The Parker Trilogy Read online

  He did.

  As he stepped away from Michiko something between them tugged and snapped, as if all along there’d been a protective film over them and he was now separating from it. It took a moment or two for him to confirm this sensation; the air around him was suddenly much cooler and a mild pressure filled his ears.

  He began walking hesitantly down the path, the soil growing looser beneath his feet the further he went. Fear tugged at him. He glanced back to see Michiko still there. He wanted to turn back, but the fear tugging at his shoulder was not enough to overwhelm the curiosity pulling him forwards. Could it be true? Could Gabriella really be here?

  He pushed on. As the forest closed in around him, his feeling of isolation grew. The path widened, then narrowed, then widened again before it cut through a thicket up ahead. He remembered being a boy and running through the woods behind his house in Missouri, when he would charge into the thickets with his friends, oblivious to what was beyond, until he wasn’t. That was the blessing of youth: no apprehension of the unknown. But now? Now he was an old man. And the denser the woods, and the more the threat of the unknown, the greater the urge to turn back.

  Vines were interwoven with the trees, crisscrossing in some sections in helix-type shapes that seemed unnatural. He steeled his nerves and pushed through. The path grew narrower and less cultivated, the trees on either side having overgrown it so much that it was almost like a tunnel now. There was a white light in the distance, creating a gradient down the tunnel. Where he was now, about halfway through, was the darkest point. Father Soltera kept his eyes on the foliage around him, and he was glad he did.

  Slowly, arms began to slither out from it, fingers splayed and grasping, as if they belonged to people on the other side who had dropped a coin down here.

  Except he was the coin.

  Some of the arms were pale, others dark, some had streaks of blood, others looked as if they’d been torn or gnawed on. They reached out for him and he was about to turn and run full speed back to the protection of Michiko when instead a tremor moved through the air, the sensation you feel when someone is looking at you. It was a freeze-frame sensation set to the aperture of his heart.

  It was the sensation he felt every single time he and Gabriella locked eyes, when the seeing inside of one another was still an awkward fumbling.

  Except, this time, he couldn’t see her. At all. Anywhere. Not yet. But she was there.

  He sensed that he had to break through this thicket and out the other side before he could get to her. So, instead of fleeing, he carefully bobbed and weaved his way between the arms, realizing that some were broken at the elbows or wrists. It was obvious that people before him had come through here . . . and some of them hadn’t made it. Somehow he knew they were now part of the woods and vines, reaching out for others. Again, a memory from his childhood came to him: playing catch-as-catch-can. The grips and holds.

  Except here there was no letting go.

  Just then, the fingertips from a hand he hadn’t seen brushed against his neck. He jerked away a little too forcefully, and for a moment he was filled with terror as he felt he was about to lose his balance.

  But it wasn’t his balance that was threatening his demise. The path, too, was tilting from side to side, like some sick carnival ride.

  He stutter-stepped until he righted himself, resenting the slowing reflexes of age, and suppressed the urge that came over him to run the rest of the way. Most of the broken arms were up there. Like sacrifices to the cause of this hellish little tunnel, they’d no doubt still be able to push or pull their victims to their doom. He moved on, this time with determination. The tilting of the path lessened, and the arms receded.

  Before long, he was out the other side.

  The path had turned to cobblestone. He wasted no time getting as far away from the tunnel as possible. Moving up the cobblestone he at first felt relief, but that was instantly ruined by the displacement of time and space around him. With each step he took, the world around him rotated: from day to night, from when the forest was young to when the forest was old, from times of fire to times of snow, from here to the other world, from life to decay, from Michigan to Missouri, from his boyhood to his manhood. A kaleidoscope of images turned with each of his footsteps.

  He stopped walking and closed his eyes to give his mind time to recover. What was happening? How was this happening?

  And that’s when he heard her voice, soft as the rain on a quiet morning.

  Leave the path, Bernie.

