One In A Million (The Millionth Trilogy Book 1) Page 22

  She went to tuck in Janie, but she was already out cold, just a soft mound under her comforter.

  Tamara went back to the living room to fetch her iPad. The house was quiet. Peeking through the blinds she noticed that the night had cast a darkness over the patio and pool out back. The small solar path-lights barely illuminated the planters next to them. Through the window Tamara thought she saw something move near the patio table. After staring at the area for a while and seeing nothing further, she called it an illusion and blamed it on the fact that she was still feeling rattled by the whole garage incident.

  She wished Trudy was awake with her, but she was still asleep, and Tamara guessed she might stay that way. She forced her focus back to the iPad and began her Google search on Victoria Duncan.

  There were no hits at first, save for on Classmates.com, which might prove useful later, but only if Victoria had kept her maiden name. For now, Tamara bet she would find better information elsewhere. She struck gold near the bottom of the first page on Google: there was a link to a PDF wedding invitation and, of all things, a reception menu. The big day had been years ago, but Victoria Duncan had married Steven Brasco in Pebble Beach, CA. Tamara nodded. She now changed her search protocol to Victoria Brasco.

  Her image came up immediately in an article from the Monterey Herald. She owned a wine shop on the boardwalk. There was another article from a fundraiser a few years back, and this one showed a picture of Victoria’s husband, an international exporter. Handsome, with black hair that was slicked back straight, he looked a little bit like a shorter and heavier Pat Riley. Their two children were also in the photo, both girls, ages eight and six at the time.

  Tamara looked at both articles again, this time focusing on just Victoria. Tamara felt her suspicions rising again, in spite of her best efforts. How many family vacations had she, Kyle and the kids taken to Monterey over the years? Five? Six? Had Kyle ever separated from her and the kids to sneak off and see Victoria on any of those trips? No obvious moment jumped into Tamara’s mind. But what if she was forgetting something?

  She sighed heavily and rubbed her eyes, the light from the iPad cocooning her in a haunting glare. The miniature grandfather clock ticked in the hallway, and with everyone else in the house now fast asleep she felt very alone. Outside, the wind chimes over the patio were brushing lightly together, spilling echoes into the air.

  The rest of Tamara’s research didn’t take long. General listings showed the Brascos’ home address in Monterey. Tamara wrote it down alongside the address for the wine shop. Zillow gave up the property value and other information, and before long Tamara could construct a simple timeline.

  The Brasco’s married and moved into their home almost immediately. One year later, they had their first child, and two years after that they had their second. The home had never been refinanced, and what little information she could dig up on Mr. Brasco’s import and export business showed that it was privately held and fairly large.

  In short, they were very well off. Tamara imagined that Victoria’s wine shop was probably little more than a hobby to stave off the boredom of being a full-time, stay-at-home mom with a nanny and a maid.

  Yawning, Tamara turned off the iPad. It was time for bed. She had a good idea where Kyle was headed now, unless they had some little chateau where they shacked up in the forest somewhere. If they were seeing each other on the side all this time then this was possible, but Tamara had a gut feeling this wasn’t the case. She would find Kyle in Monterey.

  In the morning she would have to find a way to tell Trudy that she needed her to watch the kids for a few days.

  CHAPTER 24

  They were headed north again, and by now the 5 Freeway was beginning to feel like a carousel. Still, Napoleon had a plan. He called Sheriff Conch back and asked him if anyone could get him and Parker back into the library. It was an odd request, but once the sheriff heard why, he understood.

  He told Napoleon that he was already out of town at his grandson’s graduation party, and the librarian, Hattie Tettle, was the only one with the keys. Since the library was closed on Sunday’s and Monday’s, he could have Kendall swing by her house early in the morning to get them if that’d help. Napoleon said it would. Conch said he’d have Kendall wait for Napoleon and Parker in the library parking lot the following morning.

