She was in the gas station for about five minutes before I noticed she was there. She was that quiet. That patient. The man I was serving, who completely blocked her from view, had to be six-and-a-half feet tall, a gentle giant counting out his gas and sandwich money in quarters, making little stacks of coins on the countertop beside my crossword.
To merit: Deserve.
I tidied the bowl of peaches by the register while I waited, checking the clock on the wall to calculate how long until the end of my shift. It was a Sunday. A Jamie visiting day. I’d taken the early shift with the hopes of getting him down to the pier for lunch, but at the rate my customer was going, I was starting to lose hope.
When the big man turned away, I saw Jessica Sanchez standing in the middle of the Pump’n’Jump, reading a magazine from the rack. She was still bruised and battered from her ordeal a week earlier, when my son had saved her from an attack by a colleague of hers at her house in Brentwood.
Sasha had told me about the attack on Jessica Sanchez while I laid low for a week in my apartment, recovering from my gunshot wound. I’d spent my days twitching at the sound of every car door slammed in the street, wincing when the phone rang. It was easy to convince myself that the police knew of my involvement in the events at San Chinto, though I’d done my best to disappear from the scene without leaving a trace of myself. After Sneak had driven away I’d abandoned Ada on the lawn I’d dragged her to, knowing she’d be fine, and gone back to the old man in the hoarder house. I’d unbound him, given him water, and dragged him out to his own front lawn, where emergency personnel responding to the car explosion would find him. Then I ran as best I could. Like a prison escapee fleeing into the growing dawn, I’d run as hard as my leg would allow, stopping two suburbs over when it seemed safe to hail a cab. I’d gone home and tended to the wound myself. For days I’d stayed inside, peering out the curtains, waiting to be arrested after a witness identified me, or my prints were found on the shovel in the tunnel, or Jessica Sanchez connected me to the murders, the heist.
But the arrest never came. And now she was here.
She saw that I was free, put her magazine down and came to the counter. I looked out at the lot, half-expecting to see squad cars screaming in. There were none.
‘I didn’t think I’d see you again,’ I said. I tried to collect my thoughts. ‘What . . . ah. What are you doing here?’
‘I just came to say hello,’ Jessica said, leaning on the counter. ‘And to see if you’d heard from Sneak.’
‘No,’ I said, truthfully. ‘I haven’t. If I had to guess I’d say she’s in Jamaica by now. We had a Jamaican chef in the kitchen at Happy Valley for a while, and she always liked the food. I heard they found Tasik’s car at the airport, so . . .’ I shrugged.
‘She’ll come back for Dayly’s funeral,’ Jessica said. ‘Surely.’
‘I don’t know.’ Dayly’s body had been found flung down an embankment off a fire trail in the Glendora mountains, the same road where Al Tasik had been killed attempting to take Sneak and Jessica’s lives. Los Angeles news outlets had had a hell of a time trying to account for the dead cop’s actions, how they were connected to the body on the mountain, whether they were connected to the bodies in the tunnel, the bodies in Ada’s car. I assumed Jessica herself was trying to straighten the police out on the whole case.
‘I’ll tell you one thing,’ I said to Jessica. ‘If I do see Sneak, whether she comes back for her daughter’s funeral, or she comes back because she’s a drug addict and a thief and those kinds of people are creatures of habit, I won’t be telling you. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to pursue Sneak.’
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘From what you told me on the phone, it sounds like Sneak murdered Tasik right in front of you. She drove over him multiple times.’
‘That’s what I told you, yes,’ Jessica said. ‘But that was only twenty-four hours after the event. I was still shocked. Traumatised.’ She shrugged helplessly. ‘I’m not sure I remember clearly exactly what happened that night,’ she said, avoiding my eyes. ‘All I know is that Sneak and I defended ourselves. Perhaps Sneak used the car to try to incapacitate Tasik, and then ran over him multiple times by accident. It wasn’t her car. She wouldn’t have been familiar with the controls. I wasn’t in the vehicle with her, so I don’t think I can assess her intention.’
‘Right,’ I said. A small smiled played at the corner of my mouth. ‘But what about her theft of John Fishwick’s hidden millions from the tunnels?’
‘What am I going to charge her with?’ Jessica asked. ‘I can’t prove the cash from the tunnel ever existed. I don’t even know if that was Sneak. All I’ve got from the witness accounts is a bruised and battered blonde woman at the San Chinto scene putting two suitcases into a car. The suitcase in Ada’s car was full of shredded paper and explosives. It might be that wherever Sneak is, she’s flat broke.’
I bit my tongue. Then I couldn’t help myself.
‘I think it was about fourteen million,’ I blurted.
Jessica laughed. ‘I hope she doesn’t spend it all on blow.’
‘What about Ada?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to go after her?’
