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

  Years later, at the Rose Bowl Swap Meet of all places, he found the same jigsaw puzzle on sale at the table of a little old lady who claimed she’d completed it and now had no use for it. As he relived his childhood trauma, she smiled at his story and then assured him that all the pieces were still in the box, even showing him it was taped shut on all four sides. He bought it, took it home and worked on it for a week before discovering about a dozen pieces were missing. He supposed he should take solace in the other 4,988 pieces he’d managed to fit together, but he didn’t.

  That old lady was probably in her grave by now, and that was good for her because he was still pissed about it. That damned puzzle had gotten the better of him twice now.

  Just like Joaquin Murietta.

  He’d gotten the better of Napoleon twice now too.

  The very name seemed to darken the room. Napoleon sighed. He wasn’t hungry, but since he was in the kitchen he decided to grill some bacon and scramble a few eggs, if for no other reason than to try to forget that name. But then the bowl he had chosen to crack the eggs into was tan, and that reminded him of little Esmeralda’s tan skin, and that, in turn, reminded him of the shallow grave, and how you learn the hard way as a rookie cop not to screw up a crime scene; because all the accused needs is a public defender fresh out of law school with a hard-on to make a name for himself, who can take the technicality of soil and grass—many feet removed from the victim’s body—to turn the case upside down and put a monster back on the street.

  The same monster who looked at Napoleon on the way out of the courtroom with a big smile. A “watch what I do next, homie” smile.

  Then the monster disappeared. Until three years later.

  Napoleon stood over the bowl of his eggs and gently ran the tongs of his fork up and down against his forehead. Stop. Stop it. Don’t go there.

  He leaned against the counter and wrestled that demon a good number of minutes until he was saved by, of all things, the gentle rumblings of the percolator. He brought himself back from that place one thought at a time, using his usual mental talismans: thoughts of little Efren, then the 1978 Rams starting lineup, then the design of his first tattoo, then… now.

  Now was defined by two words, Kyle Fasano, the latest thing to be solved. A person was not unlike a puzzle, with a lot of pieces that fit together to make a picture of who they were and what they’d done. Except with people you didn’t start with the corners and work your way in, you started in the center and worked your way out.

  He added some butter to the heated skillet, set his fork to the dueling yellow suns of his eggs, poured in some milk and then added the mixture to the skillet. Feeling lazy, he just microwaved the bacon. A few minutes later he was sitting down at his small dining room table, overlooking the freeway and streets beyond, picking at his food and sipping his coffee.

  Fasano was out there somewhere, just like Joaquin had once been. The hunt was on, and there was no getting around it. A girl barely out of college was now a corpse at the morgue, and Fasano was likely the last person to see her alive. Napoleon felt the urge to turn it all over in his head again, then decided to hold off for now. He was still only half-awake.

  Something wasn’t right though, and there was no getting around it.

  He glanced at himself in the Aztec mirror that hung over his dining table; his face was a wreck, his hair greasy and blotted to his head. His skin was pale, making the tattoo on his right arm stand out even more. It was a traditional tattoo, done all over the world: a pair of praying hands. Usually it was done with the hands clutching a rosary, but Napoleon had gotten it when he was fourteen, the rebellious nature of his teen years already in full swing. As a result, he asked the tattooist to leave out the rosary.

  “¿Por qué, mijo?” the old man queried with an odd grin as he mixed the ink.

  Napoleon answered, “Because when I pray, I don’t want nothin’ between me and God.”

  The old man raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly before continuing his work, the two teardrops tattooed beneath his right eye a testament to the fact that he and God had some issues of their own to deal with someday.

  The eggs were getting cold.

  Outside his apartment a car horn blared, reminding him that he needed to get moving, get back to the station house and back on the case, but Napoleon continued to stare at his tattoo.

  Something wasn’t right with the Fasano case. But it was way too early to start forming assumptions or opinions. That’d be a rookie move he’d expect out of Parker, not himself.

  But the thought stayed anyway, a hunch embedded in his mind that was as stubborn as the ink carved into his arm.

  Kyle Fasano wasn’t guilty.

  THEY SAT THERE for what seemed like hours, the three of them just looking at each other in the now frozen world of Denny’s. Beanie averted his gaze only once, down to Kyle’s hands. At some point Kyle realized that the force moving around inside him and to his hands was also now shielding his mind. They couldn’t read his thoughts anymore.

  So they sat like three deaf mutes preparing for a rumble. This would’ve made Kyle laugh on any other day but, to be honest, right about now he was scared shitless. Beanie and John Deere were bad enough, but the blue glow in his hands scared him even worse. It was warm and rhythmic, as if he were attached to a lightning bolt on a controlled current.

  What’s happening to me? This is crazy.

  He had no idea what to do next, and thankfully they hadn’t figured this out yet. But they would. Then what?

  Beanie shifted his weight and Kyle jumped ever so slightly, but neither one of them seemed to notice. That was good, but this movement seemed to kick-start something in Kyle’s mind. He had to play this straight out of Guy Code 101: when in doubt, bluff—and bluff in as macho a way as you can.

  When he spoke he couldn’t believe his own voice as the words rolled out of his mouth. “You should leave. Now.”

