Chapter Summary
There is a murder victim in the back of the Charger. Robbie and Eli play detective.
Chapter Notes
Lots of warnings this chapter, as described in the tags. Specific warnings for this chapter are in the end note at the bottom.
With a driver rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars, Eliot Miller was in imminent danger of getting kicked off the Uber app or having to attend a remedial driving course, neither of which were acceptable outcomes, because there was no way for Robbie to impersonate Eli's sixty-seven-year-old alias. So they developed a strategy to minimize the number of sub-satisfactory ratings.
One a.m., on Saturday morning; "Cindy," 4.2 stars, hailed Robbie to take her and her two friends home from a Friday night at the Loopy Luau . "Omigaaaawwd, is that our caaaaarr?" Yes, that was the car. Cindy and her two drunk friends poured themselves in. "He's haaaawt. He's like fifteen but he's so hot. Shelly, don't you think he's hot? Hey, can I eat my fries in your car?" Yes, they could. "Can I drink in your car?" Yes. Fine. Robbie cruised sedately away from each stoplight, reducing the risk of his pax screaming and clutching for non-existent hand-bars, and as a bonus, the extra time added to into his fare. "Your car is so cooooool. I can't believe you drive this for Uber!" Retching. "Oh, god, MacKenzie really overdid it. Do you have any water?" Yes, he had a case of tiny water bottles under the front seat. After they got out, he'd take a photo of the mess to earn a clean-up fee, then light up the car and vaporize the vomit. Then he'd Febreeze the interior to kill the brimstone smell.
Midnight on a Monday, "Lee," 4.8 stars, across from the Watering Hole on a street corner in the shadow of a decrepit apartment building, standing next to a shrine of a dozen votive candles and a young man's portrait propped up against a fence. "Oh god get me out of here, I don't know where I am and I think some guys across the street were planning to mug me. I was starting to think Uber didn't come here. You may have literally saved my life."
Five a.m. on a Thursday, "Rosa," 4.8 stars, beating the morning traffic into the city. "Isn't it nice to be out before the sun comes up, when you can just roll down the windows and feel the breeze in your hair?" M-hm. "Say, do you have anything to charge my phone?" He did.
Eleven p.m. on a Sunday, "Phil," 4.7 stars, back door at the Whittier Emergency Clinic. "Drive this box to the diagnostic laboratory downtown. If you make it inside thirty minutes, I'll tip you twenty bucks in the app." Blood and urine samples were clean, silent, and uncomplaining sources of five-star ratings and excellent tips—when Robbie could cut loose, the Charger always made it across town under the deadline.
Eight p.m. on a Friday, a text from Nora. Four appnts. $40 per wait + fare. You free? Two others also riding.
He figured out his schedule. He worked at Canelo's all the days and half-days he could get, while Gabe was at school—worked out to about thirty hours a week. The days he didn't work, he slept. He avoided transporting pax in the heat of the day, but drove all Friday and Saturday nights, when he could afford to sleep in after, and drove at the witching hour most weeknights as the bars started to close. The four star reviews rose to fives, the one-stars slowed to a rarity. His rating edged up to 4.6 and stayed there. He was making decent money—not enough that he didn't have to worry, but enough to keep just ahead of the bills. Eli was steaming mad, but what else was new.
Then he got The Cooler.
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Six a.m. on a Friday, "Tomas", 4.8 stars, East Los Angeles Medical Center. Instead of a little cardboard box waiting for him around the back of the hospital, Tomas had a three-foot plastic cooler. It was just like a regular cooler you'd put ice and drinks in, but plain white, with the hospital's name and address on a vinyl sticker on each side. Strips of colored tape sealed each end as tamper-proofing.
"This is going to the Gold Coast Conference Center," Tomas said, helping Robbie ease the cooler to the floor behind the front seat. "Ask for Mr. Sherman when you get there, he'll know where this goes. Just don't look inside, man, we'll know and you won't be happy you did."
That's not real tamper-proof tape, Eli said helpfully as they drove off.
At 6 a.m., LA traffic was manageable, but still not good. Robbie pushed the Charger through its paces, starting and weaving and jerking to a halt. A jacked-up F-250 had the audacity to roar up behind him and practically hump his bumper, and he brake-checked the asshole, then spent the next mile trying to trap him in the blind spot of a semi-truck in the next lane. The pickup slipped by, then tried to pass Robbie on the right. Fat chance. The blower roared. The Charger leapt ahead, leaving the F-250 looming behind a dawdling Geo Metro. Impatient traffic Robbie had been bottling up rushed forward, and he left the truck five cars behind him.
He'd just broken every unwritten rule of the road ever made, but better that than burning up, melting up out of the car, jumping feet-first through the F-250's windshield and tearing the driver's ribs open like a piñata.
That...should never have been an impulse Robbie had to shove down.
Fuck Eli—except, Eli just was what he was. He'd been in his forties when he'd died, his character rotten beyond all help, and being dead probably wasn't too conducive to personal growth. Just because Eli liked watching Robbie struggle with intrusive, murderous thoughts didn't mean he was pushing them at Robbie on purpose. Well, a lot of the time he did. Just not always.
It wasn't Eli's fault that Ghost Rider was a monster, anymore than it was that Robbie had died.
That was the mercs.
He felt cold, as the sun began to rise. He rubbed his cheekbone where one of the bullets had passed—an odd angle, missing his brain, that left his mouth crushed and jagged with bone fragments. Phantom aches of ice all through his chest, his abdomen, his hip. The bullet that struck his hip was the one that knocked him off his feet, jolted him around. His heart was jelly. His blood wasn't even pumping when he hit the ground, just oozing, as his broken body trembled and his vision slowly faded on the men in fatigues who stalked past him, retrieved some bags from the car—he'd never even looked in the trunk of the car before he'd borrowed it, he didn't know there was anything there—splashed some gasoline over them both and struck a match.
They'd murdered him. Taken him from his brother. And Robbie had done nothing at all to deserve that. He'd been stupid, desperate. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, borrowed the wrong car. But the mercs had gunned him down and burned him like trash, simply because he'd been in the way. He'd been innocent.
He didn't know why he was thinking about his death as he wove through traffic on Interstate 10. He didn't like to think about it, and he couldn't usually remember it so clearly.
Revenge? Eli offered.
I think we did that already.
Something wasn't right. He was cold. He couldn't concentrate, couldn't stop thinking about that night. A helicopter whop-whopped in the distance, which didn't usually bother him unless they got close, and he shuddered. No one should have to die like that. For no reason.
Someone had.
Someone was dead who shouldn't be.
"What's in the cooler," Robbie said. He put on his signal and eased onto the shoulder of the freeway, rolling over broken glass, a fragment of burst tire, a ragged T-shirt, a smashed cardboard box. He tried to melt through the car to get to the cooler, even though he wasn't lit up—ended up bouncing back and forth stupidly against the upholstery. He unbuckled himself and squeezed between the front seats, rolling with a squeak of springs onto the back bench. He dragged up the cooler from where it was wedged in the footwell. The contents sloshed and thumped.
Careful with the tape! Eli prodded him. Easy. Easy. Peel it up, so you can put it back how it was. What's gotten into you, kid?
Robbie opened the cooler. Inside, it was swimming with half-melted ice chips and a half dozen severed human forearms, each individually vacuum-packed and bar-coded, meat and skin peeling away where they stopped just above the elbow. He reached in and pawed around in the ice. Sloshed water on the seats. Pulled out one of the arms, dripping.
Alas, poor Yorick. You know this...chick? Short man with small hands?
No, he didn't. But they were dead. This wasn't an amputated arm donated to science. They were dead. They shouldn't be. They hadn't done anything.
They'd been murdered, just like Robbie. But they weren't coming back.
Kid, you just hopped the express train waaaaaayacross the state to Conclusionsville. Where's this coming from?
There's five other arms in here. What's so special about this one?
"I don't know." Robbie was shaking. This was wrong. It was wrong. A murder victim's body parts belonged in, he didn't know, the Coroner's office, or a crime lab. Not whatever this was. Not mixed in with other people's limbs headed for the Gold Coast Conference Center. He clutched the arm and peered through the plastic, looking for clues. Tawny brown skin, barely wrinkled. Neatly kept nails. A little blue heart tattoo on the inside wrist, neat edges, nice even color saturation, just starting to blur and settle with age. On the elbow, skin peeling down away from the meat, making him sick to look at it.
