One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  “We play the odds that the devil worshipping thing is just Beecher clutching at straws.”

  “Is she any good?”

  “At what she does? One of the best.”

  “Then why discount her?”

  “Because she’s getting rushed and pressured too, and from her call, she’s feeling it.”

  Parker looked worried; he glanced up and down the street. “Well, shit. That’s comforting.”

  A few cars with bicycles on racks passed by before Napoleon spoke again. “Assistant DA’s daughter, evidently a hotshot of some kind to be getting this much support so fast and from so many people. The press is salivating over the whole thing. The nature of the crime—murder or suicide… sex, love and politics—that’s the shit they love, and since so far this case has no firm answers, they have free rein to fill in the gaps with endless speculations.”

  “You’re saying that we’re getting pushed into a meat grinder, aren’t you?” Parker asked, looking at Napoleon.

  Napoleon nodded. “I don’t think it’s anything sinister, man, just people covering their asses, especially the cap. This dipshit Fasano would’ve made things easier without the Dr. Kimble routine. But no, he goes on the run, and that really gives the press a boner. From Fasano’s perspective, he’s probably covering his ass in all of this too.”

  And there it was. Napoleon just dropped it out there like a shiny penny.

  Parker lowered his gaze and squinted at him. “So. . .you really don’t make Fasano for this? Seriously?”

  Napoleon shook his head. “Something’s not right.”

  “Wow.” Parker raised his eyebrows. “Shit.”

  Even now, Napoleon was trying to train him. How easy, he wondered, was the rookie susceptible to being led? “You agree?”

  Parker thought for a moment and then cracked his jaw. “Sorry, Nap. No. At least not yet.”

  Good job.

  “I get that, Parker. That’s not going to stop me from saying what I’m gonna say next.”

  “Which is?”

  “Get off this case, man. Somehow, some way. Say you’re sick. Create a family emergency. Hell, I’ll kneecap you if you need me to and you can go on disability for a month. Whatever. Just get off this one. It stinks. It’s a mess and it’s a career killer.”

  Parker’s face seemed to turn to stone. He blinked but said nothing.

  So Napoleon did. “Look, we chase this down and Fasano isn’t the guy? We lose. We chase him down and he is? A defense attorney is going to lick his chops over the so-called ‘evidence’ we have so far. If we have to go down the kinky sex or whole devil worshipping path and we’re wrong? That Assistant DA will want our blood for ever casting his baby girl in such a light. The press will talk gang rape one day, blood rituals the other. You can see the headline: ‘Horny Devil Girl Gets Sacrificed.’ It’s a train just waiting to go off the tracks. The whole thing.”

  Parker whistled. “Man, Nap. When I left my station house, my sergeant, Matto—you remember him, right?”

  Napoleon nodded.

  “He told me I was a blessed man. He actually said that: ‘blessed.’ I doubt that guy has ever gone to church in his whole life. But still, he told me I was going to train with the best detective in the whole department.”

  “Yeah? Well, he always was a drinker.”

  “No, man. He meant it. And I was so excited. And here I am, on my very first case. It’s a raw one, I’ll admit. But here I am, and you’re asking me to quit?”

  Putting his hands on his hips, Napoleon looked Parker in the eye. “Kid. I’m almost done. My career is almost tapped out. You understand? You’re young, just getting started. From what little I’ve seen so far in a whole three days? You’ve got potential. This case ruins me, I still got my pension. But you? You’ll need to get a damned job at In & Out. Trust me.”

  Parker smiled and shook his head. “Ya know, I haven’t told you anything about me because you haven’t asked. Shit, we haven’t even had a beer together yet.”

  Nor could we, Napoleon thought, because you don’t know about that AA chip in my pocket with the VIII on it, eight years now and counting, and of having to fight “the desesperación” without the sweet help of a good scotch. It was true. They hardly knew each other.

