A young black woman with short tightly-curled hair stared back at Fenway. Fenway had seen her before—both in Natalie’s office and at Dr. Barry Klein’s press conference.
“Sascha?”
She nodded. “Come on in,” she said.
Fenway hesitated. She hadn’t expected to see the reporter from The Estancia Courier.
“This is what you came for, right?” Sascha asked. “So come on in. I’m kind of surprised someone put it together.”
Fenway followed Sascha into the living room.
There, on the sofa, with two bowls of soup in front of her on the coffee table, was Rachel.
“Hi, Fenway,” Rachel said quietly.
“Are you okay?”
“For now.” Rachel nodded. “I’m safe here, for the time being.”
“What are you talking about?” Fenway said, exasperated. “This is one of the least safe places you can be.”
“I guess you haven’t figured everything out,” Sascha said. She pulled a badge out of her purse. Gold with dark blue lettering, with an eagle, wings spread, the badge had a small seal in the middle, a large U on the left and large S on the right, and just below the eagle, the letters ATF.
“Craig was right,” Fenway muttered. “The ATF.”
“Special Agent Robin Orlando,” she said. “You probably also know me as James Monroe.”
Fenway blinked.
“We’re working on taking down a new opioid network before it gets up and running.”
“Red Skies.”
“Right. The sheriff’s department made a grab of part of the last shipment last night when they rescued Olivia Jenkins.”
Fenway nodded. “I heard.”
“And you might have heard of one of the shell companies associated with it.”
“SRB.”
“Right.”
“But what is Rachel doing here?” Fenway asked. “Shouldn’t you get her to safety?”
Special Agent Robin Orlando squinted at Fenway. “This is safety,” she said. “This is well-protected. Rachel’s going to stay here until we catch the man trying to kill her.”
“The man?” Fenway was incredulous. “Isn’t the head of the network Elena Valenzuela?”
Agent Orlando cocked her head to the side. “What do you know about Elena Valenzuela?”
“I know that it’s Natalie’s real name,” Fenway said. “I know that somebody classified her personnel file. And I know she’s been missing ever since her discharge from the Marine Corps. And I’m pretty sure she took over El Magnate’s network after he went to jail.”
Agent Orlando shook her head. “No, Fenway. Elena Valenzuela has been working for the ATF since she got out of the military. She’s the one who took down El Magnate.”
Fenway’s eyes widened.
“She’s been undercover for over a decade.”
Fenway looked at Rachel. She nodded.
Agent Orlando folded her arms. “We recruited Elena into the ATF. She’s helped infiltrate several opioid distribution networks. We got word of a new, hot opioid coming out on the market—especially dangerous because it wasn’t classified as an opioid.”
“Nozithrapham,” Fenway said, automatically.
Agent Orlando nodded. “And they worked really hard to keep it off the ATF’s radar. Falsified clinical trial data, for example.”
“Like the mother of Alan Patrick Scorrelli,” Fenway said. “Gottfried Ebner falsifying all kinds of data, right?”
“For coming to the wrong conclusion, you sure figured out a hell of a lot,” Agent Orlando said.
“But who’s they?” Fenway asked. “If not Natalie, then who’s trying to become El Magnate Nuevo?” As soon as the words left her lips, she knew. “Oh,” she said. “He just announced his candidacy for coroner this morning.”
Fenway’s phone dinged. She pushed the Model 41 aside in her purse and pulled the phone out. It was a text from Kav.
Ink from Rachel’s suicide note matches credit card receipt from Maxime’s – same ink batch
Then about ten seconds later:
APB on Everett Michaels – we want him for questioning
Then one more:
I know he’s friends with your dad – call and warn him
“Everett Michaels is behind everything?” Fenway asked.
“That’s right,” said Rachel.
Fenway turned to Agent Orlando. “Why haven’t you moved on him yet?” she demanded. “You’ve let him kill our mayor and a P.I.—and kidnap a little girl?”
