Private L.A. Read online

  Stella remembered that she suffered from jet lag but felt happy to be out of Vietnam, with all those crazy scooters that almost ran her over. The bulldog recalled getting up early with Malia, who’d promised Jennifer she’d feed and water the horses. Jennifer liked to sleep in. The dog also remembered that Jin had worked on a watercolor painting instead of unpacking her room, which had annoyed her mother no end. Stella further recalled that Miguel had climbed a live oak tree he’d never climbed before, and Héctor, the caretaker and groundskeeper, got upset with him, and had to fetch a ladder to get him down.

  “How long have you known Héctor?” Justine asked.

  “Forever,” Malia said. “Héctor came with the ranch, Thom told me once.”

  Their adoptive father had gotten up around nine the day after their arrival back at the ranch, got coffee, and disappeared to his editing room in the basement. The bulldog and all three children saw him go through the kitchen on his way there. Despite his promise that he’d spend time with the children, Thom had spent much of the day working. Jennifer rose later, around noon, complained of jet lag; but then she too went to her office and worked for much of the day.

  They’d had dinner together around six. Miguel wanted to play soccer afterward, but Thom said he had too much work to do, took a plate of food, and returned to his editing room. Stella remembered this because Thom had dropped a cubed piece of chicken and she’d snagged it before he could.

  “Thom told Stella she was like a shark,” Jin recalled softly.

  As the group that was gathered in the common room watched the screen, the bulldog, on the bed next to Miguel, seemed to grow puzzled. Was that possible? Her eyebrows definitely rose. She clearly knew the kids were talking about her.

  “When did Stella go out last?” Justine asked.

  “Probably after we went to bed,” Jin said. “Jennifer always took her out last, let her go pee and poop while she went for a run.”

  “Did Jennifer go for a run that night?” Justine asked.

  “Jennifer never misses her run, no matter what,” Malia said flatly. “I heard the screen door slam when she went out that night. It’s below my window.”

  “What time did Jennifer come back?”

  “I dunno,” Malia said with a heavy shrug. “I was in my room when she left, but then my iPhone died, so I went to where we watch television, off the kitchen?”

  Justine nodded. “And?”

  “That’s the last thing I remember,” Malia said. “I was on the couch, watching the CW, and then like nothing.”

  “How about you?” Justine asked Jin.

  Chapter 56

  JIN SHOOK HER head.

  “Miguel?”

  The boy looked off into the distance. He’d covered his mouth again with his hand. Even so, you could see the memory of some traumatic event ripple across his face. Then he shook his head, said, “No.”

  “What were you thinking about just then?” Justine asked.

  Miguel shrugged, said, “It was like a dream. I don’t think it was real.”

  “What happened in your dream?” Justine asked softly. “Was Stella there?”

  “She was sleeping in my bed,” the boy said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she farted when I got up to go to pee. It was horrible.”

  Jin giggled, nodded. “Stella’s the smartest, prettiest girl, but she’s got the worstest farts.”

  The dog’s eyebrows went up again.

  Justine said, “Okay, so Stella farts in your dream, Miguel, and then you go pee, and then what?”

  The boy blinked, and the repressed memory passed across his face again. “I heard noises,” he said. “I didn’t know what they were, but I knew they were bad.”

  “How?”

  He hesitated, hand worrying the bulldog’s neck, said, “I don’t know. But I was scared. I started to run, and I fell and hurt my legs.” He pointed to the bruises on his knees and shins. “And then I don’t remember anything.”

  “When you say ‘bad noises,’ do you mean screams or—”

  “Crying,” Jin said suddenly, looking off somewhere herself. “I remember a dream too. Someone was crying.”

  “Where were you?” Justine asked. “In your room? At home?”

  Jin appeared puzzled but then said, “No. I was in like a bunk bed, because I was lying on my back, and I could reach up and touch the bottom of the mattress. It wasn’t very far.”

  “You remember seeing that in your dream?” Justine asked.

  “No, it was night. I could just, like … feel it?”

