I Shall Not Want (18 page)

“
Mierda
,” he whispered.

Isobel whirled. Inhaled. Turned to him. “Go,” she said.

He shook his head. He wasn’t about to leave her to face her family alone. “No. You come.”

“Please! Go! Vamanose!” She glanced back over her shoulder. Said something fast and full of despair. She pushed at him. “Please, Amado, please. Go. No come back. I okay.”

“No!”

She dragged him around the corner of the barn, out of sight of the approaching man, and pinned him in place with her body. “You no come back! I okay. He—” She struggled to find a word, then sliced her finger across her throat. Then she leaped over all those high bars and good reasons keeping them apart as easily as she jumped from the haymow and kissed him.

Time stopped in an endless moment of soft and wet and the taste of coffee and corn chips. His breath caught and his eyes fluttered shut, and then she pulled away and shoved him toward the woods. He tucked the sack under his arm and ran, his mind fogged, until the thrash of branches and the sawing of his own breath alerted him to the fact that a blind man could follow the noisy trail he was making. He stopped, chest heaving. Wait. He had to make sure she was all right.

He doubled back toward the barn, slipping between hemlocks and birch trees. He stayed low, sticking to shadows and scrub brush. He spotted a deadfall pine, moldering into the forest floor, and he dropped belly-down next to it.

He could hear them, faintly, the big man bellowing and Isobel yelling. He was demanding, she was defying—that Amado got from the pitch of their voices. Then—
oh, God
—there was the meaty sound of flesh hitting flesh. Isobel shrieked. He heard it again. He was up from his hiding place, up and moving, his hand flailing at the paper bag, reaching for the gun, when he heard her, over the sound of his thudding feet.

“Amado!” He skidded to a stop. She wasn’t calling his name. She was… naming him. He moved closer, tree to tree to tree. He could hear her, sobbing. “Amado, okay?” she said. Then more—between the weeping and the English, he couldn’t make it out—but he heard her say “McGeochs” clear enough.

His fingers curled around the butt of the gun. Through the leaves, he could make out the top half of the barn. He dropped the sack and fell to his stomach again, crawling through the underbrush until he could see.

Isobel was curled on the ground, trapped between the barn and the big man. She had both arms wrapped around her in futile protection. She shook with sobs. Her lip was bleeding. Amado brought the gun up and sighted it. The bastard’s back was wide enough; even an inexperienced shot couldn’t miss.

Then Isobel’s attacker bent over and scooped her up. He cradled her tenderly, making soothing noises, stroking her back and hair. She clung to the monster, still weeping, and buried her face in his shoulder.

Amado lowered the gun. He turned away, fighting to keep his gorge down. He knew what that was. He had seen it before. There were a few women in his village whose husbands would beat them Saturday night and woo them Sunday morning. But he was sure Isobel was unmarried. A brother, then? Or an uncle? He stared at the gun in his hand, heavy and unfamiliar, and almost dropped it again. Sweet mother of Christ. Had the bearded giant been hitting Isobel because he had seen her with a dark-skinned man? Or because
this
was missing?

Hide
, she had said.
Hide
. He bent, scooped up the sack he had dropped, and replaced the gun inside. Slowly, carefully, he threaded his way through the trees. Back toward the McGeochs’ land. To do what she had asked him to do.

The first person Kevin ran into as he snuck into the station that afternoon was the deputy chief. “What the hell are you doin‘ here?” MacAuley asked.

“Uh… I wanted to get in a little early for my shift.”

“An hour early? Damn, boy, your hair’s still wet.”

“I showered at the gym. I was working out.”

MacAuley’s caterpillar eyebrows went up. “You. Were working out.” He thwacked Kevin on the chest with a manila folder. “I thought you were more into pickup basketball games.”

Kevin shrugged.

MacAuley shook his head and looked upward, to where acoustic tiles covered the hallway’s original plaster ceiling. “God help us all,” he said. He thumbed toward the briefing room. “May as well get back there. You can tell the chief about your stop last night.”

“My what?”

MacAuley looked at him impatiently. “You stopped to pick up Knox, right? Ran plates on a Hummer driven by a guy with tattoos? A corpse cake turned up this morning in the woods off of Lick Springs Road. Matching marks on his hands. La-ti-no.” He rolled his eyes. “Not PC to say
Mexican
anymore. Hunh. Maybe I’ll start calling myself a Hibernian-American.”

