two-story glass, experiencing the sky reflected in it. Or perhaps he sat in one of the lounges with fine women next to him, on either side, sunning the very bodies they would wrap around him that afternoon, before he napped.
Could that be him?
Did Finch Graves have it in him to kill—not just to defend his life—but to defend a lifestyle?
People died all the time anyway, regardless of Finch’s decisions. The total of human pain and misery was infinite.
Why shouldn’t he be on the side of it that gave him a mansion?
And the part he hadn’t really considered, that animated the rest of his thinking ...
Do I want to die?
Already?
Because the path he was on, that was the inevitable conclusion. If he took the fight to his brother and father, he’d wind up dead. The question was just how long he got away with living.
And seen from that light, was it really his fight to save the whole world?
Was it his obligation to save every fucking deadbeat Latina who didn’t have the sense to avoid the coyotes?
If Latin America valued its kids, wouldn’t it keep them from coming north? It wasn’t like Luke and Wayman Graves were the first men to discover pedophiles.
The sun had set a half hour ago. The wall clock said six. Where the hell was she?
It’d be just his luck that if he decided to bolt, that’s when she’d show. He looked behind him, at the glass of the real estate office. The dial in the window read forty degrees. The temperature would drop fast, without the sun.
Lou Rivers’s car swung into the lot.
He had to figure out what to say to her.
He couldn’t go back to the family. The FBI was on him.
But he didn’t have what the FBI wanted.
For the moment, he’d have to play both sides.
Agent Lou Rivers had parked with her trunk to the building. Finch approached the driver side and stood beside the door.
The window dropped. She said, “Get in. Come on.”
Finch walked in front of the car. Opened the passenger door and sat inside.
“You look different,” he said. “New shaving cream?”
“What do you have for me?”
“Nothing but a story.”
“Where’s the wire? The recording?”
“That’s part of the story.”
“Shit. This better be good.”
“I can give you politicians. Clergy. Cops. Billionaires.”
“But no recording?”
“Like I said. It’s part of the story. It was incinerated. But I know where the real evidence is. Video of not just the men and the kids. It’s way bigger.”
“Yeah?”
“They’re selling the kids to killers. Like, billionaire serial killers.”
“You’re jerking me off.”
“Uh.” Finch blinked. “No, there’s like a hundred thousand billionaires. A million or some shit. A crazy number. And you’d have to be half psychotic to want that much money anyways. So there’s zillions of them that want to rape and kill kids. My brother’s business corners that market.”
Lou Rivers looked forward. The weight of the accusation had clearly rattled her. Finch continued, “He made me help clean up after one of them cut a girl to death. He made me sanitize the room with him. He’d have killed me if I tried to get away. So I helped, and even made it look like I was happy to. You know? But that isn’t the worst.”
“What’s the worst, Finch?”
Finch stared out the front windshield. “He makes the bodies of the dead girls into sausage and donates it to homeless shelters.”
Rivers thumped the steering wheel. She looked across the street to the old railroad depot. “But you don’t have any direct evidence of this, yet? Just what you witnessed?”
“No. They made me strip, and I tore the wire off with my shirt.”
She looked at him.
“I had to strip so I could clean off the blood. They’re fanatical about getting rid of the evidence.”
“Okay. Stop talking. I need to get all of this recorded. I need your testimony to be legit. Straight up legit. If you’ve seen this stuff, it’ll be enough for the warrant we need.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. We need to go to the station. You’re willing to make a statement?”
“I mean, of course, with protection or something. They have body guards. They’re making millions. They’ll kill me.”
“We can protect you. I promise. Hey, I need you in the back seat. And throw on these cuffs. Just can’t take you in without cuffs on. No one will see.”
“Yeah ... That’s how it’s done?”
“You’re part of a criminal organization. Until we have an agreement on paper, to the Bureau, this is all smoke. I mean, I believe you ...”
“No problem.” He picked up the cuffs and opened the car door. “Back unlocked?”
She hit the button on the door panel. The mechanism thunked. “Hop in.”
Lou pulled out of the realtor’s parking and turned right on Milton Road, then slowed approaching the onramp to Interstate 40.
“Isn’t the office up ahead?”
Lou Rivers didn’t answer.
“Hey?”
“I want you to show me the scene from the other night. Where you said your brother killed the Mexican boy. Something about this whole thing isn’t adding up.”
“I already told you all about that.”
“I know. I want to see it. We’ll have to get some people on it.”
“You haven’t been out there yet? I told you where to find him. The red jacket.”
“Look, it’s been a busy day.”
She merged onto the highway and Finch looked out the window. Something didn’t add up about him?
Him?
Finch thought about Lou Rivers. Her age. Masculinity. The way she seemed to hold something back, in her eyes. Never really there with him. How she always delayed doing anything about the shit he told her.
How she wanted me handcuffed in the back seat.
“Just taking a wild guess,” Finch said. “How long have you been working with my father?”
Agent Lou Rivers connected eyes through the rearview, then returned her look to the road. “Known him a long time. We went to high school together.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So you’re not driving to the site of the body.”
