Private L.A. (Private 6)

“What’s the tit?” she demanded, and I heard ice cubes clink against glass.

“An update on their physical and mental condition, the little we know about the day of the kidnapping,” I said.

“Mmmmm, that is tempting,” Bobbie said. “The tat?”

“Who tipped you off? Was it Maines?”

“A good journalist never reveals sources,” she protested. “You know that.”

“Too bad, then. Gotta go, Bobbie.”

“Wait, wait!” she cried. “Okay, okay. You go first.”

“Nope,” I said, and stayed silent. “Offer’s good for ten seconds.”

Five seconds went by. Then nine. I was about to end the call when she said, “Terry Graves.”

That threw me. Why would …?

“I’m waiting for my tit, Jack,” Bobbie said.

“Sorry, Bobbie, your information came in a second after tit deadline.”

“What? You … you lying son of a—”

I ended the call, feeling like balance had been restored in the universe. You can only take so much grief from one person before you give it back.

I looked at Del Rio, hoping to … He was sleeping.

There was a recliner in the room. I sat in it, shut off my cell, kicked back, shut my eyes, and drifted off to a place where there were no mass killers, no celebrities, and no conniving attorneys, not like my hometown at all.

Chapter 58

JUSTINE SUFFERED THAT night.

In her nightmares, she kept hearing the muffled sounds of someone crying, kept seeing the chewed lips of Leona Casa Madre, and kept reliving the knife fight with Carla. Twice she woke up shaking and in a cold sweat, unsure where she was. Twice she wondered about the brutal vividness of the nightmares, worse than the actual experience. Was she infected? Running a fever? Hallucinating?

She woke for a third time a few minutes before five, feeling Carla’s fingers around her throat, seeing the woman’s insane eyes and the shiv sticking out of her back. Justine lay there panting, trying to figure out why the nightmares would not quit.

And then she thought she knew. She recalled hearing about this kind of relentless cyclic dream from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Jack had had this very same sort of dream. The dreams were what had driven him to seek her out in the first place.

“I think I’m suffering from PTSD,” she said, as she sat up and turned on the light.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, rampant among vets, seen in cops and firefighters. And now her? Was that what was going on?

Justine pulled her legs up tight to her chest, realizing that the attack in the jail cell was the closest she’d ever come to dying, the closest she’d ever come to deadly violence. Once again she felt invaded, like a part of her, some basic innocence, had been ripped from her, leaving no visible wound other than the ones on her arm and upper chest.

The clinician in Justine clicked through the symptoms of PTSD that might affect her: recurring nightmares, hyper-vigilance, inability to sleep, inability to feel certain emotions, heavy drinking, heavy medicating, acting out sexually.

Her head ached. She was still tired but did not want to sleep again.

She got out of bed, got dressed for Crossfit, thought it would be good to go sweat the horrors away. She found a coffee shack open at five thirty, got a double-shot latte, and prayed that the workout of the day didn’t include running. She arrived at ten to six and parked across the street from the box, which, to her surprise, was already lit up. Usually Ronny, the trainer at the early class, arrived at the very last second. She went inside, finding Ronny talking excitedly on his cell. He hung up, looking shaken.

“You okay?” Justine asked.

“No,” the trainer said, puffing his lips. “My sister, she just went into labor, and her boyfriend left her. I said I’d be there for her.”

“Well, go on, then,” she said.