  The funny thing was that Napoleon was starting to get paranoid. He told Conch that they felt like they’d “missed something” at the library, perhaps a book or magazine Fasano had flipped through, instead of the truth, which was that they were after those other seven internet histories on the computer island. Napoleon felt guilty about that, but better to play it safe. He didn’t need Kendall trying to make a name for himself and mucking around with the computers before they got there, in the process accidentally deleting a link or piece of data or some other bullshit.

  On the freeway, they passed Napoleon’s apartment again. He smiled. The last time they’d been this way he’d had the oddest feeling he would never see home again. Yet there it was, zipping by as a blur at sixty miles an hour, but there nonetheless. It was a good sign that things were turning around now.

  “You should get some shut-eye,” Parker said, his face illuminated by the dashboard lights. The dark night sky was broken up in sections as they passed through the Lincoln Heights tunnels.

  “Not likely, man.”

  “Yeah,” Parker replied. He’d kept very quiet since Napoleon ventured his guess about the library. Napoleon knew why, and for the past hour he’d given Parker some space, but enough was enough.

  “Look. I hope you’re not beating yourself up over this.”

  Parker said nothing.

  “You couldn’t have known, and it still may be a dead end when we get there.”

  “But I should’ve known to at least look.”

  “And from now on you will.”

  “Great. I’m learning and all that shit.”

  “Yep.”

  “Except maybe the cost is that this asshole gets away again.”

  The tunnel ended and split at the 2 Freeway, which veered off to the right. They still had a little over two hours to go to Beaury.

  “Yeah. Well. If we do find something, I missed it too, and we both know who’s been on the job longer.”

  “Yeah, but you—”

  “Don’t say it. I had no excuse. Period.”

  Silence returned to the inside of the car. The radio remained off, leaving only the droning of the engine and the vibration of the road as the soundtrack to their drive.

  Napoleon cleared his throat, which was still a little dry, and popped a cough drop in his mouth. The silence sucked, so he broke it. “Besides, Fasano may or may not be a panicked husband who offed his lover, but he’s no psycho about to go on a killing spree.”

  Parker grunted, then said something Napoleon wished he hadn’t. “We’d better hope not.”

  Damn rookies. They never knew the gravity of a jinx.

  They left each other to their thoughts for the next hour, passing through Santa Clarita and Castaic, until they saw the Gorman rest stop up ahead and decided to pull off so Napoleon could take a piss.

  It looked like a new facility, with map guides and shiny vending machines. A half-dozen big rig trucks were lined up in the parking lot like staggered metal walls. As they got out of the car Napoleon could smell citrus from all the nectarine farms in the area.

  “You go and hit the head, I’m gonna raid those vending machines. I’m starving,” Parker said, turning off the car. “You want anything?”

  “Yeah. I’m hungry too. Donuts or cookies if they have ’em, and a bottled water.”

  “Sure thing.”

  It was just past nine, and the orange lighting around the facility cast the area in a Halloween-colored haze. There was only one other person around, a heavy-set trucker in a John Deere cap who was making his way to the bathroom ahead of Napoleon. What a life, trucking. Napoleon had no idea how they did it, driving all
the time, cooped up in the cab all day, sleeping behind the cab all night. It was a boxed-in existence, like living in a coffin on wheels.

  The inside of the bathroom glared harshly in fluorescent light, and Napoleon had to wait a few seconds for his eyes to adjust. There were four urinals and a few stalls, one of them now occupied by the trucker. Napoleon could see his workman’s boots beneath the stall door. Great. He was going to have to take a piss while this guy blew his ass out. What a joy.

  What he hated most about getting older was the whole enlarged prostate thing. His bladder could be full, yet it still took a good five seconds of standing around and waiting before piss came out. It wasn’t fair. If anything should enlarge in a man as he got older it should be his dick, because even though you usually got to use it less, by that point in life you at least knew how to use it.

  He was just going from a trickle to a stream when the trucker in the stall spoke up.

  “Do you ever wonder, man?”

