Run the Risk (18 page)

He hesitated.

“Gabriel is a killer. He will not let anyone get in his way. Every one of your friends is in danger.”

“Everything is screwed—that's the signal.”

“What's the e-mail address?”

He looked at me. I could see in his eyes that some piece of him was still clinging to the eco-warrior image he had built for himself. Name, rank, and Sierra Club membership number only. Anything more than that and you were a traitor to the cause. No different from the lowliest oil company executive raping the planet.

His eyes fixed on me, and I could see him dig his heels into what was left of his eroding world.

“What if you're lying to me?”

“Your friends, and my daughter, may be dead already, but if they're not, the only thing that may save them is what you do right now.”

He looked down at his lap and the last of his resolve was expelled with a long, tired breath.

“I need your password, and the e-mail address to send the message to.”

He sat silently for a moment, and then the words slipped out of his mouth in the dull monotone of a witness naming names in front of a Senate committee.

“Hldtplnetgr.”

“Hold the planet green,” Harrison said.

Eric nodded.

Harrison sat down at the laptop and began logging on. The computer chimed and whistled and then connected to the 'net. The synthetic “welcome” had an eerie, menacing quality to it. Like an automated voice in a cockpit repeating “Pull up, pull up.”

“What's the e-mail address?”

“[email protected].”

Keep the planet green. Hold the planet green. Jesus. It had the sound of kids playing at being spies. Connecting it to real violence was unimaginable. Connecting my daughter to it was terrifying. How the hell had it gone so horribly wrong? How had Gabriel slipped into this? And why? What creates a person like that? How are we to understand a kind of thinking that is utterly foreign to us?

Harrison entered in the e-mail address, and then typed the message: “Everything is screwed.”

I glanced at Eric. “Anything else?”

He shook his head. “Just that.”

“How are they supposed to respond?”

He shrugged. “I don't know.”

I nodded to Harrison and he pressed send.

“If they don't answer—”

He left the question hanging, as if not really wanting to finish it. I stared at the screen silently, trying to will an answer to our message. It was like the first night Lacy had ever stayed out well past the agreed time of her return. I had sat on the couch until three in the morning, staring out the window, waiting for her headlights to appear in the driveway. With each minute that passed, I created another scenario of disaster, another story of lost innocence. When she did return after three that morning, instead of telling
her that I loved her and thought I had lost her, I told her that I knew too much about how horrible things can happen to people and that she was grounded. A brilliant piece of parenting. Push her away.

I glanced at my watch and began marking the minutes since we sent the mail, the same way I had counted them that night waiting for Lacy. Four minutes passed, then five, six . . . seven . . . nine . . . ten.

“How long—” Harrison stopped himself. “Never mind.”

I turned from the computer and looked around the room. Eric was sitting slumped in the chair, his head hanging, eyes staring at the floor. He looked like a high-school kid who couldn't believe that he had just lost the big game.

I walked over and pulled up another folding chair in front of him.

“Tell me about Lacy.”

He looked up at me with either surprise or disbelief on his face. “What do you mean?”

It was pathetic to have to ask a kid who helped kidnap my daughter who she was, but pride was the last thing I was worried about now. I wanted to know what she was passionate about, what she feared, loathed, dreamed. I wanted to know all the things I should, but didn't because I had stopped paying attention. I wanted to know who my daughter was.

“Why did she do this?” I asked.

A slight smile appeared on his lips. “Oh, that . . . like how could my daughter do something so . . . yeah, right.”

He looked at me and shook his head as if in disbelief. “How can you all be so clueless? You think we do what we do because we admire the world you've created?”

Right. Ask a foolish question of a twenty-year-old true believer and you may just hear the truth.

“I may have failed my daughter, but you betrayed her.”

He looked at me with the defiant eyes that he had when we first put him in cuffs.

“I did what I did because I believe in something. What's your excuse?” he said.

I stood up. “Love is my excuse. Blind, stupid love.”

I walked over to Harrison, who was sitting in front of the computer with his eyes closed.

“Maybe we should cancel the parade,” I said.

