The Parker Trilogy Page 76

  Parker felt the blood in his veins go ice cold. “Come again?”

  “Yeah. ‘Shilo.’ Name like that, I thought you’d know right away. Doesn’t sound like it though. A witness at the club that night, maybe? Or, Klink said he read in the report that you and Campos filed when you visited Hector’s warehouse over on Fresno Street that the dude liked quoting poetry?”

  Wrong, wrong, wrong. Parker looked around, expecting to see Napoleon, but he was gone again. This was getting insane on more levels than he could count. How? How could Hector Villarosa have known to toss out a Neil Diamond song? The people around him, the check-in counter staffed by two pretty blonds, the luggage stacked nearby, it started going sideways. Just like it had that day on the freeway, when he’d seen that glowing creature taking the car crash victim off and away. Except this time the . . . eeriness . . . wasn’t from seeing something, but rather hearing something. Shilo? Incredible. He barely managed the words he needed to end the call. “Okay. Text me the number. I gotta hit it.”

  “You got it. But Parker, if this guy gives you anything pertinent to the case somehow—”

  “I know, I know. I’ll get it to you right away.” Parker hung up.

  A woman in a black business suit, white blouse and navy blue pumps that had been trying to flirt with him earlier and was seated across from him was now looking at him with concern.

  He felt weak and sweaty, like he might pass out. He pulled himself together and wiped his hand across his forehead. A little kid, maybe five, was chasing his older brother around a bench of chairs, laughing and yelling as he did so. Their mother and father, both seated nearby, were thumbing through magazines, the mother occasionally tossing an eye in their direction, looking wary of possible injuries.

  When his phone buzzed with Murillo’s text, he looked down at it and deciding to go all in or not in at all, he punched the number and let it dial out. The prison guard manning the main line forwarded Parker to the Visitors Information Desk, where a man with a very deep voice, identifying himself as Sheriff Thomas, answered the phone. After taking down Parker’s information, he told him that inmate Villarosa was out on the yard. Calls were supposed to be scheduled in advance, but Parker pressed, telling Thomas that Hector might have information crucial to an ongoing case. Never mind the fact that I just identified myself as Detective Parker, which I’m not anymore. Screw it. I didn’t mean to. Force of habit. Thomas softened his stance and said they’d fetch Hector, bring him in and have him call Parker back in fifteen minutes or so.

  Parker still had time until his flight began boarding so he sat . . . and waited.

  It took twenty minutes before his phone rang. Again, he played the role. “Detective Parker.”

  And again, he was floored. The man on the other end of the line said, “I thought you weren’t a detective anymore, man.”

  He vaguely recognized the voice. “Hector?”

  “Yeah. It’s been a while, huh?”

  How did he know that I’m not a detective anymore?

  Parker grunted. “Yeah. It has. But how’d you know that? Did Murillo tell you—”

  “No. Our friend in the gray suit did.”

  Again, another shot to the head. This was too much. Parker leaned back in his chair, wanting to puke but afraid to move. This isn’t happening. It’s just . . . not . . . possible.

  “You still there?” Hector said solemnly.

  But Parker wasn’t. He was too busy running thoughts around in his head, like the little boys around the bench of chairs nearby. The Gray Dude is involved. How? How does . . . dammit, just say it . . . how does an angel align himself with a cold-blooded killer? What. Is. Going. On. Maybe I’m off base. Maybe he’s just referring to—

  “And by ‘our friend in the gray suit’ your referring to . . .” Parker blurted out.

  Hector sniffed and yawned loudly into the phone. “Ah. Man. I dunno. This shit sounds so crazy you ain’t never gonna believe me when I say who this guy is and what he—”

  “He’s an angel,” Parker said suddenly, as much to himself as to Hector. It was time to quit pretending and denying. Again. Maybe this time it would stick.

  Silence. Long and hard. “So you do know about him? Bro, this is nuts. I keep telling myself that I’m just seeing things, or at least I did tell myself that, but it goes both ways ’cause I can see the other side, too, man.”