  “And the crying?” Justine pressed. “Where was that? Who was that?”

  “I don’t …” Jin said before her voice trailed off.

  Malia’s mouth hung open. “I had that same dream too. Someone was crying.”

  “Where?”

  “Outside of where I was,” Malia said, growing agitated, tears starting to dribble. “Only I don’t think it was a bunk bed. I was in a box. I felt walls all around me. I heard the crying through the walls.”

  “Was it a man or a woman crying? Your mom or dad?”

  The oldest Harlow girl shook her head. “No. It sounded like a child crying. Not Jennifer.”

  “Couldn’t have been Thom?”

  Malia blinked, thought, said, “But I heard men talking and that stopped the crying, and then I heard loud noises like chains clanking, and something heavy hitting something metal. And then a sound like a jet, the way the engine sounds when it starts up?”

  “I know that sound,” Justine said, paused. “The men you heard talking in your dream. What were they saying?”

  “I don’t know. They were speaking Spanish.”

  Chapter 57

  DEL RIO’S FACE was puffy, bandaged. A carbon-fiber-and-canvas girdle wrapped and supported his torso. He was flat on his back, hitched to several machines and an IV, but breathing without a tube.

  “I’m spending too much time in hospitals,” I said in weary greeting. It was past ten. Other than two twenty-minute catnaps, I hadn’t slept in nearly forty-eight hours. I should have listened to Justine, gone home, slept hard. But I felt I had to be by Del Rio’s side. It was my duty, and my honor.

  Del Rio smiled, coughed, looked at me through a medicated haze. “They say it will all heal.”

  “You can’t know how happy I was to hear that news, Rick,” I said, grabbed his hand and shook it. “How happy all of us are.”

  “Don’t feel jack now, Jack,” Del Rio said. “But they got me on all sorts of stuff supposed to reduce the swelling.” He paused. “What-all happened? Nobody’ll tell me anything.”

  I gave it to him in broad strokes, the death of Bud Rankin, the chase at the pier after the explosion, the identity of the kiteboarders, the sheriff trying to say Private should take the fall for the whole fiasco.

  “What did I tell you?” Del Rio rasped.

  I raised my hands in surrender. “I should have listened to you, but we had and have immunity. Anyway, FBI’s involved now. In both cases.”

  “Both?”

  I summarized Justine and Cruz’s trip to Mexico, the release of the Harlow children, and their spare and fuzzy recollections of their capture and captivity.

  Del Rio closed his eyes. For a second I thought he’d lost consciousness, but then he said, “Those sounds she heard, the Harlow girl. Sounds like loading coffins on an airplane, right?”

  I thought about it, nodded. “Could be, or something like it.”

  “There’ll be paperwork on that somewhere,” he said. “You can’t just go flying bodies around in coffins.”

  “That true?”

  “Well, you’d think.”

  I couldn’t argue with his logic, said, “I’ll have Mo-bot look into cargo flights to Mexico the night they disappeared. Guadalajara.”

  Del Rio nodded, glanced at the clock. “I don’t remember you saying Fescoe or anyone else got another demand from No Prisoners.”

  “Because ther
e hasn’t been one, at least to my knowledge.”

  “More than twenty-four hours,” he said. “No more killings either.”

  He was right. What did that mean? Anything? Or was No Prisoners just trying to lull us into thinking—

  “Where’s it all going next?” Del Rio asked. “Private’s end of things?”

  “Justine and Sci are returning to the Harlows’ ranch in the morning along with a team of FBI techs, see if there’s anything they missed,” I said.

  “Justine done with the kids?” he grunted. “Couple of hours of mind-flogging doesn’t seem enough for her.”

  I shrugged. “She offered to go back in the morning. But Sanders wanted to give the children time to get settled into his house before they were talked to again. I have to admit, he seems very protective of them. They all do. Camilla Bronson and Graves. Justine’s arguing that I should send people back to Mexico ASAP. But the FBI’s already heard her story and they’ve got more clout.”

  “No Prisoners?”