Agent Orlando shook her head. “We can’t just scoop him up off the street,” she said. “For the last few weeks, we were trying to get him through Carpetti’s financial records. He’s overseen literally thousands of hidden payments.”
“And Fletcher Jenkins brought you the information.”
Agent Orlando nodded. “And his mother.”
“So how did she end up dead at Cactus Lake Motel?”
Rachel sighed. “I don’t know,” she said sadly. “I assume Everett Michaels found out some way to get her there.”
“We have a theory,” Agent Orlando said. “And we’ve found a couple of the pieces that fit. There were two calls from a throwaway cell phone to the mayor on Friday evening. I believe someone pretended to be a friend of Fletcher’s concerned about him backsliding. Preyed on one of the mayor’s worst fears.”
“And who killed her?”
“Michaels had brought some people with him the last few days,” Agent Orlando said. “You met one of them—well, after the sheriff shot him dead.”
“Alan Patrick Scorrelli.”
“Right.”
“And the guy in the track suit.”
“We’ve identified him as Wilson Bai.”
“Did he have a relative in the clinical trials for Nozithrapham too?”
“His mother.”
“But he seemed to be more dangerous.”
“He’s wanted in connection with several stabbings in Los Angeles, yes. The short dagger, the kind that killed both the mayor and your private investigator—that’s his weapon of choice.”
Fenway turned to Rachel. “And you knew about this all along?”
Rachel hesitated. “I knew that someone high up at Carpetti Pharmaceuticals laundered money and bribed senators so that he’d be able to control the pill market.”
“Estancia was basically his test market,” Agent Orlando said. “If he could do well here, and squeeze out Norco and Oxy, we think he planned to expand to Los Angeles, and maybe the whole West Coast.”
“So why kill the mayor? And why try to kill you, Rachel?”
“About two months ago, Fletcher Jenkins found thousands, and I mean thousands, of financial anomalies in the Carpetti records,” said Agent Orlando. “It had been hidden very well, but Fletch did a bunch of digging on his own, and found all the holding companies and tracked all the payments to the senators and to many of the dealers. He went to his supervisor, and she told him to bury it.”
“Bury it?”
“We think she’s on the take too. She just paid off a bunch of credit cards. So he went to his mother, and she went to the state attorney, and the state attorney went to the ATF.”
“Right about the time that I got offered the PR job at Ferris Energy,” Rachel said, “and then right after that, this job. That didn’t seem right, so I talked to Mayor Jenkins about it. And she had a plan.”
“We had to keep the Carpetti Pharma stuff out of the press or risk Michaels getting away,” said Agent Orlando.
“And voilà,” Fenway said, “Rachel accepts the public information officer job, you go undercover as a reporter, and another of your agents goes undercover as a veteran who needs the pills for PTSD.”
“Right,” said Rachel.
“And of course,” said Fenway, “you, Agent Orlando, are the owner of the ‘classified’ fingerprints in Rachel’s office.”
“If you found classified fingerprints in Rachel’s office, yeah, they were probably mine.” She winked. “Or James Monroe’s, if you prefer.”
“You’re so undercover even your fake identity has a fake identity,” Fenway said.
Agent Orlando’s face turned serious. “We were really close to solving it,” she said. “But we didn’t think they would see Fletcher as a threat.” She pressed her lips together. “Obviously, we were wrong.”
“But why not just retire from big pharma to become a drug kingpin?” Fenway asked. “Why did Everett Michaels make a play for the coroner job?”
“Because,” Rachel said, “of the side effects of Nozithrapham in those clinical studies.”
“Like Scorrelli’s mom,” Fenway said. “She had an episode of violent rage.”
“And then died,” Rachel said.
“But if you’re the one in charge of figuring out what caused all the suspicious deaths in the county—” Agent Orlando began.
“Then you can throw all the investigations of those drug-related deaths off the trail of Red Skies,” Fenway finished. “But why the hell did Michaels kidnap Olivia?”
“Leverage for Fletch’s guilty plea,” Agent Orlando said. “If Fletch had gone to jail, Michaels would have been untouchable on that murder.”
