The Gatekeeper (8 page)

Kelly turned it off with a snort. She’d grown up on the East Coast, and spent most of her adult life in New York and Washington, D.C. She knew that immigration reform was a major issue for a lot of Americans, but she lived at a remove from it. Here, it seemed to taint everything. The murder of Duke Morris by machete had inflamed passions. Editorials in the regions’ papers screamed for ICE raids and mass deportations. Protests and counterprotests were sparking up everywhere. There was a sense that the whole region was about to explode in retaliatory violence.

Kelly’s cell rang. She checked the number and frowned before answering. “Yes?”

“Jones, I’ve got some bad news. Emilio didn’t make it.”

“What?”

“The processing instructions got screwed up—instead of juvie he was sent to intake. Someone shivved him.”

Kelly squeezed her eyes shut, an image of Celia’s tear-streaked face flashing through her mind. “Jesus, Rodriguez. One of the MS-13s?”

“Nope, another guy. White. Guard said it was probably race-related. Tensions are high, with all the shit that’s been going down.”

“Crap.” Kelly kneaded her forehead. “Have you told McLarty yet?”

“Technically, we had handed him over to Phoenix P.D., so…”

Kelly’s eyes narrowed. “So, what?”

“So he wasn’t our responsibility anymore.”

Kelly was surprised at the coldness in his voice. Sure, Emilio had been a little punk, but he was just a kid. She wondered if this was residual rage over the chase earlier that day, or something deeper. “I doubt Celia will agree.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe she should have kept better track of him.”

Kelly was too tired to argue about it. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Just wanted you to know.”

“Good night, Agent Rodriguez.”

He’d already hung up. Kelly readjusted the pillows and lay down, reflecting on the day. Crazy that she lived in a world where a twelve-year-old dreamed of joining a gang. Crazier still that they might offer him the best prospects. Public schools were a mess, jobs were tight, and for a kid growing up in a tough neighborhood, chances of survival, never mind success, were slim. Maybe Emilio was just another casualty of the American Dream. The confluence of events that landed him in an interrogation room could be considered inevitable, based on statistics alone. If not today, maybe five or ten years down the line he would have found himself in the same situation, dying from a blade shoved in his gut.

Kelly felt responsible regardless. She picked up the phone and dialed. “This is Agent Jones, I’m part of the Morris task force. I’d like a copy of the processing papers for Emilio Torres on my desk tomorrow morning.”

Madison was curled in a ball on top of the mattress. She’d never been in so much pain. The closest was when she’d broken her leg snowboarding, and they trundled her downhill on a sled that jolted over moguls. But that didn’t even begin to compare to this.

She shuddered repeatedly as flashes of what happened
darted through her brain. His scary grin as he dragged her down the hall and into a different room, then tied her to the chair. His fumbling hands all over her, tugging at her shirt. She’d shied away, screaming, but he yanked out her bra straps and attached wires to them. Then the pain, so bad she blacked out. And Lurch in the background with a camera, recording it all.

It seemed to go on forever. It was still dark outside, and she wondered if she’d lost another day.

Madison felt like she’d been beaten all over, every limb, every joint ached. For the first time she confronted the full gravity of her situation. All along in the back of her mind she’d maintained this elaborate fantasy. Commandos storming in and putting a bullet through Lurch’s brain. They’d tell her she was so smart, so brave. Deep down she never doubted that someone was coming to save her.

Now she could see how childish that fantasy was. Sometimes there was no happy ending. Sometimes people just died. She almost laughed aloud at how pathetic her GPS transmission was. Ridiculous, really—the world was full of signals now, a never-ending stream bouncing along every wavelength, a constant din. And yet she’d managed to convince herself that her little signal, from a DS Lite no less, would filter through. It was completely absurd.

Madison realized she was shuddering again. She drew a deep breath. No more imagining who would show up at her funeral, no more pretending this was a nightmare she would awaken from. She was done with all that. All she could do now was hope they never brought her in that awful room again.