  “I want No Prisoners because of what he did to you,” I said coldly. “But I have no idea what Private’s official role will be going forward.”

  My cell phone rang loudly. “Shit.” I wasn’t supposed to have the damn thing on. I glanced at the caller ID and was taken aback.

  I hesitated, clicked ANSWER. “More slanderous accusations to throw my way?”

  “Jack,” Bobbie Newton sighed. “I just have to draw the line at someone disrupting my God-given First Amendment rights.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “How are they, the poor li’l darlings?”

  I could tell she’d been drinking. Bobbie liked to drink, early and often, another winning aspect of her character.

  “Who?” I said.

  “Coy boy,” she said in a scolding tone.

  I let the silence grow, knowing it would drive her crazy, personally and from a journalistic point of view. Bobbie had broken the story of the Harlow kidnapping and the release of the children. No doubt about that. But stories like the Harlows’ disappearance required near-constant updates to feed the cable, Internet, and network news monsters.

  “Give Camilla a call,” I said. “I’m sure she’d love to talk.”

  “Camilla Bronson carries grudges,” Bobbie said.

  “And I don’t?”

  “C’mon, Jack. That’s old news. Live and let live.”

  I waited several beats, then said, “Tit for tat, Bobbie?”

  “What’s the tit?” she demanded, and I heard ice cubes clink against glass.

  “An update on their physical and mental condition, the little we know about the day of the kidnapping,” I said.

  “Mmmmm, that is tempting,” Bobbie said. “The tat?”

  “Who tipped you off? Was it Maines?”

  “A good journalist never reveals sources,” she protested. “You know that.”

  “Too bad, then. Gotta go, Bobbie.”

  “Wait, wait!” she cried. “Okay, okay. You go first.”

  “Nope,” I said, and stayed silent. “Offer’s good for ten seconds.”

  Five seconds went by. Then nine. I was about to end the call when she said, “Terry Graves.”

  That threw me. Why would …?

  “I’m waiting for my tit, Jack,” Bobbie said.

  “Sorry, Bobbie, your information came in a second after tit deadline.”

  “What? You … you lying son of a—”

  I ended the call, feeling like balance had been restored in the universe. You can only take so much grief from one person before you give it back.

  I looked at Del Rio, hoping to … He was sleeping.

  There was a recliner in the room. I sat in it, shut off my cell, kicked back, shut my eyes, and drifted off to a place where there were no mass killers, no celebrities, and no conniving attorneys, not like my hometown at all.

  Chapter 58

  JUSTINE SUFFERED THAT night.

  In her nightmares, she kept hearing the muffled sounds of someone crying, kept seeing the chewed lips of Leona Casa Madre, and kept reliving the knife fight with Carla. Twice she woke up shaking and in a cold sweat, unsure where she was. Twice she wondered about the brutal vividness of the nightmares, worse than the actual experience. Was she infected? Running a fever? Hallucinating?

  She woke for a third time a few minutes before five, feeling Carla’s fingers around her throat, seeing the woman’s insane eyes and the shiv sticking out of her back. Justine lay there panting, trying to figure out why the nightmares would not quit.

  And then she thought she knew. She recalled hearing about this kind of relentless cyclic dream from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack had had this very same sort of dream. The dreams were what had driven him to seek her out in the first place.

  “I think I’m suffering from PTSD,” she said, as she sat up and turned on the light.

  Post-traumatic stress disorder, rampant among vets, seen in cops and firefighters. And now her? Was that what was going on?

  Justine pulled her legs up tight to her chest, realizing that the attack in the jail cell was the closest she’d ever come to dying, the closest she’d ever come to deadly violence. Once again she felt invaded, like a part of her, some basic innocence, had been ripped from her, leaving no visible wound other than the ones on her arm and upper chest.

  The clinician in Justine clicked through the symptoms of PTSD that might affect her: recurring nightmares, hyper-vigilance, inability to sleep, inability to feel certain emotions, heavy drinking, heavy medicating, acting out sexually.

  Her head ached. She was still tired but did not want to sleep again.

