Light Before Day (38 page)

Eddie had spent most of the evening doing exactly what the rancher had told him to, but now his teeth felt like they were crumbling in his mouth, and his skin was lacquered with a noxious sweat. He needed a three-hour shower and another hit from the rancher's pipe.

He was about to find the rancher and ask for both when the double doors to the barn rolled open. Right away, Eddie knew the two guys at the entrance didn't belong there. Worse, they had made no attempt to blend in. Both men wore black jeans, black T-shirts, and leather jackets that looked oddly lumpy in the chest and shoulders. Each one had a black motorcycle helmet clipped to the side of his belt.

The first one to step inside the barn had a husky frame, a square head with black steel-wool hair, and a flattened nose. He breathed hard at the scene in front of him like an angry bull. His partner was taller and slender, one of the prettiest guys Eddie had ever seen. His dark hair fell to his shoulders from a part down the middle. He had a dimple in his chin, and his slanted green eyes betrayed no emotion. Neither of them looked old enough to be out of high school.

Right away, Eddie knew there was going to be trouble, so he backed into one of the empty cattle stalls, just several doors down from where the men were going to town on their whore. His first thought was that the strangers had come to use or rescue the prostitute, but Eddie watched in astonishment as the two men moved to the center of the barn, met chest to chest, and started a slow, out-of-synch waltz to the piercing cries of Celia Cruz.

Eduardo Velasquez stepped forward first. Eddie watched him approach the swaying couple like a restaurant manager summoned to a rowdy table. When Eduardo called out to the men over the music, Eddie heard the steady confidence of a man who was sure his violence could fix any situation in due time. But the two men didn't react to him.

Eddie expected someone to kill the music. No one did. As they stepped forward from the stall, a few of the men started to laugh as if they had figured out the whole thing was a prank and were just waiting for their boss to get the joke.

"El Maricon!" Eduardo shouted.

Suddenly the shorter man spun his dancing partner out, long enough for the pretty boy's slanted green eyes to meet Eduardo's. He gave a sudden smile. That's when Eduardo reached for the pistol on his belt. No one else saw what was coming—no one besides Eddie Cairns. If they had, the two men would have been shot dead on the spot and hell would have stayed where it belonged for at least another night.

Again the shorter man spun his dancing partner out toward Eduardo. Eduardo pulled his gun from its holster just as the pretty boy reached up to the top of his back with his free hand and found a grip on something buried under his leather jacket.

The next thing Eddie knew, Eduardo Velasquez had fired his gun into the air and was

stumbling backward, his knees buckling. The pretty boy returned a bloody machete to its hidden holster. Then he and his partner ripped their motorcycle helmets from their belts, put them on, and sank to their knees. Eduardo hit the floor on his back, a gushing red line down the center of his face, between eyes as big as eggs.

Eddie heard the commotion several stalls down as the other men leapt to their feet and crawled over one another. The two strangers stayed right where they were, on their knees, their gloved hands clasped in front of their chests.

Just as the men started to rush them, there was a sound like a giant whip cracking across the roof of the barn. Pieces of glass from the giant cathedral window tore through the air like a swarm of locusts, driving the other men to their stomachs, to their knees, their faces laced with blood and stripped flesh. His ears ringing, Eddie saw shards of glass impaled on the walls of the stall just above his feet. He expected a fire but none came. The explosion had been all sound and force. His back pressed to the rear of the stall, Eddie watched as the two strangers got to their feet and surveyed the bodies all around them. The duo was unscathed, thanks to the helmets and whatever body armor had given their clothes a bad fit.

The strangers went to work. They moved from man to man, lifting each by the back of the head or rolling them over onto their stomachs if they needed to, then swinging their machetes high and leaving long lateral slashes down each man's back. By the time they were finished, the ten men were rag dolls, their limbs twitching, eyes bulging, and jaws quivering. Incapacitated but alive.

Eddie realized that if the strangers weren't killing the men outright, their work was not over.

Without a word to his partner, the shorter, thicker man walked out of the barn, ripping his motorcycle helmet off as he went. The pretty boy stayed behind, surveying from behind the visor of his black helmet the writhing limbs all around him.