The other arms had bone sticking out, like they'd been cut with a saw. This one was at the same time more and less neat: muscles trimmed short at the tendon, the glossy white hollow of the elbow joint exposed where the upper arm bone had been completely removed. Less precise. More biological.
There was a sticker with a bar code on one end of the bag. And that was all.
Shove over. Eli nudged against Robbie's hands, and Robbie let him. Eli squeezed the arm up and down, squinting at the skin, at the blood that pooled in one corner. " Frozen and thawed. See these scars? " On the thin skin on the inside of the arm were subtle, irregular blemishes. " They used some good scar cream I bet, but these are all recent, not more than a couple years. This one, couple weeks. Feel this. " He rubbed Robbie's fingers firmly through the plastic and flesh against the arm bones, where they were thickened for an inch or two. " Old break. Again, not more than a couple years. " He squeezed and flexed the wrist and hand. " Definitely an adult. Teenagers're squishier. By the shape of the palm, probably a woman. See this dark ring around the wrist? " He rotated the arm to turn up its paler underside, where a band of pigment showed, much like the marks Gabe had now from his crutches. " Not the right place for being tied up. This is from a hand. Repetitive pressure mark."
Eli sank back. You might be right, kid. But of all the bullshit powers to come back from the dead with, did you have to pick psychometry?
Robbie took a picture of the bar code with his phone and put the arm back in the cooler. Closed it and pressed the tape into place.
If we figure out whodunnit, are you finally gonna kill 'em?
Robbie wedged the cooler back into the footwell. He wanted to blaze up, spin the car around, scream down the shoulder back to the hospital. Fling fire and steel in every direction. Ram the Charger through entire wings. They'd put her in the cooler. They'd cut her up. They'd done this to her.
Of course they cut her up, you nimrod, they're a hospital! They have a morgue! It's their job to dispose of dead bodies! You need to find out who she was, and who did the killing—if she was even murdered at all and didn't just fling herself off a bridge. What the fuck is wrong with you today?
"Right," said Robbie, letting out a steaming breath through his teeth. He crawled back into the driver's seat and merged abruptly, roaring from zero to forty, the car behind him laying on the horn as they slammed their brakes.
They pulled up to the Gold Coast Conference Center. People skittered out of the way as Robbie stalked through the doors, and the security guard put his hand to his earpiece. There was a signboard in the lobby, pointing down the hall, that read "Minimally Invasive Techniques in Carpal Tunnel Surgery—Wet-Lab".
"Delivery for Mr. Sherman," Robbie growled.
He let the Cooler go.
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Robbie Reyes was not a hacker, but he was a talented mechanic, and many of the same skills applied. Identify the make, model, and year of the system of interest. Download the manual. Check online forums in case the manual is wrong. Locate a supplier with decent reviews. Order the necessary parts and meticulously install them.
East Los Angeles Medical Center used Automed records software in Windows 10, running on Dell boxes. He could see that at a glance as he leaned over the ER's reception desk, pretending to ask about his mother who had had a heart attack. When they failed to locate any Maria Millers, he turned and left, blowing his story beyond all credence. Oh, well. He was just a skinny thug with gauged ears and weird scars on his head, one of thousands, interchangeable.
Eli's knowledge of the Dark Web had been gleaned over just two nights he'd snagged Robbie's body for, when Robbie was sleeping so soundly from exhaustion it probably qualified as a neurological condition. In that time, he'd Googled "world wide web crime," discovered Reddit forums on browser security and the modern surveillance state, panicked, downloaded Tor, figured that was good enough, and gone stumbling through the dark-web from job postings to cocaine markets, cackling to himself.
Robbie bought an account at the cheapest VPN provider he could find, bought a tiny fraction of a coin, and bought a worm from a hacker who had a reputation for providing user-friendly instructions and not poisoning their customer's computers. He loaded the worm onto a tiny black USB drive.
There were several ways to get malicious code into a target computer. If it was physically remote, he would have to do some phishing, try to sneak a convincing email past the hospital's spam blocker, or weave malware into a website the staff had to use. These were somewhat beyond Robbie's skill level. The quickest and most reliable way was to physically plug his new worm into the system. This would require getting around the reception desk and touching one of the computers.
They picked a weekday when Robbie didn't have a shift at Canelo's. Instead of turning on his Uber app, he drove to Starbucks and, gritting his teeth, ordered a tray of four Venti frappuccinos, one plain, two mocha, and one Unicorn. He took a curious sip of the Unicorn frap. Diabetic angels danced over his tastebuds.
This is future coffee? What the fuck?
He parked at the hospital and loosened all the lids before getting out of the car. Stuffed the napkins they came with into his pocket. Got rid of the receipt.
Okay, kid, you're tense. Jittery. Ease up a bit—oh, what am I saying, this is an Emergency Room, of course you're tense. Your beloved Uncle Eli just got hit by a car and it looks bad. You were driving the car! That's why you brought the milkshakes. You're wracked with guilt! Shaking. Clumsy. Everyone's waiting for you in the Intensive Care Unit. How will you ever atone? Your father. The way he looked at you last night. How could you hurt his little brother like this? His own flesh and blood! This is one mistake milkshakes won't fix!
Robbie shuffled through the rows of chairs in the ER lobby, passing a little girl on her father's lap with a towel wrapped around her hand, a metal-head in head-to-toe leather and spikes puffing dejectedly on an inhaler, an old woman with a swollen leg, another old woman with a swollen ring finger. A steady morning crowd. And there were three people lined up at the reception desk.
He shoved abruptly to the front of the line, tripped on nothing, and flung the frappuccinos all over the man at the computer.
Bold. Simple. I like it.
"Ay! Dios! Lo siénto!" Robbie hopped the desk, waving his napkins as the receptionist gasped with the cold and wiped coffee and whipped cream out of his eyes. Everyone in the lobby who was able to stand was standing and trying to see, and the other receptionist was storming over with a dangerous look in her eye. Robbie flipped the keyboard upside down, pouring out a cup of beige slush.
"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step back into line," she said coldly.
"Lo siénto, lo siénto," Robbie repeated, wiping the sopping, protesting man's shirt.
Are you kidding me, not this "No hablo el Ingles" shit, this is humiliating.
"Señor, no estaÌチs permitado entrar aquiÌチ," the woman continued.
Robbie looked up and froze. He shoved the sopping receptionist in his roller chair at her and they collided, the man getting frappuccino all over her scrubs. Dropping to his ass, Robbie fumbled the USB out of his pocket and plugged it into the box on the floor while she shook her hands off and wiped at herself in fury.
"Out! " she bellowed. " Afuera! "
"SiÌチ, siÌチ, lo sieÌチnto," Robbie babbled, and climbed back over the counter and bolted out of the hospital.
His hands were shaking as he started the car. He hoped he hadn't shoved the male receptionist too hard. He hadn't had time to check the monitor and see if the worm was installing itself—it was designed to, but you never entirely knew, with complex machines. There were always variables. He stopped at another Starbucks, bought an Americano for Eli and the wifi password, set up his laptop, logged into his VPN.
He only had a day or two—hours, if the hospital was serious about security—before routine maintenance found and deleted his worm. So he'd done his homework beforehand, printed out the manual for the Automed software. He pulled up the icon for the spyware he'd bought—a cute cartoon weevil—and through that, opened a remote window into the hospital's record system.
Even with the manual, navigating the thing was a nightmare.
Tiny, arcane icons that looked like little red and blue Webdings. Pointless matryoshka nests of files. Thousands of Smiths and Garcias. He entered the number from the arm's bar code into search bar after search bar. Their coffee was cold by the time they found the proper files.
Candace Isabel Gutierrez, female, Black, 26 years old. Weight 113 pounds, height 5'4". Arrived 3-12-2016 at 4:23 a.m., care of unknown Good Samaritan. Dead on arrival. Cause of death: vehicular trauma. Cadaver donated to medical science.
Just a few lines. There were attached PDFs of the intake and exam forms, the death certificate, the release of the body, all from six months ago. Robbie downloaded and saved those. His head was spinning.
He was so sure there'd been foul play. Something violent, personal. Walking along the road and getting hit by a car was plenty violent, but it sure wasn't personal. Wasn't murder. He was going crazy. He'd just spent three hundred dollars on illegal software to break into a hospital on an irrational impulse.
Hold up, kid, I wouldn't count your psychometry out yet.
My what? Why would I suddenly have psychic powers, that's your bullshit.
