Thirty-six

Sabrina woke the next morning to find Church gone and a quick note scribbled on a hotel notepad.

The cowardly lion and I are off to see the wizard.
P.S. Took your dead cat to the lab

She twitched the curtain away from the window and looked out into the parking lot. Their car was still there. Which meant Church had hijacked Croft to play chauffeur/hostage. Hopefully, between the two of them, they’d be able to come up with some answers. Like the legal name of the person attached to the post office box used to exchange letters with Wade.

It was late August in Arizona. The sun was barely peeking over the horizon, but with it came the kind of heat you have to experience to truly appreciate. She could feel it even through the heavily lined hotel curtains. The cooler temperatures brought by yesterday’s rain were gone, leaving the air thick enough to cut and hot enough to burn. Reluctantly, she traded boy shorts and a tank for another pair of smothering dress slacks and an equally oppressive button-down before slamming a cup of bad hotel room coffee. She looped the beaded chain attached to her badge around her neck. She’d forgotten over the last year how it felt to wear one. How heavy they were. Feeling the weight of it against her chest, she realized how much she missed it.

Stepping into the corridor of their hotel, Sabrina turned to pull the door shut, jiggling the handle to make sure it was locked. It was an unnecessary precaution—the door locked automatically—but she did it anyway. Satisfied, she turned toward the stairwell just a few steps away. Pulling open the door, she collided with a broad, sturdy chest covered by a damp T-shirt. She jolted backward, instantly forcing distance between them. Her sensible shoes tangled beneath her and she pitched back, her legs giving up the fight.

A hand shot out and gripped her, keeping her upright. “Shitsorry,” he said smashing the words together as he hauled her toward him to keep her from falling.

“It’s okay,” she said, pressing a hand to his chest, pushing him away while she mentally cataloged his appearance. Gray T-shirt. Navy basketball shorts. Sandy blond hair darkened by sweat. Blue eyes. Nearly a head taller than her and built—muscular but not a total meathead. Good-looking but not too pretty. The kind of guy you’d notice but then forget about as soon as you passed him on the street. “It’s okay,” she said again, forcing herself to smile. “I’ve only had one cup of coffee this morning. That means I’m only half awake.”

“I hate to tell you,” he said, smiling back, the curve of his mouth upping his pretty points by about a hundred, “but if you’re referring to that stuff they offer for free in the room, you still haven’t had any coffee this morning.” His eyes trailed downward, from her face to her chest before settling on the badge that lay against it. His demeanor changed instantly. “My apologies,” he mumbled, squeezing against the frame of the open door while he edged around her like she had some sort of contagious disease.

She laughed, moving past him to jog down the stairs. The badge was either a total turn-on or worked as a repellent. There was rarely an in between. “Have a good day,” she called up, just to twist the knife a bit. The only sound that answered her was the sound of the door above her slamming closed.

–––––

The hotel was close to the I-10, situated in a bustling pocket of fast food restaurants and strip malls. This Yuma was very different than the one she remembered. She started the car and headed east, toward Yuma’s only police station. After a year spent surrounded by nothing but silence and trees, it was disorienting—the speeding cars and tall stucco buildings slammed too close together. The noise and the heat. She welcomed the feeling. It helped her pretend she was a stranger. That the girl she’d been when she lived here all those years ago had been someone else. Like she never really existed.

When she got to the station, she parked in the employee lot, noting that it was nearly empty. None of the cars looked like any she’d seen in the dirt lot in front of Saint Rose last night. Hopefully Detective Santos wouldn’t be here yet. His absence would make what she came to do a lot smoother.

Striding across the lobby with a confidence she didn’t feel, she flashed the badge around her neck at the uniform manning the information desk on her way to Major Crimes. He was on the phone, calling her arrival up before she even hit the stairs. They’d set up a temporary office for her and “Agent Aimes” in a conference room. In it was a computer that would give her access to old case files. Tasers and ball gags might not be something she’d use to get information, but unauthorized digging through police records was right up her alley.

