Special Agent Samuel Barrera spent breakfast trying to remember the name of the ax murderer.
The guy had tortured and killed six illegal immigrants on a ranch up around Castroville, left their body parts scattered in the woods like deer corn. What the hell was his name?
Sam had a feeling it would be important in the case he was working on. He’d talk to his trainee Pacabel when he got to the office. Pacabel would remember.
The morning was humid after last night’s downpour, just enough drizzle to keep everybody sour-faced, staring at the gray sky, thinking, Enough already.
Not even Alamo Street Market’s coffee and migas were enough to compensate.
Sam pulled on his jacket over his sidearm.
He left a ten on the table, got annoyed when the waiter called, “ Hasta manana, Sam.”
Like Sam knew the guy. Like they were old friends or something. What the hell was wrong with people these days?
Down South Alamo, yellow sawhorses blocked the side streets. Asphalt had come apart in huge chunks and washed away. The sidewalk was buried in a shroud of mud.
Sam picked his way through the debris.
The last few years, people had started calling this area Southtown. Art studios had opened up in the old barrio houses, funky little restaurants and curio shops in the crumbling mercantile buildings. The changes didn’t bother Sam. He liked seeing life come back to his old neighborhood. But it did make him miss the past.
His family home at the corner of Cedar was falling apart. He’d owned it since his parents died, back in the seventies. He hadn’t lived there for years, but he always parked in front of it. Force of habit. The FOR SALE was up. The real estate agent called him every day with glad tidings. They had their choice of offers. For this old dump. Sam never suspected he’d grown up in a Victorian fixer-up dream. To him, it had just been la casa. Back then, nobody lived here but the Mexicans, because this was where they could afford to live.
He opened the door of his mustard-yellow BMW.
The car was getting old. Like him. But Sam kept putting off a trade-in, irritated by the thought of unfamiliar controls, a different paint job. Too much to keep track of, when you got a new car.
He drove north to the field office on East Houston, still thinking about that rancher whose name he couldn’t remember. He’d kept the six illegal immigrants as slaves, killed them slowly, one at a time. It had something to do with Sam’s present case.
When he got to the FBI suite on the second floor, he walked into the reception area and found some rookie fresh out of Quantico blocking his way to the inner offices. “Sir, can I help you?”
Sam scowled. There was a time when he would’ve chewed out this asshole for standing in his way, but Sam didn’t feel up to it today. He felt a little off. Preoccupied. “I work here, son.”
Something disconnected in the kid’s eyes. It wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. “You have identification?”
Sam patted his jacket, where the ID should be.
Hell. Was it in the car, maybe? On the coffee table?
Held up from work by a fucking detail.
A couple of agents came out from the interior offices and sized up Sam. One of them was an older guy-must’ve been nearing mandatory retirement. He had thinning silver hair, a big nose blazed with capillaries. Sam knew him, couldn’t quite place his name.
“Must’ve left it at home,” Sam told the rookie. He felt the situation slipping away from him. “Cut me some slack.”
The agents exchanged looks. By some silent agreement, the silver-haired one stepped forward. “Hey, Sam.”
“Yeah?” Sam said.
“Let’s take a walk.”
“I don’t want a walk.”
The old guy put a hand on his shoulder and steered him back toward the entrance.
“You know me?” the old guy asked.
“Sure,” Sam said.
“Pacabel,” the guy said.
Immediately, the name slipped around him like a comfortable shoe.
“Joe Pacabel,” Sam said, confident again. “Sure, Joe. Let me get to work, will you? Tell these jokers.”
Pacabel looked at the floor. Beige tiles, which seemed wrong to Sam. It should’ve been carpet. Green industrial carpet.
The other agents were trying not to stare at him.
“Look, Sam,” Pacabel said, the words dragging out of him. “You’re a little confused, is all. It happens.”
“Joe, my case…”
“You’ve got no case, Sam.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Pacabel’s eyes watered, and Sam realized it was from embarrassment. Embarrassment for him.
“Sam, you retired from the FBI,” Pacabel said gently. “You haven’t worked here in twenty years.”
