Nicole stepped off the elevator on the second floor and into a small lobby. She followed the signs to the business office and conference center but did not find Joaquin there. When she and Lars left the room, Dr. Esparza between them but not cuffed, Joaquin had been nowhere to be seen. She’d thought he’d gone ahead, found the conference room and waited, slouched in one of the padded chairs at the long table, but the room was so empty that her footsteps echoed on the travertine tiles.
She returned to the elevator and pressed the call button but didn’t board. She’d caught movement out of the corner of her eye, a flash of cobalt blue that could have been Joaquin’s parka, and she followed it around the curving corridor and into a sitting area.
Joaquin stood with his shoulder propped against a rustic beam, a panel of windows behind him showcasing the snowfall. His dark eyes were somber, but he met her gaze and held on.
“He confessed, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Joaquin nodded. “That was plan B,” he said, and a smirk twisted his lips. “He got there pretty fast.”
“What was plan A?”
“Denial. We’re good at that. We’ve been living in it for years. Maybe forever.”
“What have you been denying?”
He shrugged. “Lots of things. We pretend that we’re as good as everybody else. Better, even. That’s really big in my house. My parents still have the accents—Mexico City. Both of them, but if you ask them where they’re from, they always say San Diego. We live in a big house with a view of the ocean, drive new cars. My mother will only buy us clothes with a label on them, but it has to be the right label, and that’s always changing. She wants—needs—to have everything right. Because she was poor, she says, and doesn’t want to remember it. Same reason my dad drives the Lexus and chases snow in the winter. Because he can. Now.”
He stopped and straightened. He shifted so that he was looking out the window. His eyes caught the swirling snow, and it held his attention.
Nicole followed him into the moment. He was gathering his thoughts. Steam. She saw sparks of his anger in the comments he’d made about his parents, but not as sharp as what she’d witnessed in the early hours of the morning. Loss could be a blunt object. It left a person dazed, and sometimes grateful for life and what they had left of it.
“What else, Joaquin?” Nicole asked. “What about Beatrice?”
“What did my father say?”
“That he killed her, but not much more than that.”
“He loved her,” Joaquin said. “He didn’t kill her.”
But Nicole knew that the dynamics in a family could be insidious. From their first conversation, she’d known that Joaquin had been branded as the black sheep and that Beatrice was emerging as the star. Children were often compared to one another, with one rising as a favorite. But the favored weren’t always the safest. Fourteen years on the job had made that clear to Nicole.
“Sometimes we hurt the people we love. You’re old enough to know that.”
“Yeah.” He nodded but lowered his forehead to the window. The snow was thick and frenzied. Flakes hit the glass and melted, leaving a thin film of moisture that quickly turned into ice and then slid down the pane and back into the cycle of precipitation. “Love isn’t forever. It’s not even all the time.”
She stepped closer. Joaquin was taller by two inches but lighter, his slim build evident even in the parka. He still had time to grow into his body. To reach his potential, as Beatrice did not.
“What do you mean?”
“Parents don’t love their kids every minute. We make that impossible.” He turned to her and leaned back so that his head and shoulders were resting on the window pane. “I piss my dad off regularly.”
“On purpose?”
“Yeah. But I make him proud on purpose too. It’s all a choice, right?”
“What choices did Beatrice make?”
His head was tipped back, and the overhead lighting cast shadows on his sharp cheekbones and beneath his jaw. His eyelids lowered, and he stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. All signs that the defiance was returning. But he answered her.
“Bad ones.”
“Why?”
“Not always.” He shrugged. “She thought she was being good.”
Good. Good girls don’t do this …
“What does that mean, Joaquin?”
“You should ask my parents.”
“I will. But right now I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know the whole story.”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“And you’ll fill in the rest?” The smirk was back but pained. It softened his face rather than hardened it.
“I’ll dig for the rest,” she corrected. “That’s what I do, Joaquin. I find the truth.”
“Why?”
“So your sister can rest in peace. And so that you can too.”
That made him tear up. He swallowed, and Nicole could almost hear him choke on his sadness.
“My father—” he began, his voice thick with emotion. “He’s deep into something. It’s not good. Medicine is supposed to be good, but not when it mixes with greed.”
“Your father is greedy?”
“He wants to be someone, you know?”
“He’s a doctor,” Nicole pointed out.
Joaquin shook his head. “Not good enough. Not for him.”
“So what did he do about that?”
“How good are you?” he wanted to know, and an intensity entered his eyes. More anger than revenge; more light than dark. Hope, maybe. “At finding the truth?”
“I won’t disappoint you,” she told him.
He considered her words and found promise in them.
“I think he sold his research,” Joaquin disclosed.
“What kind of research?”
“I don’t know. Something with cancer, for sure, because that’s what he does. I just remember hearing him for years complain about being so close, if he could only get the hospital to pay for this or that, or get him some equipment he needed that would make a difference.” He pushed away from the wall and stood over her, his hands now resting on his hips. “But that changed. Suddenly he was on cloud nine, you know? Walking around the house and saying things like ‘I’m the man’ and ‘I finally did it. Me, a hungry little boy from south of the border.’”
