REMY DROPPED ME in the alley behind 13th Street, and I made my way along the backs of buildings until I found the place. A beaten-up brick apartment building with a door that led in from the back alley.
I stepped into a small lobby. The area smelled like a wet dog, and green Astroturf was peeling up in the corners.
The main purpose of the lobby appeared to be housing the residents’ mailboxes, nearly all of them shoved full of flyers and door-hangers. A trash can held even more junk mail, along with a pizza box and an empty six-pack of Rolling Rock.
I threw my satchel over my back, leaving both of my arms free. I grabbed the pizza box and tucked my .22 under my shirt.
Upstairs I knocked on the door to apartment 219.
“Domino’s,” I said. Holding up the logo in front of the eyehole.
A woman opened the door. She was heavyset, with long black hair and a flowing dress with orange paisleys. Her skin was so red it looked like she used sandpaper as a washcloth.
“I ain’t ordered no pizza.”
“Well, I don’t have any,” I said, tossing the box and shoving my foot in the door.
“He ain’t here,” she said. Nonplussed.
“I haven’t said who I’m looking for.”
“You’re a cop or a PO, and y’all ask the same question.”
I pulled out my .22 and pointed it at her head, pushing the door open.
“How ’bout now? He here now? Does his PO do this?”
She was tough, but scared, and she shook her head slowly from left to right.
I pushed my way inside and closed the door behind me, her eyes registering fear as I locked the dead bolt.
“We alone?”
She nodded, and I pulled her close as I cleared the place, my fist holding on to a handful of her hair. “Stay with me, sister,” I said. “He pops out of a door, and you’re a dead woman.”
I pushed her into the bedroom. No one there. Then the kitchen. An old farmhouse sink was piled a foot high with filthy pots and pans.
As we moved out of the kitchen, she grabbed a skillet and came at me. I blocked it with my forearm and twisted her arm behind her back. Shoved her against the wall.
I hadn’t noticed until then, but she was missing a tooth. Where her right incisor should’ve been was just a reddish-black socket of blood.
“Tell me where the fuck Cobb is,” I said. “Him and that goddamn giant.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I bent her arm farther back and felt her wince.
“I got no idea,” she hollered.
I spun her around so we were face-to-face. “Then you’re worth nothing to me.”
I put the barrel of my .22 in her mouth.
She twisted her head to get the barrel out from between her lips. “Wait.” She started crying. “He’s with those rich people.”
“I need a name.”
“I think it’s Jester? Or Hesmer?”
“Hester?” I asked, pushing the gun against her cheek now.
Her head bobbed up and down.
“Where?” I said.
“They’re in Shonus.”
I pressed the barrel harder to her face.
“He thinks he’s one of them,” she said. “Them against the blacks.”
My mind was spinning, confused.
Wade Hester had almost been killed the same night I got poisoned. Remy said he was innocent.
I knew I couldn’t trust her not to call Cobb, so I dragged her across the room. Used a zip tie to fasten her to the heater pipe in the bedroom. I stood up.
“What the fuck,” she cried. “You gonna leave me here?”
I turned on the TV. Tossed her the remote. Grabbed a bag of pork rinds and two beers from the fridge. Gave them to her. “If you’re not lying, I’ll be back tomorrow and let you go.”
A minute later I popped out of the back alley and walked casually to the street. Got in the Charger.
“Was he there?” Remy asked.
“His girlfriend was,” I said. I turned to my partner. “The Hesters—we figured they were clean, right?”
Remy nodded. “Wade was almost in a coma from the same poison that got you.”
I needed to connect something. For this to make sense.
“That’s not what the girlfriend says.”
Remy looked confused, and I fired up the ignition, calling Captain Andy Sugarman, the cop up in Shonus County.
“P.T.,” he said. “I’m surprised to hear from you.”
“How’s that?”
“I heard they pulled your ticket.”
“Almost,” I said. “Your boy Wade Hester saved my job. Him throwing back a couple cups of that coffee after I left,” I said. “It put that maid of his on the run and tied her son, Donnie, in a neat little bow for us.”
“What can I do for you then?” Sugarman asked.
“I felt bad about Wade. Calling to check on how he’s doing?”
“Okay, I guess,” Sugarman said. “But I think the whole thing caused a split between the old man and him.”
“He tell you that?”
“A deputy of mine,” Sugarman said. “He talked to one of their security patrols. I guess Wade moved to their house on the river. Told security to stay away. His old man to stay even farther.”
I hung up and thought this over. Maybe the younger Hester didn’t know what was going on with the Order. Or maybe he’d chosen not to know, until his father’s bullshit almost killed him.
I got onto SR-914 toward Shonus. I could’ve asked Sugarman where the Hesters’ second home was, but I didn’t want him to know I was nosing around in his backyard.
I asked Remy to pull up a map of the area on her iPad.
“Any street that runs along the Opagucha River?” I asked.
“Two of them,” Remy said. “Windy Vista and Highland.”
I called our office and got ahold of Donna, my friend in admin. Asked her if anyone named Hester owned property on either road.
“Are you supposed to be working, P.T.?” Donna asked.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m checking out real estate. Thinking of changing occupations. Think you’d buy from me if I was a realtor and you saw my face on a bus bench?”
“Not a chance,” Donna said. Then she told me the address.