As soon as the man outside turned his back to Eddie, the boy took off. He could feel the stranger's eyes fall on his back, but he kept running, past the parked cars and past the spot where the old rancher lay, his throat a red grin. Expecting the husky guy to jump out at any minute from behind a fence or truck, Eddie fled up the rutted road in the direction of the highway.

When he was almost to the highway turnoff, Eddie looked back. In the distance, a flickering white glow lit up the interior of the shattered cathedral window. The tall stranger stood in the doorway to the barn, his helmet raised above his head in a gesture of farewell to him. That's when Eddie Cairns realized that they had known he was there all along and had allowed him to run because he had borne witness.

Caroline pressed Stop on the tape recorder and got to her knees. She took one of Eddie's trembling hands in hers and leaned in toward his sobbing face. It sounded like she was saying soothing things to the man.

I stumbled into the clearing, focusing on the leaves that scattered at my feet in the weak wind and the gray-blue luminescence the slanting sunlight gave to the valley oaks all around me.

Eddie Cairns had described a slaughter that bled revenge. A young man who answered the description of Reynaldo Reyez had slaughtered the drug lord who had torn apart Reynaldo Reyez's family.

I heard a snap of twigs behind me. Caroline's face was flushed, her freckles almost crimson.

"Eduardo Velasquez was found beheaded in an irrigation ditch when Eddie Cairns was sixteen years old," she said.

"Burned?" I asked.

"Eddie didn't say they burned Velasquez's body," she responded. "Eddie said they set fire to the barn after the kid ran for it. Eddie's story has been floating around for years. He just gave us the definitive version."

"Definitive?" I asked. "Directional explosives that don't combust? Body armor under black leather suits? That's not definitive, Caroline. That's illustrative."

"Eddie Cairns just told us that he saw a man who looks just like Reynaldo Reyez murder Eduardo Velasquez. Do you believe him or not?"

"Yes," I answered. "Rut I think he got the rest of it out of a comic book." Amid all the gory, impossible details, the part of Eddie's story that had affected me the most was his description of his own addictions and the insanity they had visited upon him at such a young age. This, above all else, convinced me that there had been truth in his nightmare.

"Eduardo Velasquez," I said. "How big a story was his murder?"

"I remember it made the nightly news up in San Francisco," she said. "I think there was an article in the
Chronicle,
too."

Joseph Spinotta had lived and worked in California for most of his life. According to the file Jimmy had assembled on the man, Spinotta had been working for tech firms in Silicon Valley six years earlier. It was possible that he had heard the story of Velasquez's murder, maybe even some mention of the killer they called El Maricon. A gay assassin surely would have caught the interest of a man like Joseph Spinotta.

Later, when Martin Cale told Spinotta the tragic tale of his nephew's romance with a young man named Reynaldo Reyez, whose family had been destroyed by the brutally murdered drug lord Eduardo Velasquez, Spinotta had asked to meet with Corey. Had Spinotta made the connection I just had? Had he figured out that Corey's boyhood lover had turned into an assassin visiting a bloody revenge against the drug network that had destroyed his family?

Somehow Reynaldo Reyez had ended up working for Joseph Spinotta, and it was Corey who got him the job. Reynaldo Reyez, also known as El Maricon, had become Joseph's supplier. That might explain why the meeting between Spinotta and Corey had been such a secret. Spinotta would not even give his kept boy the location of their hideout. It made sense that he wouldn't tell Billy about the dangerous assassin he had employed.

"Your boy's been hired out," I finally said. "By a guy named Joseph Spinotta."

She wasn't impressed. It was still my turn. "Let him go and I'll tell you the rest."

"Who?" she asked.

"Eddie!"

She recoiled, then put her hands on her hips. "What did you think I was going to do with him?"

"I didn't ask that question for a reason, Caroline." She rolled her eyes and walked back inside the barn. I felt foolish for having judged her. I was now in pursuit of a man whose operation was larger and bloodier than I had imagined. If Reynaldo Reyez was actually involved in this operation, then someone—either Corey or Spinotta—had lied to him. But if I was going to find him, I needed Caroline Hughes and all her rage.

