15. Jude
15
JUDE
“Think that fucker’s in there?” Nolan asked as I pulled into the parking lot at the Dive.
“I wish.” I pulled the Rover to the front. “But I’m going to take a wild guess and say no.”
The squat one-story building had no windows, but it didn’t take a psychic to know the place was probably empty. Other than the rusty blue Honda — Lilah’s car — parked at the side of the building, the lot was barren, although it had been plowed, snow piled high at the edges.
“Damn,” Nolan said.
I felt his frustration. After seeing what Vic had done to Lilah — chasing her through the snow, practically killing her, forcing her to be scared in her own apartment — I’d been looking forward to an up-close meet and greet.
“It’s better this way,” Rafe grumbled, stepping out of the car. “We don’t need local trouble — and we especially don’t need local trouble on account of Lilah.”
I had a feeling we were already in trouble on account of Lilah — and not just because of whatever was going on with Vic — but I kept that part to myself.
Nolan and I piled out of the Rover and joined Rafe on the cracked concrete in front of the main entrance, a nondescript wood door that looked as poorly constructed as the rest of the place, so ugly it was an affront to my senses.
“I’m tempted to bust this piece of shit down,” Nolan said, looking at the door. “Make a point."
It wasn’t a bad idea, but kicking in the door at the front of the Dive, which faced the road, wouldn’t be smart. We might be in the mix with Lilah and Vic but no reason to invite more trouble.
“Let’s check the back,” I said, starting for the side of the building.
I was relieved when Rafe fell into step beside Nolan. Captain Sandoval had tamed Rafe for a while, but he’d gotten further away from reason since the incident that had ended our career with the SEALs. We made our own rules now and Rafe was even less inclined than Nolan and I to add more rules to the list.
Rafe looked up at the roofline as we made our way around to the side of the building. “Not a single camera.” Disgust dripped from his voice. “What a bunch of fucking amateurs.”
“Better for us,” I pointed out.
The back of the building was identical to the front except for the dumpster lurking against the building next to another door. Here the parking lot was smaller, and I could almost imagine the scene Lilah had described to us: Lilah emerging from the building with a bag of trash in her hand, the black car idling outside, the terrified girl pushed into the backseat.
It was like an imprint on the place, a dark one. I felt the energy of it lingering in the air.
“This one doesn’t face the road,” Nolan said, considering the door.
“It’s like you want to get involved in this shit,” Rafe muttered, removing a lockpick set from the pocket of his coat.
“We’re already involved,” Nolan pointed out.
Rafe bowed his head to the lock on the door. “Yeah, and it’s not too late to get uninvolved.”
I wasn’t fooled. Rafe’s determination not to get mixed up in Vic’s shit wasn’t some kind of newfound discipline. It was his determination to get away from Lilah.
And the sooner the better.
I tried not to think about the possibility that in this case, Rafe might be the reasonable one. The idea was too radical to consider.
It took him less than a minute to pop the cheap lock. He opened the door and waited for the shriek of an alarm that never came, then stepped inside.
“What a surprise,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
I knew what he meant. Kind of wild for Vic to be mixed up in something shady at the Dive and not have cameras and decent locks on the doors, not to mention a basic security system, although maybe the lack of cameras was intentional.
Nolan closed the door and hit the lights. A narrow hall with stained linoleum stretched toward the shadowed recesses of the bar. Doors marked the men’s and women’s restrooms along one side of the hall. On the other side, another door stood closed.
“This must be it,” Nolan said, opening the unmarked door.
He turned on the lights on our way in and we stepped into a small, dingy room. A rusting metal desk stood on one side, an ancient worn chair behind it. A hulking desktop computer hummed on its surface along with scattered piles of paper. Two metal file cabinets stood against one wall.
Despite its minimal furnishings, the room felt cluttered and dysfunctional. Would it have killed Vic to add a houseplant? There weren’t even chairs on the other side of the desk for fuck’s sake.
My observations weren’t relevant to the task at hand, but it was second nature to see everything as a composition, something I could draw, and I had to resist the urge to move things around, try to make the room more pleasing to the eye.
Bad design grated on my nerves.
“I’ll check the filing cabinets,” I said.
Rafe moved toward the desk. “I’ll take the drawers.”
“I’m going to dig through this pile of crap,” Nolan said, looking at the papers in haphazard stacks on the desk, “see if I can find anything interesting.”
“We’re not looking for something interesting,” Rafe said, bending to open one of the desk drawers.
