“She’s fine.”
He cocked his head. “Maybe you’ll end up in Washington, Mapstone. Lindsey was one of my best. I’m glad she took the job. She could become a star at Homeland Security.”
“She’s trying it out for six months.” I heard the anxiety in my voice.
“Sure,” he said. “Is Robin telling the truth?”
I told him, yes. At least I thought so.
He put his bear-paw hand against my shoulder. It was not a friendly bear.
“Look, this is serious shit she’s landed in. They know where she lives. They know where you live. Get it? Vare is right. You need to get out of the house. You guys can come up to my place, if you want. Plenty of room. I’m hardly ever home. But Robin may know more than she even realizes. She might have seen something, overheard something.”
“What if she didn’t?”
“Whoever tortured that man, whether he was El Verdugo or a professor, and then sent his fucking head to your house, thinks she did.” His voice rose ever so slightly, his anger evident to a close observer of all-things-Peralta. The bear paw came down. “And you’d better get your shit together and focus.”
We walked back to his Crown Vic. Robin had tied her hair into a ponytail. He put her in the front seat. I got in back and tried to focus.
I focused on Robin’s neck, which bore a similarity to my missed love. Lindsey and Robin both had long, elegant necks. Lindsey’s hair brushed against her neck and shoulders as she turned her head. It was art in sensual motion. Just thinking about it could make me feel better.
Then I saw the chain sitting against Robin’s skin. I had never noticed it before. It was a simple ball chain, like the kind that hangs from a bare-bones lamp, one gray kernel snapped into the other.
This chain had blood on it.
6
I kept my discovery to myself as Peralta drove us home. My temples throbbed.
Something was different in his manner as we turned down Cypress Street. He stopped chatting about nothing with Robin. I watched the back of his head. It swiveled just enough. He was taking the street in, checking out the houses. Not even a lawn crew was there but he drove past my house, went around the block on Holly, past the little park we used to call Paperboys’ Island, and returned to Cypress. My hands grew cold. After stopping he came inside with us and casually asked Robin to run through the events of the previous night. As she did, they walked through the house. He was leading. His walk was looser and more attentive. As she talked, he was silent, just nodding. He reminded her of the offer for us to stay at his place and gave me a look that said, “back outside.”
“You’re checking out the house,” I said once we were on the walk.
“Can’t beat this weather, Mapstone.” It was seventy degrees, cloudless, dry, and he was lying to me.
I pulled on his suit coat and he stopped, turning to face me.
“How did you know about this?”
His eyes widened with too much innocence. “You know the watch commander briefs me every morning on what went down the night before all over the county, especially the one-eighty-sevens.” The homicides. “The address sounded familiar.”
“I bet.”
He strode to the car and I followed him. We both scanned the streetscape. He was just able to do it more casually, mostly moving his eyes. He slid a key into the trunk and it popped open.
“Here.”
“I don’t need that. It looks too small anyway.”
“It’s for Robin.”
I hesitated, then took the Kevlar vest in one hand. “So I’m supposed to tell her about this El Verdugo? Let her know she’s in a lot worse danger than the trauma of opening that FedEx carton? That her boyfriend wasn’t a professor who studied at Harvard but was a killer for the Sinaloa cartel? Hell, no. You do it. And tell her she has to wear this damned thing. She might actually do what you say. She likes you.”
“She likes you, too. It makes you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, bullshit! You know something. You know more than you’re telling me.”
He ignored me. A large black bag was hefted halfway out of the trunk and I heard a heavy zipper. He held out a semi-automatic pistol.