I only knew one thing for certain: the man was sloppy. If that bomb had been on a timer, he had no way of knowing I’d be anywhere near the sedan when it went off. If he triggered it remotely, that was even worse; he’d talked, and gloated, and given me just enough time to get clear of the blast, when he could have vaporized me with the push of a button. He needed attention more than he needed victory, and that was a weakness I could exploit.
More evidence of his sloppiness was right there on a flickering screen. We’d narrowed the footage down easily, starting from when I’d parked the car up to when Grimm had made his appearance at the party, and the security camera had caught a perfect shot of his arrival. He rolled in five minutes after I did, riding alone behind the wheel of a dirty white panel van.
“Okay,” I said, “so let’s jump it ahead an hour or so and see if we can catch him on the way out, too.”
He obliged us at one hour and fourteen minutes on the dot. I froze the frame on a still of his license plate number.
“Gotcha,” I said. “Well, maybe. If he’s any kind of professional, that car is stolen—”
“But from what you’ve been tellin’ me,” Jennifer said, “he ain’t any kind of professional.”
“My thoughts exactly. I’m going to shoot the plate number over to Pixie. She can run a search and pull the registration info for us. Who knows? We might even find out Hunter McChucklenuts’s real name.”
I tugged out my phone. I was about to copy the plate down when a text pinged in. Then a second, and a third.
“Good man,” I murmured. “You might hate yourself in the morning for this, but you made the right call.”
Jennifer tilted her head at me. “Whatcha got, sugar?”
I turned the phone so she and Caitlin could read the messages, straight from Gary Kemper.
Santiago is a cop
at the Starbucks on n rancho dr, keeping him distracted
come pick him up before I change my mind
30.
“I really appreciate this,” Santiago was telling Gary. “I mean, I got potential, you know? I could really make an impact if I got my detective’s shield. All I need is a mentor to help me get there. Somebody who can put in a good word for me.”
They were nestled in a two-seater by the window, talking shop over paper mugs of coffee. Both in plainclothes. I figured it was either Santiago’s day off, or Gary had convinced him to call in sick. Either way, he was off the clock and nobody was going to come looking for him until tomorrow at the earliest.
“And that’s why I offered,” Gary told him. He didn’t make eye contact. He did with me and Jennifer, though, when he saw us coming. Then he stared at his cup. Santiago had his back to us.
“You…you okay, man?” Santiago shrugged. “You look down all of a sudden.”
Gary curled his lips in a bitter smile.
“Just wondering how to do this right. I think this is the part where I’m supposed to kiss you on both cheeks.”
I clamped my hand on Santiago’s shoulder. He looked at me, then at Gary, and I saw the pieces click together in his eyes.
“Don’t make a scene,” I told him.
“You son of a bitch,” Santiago breathed. “You’re with them?”
Gary’s hand tightened around his cup. The cardboard started to buckle. Now he looked Santiago in the eye, cold and steady.
“I’m not with them, no. I’m with the dozen kids who died because of the tainted drugs you put on the street. And whatever these two do to you, it’s probably better than you deserve.” Gary looked to me. “Get him out of my sight.”
Jennifer nudged Santiago to his feet. “C’mon,” she said in a low voice. “We want you alive, but we don’t need you alive. And if you don’t think I’ll put a bullet in you right here and now, think twice.”
She was bluffing, but he bought it. Santiago rose and walked with us, a lamb to the slaughter.
“Faust,” Gary said.
I looked back at him.
“Never ask me to do this again,” he told me.
“Might not feel like it right now,” I said, “but you did the best thing you could do, under the circumstances. You’re still one of the good guys, Gary.”
He drank his coffee and looked out the window.
*
We took him to the fortress. That was the nickname for Jennifer’s place out by the airport, a U-shaped tenement block she’d bought up on the cheap and converted into a modern-day castle of crumbling stone and sheet-draped windows. Rusted cars parked along a side street formed a makeshift barricade, and corners in every direction were manned by Calles foot soldiers in brown and yellow. Up on the rooftops, more shooters stood with binoculars and hunting rifles, keeping a silent watch over her tiny kingdom.
Caitlin had gone ahead of us to get the room ready. When we marched Santiago inside, he knew what it was for. You don’t lay plastic sheeting across dusty floorboards, let alone tack it up over the peeling floral wallpaper, unless you’re planning on making a serious mess.
We cuffed his hands behind him, sat him down in a chair in the middle of the plastic tarp, and that’s when he started to cry.
My kit was all laid out on a sawhorse on the side of the room. Tupperware containers of sea salt and cow’s blood, white candles, all the fixings to purge his body of the Network roach in his guts. I could see it with my third eye, a black blotch like a fist-sized tumor in his abdomen.
I took the salt and started to trace a circle around his chair in glittering crystal lines. I focused on the spell-work to come—I had a fifty-fifty shot of pulling this off—and tried to ignore his blubbering.
“Have some damn dignity,” Jennifer snapped at him. “All we want to do is ask you some questions. You tell us what we wanna know, maybe give up some of your buddies, you got a real good chance of walking out of here.”
Of course, she was lying. After what Santiago had done—dancing to Elmer Donaghy’s tune, sending Todd into the streets with a baggie of tainted ink and causing a massacre just to get my attention—there was no chance he was ever leaving this room alive. We were going to wring him dry, and then we were going to kill him, and that was that. The only question was how much he was going to suffer between those two points.
He should have known that, but desperation makes people stupid. He got himself under control and bobbed his head at Jennifer like an eager puppy. A blob of snot glistened in his mustache.
“Anything you want to know,” he stammered. “Anything! I can help you. I can be real helpful!”
I finished the circle, tapped off a few last grains of salt from the Tupperware, and went to get the candles.
“Not yet,” I told him. “Keep your mouth shut until I get this done.”
“You want to know about Elmer, right, and phase two? I can tell you all about it. The dude is sick, you don’t even know the half of it.”
Santiago wrenched to one side, his words cut off in a choking sob of pain. I saw the hazy image of the roach stir inside of him—and bite, a punishment for his disobedience.
“Stop talking,” I said. I laid down the candles as fast as I could, forming the points of a star around the circle of salt. Caitlin was right behind me with a book of matches. Wicks sizzled to life one by one, filling the air with the faint, musty scent of smoke. Sweat beaded Santiago’s face. He was too desperate to think straight, too afraid to understand what was happening to him or connect his treason to the sudden pain in his belly.
“You didn’t stop shit,” he stammered. “Those pits were just where he keeps the roaches, not where he makes ’em. Oh God, what—”
He lurched forward, his spine bucking, and vomited a gout of blood. It splashed across his slacks and spattered the plastic sheeting. I ran and grabbed the plastic bucket of cow’s blood, an offering to draw the geas-roach out.
“Jennifer,” I shouted, “put something in his mouth to shut him up. Gag him with your belt or something!”
Santiago wheezed his words out. He was trying to save his own life by giving us something we could use. He didn’t realize he was committing suicide by doing it.