Terminal (A Lomax & Biggs Mystery Book 5) (13 page)

Frankie and Izzy had gone on ahead so that dinner would be ready by the time Sophie got home.

“I’m not eating party food,” she said, passing up the Big Ugly Food Truck’s
Almost Famous Pulled Pork And Melted Cheese Panini
. She went to the kitchen, made herself a peanut butter sandwich, and retired to her room to write, while the rest of us sat down with Daniel and Lucy Zhang to decide on her future.

“Daniel,” I said, “Carly is an American citizen. Is there anything our government can do to convince your government to lighten her sentence?”

“You can make it a
cause célèbre
,” he said. “I’m sure you can find journalists who could focus national—even worldwide—attention on the case. But in the end, China will not budge, and all you will have done is underscore the fact that Sophie’s birth mother is incarcerated for the remainder of her childhood, and she’s living with strangers who are no more than temporary legal guardians. Do you know what will happen when that news gets out, Mike?”

I knew. I looked around the room. We all knew. “Jeremy Tan will come after his daughter,” I said.

“He has every right,” Daniel said.

“He gave up that right,” Diana said. “He abandoned her when she was six months old.”

“I understand your outrage, Diana, but he didn’t abandon her. He left Sophie in the care of her mother, and now that he’s her only available biological parent, the courts won’t rule against him.”

“But at least if Jeremy got custody of Sophie, she could stay in America,” I said. “That’s what she wants.”

“But it’s not what Carly wants,” Daniel said. “We were granted five minutes with her before she was taken away. As much as she hates uprooting her daughter, she believes that Sophie will
fare better with us than she will with Jeremy. For one thing, he can’t afford the private-school education Carly has been providing for her. We could match that in China.”

“Mike and I can afford to send her to private school,” Diana said. “How would Carly feel if we adopted her? Instead of being temporary guardians, we could make it permanent.”

“I’m sure Carly would be thrilled,” Lucy said, “but she is already embarrassed that she asked you to watch over Sophie for a few weeks, and it has turned into five months.”

“Embarrassed? I’m sure that Mike will agree that it’s been the best five months of our lives. I know Sophie would be happy with us. Just ask her.”

“I think we would all be happier if she could stay here with you rather than being raised by a couple in their seventies in a foreign country,” Lucy said. “But Sophie doesn’t get a vote. None of us do. Only Jeremy can decide to waive his rights as a parent and allow you to adopt, and I doubt if he will.”

“You don’t know unless you ask,” Big Jim said. “Let me talk to him.”

A chorus of voices shouted no.

“I know you mean well,” Daniel said, “but the last thing we want to do is alert Jeremy to the situation.”

“So basically,” Big Jim said, “you want to kidnap Sophie—smuggle her out of the country before her father finds out that she’s up for grabs.”

“Dad!” I said, slamming my hand against the arm of my chair.

“That’s okay, Detective,” Daniel said. “Lucy and I expected that emotions would run high. For the record, we are not kidnapping her. Not as long as we have written consent.”

“From Jeremy?” Diana asked.

“No. From you and Mike. You’re her legal guardians. As long as you give us a notarized letter of authorization giving us permission to take Sophie to China, none of us would be breaking any laws.”

“Even if we know you’re never going to bring her back?” Diana said.

“We wouldn’t have to bring her back unless Jeremy got a US court order demanding that she be returned.”

Big Jim stood up. “And that’s when you’ll start breaking the law,” he said.

“Jim!” This time it was Angel. She rarely gets vocal when my father gets out of line, but when she does, he backs off.

“You’ll have to forgive my husband,” she said. “We’ve all come to love Sophie so much. This is a sad day for our family.”

“Sorry,” Big Jim mumbled.

“I think we all could use a break,” Frankie said. “How about you all come out to the food truck and get something to eat?”

One by one they filtered out until only Diana and I were left in the room.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s an eight-year-old girl who effectively just lost her mother and is faced with two horrible choices. Live with strangers in a strange land, or live with a father who hasn’t paid any attention to her for her entire life. I felt like Big Jim and I were the only ones trying to come up with a better option.”