C H A P T E R 18

We left the Coast Ranges behind without saying a word to each other. Caroline turned left on Highway 33 and headed toward Avenal, the reverse of the route I had followed her on. Eddie Cairns lay under a tarp in the cargo bay. He was not a free man yet, which meant I didn't have to tell Caroline squat.

I tried to imagine the lunch between Spinotta and Corey. I tried to write the scene the way James Wilton would.

Corey is still shattered from Melissa Brady's betrayal and his exile from the Marine Corps.

Barely out of his twenties, he has returned to Los Angeles a broken man. Suddenly a wealthy and charismatic businessman like Spinotta wants to meet with him in private for no apparent reason.

Spinotta starts in gradually on the topic of Reynaldo Reyez, luring the story out of Corey piece by piece. Then Spinotta starts his pitch. He dreams of lifting young children out of the kind of squalor and abuse that Corey was raised in. Does Corey know anyone who can help him make this dream a reality? Corey buys into this lie and agrees to put Spinotta in touch with Reynaldo Reyez.

Reynaldo the assassin and Joseph the pedophile probably communicate entirely by phone, each one unwilling to reveal his identity to the other. Joseph repeats the same lie he gave to Corey: He wants to give kids who are being denied every chance a new shot at life. A new identity.

Reynaldo Reyez believed he was delivering the abused children of meth addicts into a new and better life. But the truth was far different. Joseph Spinotta was taking possession of these young boys and profiting from their sexual violation.

Meanwhile, back in Los Angeles, the man who supplied the connection that turned Spinotta's mad dream into a reality had started to become suspicious. Over time, Corey had seen things aboard his uncle's yacht, things he did not approve of. Eventually, Corey discovered that his uncle was a paying customer of a child porn ring—one that Corey had unwittingly enabled Spinotta to create four years earlier.

So where did that leave Corey's thirteen-year-old brother?

Suddenly I saw it. Reynaldo Reyez had abducted Corey's brother on purpose. Reynaldo

Reyez thought he was delivering Caden McCormick to a better life. Corey had been too afraid to tell his old friend that he had hooked him up with child pornographers, so he had tried to bring down the operation and get his brother back on his own.

My theory was more sprawling and presumptive than the step-by-step deductions James

Wilton had come up with over the past week. I needed to establish that Corey and Reynaldo Reyez had remained in contact after their teenage years.

I needed James Wilton.

A good ways past Avenal, Caroline turned off into a barren field. I watched her step out of the truck and head around the back. She opened the cargo door. I couldn't see what she was doing, but it looked like she was trying to rouse Eddie Cairns from his stupor.

I stepped out of the car just as she was hefting Eddie out of the truck. His hands were bound and his ankles hobbled together so that he could take only foot-long steps, and he was blindfolded with a piece of grease-stained muslin. When Caroline realized she walking him straight toward me, she stopped, and Eddie leaned back against her, his chin to his chest, his breaths whistling through clenched teeth.

I took out my wallet and shoved a ten-dollar bill in Eddie's front pocket.

"He's just going to blow it on meth," Caroline said.

"I hope so," I said. "And I hope he gets a nice big bottle of Crown Royal to go with it."

I gave her a cheery smile and got back in the car. She walked Eddie a hundred slow paces from the front of the Tahoe. I saw her give him whispered instructions; then she crouched down and removed a large field knife from a holster hidden inside the right leg of her jeans. In one motion, she chopped the nylon rope from around Eddies ankles, then from around his wrists.

Eddie ripped the blindfold away and took off. Caroline strode to the Tahoe, slid into the driver's seat, and started the engine. As she turned the car toward the highway, I watched Eddie Cairns turn into a running dot that was almost indistinguishable against the barren mountains in the distance.

"I've got an idea," I said. "The next time you abduct someone, why don't you give some thought to a stocking cap?"

"You think he's going to talk?" she asked. "Who's going to believe him?" She chuckled; I grimaced.

It was time for me to tell her what I knew. "Do we agree that your El Maricon is Reynaldo Reyez?" I asked.

When she said yes, I told her everything I had learned over the past week; then I gave her my new theory. She chewed on it for a while as she drove north on Highway 33. "So El Maricon is working for this Joseph Spinotta," she said. "And your friend Corey got him the job."