American Blood (13 page)
So he just lay there.
Five seconds. The 911s would be going out. The green-haired guy circled to the other side of the car. Rojas, as they say, between a rock and a hard place:
Come across the street, or bail out.
He chose the latter.
He ran out into the road, heading for the Chrysler, calling behind him as he went: “I’ll get Cyrus, you get the girl.”
Someone at a window, phone to ear. Another guy came out the open garage door onto the driveway. Marshall tracked him with the gun. The guy saw the green-haired man hunkered down all bloodied beside the Audi, the car itself wearing a nice spread of buckshot. Rojas’s form receding into the distance.
The guy glanced into the trees, and his mouth opened a fraction, like in that instant he could see the whole debacle.
He said, “Shit. Get in, get in.”
The green-haired man opened the passenger door and clambered into the car, and the new guy circled round and got in the driver’s side and they roared away.
Marshall gave it another few seconds, gun on the open garage, and then he got to his feet and picked up the shotgun and sprinted across the street. Colt in his belt, 870 raised as he went through the front door.
That shortness of breath.
Every sense hyper-tuned.
The roaring adrenaline.
Shit, it had been a while. And never in his own house.
Clear in the entry.
Clear in the kitchen.
Into the living room and there she was, bound on the floor. Cable ties at wrist and ankle. She raised her head to look at him and let it tip back gently to the floor.
She let her breath out. “God. Get me out of here.”
* * *
He went to the kitchen and took a knife from the block on the counter and walked through to the living room and cut her cable ties.
The cuffs had bit deep. She rubbed each wrist in turn and sat up and got slowly to her feet. Her hands were shaking and she’d lost some color, but she was keeping it together. He wouldn’t have blamed her for being less composed.
Two minutes. Don’t hang around.
He bent and picked up the curved scraps of plastic. “What are you doing in my house?”
She kissed blood off a wrist. “I thought you might say, ‘Are you all right?’”
“I can see you’re all right. Anything else will need some explaining.”
She followed him into the kitchen. He returned the knife to its slot and opened the cupboard under the sink and stood on the bin pedal and dropped the cuffs in the trash. He said, “This is the second time I’ve saved your life. If you were banking on me showing up, you must be damn good at wishing.”
He looked at the 870. “Or maybe you’ve got the patron saint of the NRA as your guardian angel. Wouldn’t that be good.”
She didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “Well. We’ll call it luck, then.”
She said, “I wanted to ask you about your meeting this morning.”
He glanced at her. “Which meeting was that?”
She laughed quietly but didn’t answer.
He leaned across the counter and looked out the window. He said, “I don’t know what your plans are, but I need to get out of here in about ninety seconds.”
“This is a crime scene. You can’t leave.”
“I think it’s more that I’m not supposed to. But permitted or not I can definitely pull it off.”
She didn’t answer.
He said, “Maybe you didn’t hear, but there was a bit of a ruckus out there a moment ago, and I don’t want any trigger-happy lawmen showing up and finding me with this.” He raised the shotgun briefly. “Also, I plan on finding those other three. You can join if you want.”
He went and cracked the side door and listened. No sirens yet. He waited, seeing if she would follow. Getting up around the four-minute mark.
No time to wait around—
Footsteps behind him. He glanced back. She said, “I’ll drive.”
Rojas
They went east.
Breakneck on the straights, almost skidding through the corners.
“Cyrus, where the fuck are you? We had to bail.”
Digital radio, not even static on the line. Like putting your ear to the void. He keyed it again:
“Vance, how’s Dante doing?”
“He’s shot all down one side. He’s bleeding pretty good.”
“Shit. Is the woman tied down?”
Vance braked hard for a corner. His taillights filled the Chrysler’s windshield. Rojas stomped the brake and the car shuddered with the ABS as he fought the wheel through the turn.
“We don’t have her, man. There wasn’t time.”
“What? What the fuck? You don’t have her?”
“There wasn’t time, Troy.”