He opened his eyes, as if woken from a deep sleep, and glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Can you do that?”

“I doubt it. Doesn't exactly send the right message, does it? First sign of trouble—cave, abandon tradition.”

“Not to mention millions of dollars in television revenue.”

“The greatest of all traditions.”

Harrison's eyes seemed to pick a thought out of the air. “How much of the parade route is televised?”

I thought for a moment. “Just the first few blocks.”

There was the answer. Or at least the answer that offered the most hope.

“We can forget the rest. He'll want it live and in color.”

Harrison nodded.

“Would you bet your family's life on that?” I asked.

“Not if he's willing to die.”

“So we find him before the parade.”

“It's the only way to eliminate all doubt.”

The chimes of an instant message came from the computer.

We both turned and looked at the screen.

“Somebody's alive,” Harrison said.

The message read: “How screwed?”

Harrison looked at me for a response. I walked over to Eric.

“Did you have any other messages prearranged?”

He began shaking his head, the anger building in his eyes. “You said everyone at the other location was dead. They're not dead. You assholes lied to me!”

“You want to keep them alive, you tell me what I want to know.”

“I'm not helping you anymore. Screw it.”

I walked back to Harrison.

“We need a reason for them to tell us where they are,” he said.

I looked over at the smoke grenades and the Roundup Eric and his friends on the other end of the e-mail had planned to use to disrupt the parade.

“Write ‘Everything is completely screwed. Need to move the grenades and Roundup to your location or forget the parade.' ”

Harrison typed it and sent it. We waited thirty seconds, then a minute.

“They're talking about it,” I said.

The first minute stretched into another and still nothing came back.

“I don't think they're buying,” Harrison said.

“No kidding, you think we're stupid,” Eric whispered.

Harrison's fingers quivered over the keyboard as if they were impatient to type.

“What do you want to do, Lieutenant?”

“Give 'em a push.”

Harrison looked at the keyboard, then glanced at Eric as if he were snatching thoughts from his back pocket. His fingers typed out an imaginary response in the air then stopped moving and settled onto the keyboard and he sent another message: “I have to move now, assholes! Where do I bring it. Give me an address.”

“Send it.”

He clicked on send and we waited for a response.

“It isn't going to work,” Eric said.

Nothing came back.

“I don't know,” Harrison said. “You want to send something else?”

I shook my head. “They either buy it or they don't.”

Harrison's hand patted his shirt pocket as if searching for a pack of cigarettes.

“How long ago did you quit?”

“Four years.”

“Took me eleven years before I stopped doing that—”

The chimes of a response came back and we both watched it come up on the screen like we were waiting for lottery numbers.

“ ‘Make sure you're not followed, then bring the stuff to 1472 . . .' ”

“It's an address,” Harrison said.

I was praying it was somewhere in Pasadena. Anywhere else meant other departments would have to be notified, and that meant control would slip from my hands.

“1472 Monte, Pasadena,” Harrison said. “I think I know that.”

He moved over to the map spread out on the floor and found the address.

“That's just north of the 210, across the street from a park.”

“Assholes,” Eric whispered.

I took out my cell and called Chief Chavez as I started for the door. He answered on the first ring as if he was expecting the call.

“We may have found Lacy,” I said. “Pasadena address. We'll need tactical to be ready, but I don't want anyone barging in. I don't think they'll hurt her.”

I stepped out the front door into the predawn light. A drizzle was falling now. The sweet citrus odor of a grapefruit tree hung in the moist air.

“Breem and Finley were the leaders of the environmental group that took her. And connecting her to them draws a line straight to Gabriel.”

The silence on Chavez's end of the phone lasted too long.

“What is it, Chief?”

“Breem died ten minutes ago. He lost too much blood.”

I took the phone away from my ear and took a breath. In my mind I saw Breem's eyes for a second. There had been a question in them, a terrible, simple question: Why? Why was this happening to me? It was the same question I wanted answered.

“What's the connection between a small group of idealists and a monster like Gabriel?” I asked Chavez.

“Maybe he needed Breem and Finley to smuggle in the explosives from Mexico and it ends there.”

“I don't know.”