  He looked around. The woods to his left were like a wall, but to his right was a wide-open field, and beyond the field was a lake. And in the center of the lake was a tiny island.

  And on the island, Gabriella stood, dressed in jeans, a white t-shirt and a beige leather jacket.

  Upon seeing him, she dropped to her knees. But Father Soltera did not do the same.

  Instead, as if struck by lightning, he ran to her, kicking off his shoes as he reached the shore and plunging in the water. Crazy, foolish old man. There was no way he could swim that distance at his age. No way at all.

  But he had to try.

  Corcoran State Prison was a walled-off section of inmate housing, full of anger and bitterness, taking up three square miles of King County, California. Hector Villarosa thought he’d been to prison before, and technically he had, but after only five days as a resident here now, he was fully aware that this place was the real deal. This place was built to break you, even if you were already broken. It didn’t care. His fellow inmates didn’t care. As with any prison, the only one you could trust in here was yourself, plain and simple, but the added dimension for Corcoran was that even trusting yourself, your instincts, your perceptions, was a sketchy idea.

  He was in his cell, blissfully alone. His cellmate, Roberto, had been sent to the Security Housing Unit, or SHU, for smuggling in heroine from his obese girlfriend, who had hidden it in a ziplock baggie that she’d tucked into the folds of her stomach fat. He hated Roberto. He talked too much about nonsensical bullshit and took no hints when you tried to keep to yourself. Still. Alone was no good either. Because alone only left you with your memories, and that was worse. Way worse. Like now, when his mind was turning back to the day of his sentencing.

  Having pled guilty to all the charges levied against him, his sentencing hearing had come quickly: twenty-five years without the possibility of parole for the murder of David Fonseca and attempted murder of Hector’s ex-girlfriend, Marisol Perez. In exchange for this, his public defender had managed to get the lesser charges of illegal possession of a firearm, evading arrest and reckless endangerment all dropped.

  Not that Hector cared. He knew what he’d done, and The Gray Man had made it very clear the price that was going to be paid. At his sentencing hearing, as the judge droned on about the repercussions of his acts, Hector kept his head bowed. Only when Marisol’s father stood to speak did Hector raise his eyes, and even then only briefly, for the hate-filled gaze that greeted him made him look away immediately. Just when he thought it couldn’t get any worse, he got an update from Marisol’s father he would’ve preferred never hearing: Marisol was paralyzed from waist down, would likely never walk again and was in speech therapy trying to learn how to form basic words and sentences with the throat that Hector had put a bullet through.

  “Why did you do this to my little girl?” Marisol’s father asked, his voice trembling with agony and rage. “Because you were jealous?” And it was the sound of utter disbelief in this last word that broke Hector down. He lowered his head again and fought hard against his own emotions.

  David Fonseca’s mother was next, and she had been no easier to deal with. She sounded stoned, probably on stress medication, as she shouted at him to raise his head and look at her. When he did not, because he could not, because his shame was like a fist on the back of his neck, she called him a coward in Spanish and then said what she had to say. “I want you to one day find yourself in hell, on fire, in eternal
agony for what you’ve done to my son. I know it’s a sin to say that, but I don’t care. Not one bit. You . . . took away . . . my baby!” she screamed, before her family rushed around her to hold her up and her sobbing erupted into loud wails that beat at Hector’s heart like a sledgehammer.

  My God, what have I done? he thought. But God did not answer, nor did The Gray Man, who had abandoned him after his visit to Hector’s cell, when he’d taught him prayers of prose. Evidently this moment, this time, was meant for him to face alone. Still, all the repercussions, all the consequences to what Hector had done was beginning to become very apparent.

  When the judge announced that Hector would be serving his time at Corcoran, Hector barely flinched. He knew that was coming. Agents of evil, serving the very hell that Marisol’s mother was damning him to, had already told him so. Because Curtis Ruvelcaba, the man who was Hector’s gang mentor, was now also in Corcoran, after being transferred from San Quentin.

