Chapter Twenty-Four
You were sweet with her,” Kit said, as they left the dark, womb-like confines of Mary Margaret’s modest home, emerging once again into the sun’s blistering heat. “Most people would just see a crazy woman.”
“I see a Lost one,” Grif murmured, knowing that his death long ago was partly to blame. Poor Mary Margaret, having that crime hoisted on her shoulders. And damn Barbara DiMartino for putting it there.
Kit followed his thoughts. “But we got a lead.”
Clearing his throat, Grif tried to do the same with his expression. It wouldn’t do to get emotional now. “Yep.”
Barbara DiMartino—now Barbara McCoy. She’d married again at some point in the past fifty years. Grif knew this because Mary Margaret gave Kit the envelope from one of the woman’s birthday greetings. It had McCoy’s address, handwriting, and—though he hadn’t opened it yet—a photo, too. Grif would finally know exactly who this woman was, and why she thought Evie and he deserved to die.
Sliding into the Duetto’s passenger seat, Grif’s heart beat against his chest, and rang in his ears. Kit’s small car seemed to close in around him, not like a womb but a vise. His fingers trembled slightly against the envelope, which Kit surely saw as she keyed the ignition, though she said nothing. Pursing his lips, he glanced down and spied the edges of a photo—greenery, and water—either a lake or the ocean—and a white silk shirt on an arm propped against a hip. The arm of this Barbara, he thought, withdrawing it slowly. The arm of . . .
Kit’s phone rang. Buddy Holly’s “Oh, Boy.” A tune Grif recognized from both past and present. Gritting his teeth, Grif dropped his hands, slapping the envelope against his thigh. “What does he want now?”
Kit raised her chin in response—he knew that blasted look—and answered the phone. “Hey, Dennis . . .”
Grif rolled his eyes. It was petty, he knew, but it felt intrusive to have another person in this car, in this moment. This was between Grif and Kit. Grif and Barbara. Grif . . . and Evie.
“Grif is here,” Kit continued, flat gaze trained on Grif’s face, like she was still reading his thoughts. He swallowed hard, and put the card aside for now. “He says hi.”
Grif pulled a face. Very funny.
Yet Kit quickly grew serious. “Sure. Hold on.”
She pressed a button on her phone Grif didn’t even know existed, and static of background noise filled the tiny car. Grif hadn’t known the phone could be set to speaker.
“You’re on,” Kit told Dennis.
“Do you guys want the good news or the bad news first?” Excitement scored Dennis’s tone, which of course decided things for Kit. Sighing, Grif tucked the card and photo into his jacket pocket. He’d have to wait until the future to look into his past.
“Good first. Always,” she answered for them.
“I found Bella.”
Jerking straight in her seat, Kit beaned her head on the Duetto’s soft top. “No way. How? When? What did she say?”
“Let the man answer at least one of the questions,” Grif muttered.
“After you gave me Bella’s name, I cross-referenced it with the files we have on Marco Baptista and his crew. A Bella Maria Sanchez is the niece of one of Baptista’s highest-ranking lieutenants, Manuel Sanchez. Mr. Sanchez has been employed for the last three years in the Sun Valley Care and Rehabilitation Center. He’s a P.A.”
“Physician’s assistant,” Kit whispered to Grif, then in a normal voice said, “And did you check to see if any large caches of codeine have gone missing under Mr. Sanchez’s watch?”
“He’s squeaky-clean,” Dennis said, causing Kit to slump. “But a little more poking showed three more of Baptista’s men similarly employed at rehab hospitals all over the valley.”
“A very healthy bunch, these gangsters,” Kit observed, easing from Mary Margaret’s driveway.
Dennis hummed his agreement. “Yet they were clean as well.”
“So what good is it to us?” Grif said, cutting to the chase.
Kit shot him a hard look as she left the cul-de-sac, but Dennis seemed pleased he’d asked. “Listen, my grandmother had a stroke a few years back and ended up in one of these places. She was so out of it she had no idea what year it was, never mind what drugs she was on. She certainly wouldn’t know if they weren’t giving them to her. One call to the narcs confirmed it . . . it happens all the time.”
“So you think Baptista’s crew has been pilfering from their patients? Stockpiling codeine for . . . what? Years?” Kit said, now thoughtful.
“A good three years, if my math holds up.”