He felt this cold seep outward from his gut and fill him that special way bad truths do. He took his foot off the gas and the Audi shrank away ahead of him. The Chrysler drifted to the curb.
Free fall. He couldn’t catch his breath. He felt the blood dropping from his head, heartbeat thundering on nothing. His head tipped against the wheel and he felt himself losing it, Vance in his ear, words that breezed straight through because:
She knows your name.
The cop knows your name.
You held a cop at gunpoint, and she knows your name.
A cruiser flew past in the opposite direction and the blue-and-red light was starry in the mist on his windows, almost beautiful but for the fact he knew what was coming and he turned and looked behind him and saw Bolt lying dead on the backseat with his eyes aimed somewhere distant and the spare keys hanging from his mouth.
* * *
Somehow he made it home. Autopilot. The Audi was in the garage, both front doors open and a trail of blood leading into the house.
She knows your name.
Cyrus dead, Dante a pint short, and the cop was all he could think of. He walked into the living room, saw Dante on his back with his shirt cut open. Black pockmarks on his chest and down his arm where the shot embedded. The whole side of him scarlet and the floor slick with blood. Vance rigging up an IV stand, prepping a line for his arm.
“Troy, help me with this. Shit, he might need the hospital.”
He patted Dante’s cheek. “Stay with me, dude. We got you covered. I’m gonna shoot you up. Troy, help me with this.”
But his phone was ringing.
“Hang on.” Anything to get away from the blood. The color so vivid, and the sweet copper smell filling his head.
He put a finger in his free ear and answered.
“Troy. Why you not ring?” His mother. Only she had such timing.
He walked toward the garage, but saw the mess and turned and headed for the kitchen. “I’ve been working.”
“When we gonna see you? You been gone so long, ages. Your sister’s worse again, Troy, she not good. She’s gotta get the marrow thing to try fix it.”
“I know she’s sick.”
“So why you not here?”
He didn’t answer.
“When I not hear I worry what you’re doing, and I think maybe you’re doing something’s gonna make you go back inside. I can’t live with that again. I can’t have my girl dead and you inside.”
He wiped his mouth and swallowed and waited a moment for it to pass. “She’s not going to die. I’m making money and I can pay for her to get better. It just takes a little while. But I promise.”
“What you promise?”
He sat down with his back against the counter, covered his eyes with a hand. “I want to be there, but I can’t. I want to more than anything, but I need to be here. Did you get the money I sent?”
“What? No. We didn’t get no money. How much you send?”
So much he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “Shit. Are you sure you didn’t get it?”
“No. We had friends of Marco stay and maybe it went with them, I dunno. How much you send?”
He just couldn’t say it.
You took a cop at gunpoint and she knows your name—
“Look, don’t worry about me.”
“How you can say that when I don’t see you. Troy? How you can say that.”
“Soon. I’ll be with you soon. But I just need time to get everything together.”
She didn’t answer.
“And when I do I can fix it. Okay?”
“You been saying your prayers, Troy? You pray you go to heaven?”
“Yes.” Not strictly true: he’d given up years ago. In the hallway, he saw Leon headed for the living room.
“Troy.” God, she was crying. “I love you so much.”
He closed his eyes and eked it out: “I love you, too.”
“And your sister.”
“Yes. So much.”
Shuddering breaths as she composed herself. “People ask where you at, and I say you away living the dream. I say Troy living the American Dream, but I never know if I’m true.”
A gunshot and he jumped. He saw Leon walking back down the hallway.
Shit. He got that panicked lightness again. She was talking, but he left the phone on the floor, scrambled to his feet, ran to the living room even though he could bet his life what he’d find.
Dante on his back in his own blood and a bullet hole in his forehead. Vance kneeling by the drip stand, rocking and cradling him.
Marshall
He didn’t want to leave the Silverado, so they took separate cars. Marshall told her he’d talk anywhere, provided there was food. She drove lead, which was a good arrangement: tailing close he could see if she was on the phone.