Halfway across town, Gerry Far was pulling dead people out of a trailer.
He hated this part of his job, but he had to help out personally. Otherwise his employees would panic. He’d learned that from his mentor, Will Stirman.
The driver this time was a fruit trucker from Indianapolis. This was his first run. It was all Gerry could do to keep him from calling the police.
“Help me with this hombre, ” Gerry told the trucker. “Jesus, he’s heavy.”
The smell in the truck was enough to kill-overripe mangos and excrement and body odor. When they’d opened the trailer, the temperature inside had been about a hundred and ten degrees.
As he hauled the big corpse over to the incinerator, Gerry did the math. Fifty-three illegals. Three hundred dollars a head. Twenty-one had died, but of course they’d paid up front.
The thirty-two who lived would be sold off to Gerry’s clients-sweatshops, labor ranches, brothels-to “earn credit” for further transportation to Chicago or Houston or wherever they dreamed of going. In reality, none of them would ever be allowed to leave. They’d bring Gerry a sale price of two to five hundred dollars each, possibly more for young women. That was the beauty of the Stirman system-the illegals paid to get here, then Gerry got paid again for selling them into slavery. Welcome to America.
Gerry would have to give the driver his cut, plus a little extra to calm his nerves. There would be a hefty fee to the guy who ran the incinerator. Still, Gerry figured he would walk away with ten grand from this load.
He was dragging out the last body when his spotter, Luke, ran up, looking paler than the corpses. “You hear the news?”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Gerry said. “Watch the goddamn gate.”
“Stirman’s free. Broke out yesterday afternoon.”
Gerry dropped the body he was carrying. “You sure?”
Luke swallowed, held up his cell phone. “I just got the call.”
“From who?”
Luke hesitated. If Gerry had been thinking more clearly, he might’ve picked up on the fact that something was very wrong with the way Luke was acting.
“Just a friend,” Luke said. “Wanted to be sure you were warned.”
“Shit.”
“Where you going?” the trucker called.
But Gerry was already fishing out his car keys, running toward his TransAm.
He’d always known a life sentence wouldn’t stop Will Stirman. Not after what Gerry had done to him. But damn it-yesterday afternoon? Why hadn’t somebody told him sooner?
Gerry drove toward downtown.
He regretted what he’d done to Stirman. He regretted it every day, but there was no going back now. He had to go through with his emergency plan.
He ditched the TransAm near the Rivercenter Marriott and caught a taxi to the East Side. St. Paul Square. From there, it was a short walk to one of his properties-a place Stirman didn’t know about. Nobody knew about it except a few of Gerry’s best guys, like Luke. Gerry could lay low there for a few days, make arrangements, then get out of town for good, or at least until Stirman was recaptured.
The property was an abandoned ice warehouse, a four-story red-brick building that didn’t have anything to recommend it-no electricity, no water. Just a whole lot of privacy, a good vantage point from the fourth floor to watch for visitors, and the stash Gerry had squirreled away-a few days’ worth of food, clothing, extra cash, a couple of guns. Not much. Gerry should’ve been more serious. But it was enough to get him started, to make a plan.
He was starting to relax as he climbed the stairs. He needed a vacation anyway. Maybe Cozumel.
At the top of the stairs, two men were waiting for him in the shadows.
A familiar voice said, “Gerry Far. Been praying for you every day, son.”
The I-Tech corporate offices looked out over the wreckage of north San Antonio-streets pulsing with police lights, swollen creeks turning neighborhoods into lakes. The gray ribbon of Highway 281 disappeared into water at the Olmos Basin. On the horizon, clouds and hills boiled together in a thick, fuzzy soup.
Sam Barrera said nothing to his secretary, Alicia, about why he was late. He hoped Joe Pacabel wouldn’t call to check up on him.
He stared out at the drowned city, the streets he’d known all his life.
He wanted to weep from shame.
The first time he’d passed on his medication. One sorry-ass morning he’d tried to go without the little beige pills and the goddamn diarrhea they caused. And what had happened? A nightmare.