‘I’d like to see Ada behind bars again,’ Jessica said. ‘I’m not going to lie. She’s a dangerous person. But from what I hear, that’s going to be a losing battle for whoever takes on the case. She’s already out on bail. She has the best lawyer money can buy, of course, and she’s blaming the whole thing on her dead goons. They forced her to go there. They killed Lemon and Ramirez, and made her watch.’
‘Slick,’ I said.
‘The slickest,’ Jessica agreed.
Jessica seemed to be examining my face, wanting to say more, wanting to promise, perhaps, that she also wasn’t coming after me. But that seemed obvious. There were no squad cars on the lot. No cuffs on her belt. I fiddled with the crossword pages.
‘How’s your face?’ I said eventually.
‘It’s all right.’ She touched the stitches in her cheek tentatively. ‘In fact, it’s better than all right. You come that close to death, leaving the fray with a punch in the face and a bruised throat feels like a win. Look, truth is, I wanted to come here today to see if you’ve got a minute to discuss me giving your kid a reward for his efforts. He saved my life. He deserves it.’
‘Oh, well.’ I smiled. ‘I don’t know. I guess I can get behind that. What were you thinking? He likes Nintendo games.’
‘I was thinking more along the lines of giving him his mother back,’ Jessica said.
A splinter of pain lodged in my chest. I stood watching Jessica’s eyes as she recounted her recorded conversation with Kristi Zea to me. She told me about the bush outside the laundry window of the Orlov house. The forensic analysis of the bite mark in the cheese sandwich. Adrian’s brother and the cocaine in the bedroom on the night of the murder. I listened silently, my hands on the counter, hardly able to breathe. Jessica finished talking and wiped a tear from her eye discreetly.
‘It’s my fault, what happened to you,’ Jessica said. ‘I want to put it right.’
She gave me a chance to speak, but I couldn’t say anything. The words wouldn’t come, so she continued instead.
‘I’m going to accept the bequest of the Brentwood house on Bluestone Lane,’ she said. ‘That’ll exclude me from the LAPD forever, but I have a feeling coming back was going to be difficult anyway.’ She gave a laugh that was tinged by sadness. ‘I’ve been a bad girl lately. Really bad. And our relationship, me and the force, it’s been strained for a while.’
‘Okay,’ I said. It was all I could muster.
‘I want you to go and live in the house,’ Jessica said. ‘If you can afford a dollar a month, that’s what I’ll charge you in rent. You’ll be close to Jamie.’
‘Jessica,’ I said. My hands were shaking. Tears were falling from my own eyes. I wiped at them unsteadily. ‘Why would you . . . Why would . . .’
‘I’m going to do everything I can to get your exoneration up and running,’ Jessica said. Her gaze was fixed on the floor, thinking through it all. ‘It’ll be a long process. There’ll be an official review. A lawyer will take you pro bono for a civil case. I’ll testify, and so will a colleague of mine who’s been helping me, a very kind man. A scientist. I think we’ve got a good shot. More than a good shot. And after your conviction is vacated, you’ll be in a much better place to negotiate more custody of Jamie.’
‘This will ruin you,’ I said. ‘This will ruin your reputation.’
She turned to me and grinned. ‘My reputation? Oh, honey. That was dead and buried a long time ago. There are weeds growing on its grave.’
I went around the counter, grabbed Jessica and held her close. The hug came naturally, spurred by excitement, shock, but in a second it evolved into something else. A fierceness rippled through me. An ache in my bones, the memory of handing my baby over, of every cold, hard night I slept inside the walls and gates of a prison. In a flash I saw Sasha visiting me, sitting on the other side of a glass panel. I saw myself hunched on my bed, poring over photographs of my child. I gripped Jessica while fury and gratitude raged against each other inside me. Without knowing the depth of my confusion, without possibly being able to know, she laughed awkwardly, uncomfortably. A woman who was hurting, who didn’t like to be hugged. When I let her go she stepped away from me, brushed herself off, like she’d come here and said what she needed to say and now didn’t know what to do. She went to the door and stood there, and we stared at each other, the two of us looking across an impossible divide, both on the edge of something new.
‘What the hell are you going to do, then?’ I said. ‘If you can’t be a cop.’
‘I was thinking of starting something of my own,’ she said. ‘A friend suggested it. Something small. A place where I get to pick the cases. Where I get to follow my interests.’ She tapped the burrito stand with her hand, thinking. ‘I might call you up, if you don’t mind. I’ll need help.’
‘You’ll know where to find me,’ I said. She smiled, and I smiled back, because I didn’t yet know what would win in my heart, the anger at this woman or the appreciation. All I knew was that I was bound to her now. The woman who had damned me, and the woman who had saved me. The key to getting my son back, and the very thing that had taken him away in the first place. Jessica was at once my old enemy and my new friend. A little warmth was stirring in me as I stood there. Forgiveness, maybe. What Ada would have called my bleeding heart.
The automatic door buzzer sounded as Jessica walked out into the sunshine.