“That’s about a year after the Kolyadenkos started coming on strong,” Kit replied.
“Exactly.”
“It would fit,” Kit mused, biting her lower lip, slipping the Duetto through a yellow light.
“Sounds like you need to pay the Sanchezes a little visit,” Grif told Dennis, intrigued despite himself.
“I’m here now.”
“They actually spoke with you?” Kit said.
“That’s the bad news,” Dennis said. “I’m waiting for backup, along with the coroner to confirm, but the front door was slightly open so I knocked. When there was no answer I entered and found Bella, Manuel, and three others with point-blank shots to the head.”
“Recent?” Grif asked.
“Very.”
“And the rest of the joint?”
“Untouched.”
Quick. Brutal. Passionless. A worry moved through Grif’s belly. “So someone just came in, calmly shot them, and left?”
“Came in, lined them up, calmly shot them, and left.”
Five homicides related to a case he was working on, and Sarge hadn’t called him in for one of the Takes. Grif’s worry intensified.
“Give me the address,” Kit said, as they sped past the park where they’d encountered Mary Margaret.
“Well, that’s why I called.” Dennis’s voice grew strange, and he grunted like he was picking something up. “I thought you might already know it.”
Kit stomped the brakes, nearly bringing the car to a stop in the middle of the street before winging to the side. A horn blared as the car behind them sped past. Tilting her head, she said, “Why would you say that?”
“Because Grif’s hat is here.”
Kit and Grif turned to stare at each other. Then they both looked back at the phone in Kit’s hand.
“His hat . . . ?” Kit began, but Grif cut her off.
“Get out of there,” he said. His voice came out quieter than he’d intended, so he repeated himself. “Get out now.”
“Sure. I haven’t touched anything else, but the analysts will be here soon,” Dennis responded, with more authority and less urgency than was needed. Get out! Grif wanted to scream. “You should probably come to—”
Come to?
Nothing.
Kit and Grif leaned forward. “Dennis?”
“What the hell is—?” Dennis mumbled.
Then a scuffle, the sound of the phone dropping, and the connection went dead.
“Oh God.” Kit fumbled the phone as she redialed. “God. It’s her, isn’t it?”
Grif’s voice came out hoarse. “She had my hat.”
And now Yulyia Kolyadenko had Dennis.
It was all Kit’s fault.
“Damn!” She hung up as Dennis’s voice message sounded on the line, then punched redial. She wished he’d given her the address to Manuel Sanchez’s home. Then she’d be driving there instead of sitting roadside, stymied and useless. Then she could do something.
“You need to call the cops,” Grif said, as the phone continued ringing throughout the car. Kit was so focused that she actually jumped when he put his hand on her arm. “Call the cops,” he said, when she looked up and met his eyes.
But the ringing stopped abruptly, replaced a moment later by the sound of a steady, insistent beep. Then the beeping faded and a voice came through the speakerphone, melodious but short, and utterly devoid of emotion. “Put Mr. Shaw on the line.”
Holding the phone out to Grif, Kit closed her eyes and tried not to weep.
“I’m here.” He held the phone crooked for Kit to hear.
“Good,” Yulyia Kolyadenko said. “I thought it was you. I thought . . . you must want your hat back.”
“Keep it,” Grif said shortly. “I’ll take the man.”
“You will take what I am giving you, Mr. Shaw,” Yulyia responded, accent severely clipped. “Just like everyone else. Do you understand?”
Kit watched Grif’s jaw clenched as he swallowed. “Yes.”
“So this reporter, this woman slandering my name in the papers, the one in bed with the Baptistas, she is the one you are with now?”
“She’s not in bed—”
“I am asking for a simple yes or no only.”
Kit nodded at Grif’s troubled glance. “Yes.”
“And did you tell her what I said?”
Grif shook his head, though the woman couldn’t see it. “About?”
“Our burden as women. About how we must choose fate before it is chosen for us?”
Grif’s eyes moved to Kit’s. “I’ll tell her now.”
“But too late,” Yulyia said. “Because now I am making choices for us all. For the dirty Cubans who are setting me up. For this stupid policeman who dares question me about my world, my business. And for you, who are working with him.”
“We just want to stop the killing,” Grif tried.
