"Amado!" He skidded to a stop. She wasn't calling his name. She was… naming him. He moved closer, tree to tree to tree. He could hear her, sobbing. "Amado, okay?" she said. Then more-between the weeping and the English, he couldn't make it out-but he heard her say "McGeochs" clear enough.
His fingers curled around the butt of the gun. Through the leaves, he could make out the top half of the barn. He dropped the sack and fell to his stomach again, crawling through the underbrush until he could see.
Isobel was curled on the ground, trapped between the barn and the big man. She had both arms wrapped around her in futile protection. She shook with sobs. Her lip was bleeding. Amado brought the gun up and sighted it. The bastard's back was wide enough; even an inexperienced shot couldn't miss.
Then Isobel's attacker bent over and scooped her up. He cradled her tenderly, making soothing noises, stroking her back and hair. She clung to the monster, still weeping, and buried her face in his shoulder.
Amado lowered the gun. He turned away, fighting to keep his gorge down. He knew what that was. He had seen it before. There were a few women in his village whose husbands would beat them Saturday night and woo them Sunday morning. But he was sure Isobel was unmarried. A brother, then? Or an uncle? He stared at the gun in his hand, heavy and unfamiliar, and almost dropped it again. Sweet mother of Christ. Had the bearded giant been hitting Isobel because he had seen her with a dark-skinned man? Or because this was missing?
Hide, she had said. Hide. He bent, scooped up the sack he had dropped, and replaced the gun inside. Slowly, carefully, he threaded his way through the trees. Back toward the McGeochs' land. To do what she had asked him to do.
IX
The first person Kevin ran into as he snuck into the station that afternoon was the deputy chief. "What the hell are you doin' here?" MacAuley asked.
"Uh… I wanted to get in a little early for my shift."
"An hour early? Damn, boy, your hair's still wet."
"I showered at the gym. I was working out."
MacAuley's caterpillar eyebrows went up. "You. Were working out." He thwacked Kevin on the chest with a manila folder. "I thought you were more into pickup basketball games."
Kevin shrugged.
MacAuley shook his head and looked upward, to where acoustic tiles covered the hallway's original plaster ceiling. "God help us all," he said. He thumbed toward the briefing room. "May as well get back there. You can tell the chief about your stop last night."
"My what?"
MacAuley looked at him impatiently. "You stopped to pick up Knox, right? Ran plates on a Hummer driven by a guy with tattoos? A corpse cake turned up this morning in the woods off of Lick Springs Road. Matching marks on his hands. La-ti-no." He rolled his eyes. "Not PC to say Mexican anymore. Hunh. Maybe I'll start calling myself a Hibernian-American."
"I think you mean Caledonian-American, Dep. Hibernian-American would be Irish. Like me." By the look on MacAuley's face, that last "like me" might have been overdoing it.
"Get in there, before I go Irish on your ass."
Kevin hustled into the squad room, grinning to himself. To be rewarded by the sight of her, seated at the big table, studying a series of photos.
"Hey, Hadley," he said, his voice a pitch-perfect blend of friendly and casual. He had practiced in his Aztek on the way over.
"Hey, Flynn." She didn't take her eyes off the pictures.
"You can call me Kevin, you know."
That made her glance up. "I don't think so."
"What are you doing here so early?" The voice made him jump. Oh. Yeah. There was somebody else in the room. Kevin turned toward the bulletin board, where the chief was tacking up rap sheets. "Never mind," he continued, "Come here and tell me if you recognize any of these."
Kevin crossed to the board. The sheets had the familiar formatting of the NYS VCAP database. Eight young Latinos stared at him, captured by booking photographers in Brooklyn and Manhattan and the Bronx: defiant, stoned, sullen, smirking. Kevin tapped the smirking face. "That's the one I had to chase off. He doesn't have his piercings in this shot"-he touched his upper lip-"but that's him." He leaned closer to read the guy's short list. Fresh out of Plattsburgh, less than four months ago. Three possessions, carrying concealed, auto theft, assault, and assault with a deadly weapon. Possible associate of the Punta Diablos. No wonder he'd intimidated Hadley.
The chief grunted. "Knox ID'd him as well. Anybody else?"
Kevin closed his eyes for a moment. Tried to re-create the moment in his mind: his lights on Hadley's car, the men, two on either side as he drove up. One pair scuttling for the Hummer before he had gotten out of his cruiser. Leaving his rig twisted frontward some, so the big block of his Colt.44 could make an impression. The littler rat-faced guy squinting at his gun. Panicked.
He opened his eyes again. Pointed. "That one. He was with, uh-" he leaned forward to read the smirking guy's name-"Alejandro Santiago."
"You smell anything on 'em?"
"Nope."
Hadley looked at them, one eyebrow lifted.
"Pot," Kevin explained. "Like we talked about." He turned back to the chief. "Lyle says we've got a dead body?"
"Mmm." The chief's face was abstracted as he studied the two sheets.
"One of these guys?" Kevin gestured to the board.
"I don't think so. We don't have an ID yet, but he's been dead at least a month, maybe more, and we've got confirmation from the First District Anti-Gang Task Force that all these charmers were alive and well as of the beginning of this month, when they reported in to their parole officers. We're interested in the group in the car because Officer Knox said Santiago and one other guy had prison tats on their fingers that look very much like the ones on our John Doe."
"Just like," Hadley muttered.
The chief crossed to the table and picked up one of the photos. It was a close-up of a human hand, puffed up like a rubber-glove balloon, with what looked like gang tags between the knuckles and first joints. "Do these look familiar to you?"
Kevin shook his head. "No."
"I mean, do they look like the tattoos on Alejandro Santiago?"
Kevin glanced at Hadley. "I-uh, didn't see any tattoos, Chief. I may not have been close enough."
"I just want to make sure Officer Knox isn't accidentally conflating two different things. There's no mention of any hand or finger markings on either of these sheets."
"He had prison tats on his hands," Hadley said. "I worked in the California DOC for two years. Believe me, the ballpoint special is distinctive." She turned to Kevin. "I told you last night, remember? About how they were inked in?"