  At first Napoleon thought he was in there on his cell phone or something, but after a few seconds of silence it was apparent that he was talking to Napoleon. Great. No one on earth lonelier than a trucker; they even wanted to chat as they crapped.

  Napoleon yawned. Screw it. He’d humor the guy. “You talking to me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “If little Esmeralda, you know… if it felt a little good for her too?”

  Napoleon’s piss stream halted instantly. The room went cold as he asked himself over and over again if he’d really heard what he thought he’d just heard.

  The toilet flushed, making Napoleon jump.

  “You hear me, old man?”

  Squinting, Napoleon zipped up his fly and turned around just as the trucker opened the stall door and walked out.

  Years of being a cop taught you how to take the inventory. First, size up the individual you’re facing. This guy was Caucasian, heavy set, about six foot three. Napoleon had already seen the boots, standard construction type, probably steel toed. He was wearing jeans and a white Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt with long sleeves that were black from the shoulder to the wrist. He had a beard and mustache covering his round chubby face and long blond hair poking out from beneath the John Deere baseball cap, which was tattered and dirty.

  “I said, did you hear me?”

  Besides the boots the only threatening thing Napoleon could see was a wallet chain that stretched from the man’s front belt loop to his back pocket. And instead of a wallet, there could be a knife at the end of that chain. Napoleon had seen that trick a few times before.

  After the inventory, you make your stand.

  “I heard you. Just not sure I heard you correctly,” Napoleon replied, facing the trucker full center, feeling the weight of his 9 mm on his right hip. They were about ten feet apart.

  “You heard correct, man. I’m just curious, is all. I hear stories, you know, from the guy that did her, Joaquin I think’s his name, and he says she liked it. She liked it a lot.”

  Napoleon was not used to fear, but he was way too smart to ignore, discount or dismiss it. Instead, he took hold of it by the throat. “Who the fuck are you?”

  The trucker chuckled and reached up to adjust his cap. “Who gives a shit who I am?”

  “Besides your momma, son? Probably no one. But you’re the douche bag that started this little chit-chat.”

  “You still ain’t answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “The one about the little girl, you know, that got killed. Do you think she was a horny little bitch or what?”

  Napoleon smiled. This couldn’t be real. He was in the car having a nightmare while Parker was driving or something. He told himself to wake up, but the trucker didn’t move and the moment refused to end.

  He looked the trucker in the eye, but they were dead eyes, like those of a wild animal. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, son.”

  “No, old man.” The trucker smiled, his teeth yellow and rotten. “You are.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You getting into things you best stay out of, with things you best not start messin’ with.”

  Napoleon was very careful to maintain a gangster’s posture: aggressive and unafraid. But on the inside his mind was going a million miles a second. Who is this bastard? Is he protecting Fasano? Or is Fasano mixed up with the Aryan Nations, who no doubt count this fat ass as a member of their inbred little tribe? Or is he a…

  That’s when Napoleon saw the chain around the man’s neck, and the pentagram that hung from it.

  I’ll be a son of a bitch.

  “Now, about our little Esmeralda…”

  At some point talk is cheap. This was that point. Napoleon took three quick strides towards the man and launched both of his hands into the center of the trucker’s chest. It was a standard judo move, aimed at the solar plexus and meant to stun. It knocked the trucker back a few steps into a sink, but that was all.

  As the trucker sneered and righted himself, Napoleon drew his gun from its holster and simultaneously grabbed the man by the collar with one hand and jammed his gun under the trucker’s chin with the other. Maybe Beecher’s crazy-ass idea had been right. Maybe this was some organized shit then, some group of Satanists working with Fasano who were now out to protect him.

  The trucker began to giggle like a schoolkid. “Oh man, you all jack-rabbited up, ain’t you, old man? It’s okay. Pull the trigger.” He stopped giggling, and his face began to melt as his cheekbones elongated into the face of some horrific goat-like creature. “Cause I’m already dead, old man.” And this time when he smiled it was all tooth and fang.