“If that were true? You would have never threatened me.” Silence loomed on the line, and Kit and Grif waited. “No, the problem is, you think you know who I am. You sat across from me in my own car and called me calculated and driven and a realist. Realist. That is funny. But if you really knew me?”
A pause.
“Yes?” Grif said, because they all knew she wanted him to ask.
“You’d never come near me at all.” The sound muffled as she snapped instructions in Russian that Kit couldn’t understand. Despite that, an image of Dennis being dragged from a dingy, blood-splattered room flashed in her mind. She shut her eyes.
The sound cleared and Yulyia said, “You came to me with question. You wanted to know who hurt your newswoman friend. Then you said you respect women.”
“I do.”
“But Marco Baptista does not.”
“We already know he’s the one who attacked Marin Wilson,” Grif assured her. “And we know he was setting you up.”
“We also know that he introduced krokodil into this city to put the heat on your bratva,” Kit added, thinking it would help.
“Yet you do so little, you two people who know so much,” Yulyia snapped back, unappeased. “That is main difference between us, I think. You know Baptista is dealing this disgusting drug, and you have nerve to question me. But I see it . . . and I make it stop.”
“How?” Grif asked.
“That’s what you need to figure out now, isn’t it?” Yulyia said. “But know this: a viper’s poison does not show on the outside. Not like Baptista’s krokodil. Instead, it roils inside, hot like a fever, until it strikes you down. This is how I will attack Baptista. I will burn him from inside out.”
That didn’t sound different from Baptista’s krokodil at all, but Kit wasn’t going to say so to Yulyia. She couldn’t put Dennis at risk.
“I hope you listened when I told you to keep looking forward,” Yulyia continued, as if reading Kit’s thoughts on Dennis. “Detective Carlisle is counting on you. Understand?”
It sounded final. It sounded like she was going to hang up.
“Wait—” Kit tried . . . because she had to try.
“No police,” Yulyia barked over her, and the line went dead.
“Dammit.” Kit looked at her phone, then slapped the steering wheel. “Dammit! She didn’t give us anything!”
“Sure she did.”
Kit glanced at Grif like he was crazy. “What?”
“She just told us she’s going after Marco Baptista. The warning was to stay away and keep quiet. No paper. No police. Then Marco is gone and the whole issue of krokodil in the valley goes away, too.”
Kit shook her head. “What about Dennis?”
Grif said nothing.
Kit searched his face, but his features were carefully blank. “Grif?”
He finally shook his head. “Let’s hope she’s just using him as bait.”
Subtext: let’s hope the Viper hadn’t yet struck.
Forcing air through her nose, into her lungs, Kit sat and breathed and thought. Then she swung the car around in a sharp U-turn.
“Where are you going?” Grif’s expression wasn’t so blank now.
Kit didn’t answer.
“Kit? What are you thinking?”
She felt so stupid for not having seen it or thought of it before. “Little Havana.”
“What about it?”
She shook her head as she said, “It’s under renovation, Grif. It has been for weeks.”
“A perfect place to hide chemicals like paint thinner and propane.”
“Not just hide them,” Kit said. “It’s their kitchen.”
This is how I will attack Baptista. I will burn him from inside out.
“Stop the car,” Grif ordered, his voice emanating from a deeper place in his throat than before.
Kit kept going.
“Stop the car, Kit,” he repeated, clipping his words this time. “Because wherever you’re going, whatever you’re thinking, plasma is suddenly thickening around you.”
Kit double-glanced at him. “Plasma? Like when you first met me? Like when . . . ?”
“When you were destined to die.”
Kit eased up on the gas. Maybe Grif was right. Maybe they should leave Yulyia alone, and Marco to his fate, and hope she would let Dennis live. Just hope.
“That’s better,” Grif said, studying the air around her with squinted eyes. “Yes. That’s just fine.”
But Dennis was a friend, a good one. She could see him now: the way he carried his beer, Pabst dangling between two fingers, a lopsided grin on his face, pomade thick in his blunt-cut hair. Yulyia had him, this man who wore creepers and cuffed jeans, a comb in his back pocket, ciggies rolled in his T. He was a good man. The Viper had him.
And she was taking him to Little Havana. Grif’s ability to sense the supernatural plasma told them that much. What it didn’t tell them was how to stop it.
“You can call the cops,” Grif finally said.
Kit shook her head. “She warned us to stay away. No police.”
