Fear

THIRTY-SIX

Groote cleaned off the screwdriver under a jet of water.

At his feet, on the kitchen floor, lay DeShawn Pitts. Groote believed a man bent, broken, and without hope was a tragic sight.

Groote ran a finger along the edge of the screwdriver. He’d learned the technique in Laos from a morals-challenged detective when Groote briefly worked with their police force on an exchange program: make a slight cut where the skin lay shallow over the bone, drive the screwdriver’s tip to the bone, twist and shred the flesh, let the subject hear the sound of metal grating against their own skeleton. Keep the subject gagged and you had quiet and a minimum of mess.

‘One last time,’ Groote said. ‘Or we’ll let Mr. Screwdriver explore fresh new territories. Above the eye socket. The pubic bone. Base of the spine.’ He lowered himself down to DeShawn’s eye level. ‘Listen. Why protect this guy? He screwed you over. He ran. Didn’t give a thought to your career, your professional standing.’

‘My job,’ DeShawn managed to say – his voice was barely above a whisper – ‘… to protect him.’

‘I’m not with the piece-of-crap drug dealer you’re hiding him from,’ Groote said. ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass what he did before. I’m a now kind of guy. I need to know how to best bring him to the surface.’

DeShawn closed his eyes.

‘Where’s he from originally?’ He started to undo DeShawn’s pants.

‘No, please. No.’

‘Tell me. This isn’t pleasant for me either.’

‘You’ll kill me.’

‘I have no quarrel with you. My quarrel’s with Michael Raymond, who ran away from you.’

DeShawn closed his eyes. ‘Never.’

‘ Never is such an outdated concept,’ Groote said, reaching for the knife, imagining a blue surgeon’s line in his craftsman’s eye on the tender skin.

It took twenty more minutes, and his answers came in a broken flood as he played the knife’s edge against an open nerve: ‘Miles Kendrick – Miami.’

He knew the name. Jesus. He’d heard the guy’s name before, talking with a couple of other old FBI hounds, talking about the Barradas’ clever spy. He’d never seen a picture but he’d heard the name. No telling how many crime rings that guy put a fucking dent in, man, the Barradas’ own CIA, who ever knew mobsters would get creative and get themselves a spy?

‘Thank you, Mr. Pitts,’ Groote said. ‘Mr. Kendrick hurt a lot of criminal organizations. Do you know if he ever struck at the Duartes in southern California?’

DeShawn nodded. ‘He… helped take… them down…’

Yeah, but not down enough. They’d still had the strength to come after his family, blame the Grootes for their misfortunes. ‘How did he take the Duartes down?’

‘Think he… stole spreadsheets…’

‘When?’ And God help Miles Kendrick, Groote thought, if it was before the attack on his family.

DeShawn didn’t answer, sliding toward unconsciousness. Groote controlled his sudden rage. Focus on what mattered now. ‘What do you know about Frost?’

‘What?’ There was no deception left in DeShawn’s eyes.

‘Where would Miles go? Back to Miami?’

‘No.’

‘How hard is Witness Protection and the Bureau searching for him?’

DeShawn passed out and Groote slapped him awake, repeated the question.

‘Hard,’ DeShawn managed.

‘Now. You’ve been very helpful. I really appreciate it. Thank you. I need to consider my options.’ Deciding about how Pitts made the best bait, alive on the hook or limp in death. No reason for Miles Kendrick to care about this dumb-ass. Groote stood, checked his gun, tucked a plastic trash bag under DeShawn’s head, fired once between the half-open eyes; the head jerked as the bullet funneled through bone and brain.

Groote tried to step into Allison’s head. She planned to run with Frost’s secrets, expose Quantrill and Hurley’s illegal testing. She was going to vanish from her life, and who better to help her than a man who’d already vanished from his own? A man who stole secrets, as she’d stolen Frost. Except the plan went wrong for Allison. You couldn’t tempt a criminal, a mobster, with a drug formula worth millions. Meat before the wolf, and he’d killed Allison for Frost. Groote was sure of it now. He’d thought first it might have been Sorenson, but he believed Sorenson was just a hired muscle for a pharmaceutical, making an attempt to steal the drug. Maybe Nathan, in league with Allison, knew about the deal and Sorenson wanted his tracks cleaned.

The evidence suggested Miles Kendrick had Frost. He was keeping it for his own gain, and he was keeping it from Amanda, and all the other people it could save.

He turned off the water, flicked the last drop free from the flat edge. Now he knew his enemy’s face, his name, and he believed he knew how to defeat him. There was a calmness in the knowledge. He’d thought killing the Duarte accountant was the final step in justice for Cathy and Amanda; but no. Fate and its engine of revenge had brought him full circle, brought him to a man who could mean justice for his lost Cathy and sanctuary for his lost Amanda.

So Miles Kendrick needed Nathan Ruiz as an example of the drug’s power, to bolster the case made in the research files. See Nathan, on video, barely able to speak when he starts taking Frost; see him, after months of it, able to effect an escape from a mental hospital and take part in a conspiracy. See, folks, this stuff works and works good, step right up, buy a bottle.

Miles Kendrick was running, crazy, with two other loonies weighing him down, and Groote was going to find him. And get Frost back.

The second auction for Frost – if Sorenson spoke truth, and he would have to confront Quantrill with this information – would be in three days. Kendrick had to be setting it up already, pressed to profit from all of Hurley and Quantrill’s hard work. So he had three days to find Kendrick.

The answer was in Celeste Brent’s computer. It had brought Allison here, it had brought Miles here. So start there. And find them, and kill them.

His watch said seven in the morning. He had time before sunset to take the bodies out to the high desert and dispose of them.

His phone buzzed. He answered.

Quantrill. Sounding tense, sounding bitter. ‘I’m on my way to Santa Fe. We seriously need to talk.’

‘That,’ said Groote, ‘is the understatement of the year.’

‘This is a goddamned disaster-’ Quantrill started.

‘Not on the phone. Just tell me where you want to meet.’

Quantrill did, anger still in his tone. Groote clicked off and the phone buzzed immediately.

It was his hacker friend who had found the Michael Raymond address off the cell-phone account. ‘I kept at that Michael Raymond problem for you. Nabbed a peek into the caller records. Finally wormed my way in.’

‘Do tell. I’d like to know who he’s been calling.’

‘He made only one call on his cell phone yesterday. To a cell phone owned by a guy named Grady Blaine, there in Santa Fe. You want Blaine’s address?’

‘I most certainly do,’ Groote said.