The Finishing School

55

MELANIE SLURPED hot café con leche from a bowl, struggling to keep her eyes open under the buzzing fluorescent lights of the Luquillo police station at three o’clock in the morning. Just as she was about to lose the fight and nod off, Lieutenant Albano walked in and marched up to her borrowed desk.

“What the hell happened out there?” he asked. Gotta love New Yorkers. Not one second wasted on preliminaries.

“I came in late, but from what I understand, the hand-to-hand was about to go down and the locals just…opened fire.” She held up her hands in dismay.

“Ah, crap.”

“The guy who shot first claims one of the Colombians was reaching for a weapon.”

“Was he?”

“Well, the Colombians definitely had assault rifles, so maybe. But now we have to deal with an IAB investigation in the middle of our case. It screws everything up.”

“Shit.”

“I’m just amazed nobody was killed. One of the Colombians is in the hospital with a bullet in his leg. I arranged with the local U.S. Attorney’s Office for a bedside arraignment later this morning. And we locked up Pavel Stepanov, Esposito’s bodyguard.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah, except our case on him sucks. Once the shooting started, the hand-to-hand never happened, and the second Colombian ran off with the drugs. So we have no product to put on the table. It’s just a circumstantial conspiracy case. I mean, we could charge an attempt, but…”

“Son of a gun. It just gets worse,” Albano muttered.

Melanie paused, looking for a diplomatic way to bring up the subject that was foremost on her mind. But there was none. “So listen, Lieutenant.”

“Yeah?”

“What went wrong with Trevor? I mean, how could you lose him like that?”

Albano looked at her like he was seeing her for the first time. “Yeah, sorry about that one, kid. What can I say? The good guys don’t win every inning.”

“That’s it? I mean, Trevor’s a solid human being. What are we doing to find him?”

“We were following up a tip that I thought came from you about the hand-to-hand tonight, thinking maybe the Leonard kid got by us somehow and that he’d show up here. But obviously things didn’t play out that way.”

“No, obviously they didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want from me,” Albano said irritably. “We got Dan and Bridget still out with the Puerto Ricans searching that area again, on the off chance anybody’s around. But it’s a long shot. Who knows, maybe this joker Pavel’ll start talking and tell us where the kid is.”

“He won’t. He invoked. So he can’t be questioned without a lawyer present.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Yeah, and when counsel’s appointed in the morning, it’ll be for ex-tradition purposes only. That lawyer’ll just tell him not to talk until he gets transported to New York and gets his real lawyer, which could be weeks from now given how slow the Marshals’ airlifts are.”

“This is when I hate the fucking system. A kid’s life is at stake. You’d think we’d be allowed to go in there and beat the crap out of that Russian prick till he gives it up.”

“That’s what separates us from the barbarians, I guess,” Melanie said.

“Look around. Nothing separates us from the barbarians these days, so why stand on ceremony?” Albano popped one of his ever-present Rolaids. “Stay put for a few minutes, wouldja? I’m gonna see if I can raise the supervisor here and get an update.”

“Okay.” Melanie drew a shaggy breath.

Albano patted her arm. “Buck up, kid. The game ain’t perfect, but we gotta keep playing it.”

“You’re right.”

Exhausted, she put her head down on the desk.

Sometime later Ray-Ray Wong shook her shoulder. Melanie lifted her head blearily. A paper clip that had been stuck to her cheek fell to the desktop with a ping.

“Morning, ma’am. The lieutenant asked me to drive you back to the hotel.”

“What? Why? What’s happening?”

“Zero. Nada. Everybody in custody invoked, so they can’t be questioned. I’m tasked with returning you to the hotel for some shut-eye and then heading on to assist in the search at El Yunque.”

Melanie sighed and stood up. She had a headache so bad it felt like there was an ice pick stuck in her eye. Insect bites and thorn pricks on her arms and legs stung like hell. Trevor was missing. Carmen was still missing. Melanie was beginning to think they were probably both still in New York, dead or alive. And here she was in San Juan, at a big fat standstill.