Well, you were dead. On average, sixty percent of people who survive being dead longer than ten minutes will return with some form of supernatural juju. Like demonic possession or seeing ghosts. Psychometry is the most common, accounts for about half of all adult-onset psychic powers in non-mutants. Stephen King wrote this book, The Dead Zone, where the guy gets visions from touching objects. He gets famous, gets hassled by the public, becomes a hermit, and assassinates a political candidate. Pretty much true to life. Now since you only homed in on one single severed arm, and I can't imagine there's a severed arm out there that doesn't have some story to tell, your talent has got to be...really weak. But that just means there must be something to this.
Why do you know this stuff?
Why do you think I came back with useful abilities like pyrokinesis and teleportation? I did my prep work while I was alive.
You—you sacrificed people to Satan so you could come back from the dead with cool powers?
Some people buy insurance. But we were talking about you. Your arm. You chased a lead, and you got a name, and a missing Good Samaritan. Look up the girl first, that's the easy part, and then that ought to lead you to the fly-by-night who dumped her at the hospital. There'll be someone to kill at the end of this road. You can feel it.
That was the worst part: Robbie could feel it. Something. Destiny, maybe.
He downloaded Ms. Gutierrez's medical records with a queasy squirm of guilt in his gut, closed down the Weevil app, and left for home. Instead of running Uber, he listened to the police bands as he drove.
Drunk-and-disorderlies. Traffic stops. Loitering. Nothing for Ghost Rider to rage against.
This was Los Angeles. People did horrible things to each-other every day.
He just had to track them down.
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On the Internet, people live forever.
Candace Isabel Gutierrez had graduated from UCLA in 2012 with a major in marketing and a minor in graphic design. Her senior capstone project had been a collection of public safety ads for children, with bold, clear illustrations of everything from how to cross the street to how to spot riptides to what to do if you are being chased by a bear.
Her Facebook was still up. She had been slender, glowing, feminine. Her profile pic showed her posing in an off-shoulder floral blouse and scarf beside an abstract outdoor sculpture, and her banner was fluffy clouds on a blue sky, the colors just off enough to be an amateur shot. Her Wall had turned into an improvised memorial, with friends and family members leaving quiet, sad notes. Occasionally striking up short conversations and offers of support. Leaving each-other Likes. Robbie wished there was a sad version of a Like.
Going back in time, Robbie found a sparse but tidy feed of pictures. A few Selfies, a few in-progress and fresh-from-the-oven shots of baking projects, and a lot of pictures of Candace with a tall, good-looking white man tagged as Alex Northwick, taken at beaches and hiking trails in Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Costa Rica. They made an almost painfully photogenic couple, Alex's lean square jaw and athletic lines, Candace's halo of shining curls and her smoky cat eyes. There was a Christmas picture with the two of them every year going back to 2012. Classy monochrome trees, with a different set of decorations each year. Most of Candace's posts were restricted to friends. When he searched for images tagged with her face, very few of the recent ones did not include Alex somewhere.
It's always the boyfriend, Eli cut in. Alex's profile was private. Just the profile pic of himself, with his shirt off, against a mountain peak.
Robbie sent some random friend requests to friends of Alex Northwick. Eventually one of them will accept, just to be polite. Then I'll be a friend of a friend, and then when I send Alex a friend request, he might think he's supposed to know me, and accept. Then I'll be able to read his profile.
Oooh. This is some cute spycraft you got going on.
A stalker did this to one of Lisa's friends.
Why haven't we burned him yet?
It was before you. Buzz off.
But Candace had a sister in town with a less restricted profile, and one of Candace's co-workers who'd posted condolences had very little privacy protection. He'd worked at a logistics firm downtown. Robbie pulled up the firm's employee roster on Wayback Machine. Candace had worked in reception a year ago.
It was enough to construct a really shaky cover story.
He found a phone number for Candace's sister, Iris, and her mother, Esther. Her father Simón had an obituary: stroke, 2010.
He called Esther. "Hi, you don't know me, I'm calling to ask about your daughter Can—" click.
He left Iris a voicemail. Let a little of his mother's accent bleed in. "Hello, Iris Gutierrez-Bao? I'm so sorry to bother you. I'm calling to check on your sister Candace. We've been out of touch and now no one will tell me what happened. Please, please call me back. My name's Roberto Morrow—" what the fuck, what the fuck? "—uh, and, my phone number is..."
I'm flattered? Appalled?
What's happening?
Freudian slip.
And then all they could do was wait.
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Nora called while Robbie was at the shop. He made an excuse, clocked out for his ten minute break, and took the call in the bathroom.
"What can I do for you?"
"Me and the girls want to talk terms," Nora said, firmly.
"Uh..."
"We're happy with your service," she said. "It's been a month and no creep factor."
Yeah...no creep factor here at all, just counting to a thousand in his head the whole ride, or if the intrusive thoughts were especially intense, reciting obscure English vocabulary. "Okay."
"Some of the girls just work on their knees, they can't spare forty bucks a trip," Nora said. "But if you think about it, it doesn't cost you much more time or gas to take two girls to the same party than just one."
"Makes sense."
"I propose, for multiple passengers, forty bucks per half-hour wait from the first rider, ten for each additional."
Robbie was making thirty dollars a day with Uber—on an average day. He needed Nora's business. "Four riders maximum and forty bucks for any side trips," Robbie qualified. "Plus drive-time and mileage."
"Done."
Robbie blinked at himself in the mirror. "I'm a red light shuttle service."
"That you are. Stay good, Eliot."
"You, too, Nora."
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Friday night, ten p.m., he got a ping, "G," 4.5 stars, in Lisa's neighborhood.
Lisa's area was nicer than Robbie's, but not by much. She carried mace and a large rock in her purse. He checked that Gabe was settled into bed and headed out.
The pax waiting at the curb was fucking Guero.
He could see Guero's mouth move as he crept down the street. Fucking Reyes.
Guero Valdez was a bastard. A thieving, tough-talking, pistol-packing rat fink, with a deep scar turning down his thin lips on one side, and green eyes and freckles on a pinched, long, mean-looking face. He was eighteen, CHECK like Robbie. Until last spring, his life's ambition seemed to be to get himself sent to prison and eventually get made with the EME.
Guero sneered at the car and leaned back nonchalantly in his new wheelchair.
He was probably the last person Robbie should ever give a lift to.
Robbie and Guero spent a few months in the same foster home when they were twelve; Guero had been a target. The other kids called him a suckup, claimed he got special treatment because he was blond. This was bullshit. Guero was almost as unpleasant at twelve as at eighteen, and the foster parents had neither the energy nor the interest to treat any one kid better than anyone else. Robbie, at the time, had been tougher and fiercer than most of the other kids, and he and Guero soon formed an unspoken arrangement where Robbie watched Guero's back and Guero helped Robbie protect Gabe. They'd just started something approaching friendship when Guero moved back with his mother. Robbie never thought more about him until he aged out, moved to Hillrock Heights, and transferred to Lincoln High, where he saw Guero again. Guero had three inches on him now, and he'd grown tougher, fiercer. He had two friends who followed him around, called themselves a crew. He seemed happy to see Robbie, in his slant-wise, dickish way, and offered to lend him a hundred dollars to buy cigarrettes and e-cig refills to re-sell to the underclassmen, a good money-maker and a low-stakes way for Robbie to get his feet dirty. Robbie had turned him down hard. In retaliation, Guero and his buddies had "borrowed" Gabe's power chair right out from under him. Ripped up Gabe's comics. Pulled a gun on Robbie to show him who was boss, and then spent the next three weeks cruising around on Gabe's chair, spoils of war. That was about when Robbie got desperate and decided that borrowing a customer's car to bet against drug kingpins in an illegal street race was safer than staying in Hillrock Heights, and he'd ended up dead in an alley.
After the first battle between the mercs and drug dealers died down, the Rider beat the shit out of Guero and his "crew" and retrieved the power chair.
That was not when Guero lost the use of his legs.
Nora got slipped a pink pill, and she turned into Miss Hyde for a day. Guero took blue pills—half the gang-bangers in East LA took blue pills from the big New York drug pushers last spring—and he turned into mean, hatchet-faced John Cena for a few hours. That was the "good batch" of super-pills. The pusher from New York recruited an army of John Cenas, and he sicced them on the Rider after luring Eli onto a bridge. Eli dumped Guero off the bridge, Robbie took control and snagged him with a chain before he went into the river, and then Robbie pulled him to safety too hard and broke his back.