Her plan was derailed the moment she made the third-floor landing. Detective Mark Alvarez, Santos’s partner, was there to greet her. Looking freshly showered and pressed despite the early hour, in his office casual short-sleeved polo and breathable cotton Dockers, he stood at the top of the stairs like he’d been waiting for her, a thin stack of case files in his hand. “Morning, Agent Vance—” He looked at his watch before offering her a quick smile. “Will had a late night so he’s not in yet. Coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”

It was barely six a.m. She hadn’t expected either of them to be here yet. Santos had disappeared directly after mass was over, following Paul Vega down the aisle in the wake of whispers and stares, and she hadn’t seen Alvarez since she’d left the primary scene yesterday afternoon. “Sure,” she said returning the smile Alvarez gave her. “Coffee’d be great.”

He led her to a small, windowless breakroom that held a soda and snack machine. Seeing them made her smile, a small chuckle escaping her. Strickland used to call the bags of potato chips and canned soft drinks they gave to suspects and witnesses snitch bait. He’d dig into that landfill he called a desk, coming up with loose bills to feed into vending machines, giving her a shit-eating grin that told her just how much he enjoyed the delicate dance between cop and suspect.

She was good at her job, but Strickland was a thing to watch. Underneath those stained ties and neglected haircuts was an interrogator so slick, so cunning, he’d have you confessing every sin you ever committed before you even thought of asking for a lawyer. When Strick was in the room, there was always an audience behind the two-way—more than a few of them taking notes.

Alvarez tossed the files onto the table as he passed it. “Something funny?” he said, aiming a look over his shoulder on his way to the coffeepot.

“No,” she said, watching as he pulled a couple of paper cups off the stack and filled them with coffee from an industrial-sized urn. “It’s just been a while since I’ve been in a police station.” She leaned across the table to read the tabs of the files he’d tossed there. Trudy Hayes. Edward Sherman. Robert Delashaw. Sara Pike.

“Missing persons cases.”

She looked up to see him standing over her, a cup of coffee in each hand. He offered her one along with a lopsided smile. “Unfortunately, being a border town, we get more than our share.”

Sabrina had a feeling there was more to the cases than that, but she didn’t press him. Instead, she took the offered cup, returning the smile with one of her own. “I remember that about Yuma.”

“That’s right—you got your start in the Phoenix field office before making the jump to Quantico.” He gestured with his cup at a chair before sitting. “You do a lot of work with PPD before the move?”

“I helped with a few cases,” she said, evasively. The last thing she had time for was to sit and chat over a cup of coffee with Santos’s rookie partner, but she smiled, accepting the cup while she slid into an empty chair. If partnering with Strickland had taught her anything it was that when it came to answers, there was more than one way to get them.

Alvarez laughed a little, shaking his head at what he must have thought was modesty. “One of those was The South Mountain Killer, wasn’t it?” he asked, even though he obviously knew that, according to her file, it was the case that made her career. “Will says you pretty much solved the case single-handedly.”

“There’s no such thing as single-handedly in investigative work,” she said. “All I did was give PPD a few ideas on what to look for. They did the heavy lifting.”

Alvarez gave her a smile, this one telling her that evading his compliment while giving props to the locals had earned his respect. “Well, my partner isn’t usually free with the attaboys so when he hands one out, I tend to believe him.”

“Tell me your story,” she said, changing the subject. If he noticed, he didn’t seem to mind. “How’d you end up a cop? You don’t really seem the type.”

Alvarez shrugged. “I lost my scholarship. Dropped out of college and after a short What the hell am I gonna do now? crisis, applied to Tucson PD. Rode patrol for a few years before I made detective and transferred here.”

She nodded. His story wasn’t much different than most she’d heard. “You and Santos haven’t been partners long.”

“About a year now.” He laughed. “Is it that obvious?”