  Parker didn’t want to know. Still. He asked. “The other side?”

  When Hector spoke next, he was practically whispering into the phone, his voice full of fear. “Man. They everywhere. Demons and shit. This place is full of ’em.” His voice dropped, and he sounded depressed. “I’m starting to think it’d just be easier to join ’em instead of fight ’em, man.”

  “Nah. You don’t know me, man. But trust me when I say: you don’t want to do that.”

  “No, huh?”

  If anyone were to hear this conversation, they would surely have called the men in white coats by now. Got one looney in Corcoran, the other one at LAX. Round ’em up!

  But Parker realized that the real loons were the ones that missed all this stuff, happening every day, all around them. You could turn a blind eye all you wanted to. But, eventually, you’d see.

  “You still there, Detective?”

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Just say it. You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  Parker sighed. “No, Hector. I don’t. Not one bit.”

  Maybe an hour passed, maybe two. Maggie couldn’t be sure. Her head hurt, and she had to be careful when she leaned it against the post she was tied to; in the right spot she could rest, but if she hit the wrong spot then pain would lace itself across her eyes and face. All those Taekwondo classes and thus far she’d spent most of her time getting her ass kicked, first at that warehouse in Granada Hills, that damned place she never should’ve gone to, then all the way across the border to this little shantytown in the middle of nowhere. History was repeating itself. Men groping her. Men abusing her. Except this time, women were involved, too. Three crazy old ladies and a psycho bitch with a face full of piercings.

  Her frustration was growing by the minute. She’d already tugged and pulled at the ropes binding her hands to the post so much that her wrists were red, raw and throbbing. She thought of giving it another go but she’d found a position, lodged against the pole with one shoulder resting against the wall, that was semi-comfortable. She was exhausted, but afraid to go to sleep. Luisa needed her and the last thing either of them could afford was Maggie wandering back to wherever Father Soltera was and maybe getting stuck there this time.

  She tried to keep herself awake by staring at Ernesto’s decapitated head. It was a morbid solution, but it worked for a while, until, like all horrors, the effect began to fade. Death was already turning his face plastic-looking, almost unreal, and as the very early stages of rigor-mortis set in, his cheeks began to tighten. Only the flies, still feeding on him and laying their eggs, ruined her ability to chalk him up as a wax figure now.

  She looked to the ground for further insect-based denial to her fantasy that she wasn’t really in a room with a dead person; a long trail of ants, about an inch wide, was snaking in from a crack in the floor of the house, over to Ernesto’s body and up one of his sleeves. Maggie was marveling at their organization when her eyelids began growing heavier and heavier.

  Then sleep claimed her as its own again, as if it were a mother she never knew, and she a daughter that could never escape.

  This time she did not go anywhere. This time she slept like a “normal” person who was struck with utter exhaustion: deep and heavy into a blanket of blackness.

  Someone was speaking. “Is she ready?”

  Her eyes shot open. It was Güero, in the next room.

  “Yes, yes she is. No thanks to you and the comedy of errors it’s taken to get to this point.”

  “Where’s Ernesto?” Güero asked, sounding angry.

  “He overstepped his bounds,” Delva
said calmly.

  “What?”

  “So I had to have your lover kill him.”

  Güero sounded enraged. “What!”

  “I was only following orders,” Sonia said in a fearful voice.

  “Orders?!” Güero yelled.

  “If it was my choice,” Sonia said, “I would’ve killed the puta in the other room, too. How dare you bring some little whore you want to sleep with into my house.”

  Maggie heard a loud slap and Sonia cry out. Then two thuds as Güero began using his fists on her.

  “Enough!” Delva yelled.

  Sonia was whimpering. “I’m tired of you always hurting me.”

  “Remember your place, puta. You’re only alive because I allow it.”

  “Alive?” Sonia screamed. “Look at my face! Look what you did to my face!”

  Another round of slaps and thuds. “Do you think I care about your face? Do you think I care about you, at all? Do you even realize what you’ve done by killing Ernesto? Besides being my right-hand man down here, he’s the cartel leader’s nephew, you stupid bitch!”