“I think you mean Caledonian-American, Dep. Hibernian-American would be Irish. Like me.” By the look on MacAuley’s face, that last “like me” might have been overdoing it.

“Get in there, before I go Irish on your ass.”

Kevin hustled into the squad room, grinning to himself. To be rewarded by the sight of
her
, seated at the big table, studying a series of photos.

“Hey, Hadley,” he said, his voice a pitch-perfect blend of friendly and casual. He had practiced in his Aztek on the way over.

“Hey, Flynn.” She didn’t take her eyes off the pictures.

“You can call me Kevin, you know.”

That made her glance up. “I don’t think so.”

“What are you doing here so early?” The voice made him jump. Oh. Yeah. There was somebody else in the room. Kevin turned toward the bulletin board, where the chief was tacking up rap sheets. “Never mind,” he continued, “Come here and tell me if you recognize any of these.”

Kevin crossed to the board. The sheets had the familiar formatting of the NYS VCAP database. Eight young Latinos stared at him, captured by booking photographers in Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx: defiant, stoned, sullen, smirking. Kevin tapped the smirking face. “That’s the one I had to chase off. He doesn’t have his piercings in this shot”—he touched his upper lip—“but that’s him.” He leaned closer to read the guy’s short list. Fresh out of Plattsburgh, less than four months ago. Three possessions, carrying concealed, auto theft, assault, and assault with a deadly weapon. Possible associate of the Punta Diablos. No wonder he’d intimidated Hadley.

The chief grunted. “Knox ID’d him as well. Anybody else?”

Kevin closed his eyes for a moment. Tried to re-create the moment in his mind: his lights on Hadley’s car, the men, two on either side as he drove up. One pair scuttling for the Hummer before he had gotten out of his cruiser. Leaving his rig twisted frontward some, so the big block of his Colt .44 could make an impression. The littler rat-faced guy squinting at his gun. Panicked.

He opened his eyes again. Pointed. “That one. He was with, uh—” he leaned forward to read the smirking guy’s name—“Alejandro Santiago.”

“You smell anything on ‘em?”

“Nope.”

Hadley looked at them, one eyebrow lifted.

“Pot,” Kevin explained. “Like we talked about.” He turned back to the chief. “Lyle says we’ve got a dead body?”

“Mmm.” The chief’s face was abstracted as he studied the two sheets.

“One of these guys?” Kevin gestured to the board.

“I don’t think so. We don’t have an ID yet, but he’s been dead at least a month, maybe more, and we’ve got confirmation from the First District Anti-Gang Task Force that all these charmers were alive and well as of the beginning of this month, when they reported in to their parole officers. We’re interested in the group in the car because Officer Knox said Santiago and one other guy had prison tats on their fingers that look very much like the ones on our John Doe.”

“Just like,” Hadley muttered.

The chief crossed to the table and picked up one of the photos. It was a close-up of a human hand, puffed up like a rubber-glove balloon, with what looked like gang tags between the knuckles and first joints. “Do these look familiar to you?”

Kevin shook his head. “No.”

“I mean, do they look like the tattoos on Alejandro Santiago?”

Kevin glanced at Hadley. “I—uh, didn’t see any tattoos, Chief. I may not have been close enough.”

“I just want to make sure Officer Knox isn’t accidentally conflating two different things. There’s no mention of any hand or finger markings on either of these sheets.”

“He had prison tats on his hands,” Hadley said. “I worked in the California DOC for two years. Believe me, the ballpoint special is distinctive.” She turned to Kevin. “I told you last night, remember? About how they were inked in?”

Oh, crap. “I—Uh…”

The chief gave him a long look. “Kevin? Did Officer Knox describe any tattoos to you?”

“No,” he said.
Shit
. “She didn’t say anything about tattoos at the time.” He grabbed at a straw. “But she was real shaken up by the whole thing. I wouldn’t expect her to remember every little detail.”

“Mmm.” The chief turned toward Hadley, who was clench-jawed and rigid. “Kevin’s got a point. You’ve been in two high-stress situations, back-to-back. It may be you’re creating links where there aren’t any. Not intentionally,” he added, holding up his hands. “That’s just the way people are. We all go looking for patterns.”

“Like those trick abstract prints where the dots and dashes make you see a human face,” Kevin said.