“And,” Rachel interjected, “we think that Michaels figured all the financial anomalies that Fletch caught would have been swept away, especially since they bribed his supervisor.”
“Of course, Everett Michaels didn’t know the feds were on to him,” Agent Orlando said. “But I suspect that was his motive.”
“Didn’t you have eyes on him?” Fenway asked. “How could he kill so many people if you were following him?”
“He doesn’t do the dirty work himself, Fenway,” said Agent Orlando. “Scorrelli and Bai both owe him big. They’ve been promised distribution. But Michaels keeps his hands clean. We can’t touch him.”
“Well, now you can,” Fenway said. “The ink from the fake suicide note and the ink from a credit card receipt are matches from the same ink batch from Montblanc.”
“It’s great that it’s a match,” Agent Orlando mused, “but that doesn’t necessarily prove anything. There are lots of rich people with Montblancs in the area.”
“Not with that specific batch, I bet,” Fenway said. “And it’s enough to bring him in for questioning. We’ve got an APB out on him.”
The window behind Rachel exploded.
Fenway felt a searing pain in her left forearm.
“DOWN!” Agent Orlando yelled, jumping into a low crouch. She pulled out her gun. “GET DOWN!”
Fenway and Rachel both dove to the floor.
“Who else knew you were coming here?” Agent Orlando demanded.
“No one,” Fenway yelled. “I didn’t tell anyone.” She felt wetness and pain from the top of her arm. The bullet had hit her.
“What about your dad?”
“My father didn’t know where I was going.” She rolled onto her back and grabbed a dishtowel from the top of the coffee table.
“Did anyone follow you?”
“I don’t know.” But Fenway’s heart sank—she hadn’t been paying attention. She knew Michaels could have followed her without her registering it. She pushed the dishtowel down on top of her wound and held her arm up, above the level of her heart. It bled steadily but didn’t gush. She hoped she could get it to stop.
“You two, stay down,” Agent Orlando said. She pulled out her radio and pushed the button. “Monroe on fire, Monroe on fire. Request immediate backup.”
“They’re half an hour away,” Rachel said quietly to Fenway.
Fenway hooked the handle of her purse with her foot and pulled it up. She took her right hand off the dishtowel just long enough to take the Model 41 out and slide it over to Rachel on the floor.
“Fenway, is this my gun? What the hell?”
“Sorry,” Fenway said. “I thought I’d need it.”
“Do you even know how to use it?”
“I know you know how to use it,” Fenway said. “I’m trying not to lose blood here. Think maybe you can defend us?” She felt around the wound, a through-and-through in the muscle and tissue about two inches away from her elbow. Fortunately, it hadn’t struck bone, but she thought the bullet hit her radial artery.
“We know you did it, Everett,” Agent Orlando shouted. “The sheriff’s office just pieced it all together.”
Another shot. This one buried itself in the wall on the other side of the room.
“How do you think you’re going to get away?” the agent called out. “Do you really think you’re going to murder three people in this house and then drive five miles back to the freeway like nothing ever happened?”
Agent Orlando paused, listening carefully.
“Do you think you’re going to be able to win the election with all this blood on your hands?” she yelled. “Do you think you’re going to be able to go back to your two-thousand-dollar suits and your Montblanc pens?”
Another shot came from the other side of the house. A second window broke.
Agent Orlando called out again. “How do you think this is going down, Everett? What’s your escape plan now that everyone knows you had the mayor killed?”
“What is she doing?” Fenway whispered to Rachel. “Doesn’t she know there are two of them?”
“I think she’s trying to get him out of here. Take his private plane to Central America, maybe, without killing us first.”
“Well, tell her to stop. He knows he won’t be able to escape anywhere if he leaves us alive with cell phones and radios.” Fenway started to feel the blood seep onto her fingers. She grabbed another part of the towel and folded it on top of the wound.
“There’s two of them and three of us,” Rachel whispered. “And two of us have guns. Maybe we can take them.” She looked across the room. “Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know where Robin went.”
Fenway turned her head. Agent Orlando wasn’t there.
