The Parker Trilogy Read online

  “You saying there’s more to it?”

  “I’m saying you’ve heard what they wanted you to hear, as best they could wrap a bow around a rather crumpled box of turds. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “And?”

  He shook his head. “Not a chance. Leave it alone. All of it.”

  Her eyes bore into him, as if she were either fighting the urge to interrogate him or pissed that he had dismissed her line of questioning. He realized it was probably a little of both. “Fine. I’ll leave it alone. For now. But, shit, Parker. You caught a serial killer. You know how many of us at the Bureau would kill to have that one on our resumés?”

  “No. I helped to catch a serial killer. In the process, a good man, a grandfather on the edge of retirement, died. And it was Tamara Fasano, not me, who finally brought Troy Forester’s horror show to an end.”

  “C’mon. You’re not giving yourself enough credit, you’re the one—” She paused, then looked down and began to fiddle with her hands. He realized that this whole conversation had been a stalling tactic.

  The sidewalk around them was becoming glazed with the rain. A group of uniformed cops passed on the way to the parking garage nearby. “What’s really going on, Agent Clopton?”

  She sighed. Her navy blue suit was fitted, with tight hem lines down her slacks to blue dress flats. Pure FBI, all the way. Finally, she replied, “I’m conflicted.”

  He bobbed his head. “Well, shit. That was honest.”

  “Yeah. I ain’t big on sleight of hand, Detective.”

  “As of fifteen minutes ago, I’m not a detective anymore.”

  She shook her head. “You will be again. Someday. I’m sure of it.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m glad one of us is.”

  “But in the meantime . . .” And now her eyes said she wished she were a better poker player. She looked around nervously.

  The moment grew still between them. “In the meantime . . . what?” he gently prodded.

  “If you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do . . .”

  “You mean what you want me to do. What you hinted at in that conference room?”

  “I absolutely deny—”

  “Cut the shit, Agent Clopton. Ain’t no one wearing a wire here, and besides that brown bird getting wet over there on top of that utility box? There ain’t no witnesses.”

  Her face pinched up in anger. Not at him, he didn’t think, but rather at something else. Finally, she spat it out. “I’m about the law. And so are you.”

  He nodded.

  “But the other night? At the Long Beach port?”

  The rain pattered around them as the air grew still. “Yeah?”

  “They found another container. One not on the manifest or on our radar at all.” Her voice sounded hollow. “So, we didn’t get to it because we didn’t know to get to it.”

  Parker said nothing. Instead, he waited.

  “Fifty-eight women. Eighteen dead. Their container was buried in a stack. No one heard their screams. They were no doubt left there after the bust we made at San Pedro harbor spooked the whole organization. Though, I’m not sure I entirely believe that.”

  Parker leaned against the kiosk and crossed his arms. “Oh?”

  “No. I think Güero did it on purpose. To punish us for interfering. To show us that he will always win. Because monsters like him never think they’re going to lose.”

  “And?”

  “And now it’s even worse; he’s kidnapped that poor pregnant girl. And the social worker? Do you know about her?”

  Parker shook his head.

  “Her name’s Maggie Kincaid. Thirty-one. Recently moved here from New York after killing her ex-fiancé in self-defense after he’d stalked her for over five years.”

  Parker raised his eyebrows. “Damn.”

  “Yeah. Can you even imagine? Surviving that whole experience and then having the universe plop your ass right down in the situation she’s in now? With Güero, of all people?”

  “Yeah. It sucks. But you’ve already told me something about her that’s very important to know, in light of her circumstances.”

  A chilly wind had kicked up across the grass and swept up and over the kiosk, rattling the plastic advertising billboards within it. “What’s that?”

  “She’s killed before. Which means she can kill again if she has to.”

  “Good point,” Clopton replied. “Which leads to my next—”

  Parker cut her off. “I’m going after him. Yes. But one, you already knew that, and two, no one else needs to know that.”

  “You have ex-associates you’re going to lean on, I take it?”

  Parker thought of Melon, down in Cabo and living the easy life now. “Only one down that way. But he’ll be enough.” Then he smiled to himself, remembering Napoleon, and added, “Or maybe two.”

  “Or maybe three,” she said.

  They locked eyes.

  “You realize that I can’t draw outside the lines with you, right?” Clopton said softly.

  Parker nodded.

  She nodded back. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t color together.”

  He was surprised. “Yeah?”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  When she walked away, Parker was speechless.

  Maggie looked across the shack at Luisa. Since Felix’s murder, she had become the queen of one-word answers. At first this seemed normal. Just pure shock. But that had been nearly a week ago, before they’d been driven south of the border, and things hadn’t improved much. Now, lying on her cot, Luisa was just staring off into the distance.

  They had three guards. The same faces each day. All too big for Maggie to take on by herself. It didn’t matter. She felt so weak that even her bones were tired, but her mind was still working, and that was a good thing. The guards rotated shifts, one of them always outside the shack door, another usually leaning against the black Escalade parked outside or sitting on a blue Igloo cooler that was dirty and cracked. The third guard was usually taking a turn getting some sleep in the Escalade.