And no write-up in the paper after it was all said and done, Kit realized. Not unless they wanted to share Dennis’s fate.
“But maybe we can save Dennis that way. And Marco and Yulyia will both get what’s coming to them.”
Kit thought about it. Yes, it might work. They might possibly rid the city of both the bratva and the Cuban gang in one fell swoop. Then Kit could write whatever she pleased. The truth would be out. Las Vegas would be safer than it was before.
But would Dennis live?
“No, Kit,” Grif said immediately. The damned plasma must have returned even before she tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I will sit on you before I let you anywhere near that restaurant.”
“Then you’ll have bite marks on your ass.” The Duetto growled as she accelerated. “She didn’t take Dennis just to kill him. She took him to make a point.”
“The point is that she can touch anyone she wants at any time.”
“But he’s alive right now, and we need to help him.”
“That’s what you said about Jeap Yang, remember?”
“No!” Kit slammed her palm against the steering wheel. She refused to accept that this was the same, or that Dennis’s death was already fated. “This is my friend!”
“It’s not that simple,” Grif argued. “Don’t forget that Scratch is dialed in to your emotions. It’ll also know if you’re injured. So, yeah, it’s Dennis, but it’s also you. And it’s me, too.”
“Don’t worry, Grif.” The words were out of her mouth before she even knew they were on her tongue. “I don’t expect you to go in. I know exactly where your priorities lie.”
Kit held her breath. It felt like the oxygen had been expelled from the car anyway. She took a hard right. Almost there.
“What the hell’s that mean?” Grif finally said.
“It means,” Kit said, the grit in her voice matching his, “that if I do as you ask, do nothing, then I’ll always wonder if I could have stopped it. And you will, too, because unlike Marco and Yulyia, and the violent paths they’ve chosen, this man is innocent!”
She let that hang between them as they waited for the light to turn green, and when it did, she followed Yulyia Kolyadenko’s instructions: she kept looking forward. Moving through the intersection, picking up speed as Grif remained silent, she navigated the most direct route to Little Havana.
Choose our fates before they’re chosen for us.
Well, Kit thought, maybe Yulyia had a point. And maybe, if they arrived at Little Havana first, they could do just that.
Something is going to happen. The woman knows it like she knows the beat of her own heart, because that is her gift, and so she begins to prepare. The only reason she takes time to answer Tomas’s call is because she knows he has related information. Even the stupid Anglo can be used by the saints to carry her a vital message. That is the greatness of their strength.
“Don’t tell me you’ve lost the reporter,” she says in greeting, slipping her beaded necklace over her head.
“No, but I’ve had to pull back.” Tomas’s voice is unusually strained, causing the woman to look up from the table where she’s gathered herbs, mini-sculptures, and bowls. “I’m using a tracer on her car instead of visual. That man who’s with her, Griffin Shaw, he’s sharp.”
“And the problem?” Because this man only calls when there is a problem.
Tomas’s swallow sounds loudly over the line. “They’re on the move now . . . and I think they’re headed back to Naked City.”
And there it is. The knowledge inside her forms into a hard ball of certainty, rising in her chest like it has wings, and she is suddenly blessed with clarity. This is how it will happen: the two nosy investigators will arrive. There will need to be a prayer offered up to the orishas before that, then a ritual to ensure that her divine actions are concealed from the outside world. But then a deep cleansing can take place. The evil spirits that have beset her household of late will be banished, and the saints will finally be appeased.
“Want me to stop them?” Tomas asks, still under the illusion that this is a worldly concern. But Josepha Baptista has the gifted awareness of a high priestess. She can hear the saints calling to her, their voices slipping into her ear like the warm wind of her homeland. Sure, she wants to act quickly as well, but Josepha hasn’t grown this old, this powerful, or this feared by giving in to impulse.
“No. Enough is enough. Let them come if they’re intent on doing so. Today they will have the answers they seek. They won’t like them, they certainly won’t live to tell them, but they will know.”
And then they will offer up their blood as a cleansing rite to her beloved Chango.
“I’ll call the others,” Tomas says in a voice so cowed that Josepha wonders if he’ll come at all.
“Yes, do that” is all she says, because it doesn’t matter. The orishas will deliver Tomas to her, too. “Meanwhile, I will end this once and for all.”