  He was the man they wanted Hector to kill. The same man The Gray Man had tasked him to save.

  The day Hector boarded the bus, he was in shackles both physical and mental. It was almost beyond comprehension. Because what The Gray Man was asking him to do was basically to go behind enemy lines, into a den of evil, and do something good. Plain and simple. And in a place like Corcoran, that was almost guaranteed to get him killed.

  The three-hour drive up the 5 Freeway from Downtown Los Angeles had been made in pouring rain. Arriving in his orange jumpsuit, he was strip-searched and forced to change into the dark blue pants—stenciled with the letters “CD CR” and “PRISONER” running down the length of one leg—and light blue shirts of Corcoran’s standard inmate attire.

  That was five days ago, and so far he hadn’t caught sight of Curtis anywhere. He was relieved for that. Hector had managed to lay low. He’d been kept alone a few days until they figured out how to process him, then left a day in his cell with no yard time until he’d been paired with Roberto. Yesterday had been Hector’s first day mingling with the general population, divided as it was.

  He laid back in his cot, laced his fingers behind his head and sighed. There were some books that were so accurate they were timeless in their truth, and Corcoran not only displayed but practically screamed the truths in The Lord of the Flies. This place was a cement island amid a sea of dirt. The men here were not children but acted like it. Power was taken by force, and life, in the final equation, was cheap. All that mattered, truly mattered, was what tribe you aligned yourself with to survive. Whites in the Aryan Nation or Nazi Lowriders, blacks in the Crips or Bloods, Southern California Hispanics called Sureños or Southerners, and Northern California Hispanics called Norteños or Northerners.

  But in Hector’s case, wouldn’t you know it, even the north/south rules did not apply. Because Curtis was a Southerner just like him and it didn’t matter.

  A guy named Raul, another Southerner and evidently on Güero Martinez’s payroll, had approached Hector that morning in the cafeteria, with two buddies and a smile on his face. “We know why you’re here, pendejo. Do you remember why you’re here . . . or do you need another beat down like our homies gave you back in County?”

  Hector nodded, his wounds from that fight still not fully healed. “I know why.”

  “Good. We’ll set it up in a lil time, get you a good shiv. You just be ready. Understand?”

  Again, Hector nodded.

  “Don’t just bounce your head at me, bitch. Say it!” Raul snapped.

  “Yeah. I understand,” Hector said, looking at Raul with eyes full of weariness.

  “Good. Next time you just bob your head around at me, you’ll be doing it in my lap, puto. Got that?”

  Hector wanted to punch him in the face, but he knew better. Instead, feeling like Piggy, he said, “Yeah. I got it.”

  Raul glared at him before he motioned his head to the rest of his crew, and they moved away.

  Chapter Three

  Parker was in the elevator, riding down alone, when Napoleon appeared out of nowhere, right next to him. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah,” Parker replied with a stiff jaw.

  “Vengeance is a double-edged sword, rookie.”

  Parker scoffed. “Don’t I know it.”

  “You’re thinking of the boy—”

  “Yep,” Parker cut him off, hoping that by doing so he could also cut off the memory of the Taliban boy back in the war, a child-sniper who killed one of Parker’s best friends one day in the desert. The same boy Parker had hunted down and shot in the spine from five hundred yards away before leaving him to die slowly in the hot sand.

  Napoleon shook his head. “I can’t help you if it’s vengeance you’re seeking, Parker.”

  “I understand.” But Parker’s chest swelled with emotion. “But I have to do this.”

  “No. You are choosing to. There’s a difference. But if you do it for the right reasons? In the right way? You won’t have to go alone.”

  “And what, exactly, qualifies as the ‘right’ way?”

  “C’mon, Parker. Think first. Then shoot your mouth off.”

  The elevator continued its descent, the lighted numbers of the display overhead moving floor to floor. Parker turned to face his old partner, who was an angel of some kind now, or an agent of the afterlife. Napoleon’s face and hair were the same, but today he wore a brown suit with a yellow shirt. “Someone’s dressed up.”