J
ake lifted a corner of the mattress and grimaced at what was underneath. Mack Krex’s living quarters redefined the term
hellhole.
A dank eight-by-ten-foot room in a boardinghouse so far on the wrong side of the tracks they weren’t even visible in the distance. The only furnishings were a caved-in bed and a rickety pasteboard bureau propped against the wall.
Honestly, a cell would have been preferable,
Jake thought. At least it would’ve been clean.

“Pretty foul, huh?” Mack Krex’s parole officer grinned at him, rocking back and forth on his heels. “No fast-food joint pays enough for a place without rats.”

Jake wasn’t in the mood to joke around. He hadn’t been able to forget Madison’s tortured face all morning. “I called the manager at Plucky Chicken. He said Krex quit a few months back.”

“Yeah? Huh.”

“But he’s current on the rent here. Paid three months in advance.”

The guy shrugged, and Jake narrowed his eyes at him. The PO stood about five-six, wearing a short-sleeved
button-down shirt, skinny tie, cheap shoes. His scraggly goatee was a misguided attempt at trendiness, and the beginnings of a potbelly hung over his belt. He looked fifty but was probably closer to thirty-five.

“Doesn’t bother you that Krex might have backslid?”

“Maybe he got a gig under the table, working the door at a club. Some of them do that, and Mack’s a big guy.” The PO held up a hand defensively. “You want to see my caseload? I can’t babysit these guys 24/7. He showed for our meets, and his piss was clean. Far as I’m concerned he’s a success story.”

“So missing last week didn’t faze you?”

“Hey, it’s not like he was caught diddling kids. I got three of those right now, one of ’em keeps trying to move on to school property. Mack was small-time, supposed to be the muscle in a botched bank robbery. Got talked into it by some buddies, then took the fall when it went south.”

“This time he might have abducted a sixteen-year-old girl.”

The PO shrugged. “So I’ll issue a warrant. Lots of fucked-up shit in the world. All I can do is try to swim through without drinking it.”

“Nice analogy.” Jake cast one last gaze around the room. “Bit of an accent there. Where you from?”

The guy hesitated before saying, “Mississippi.”

“Yeah? You’re a long way from home.” Jake eyed him. “What brought you to Stockton?”

“The weather.”

“Huh.” Jake glanced out the window. Stockton was in California’s Central Valley, a region that turned into a choking dust bowl each summer. It had to be a hundred degrees outside, convection-oven territory. “So you got any leads on Krex’s known acquaintances?”

“Not much in the file, but I’ll give you what I got. If you’re done, I got a crap-load of paperwork to do.”

Jake followed the PO out. Beating himself up didn’t help matters, but he couldn’t seem to stop. He was the one who told Randall to take a hard line, refusing to continue without proof of life. It was a dangerous dance, bartering over a person’s well-being. What he’d recommended was Kidnap and Ransom 101, the baseline that any kidnapper should have recognized. Problem was, they were apparently engaged in a different tango.

The video clip was less than a minute long, shot so close it was impossible to tell what was happening to Madison. Nothing audible but her screams, nothing to show that it was filmed yesterday or a week ago. Jake hadn’t pointed that out, figuring Randall was too rattled to handle it. He had to give him a serious pep talk before sending him off to work this morning. Randall drove away slowly, hands still shaking. Not that Jake blamed him. He couldn’t even imagine watching your kid undergo that kind of pain.

A hulking guy passed them on the stairs, shaved head, lots of tattoos. He glared at Jake.

“One sec.” Jake ducked down the dark hallway, past a pay phone to the door marked
Manager
in tarnished, crooked letters. Knocked once, and the guy who had let them into Mack’s room opened it. He was holding a fresh bottle of Bud.

“Yeah?”

“You got a list of all the tenants?”

The guy squinted at him. Jake felt the PO peering over his shoulder. The manager glanced at him, then back at Jake. “What for?”

“Just curious.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something?”

“Sure, I could get one of those,” Jake bluffed. He had no idea what strings Syd had pulled to convince the PO that he was a federal marshal, but figured it was best to play along. “Or I could spend the day grilling every person who walks through that door. Maybe check some of the other rooms, see what I find. Up to you.”