  John Deere managed a weak smile, but Beanie was no poker player; he looked genuinely worried, well beyond surprised and into the land of confused, and this gave Kyle added confidence to continue.

  “I’m not going to tell you again,” Kyle said, leaning forwards on the counter.

  When John Deere spoke, it was with a primal, hate-filled voice from another world, from hell itself. “Tell your master that he has chosen poorly.”

  Finding courage in John Deere’s taunt, Beanie spoke up too. “You don’t have what it takes, Kyle-man,” he said with a sneer.

  Fear began to well in Kyle’s chest, but he held it down. Thank God they couldn’t read his thoughts anymore. If they could, he just knew they’d be upon him without hesitation, like wolves on a sheep.

  The power pulsed in his hands, swelling against the tips of his fingers.

  Without thinking he opened his hands and put them palms down on the counter, and in an instant the blue light shot down the counter’s length, violently vibrating the cups and plates before it reached the target it evidently desired; Beanie’s left hand, resting on the counter, was enveloped in blue light and vaporized. Screaming, he fell back, holding up the cauterized stump of his arm in horror.

  John Deere stood as if to attack, and Kyle, again following school yard logic, did the same; but he was getting very close to the flip side of that same child’s logic that warns that—bravado or not—when the bully’s coming for you, sometimes it’s best to run.

  As quickly as that thought came, Beanie and John Deere returned back to human form.

  “You shit! Put that under your coat.” John Deere shrieked at Beanie, who whimpered softly as he put the handless stump inside the fold of his jacket.

  They slowly slid past the booth behind them and then moved quickly to the exit, the view of the world around them warping as they did so. Awe sunk into Kyle’s chest. The patrons, the waitresses, the traffic outside, even the sunbeams coming in through the windows, began to move incrementally at first, then a little faster.

  John Deere looked at Kyle with
bulging eyes as his lips pulled back in a vicious sneer. “We’re not finished with you yet,” he spat.

  Encouraged by their retreat, Kyle couldn’t resist a bit of bravado. “You better hope you are.”

  Beanie and John Deere laughed, and this was worse than any of their smiles or taunts because it was a laughter absent all happiness. It sounded like the blackest and saddest of things. They laughed all the way out of the diner, John Deere pausing just before he stepped out the door to glare at Kyle one last time. “See you soon, slug,” he said.

  They disappeared, and almost instantly the world returned to full speed. Kyle exhaled for the first time in what seemed like an hour as the blue in his hands began to fade, gradually at first, before it blipped off all together, as if someone had hit a switch somewhere.

  He was shaking so badly he couldn’t even pick up his cup of coffee, so he forced himself to sit down and take deep breaths to steady his nerves. Around him the world went about its business: the truckers told another dirty joke that made one laugh so hard he began to choke; the bread man folded his sports page and settled his check; and the fat waitress was reaming out the chef for under cooking someone’s hash browns.

  Only Jasmine still seemed a bit off.

  Standing at the register and sifting through receipts, she seemed confused. She was obviously upset, but it looked like she was unsure as to why, as if she had a bad memory or a premonition of sorts. Kyle watched her glance more than a few times at where Beanie and John Deere had been sitting, but they were gone now, their place settings on the counter undisturbed as if they’d never been there in the first place.

  The bread man exited the restaurant, brushing against Kyle by accident as he did so, and in some after-effect of the blue a heightened sense of awareness came over Kyle and he immediately began receiving information about the bread man in small, mental flashes: he was single, he liked pornography, especially girl on girl, and he watched it for hours every night on his computer before going to bed, where he would then abuse himself, never aware of the squatting goblins in his room who always led his eyes to just one more video and one more step towards complete disrespect for the women he saw each day.

  Lately, one woman in particular had become the object of his obsessions: a girl on his delivery route who’d never outgrown her need to tease, and who would flirt with him one day and then be bitchy to him the next, exacerbating both his passions and his contempt.

  Kyle tried to stop the images from flooding into his mind but he couldn’t.

  The girl had no way of knowing that she was finding her way more and more into the bread man’s dark and twisted fantasies, or that he often dreamed of tying her up in his garage and making her watch videos with him. When he was done with her? Well. The bread man would have to make a different kind of delivery, maybe to the ravine off of Highway 14.

  Repulsed by the images, Kyle pulled his attention away from the bread man’s mind like a man who pulls his gaze away from a dead animal he’s seen dismembered on the road.

  His hands were shaking worse now, and the fabric of who he was, what reality was, who we all were and what was happening around us, every day, was coming undone again, like pulled threads.

  In frustration he reached out to a God he didn’t feel he really knew.

  “Why have you chosen me for this?” he whispered softly.

  As expected, there was no answer.

  He knew why, anyway.

  Because he deserved it.

  CHAPTER 11

  Tamara moved the coffee maker to one side of the counter and wiped beneath it. Cleaning was normally a good way to get your mind off of things, but not when your life was falling apart.

  No. It wasn’t falling apart. It just needed to be reorganized, like the salt and pepper shakers cast off haphazardly by Juanita to a lonely island atop the toaster oven when they actually belonged next to the seasonings rack and butter dish near the stove.