“Alex, we don't have to understand him, we just have to stop him.”

I wasn't sure Chavez was right about that. Understanding Gabriel might be the only chance we had. But there were no reference points to understanding him. He was a book filled with blank pages.

Harrison stepped outside with Eric in tow.

“Breem's dead,” I said to him. I looked at Eric. “He bled to death.”

Eric's mouth hung open as if he had lost the power of speech, then he looked down at his feet as if ashamed. Harrison started toward the car and I picked up the phone and continued with Chavez.

“Lacy may be at an address just north of the 210, 1472 Monte.”

“I'll set up a staging area.”

“And we'll need this house in Azusa sealed.”

“I'll take care of it,” Chavez said. Then he started to say something else but stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Agent Hicks is blaming us for Breem's death. He wants you out of the loop.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to go fuck himself.”

My big Chicano grandfather. I started to say thanks, but the words hung in my throat.

“Forget it,” Chavez said. “He can still pull this out from under us, but until he does, we do it our way.”

I hung up and started for the car after Harrison. The rain was falling heavily now and had washed away the scent of grapefruit. The tops of the palm trees swung in the increasing wind like they were stuck on springs. My breath was visible as I exhaled. I looked west, along the sloping front
of the San Gabriels toward Pasadena. The valley floor had once been Spanish land grants. The mountains above were home to gold mines and grizzly bears. Looking at the landscape now, with its suburban sprawl, it felt as unrecognizable as if I had turned back the calendar a century and a half. Everything had changed, everything.

THE HOUSE ON MONTE
was a small stucco home with a detached garage in the back off the alley. The windows were barred, the front and back doors covered by heavy metal screen doors. The lot to the right was vacant. A storefront with an
OUT OF BUSINESS
sign in the window occupied the one on the left. It was the perfect address to go through a day unnoticed.

By the time we arrived from Azusa, Chavez had already set up the staging area a block away. A SWAT officer dressed as a homeless man was watching from across the street in the park. Another officer had an observation point in a second-floor window of a house directly behind it.

“There's been no movement inside, no lights, nothing,” Chavez said.

I looked toward the east. The first hint of dawn was showing over the mountains, but with the low clouds and rain, full light would be slow in coming. I glanced at my watch; it was five-thirty.

“We have about forty-five minutes before it's light,” I
said. “They're expecting someone to drive up and walk up to that front door. I think that's exactly what we should do.”

The SWAT commander named Peters nodded.

“We hit the back as soon as they answer the front door.”

With his black uniform, machine gun, body armor, and helmet, he had the look of a real-life action figure. Most of his team were ex-military. For fun, I imagined they took fifty cc's of adrenaline and injected it directly into their heart muscles. For excitement, I couldn't imagine what they did.

“There's no reason to expect that they're armed inside,” I said.

“Unless Gabriel is in there,” Chavez said.

“If Gabriel is inside, then he's made a mistake, and so far he hasn't made any.”

“There's another possibility,” Harrison said.

We all turned to him.

“He may have been here and left.”

He didn't have to finish the thought. We could all draw our own picture of the results of that one. If Gabriel had been there, what had he left behind? I turned to Chavez.

“How long did it take to get the first squads here after we talked on the phone?”

“The first unit was here five minutes after I talked to you in Azusa,” Chavez said.

I looked at the house on Monte where the e-mail had originated from and walked the time line back another step.

“And I received the e-mail from inside that house two minutes before I talked to you on the phone.”

I looked at Harrison. “That's six or seven minutes for him to leave.”

“If he preset a device, he would have only needed one minute. We could be walking into anything.”

I looked down the block toward the corner and then turned toward the house. Rain was hitting the hard shell of the SWAT officer's helmet and bouncing off like repelled rounds of buckshot.

“I need a vest and a rain parka with a hood.”

Chavez started to shake his head.

“If someone answers that door, you go in the back,” I said, looking at the SWAT commander Peters. “If no one answers, I go in alone.”

“They see your face, it's over right then,” Peters said.

“In this light, with my hood up, it will give you enough time to go through the back.”