  Sonia screamed in fear, probably because Güero was advancing on her again. Delva shouted, “I said, enough!” Except this time a massive rush moved through the house, the air rapidly displaced, as if a suppressed explosion had been released. It caused the walls and roof to vibrate and the curtains to the next room to fly open. Through all the dust and dirt that plumed up from the floor, Maggie could see Misha dabbing a washcloth on Luisa’s head as Delva glared at Güero, his face twisted in rage and glaring back at her.

  Well. In the movies this would all work out splendidly. They’d just kill each other off and I could ride out of Dodge with Luisa on the back of a horse. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Maggie thought.

  As if the world was reading her thoughts, Delva went soft, showing that, elderly or not, she still knew how to turn a man’s ego against him. “Güerito. When? When are you going to realize that you’re beyond these worldly concerns of the cartel?”

  Güero huffed and puffed a few times before replying, “It’s complicated. You never should’ve ordered it without my approval.”

  “Yes. Yes, I know,” Delva replied, waving her hand across the room and then to Güero. “But all of this is for you. When this is done, and you have the child? All we must do is get you somewhere safe with more money than you could ever need. The cartel will never find you, we’ll see to it with our spells and our friends. Then, you can raise her and have her as many times as you want, and trust me, when this child grows up? She will be all you’ll ever want. No other woman will ever please you again. You will serve The Master and she will serve The Master . . . and the evil you will do together? Oh. My old bones shudder with ecstasy at the thought.”

  Maggie closed her eyes in disgust and dismay. How? How were there really people like this in the world? It didn’t seem possible until you read all the articles about kidnappings, saw all the news reports of the serial killers, or jumped for the umpteenth time when your phone exploded with an Amber Alert. No. It was true. Evil was real. And though she still wasn’t ready to go down the rabbit hole of demons and hobgoblins, she didn’t need to. Evil was right here, in this house, not twenty feet away. It didn’t matter if it answered to the moon or to Satan himself.

  Because it was answering to somebody.

  Her energy somewhat refreshed from her nap, she scrambled to her knees and began pulling the rope up and down against the post again. Nothing. Except her efforts had caught someone’s attention.

  The curtain, which had fallen partially closed again once the disturbance in the air passed, was pulled wide open and there, in a blue suit with a starched white shirt and red tie, was Güero looking down at her. “Hi there, baby,” he said with a big, fat smile.

  “I hate you!” Sonia screamed from behind him, her voice dripping with jealousy.

  “Leave her be!” Delva shouted.

  Maggie gritted her teeth and jerked towards him, wanting to hit him more than anything in the world.

  His smile grew so wide that it seemed almost inhuman. “Yes! Still feisty. After all you’ve been through? Incredible. I can’t wait anymore. I want a taste. Just a little taste,” he purred, his eyes so full of lust that he was completely blinded to Ernesto’s body and head nearby.

  “You can’t,” Delva said, this time, incredibly, almost pleadingly. Up until now Maggie had Delva pegged as highest on the totem pole around here, especially the way Güero had deferred to her back at the warehouse before they’d killed and cut Felix into pieces. But now? Now she sounded genuinely concerned.

  Güero turned sideways and looked at her. “Why not?”

  Delva looked at Maggie. “Because she’s been . . . touched. By the other side.”

  “What are you talking about? She hasn’t been out of our sight since—”

  This time, as Delva spoke, Maggie met her gaze. “No. She was touched by the other side a long time ago, to protect her from an evil that was being done to her.”

  “Whatever. Who cares. So what?”

  “So . . . you will risk involving forces we do not want or need here, you stupid boy!”

  The room froze. Eenie, Meenie and Miney all looked to Güero, their faces showing that they were relieved by his return. Anastasia and Misha walked slowly to Delva’s side. Sonia rose from the ground and wiped tears from her eyes.

  Go ahead, Maggie begged. Pull that dagger, Sonia! Cut out his cheating heart!

  “I listen to you only because The Master has told me to, hag. Know that.”