The manager grunted and scratched himself. Clearly Jake wasn’t winning friends and influencing people in Stockton. Maybe it was outside his target demographic. Without another word the manager turned and shuffled off. A second later he returned with a smudged spreadsheet. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Jake tucked it under his arm, then strode down the hallway. The PO fell in step behind him. Maybe Jake was being paranoid, but he half expected to feel a knife in his back.

Alone in the car five minutes later, he rang Syd.

“Anything?” she asked, sounding breathless.

“Are you jumping rope back there?”

“Give me a break, I was across the office dealing with something. Any leads on Krex?”

“Not really. Just finished up at his place, now I’m headed to where he used to work. I got some names for you to run down.” He read them off, made sure she had the right spelling. “Another thing. Get me background info on Krex’s PO and find out who owns that boardinghouse.”

“Okay.” The sound of typing in the background. “Am I looking for anything specific?”

Jake glanced back at the building, three ramshackle stories that in happier times had been painted bright yellow. “Something feels off here. The PO was too laidback about Krex slipping off his radar, and there are a bunch of doppelgängers shacked up there, too.”

“Not unusual. Can’t imagine many places rent to ex-cons.”

“I know, but still. Look into it. Might be nothing, but…”

“Hey, I’m not complaining, it’s good to have something to do. I was down to arranging my pens by color.”

“We only bought blue pens.”

“You see my problem.”

Jake grinned. “All right. I’ll check in later.”

“Later, partner.”

Jake sat for a moment, drumming his fingers idly on the steering wheel. Mack Krex had slid off the grid, not unusual for an ex-con. But then he turned up at the airport as part of an elaborate plan to kidnap a sixteen-year-old girl in exchange for nuclear secrets. Someone was pulling the strings here, and he’d bet it wasn’t a third-rate felon with an eighth grade education. He pressed Redial and waited for Syd to pick up. “Hey, can you get me in to see the warden at Corcoran? Maybe he knows more than the PO.”

“Sure thing.”

Jake hung up and shifted the car into Drive. The fast-food joint where Mack used to work was a mile away. Unless something shook loose there, they were pretty much back where they started. And Madison was running out of time.

Randall sipped nervously at his cappuccino, trying not to look as terrified as he felt. He had left work shortly after arriving, complaining of a stomach bug. Barry, no stranger to intestinal distress, agreed to cover for him. And the truth was he’d been nauseous ever since that awful video last night. He clenched his fists at the memory. Randall wished again that he was someone dif
ferent, the kind of guy who would find the people responsible and wring their necks. Unfortunately, he had to rely on Syd and Jake to do that for him. And so far, they hadn’t really helped.

He was sitting in a park on the outskirts of Concord, a patch of green etched out between office buildings. Like most of the East Bay, the town was a mix of strip malls, office parks and suburban neighborhoods wound around cul-de-sacs. To his immediate right a bronze memorial to 9/11 read, “Through blurred eyes we find the strength and courage to soar beyond the moment.” Under the current circumstances, it struck him as particularly ironic.

Randall glanced at his watch again: 11:00 a.m. He’d arrived late, there was construction on the 680 and traffic had slowed to a crawl. A shadow blocked the light, and he squinted up. A man stood over him, head cocked to the side. He was white, medium-build, wiry-looking; not the same guy who first approached him. Dressed in jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt despite the weather, his features masked by aviator sunglasses and a Giants baseball cap. Randall’s throat closed up with rage at the sight of him. He gripped the bench’s armrest to prevent himself from doing something stupid.

“Dr. Grant, right?” His voice was a chain smoker’s rasp. “You got something for me?”

Randall reached into his jacket pocket for the flash drive. The guy’s hand clamped down on his wrist, stopping him. “Don’t get cute, Grant.”

“You tell that son of a bitch he fucked up by hurting my daughter,” Randall said. “I told him I’d get it, I just needed more time…”

“You give us what we want when we ask for it. You knew that was part of the deal. Can’t stall and expect nothing to happen.”

“I want my daughter back.”

“Behave yourself and we’ll cut her loose this afternoon.”

A woman approached with a stroller, the only other person to enter the park since Randall had arrived. The guy clasped his shoulder, guffawing as if Randall had said something hilarious. As he exerted pressure, Randall fought not to cry out.