“I don't want you stepping through that door,” Chavez said.

“If it explodes and Lacy's inside, I can't let anyone else be responsible for that. This is my call.”

Chavez glanced down the block and shook his head. “Give her a vest and a rain parka.”

Peters rolled his eyes disapprovingly and motioned to another officer to bring a vest and a parka.

“If no one answers, I should go through that door first,” Harrison said.

“No,” I said.

“He's right,” Chavez said.

I started to shake my head.

“You don't know a bomb from a burrito,” Chavez said. “Harrison does. End of discussion.”

A SWAT officer walked up with the vest and a rain jacket. I slipped the heavy armored vest over my shoulders, then pulled on the rain jacket.

“No one answers, you do not touch that door until Harrison is with you,” Chavez said.

I nodded, but my mind was already walking up the steps to the house.

“If the door does open, you take down whoever opens it,” Peters said. “If you can't, we'll already be in the back door, so don't go charging in yourself.”

I took out my wallet, removed a photograph of Lacy, and handed it to Peters.

“Make sure everyone on your team knows exactly what Lacy looks like.”

He took it and nodded. “I have a daughter, too, Lieutenant. We'll take care of her.”

He tucked the photograph into a pocket, then glanced at Chavez. “I'll need five minutes to get my team in position.”

He turned and moved purposefully off into the gray light. I walked over to my Volvo and glanced at my watch. I heard Chavez step up behind me.

“Now, remember, you wait for Harrison if there's no answer,” Chavez said.

I nodded and looked down the street to the corner. The rain had raised oil on the pavement that glistened under the streetlight. The sound of raindrops hitting the leaves of banana trees and birds of paradise plants muffled the crackle of police radios. It was strangely peaceful, the kind of morning to huddle under the covers and hold off the dawn for as long as possible.

“Park in front of the vacant lot to the right of the house. That'll give us time to see if anything is wrong as you walk up,” Chavez said.

I glanced at Harrison, who was slipping on his vest and other equipment. Chavez reached out and took hold of my arm, squeezing it gently in concern. “Alex, do you think Lacy's in there?”

A cold drop of rain hit my forehead and slid down my cheek. “They answered the e-mail. Someone was or is in there.”

“But who?”

“We're going to find out.”

I walked around to the driver's side and opened the door. Half a block down behind the staging area, I noticed a paramedic unit pull up and stop. Chavez glanced at it, then turned away as if not wanting to acknowledge its presence.

“Now, you remember—”

“I remember, Ed,” I said, using his Christian name in hopes it would reassure him.

“If it's no good you get out of there.”

“Gabriel's had his opportunity to kill me already and he hasn't. I imagine there's a reason.”

“You could also just be goddamn lucky.”

“ ‘Lucky' is not a word I would apply to the last twenty-four hours of my life.”

Harrison stepped up wearing the tools of the bomb squad. His wide-eyed look of a newly hatched homicide detective was gone. His eyes had a penetrating clarity that could chill a glass of water.

“If there's a doorbell, don't use it—knock.”

He reached out with a small radio and hooked it to my belt, then ran an earpiece and a mike up to my ear and slipped them on. Our eyes met briefly as his fingers touched my ear. It was strangely intimate, like a shared glance in a public space between two secret lovers.

“I'll be on the other end. It's an open line; I'll hear anything you say.”

His eyes held mine for a moment, then he stepped back and I slipped into the car and started it. Chavez raised his radio to his mouth.

“We're moving.”

I slipped the car into gear and pulled away from the staging area. Looking through the wet windshield, I had the sense of being submerged in an entirely new reality where the old rules no longer applied. What was up was no longer up; what was down was anyone's guess. Halfway down the block, I switched on the wipers and turned right onto Monte. Rounding the corner, my headlights swept across the park, briefly illuminating the SWAT officer dressed as a homeless man, crouching behind a tree. In the middle of the street, a crow sat picking at the remains of a McDonald's bag, tearing at it as if peeling back the skin of roadkill to get at the soggy Big Mac underneath.