“Yes. Thank you, Kevin.”

Too late, he realized that wasn’t going to make Hadley feel any better. “I know what I saw,” she said. “And I saw those markings”—she jammed a finger against the photo the chief was still holding—“on that man.” Her arm swept toward the bulletin board, where Santiago’s picture was displayed.

“We’re still going to follow up on the guys in the car.” The chief dropped the photo back into the file. “We have one dead Latino with gang markings, and two live Latinos with possible gang connections up from the Bronx. It’s a pretty thin connection, but it’s the only string we’ve got.”

“I wanna know what the hell they were doing in Millers Kill.” Lyle MacAuley strolled into the squad room. “Recruiting?”

The chief looked unsettled at the suggestion. “This isn’t the Latin Kings or Los Traveosos. The AGTF classifies them as known associates, that’s all. Besides, most gangs tend to be racially cohesive. Last I looked, Millers Kill and its surrounds didn’t have much in the way of a Hispanic population.”

“You’re not looking hard enough. Every fourth farm in the county has Mexicans working for ‘em nowadays.” MacAuley handed the chief a mug of coffee. The chief took it and blew across the top. MacAuley cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t think some of those farmhands up here for a crack at the good life wouldn’t trade hard labor for a chance to walk tough and make big money? Sellin’ drugs is a hell of a lot easier on a man than milkin‘ cows.”

“Until you get gunned down.” The chief took a sip, grimaced, then took another. “Did Harlene make this?”

“Just because I didn’t put six teaspoons of sugar in it? Jesus.” MacAuley gestured toward the hallway. “You get anything out of Pedro, there?”

“The kid’s name is Amado. Amado Esfuentes. And no, I didn’t get anything. It was a long shot, anyway.”

“Amado?” Kevin asked. They both looked at him as if the filing cabinet had spoken.

“You should check ‘im out, Kevin. He’s the only guy I’ve ever seen has a worse beard than yours was.” MacAuley stroked his chin.

“He’s the guest worker who broke his arm in that accident back in April,” the chief said. He took another drink from his mug, wincing. “I figured, since he
is
Latino and he’s living out on my brother-in-law’s farm—where the body was found—he might have some information.”

“I thought he was shifty.” Hadley’s voice was still tight, but she sounded as if she was trying to let it go. “Like he was hiding something. He didn’t like it when you asked him about anyone he might have seen around the McGeoch place.”

The chief nodded. “I agree.”

Kevin opened his mouth.
She got to sit in on an interrogation? I never get to do that
! He snapped his jaw shut. He wasn’t going to move up from patrol by being a crybaby. A new and unpleasant thought occurred to him. Maybe he wasn’t going to be the one stepping into departed officer Mark Durkee’s shoes. Maybe he wasn’t advancing from street work to investigations. Maybe they had hired Hadley Knox for that. That would explain why, despite her reluctance, the chief kept pushing her into the investigations. Maybe her DOC experience gave her an edge. Maybe they still thought he was too young. Maybe there was some sort of equal opportunity quota and they needed a woman.

The chief was still talking. “Don’t forget he probably views any American in uniform as a threat. I suspect his uneasiness may have more to do with his legal status as an alien than with trying to conceal anything criminal. Still… let’s keep that in mind.”

“Maybe you should let Knox question him alone.” MacAuley looked at Hadley speculatively over the rim of his coffee cup. “He might find her less threatening. Open up more.”

Solo questioning! And she’s not even out of Basic! God damn
! Hadley, however, didn’t seem to appreciate that she was in like Flynn—except this Flynn obviously wasn’t. She got a panicked look on her face. “Uh…” she said.

The chief shook his head. “I want to talk with my sister and brother-in-law first. Kevin?”

“Chief?”

“I want you to drive Mr. Esfuentes back to St. Alban’s.” He paused. MacAuley turned his considering gaze on the chief. “Tell Reverend Fergusson we’ll run him back out after he finishes work tonight,” the chief continued. “We’ll keep everything nice and informal and friendly-like.”

“Uh… okay.”

“Officer Knox, go with him to the interview room and let Mr. Esfuentes know what’s going on.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “Then you may as well knock off for the day.”

She stood. “Yes, sir.”

In the hallway, out of earshot of the old guys, Kevin said, “Look, I’m sorry about what went down back there. I mean, about not backing you up on the tattoos.”