MOUNT VERNON/ANTELOPE VALLEY
Park drove to Carla’s house cop-fast. Passing headlights threw up weird shapes in his eyes. He saw the little girl in the shapes. The one who had called him. The one he’d let down.
He’d missed her. He wouldn’t miss again.
Park hit the apartment complex at speed. He stomped brakes, tires squealed. He left the car in the fire zone, fuck-you-I’m-a-cop style. He double-timed the stairs to Carla’s apartment. Bam bam bam on the door, fuck-you-I’m-a-cop style.
Carla had sleep boogers and terror in her eyes.
“Detective—”
“Invite me in,” Park said. Cops were like vampires that way. They had to be invited in. She stepped aside. He came in. Her house was chaos. Everything was chaos right now.
“You got a brother in Chino,” he said.
“What’s he got to do with this?”
“Nothing at all,” Park said, “except I can touch him, and that’s how I’m going to touch you.”
“Is that blood?” she asked. Park looked down on his shirt. Blood spatter from when Park had broken the john’s nose at the motel. The one he thought was Nate McClusky.
“Yeah,” he said to Carla. Saw the fear jolt in her. It jolted him back. The thing in his brain whispered chase it. He picked up a beer bottle from the table. He thought about the little girl. How scared she’d sounded. He threw the bottle against the wall. There was only a part of him that felt bad when Carla screamed.
They’d been camped out at the motel for three hours when they caught the guy creeping in the bushes. When a uni radioed that a white guy had just crawled out the back window of one of the units, Park ran from his hiding spot. He hit the guy elbow first. He heard a crunch like celery snapping. He turned the guy over already knowing from the guy’s soft body that he wasn’t Nate. Just some dumb son of a bitch who had himself a fifty-dollar hooker in his room and saw one of the unis, thought it was a bust and went out the back window.
Pretty soon after that Park knew it was a dead end. He called off the stakeout. They grabbed the manager and went into Nate’s motel room. They found luggage. They found fast food bags in the trash. Park left a plainclothes to sit on the place in case they came back. But Park knew they’d missed them.
He should have gone home from there. He should have gone to sleep. He didn’t. The woman from the gas station had known something. He radioed in for Carla’s home address. He chewed nails while he drove to her.
“Your brother,” he said once he’d given the apartment a once-over. “He’s an Aryan Steel wannabe up in Chino.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“I did a favor once,” Park said. “Guy named Joker. He runs Chino for La Eme. Now I know white people are used to running shit, so maybe you don’t know. In California the whiteboys are outnumbered six to one. Aryan Steel takes a backseat to La Eme. So if I call in my chit with Joker and tomorrow your brother is bunking with the carnales, it’s not gonna go well for him.”
Carla moaned.
“Nate McClusky,” he said. “You saw him. You saw his daughter.”
Carla nodded yes. She was scared preverbal.
“You ever live in Fontana, Carla?”
She nodded yes.
“You knew Nate from there?”
Yes.
“He was there to see you, wasn’t he?”
Yes.
“He was there with one of his buddies from lockup.”
No.
“The guy he fought with, he didn’t come with him?”
No. Something pinned behind her eyes. Something she had her jaw latched shut to keep inside her. Something clawing and biting to get out.
“Tell me,” he said, and watched her unlock.
“I sold Nate out. They were going to hurt my brother if I didn’t.”
“Who?”
“The Steel. They’re the ones who killed Avis and her husband.”
Park laughed, jagged, scaring Carla, scaring himself.
“Nate McClusky killed Avis and Tom Huff.”
Carla shook her head no.
“Guy walks out of jail, kidnaps his daughter, the wife winds up dead and you want me to think he didn’t kill her?”
She nodded that’s right.
“Use your words, Carla.”
“He took Polly ’cause he knew Avis was dead already. And Polly was next. He saved her life, you stupid son of a bitch.”
Goddamn it.
He believed her.
That fucked up everything.