  Parker continued. “But for the record, I served two tours in Afghanistan, in the beginning, that is, when that shit was real beyond real. My first gig? I was at Kamdesh. You wanna talk about a mess? Anyway… the one thing you learn right away is that the guys always trying to cover their own asses?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re the first ones to die.”

  There was a moment of silence as the breeze picked up and carried some loose leaves across their feet and under an Acura parked nearby.

  “If you want to survive hell,” Parker added, “you gotta cover the backs of the guys who are in it with you. For some reason… I mean, it don’t always work out… but most of the time, for some reason, that’s how you survive.”

  Napoleon could see from Parker’s eyes that he was now back in that desert, if only for a few seconds. Napoleon wanted to argue, but he knew this look, the one etched now in Parker’s face. It wasn’t naïve and it wasn’t innocent, in any way. It was the look you earned in the street when it made you harder than you ever imagined you could be. Whether that street was made of asphalt in Boyle Heights or sand in Kamdesh, it didn’t matter. “So that’s it then?”

  “I ain’t going anywhere, partner. Fuck the politics and fuck the politicians. Let’s just get Fasano.”

  Napoleon smiled sadly. “Okay then. Fine. But why?”

  “For one, I’m still not buying that he’s innocent, no matter what you say, but also… because this thing started with him, it only makes sense that it will most likely end with him too.”

  “Very good, Parker.”

  They were crawling into the car, which had become their traveling home, when Napoleon got the call from Sheriff Conch in Beaury.

  “Hello?”

  “Detective Villa?” Conch asked, his voice obscured by the wind wherever he was.

  “Yeah. Sheriff Conch, right?”

  “Yep. I got some news.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know where your boy went, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t go south.”

  Remembering the blank look they’d found on Mr. Reardon’s face and the baby fit that Mr. Klein had thrown, Napoleon smirked. “Welcome to the club.”

  AFTER PAYING the day fee at the YMCA and taking the longest, hottest shower of his life, Kyle changed into a pair of jeans and the blue t-shirt that were in his duffel bag. Then, as The Gray Man had instructed, he took the bus to Monterey and made his way to the Starbucks on the ground floor of the old Monterey Canning Company, a huge red building on Cannery Row that was across the street from Steinbeck Plaza.

  It was small but cozy, with beige tile floors and the usual assortment of round tables and chairs that surrounded a large leather sofa. He’d made the short walk from the bus stop to here through a slight fog that was developing as the afternoon grew to a close.

  Kyle ordered a butter croissant and a tall Pike, out of habit, and took up a chair at a table opposite the counter that had a clear view of the front door. A growing discomfort began to overtake him; he already felt like a stalker, and he hadn’t even seen her yet.

  And what if she saw him and recognized him? It could go either way, really. She might be happy or completely put off. His story would be that he was in town on business, but if she asked for details he was going to fumble around, he knew it, and that might creep her out. Normally he could play a lot of things cool, but this was different. This was Victoria. Playing it cool with your first love after twenty years was not an option. Not making an ass of himself was really the best he could hope for.

  His stomach pushed back at his first sip of coffee, and he realized that he was beyond nervous. Just the thought of seeing her, after all this time, seemed to make this entire t
hing more real than any powers or demon attacks could. What was he going to say to her? What could he say to her?

  He sat there for over an hour, sipping at his coffee and picking at the croissant, when she walked in.

  Instantly he chastised himself for ever believing that he would be ready for the moment. He wasn’t. Instead, the universe tilted to a stop, plain and simple. His breathing slowed and his mind was arrested by her presence. She was here, right in front of him, and he drank her up.

  She was wearing a beige long-sleeved cotton top with the collar down and the sleeves rolled to her forearms, white dress slacks and brown heels. She was maybe fifteen feet away from where he was sitting, the third person in line, and had a confident air about her as she thumbed her smartphone.

  She glanced around, thankfully missing Kyle’s table entirely, and he saw that her dark chocolate-brown eyes were the same. Her hair was different, though: it used to be soft-brown with natural highlights of blond from the beach, but now it was as dark a brown as her eyes. It was styled now too, but fell to the same shoulder length it used to be.