“I know, but do me a favor,” I said. “Next time you decide to adopt a kid, consult with me before you make the offer.”

“I didn’t think I had to.”

“I don’t know if Jeremy would even consider letting it happen, but right now I could use a little time before I pull the trigger on a major life-changing decision.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just thought that given how serious the situation is, you wouldn’t even have to think about it. How much time do you need?”

Ever since I left Doug Heller’s office I had kept all my fears, my pain, and my anger bottled up inside. But Diana’s question, innocent as it was, unleashed the demons.

“Dammit, Diana, babysitting for Sophie was a no-brainer, but asking me to take on the physical, emotional, and financial responsibilities of raising her is not something I can figure out over a pulled pork sandwich and a beer. I don’t know how much time I need!”

I’d never lashed out at her like that before, and I could see the shock and the hurt in her eyes. But I wasn’t ready to tell her the truth.

I didn’t know how much time I had
.

CHAPTER 32

WHEN CHARLIE BROCK
first saw Dahlia Ben Ezra at a Living With Dying meeting he figured he’d already died and gone to heaven.

In a city full of cookie-cutter blondes with stars in their eyes and silicone in their chests, Dahlia was a raven-haired, dark-eyed natural beauty with the lithe body of a cat burglar.
And totally out of my league
, he thought.

But he was wrong. They had a lot more in common than a ticking clock. Dahlia was a former Israeli Air Force pilot who had flown air strikes over Lebanon and Syria, and Charlie had seen action with the US Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The first night Dahlia joined the after-the-meeting drinking crowd at Halligan’s, the chemistry between them crackled, and after one drink they broke off from the group and traded war stories. Three drinks later, he leaned across the table and asked if she could help him with a personal dilemma.

“My father and three of my uncles are rabbis,” she said. “Personal dilemmas are my specialty.”

“My doctor says I’ve got about a year,” Charlie confided, “and in keeping with the spirit of this living with dying shit, I’d like to share that time with someone I can care deeply about.”

“Do you have anyone in mind?” she asked.

“That’s the dilemma. I kind of have my eye on two women,
but there are plusses and minuses to both.”

“This is getting interesting. Tell me about them.”

“The first one is reasonably good-looking. She has a solid job working for a company that sells marine insurance, and she’s a loving family person—she’s the sole provider for two aunts who are in their eighties. Every Sunday she takes them to mass and then out for lunch. She also volunteers at the church soup kitchen two mornings a week. She loves the arts, and her biggest passion is ballet. She often goes at the last minute and buys Standing Room Only tickets because she can’t afford the price of a subscription.”

“She sounds wonderful,” Dahlia said. “What are her minuses?”

“Those
are
her minuses,” Charlie said. “On the plus side, if I spend a year with her, it’ll be the longest year of my life.”

Dahlia shrieked with laughter. “I’m almost afraid to ask. What’s your second option?”

“She captivated me the instant I saw her. She’s exotic, hauntingly beautiful, mysterious, smart, funny, sexy—”

“I’m hoping those are plusses,” Dahlia said. “What’s the downside?

“I’m afraid that if I get involved with her, the last year of my life will fly by in a flash.”

“The question is,” she said, “do you want to live long, or do you want to live life?”

That night they became lovers. The next morning, they became business partners. Six weeks later, Dahlia Ben Ezra murdered a woman in Joshua Tree National Park.

Twenty-four hours after that she confirmed that a half a million dollars had been secured in her offshore account. “So what do you get out of this?” she asked, as she and Charlie lay in bed, naked and still entwined.

“I got you.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “You’re no different from me. You’d sell
your loyalty to the highest bidder.”

“Okay, so my title is Head of Human Resources. I recruit, train, and interact with all the temporary help. And for that, I got a shitload of money to make sure my brother Kenny gets private care for the rest of his life.”

“Not that it makes a difference,” she said, “but I’m curious. Who’s paying the freight for all this?”

“I have no idea. All the instructions I get are electronic. The only thing I know for sure is that it’s someone with deep pockets and a major hard-on for Chilton-Winslow.”