Sabrina shrugged, thinking of Strickland. Wondering who had his back now that she was gone. “How’s it going?”

“Actually, Will is the first partner I’ve ever had. I rode patrol solo …” He trailed off. “We’ve got different styles but he’s a great cop. I’m lucky to partner with him.” He said it like he was reading off a cue card. “How about you and Aimes? Been together long?”

Too long. “Believe it or not, this is our first case together,” she said, tipping her cup in his direction before taking a sip. “The Bureau is all about sink or swim when it comes to field work.”

“Ahh …” He laughed, nodding his head slowly. “That’s it then.”

“That’s what?” she said carefully.

“The tension I caught between the two of you.” Alvarez lifted a shoulder before taking a sip of his coffee. “You know, the awkward honeymoon phase—months of forced politeness and feeling each other out until one of you finally snaps.”

“You and Santos seemed to get through it okay,” she said, steering the conversation back in his direction.

“We’ve had our growing pains.” Alvarez gave her a sheepish grin. “Neither of us like to take orders, but he’s got the experience so I don’t mind playing the sidekick.”

She grinned back, silently thanking him for finally opening the door. “Yeah, from what I hear, he’s worked a few high-profile cases.”

Alvarez tilted his half-empty cup toward himself, pretending to gauge if he needed a refill. What he was really doing was deciding whether or not he wanted to slam the door he’d just opened in her face. “He had his fingers in the Vega case for a few minutes, back in 2000, but that didn’t last long.” His tone was flat, tinged with disgust, like just thinking about it pissed him off. “They closed ranks—surprise, surprise. Shut the whole thing down before Will could even take a formal statement.”

She remembered Santos, the look on his face as he passed her by, following Paul Vega out of the chapel. It hadn’t been anger she’d seen; it’d been the look a predator gets when it catches the scent of wounded prey. And it hadn’t been about old wounds. It was the scent of fresh blood that brought Santos to the chapel last night.

Santos believed Vega had something to do with what’d happened to Rachel Meeks, she was sure of it. Instead of pursuing it, she filed it away for later, giving Alvarez a small smile like she knew what he was talking about.

“He was also the lead detective on the Melissa Walker case, wasn’t he?” Santos had stonewalled her yesterday when she’d asked. Alvarez was the back door and she kicked it in with a smile.

The easy-going attitude he was throwing her went stiff around the edges. “Yeah, but that was way before my time,” he said, trying to keep it casual with a disinterested shrug “Will isn’t really the share your feelings type, you know?”

She nodded like she understood and she guessed she did. That particular case wasn’t something she liked to think about. “So he doesn’t like to talk about it?”

“Girl gets kidnapped, raped, tortured for months, and then murdered by her sicko brother on your watch …” he said, staring into his half-empty cup. “Would you want to talk about it?”

“I suppose not,” she said, giving him a smirky half smile even though his casual summary of the hell she’d lived through made her want to throw up. She felt something inside her break away, burrowing deep inside her brain. She let it go, didn’t try to dig it out. It was an old habit, allowing herself to detach, and she clung to it now, grabbing at it with the desperate hands of a junkie. It was how she survived. The only way she could have this conversation without completely losing her shit.

“Way Will figures it”—Alvarez stood up, making his way to the coffeepot to top off his cup; he didn’t ask her if she wanted a refill—“he could have stopped that freak before he even got started,” he said, sliding back into his seat. “He blames himself.”

“So, your partner fancies himself a clairvoyant?” She smiled, felt the cold slide of it across her mouth followed by a numbness that wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “I read the reports. Wade Bauer tracked her across two states. Nearly fifteen hundred miles. Santos couldn’t have known that. He couldn’t have stopped him.” She believed that. No one could have stopped Wade. What happened. What he did to her.

Alvarez let out a long breath, shaking his head at her perceived ignorance. “Maybe you feel that way because you don’t know the whole story.”