Oh, and somewhere along the way, Guero had figured out Ghost Rider's identity.
This asshole will not adapt well to being a cripple, Eli said. He's like a coyote with two legs. He'll bite every hand that tries to help him, probably drink himself to death in a pay-by-the-hour motel inside five years. He's rubbish. He did this to himself, and if he had half a brain, he'd thank you for putting him out of his misery. Besides. He'll find a way to expose us. Didn't Lisa say he's some kinda kid reporter now?
Shut up.
Broken record.
Robbie stopped dawdling and pulled up to the curb. He rolled the window down—he made the car roll its own window down, the crank spinning with no hand on the knob. "You're calling yourself G?"
"This is not my fuckin' day," Guero replied. "Why don't you just cancel?"
Like hell was Robbie stranding a guy in a wheelchair in this neighborhood. "Why don't you cancel?"
"The fees, fool. The fare's bad enough as it is."
Robbie opened the passenger door, without moving his hands or breaking eye contact. Guero sneered at him. "How do you want to do this?" Robbie asked.
Guero lowered his eyes. The corner of the sidewalk was nearby and had a ramp. But depending on where Guero's back was broken, he might not be able to lift himself into the Charger on his own. It sat low, only a little higher than the chair itself, but it had no hand-grips for him to use. "I'll take some help if it won't put your back out," Guero said. "Skinny-ass freak."
"This skinny freak kicked your ass," Robbie replied, as Guero wheeled himself down the ramp and onto the cracked tarmac. He scooped Guero up; they kept their heads and bodies angled so as to look at and touch each-other as little as possible. Guero was lanky, not quite twice as heavy as Gabe. He set him in the passenger seat, and Guero reached backward to grab the headrest to pull himself a little straighter. Robbie collapsed the wheelchair and put it in the trunk. There was a backpack full of books and papers hanging from it; he handed that off to Guero. Shut the door by hand. Got in. "Where to?"
Guero gave an address on Ruckleroad Lane, for a dilapidated apartment complex just five blocks north of Robbie's home.
Robbie headed off and put the radio on. This late, the indie station played local stuff, and he tuned in halfway through the chorus of an energetic track by Manic Hispanic. The lead singer bellowed into the microphone as drums and guitars rattled and squealed. "Beef! Chorizo! Beef, beef! Chorizo!"
Guero sneered at the speakers. "This shit supposed to be lyrics?"
"It's a dick joke," Robbie informed him, as if to be helpful.
"Chinga tu madre. When'd he come up with that, two minutes while taking a dump?" Guero leaned forward, and lifted one leg out of his way with his hands so he could retrieve a book and a penlight out of his backpack. Robbie glanced at him in surprise. He had never seen Guero so much as crack a textbook while at school. He supposed it was odd, in retrospect, that Guero had never had to repeat a grade level. It was a small paperback book with dense print.
Guero had eyes on all sides of his head and he caught Robbie staring. "Yeah, Reyes. Laugh it up. I'm the golden boy now. You're the delinquent who dropped outta high school."
"I didn't say anything."
"You were thinkin' it."
"I'm glad you got something to keep you busy."
Guero smacked himself in the knee with the book, making a sharp crack. "Fuck you. I don't gotta 'keep busy,' I gotta live my life. Which you ruined . You might be happy staying in this shithole, but I'm getting myself outta here, and this ," he waved the book, "is how I gotta do it."
"I don't wanna stay here, either," Robbie snapped.
"Don't gimme that, you're king of this shithole."
"Nobody's king of this shithole."
"Yeah, you are, diablo. Everybody's scared shitless of you. All the authority, none of the responsibility. You don't even have a crew to roll with. Don't have the balls to tell people what's what, or help anybody out when they ask."
Nobody got to talk to Robbie about responsibility. "And what about your crew, huh? Why aren't they with you?"
"Can't take care o'them no more," Guero shrugged. He opened his book again. The Jungle . There was a picture of a cow skull and a train on the front. Robbie'd never heard of it.
I had to read that in high school, Eli said. Gave me a lotta ideas. Thought about bein' a butcher for a hot minute.
"What's that?" Robbie asked.
"Book," Guero said, with a suspicious look. A minute later, he added, "It's a classic exposeÌチ on the meat-packing industry in Chicago at the turn of the century. A big reason they invented food safety regulations."
"Mm," Robbie said. He turned the radio down a couple notches, to be polite.
"Gotta bone up on this shit," Guero continued. "My transcript's not what you call clean off the key. I'm not getting outta here with just a sob story and some tight rhymes."
Robbie downshifted for the stops. Started again smoothly. Took corners in easy arcs, pushing up with the outside shocks like he was some fancy Mercedes outfitted with hydraulics in the suspension. Guero turned pages steadily.
"We're here," Robbie said as he pulled in to the address. He looked up at the apartment building. Looked like the kind of place where the elevator might stick halfway down. Some of the concrete balconies were visibly crumbling, re-bar sticking out of the corners.
Guero looked up, startled. He put his book and penlight away. "So, Reyes," he said, looking down. "I'm not gonna dick around here . I know, you know I know, we know, so no bullshit, right? You never stay injured. Whatchu got in your system, and can I get a hit of it?"
Pills. That was what Guero knew. Robbie wished he just popped a pill a couple nights a month.
"I'm possessed by an evil ghost," he said.
"No shit?"
"No shit."
Guero laughed. Robbie got out and snapped open the wheelchair, scooped him up and helped him into it. "You know what, you can keep that. Keep your evil ghost. I guess there had to be some sucker worse off than me."
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Friday, midnight. Robbie was parked in front of a Days Inn with Uber turned off, taking notes from his American History prep book while he waited to drive Nora and another woman to their next appointment. The police band crackled. "East Los Angeles Precinct, all available units, respond to a hostage situation in progress on North 187 th and La Jolla, Address 453b La Jolla Avenue. CHECK Suspect is white male, five foot ten, one hundred eighty pounds, witness reports armed with a handgun. Suspect is inside the house with two young children and one Hispanic female. Has threatened to shoot all occupants of the house. Responding units are to form a perimeter and await arrival of SWAT and federal hostage negotiators."
YES!
The engine roared. Robbie started to light up, the pages of his textbook glowing in the fires of his burning eyes. Pain, beautiful pain, and to delay it was agony. He ported the book into the trunk. Grabbed his phone and texted Nora: emergency. gtg. Stuffed the phone safely into the glovebox and let himself blaze up. Light and heat, and his soul swam back and forth between the burning car and his burning body, the wheels flaring red, the blower spitting gouts of flame high into the night. He cracked his knucklebones inside the Rider's black leather skin. Shook charred flesh out of his sockets and faceplates. Roared in eagerness, sparks and gasoline boiling out between clenched teeth.
The car streaked off, lighting up the asphalt as they wove between stand-still traffic. Zigzagged through intersections. Can you port us there? Robbie demanded.
I have no idea where the fuck La Jolla is, Eli replied.
North somewhere.
They cut a jagged red ribbon through the night. Picked up North 187 th , followed the building numbers. Blue collar, white collar, blue collar, no collar. Towering Oleander shrubs. White collar again. Two-story white stucco houses with clay tile roofs, neat green lawns, flowers and rock gardens, a pre-recession housing development on the side of a hill. Four hundred, four twenty-five, four hundred and fifty three.
They slowed and cruised past the house, muffling their flames until they passed around the corner.
453b La Jolla was one half of an upscale duplex with a large driveway and neatly sculpted juniper trees in the front yard, Dr. Seuss topiary. Every one of the large windows was lit up, but the blinds were down.
I can port you to the top of the roof if you get me two streets over onto that hill. If you want to be subtle, or some shit.
There's kids, Eli. Yeah, I wanna try subtle.
They rumbled uphill and around. Two cop cars squealed in the distance, flashing lights drawing closer. In the driver's seat, the Rider drooled molten steel, shaking with impatience. The fire built hotter and hotter under the shuttered vents of their skull, and Robbie felt it start to shine out through the seams in their leather skin.
Ready. Aim.
Robbie melted into the car and hauled himself up out of the roof, feet planted, a long chain wrapped around his arm, one of Eli's old knives at each end.
Fire.
He dropped into a pool of blackness under his feet, landed silently on the ridgeline of the duplex. Spat out a mouthful of burning oil that dribbled down the clay tiles, opened his vents and let the flames light up the sky until he could think.