  She’d already cleaned the microwave and range hood, even getting the filthy fan grill beneath. Her attention now turned to organizing her many cooking oils, infused as they were with garlic or basil, saffron and chili peppers. She had quite the collection, some from the Montrose Farmer’s Market and others from the olive oil specialty shop in San Luis Obispo.

  She arranged them from tallest to shortest, then changed her mind and went with fullest to emptiest.

  Janie was still asleep, though twice in the night she had stirred and cried out for her father. Seth had awoken, made his way to the television and was now watching Saturday morning cartoons, his stuffed horse tucked under one arm as he leaned against the cushions.

  She looked at the back of his little head and her heart contracted.

  He had no idea how much his life might change now. If this played out the way Tamara feared, with Kyle in jail or out on bail with months of legal hell to endure, there was no way she’d let either of her children be subjected to the tortures of the school, or even the neighborhood, for a while.

  She sighed and forced herself to focus.

  The oils in order, she now began to organize the pasta containers on the far right counter. The straight pastas were first, fettuccini to angel hair, thickest to thinnest, then the round pastas, rigatoni to penne, again thickest to thinnest. The rice jars came next, by grain size.

  She used to love to cook, until she began working so much. Now it was only a weekend exercise, and rare at that, as work often followed her home.

  She paused. How did all this happen?

  She and Kyle hadn’t had sex very much the past year.

  She had to be honest with herself. All women knew that men needed one thing. Sex was always the elephant in the room. Add kids and overtime to the mix and there simply wasn’t enough energy to go around.

  This was all her fault.

  Bullshit. Quit thinking this way. Quit thinking about all of it.

  Her eyes filled with tears before she steadied herself.

  She turned and began to clean the refrigerator, the top shelf first so she could knock crumbs and the like down as she went, sadly removing her birthday cake and placing it on the dining room table before she began. She noticed that Juanita had cleaned the refrigerator recently, but no woman can take care of your house like you can.

  Though some of them can take better care of your man.

  She immediately thought of Caitlyn.

  Shut up! Just stop it!

  She began to clean the shelves harder and harder, her blue sponge making mad semi-circles as she scrubbed away dried-up liquid drops and bits of celery on the middle shelf, until the weight of her arm collapsed it. Cheese packets, tortillas, a half-empty can of peaches and a plastic container of pesto spilled down her body and across the floor.

  She saw the peaches on the floor, and then the world went red. She began to smash at the rest of the shelves, collapsing them one by one, the milk and orange juice cartons tumbling out with heavy thumps, apples and oranges scattering out across the floor like oversized marbles, a cream cheese container and jar of pickles tumbling next. She grabbed at the items that dared not fall, the plastic ketchup and mustard bottles, the ball of fresh mozzarella cheese, a bag of cilantro, a bottle of soy sauce and a can of A&W Root Beer, Kyle’s favorite, throwing each of them at the kitchen cabinets she had just wiped down.

  Hot tears were burning down her face, and it was like the emotions they carried were reabsorbed into her body, because her chest began to burn too, more intensely with every short breath she could manage.

  He’s ruined everything. My whole life. The kids’ lives. It’s all ruined.

  But she loved him. She loved him anyway, even now. How could that be?

  She collapsed in a heap, right smack dab into a puddle of milk and apple juice, and began to sob uncontrollably. “Nobody’s perfect,” she whispered, over and over. “Nobody’s perfect! Nobody’s perfect! Nobody—”

  Her children came to her in stereo.

  “Mommy?” Janie, from the hallway, he
r hair in her face, tears in her eyes.

  “Mommy?” Seth, from the entryway to the den, his stuffed horse clutched like a shield against his chest, confusion in his face.

  Jesus! Could I blow this any more? Hadn’t she told herself last night, right after those detectives had left, that the number one thing she had to do was protect the children from all of this?

  So much for that idea.

  Now she’d failed miserably at that too.

  She got to her knees, a hand held up to each child like a traffic cop, trying to stop them from coming to her across the mess on the floor because there was surely broken glass somewhere. But they both ignored her warning and ran into her arms, and the three of them embraced there on the kitchen floor, rocking back and forth in tears, Seth not even knowing why yet, evidently just crying because his mother and sister were.

  Just then the sun rose fully in a yellow brilliance, lighting up the kitchen in hues of red and orange, and on any other day Tamara might’ve seen all those burning colors as beautiful and bright.

  Not today.

  Today they were the colors of only one thing: hell.

  NAPOLEON LOOKED AT THE CAPTAIN, with his white hair and peeling cheeks, and waited for him to speak.

  “I tell you to get some rest and you’re back here already?”

  “I got some sleep. Feel a little better.”

  “Bullshit. You’re already bird-doggin’ this one, aren’t you?”

  Napoleon shrugged and nodded.

  “Okay. Fine. So? We make the husband for this?”

  They were seated in the captain’s office, near the main area of the second floor of the station house, phones already ringing and people talking in a sea of sound outside. The captain motioned his head towards the door. Napoleon closed it before answering, “Hell if I know. Until we get those lab results, we can’t be sure.”