So you got confused, he consoled himself. It could happen to anybody. You were thinking about…
What?
Something had thrown him. Something on the television.
Sam made fists, wishing he could squeeze the confusion out of his mind.
Today was Monday. His doctor had only given him until Friday to make a decision.
It’s got to be next week, Sam. I have to insist. Think about it. Talk to your family.
But Sam had no family. No wife, no kids. His other relatives he’d had a falling-out with years ago, over something Sam couldn’t even remember now. He’d taken down all their pictures, stuffed them away in the back of his closet.
He had only his work-his talent for weaving facts into patterns, making the perfect investigation. And now, at the unreasonable age of fifty-eight, that talent was betraying him.
Twenty years since he quit the Bureau… Hell, of course it had been.
He’d gone into the PI business, built I-Tech from scratch, made himself a reputation.
He reviewed those facts in his head, tried to hold on to them, but it was like those tests at the neurologist’s office-name the presidents in reverse chronological order, count backward by sevens from one hundred.
The last month, work had gotten progressively harder. Case files were now almost impossible for him to understand.
Mornings were better. He tried to finish work early, get home before afternoon when his mind got cloudy.
But he relied on Alicia more and more. She knew something was wrong. She’d stopped teasing him about getting absentminded in his old age. Now, she just watched him uneasily.
Five days to decide.
He stared at his desk-a disgraceful clutter of unread reports, notes to himself stuck everywhere. The work surface had once been pristinely organized. Now it was deteriorating into chaos.
Across the room, a bank of televisions played security footage from I-Tech’s major accounts, along with news from the three local stations.
The news was all disaster coverage-befuddled weathermen predicting the second hundred-year flood in four years.
Sam doubted that’s what had unnerved him.
Why should he be surprised if the town hit a century mark every four years? He’d lost twenty years in a single morning. Time was collapsing around him. Chronology meant nothing anymore.
He got out his Post-it notes and a pen, checked his private line for messages.
There was only one-last night, 10:48 P.M. Erainya Manos.
The name snagged on his memory as he wrote it down.
The case he was working on… but Joe Pacabel said there was no case.
Erainya Manos said they needed to talk. Absolutely urgent. Sam would know what it was about.
But he didn’t know what the woman wanted.
He stared at her phone number until something on the television caught his attention-a reporter breaking in, a convenience store shooting in New Braunfels. Three masked gunmen had fatally shot a clerk, made away with several thousand dollars. Police were investigating for a possible link to yesterday’s jailbreak-the Floresville Five. Will “the Ghost” Stirman, four other wanted men.
A mug shot of Will Stirman filled the screen, and the world shifted under Sam’s feet.
The convict’s face was gaunt and hard, like weathered marble. He had dark, preternaturally calm eyes, and a faint triangle of buzzed black hair. If Sam didn’t know better, he would’ve pegged the man as a white supremacist, or an abortion clinic bomber. His expression suggested the same quiet confidence, the same capacity for fanatic violence.
Sam knew this man. This was who he’d seen on television earlier. This was the news that had shaken him.
He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a crumpled yellow Post-it note he’d forgotten.
In his own shaky cursive, the note read:
Stirman is free. He’ll be coming. I can’t go to the police.
Sam stared at it, then looked at the newer message from Erainya Manos.
He picked up the receiver, began to dial Erainya Manos’ number, then hung up again.
He had a bad feeling about this woman.
He had to think clearly.
Sam felt bitterness rising in his throat. It wasn’t fair for life to throw him one more problem. Not now, when he was struggling just to get by.
But it wasn’t Sam’s nature to surrender. He never played defense. The only way to survive was to plow forward, like he’d always done, right the fuck over anything and anyone who stood in his way.
He would let Erainya Manos do the talking. She would fill in the gaps. He had become an expert at covering his lapses that way, letting others talk into his silence.
He couldn’t remember why, but Will Stirman was lethal. If Sam didn’t handle this just right, if he didn’t stay in control, he would be destroyed.
He picked up a pen and wrote himself a new note: I’m calling Erainya Manos. Be careful. I’m pretty sure she’s my enemy.