He listened. Tune out the traffic and sirens and yap of the neighbor's dog who'd spotted him. Tune out the hum of the home's air conditioning that carried through the soles of its feet. Let the body and its fires be still. Hunt.
Sobbing, from one of the upper rooms at the front corner. A man, and a child.
The chain—not a knife on the end, he wanted a hook. Fix the chain to the whole-house air vent. Stalk silent and blazing to the edge of the roof, leap off high up and away, roll in midair to look back on the big bedroom at the corner of the house, light and movement behind the Venetian blinds. In the pause before gravity took hold, heave on the chain and shoot himself toward the window, burst through the glass like a flaming javelin. Hit the opposite wall and roll to his feet, chain in his hands again, knives again. Roar the song of his engine, roar his rage.
There was the man with the gun. Fading hair, unshaven, sweaty, white with fear, dressed for bed in boxers and a soft tee-shirt.
There was the woman. A few strands of gray, her lips pale, smothering within the man's arms. The children were not here. The children were crying inside the closet.
Ghost Rider rumbled as he whirled the chain in his fist. Spat fire.
The man swung the gun away from the woman, dropped her to the ground. Fired on the Rider, caught a ricochet from the faceplates. Punched holes that spurted flame through the Rider's skin-suit. Fired until the magazine clicked dry. The Rider snorted Eli's laugh. Snap out the chain, knife flying around millimeters from the man's eyes, catch him by the neck. Haul him overhead, tiptoe. Shake him as he screams. Bash his head on the ceiling until plaster crumbles around them. Fling him to the floor. Let him scramble to his feet, run for the hallway. Fling the other end of the chain, wrap him shoulders to knees. Drag him back, swing him by the ankle. Shake him again.
The man screaming. The woman, also screaming. Pounding on the Rider's back. Broke a marble statuette over his steel skull.
The Rider dropped the man, spun on her, hissed.
"Please," she sobbed. "Please. I don't know if you can understand me—please don't kill him. He's out of bullets, look at him, he's not going to hurt me now—"
She's got that right. The Rider roared again and kicked the man, snapping ribs.
"Please! Please! My husband is sick. He's sick in the head, he's been hearing voices but I didn't know it was this bad. He needs to be in a hospital. He doesn't deserve to die." She pushed in front of the Rider and covered the chained man with her body. "If you have any mercy in you. If you understand me at all. Please. Please just go."
Stupid bitch. End him!
No.
Robbie focused himself. Found himself within the fires of the Rider, pulled himself up from the waves of their aggression. "Hospital, " he rumbled.
"Yes," the woman sobbed, hope in her eyes. "Yes! He needs help. He needs psychiatric help. Please. I love him. We love him."
The Rider flipped the man over with the toe of one boot, bent down, fire of his eyes and breath singeing the man's shirt. "Go to the hospital, " he snarled in the furious voice of his engine.
He left the man chained on the floor of the bedroom. Jumped out the destroyed window, found the nearest shadow and melted back into the car, snarling and gasping through the blower, shuddering through the gears and wheels. They revved and revved, spitting fire in every direction. Lights were turning on up and down the neighborhood, waking up to stare at the burning car that screamed in frustration in the middle of their street. Cops had found the car and had started setting up a second perimeter, guns drawn.
VALIó MADRE!
Take us to the hills.
Fuck you! Fuck you, Roberto Reyes! YOU COCKTEASING LITTLE SHIT!
Robbie congealed into the driver's seat and rammed the Rider's forehead repeatedly into the steering wheel. The cabin erupted in flame. Outside in the street, officers raised their weapons.
The hills, Eli! NOW!
FUCK YOU! Eli howled. A black hole ripped open in front of them and they roared into it. Screamed their fury to the empty desert.
They wore themselves out at three in the morning. As soon as Robbie snuffed out, he puked up coolant and motor oil, then dinner and lunch, then just bile, heaving and heaving. He trembled. Stopped at a gas station for a Gatorade and an energy bar on the way home, so Eli wouldn't hijack his body tomorrow and murder his passengers while Robbie dozed in a hypoglycemic coma.
He checked his messages. Nora was safe, but she was not happy. She was cutting future fees by half.
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Iris called while Robbie was cruising down I-5 in the center-lane, ferrying Michelle, 4.3 stars but a perfectly good pax as long as Robbie was concerned, into the IT district at five in the morning on a Tuesday.
"Sorry, I gotta take this," Robbie said when he saw who it was. He didn't need hands to drive. He asked Eli to keep an eye out in the mirrors for cops. "Hello. Iris? I'm, uh, I'm so glad to hear from you, I didn't think you'd call."
"I was thinking it over," said the voice from the voicemail message. Now grim, flat, slightly hoarse. "I might as well talk to you. How did you know Candace?"
"I just saw her sometimes," Robbie said. He had no confidence in his ability to weave a convincing lie. "She was always nice. But she seemed," he made an educated guess, "sad."
"You could say that."
The line was empty except for Iris' slightly wet breathing. Good, good. Just wait. Let her jump to her own conclusions, then play along.
"I don't know what your angle is," Iris said at last. "I don't really care. Hell, if you're willing to actually listen, I'm not about to turn that down. Weekdays, I have lunch from twelve-thirty to one thirty, and I can swing an extra half hour on either side of that. There's a coffee shop across from the Whittier Library. We can meet there."
Yes. Robbie had to stop himself from offering to go today, begging a day off from Canelo. He needed the money. Candace had died six months ago, two more days wouldn't change anything. "I can meet you Thursday. Twelve-thirty."
"I'll be carrying a red bag."
"Black and white jacket."
"Be seeing you, Mr. Morrow." She hung up. Robbie shuddered.
His pax looked at him curiously. "What was that about?"
"Funeral."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's okay. I didn't know her very well."
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At twelve thirty on a weekday when he didn't work at the shop, Robbie was usually sleeping, a heavy quilt tacked up over the window and a bottle of melatonin on his nightstand. On Thursday, he was regrettably conscious. The previous night-slash-morning he'd made a hundred and fifty dollars, without Nora's tips, carrying people home after a soccer game had packed them into the bars.
Iris was Candace's opposite. Tall and a bit heavy, with bone-straight dark hair and subtle, professional makeup, a fashionably boxy jacket over a nipped-in skirt, a crisp white blouse, low-heeled pumps. She occupied a patio table under an umbrella, a square, red leather handbag upright on the table like a flag.
Robbie felt grubby.
"Ms. Gutierrez-Bao?" he asked, when he reached the shade of the umbrella.
"Who's asking?" she asked.
Oh, god, Robbie was going to have to say his alias again. "Roberto Morrow."
"Yes, I'm Iris Bao. You want to get coffee, or get right into this?"
"I'm ready. Their coffee is...really expensive." He sat.
"Mm." She looked him up and down. Robbie hunched. Picked paint off the underside of his chair. "Why don't you tell me how you knew Candace."
He and Eli had worked on this. Hell, Eli had coached Robbie on this as hard as a sitcom dad whose son was going on his first date. "I work at an auto shop," true, "and we do a lot of restorations, collector cars, that kind of thing." A stretch. "We used Angelino Logistics to ship these cars back to the owners," total lie, "and the boss liked to send me to collect the shipping paperwork 'cause, well, wasn't always anything for me to do." Another total lie, and a humiliating one—Robbie could do almost anything short of electrical system diagnostics and automatic transmission servicing. "I always liked going because Candace worked at the front desk," he continued, spiralling deeper into fantasy-land. "I had this huge crush on her. She was so pretty. And she was always super nice to me, even though I was just the messenger boy. I was away for a few months, and then the next time I went to Angelino, she wasn't there. I asked but they wouldn't tell me anything. I found her on Facebook and found out she was..."
"Dead."
"Yeah."
"Yeah, she is."
Robbie nodded.
Iris lifted a hand and shut her eyes for a long minute. "So you're not a reporter?" she asked at last, steady.
Robbie held eye contact very carefully. "What? No."
"Damn."
"Should I be?"
"It would mean someone with some power gave a, a crap, what happened to my sister," Iris said. "So yes. I guess you should be. But we're here anyway. So here's what I know.
"My sister Candace met Alex Northwick when she was twenty-one and in college. She was...not a woman of wide romantic experience. She fell desperately, obsessively in love with him. They got together soon after that and stayed together for the next five years. They lived together for three.
