B007GFGTIY EBOK (21 page)

“Could he have contracted it out?” Rebecca asked.

“It’s a possibility. As yet, bank records for him and MDE don’t show any major withdrawals. My gut tells me he knew something. He had called everyone there for the meeting but didn’t show. His suicide is an admission of guilt, but I don’t think it was for the slaughter of his people.”

Santiago’s revelation cast a cold shadow over the group. Hayden lost all appetite for his float and pushed it away.

“I think that’s it for now,” Santiago said. “Get out of here and keep out of trouble. We’ve got it covered. Anything happens, you come to us. No excuses.”

Hayden smiled. “No police escort?”

“No. I’m going to check in with Eskdale. Maybe I can succeed where you failed.”

Hayden’s smile faltered. He didn’t want to be anywhere close to Santiago when he landed Eskdale. “Yeah, we’d better go.”

H
ayden picked up the freeway and pointed the car south. He and Rebecca had been damn lucky to escape Eskdale, then Santiago, without being charged. Even though Santiago could pick them up at any time, he wanted to pile the miles on between Arcata and them. Taking on Eskdale wasn’t a mistake, but it was certainly a mess. They had little to show for their encounter.

He looked to Rebecca to comfort him, but she was silent. Her gaze was fixed on the road ahead and she was lost in her own thoughts. Maybe silence was the right move. Fear of the future was best left unexpressed, and he had no desire to relive the last couple of hours.

Twenty miles into the drive, Rebecca fell asleep. Hayden felt his own fatigue set in as the day’s tension left him. He could have done with Rebecca’s company to keep him awake on the monotonous road.

He kept the car stereo switched off to let Rebecca sleep but checked his cell phone for messages to keep his mind working. He had two messages.

The first was from Dave O’Brien at Macpherson Water to tell Hayden he no longer worked for them. He’d been AWOL from his day job one day too many and Dave had canceled his contract. He didn’t blame Dave for firing him. He’d given the guy little choice with his absences. The firing should have bothered him, but the job seemed insignificant compared to what was going on. In the scheme of things, it was a bump in the road. He’d pick up a new contract elsewhere later.

The second message cured him of any fatigue. At the sound of the man’s desperate voice on the line, Hayden straightened in his seat.

“Hayden, you don’t know me, but we need to talk. I don’t have to tell you what about. I’m not calling you back on this number. No cells. Landlines only. I tried your home phone, but got no answer. I hope you’re still around to call me back. I’ll leave word at your home. Be by your phone tonight. I won’t call tomorrow. I’ll talk to you and you alone. No one else. If I think you’ve included someone else in this, I’m gone.”

The message left him dry mouthed. Who was this guy? He couldn’t be someone from MDE. Everyone was dead. He thought hard. One thing sprang to mind—document1. He remembered Rebecca’s remark about Shane’s password-protected file. The file wasn’t for him to read. It was for him to hand off to someone else.

That was a big assumption, though. His skin still felt the effects of the fire. Mr. No-Name could be MDE’s arsonist out to finish his work. It wouldn’t be that hard to track down his home and cell phone numbers. The arsonist was likely to be a man with many skills, considering the body count to his credit.

Either way, he needed to take the call. If this guy knew something about MDE or Shane, then he needed to hear it. If the guy was the arsonist, he could say something to trip him up. He could do this without risk to himself. The phone line separated them.

He looked over at Rebecca, who was still sleeping. He couldn’t include her in this. He’d been adamant after she’d run off after Fuller alone that they stick together, but Mr. No-Name had been explicit. He couldn’t risk losing this guy over the demand and in some ways, he was glad. If the caller was the arsonist, he would want to take Rebecca and him out together. Leaving Rebecca behind ensured one of them kept the investigation alive.

The Mitsubishi rode over a pothole, waking Rebecca. She screwed up her eyes at the light. She looked at her surroundings outside the car, then at Hayden.

“Was I asleep long?”

“No.”

She latched onto a change in his demeanor and stared at him quizzically. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m in the doghouse with my boss. I have to go in. I don’t want to lose this contract, too. I’ll drop you off at Shane’s and I’ll stay at my place tonight.” He didn’t like lying to her. If the caller panned out, he’d bring her up to speed.

“I can stay with you tonight. I’ll go in with you and explain how you’re helping me.”

He smiled. “That’s a nice idea, but it won’t buy me any favors. It’s best if I go in alone and sort it out.”

She frowned at his smile. “I thought we were supposed to stick together—never leave each other’s sides.”