“It’s probably another drug company,” she said. “Or a Mexican cartel.”

He laughed. “Did anyone ever tell you that you think like an Israeli?”

She rolled over and straddled him. “Is that a plus or a minus?”

He grabbed her ass and began moving slowly, rhythmically beneath her. With Dahlia there were no minuses.

They had decided they were both too fiercely independent to live together.

“But if we did, it might be fun to see which one of us kills the other one first,” Dahlia said.

“I already know the answer, which is why I’m staying in my apartment where I know I’ll wake up in the morning with all my body parts still attached.”

And then one night Charlie showed up with two duffel bags and a laptop. “Sorry to fuck up what we’ve got,” he said, “but I need a place to hide.”

“From who?”

Dahlia reeled when Charlie told her the news. “You killed Bruce?
And
his wife? Why?”

“The cops were hauling them off to jail,” Charlie said.

“Cops?”

“The same two dickheads who showed up at the meeting last night and grilled us about Cal. You’re lucky you weren’t there.”

“Oh yeah, lucky for me I was hunched over a toilet bowl last night reminiscing about another memorable chemo session,” she said. “All right, I can understand why you killed Bruce, but his wife didn’t know anything.”

“Her name was Claire, and she knew everything.”

Dahlia’s dark eyes opened wide. “What do you mean
everything
?” she asked.

“I mean Bruce told her all of it. He even took her on the job with him. She was in the car when he ran down Yancy.”

“
He took her with him
? What happened to rule number one—don’t tell a soul?”

“That’s the problem with hiring amateurs, Dahlia. They don’t always follow the rules.”

“Even so, why would the cops arrest him? The accident report was cut and dried. Yancy was hit by a car. End of story.”

“A car and a golf club,” Charlie said. “Apparently Yancy didn’t die fast enough, the wife called 911, and Bruce panicked. Bashed in his skull with the first thing he could find in his trunk. The medical examiner decided it didn’t look like an accident.”

“So Bruce broke rule number two, and the cartel, or whoever the hell they are, told you to kill him and his wife.”

“They didn’t tell me. I made the call on my own.”

“Which means now they’ll probably send someone to kill you.”

“Just the opposite. I got a message this afternoon. They want to escalate.”

“What does that mean?”

“The cops will start connecting the dead bodies. They know about Kraus and Yancy, and it won’t take long for them to decide that Carolyn Butler had help falling off that mountain in Joshua Tree. Then they’ll figure out who else might possibly be on the hit list and warn them. Our job is to kill off as many as we can as fast as we can, before they all go underground.”

“At a half a million dollars a pop?”

“That’s still the going rate.”

Dahlia wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear. “You realize that this makes you the best boyfriend I ever had.”

CHAPTER 33

TERRY WAS ON
the phone when I got to the office Friday morning. “We’re on our way,” he said. “And doc… don’t sedate him. We need him conscious.”

“Sounds like Bruce is awake,” I said as soon as he hung up.

“Claire wasn’t that lucky,” he said. “She died during the night.”

“Have they told him yet?”

“No. Guess who gets to break the news to him.”

I didn’t have to guess.

“I know Bruce ran down Yancy intentionally,” Terry said as we walked to the car, “but the poor bastard was desperate, and someone convinced him that if he did it they would take care of his wife after he was dead. Then they shot her through the head. They didn’t even have the decency to wait for him to die.”

Terry is one of those cops—tough on the outside, but he’s always had a soft spot for the underdog, even in a case like this when he knew the underdog was a cold-blooded killer.

“Let’s change the subject,” he said, starting the car. “How did Sophie’s reunion with her mom go?”

“Ugly.”

He killed the engine and looked at me.

“Carly is in a Chinese prison for the next twelve years, and her family is trying to relocate Sophie to Beijing so that Jeremy Tan can’t get custody.”

“You’re serious,” he said.

“As a bullet through the brain.”

I gave him the shorthand version of last night’s drama. He asked a lot of the same questions Big Jim, Diana, and I had asked, but there were still no answers.

“You’ve got to fight it, Mike,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you have to do. You can’t let Sophie—”