“No reason to stand here with my dick in my hand while you guys look for Lilah’s stuff.”
The first filing cabinet held nothing of interest, just a bunch of old-school files with sloppily written labels (who kept paper files anymore?), boring shit every business kept track of: payroll, purchase orders, receipts for repairs to the building.
We were looking for Lilah’s purse. Her ID and credit cards were inside it, but most importantly, so were the keys to her car. We could hot-wire it — older cars were easy to hot-wire — but then Lilah would need to get the car rekeyed, which would be a hassle.
I had the sense that Lilah had a lot of hassle in her life, that she couldn’t afford something like rekeying her car, and I wasn’t dumb enough to think she’d let us pay to have it done, not after the way she’d stood with her arms crossed over her chest, face flushed, when we’d paid the locksmith to rekey her apartment.
She’d protested when we said we were going to get her stuff from the Dive, had been worried Vic would fuck with us if he saw that we’d taken her car, but Rafe had just laughed, the one and only time I’d heard him laugh in Lilah’s presence.
We weren’t afraid of Vic Lombardi.
Behind me, Rafe muttered under his breath while he rifled through the desk drawers. I didn’t bother telling him to take it easy, to leave everything the way we’d found it. Vic would know we’d been here when he discovered Lilah’s car and purse — if we found it — missing, and I wasn’t above rubbing in his face the fact that we’d broken into this dump.
Nolan was quiet — and a lot more careful than Rafe— as he rifled through the papers on the desk. Nolan was always careful. It was what had made him a great medic, what made him a good foil to Rafe’s feral chaos, my own tendency to go with the flow.
Nolan rode the line between us.
I closed the last drawer in the first filing cabinet and moved to the second.
“There’s nothing in here,” Rafe said, slamming the bottom desk drawer. “I’m going to check the bar, see if that asshole put it there.”
“Maybe he took it home,” Nolan said, studying a piece of paper from Vic’s desk.
I opened the third drawer in the second filing cabinet and felt the thrill of discovery when I laid eyes on the black bag lined with fringe. “Nope. It’s here.”
“Are you fucking with us?” Nolan asked.
I turned around with the purse in my hand. “Not unless Lombardi is in the habit of hoarding women’s purses.”
Rafe snatched it from my hand.
I scowled as he opened it. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Making sure it’s hers,” he said.
“99% chance it’s hers,” Nolan said. “We shouldn’t violate her privacy.”
“Fuck her privacy,” Rafe said, removing a green suede wallet that had seen better days. “We’ve risked our asses more than once over the past couple days. I’m making sure this is the right bag before we leave.”
I wasn’t buying it. He was curious about Lilah, wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to peer into her life. Maybe it was wrong — okay, it was definitely wrong — but I understood. I was curious too. Lilah Abbott had been an out-of-focus painting for the last six years. The picture had become a little bit clearer over the past two days, just enough to make me hungry for more.
Rafe opened the wallet and withdrew a driver’s license.
“Well?” Nolan asked.
“It’s hers,” Rafe said.
“Good, let’s get out of here.” Nolan reached for the bag but Rafe swung it out of reach and dug inside.
He emerged with a small prescription bottle and peered at the label. “Are these for the heart thing?”
I knew he was asking Nolan even though he was staring at the bottle.
Nolan leaned in to look at the writing on the bottle. “Yeah.”
“Can it kill her?” Rafe asked.
Nolan sighed. “It could but lots of people live with it when it’s well managed.”
Rafe furrowed his brow and put the meds back in the purse, then withdrew a ring of keys, a lip gloss, workout gloves, and a small pocketknife. “Interesting.”
“So she works out and carries a knife for protection,” Nolan said. “Can we get the fuck out of here now?”
It said a lot about Nolan — and about how well I knew him — that I knew he was worried less about Vic returning and more about invading Lilah’s privacy. How he’d ever gone along with Rafe’s plans for Lilah in high school was a mystery.
Rafe dropped the items back in the bag. “Should we light this shithole on fire on our way out?”
There wasn’t even an ounce of humor in his voice, and I knew if even one of us agreed, he’d be lighting the match before we could say “arson is a felony.”
Rafe might not like local drama, but he liked fire.
I was relieved when Nolan and I said “no” at the same time.
“A half hour ago you wanted to stay uninvolved,” I added.
“That was before we found the purse and keys,” Rafe said. His footsteps were heavy as he stomped to the door. “Too late now.”