Once the woman passed them, the guy said in a low voice, “We had a deal, Grant. And that deal included delivery dates.” He released his grip.

Randall watched the young mother wheel the stroller away. Funny, sometimes it seemed like yesterday he was pushing the girls around in one of those. His mind flashed back to a day at the zoo when they were still tiny, the two of them hanging off the metal fence around the penguin compound, laughing, and his stomach seized up. Without a word, he dropped the flash drive in the man’s hand.

“Good. Now get back to work, we need you there in case anything goes wrong.”

“You said she’d be free this afternoon!” Randall protested.

The guy laughed. “Just fucking with you, Grant. Don’t screw with us and we’ll return her safe and sound.”

Randall snorted. “I’ll be lucky if there isn’t an armed detail waiting at my desk.”

“Yeah, that would be unlucky. For both of you.” The guy drew a pack of gum from his pocket, peeled off a piece, and stuck it in his cheek. “Remember, we’re watching you.”

“Fuck you.”

The guy grinned and sauntered away. Randall watched as he slid into the passenger seat of an SUV with tinted windows. As soon as it turned the corner he slumped and buried his head in his hands. He’d royally screwed everything up again.

Jackson Burke leveled the barrel. He nodded once, and the trainer released the dogs. They surged toward the cattails lining the pond. A dozen mallards exploded from the reeds, necks straining upward as their wings beat the air. He got one in his sights, led it, then squeezed the trigger. He lowered the rifle and watched, satisfied, as the mallard stopped dead before spiraling back down. Tails wagging, the dogs dove into the water to retrieve it.

Jackson tugged his hat brim up an inch.

“Not bad for an old man,” his companion remarked.

Jackson grinned at him. “Not too old to whip your ass.”

“Not in a fair fight.”

“I always thought that was an oxymoron. A fight’s a fight, the goal is to win.” Jackson leaned against the bumper of their 4x4.

“Sorry to hear about Duke. He was one of a kind.” The young man propped a rifle against his shoulder. They were both dressed in matching camouflage and waders.

“He surely was.” Jackson nodded. “Terrible shame. But maybe some good will come of it. Woke some people up, made them realize the enemy is already inside our gates.”

“Absolutely.” The young man nodded and spit a long stream of tobacco juice out the corner of his mouth. “If they stay this angry, we might finally push that bill through in the next session.”

“Oh, I believe you will.” Jackson watched the trainers drop the lifeless birds into a cooler before loading the dogs back in their crates. “More trouble coming, you can bet on that.”

“You think?” The young man squinted toward the setting sun. “Speaking of which, I heard a rumor the governor is naming you Morris’s replacement. That true?”

Jackson smirked. “Little birdie tell you that?”

The other man laughed. “Fine, Jack, don’t tell me. But we need more people like you up on the Hill. It’d help keep some focus on this border problem.”

“Change is coming, boy. Trust me on that.” Jackson settled back into the passenger seat with a grunt.

“Always an optimist.”

“Hardly. An optimist hopes for the best. A pragmatist makes sure it happens.” Jackson pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes again and nudged the driver. “Let’s get going. I’m fit to eat a horse.”

“Celia, I’m so sorry.”

Celia eyed her through the screen door. Less than twenty-four hours ago, Kelly had been standing on this exact spot asking for Emilio. And now the boy was dead.

“What you want?”

Kelly shifted awkwardly. It was a fair question, and one she wasn’t sure she could answer. Rodriguez didn’t know where she was—she’d slipped out of the task force room, figuring she’d come up with an excuse on her drive back. If McLarty knew she was here, he’d already be filing her termination papers. But she didn’t care. A kid had been hurt on one of her cases last fall, and still hadn’t fully recovered. Now she’d have Emilio’s death weighing on her conscience as well.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Celia glared at her.
“Mi
Emilito is dead.”

“I know. Like I said, I—”

“You sorry.” Celia snorted, then turned and shuffled away. Kelly took that as an invitation to follow and hesitantly opened the screen door. She glanced around. Yesterday she’d been so focused on Emilio, she hadn’t taken note of the interior. It was small, two bedrooms, a kitchen,
a living room. Shabby and filled with secondhand furniture, but clean.