  On occasion, one of them would leave and come back with food and drinks for everyone. Always bagged chips or sandwiches, never anything in “to-go” boxes. There were no logos on any of the plastic wrap or the price stickers. That meant the closest thing nearby was probably a gas station with a mini-mart. These guys were professional, too. Not once did one of them come back with beer, tequila or anything else that would’ve impeded their senses and given her an advantage if she decided to make a move.

  She had nicknamed the three of them Eenie, Meenie and Miney.

  Eenie had broad shoulders and a handsome face that she was going to have no problem putting a bullet into someday, because he was all hands with her whenever he had the chance. Nobody in their right minds was stupid enough to touch Luisa after what happened to Felix. But it was also obvious that they were under some kind of orders not to touch Maggie, which kept her mostly safe. Still, whenever she needed her shackles loosened or asked to be escorted to the port-a-potty outside, Eenie was first to volunteer and snuck in every chance he got to “accidentally” touch her chest or ass.

  It was better than being raped but still infuriating, and when she laid in bed at night and listened to the coyotes out in the desert yipping to one another, it was Eenie’s end—and how she would affect that end—that lulled Maggie to sleep.

  Meenie, meanwhile, was dumb as an ox and as thick as one, too. He had a block head and a crew cut, with beady eyes and a mouth too small for his fat cheeks. His voice was deep, but he rarely spoke.

  The chatterbox of the group was the short and skinny Miney. He spoke mostly in Spanish, sometimes in English, and always had something to say. About soccer, or a job he had done somewhere for this person or that, or the weather, or how much he’d like to get word from Güero to be allowed to gang rape them both.

  Maggie had tried repeatedly to find some redeeming quality in at least one of them that she could work on. A soft spo
t, a trigger for their conscience, anything. But she couldn’t. They were flat-out evil human beings who liked to talk about killing people, making money and forcing women to do things they didn’t want to do. After days now of listening to them intently, it was painfully obvious that they were simply barren people, living a barren existence.

  She and Luisa were in a hopeless situation. At least right now. Which left Maggie mostly trying to fend off that hopelessness. It was obvious that Luisa had already surrendered to it. But Maggie couldn’t. If she did, they’d have zero chance of survival. And she didn’t want to die at the hands of monsters, plain and simple.

  So she sat like a stone golem and watched them through the gaps in the wood slats and studied them carefully: the way they walked (Miney had a slight limp in his right leg), what their dominant hands were (only Meenie was a leftie), who was most likely to zone out with boredom (Eenie, for sure). They each had cell phones, which they played with while they sat around and charged in the car. That was good. It meant there was cell reception here.

  When she got her chance, she’d go for Eenie’s phone. He was the youngest and therefore the most likely to bend whatever rules they were supposed to be following. If she could get his phone, she could make a call. But how? And then what? A call could be cut off, could take forever to connect, and she no doubt wouldn’t have enough time to explain everything. And even if she had the time, she had absolutely no idea where they were anyway.

  That’s when a new idea came to her. She squinted, feeling the corner of her eyes tighten against the desert dryness that was gripping her face. Of course. Yes. It just might work.

  Eenie was the one on duty now. Perfect. She knocked on the wall, making Luisa jump on the bed.

  “What?” Eenie said, irritation in his voice.

  “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  For a second, she panicked, as Meenie began to stand up from the cooler. But she figured Eenie would want to be the one to take her, and sure enough, he waved Meenie off.

  Eenie always kept his phone in the back left pocket of his dark jeans, and as he opened the shack door and escorted her out, she could see that it was right there. She steeled herself and let him walk her to the port-a-potty. When they got there, he, as expected, got his freebie in by pressing up against her from behind for a few seconds before he spun her around to take off her cuffs. Smiling at her, he motioned his hand to the bathroom door.

  She nodded and said, “I’m gonna be a while, if you know what I mean,” just to spoil his mood.

  Once inside, she slammed the door as if she’d closed it all the way . . . then slowly reopened it, leaving herself a slit through which to see as he turned to the side, his back mostly to her, and pulled out his phone. Like he always did. Each and every time they’d done this little ritual before.

  Routine. It was human nature. It was also what almost killed her with Michael, when he was after her that first year, but now it might actually be what helped her. Eenie’s routine had thus far gotten her three of the digits of his phone’s password code. Two, eight and nine. One more. She just needed one more. The port-a-potty was situated about twenty feet from the shack, in clear view of the shack. Meenie had not noticed that the door was ajar.

  Eenie had out his phone but was looking out over the desert at something that had caught his eye.

  Maggie rolled her eyes. C’mon!

  After seconds that felt like minutes, he finally turned his attention back to his phone. His right thumb punching it out: Two . . . eight . . . nine . . .

  One.

  Maggie Kincaid closed her eyes and thanked God.

  One part of her plan down. One to go.

  Chapter Four

  The water was cool and blissful, and it splashed away the tears of joy spilling down his face with every stroke he took towards the island. It was okay to love. It was okay to care. It was okay to be here. It was. Wasn’t it? The old voices of persecution and shame tugged at him like kelp trying to tangle his legs and drag him down. Stupid fool, you aren’t good enough, handsome enough, decent enough, young enough for this. And what of your oath? What of your faith? What of your God?

