Chapter 16 #2
The contrary urge to defend Benson caught in Javi’s throat. He overcame it and stuck to the question Kincaid had actually asked.
“I’ve used Dry Rock as a base a few times,” he said. “From an operational standpoint, it’s convenient—no back-and-forth traffic to Plenty to draw attention, no surplus personnel to run their mouths, and the terrain gives good natural standoff distance—even if it’s short on the comforts of home.”
Kincaid took the turn onto Service Road 9. A second later, he had to ease up on the speed with a grunt of annoyance. He pulled his arm, already red with kicked-up dirt, back in through the window to roll it up.
“That’s OK,” he said. “People are more useful when they’re uncomfortable.”
It took five minutes to reach the top of the road. By the time they got there, the car was caked with dirt, and Kincaid had given up on smearing the dust around with the wipers in favor of squinting through the film of filth.
“The attack that night was less fatal than I let on,” Kincaid carried on his explanation as he parked.
“It was real…but also unfortunately useless to me. When we went to arrest Luka, he was already gone. I assume Vesna smuggled her only idiot child out of the country and installed him somewhere she could keep him under control and entertain him with endless livestock to abuse. That left me with nothing, except an informant who didn’t want to inform anymore. ”
“Why not enroll him in Witness Protection officially?” Javi asked as they got out of the car.
Kincaid snorted. He walked briskly across the cracked concrete of the lot to the heavy metal roller doors at the sally port.
“Because eventually Luka would convince his mother that he’d learned his lesson and she’d let him come home,” he said. “And at that point Eric could still conceivably be of some use to me, but not if I had to jump through the marshal’s hoops to access him.”
He slapped his hand against the doors. The echo bounced off the dry, sere hills around them.
“Instead, Saul made you jump through his.”
Kincaid shrugged as he waited. “That was navigable,” he said. “Saul was a man of principle and integrity, which made what happened to Sandoval torment him. I knew his lever points. I could pull him back into the plan if I needed to. Except…”
“He died.”
“And took Eric’s new identity with him,” Kincaid said.
He took a half step back as the doors started to roll up.
“I’ve been trying to track him down since—that’s why Joel was here, not that I’d told her that yet—but I guess Horvat got that information first. It hurts my pride, I’ll not lie, but not like a drug dealer has to justify their budget to anyone.
And not like I knew Saul would be stupid enough to use a name they’d recognize. ”
He ducked under the doors instead of waiting for them to lift all the way.
Javi blinked at the doors for a moment and then followed him.
The fluorescent lights that lit up the scraped-clean concrete bay inside weren’t as bright as the sun outside, but they were harsher.
A handful of agents moved around the space, carrying files and wheeling chairs.
The numbing mundanity of setting up a workplace.
“You think the Horvats were behind this?” he asked in surprise.
Kincaid stopped mid-stride. He turned around to give Javi an incredulous look.
“You mean you don’t?” he asked. “Really? Now that you know who Sandoval was, you really think that this was all just some pervert that jerked off into the wrong flowerbed?”
No.
Now that Javi thought about it, he supposed he didn’t.
The sour eagerness of that thought surprised him. His anger at the Horvats had always taken a back seat to his own guilt, but he supposed he didn’t have that as a buffer anymore.
“If it’s them,” he said, “what reason do they have to keep him alive?”
Kincaid sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He seemed disappointed. It was probably a bad sign that made Javi want to prove him wrong.
“The same reason they kept his namesake alive, for a while anyhow,” he said. “Nobody’s scared of a quick death.”
“I’m not happy about this,” Galloway said flatly.
The pale, stocky medical examiner ignored Javi as she briskly snapped the latex gloves off her fingers, turned inside out so she didn’t get blood on herself.
“If I wanted to treat the living, I’d have picked a different specialty.
If I wanted to work for the federal government, I would.
If I wanted to work for you, I’d seek therapy. ”
She threw the balled-up latex gloves into the bag of medical waste on the table.
For once, Kincaid didn’t bite back. He looked at Javi.
“I needed a federally-cleared medical professional, and Doctor Galloway here was the only one in the county who fit that description,” he said. “I don’t think she appreciates that I didn’t have a choice.”
Galloway gave him an exasperated eyebrow. “No, I do,” she said. “But we’re at a black site where you’re about to interrogate a prisoner who I strongly suspect is not going to be allowed to invoke his rights. Necessity doesn’t make me like it.”
Behind, the man on the makeshift hospital bed groaned and shifted uncomfortably against the sheets.
The handcuffs that fastened one arm to the bed rattled against the bars.
His other arm was puffy and bruised, and that was where the injuries weren’t hidden under heavy-duty bandages and tape.
Even unconscious, he looked in pain, his face gray-toned and slick with sweat.
“And, just to be clear, you’re not going to do anything about that…slight impropriety,” Kincaid said.
Galloway smiled thinly at him. “I can’t imagine I will,” she said. “That’s not something I particularly like about myself, and I blame you for that. So we’re not getting on any better footing here, the more we talk. Are we done?”
Kincaid tilted his head to look around her. “Is he going to live?”
“He was bitten by a dog,” Galloway said.
“A dentist could have made sure he lived. So, yes. He will. I’ve debrided, cleaned, and stitched multiple lacerations.
He also has a fractured sternum, but since I was able to x-ray him—and I’m not sure I want to consider why this facility had an x-ray machine—I can confirm it seems to be stable.
The treatment for that is time. The treatment for his wounds is antibiotics.
I’ve left instructions. I also suspect from his general demeanor when I arrived that he’s on multiple psychiatric medications.
I’ve taken blood samples, but I assume your labs will be able to process them quicker than mine. ”
“Appreciated,” Kincaid said. “When can we question him?”
Galloway turned her wrist to look at her watch and then sniffed. “When he wakes up,” she said, then softened the answer reluctantly with, “It won’t be long. A few minutes. Now, if you excuse me, I have dead people waiting for me, and I think I’d enjoy their company more.”
She stepped around Kincaid and stalked toward the door, the soles of her shoes squeaking on the tiles. The heavy clubbed braid of her hair tapped against her shoulders with each step.
As she pulled open the door, she stopped and turned back. This time, she looked at Javi, her gaze steady.
“I can live with this,” she said. “Maybe you can. I’m not sure that Deputy Witte’s moral compass is quite so flexible. So keep your head.”
“I don’t think this is something I’m going to be able to tell him about,” Javi said. “Not even if I wanted to.”
“Look,” Kincaid interjected quietly. “Someone with sense.”
Galloway looked Javi over, head to toe. “Good idea,” she said. “Sounds like a plan. Let me know how it works out.”
She left without giving Javi a chance to say anything. The door slammed behind her. Javi stared at his reflection in the scratch-misted reinforced glass window, dim and distorted.
“What does she know?” Kincaid said. “Secrets and lies are the basis of any relationship. If people knew who we really were, they’d run a mile. I mean, not your boyfriend. He seems like a genuinely good person, but the rest of us have to work with what we’ve got.”
Javi turned away from the door, his reflection sliding out of sight. He gave Kincaid a tight smile and then nodded to the restless, still knocked-out man in the bed.
“His name’s Brian Fowler.” It felt like a betrayal, somehow. Javi tried to ignore that. It wasn’t like Cloister wouldn’t understand if he knew what was going on. “It might be an alias. That doesn’t mean it’s not useful.”