“No.”
“You’ve been feeding everything I’ve been telling you to my Dad.”
Lou Rivers said nothing.
“You know he’s going to kill me.”
“That’s his business.”
Finch saw himself handcuffed to the rail in the back of the Isuzu refrigerated truck. He thought of the basement where they kept the girls and boys, the piss-smelling mattresses and rough wool blankets. He thought of the interminable ride from Sierra Vista to Salt Lake City, all of it on a wood floor, bouncing along with a wrist handcuffed to the rail. And he thought of the ultimate destination. Getting drugged, raped, murdered, and fed to the homeless.
“What’s he have on you? Video, like the stuff I saw at my brother’s place?”
“I’m not into kids.”
“No, I figured it was something else. Who knows. You guys are just as corrupt as anyone else. So hey, you know where you’re going? The exit to take?”
“I know where I’m going.”
“Good. That’s just fucking terrific.”
Finch inhaled deep but kept the breath in his lun
gs. Let it out slow. He filled them again and felt the intoxicating oxygen replenish him. His heart raced and the more he tried to calm himself, the more adrenaline surged.
Lou Rivers put on her turn signal and braked. As the vehicle slowed toward the stop sign, Finch slipped sideways.
She drove the Impala to a rolling stop. The engine idled. The car eased forward. There was never traffic at the intersection. In his entire life, he’d seen maybe one other vehicle there at the same time.
He could trust it.
Finch threw his handcuffed wrists over the seat ahead, catching Lou Rivers by surprise. He yanked back hard. The chain between his handcuffs crossed her throat and pinned her head to the rest.
The car drifted into the intersection. Lou Rivers bucked, hit the gas; the car surged. She twisted right and gagged. He pulled harder, now against the side of her neck. Her knees collided with the steering wheel and the car wobbled. Her feet off the gas, it slowed. They’d crossed the intersection and now rolled up the edge of the onramp, as if to resume travel on 40 west.
Finch didn’t remember which side of the neck carried the blood to the brain. He couldn’t suffocate her with her head turned sideways, and it was possible she wouldn’t even pass out. If she could work both of her hands, she might be able to free her pistol and point it back at him through the seat.
Finch pushed his hands forward, releasing the pressure. He swung his left hand over the head rest and with both wrists side by side, jerked backward. She brought her hands to her neck.
Finch pulled harder.
She spasmed.
Finch drew her closer.
She gurgled. Her hands fell away. Finch heaved until he felt something in her neck dislodge. Maybe her throat collapsed. Or a vertebra shifted. He jerked again, felt the handcuffs cut into his wrists, and held the pressure until long after Lou Rivers was limp.
Finch eased the pressure, keeping his hands about her neck and the cuff chain in place, should she revive. The car had stopped on the wide curb of the on-ramp. A tractor trailer passed on in the interstate. Finch looked over his shoulder, through the rear window. No traffic behind him. He pulled his hands over Lou’s head and, like a swimmer, dove between the seats, landing with his head in her lap. She smelled of released bowels.
Finch put the car in park. Checked her pulse to be sure. Her eyes were glassy and fractured with a thousand blood vessels.
He patted her pockets, found a key in the left.
It had to be the left.
Finch adjusted Lou Rivers sideways, her back to the center of the car. She fell over to the console. He reached with both hands and dug with the left into her pocket for the key.
In a few minutes, he had the cuffs off his wrists.
Finch exited the car and stood in the free air, knowing his remaining life would be counted in minutes if he didn’t get his shit together.
There was no way to escape the FBI forever. Not when he’d killed one of them.
There was no way to evade his father and brother. They’d hunt him down. He couldn’t trust the law; given his father’s reach, he couldn’t trust anyone.
He pulled the keys from the ignition. Opened the trunk, dragged Lou Rivers from the driver’s seat and dropped her in. The woman couldn’t have weighed a hundred pounds. At the front seat, he looked at the mess she’d made releasing her bladder. Inside the door pocket was a roll of paper towels. He wiped the seat, threw the towels in the trunk with the body, then let out another ten feet of paper and folded it into a cushion. Finch fired the engine, sat starting at the windshield.
Now what?
Finch thought of the log cabin mansion under the cobalt sky and the glassy stare of the Latina he’d cut to pieces.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Wake up.”
Girl voice.
I shake with cold. Hands on me. Pull my face. Shake shoulder. Open eyes. Still dark. Pain in the leg crowds everything I know. Can’t make thoughts cohere. Dreamed of pain then woke to it.
“Take this.”
She push a plastic doohickey in my mouth.
“The fuck?”
“Take it.” She push it in. Hold up the box. Can’t read fer shit.
“Fentanyl. It will help your pain.”
I can’t rest. The head pounds and the whole right leg’s on fire.
“Keep that in your mouth. It will help. This is going to hurt but you must trust me.”
She work out a bag. Take an item, do something, back the bag. With scissors she cut pant leg and under skivvie.
“Do you feel this?”
“Nothin’ special.”
“Good.”
She shove a bristle brush up the hole.