"Candace never had many girlfriends, and this is probably why it took me as long as it did to realize she was in trouble. You see. Women need girlfriends. We need someone on our side, some outside perspective to keep our heads on straight, while our men are doing their level best to brainwash us. They can't usually help it; this world brainwashes all of us one way or another. Candace had me, big sister Iris, busy with my new baby and my career, and Mom, who has her own issues. I was all wrapped up in my kids. Of course Candace wasn't coming over every other weekend. Who wants to hang around all that screaming and yelling, eat kid food, watch kid movies. She's a grown woman with her own life. I thought. She's in love with her Prince Charming.
"It didn't help that I was jealous. Not of her and Alex, I love my Stephen. But the lifestyle. The freedom.
"Mom's not a big one for holidays, so it took a while before we had an excuse to see them for longer than an hour or two. And Alex. He wasn't one for family. His parents were a real pair. Separate bedrooms. And they didn't seem to like him, except when out of the blue they'd drop off some really expensive present—downpayment for a boat. Sculpture from some minor-league artist. That kind of thing.
"So I thought, Alex is uncomfortable with us. He's white-bread rich. Well, fine. Long as he treats my little sister like a princess, I'll put up with it."
Iris swallowed, took a breath, held up one hand again for silence. When she spoke again, it was a low, monotone snarl. "He did not treat her like a princess.
"Candace still has—had—a MySpace. From when she was a kid. Used to use it as a diary until I found her profile and teased her about it. DestinyDanger2001. She was obsessed with Destiny's Child when we were kids.
"I don't know why. I'd just got off the phone with her. I had a feeling. I looked up her MySpace and she had all these recent posts about Alex. You can read them. You should read them. The cops couldn't seem to find the time.
"I mentioned Candace didn't have much romantic experience before Alex. She was a nice girl. Sheltered. Well, Alex had certain wants that Candace hadn't expected to provide. She said in her diary that she didn't want to. But she was afraid what he would do if she didn't provide for him, so she just. Let him do it to her.
"She also posted...drawings. Of herself. In little sections. Bruises, mostly. Drew them in Paint. No photographs. She'd actually deleted all her old selfies. She used code names, called Alex just A. And she still—" The raised hand again. "She was still so in love with him. She wanted to help him. Can you believe that? This had been going on for years by then. It was escalating. And she still loved him, so much. She was so strong. So strong for that sonofabitch.
"So I call a family meeting. I get Mom, Steve, Uncle Carlos. We all agree Candace is in deep shit, either that or she's got a hell of a creative writing project going on. Mom's got a friend in Seattle, so the plan is, we talk sense into my sister, load her on a plane, and then, I don't know, make her stay up north forever. Hope Alex forgets about her. That was the plan. We called Candace. Took her over a week to get free, she begged off because of work, commitments with Alex, sailing trips with Alex. Finally we got her to Mom's place. And she was limping, she was fucking limping . She was always a girly girl, but now she had on a full face with foundation and powder, razor-sharp eyes, falsies, all that to see me and Mom, because it was second nature now to cover up. She claimed she twisted her ankle.
"Mom, bless her. Mom plays the frail old woman card. Finds chores for her to do around the house—weeds, clearing out the attic. Kept her running around like Cinderella. After a couple days of this, Candace stops wanting to leave. Offers to regrout the bathroom. Repaint all the ceilings. She's remembered what it's like not to worry about where the next pinch or slap is coming from.
"We get more of the story from her. This house Alex lives in, it's gated, and there's no keypad. Just a remote, just one remote Alex carries. He bought her an Audi but she can't drive it anywhere because she can't get it out of the garage. He installed locks on the interior doors. The entire upper floor of the house seals off. She cooked for him, but she wasn't allowed to leave the house when he was at work, but she had to have dinner ready when he got back. This one time, she told me, she was making this eggplant dish and she was out of lemon. She only had half the amount of lemon. And the chard was wilty. So she had to climb the fence. Flag down a neighbor. Hitch a ride down to the grocery store, get the ingredients, take the bus back. All for half a lemon. He was so irrational and controlling, she was terrified he'd notice the food wasn't perfect. I think when she told me, she was starting to realize how scared she really was. Then I—"
Iris cut herself off and turned completely around in her chair, shoulders hitching. Robbie twisted his fingers in the seams of his jeans.
"Then I fucked it all up," Iris continued, her voice breaking. She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on the table and blotted her eyes, blew her nose. "I let something slip to her. And she found out I'd been reading her MySpace again. And she called Alex.
"We all got to witness the Alex Northwick charm offensive. He had flowers and a suit and a new dress and a trip to Aruba where he could beat the shit out of her in a foreign country and he woulda brought a puppy with a bow on its head if he didn't think it was too cliché. All 'yes, ma'am,' 'no, ma'am.' He had Mom half-way forgetting what he'd done to her daughter. He didn't act guilty at all, see. Made you forget what he was capable of. He whisked Candace back to his castle on the hill.
"I couldn't get word of my sister for three solid months after that.
"One day she calls, completely out of the blue. I pick up. She's not mad at me anymore, she sounds weird, like she's happy? Not like Candace being happy, but like someone on TV. Invites me and Steve and Mom to this molecular gastronomy restaurant, Alex is paying. We show up. She looks healthy, but that doesn't mean anything, they make concealer for your legs nowadays. It's us, her, Alex, and two of Alex's weaselly looking friends and their wives. Turns out this is their engagement party. I get Candace in the bathroom, ask her if she's lost her damn mind, and she swears, she swears to me, that Alex is getting better. He's gone to therapy, turned over a new leaf. She asks me to please, please be happy for her. She loves him so much. Nobody could love like Candace. And I tell her, I can't be happy, but I'll pray for you."
Iris paused, picked up her coffee, put it down without drinking. Her jaw worked and she shuddered, breathed deep, dabbed her eyes more with the napkin.
When she spoke again, it was a snarl. "I should've got off my praying ass instead.
"All quiet on the Northwick front, the next few months. I get a couple phone calls. I met her for coffee one last time, helped her pick out invitations. Not a lot of invitations to order, on Alex's side.
"Then I get this call at eleven o'clock, March 11. It's Alex. In all the four years he's been screwing my sister, he's never once called me. He asks me where Candace is. Sounds worried.
"Now Alex is...a strange man. He's always in control. Master and commander type, keeps his cool through any craziness that drops in on him. So I knew, when he called me in a babbling panic in the middle of the night, that something didn't add up. If something happened, Alex wouldn't sound worried.
"So I say, I don't know, where do you think Candace is? And he says she ran off, they had a fight—really, he called it a fight—and she stormed off and disappeared and he's worried something might have happened, the way she was acting. And so I say, I hope to God she did finally storm off, and if I did find her, he'd never hear about it from me. And I hang up.
"The next week, Mom gets this call. It's from the hospital. They've called her to let her know that Candace's personal effects, which were removed from her body, are due to be donated to charity if she doesn't come pick them up."
Robbie blinked at her. "Wait. What? "
Iris nodded. "That's the first time we heard Candace had died. The hospital calling for us to pick up her effects."
"Didn't the police—"
"Near as I can tell, the police were never involved."
How?
Administrative error or coverup. I don't like this.
"We ask to view the body. They tell us there's nothing to view, remind Mom that the relatives already donated the body to science. So that's where she's gone: science. Mom says she never identified the body, and the hospital says yes she did, it's right there on their paperwork. Try to convince her she's forgotten the whole thing, that she's crazy. But we never signed anything. We never saw anything. Candace didn't have any existing will to dispose of her remains; she wasn't an organ donor and she told me once that she wanted to be cremated. And they'd had the body a week. A whole week before anyone told us Candace was dead."
"And no one ever...investigated Alex?" Robbie asked.
Iris leaned forward onto her elbows, grim. "Here's the turn of the screw, Mr. Morrow. Alex Northwick is Doctor Northwick. That's how Candace met him in the first place. He was the surgeon on duty when she cracked her ribs in a car accident five years ago. She was his patient. He pursued her after hours and she fell for him. At that time, he was in his last year of his fellowship. Now he's full time at East Los Angeles Medical Center as a trauma surgeon."
"He's a doctor," Robbie repeated dumbly.
"Surgeon. MD, FACS."
Oh, fuck.
What?
Just—fuck.