  She got out of bed, got dressed for Crossfit, thought it would be good to go sweat the horrors away. She found a coffee shack open at five thirty, got a double-shot latte, and prayed that the workout of the day didn’t include running. She arrived at ten to six and parked across the street from the box, which, to her surprise, was already lit up. Usually Ronny, the trainer at the early class, arrived at the very last second. She went inside, finding Ronny talking excitedly on his cell. He hung up, looking shaken.

  “You okay?” Justine asked.

  “No,” the trainer said, puffing his lips. “My sister, she just went into labor, and her boyfriend left her. I said I’d be there for her.”

  “Well, go on, then,” she said.

  “I’ll have to cancel class,” he said.

  “Go,” she said. “Give me the key. I’ll wait until ten past, tell whoever shows, lock the place up, and put the key back through the mail slot.”

  Ronny hesitated but then ripped the key from a chain and took off. Justine looked around, thinking, Life goes on, doesn’t it? Bud Rankin dies. A baby is born.

  Chapter 59

  JUSTINE KNEW SHE probably shouldn’t use the equipment without a trainer present, but she’d been there long enough to feel she could at least do something, say, ten rounds of five pull-ups, ten push-ups, and fifteen sit-ups?

  She was into round six, hanging off the bars, when she heard the front door open. It was that guy, Paul. His curly brown hair hung above his soft, nice eyes, which found her immediately.

  “We the only ones?” he asked, coming in, looking up at the clock. It was five past six.

  “No class this morning,” Justine said, and explained about Ronny.

  “Oh,” Paul said. “What happened?” He was pointing at the bandages on her forearm. The one on her chest was hidden beneath her shirt.

  Justine looked at her arm, hesitated, then said, “Fell Rollerblading.”

  “I broke my wrist once doing that,” he said. “Are you working out?”

  She told him she was.

  “Mind if I join in?” he asked.

  Justine once more noticed how appealing he was.

  “Sure,” she said. “Just no weights or rowers. Liability issues, I think.”

  Paul grinned. He warmed up and stretched while Justine finished her last four rounds, which left her swea
ting and heaving for air. When she got to her feet, Paul was crossing toward her, carrying a heavy green rubber band about three feet long.

  “Can you show me how this kipping thing works?” he asked. “Ronny said I should use the bands to learn it.”

  “Uh, sure,” she said, checking the clock. Six-twenty. No one else was coming.

  She helped Paul set up the band, looping it over the bar at the top of a pull-up station. She showed him how to step into the band with one foot while holding on to the bars.

  “Now fully drop down,” she said, recalling how she’d been taught to kip.

  He did. The band stretched. His feet hung two inches above the floor.

  “Okay,” Justine said, “now you want to get your body rocking, as if you were pushing your stomach out and then snapping it in and back toward your spine. That momentum carries you into the pull-up.”

  Paul tried. It was a pitiful attempt. He was throwing his knees forward, not his belly. “Here,” she said. “Can I put my hands on you?”

  He smiled down at her, a nice smile, a very nice smile. “If it will help.”

  “It helped me,” Justine said.

  “Okay, then.”

  She smiled, nodded, moved around to his side, put one hand on his lower back and the other on his stomach. “Jump up.”

  Paul jumped up and caught the bar with both hands. Justine pressed against his back so his belly arched against the band; then she pushed backward quickly. He swung on the band and lifted.

  “Feel it?” she asked.

  “I did,” he said, then began to play with the motion. “It’s almost like what trapeze artists do.”

  “Exactly.”

  In less than ten tries, he had it and was using his body and the band to snap himself up into the air, six, then seven times in a row.

  Justine clapped. “You’ve got it!”

  Paul slowed, stepped out of the band. He was grinning. They were very close. “You’re a natural, you know that? Teacher, I mean.”

  Justine noticed how good he smelled, blushed, but did not look away or try to create space between them. “I just did what—”

  “No,” he said, taking her hand. “I mean it, you … you’re really wonderful. I’m sorry to be so forward, but ever since I met you, I’ve thought about you a lot.”