  She was still thin and had small breasts, her cleavage partially exposed, her shirt loosened a few buttons. From what little he’d read on the internet, she’d married into money. Yet she hadn’t altered her body, and her face looked her age, with small crow’s feet just beginning to sprout at the corners of her eyes, barely visible from the glare of the overcast sky outside, which also made her lip gloss shine. Same old Victoria; she wore very little makeup. The light freckles dotting her cheeks and nose, like a net could catch your eyes and draw them to hers.

  He forced himself to look away before she saw him staring and so he could catch his breath. There was no denying the ache in his heart, as real as any Shakespearean sonnet could ever describe. It was a melancholy pain, undecided between recognizing what was and what might’ve been, but it was accompanied by an odd relief that she was still so similar to the girl he remembered. So much had changed over the years. It seemed natural to cling to the few things that didn’t.

  Glancing back her way, he saw her look up, twice, at a young Latin barista with tattooed arms and a small hoop in his nose, and who was busy churning out lattes and mochas at the far end of the counter. When their eyes finally met, a mutually flirtatious smile was exchanged.

  Kyle no sooner felt a twinge of jealousy than he felt it smothered by the sudden realization that this might be the very man she was planning an affair with. If he was, Kyle wondered what she was thinking. He was just a kid, barely out of college.

  Yeah. Like Caitlyn. The thought shamed him instantly.

  When it was her turn in line, she ordered a cappuccino with two espresso shots and made her way to the barista’s counter. Again, a smile was exchanged between them, but Victoria didn’t seem so confident anymore.

  The two of them began to talk. When she spoke it was with the same voice he remembered, and this seemed to hurt more than anything, because Kyle realized a person’s voice stayed locked in our hearts forever. This same voice had whispered so many things to him, and he’d been so damn deaf. Now, that voice was asking the barista silly questions while Victoria giggled like a schoolgirl in response to his answers.

  Kyle noted the rock on the ring finger of Victoria’s left hand, and this bothered him.

  You should at least take off your ring.

  Like I did. Another pang of guilt struck him. What was the Bible verse? “Let he without sin…”

  No. He wouldn’t allow himself to believe this about Victoria. She was just harmlessly flirting. But then the last patron stepped away from the counter and gave Victoria and the barista a moment to chat privately.

  “You’re a little late for your 3:00 p.m. caffeine boost,” the barista teased.

  “Yeah. We’ve been busy today.”

  “You’re still missing your other half?”

  “Yeah. His trip was extended.”

  “That sucks. I’m used to making his Americano along with your drink,” he replied, smooth and easy. As if he really cared about her husband or making his Americano.

  Tamara laughed softly. “Yeah. Some stupid disagreement over the exchange rate or something.”

  He smiled. “So how long before he gets home?”

  Kyle watched his first love pause, as if she was weighing the intent of this question. Then she locked her eyes with the boy in a way that made Kyle want to squirm. No, Kyle thought, you don’t know what you’re doing, Victoria. Trust me. You don’t want to do this.

  “A few more days,” she finally said.

  “And the kids?”

  “Visiting their aunt and cousins.”

  “Hmm.” He smiled. “Gotta be getting pretty lonely by now. You should buy me dinner sometime.”

  Victoria laughed. “Oh really? I should buy you dinner?”

  “Hey, I’m just a poor coffee shop boy. You’re the one with the raging wine shop on the pier.”

  Victoria glanced behind her. There had been an odd lull in caffeine addicts thus far, but the line was beginning to form again. Their private time was about to end.

  She had just enough time to make a fateful decision. Smiling shyly she said, “Ya know? Why not? We can grab some Italian from the new place down the street.”

  The barista smiled, his teeth pure white, his hair spiked with gel. “That sounds fantastic. When?”

  “Tomorrow night should be good. You working in the morning?”

  “Yep. Nine to five.”