"I know Alex killed my sister. And he used his position to muddy the trail somehow. If you look at his personal history and character, listen to mine or Mom's testimony, it's obvious. He should at least get interviewed. But whenever I tell this story, the moment, the moment I let slip that Alex is a surgeon, they get this look in their eye. They turn away. They rationalize it. Oh, he's just a run-of-the-mill domestic abuser, what a pity, at least he's single now. Poor woman, I wonder what happened to her, after she ran from him. What terrible luck."
"He got away with it."
"So far, he has."
And he's gonna continue getting away from it. We're dropping this, kid.
What? No. He made that woman's life a living hell and then he killed her and used his position at the hospital to cover it up. We need more proof, but unless Candace really did go wandering down the highway and get hit by some random car, we're gonna make him pay. He's never gonna hurt anyone again.
This is a doctor. He saves lives for a living. You really think that killing him is going to make this world a better place?
Suddenly you give a shit? You heard Iris. Candace lovedhim. She sacrificed for him. Why would anyone kill someone like that? Who does that?
"Thank-you for telling me," Robbie said, studying the toe of his shoe.
"More than you bargained for, I'm guessing."
"Little bit."
"You know any reporters? Any cops?"
"Not really."
"Nobody on the State Medical Board?"
"No, ma'am."
"Then I don't really know why I told you any of it. Let's call it practice. Eventually I'll get someone useful to listen. No offense."
"None taken—wait." Robbie stood, drew himself up. Felt absolutely ridiculous. "Your sister was innocent. She deserved to live. She deserved to be happy. Whoever took that from her will pay."
Iris shook her head slowly at him. "I don't think I was ever that young or stupid. Why do you think I haven't done it myself? I got my own family. Alex isn't worth yours."
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It was a twenty minute drive back home, with the traffic picking up. The sun beat down and the hot car baked pleasantly.
"Why do you suddenly care about this domestic abuser?" Robbie asked, fighting sleep as he waited for a light to change.
He felt Eli form and discard several hidden thoughts. I know you fancy yourself as the rational half of this partnership, boy. But you've been dead, too. That changes you. Messes with your head. Ever since you sniffed out that severed arm, you've been obsessed. Look at yourself, playing Nancy Drew. Used to be, I had to poke you and prod you and you still let scumbags do business right under your nose until they were shooting up your actual street. Take a step back. Think about what you're doing.
"I am. I have. Someone murdered Candace Gutierrez, and Alex Northwick had the means to cover it up. That's what my—my 'psychometry' told me, okay? She was murdered and she didn't do anything to deserve it. She wasn't fighting for turf, she wasn't a satanist-slash-assassin, she was murdered. Just like I was. And I can't give her her life back, so I'm going to do what I can to get her justice. We help people, and that's the only way I can help her now."
Let me stop you there.
I told you once we were uncatchable. Okay? I lied.
Small-time vics, or vics with dangerous jobs, your drug-dealers and mercenaries and hookers, hell, even your mob bosses, your kingpins—even if they're important people, congressmen, that kind of thing—if they have enough bodies buried, then when they snuff it, there'll be a whole lineup of different suspects. And the cops generally won't try their absolute hardest. Corruption is tough to rub out, unless it rubs itself out, see?
But this doctor. This Alex Northwick MD Fancy-Ass Surgeon, he wasn't pressured into anything. He doesn't have any shady business partners to take the fall. He's just a dick. A dick who's had probably half a million dollars worth of training in saving people's lives. So what if he—
Okay, what happened to the girl was very unfortunate. But if we kill Alex Northwick. If we start killing untouchable people like this trauma surgeon, then people who CAN catch us are going to notice.
"Like who? What're they gonna do, cuff us? Put a boot on the car? Worst they can do is send another ghost rider, and Johnny knows us, I could explain—"
How about seal us up in an unbreakable mystic orb for a thousand years. Yeah. Or boot us to the kind of hell dimension I worked so hard to avoid. It's a big world out there, kid. We might hold off mundanes like the Avengers, but we'd have to run. Really run. You want that? The Sorcerer Supreme, now, or the Queen of Limbo, we won't outrun. We've got a lotta power, but there's always a bigger fish.
This doctor is exactly the kind of trash we can't take out.
Find someone else.
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Robbie went home and tried to sleep. Picked up Gabe, made dinner. Slept some more. The next morning, ran a pax to LAX for a red-eye before it was time to make Gabe's breakfast and head off to the shop for some real work. He did five lube-oil-filters, located a leak that had been pumping exhaust into a Civic's cabin air, and tried to convince a client to get her front struts replaced.
"I understand you haven't been having a problem yet, ma'am. But these struts are original to the car. Over time, with repeated stress, microfractures develop within the steel, creating a risk of failure. That would be a sudden, significant problem."
"There's always a risk! I could get cancer! I could get hit by a car walking through the parking lot! I could get fired because my car is in the shop an extra week because, oh, you need this replaced, oh, this tube went bad, oh, it's oozing the wrong kind of ooze! You're running a snow-job! A fuckin' snowjob! When it starts to go bad, I'll replace it. I can't spare that kind of time, or cash!"
"A strut doesn't fail gradually," Robbie insisted. "It cracks. Best case scenario, it throws off your alignment and causes uneven tire wear. Worst case scenario, your brains wind up splattered across the freeway median."
"Reyes!" Canelo bellowed.
Stupid sack of pork, we were just trying to do our job!
Let go! What the fuck are you doing?
Robbie fought Eli down, just as Eli ducked back under. In the abrupt handover, his vision blacked out and he swayed on his feet. "Sir, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, ma'am."
"Take a tenner," Canelo barked, guiding the furious client into the office. "See, ma'am, over time, with repeated stress, microfractures will develop within the steel of even a properly manufactured strut..."
"I worry about you," Canelo said later that evening, having ordered Robbie into the office. "You're smart. Sensible. God knows you're a hard worker. But lately...are you getting help? Like, psychological help?"
"It's not on my insurance," Robbie said with a grimace.
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At Eli's insistence, Robbie dropped Candace Gutierrez for a week. He didn't look at her medical records. He didn't read her MySpace. He didn't look up Dr. Northwick's professional biography.
Tuesday morning at seven, he picked up two male pax from a modest adobe-style house in Montebello, under the account for "Simon," 4.6 stars. Most of Robbie's early morning pax wore some kind of workday uniform. Suits, khakis, that sort of thing. Simon wore an embroidered satin bomber jacket and distressed jeans, and his friend Junior was in head to toe Lakers gear. Junior carried a comically small backpack by Bathing Ape. They both chose to sit in the back seat. Simon's text alert went off every couple minutes.
I'm not an idiot, he told Eli, before Eli could get started. Trash. Rubbish. Blah, blah, blah. They're paying customers.
No one would look for the bodies.
I know.
Tonight!
Maybe.
Fuck's that supposed to mean?
It means maybe I don't want to send them to the ICU. Or maybe I do. I don't know yet.
"Got a long ride planned, guey," Simon announced as they rumbled through a manicured hilltop development. "You up for a few more stops?"
"Sure."
They pulled in to a long, looping driveway at a sparkling white Mission-style three-story home with a wet green lawn and a geometrically-manicured hedge. Junior crawled out over the passenger seat and knocked on the cut glass door. A few minutes later, the door cracked open. Junior and the occupant talked for a moment, exchanged small items. When Junior returned, zipping up his backpack, Robbie was out of the car with the passenger seat folded down.
"Don't step on the leather."
Junior swung himself back into the back seat. "Okay, man. Just thought you'd want to stay inside."
Robbie grunted. Snapped the seat into place, got back in. "Where next?"
Next was a nearly identical house five doors down. After that, they got on I-5 and headed South to an apartment complex in Santa Fe Springs. Junior and Simon both got out for this one, looking over their shoulders as they buzzed in, and they stayed in the apartment for twenty minutes while Robbie tried to memorize the names of all the countries in Asia and Africa.
Nobody knew this stuff. It probably would've been easier to just stay in school.
After the Springs, they went North toward Whittier on the 605, stopped at some more middle-class neighborhoods, Hondas and Chryslers parked here and there instead of Mercedes and Audis in double garages. Then they got back on the highway and headed North again. Simon's text alerts slowed, and they'd both started to relax into Robbie's seats, feet on the floor. The day started to warm up.
"Water?" Robbie offered.
"Thanks, man," Junior said. They each accepted a tiny bottle of spring water and Robbie cracked both windows. Junior unzipped the backpack and shuffled through it, ruffling paper and plastic.
"How's Lupe?" Simon asked.
Junior looked up, surprised. "Good. Real good."