  Napoleon recoiled in stunned disbelief, his fear now morphing into an unexpected terror. “¡Madre mia!”

  “Oh. Mama got nothing to do with this… son.” The trucker’s voice had gone to gravel. “Nothin’ t’all.”

  Napoleon stumbled backwards, almost falling, before managing to regain his balance.

  The trucker let loose a belly laugh that was half bleat. “Oh, you ain’t so brave now, huh, pig?”

  “What do you want with me?” Napoleon asked, but his voice was barely a whisper.

  The cold white tile of the bathroom walls only heightened the fluorescent glow of the room, and Napoleon could see the trucker’s back in the mirror: there were large spikes sticking out of his neck and spine.

  “I already told you. It’s simple really: just leave this alone. Drive back home. Stay there. Die lonely. Got it?”

  Napoleon shook his head and blinked three times. Still, none of it would go away.

  “And just so you know, old man?” the trucker continued. “That little girl? She didn’t like it. It hurt… like hell.” His giggle returned, full of glee, and then, amazingly, the trucker simply stepped backwards and crawled through the mirror, to someplace else, and was gone.

  Parker’s voice ricocheted into the bathroom from outside. “Hey man, you still in there!”

  Napoleon jumped, almost dropping his gun before he holstered it and swallowed hard. “Be right out!” It was only three words, but they left him breathless.

  What’s going on? What was that? Am I losing my mind now? Is this how it ends? A psych trip with three days’ observation at the hospital? A medical leave? What?

  He’d spent his whole life trusting his instincts and, in the end, before he left the bathroom and walked back to the car, they were what saved him.

  He wanted nothing more on this earth than to splash cold water all over his face, into his eyes to wash away what he’d seen, and over his head to force himself to snap to.

  But his instincts told him not to go anywhere near that mirror. To not even get close.

  KYLE WOKE up where he’d passed out at the night before, except at some point he’d evidently collapsed onto his side. The right side of his face was numb and his nose was filled with the smell of rocks and moss.

  As his eyes focused, he saw a group of sea
otters rolling around on the waves some twenty-five yards away. The fog was dense and wet, and even the sand beneath his hand was damp, though he was nowhere near the tide line.

  His clothes were moist and his baseball cap was tilted partially over his face. He could feel that the inside of the rim had made an indentation in his cheek. After a night in these conditions it was no surprise that he was chilled to the bone and his chest was heavy.

  Despite his discomfort, the first thing to cross his mind was the images from the night before, and the dread and sorrow of the truths they’d revealed to him. It was like waking up after a bad breakup, when the day was gloomy before it ever had a chance to be anything else; except this was billions of times worse. It felt like he’d broken up with the rest of the human race.

  He was seeing things now, experiencing things beyond this realm and beyond what he could explain to any other living person. People would either say he was mad or lock him up until he confessed that he was. He wished he were. He wished it would all go away. He would give anything to have one chance to go back and leave Caitlyn at the bar that night instead of taking her to that hotel. It all just turned on a dime and it’d been spinning out of control ever since.

  The images of the hurricane footage came to him again and he tried pushing them away, but it was no use.

  It was true then, what the Bible said: there were spirits at work around us every day, in a multitude of ways, striving for our good or plotting for our downfall. The entire story of human existence, of good versus evil, of a thin veil between this world and the next… it was true.

  Every world religion discussed it in some way: a dark force juxtaposed against one of light. Why was he surprised? Did anyone really think that was a coincidence? Even his own religion was based on a leader who had to endure forty days of taunting and temptation by the devil himself, the very same devil who was there to see that those spikes were firmly nailed into that cross.

  Did it really matter what name you gave him? Whether it was Beelzebub or Lucifer? The truth was that we could handle the cute concepts of guardian angels or dead loved ones coming back to help us, but the notion of a sneering monster with horns and hooved feet was dismissed as ridiculous, despite the evidence right there in our faces, throughout history; Adolf Hitler, Ted Bundy—monsters were real, and the evil they committed was no less so.