She led him down onto Cerrillos Road heading south and west, and stopped at a diner about fifteen minutes out of town. It was a low brick building with cars nosed in on three sides below the windows, as if peering into the light. The sign on the pole by the turn-in read
BIG CHIP AND SMALL FRY’S
. In the dark with the mountains obscured the six-lane appeared to stretch forever through the cold and barren world, and the bright diner looked like the last friendly waypoint you’d ever see.
Sitting opposite her in a booth at a window, he wondered what trauma you’d have to live through to come out the other end of the last two hours and not be rattled. Maybe she was having the same thoughts about him.
A waitress came by and poured them each a cup of coffee. Marshall ordered a short stack of pancakes, and she asked for a grilled cheese sandwich. Even speaking to the waitress, she never took her eyes off him. Marshall sat there relaxed, his arm along the top of the seat like he had with Rojas and Bolt that morning. He quite liked that unexpected symmetry, bookending the day with diners and the same little pose.
The waitress moved away and she said, “You talk first.”
Marshall said, “You going to ask questions, or do you want a soliloquy?”
She had some coffee. He noticed the liquid quivering when she lowered the mug. She was scanning the room every minute or so, and it made him feel better about having his back to the door. She said, “Can’t be a soliloquy if I’m here. Monologue.”
Marshall rocked his head a little: same difference.
She said, “What were you doing down in Albuquerque?”
“When?”
“That night in the bar with the robbery.”
“Attempted robbery. I think I cut it short.”
“Why were you in there?”
He looked at her a while, one of those instances where he couldn’t find a simple lie for a complicated truth. The complicated truth being he preferred to avoid lying awake in the dark regretting things. After a while he said, “I like to drink.”
She said, “Huh,” like she knew there was more to it.
He said, “I was down there on a job for a couple of days.”
“Do I want to know what sort of job?”
“I have no idea.”
She didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “I’m a welder. I stick bits of steel together.”
“Don’t normally see welders that good with guns.”
Marshall said, “I watch a lot of YouTube.”
She didn’t smile. She said, “What were you doing in that diner this morning talking to Troy Rojas and Cyrus Bolt?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The DEA’s acquainted with them, but you’re not federal, so I’m guessing you’re a narc detective.”
She didn’t answer.
Marshall said, “But my meeting wasn’t about illicit substances, so I’d say strictly speaking what was discussed is beyond your purview.”
She smiled thinly. “Maybe just tell me anyway.”
Marshall took his time, thinking how he’d lay it all out for her. He said, “You keep up with stuff about missing folks?”
“I try to.”
“There was a girl named Alyce Ray, disappeared down in Albuquerque.”
“How do you know about that?”
“I saw it on TV. Night after I rescued you in that bar, I was in a diner and saw it on the ten o’clock news.”
“And what?”
“And I thought I’d better find out what happened to her.”
“Why?”
He took a sip, buying time, not wanting to talk about it. He said, “Because it seemed like a decent thing to do.”
“Thought you might have a better reason.”
He thumbed the stack of napkins slowly, like looking for something between the papers. He said, “What better reason do you need than it’s a good thing? If people observed that rule, I think the world would be in a far better state.”
She said, “I mean I thought you might have a more personal reason.” Getting closer to it than he liked.
Marshall said, “It was personal. I thought I wouldn’t feel too swell about myself if I did nothing, knowing I could have been proactive.”
“You call this proactive?”
Marshall looked out the window expecting to see the world, but just saw himself sitting there. He thrummed his fingers on the top of the seat, crossed his legs at the knee under the table. “Well. Whatever it is, it’s certainly caused a bit of a stir.”
They fell quiet as the waitress set their meals on the table. Marshall pulled his plate toward him and turned it to get it just so, and cut a segment of pancake with a single stroke near the edge, and ate it. The trick was to go no deeper than the top layer. He chased it with some coffee.
She watched this little procedure and said, “What makes you think Rojas and Bolt had anything to do with it?”
“She came into contact with them the night before she disappeared.”
“But they didn’t necessarily do the disappearing.”