He took her hand, brought it up to his mouth, and kissed it. “Look, I’ll be back by noon. I just need to smooth things over.”

“OK, just as long as you’re back to me by noon,” she said with a smile.

His corresponding smile felt tight and out of place. Lying had never felt so hard.

Now awake, Rebecca was up for talking. They fell into an easy conversation, relegating Mr. No-Name to the back of Hayden’s mind. Hayden’s lie hit black ice when Rebecca wanted to stop for food. He couldn’t afford the delay a meal would take. Even without stops, he wasn’t going to arrive home before nine p.m. Mr. No-Name could give up on him by then. Rebecca started to suspect something, but he blamed having to go into work for not wanting to stop. He compromised with a stop at a drive-through, which seemed to allay her suspicions.

He dropped Rebecca off in San Rafael just after nine, keeping his speed a few miles per hour over the limit. The moment he dropped her off, he kept the speedometer as high as he could without running afoul of the highway patrol. He made it home in less than forty minutes.

The moment he stepped inside, the hairs on the back of his neck bristled. For a second, he thought his place had been ransacked again, but he soon realized everything was in its place. The only thing out of place was him. His home felt unfamiliar and strangely uncomfortable. He’d been away only days, but it felt like months. A lot had happened to him. He’d never view the world the same way again, even if Santiago caught the person who’d tried to kill him.

He put his out-of-place feelings aside and went straight to his answering machine. The message light blinked and he hit play. After messages from his mom and Dave O’Brien, he came to those left by Mr. No-Name. The same urgent and intense voice spilled from the speaker.

“Hayden Duke, you don’t know me, but we need to talk. I can’t talk long. It’s about Shane. Look, I’ll call back at seven, then again every hour, on the hour.”

The message ended and the answering machine announced the call had come in shortly before six. It was 9:50 p.m. No other messages followed. Either Mr. No-Name had hung up at seven, eight, and nine, or he hadn’t called back. If he was calling back, he’d be calling again in ten minutes. Part of Hayden didn’t want him to call, but a much larger part needed him to.

Mr. No-Name had said he knew Shane. Hayden wondered how. He couldn’t be anyone from MDE, so how did Shane know him? Chaudhary and Shane had shared information. Had they shared contacts, too? Was this the person expecting document1? The thing that disturbed Hayden most was wondering what had triggered Mr. No-Name to call him. There was only one way to find out.

The phone rang at exactly ten. Hayden snatched up the phone. “Hello.”

“Hayden Duke?”

“Yes.”

“We need to talk.”

“About what?”

“Don’t play games. You know what.”

“Who is this?” Hayden demanded.

“Meet me and I’ll tell you.”

The silhouette of the arsonist filled Hayden’s mind. “Tell me and I’ll think about meeting you.”

The line went silent. Hayden heard the man’s breathing. Good. He wanted this guy under pressure. He wanted answers, but he couldn’t be seen as a pushover.

“I’m not taking any chances with my life,” Mr. No-Name said. “You do things my way or not at all.”

“Look, I don’t have time for this bullshit. If you know something about Shane’s death, start talking.”

“Two blocks from your house there’s a pay phone outside a Mexican market. Go there.”

The son of a bitch knew where he lived. Was he outside now? Shit, Hayden hadn’t thought that luring him to his own house could be a trap. He went to check out front but stopped. If the guy was scoping him out, he would have called the moment he’d stepped inside his home, not waited until the prearranged time. That said, the guy knew where he lived. Mr. No-Name had the upper hand on him. It wasn’t a good feeling.

“It’ll ring for thirty seconds. If you aren’t there to answer it, it won’t ring again. You’ve got five minutes.”

Before Hayden could respond, the man hung up.

He shouldn’t have done this. The guy probably had nothing that answered his questions about Shane. But what if he did? Hayden couldn’t let the questions go unanswered. He snatched his keys off the table and ran out of the house.

He slowed when he reached the street with the market on it. The pay phone outside wasn’t ringing.

He crossed the street. The market was open and the shop lights illuminated rows of fruit and vegetables on display outside and the lone pay phone. He went up to the pay phone and felt conspicuous standing in front of it and not using it. He picked up the handset, but rested a finger on the cradle. He glanced into the supermarket to see if he was being watched but saw no one.

He glanced at his watch. The five minutes had elapsed. Mr. No-Name had been specific about the time. Now he was breaking his own rule. Hayden didn’t like this.

A silver Lexus pulled into the market’s cramped parking lot. Black glass hid the identities of its occupants. It pulled alongside him instead of parking in a stall. The passenger window slid down.