“And you don’t know what he did, Joaquin?”
He shook his head. “He called it Nueva Vida.”
New life. Nueva Vida. Beatrice had scrawled the words in her diary, sometimes in sweeping letters, other times etched short and sharply into the paper.
“How was Beatrice involved in Nueva Vida?” What bad decision had the victim made that could have led to her death?
“She knew,” he said simply.
“She knew what your father’s breakthrough was?”
“Yeah. She knew, and she didn’t like where he was taking it.”
Had Beatrice done something to stop her father? Had she threatened to?
“How do you know she didn’t like it?” she pressed.
“She said so. And they argued about it.”
“Your father ever lose his cool?”
“Sure, but never with Bea. She was giving too much of herself already to ‘the cause.’”
“How so?”
“I think she was the human sacrifice.”
“‘Lab rat,’” she quoted. “Your last text to your sister.”
Regret rippled across his face. “Exactly.”
“Why do you think so?”
But he shrugged and his lips pressed together in mutiny. Nicole waited. She eased back on her heels and watched him.
“I’m the help, Joaquin,” she said.
“My father lied to you. The old Bea, she was strong and healthy. But that changed last summer. She got sick all the time. She looked like she was dying. Sometimes. Then suddenly she was better than ever.” He shook his head, bewildered.
“And you think your father used Beatrice to test his breakthrough?”
“She would die for us,” he said. “And maybe she did.”
“Explain that.”
“Whatever my dad was doing, it was too much. Bea said so. She told him she wasn’t enough to make a difference. That it would take many more. They argued about that, a lot.”
“Many more what?”
“She didn’t say, and when I asked questions, Bea clammed up. But I think she was talking about test subjects. I think she was the only one, and Bea worried that wasn’t enough.”
“But she didn’t quit?”
“No. My father said she was the traction they needed. She would get them the attention necessary. She was the catalyst for change. And Bea went with it.”
“Maybe your father wouldn’t let her quit.”
But Joaquin was shaking his head. “Bea wouldn’t give up. She was a people pleaser. She did it to help my father, but to save the world too, because she had that kind of heart. Open to everyone.”
“Was your father’s discovery big enough it would change the world?”
“I don’t know. But my father is not altruistic.”
“And Beatrice was?”
He nodded. “And naïve. That was the problem. They fought about that more than anything else. You want to know about Bea’s bad decisions? Here’s a big one, the worst it can get: she wanted to save the world, and she was willing to die to do it.”
Nicole let that rest. She had other questions, other possibilities to explore.
“Would she defy your father, take his discovery to someone who cared?”
“No. She would never do that. She loved our father, our family. We always came first.”
Strong words, but Nicole had seen family sell each other out for less. She changed direction.
“Who’s Kenny?” she asked.
Joaquin’s upper lip curled into a smile that was more cruelty than kindness.
“I told Bea she needed to scrape him off her shoe.”
“You don’t like him?”
“No one does.”
“Except maybe Beatrice did,” she pointed out.
“I told you, she liked everyone.”
“But was he her boyfriend?”
“I hope not.”
“But it’s possible?”
“She wouldn’t tell me if it was true. She knew how I felt about him.”
“How do you know Kenny?”
“What do you know about the world of the wealthy?” Joaquin countered.
“From the inside? Nothing,” she admitted. “So educate me.”
“Protégé.” He said the word like it was explanation enough, but continued when Nicole frowned. “Protect the legacy. That’s number one. The spoken creed. You can’t take it with you, and that really sucks. Worse, though, is if you can’t trust it will survive future generations. So parents groom. And that’s Kenny.”
“The groomed?”
“Exactly.”
“And you despise him for it?”
“That and other reasons.”
“You’re the son of a wealthy man,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but I’m the outcast. The black sheep.” He laughed curtly, and it cut through the air like an explosion of glass. “Remember?” he prompted. “My father gave up on me.”
“And focused instead on Beatrice.” She let that sink in. “Did you hate her for it?”
He shook his head. “You don’t get it. A protégé has to be ruthless.”
“And that wasn’t Beatrice?”
“She didn’t have the right stuff either.”
And Nicole wrestled with his earlier words, how Beatrice had been willing to die if it helped others.
“Because she would give it all away?”
“Exactly. My father hoped she would change.”
“But you didn’t think so?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“So who’s Kenny?” she tried again.
“The son of one of my father’s colleagues. One of the men from a Big Six pharm company. We saw a lot of them for a while. I guess that’s what they do—throw our families together and pretend it’s a good mix.”
“What was wrong with Kenny? Other than the grooming?”
“Entitlement,” Joaquin said. “He was so full of it, it floated in the air around him.”
And a trait common in date rapists. Nicole felt her stomach tilt.
“And Beatrice felt the same way,” Nicole said. “She didn’t believe in privilege either.”
“She was better at it,” he said. “She could find something to like about everyone.”