  “Yes,” Delva sneered, “and The Master is all that matters. You’ve worked too hard to get this far. I’m trying to help you.”

  The house went quiet again as Güero looked to the ground, then at Maggie, then back to Delva. “So, what, then?”

  Delva’s face was painted with somberness. “If you were smart, instead of trying to have relations with her, you’d kill her. Not now, but right at the end of the ritual. We could use her blood, touched as it is, to heighten the effects on the child. And by then? It would be too late for the other side to help her.”

  When Güero looked back at Maggie, the lust in his eyes now gone, and when he spoke it was a crushing blow to Maggie’s distant hopes for a Hollywood ending where the bad guys killed each other off in stupidity.

  “So be it,” he said firmly.

  He closed the curtain and Maggie was back in darkness.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Father Soltera knew time was the enemy now. He had to get to The Stairway, to home and to two frail bodies: his own and Gabriella’s. Worse still, somehow, someway, Luisa was now wrapped up in all of this. As he cradled Michiko in his arms, he looked desperately to the woods. Tabitha had gotten a good head start on him.

  “You cannot let her get through,” Michiko whispered.

  Father Soltera looked down. “What?”

  “You must go, tomodachi. She must not breach The Stairway before you do. If she does, she would have access to the girl and her baby.”

  “How do you—”

  “I can see it all in your mind.” She coughed weakly. “And your concerns are merited. In addition, if she gets through, she could seal the door behind her, trapping you here forever.”

  Shock numbed his mind, momentarily distracting him from the fight within himself between the urge to chase Tabitha and the duty to stay and protect his friend. “Michiko, I can’t just leave you here!”

  “I will be fine,” she said, as her body lit up in a soft goldish-white light that pulsed over the outline of her body. “I just need some time to heal.”

  As if to confirm this statement, Father Soltera watched in awe as bits of the aura left the outline, combed over Michiko’s wounds, and then came back. Tiny dots that, with each pass, were healing her cuts and gouges a bit at a time. He looked into her eyes and saw strength. She nodded firmly. “Go.”

  Jumping to his feet, he turned and ran into the forest opening where he’d last
seen Tabitha. As he did, something in the woods moved. Something big. It was no natural stirring on the forest floor. He looked around but saw nothing. A branch cracked. But it was from above, from somewhere up in the forest canopy. He looked up and squinted, trying to see what it was. Again, nothing. Sighing, he asked himself how many terrors could this place throw at them? Then he immediately regretted even thinking the question.

  As he ran down the path, he saw no sign of Tabitha. At her age, even without that head start, she’d have a clear advantage of getting to The Stairway ahead of him. Fear, anxiety and a building sense of desperation began to overtake him, yet he was thankful for it. Because he knew what to do with these things, had trained himself over the years to counter them with only one reaction: prayer.

  And as he ran and prayed, Michiko’s voice came into his mind immediately. Be strong, tomodachi. Take heart.

  The sky above began to crackle with energy. A lightning bolt splattered across the sky in staggered, swiftly disappearing sections, and thunder rumbled through the woods as a storm began to form. It occurred to him that everything here was sudden. Life. Death. Safety. Danger. Clear skies one minute, full-fledged storms the next. As if this place were suffering from a series of mood swings, as if he and Michiko were stuck in a massive subconscious that was made up of all the dead who were stranded here, lost, marooned and alone. Teetering between the depression of their decision and the madness of its consequences.

  He felt a sadness creeping over him before he countered it with one thought: no one was beyond saving. Especially if those they left behind loved and hoped and prayed enough to reach them. Wasn’t Gabriella proof enough of that? And what of Ikuro? How many lonely songs had he played on that violin, refusing to go back to his tree and hang? Knowing—believing—that someone, someday, would come.

  His knee caps groaned in their sockets as the uneven terrain of the path began to take its toll. He pushed on, wiping at his face, as scattered raindrops pattered down on the upper leaves of the trees and fall below. Something told him to look up again. Something was up there. Looking. Watching. He could feel it.