Hayden’s stomach tightened. It was a setup and he’d fallen for it. He was looking at a bullet or abduction.

The phone rang and Hayden flinched.

A Hispanic woman hopped from the Lexus and ran into the market. Hayden exhaled hard in an attempt to untie the knots left by his imagination.

“Hayden?” the voice on the line demanded.

“Yes,” Hayden said testily, more angry at his imagination than at the caller. “Who are you?”

“I’d prefer not to say.”

“Tell me or I’m hanging up.”

“OK. OK.” He mumbled a curse away from the receiver. “I’m Tony Mason.”

“So, Tony Mason, what do you want?”

“I know that Shane Fallon was murdered.”

“I think you’ve been misinformed, my friend. I saw Shane die. It was suicide, plain and simple. You should do your homework before you try scamming someone.”

“Jesus Christ, Hayden. I know you were there. Trust me, it wasn’t suicide.”

Hayden flicked his gaze to the market, the street ahead and behind. He felt exposed at the pay phone—a lamb tethered to a stake in the ground.

The woman darted out of the supermarket with a paper sack in her arms. She jumped into the Lexus and it sped off.

“Shane didn’t know what he was doing. They did that to him. They couldn’t be guiltier if they’d put a gun to his head. They have other ways of pulling the trigger.”

This speech was in Malcolm Fuller’s territory. The world was populated by thems and theys. “Who are
they
?”

“I don’t want to say on the phone. Meet me?”

Against his better judgment, Hayden said, “Where?”

A loud exhalation from Mason’s end of the line reduced the line to static. “Thank God. You don’t know what it means to me to talk about this to someone who understands.”

Hayden still didn’t understand anything. He just knew that people kept dying. “Then you know what’s going on?”

“Enough to get me killed.”

Hayden considered talking Mason into meeting Santiago but decided against it. He had to earn Mason’s trust before he brought up the subject of going to the cops.

“Don’t disappoint me.”

“I can assure you, I won’t.”

Mason’s meeting point was at the Home Depot in Fairfield. Not in the store itself, but on the service road the delivery trucks used. Hayden knew the place. The Home Depot was located on the south side of the city, twenty minutes from Hayden’s house. It was a relatively new development in an extension of the business park that stretched across an ugly section of Highway 12. He cut through Fairfield and turned into the Home Depot’s parking lot. The Home Depot shared its lots with two other big-box stores still under construction but close to completion. The store was closed, but the lot had the benefit of security lighting. He followed the signs for deliveries and turned onto the service road.

The service road was unlit. He relied on light pollution from the neighboring business park and Suisun City. Rows of deserted loading and unloading bays curled around the backside of the store. He saw no sign of any another vehicles or Tony Mason.

The sensation of being a lamb tethered to a stake returned. Hayden pulled up behind a Dumpster. “You’ve been smarter, Hayden,” he told himself.

He got out of the car. If Mason was watching—and Hayden had no doubt about that—he wanted the guy to see him. The Mitsubishi’s dome light lit up the coupe’s interior, showing he was alone. He left the door ajar in case this meeting turned sour.

The drone of traffic racing across Highway 12 drowned out his footsteps—and anybody else’s.

“Tony?” Hayden called out, but the man with all the answers didn’t answer back.

Mason had picked smart. There were plenty of places to hide out. Dumpsters dotted the service road. A dense fringe of bushes and shrubs concealed the road from prying eyes—and more importantly, camouflaged Mason from Hayden.

Hayden stepped out into the middle of the road. He kept his hands away from his sides and made each step obvious and deliberate. If Mason was hiding out he didn’t want him getting the wrong idea. No doubt Mason was just as spooked about this meeting as he was. The thought relaxed him. He’d been through this situation with Fuller. He was an old hand with clandestine meetings. If someone needed to take the lead, he could do it.

He continued to walk forward. He checked behind and between a couple of Dumpsters. He called out to Mason twice more without reply. Not a problem. The guy was scared.

“Tony, are you here?” His voice carried on the night air. “C’mon, you called me. You said you wouldn’t disappoint me.”

The bushes where the service road turned right to curl around the building rustled and a stocky black man emerged.

Hayden froze. He had an image of Mason and the person striding toward him wasn’t it. He was bigger and stronger than Hayden expected, possessing a retired football player’s build. His blue and black bowling shirt barely contained his barrel chest and Hayden doubted he could button the army jacket he wore loosely over the shirt. He was older, too. Hayden put him in his midforties.