Fire all inside and overwhelm the rest my misery. Brain go off and float somewhere the lights is bright and pulsing. Skin on my teeth peels back. Bones crumble to mush. Gotta think I’s somewhere else.
She do it again, calf-fucked with a wire brush. Pushing that torment deep in the muscle.
“This part will hurt a little too.”
She shake a can, like spray paint.
“Whoa.” My voice brittle like a little girl. “Just fuckin’ shoot me. No more torture.”
Hear the whoosh from a can.
Fire in the leg go nuclear. Burn like flesh melts off the bone. I twist and holler an cuss, and she move out the way so’s I don’t whack her. Moonlight show the label.
Lysol.
She shove a hose up the hole an fill it with Lysol. I get a thought and can’t hold it. Then another and I partly remember the first. Some a me’s filled in wonder she come back. Lysol a good idea. Kill anything it touch. Good start. But rest a me can’t hold it together for the agony.
“The pain killer I gave you will help. I want to wait but the infection is very bad. Lysol will slow it. But some might be too far inside. The leg is swollen. We must go to the hospital. There is a Cadillac in the garage. Can you drive?”
“Sure.”
“You must teach me.”
My eyes is drippy with water. Throat sore and raspy. Brain like hammered mud.
“Okay.”
She unhook the tarp, pull it back and it’s white all over everywhere and moon sharp as a knife up there above. Specks of light—clearest night I ever see. I blink and my eyes don’t feel right. The leg kinda go distant. Still throb, but like the leg a mile off. Close my eyes and open again. Now this girl’s the prettiest in the world—even with the orange clown hair.
Wow, is all a feller can say.
“You got some pretty ass hair. Why don’t you press it agin some kindlin’ and start a fire?”
Way back somewhere I got paper birch bark. Was that in Arizona? Or as a boy?
She stare, mouth tight. Then smile. “The fentanyl.”
“I like to still some of that.” Then, “You come back after I say some mean stuff.”
“You get on this.” She drag a plastic boat sled next me. Got a yellow nylon rope with knots up front. “Can you roll over?”
I twist and land on Smith in the bed of the boat. “You gonna tie up Stinky Joe and holler mush?”
She wrinkle her face.
“Who is Stinky Joe?”
“That dog was here. Where Joe?”
“He has not been here. We need your legs on the sled.” She gets in front of me and something’s different. She lift my leg and put ’em on the sled. Then the other. She wearin’ gloves.
“You see Mrs. Graves?”
“I saw.”
“Wicked woman, that.”
Blackhair lift the rope and pull.
“Hey, my sleepin bag. And pack.” Reach and touch Smith. Okay. Forgot I already checked. “What you say this lollipop is?”
She lean hard and get the rope over the shoulder. Plant the feet sideways, squat, cinch up, stand. Sled move off the flat an alla sudden the silent night filled with the crunch a snow. She pull and trot, and the boat cut the hill with speed. Rope go limp.
“Out the way! Whooooeeee!”
/> Glide downhill. Grab the boat sled rails and pull the left; lean right. Pass the girl; drift toward the house. Lose speed cause I ain’t headed straight down hill, but save the trek at the bottom. Look like six-inch snow if one. Come to the flat and I’s at the edge they lawn. Sled stop. I push with the arms and pain clouds the brain. Druther walk. Brain about as loopy as a ten day drunk all at once. Try an figger how to stand. Right leg won’t bend worth a shit. Roll over an push up. Stress the head like to pop, and through the giddy loopy I sense if I don’t get the antibiotics soon I’ll pull up the green corn and stomp little chickens.
Standing, I plant the right leg and move the left. Drag the right along. Got mebbe twenty thirty yards to the driveway.
Girl catches up.
“Hey. What yer name?”
“Tat.”
“What? Tat?”
“Tathiana.”
“Hello, Tat.”
“Hello. Keep going. The car is on the other side.”
“Tat. I got—hey, lissen.” Grab her shoulder. “Tat. I sorry. I apologize.”
She look at my face and nary a muscle twitch. Nothing ’bout the eyes. Nothing ’bout the mouth. Cold as sauerkraut.
Mind move on. Fentanyl drug. Can’t make sense that orange hair. But it make the girl pretty. Mebbe her coming back make her pretty. Sometime a man just want a hole to curl up and cry in.
Fuckanyl drug.
“What drug you gimme? Sheeit.”
Wonder if she could drag me. Stinky Joe could. Where Stinky Joe? I stop. Turn. “Joe! Hey-Ah. Joe!”
“We don’t have time.”
“You find keys in the house for the Cadillac?”
Head shake.
I walk. “Mebbe run ahead? Look in the house. Find her purse?”
She go ahead. I look from there to my feet, a mile and back. Got the vertigo. No balance in the feet. Look ahead and a star flare off the left, down the road. Two star, ground level.
Mebbe I get to kill one more Graves.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Wayman Graves powered off his computer. He glanced at his watch. Claudia was probably downstairs already. She’d said she’d meet him, rather than allow him to send a car.
Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3) Page 16