Ahead on the right, next to the vacant lot, was the house. It was smaller than I had pictured. Shabbier. Even when new, it would have appeared cheap. I imagined a hard, steady rain could wash the whole thing away, board by board. But that was the thing about Southern California,
wasn't it? Nothing was really permanent. A little rain, a shake of the ground, even a single idea appeared to hold the power to change everything.

I pulled up to the vacant lot and coasted to a stop. I hit the lights and turned off the engine. Rain began to gather on the windshield and run down onto the hood of the car in little streams.

“I'm getting out,” I said into the tiny mike clipped to my collar.

“Okay, Alex,” Chavez said. “One step at a time.”

I pulled the hood of the jacket up over my head, stepped out, and started walking toward the front door. Up close, with its barred windows, the house had a distinctly lifeless quality, like something that was abandoned during a plague. The blackness inside the windows felt like the dark eyes of a predator, waiting for a flicker of weakness or hesitation. Dead climbing roses littered the foundation around the front steps like discarded bones.

“You okay?” Harrison whispered in my ear.

His voice sounded like a lover's.

“I'm okay,” I answered, using the exact same lie I had told my husband after the final intimate act before our breakup.

My hand brushed back across my hip and landed reassuringly on the weapon under my rain parka. I stepped up to the front door. The barred outside door was open, like an invitation to step inside.

“The steel door is ajar.”

“I don't like this,” Harrison said.

I reached out and took hold of the handle and pulled it gently open enough so I could knock on the wooden door. With the first knock, the door swung halfway open. No light penetrated the interior. I could make out nothing. At my feet, pooled against the threshold, was an unmistakable, dark, viscous liquid.

“No one moves,” I said urgently. “Nobody moves!”

I pulled my weapon and trained it into the empty blackness in front of me.

“Lacy!” I yelled. “Lacy, can you hear me?”

Nothing came back, not even an echo. The blackness inside seemed to swallow everything, including sound. I glanced at my feet. A small stream of blood trailed from the pool at the door back into the darkness, where it disappeared.

“Lacy!” I yelled again.

From down the street I could hear the gunning of an engine as Harrison and Chavez skidded around the corner. I took out a Maglite and shined the beam into the darkness, following the stream of blood across the wood floor to where it disappeared under another door.

“Do not go inside,” Harrison said.

Too late. I was already three steps in, moving toward the door that concealed the source of the blood. Ten feet into the room, a single tennis shoe lay upturned. I stopped, the tight beam of light illuminating the tennis shoe's bright yellow laces. It was my daughter's.

“Lacy!” I yelled.

I swung the beam around the room. There was some tattered furniture, a couch, an overstuffed chair, a coffee table, and a small television. The rest of the room was empty. I directed the beam back to the door where the blood disappeared. The darkness closed in around me as if I had been submerged in water. I had trouble finding enough air to take a breath. A voice in my head was saying, “No, no, no.” I looked at my daughter's shoe, and my hand holding the flashlight began to tremble.

The same voice began to say, “This is not happening, this is not happening.”

A rage I had never known took hold of every cell in my body and I started for the door. It was as if I were standing outside myself watching a stranger's actions, watching a mother grizzly. I seemed to enter into a tunnel that was taking me toward the door and the source of the blood.

“Stop, Lieutenant.”

I took two more steps and reached for the door handle.

“Lieutenant, please!” Harrison yelled.

I hesitated, thinking I had heard something, then continued the slide down the tunnel toward the door.

“This won't help her,” Harrison said quietly.

I stopped. The pounding of my heart was the only sound in the room. The walls of the tunnel caved. I looked at my hand. It was inches from the door handle, though I had no recollection of how it got there. I turned and looked at Harrison, who was standing in the entrance.

“That's Lacy's shoe,” I said.

My hand moved toward the door handle as if acting on its own.

“Lieutenant.”

“That's my daughter's shoe!” I yelled.

“This is not the way to do this.”

“I don't care.”

I turned back to the door, then took hold of the handle and flung the door open. Air rushed past me as if wanting to escape whatever was inside the room. I raised my weapon and the flashlight and followed the trail of blood deeper into the darkness toward the center of the room and the source of the blood.