Fenway heard another car pulling up to the house.
“Is that another car?”
“I think so,” Rachel whispered. “I don’t know if that’s us or them. But we’re too exposed here. The kitchen is better. We can get in the corner behind the breakfast table and see what’s in front of us. I’ll have something to shoot. Now I’m trying to cover the window and the door and two other entrances.”
“And I’ll have more dishtowels,” Fenway said under her breath.
“Okay, start moving,” Rachel whispered. “And keep quiet.”
Fenway moved backward toward the kitchen, trying to keep her arm up, and didn’t get very far. The pain in her arm intensified, and she grimaced. After about ten seconds, she turned over to her hands and knees, taking the towel off her arm, and crawling as quickly and quietly as she could into the kitchen. She left a smeary trail of blood everywhere her hands touched the floor.
She saw the kitchen table and the corner she thought Rachel would want to use. Fenway scooted around to the left side of the table, next to a set of drawers. She opened the bottom drawer and found several cloth napkins. They looked expensive. Fenway promised herself she’d replace them as she pulled out the folded napkins and put two of them together, eight layers of fabric over the wound, again elevating her arm.
Three gunshots—pop, pop, pop—came from the front of the house.
“Was that Agent Orlando?” Fenway whispered.
Rachel shrugged her shoulders.
I’m not doing much good here, Fenway thought miserably. Not only had she gotten Natalie’s role in the whole thing completely wrong, but she had led the actual bad guy right to Rachel. She pursed her lips and tried to concentrate on stanching the bleeding in her arm. She started to get a little lightheaded and fought the feeling. She tried to slow her breathing so her heart rate would lessen, so she’d stop pumping the precious blood out of her body, but she couldn’t calm down.
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” she said. “I led him right to you.”
“You were trying to save me,” Rachel whispered. “Now quiet.”
There was another sound of breaking glass.
Fenway looked at Rachel.
Rachel held the gun out in front of her, calm and relaxed—just as steadily as she had held it on her father two months before. Fenway marveled at how Rachel’s hands could be so steady under pressure.
“The Marines are here to back us up, Everett,” Agent Orlando shouted. “Your buddy in the track suit is down. This won’t end well for you unless you give up.”
Natalie—Elena—had arrived, Fenway thought. And she shot Everett’s henchman.
Fenway and Rachel stared at the doorway to the living room, not moving, not daring to breathe.
Fenway started to drift.
The blood flow slowed but didn’t stop. It hadn’t soaked through the eight layers, though how much longer she could do this, she didn’t know.
“Is he gone?” she whispered.
Then she caught the scent of cardamom and bergamot.
She went on high alert.
And then Everett Michaels appeared in the doorway, gun out.
His head turned the wrong direction.
Rachel pulled the trigger on her .22.
A click. Then nothing.
Everett Michaels spun toward Rachel, seeing her sitting on the floor, and lowered his pistol to aim it right at her.
Fenway screamed, a guttural snarl, as she jumped to her feet, hands holding the two bloody cloth napkins taut in front of her, and launched herself at Everett Michaels.
He jerked when he heard the scream.
The cloth napkins caught him right over the eyes and he pulled his hands up and dropped the gun.
Fenway kept driving with her legs.
He clawed at her hands, trying to get the napkins and the blood away from his eyes.
He took two steps back and then fell backward.
Fenway had her whole weight behind herself as they fell together. He whipped his head from side to side, trying to free his eyes from the bloody napkins. Fenway tightened her grip and pushed harder.
Crack.
His temple crushed against the corner of the coffee table. Fenway smashed her left hand against the edge of the table as she went down.
He landed on the floor in an awkward position.
Fenway landed on top of him. She put an elbow into his neck and the blood-soaked napkins fell off his face.
His eyes were open but unseeing.
A trickle of blood ran onto the floor from the side of his head.
Fenway pushed herself off him. She saw Rachel, Natalie, and Agent Orlando appear above her.
“That psychotic motherfucker still smells fantastic,” she said.
Then she passed out.