  He was tired of them, these voices. Even if they were “right” in some ways. What he felt, he felt. Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes “wrong” was relative, and the needle of your mind only pointed to where the gravity of your heart directed it.

  Stroke after stroke he made his way to her, waiting for exhaustion to overtake him as his heart struggled in his chest and his legs kicked, heavier and heavier, against the water.

  Breathe, he told himself. Pace yourself. You have to make it. You haven’t come all this way to die now.

  The thing was, the mere sight of her filled him with so much hope that he simply couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop, swimming. He literally willed himself to the shore, and overcome with emotion, once he was there, he crawled to her. Still on her knees, she did the same, and they scrambled to one another like children before she wrapped her arms around him so tightly that she stifled his gasps from the effort of the swim. “Bernie,” she said, her voice a tight squeak. “Bernie.” It was her. The real her. Not a mirage. Not a twisted nightmare in disguise.

  Then, knowing it was a sin but helpless to stop himself, he did something he’d always fantasized about, back home: he buried his face in her hair. That marvelous, sleek, shiny black hair caressed his face and dragged across his lips. It smelled of plums and lavender and he thought, surely, this would be the end of him, that his chest would tighten and the world would go numb and that would be just fine by Bernardino James Soltera. Death could take him. Like this. Right here. Right now. It would be a much better way to go than in the vessel of a body ravaged to pieces by the cancer spreading within him.

  After a few moments she cried out in disbelief. “What are you doing here? How did you—”

  He drew back and put the four fingers of his right hand gently over her lips, his thumb curved just below her delicate chin. Looking at her face, the soft cheeks, the thoughtful eyes and . . . there it was . . . that small, insecure little smile of hers. In seeing her, he felt so convicted that he had to pray. God, God please forgive me, but I do love her so. Father, I’m so sorry, but I do.

  She pleaded with him. “Bernie? Please tell me how you got here.”

  “It’s such a long story,” he replied, his voice barely a whisper.

  She reached up with both hands and wiped away his tears. “I want to hear it. All of it. I heard the song, Bernie! ‘Ombra Mai Fu’? I heard our song.”

  Our song. So, it was true. She had felt it too, the bond between them, strung through the notes of music written almost three hundred years ago. Each of them a high note for the other’s low. Playing beneath the canopy of an eternal orchestra.

  “I played it each time I visited you, every month,” he said. “Every time.”

  She nodded and smiled. “I heard. I don’t know how, but I heard.”

  He choked back more tears. “I knew it. I just knew . . . if I played it, you’d hear it.”

  “I can’t believe you did that: visited my grave every month.”

  Her words momentarily knocked him speechless. Gathering himself together, he took a few deep breaths, before he decided on a measured response. “Grave?”

  An eddy of perplexity came across her face, mirroring those that were rippling here and there across the lake around them. “Y-yes.” But that was all she said before she looked away, as if she wasn’t sure she wanted to discuss it any further.

  Father Soltera shook his head softly. “You aren’t dead, Gabriella.”

  It was as if he’d slapped her. She recoiled from him and sat back on the tops of her feet. “What are you talking about?”

  He looked around. He and this woman, they had been romantics back in the real world, yes, but they had also been sharp realists, occasionally teasing each other with the hard truths of things . . . as long as it wasn’t the truth of the thing they felt between them. He owed he
r that honesty, that realism, that truth, now. “Surely, you didn’t think this was heaven, Gabriella,” he said, waving his hand at the world around them.

  Her eyes widened in shock. “No, Bernie, I didn’t,” she said with a deep sigh. “I thought it was hell.”

  Again, he was knocked speechless, before he managed only one word: “Hell?”

  She looked around sadly. “Every day I’m here. No food. No drink. No company save the fish that sometimes swim up at the edges of the island. There are birds, too, but they are too big to be real, I think, so I tell myself I’m imagining them. Besides that? It’s just been me and the island. I’ve walked it. It’s sixty feet by forty feet. The sand keeps me warm at night—during the day, it is as it is now. At night it glows. At first it was hard to sleep it was so bright, but I’m not sure you really sleep here, anyway. You just close your eyes and open them back up again sometime later. With nothing in between. No dreams. Not even any nightmares.” She rubbed her eyes and grabbed one of his hands in both of hers. “I’ve been so, so lonely, Bernie. This place has to be hell, right? For the things I did in my life, for the . . . feelings I had for you, a priest. I mean, every time I heard your voice, reading things to me or playing our song, I thought surely I was being tortured.”

  He gripped her palms. “Gabriella, listen to me. This is not hell.”

  “It has to be! You’re lying!”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “Fine. Then if it’s not hell, where am I?”

  The million-dollar question. He glanced out across the water, to the area where he’d left Michiko behind. He could still feel her out there, somewhere, but she wasn’t going to help with this moment, that was for sure. This one was all his. He thought about things for a few moments, feeling Gabriella’s impatience, before he answered. “Your guess is as good as mine, but I think you’re stuck, between your old life and the next.”

  “What? That makes no—”

  “Gabriella. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell you this . . . but your body? Back in the world? It’s still there.”