“What did she like about Kenny?”
“His father.” The words were tangled in Joaquin’s disdain. “Another ‘big man.’ Another rags-to-riches success story. Beatrice was impressed. She believed he wanted my father’s cure available to everyone, not just the lucky few.”
And that made Joaquin mad. She could hear it as his voice grew tight and his words sharp.
“The lucky few? You mean the rich,” Nicole said.
“Yeah.”
“And he could do it, because he was the CEO of a Big Six?”
“Could, but wouldn’t. That world is all about money.”
“Does he have a name? Kenny’s father.”
“Michael King.”
“Did you see a lot of him?”
“No. My father and Beatrice did, though.”
“Is that where your father and Beatrice were headed on December sixteenth?” she asked, and then prompted, “There’s a text thread running between you and your sister that day. She was with your father, driving and getting nowhere—do you remember it?”
Joaquin nodded. “They were supposed to meet with King.”
“But they never made it?”
“No.”
“You didn’t have a lot of sympathy.”
Regret flickered again in his eyes.
“Crazy days,” he said. “The pressure at home, it was intense. It was like living inside a balloon that grew bigger every day. It hurt my ears. My back was always up, waiting for the explosion, you know?”
“Someone was going to burst from it?”
He nodded. “I thought it would be me.” He shook his head, mystified. “That day it looked like it would be my father. They drove for hours and got nowhere.”
“When they got home, what did your father say about it?”
“Nothing. The usual. The big man was stepping up. All that bullshit. My mother said he was ready to make a decision. It was a very important time for him. But he was like, manic, always moving, talking. He never shut up, and none of it made any sense.”
“Because you weren’t in on the secret.”
“Right.”
“What did Beatrice say?”
“Nothing. She was mad at me. The ‘lab rat’ thing. I wish I hadn’t said it, but I believed it.”
“Did your mother ever try to stop what was happening?”
He shook his head. “She believes in him.”
It was that simple. His words, his tone, his demeanor said as much.
“It didn’t bother her that he was using Beatrice or that she was getting sick?”
“They both agreed that she was the one—you know, the other doctor in the family. Beatrice would keep us first class. Because money isn’t everything. The one thing it can’t buy is position.”
And that should have been Joaquin’s role.
“What about you, Joaquin? What will you do for the family?” Contribution. She remembered it from his text message. It was a weighted word, full of expectation.
“Early acceptance into college—that you can buy. My grades aren’t good enough for a scholarship or even admission under normal circumstances. But my father’s money and reputation have made it possible. And that really pisses him off. By my age he had his feet under him. He was already going places and under his own steam.”
“You disappoint him,” she said.
She expected the comment to draw sparks, but Joaquin became reflective.
“My mom believes I’ll settle down. She says I have the fire, I just need to redirect it.”
“And it didn’t bother you, all the attention Beatrice received from your father?”
He met her gaze. “I loved her.”
And in his own words, people who loved didn’t murder.
“Why did your family come to Montana?”
“Vacation. At Christmas it’s always about the snow, but my father invited some pharm guys. He said this was it. His round table.”
That struck a chord with Nicole. “You mean like King Arthur?”
“Yeah. Bea was really into all that. Knights and the perfect quest. Fairy tales.”
Beatrice had believed, and she had championed her father’s cause.
“What did he expect to happen at the meeting?”
“He was going to let the dogs loose. That’s what he called it, and it was pretty accurate. A lot of the pharm guys were foaming at the mouth. They didn’t like my father’s discovery. Or they didn’t like what it would do to them. Except one or two, and they were the big guns. The ones who could afford to play the game.”
To pay the price for Nueva Vida.
“When was that—the round table?”
“Christmas Day.”
“And you saw Beatrice after that?”
He nodded, but he looked away from her, his eyes ricocheting around the room. “I told you I did.”
“You also said you went to bed before her.”
“And you don’t believe that?”
“No. There’s a lot about last night that isn’t lining up. Maybe you did watch Fast and Furious, and maybe you did brew hot chocolate while sitting in front of the TV, but I think you did all that alone. Beatrice was long gone by then. And I think you have a very good reason for covering it up.”
His face was set, but he swallowed and said, “What reason?”
“What size shoe do you wear, Joaquin?”
The question confused him, but he answered. “Ten.”
“And your father?”
“I don’t know. Smaller.”
“Where did you go last night?” She wanted him to say he’d gone to Beatrice. That he had tried to find her. That he had answered her call for help. “That thread on your sister’s cell phone—her last message was to you. She sent it last night. ‘SOS.’”
She watched the enormity of it wash over him. His sister’s last text. Hope dwindling, she’d reached out to him. It hit him hard, shock having a rippling effect, loosening the tension in his face. His shoulders and arms became liquid, his knees soft.
“I didn’t go.” His voice was thick with emotion. “I should have; I wanted to. I got dressed. I was putting on my boots when my mom saw me. I told her I was going to find Bea, and she … It was my mother. She went.”
“Where?”
“To pick up Beatrice.”