  To Kyle, Victoria seemed nervously excited, and at the same time a bit reluctant, as if what she was doing had just hit her. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow morning and we’ll figure out the details.”

  “Cool deal.”

  A sudden sorrow came over Kyle. Though he would never trade Tamara for anything in the world, there was a part of him that mourned. It was his younger self, the self that didn’t yet know Tamara and only knew Victoria’s touch, her kiss. His seventeen-year-old self had awoken briefly, beneath the shades of the blinds in this quiet little Starbucks, and rolled over to glance across the years to have one more look at the love it had squandered, so long ago.

  “See you then,” Victoria said as she turned and then walked past Kyle, coming within a few feet of him. The heels of her shoes tapped on the hard floor as she went by and the spell was broken; Kyle blinked.

  She belonged to someone else now. She was someone else now. She would never be his again, and the finality of that fact was a good thing. He wasn’t the same either. He may have blown it as a dumb kid, but he’d found the love of his life already. She was miles away from him, but still, oddly, right there.

  Because the heart may allow itself to wander occasionally, to look at what was or what might be, but it always returned its focus to the one it truly loved.

  For Kyle, that woman would always be Tamara.

  She wasn’t his past or his present.

  She was his now and his everything.

  CHAPTER 22

  Tamara went inside determined to check on the kids and then cry on Trudy’s shoulder about Kyle’s card and about what had happened with Ben, but as she closed the front door a sense of resolve overtook her. She was tired of doing nothing, of simply existing in the midst of her circumstances, nearly hopeless, because she knew that on some level it took her almost completely out of the presence of God, and she knew better than to let that happen.

  As an only child and having been raised by missionary parents whose efforts over the years spanned many villages throughout Bolivia, Tamara had learned early on to be self-sufficient. She also learned the value of hard work in poor circumstances.

  She was homeschooled along with the other children who were part of their church group, a lot of the faces changing over the years as various families switched missions or dropped out altogether.

  Her mother was a great teacher. Tamara took her SATs at seventeen, scoring so high that Duke was more than happy to accept her application, even offering her a partial scholarship
in light of her parents’ limited financial resources.

  Yet somehow that child, who had toiled in the fields and learned Spanish by eight, had fallen a long way down to the place she was now, where she would wait by the phone or pine over the mail. She should’ve known better and she was tired of not knowing better.

  Her faith in God should have been strong enough to have handled this without her crumbling so entirely. But she’d gotten away from her faith, hadn’t she? Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. The last few years it had been lukewarm at best.

  Her frustrations with her husband and their marriage were part of it, yes, but working so much and missing all the time with the kids had taken a toll too.

  At some point her prayers to God had become more about what she didn’t have than what she did have. She allowed herself to be filled with a cavalcade of worries: that she wasn’t a good mom, that she wasn’t good at her job, and that she would prove all the clichés about working moms right.

  “Remember, honey, the devil knows your number. And he never stops hitting redial,” her mother said one day when Tamara was about thirteen. They were helping to build an irrigation system in a small town just outside of Sucre. “You worry too much about things, this or that. Don’t be such a worrier. Get on with being a doer.”

  Tamara had mostly taken that advice to heart, but it was a long way from Sucre, Bolivia to La Canada, California, with a lot of twists and turns along the way. Somewhere, she’d just sort of dropped Jesus off on a corner and then kept on going.

  No more.

  After an early dinner of Hamburger Helper and potato chips, Trudy had gone to bed early, exhausted from staying up so late the night before and her inner clock still being on Eastern Time from her business trip. The kids were playing Xbox together in the living room. Tamara knew what she was going to do.

  She prayed. First she prayed for her children to be okay through all of this, then for her husband’s safety, that the police wouldn’t hurt him, then for Caitlyn’s soul and for her family’s comfort in their time of mourning, that the real killer would be found and, lastly, Tamara prayed for herself. She prayed for the wisdom to know how to proceed and for forgiveness for what had happened with Ben.