  Nap nodded. “I had a funeral to attend.”

  Parker raised his eyebrows.

  “Yep. The dead visit graves, Parker. To help some cross over, yes, but mostly to comfort those left behind.”

  “Someone you knew, then?”

  “Yes. Gabriel Mejia. An old high school buddy. Died of a massive heart attack while eating breakfast at Denny’s.”

  “Did he make it?”

  “Make it?”

  “To heaven?”

  Napoleon looked serious. “That’s above my pay grade.”

  Perplexed, Parker replied. “Well, were you at least there . . . in the end, I mean?”

  “No. I wasn’t. Someone else got him to the door.”

  “The door?”

  “Yep. You die. You see the light, you follow the light. You get to the door. You go through the door. From there, it’s all between you and what’s next.”

  Far from being intrigued, Parker was suddenly sad, and the feeling confused him.

  As the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened, Napoleon sighed and said, “Back to the point. Why? Why go after Güero?”

  Parker took a deep breath, walked through the lobby, said goodbye to the desk officer for what was probably the last time, and exited the building out into the drizzling rain. The wetness kissed at his face and ears. When he looked at Napoleon, he noticed that the rain ran off him like glass. For the first time, Parker also noticed a very soft tan glow to his old partner.

  I’ve gone crazy, Parker thought. I’m seeing ghosts. But he knew better now. No. I’m not. On either count.

  “Still waiting,” Napoleon said firmly.

  Having mulled over his answer, Parker went with his gut. “Justice. That’s why I’m going after him. For justice.”

  Napoleon nodded approvingly. “Right answer.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t think you were smart enough to get it right, to be honest.”

  Parker chuckled. “Well . . . screw you, too. Partner.”

  “Hey. Smarts ain’t your department. They are, however, hers.”

  “Hers?”

  Napoleon bobbed his head over Parker’s shoulder and blinked away just as Parker heard a woman shout from behind him. “Detective. Wait up!”

  It was Agent Clopton.

  The rain had gotten heavier, so he motioned her over to a nearby shuttle stop with a kiosk they could stand under. “What’s up?”

  Joining him, she ran her fingers through her cropped blond hair and nodded, looking nervou
s. Again, he noticed her sharp cheekbones. “Listen,” she said, “you don’t have to do this. I can still bring you on in a support capacity on our side or—”

  “We both know that’s not true.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Okay. Fine. You get me behind a desk in the Federal building, somehow, someway. No doubt over the vehement protests of that asshole lieutenant up there, who maybe gets you in hot water with your superiors.”

  She shrugged.

  “For what?” he continued. “So I can push papers around a desk, or do some internet research on Güero? Do you really think that’s going to catch him?”

  A look of defeat came over her face. “No.”

  They were alone in the kiosk when a shuttle pulled up. They both waved it off and it drove away.

  After a moment, she spoke again. “But . . . your career.”

  “It’s in a shamble anyway. It has been ever since I left South Central and caught my very first detective case in the cesspool that is East LA.”

  “The Hall Case, you mean?”

  “Surprise, surprise. You’ve done your homework,” Parker replied. But he thought again of Napoleon’s words. She was smart.

  “A lot didn’t add up there.”

  He smiled. “Nor was it ever meant to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She was about his age, with a quizzical look that was intense. He looked her off. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  His neck was tight with stress, so he rotated it between his shoulders before he answered her. “There were . . . uh . . . forces at work that . . . um . . . complicated things.”

  Both her eyebrows plummeted with confusion. “Forces?”

  “Like I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I mean, from what I read, Caitlyn Hall was into devil worshiping. Some sort of ritual got her killed, right? Kyle Fasano was wrongly accused, blah, blah. Your partner disappeared in the woods in Monterey after a concussion or something. And so on and so forth.”

  He laughed. Hard. Then nodded. “Yeah. That’s what happened, all right. And so on and so forth? Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.”