"And Max. He doing well? Liking Preschool?"
"Yeah. I mean, he cried at first, but he's settling in. Making friends. Started to draw on paper instead of on the wall, that was a relief."
"Oh, shit! You gonna get your deposit back?"
"Sure. 'S just paint. Landlord White, you know. Looks better now than before Max got to it. He's really settling down, you know, emotionally. Now Lupe can be with him in the evenings. He's got to this point—it's weird. It's like, wow, suddenly this is a tiny person, you know?"
"I know . This one time Katie taps me on the shoulder, 'Tienes que desayunar conmigo, todos veces. ' Todos veces, in this squeaky nin͂ita voice. The authority! It's like Maria gave birth to my mother!"
"Yeah," Junior sighed, zipping up the backpack. "Lupe's got an accounting test on Friday."
"She'll whip it."
"Hell, yeah, she will."
"She gets her license, what then?"
"I dunno. Stock shelves at WinCo, I guess. Not much else I can do that's legit."
"You're giving up a lotta opportunity, guey. You got a good head for this."
"Yeah, I do." Junior gave Simon a hard look.
"Sorry," Simon said. "You're a good partner. Just callin' it like it is."
Heads up. Robbie checked the rear-view mirror, spotted a patrol car catching up in the fast lane. Lights weren't on. The Charger was holding to the speed limit, much to the annoyance of the cars behind it. His heart started pounding out of control. His gloves grew damp around his palms. He heard helicopters.
There were no helicopters. It hadn't even been cops who'd killed him, he'd just assumed they were until they actually caught him. This car wasn't even interested in him, he hadn't broken a single traffic law today.
His mouth was suddenly bone-dry.
His pax stared, rigid, out the tinted windows as the cruiser lingered just off the corner of their back bumper. Then it swerved into their lane, switched on the light bar, and blasted the siren.
Robbie made a strangled noise. No. He wasn't getting arrested. He wasn't going to jail. Gabe wasn't going back to foster care. No.
Why don't I take the wheel for a stretch.
Robbie signaled and began working his way to the right lane. "Okay," he said hoarsely. "It's gonna be okay. I got a clear title. No priors. Gimme the bag."
"What?" Junior choked, just as hoarse.
"The bag, gimme the bag. There's...secret panels. Pass it under the seat. You got anything else?"
Junior tucked a knife into the bag, Simon a handgun.
"Okay. Give it here." Junior kicked the bag under the front seat. The cop was right behind them, getting impatient. Robbie sparked up a little, watching the road. He pushed his left hand into the door, dissolved it into the car. Reached up through the floorboards under the seat, felt around, found the bag. Now where to put it. The cops would paw through the car head to toe and he wouldn't get another chance to spark up and move it, not unless he wanted Ghost Rider to be a cop killer. He pulled the bag down into the floorboards, slowed, and came to a stop on the shoulder, eyes still burning, arm still stuck halfway through the door. The tires were just wide enough. Robbie felt for the airspace within the left front tire and wiggled the bag around until it fit completely inside while solid. Let go, pulled out his arm, shook out his hand. Chugged a water.
"I'm sweating," Junior said. "I'm sweating. I'm shaking. I feel like I'm gonna die in here."
Robbie killed the engine and rolled the driver's side window down, both hands on the wheel. "I'm just the driver. I don't know you. I'm just the driver."
The cops were taking their sweet time getting out of the car. The one in the passenger seat was on the phone. The lights still flashed, sending ripples of panic down Robbie's back. Finally the driver, a stocky middle-aged white man, got out and approached.
Lemme take this. I do a mean Minnesota accent. Always throws 'em off.
Robbie clung stubbornly to his body and to the steering wheel.
"License and registration, son," said the cop.
Slowly, Robbie pulled out his wallet. Handed the whole damn thing over. Opened the glove box, took out Gabe's Iron Man and Batman figures. Got the title.
The cop opened his wallet and slipped out his driver's license. "Roberto Reyes?"
Robbie nodded.
"Face me, son."
He complied. Stared at the cop's clip-on tie.
"Says here, eyes, green."
Ever since Eli had moved in, Robbie's right eye was a weird rusty color. "Medical condition," he rasped.
"Best you get that changed next time you update your license," the cop said. "Proof of insurance, too."
Robbie shuffled through the papers in the glove box with shaking hands while the cop did his best to blind him with a flashlight. He found the most recent insurance card.
"Stay in the vehicle," the cop said, and he sauntered back to the squad car with Robbie's paperwork.
Robbie let out a long breath, his heart pounding and skipping. He fainted.
Eli caught him, filled him out like a hand in a glove before he collapsed. "You boys sit tight back there, " he told Robbie's pax. " We'll be off in a minute unless you blow it."
Junior nodded quickly. Simon leaned back in his seat, staring up at the ceiling and breathing through his nose. "It's hot as hell in here, guey," he muttered.
"Hell's hotter. Quitcher bitchin."
The cop returned five agonized minutes later. "This here's a salvage title," he said, not handing Robbie's wallet or documents back.
"So it is."
"Any idea what the history is on this vehicle?"
"I may."
"What have you heard?" the cop asked, looming over the driver's window.
Eli grinned up at him. "Some fuckwit fries the clutch and wraps her around a light pole 'cause he can't handle more'n two hundred horses. Dumps her at Canelo's Auto and Body to fix his mess. Whaddya know, he never pays. The shop takes possession of the car, gives it to the mechanic who did all the work: me."
"Do you know if this vehicle has ever been used in the commission of a crime?"
Eli's grin split Robbie's face before he stifled it. "Well. I always figured it's best not to ask."
"Please step outside the vehicle and open the trunk."
Junior stifled a whimper. Simon prayed under his breath.
Eli stared up at him. There were laws about this. Legally, he could refuse to consent to a search and it was on the tip of his tongue when he caught sight of Robbie's skinny face in the mirror: very young, very pierced, and a couple shades more tan than Eli ever used to get. "Can do, officer."
He got out. Let the pax out. Waited for Cop Number Two to get out of the patrol car and stare at them all with one hand on his gun. Planted his hands on the hot car to be frisked. Watched the pax get frisked. Watched smugly as the cop shined the flashlight through the trunk, shuffled the Rider's chains around, peeled up the upholstery where it wasn't glued down.
The kid stirred.What's happening?
Shh.
After leaning in and feeling and sniffing every inch of the cabin he could reach, cop number one took each of the pax's wallets and carried them back to the squad car while Eli leaned comfortably against the Charger and the pax hovered their hands above the hot metal, trying not to move.
Cop One returned again, an interested light in his beady eyes. "You gentlemen know each-other?"
"No, sir. I'm just the Uber driver."
"Oh, really. Where you headed today?"
"Library," Eli said.
"Nine o'clock on a Tuesday and you boys are going to the library."
"Job applications," Junior added.
"That so?"
"Yessir," Simon said.
The cop looked at Eli, and Eli shrugged.
"I thought you had to be twenty-one to drive for Uber," the cop said, and Eli rolled his eyes, shifted his feet. Bent his knees.
No. No! Just go with it. Nobody remembers all this stuff. Just lie! Lie! You're good at this! Come on! You don't want the Avengers after us for killing a cop, remember? Dammit Eli!
For fuck's sake shut up. Fine.
"They changed the rules," Eli said.
"Huh," said the cop, looking over the gleaming vintage Charger with its massive, spotless chrome blower. "Well, if it gives kids like you a legitimate source of income, I guess that's good. You stay safe out there. Don't pick people up after dark in shady areas, you never know who'll you get."
"No, sir. Never know who might be standing right in front of you."
Don't tease him! You showboating sonovabitch!
The cop handed them all their documents back. They waited for the patrol car to drive off before getting back in. Junior stumbled into the weeds by the roadside, bent over, and puked.
"Heh-heh. Little nervous?"
"Man, what's with you?" Junior demanded, spitting.
"Oh, there's nothing like a little danger to get my blood going. You boys ready to go?"
"Guess so. Can I have another water?"
"Fresh out."
Eli put the car in gear. As they started to move, Junior's bag thumped and rolled inside the front tire, unbalancing the wheel and setting his teeth on edge. Robbie started pushing at Eli in earnest, like a small child kicking the back of his seat on an economy flight. Whatcha think they're selling, kid? he asked, humming to himself. Coke? Speed? Horse? Something upscale. I hope it's coke. That's what you need in your life, kid, a bump of coke! Everyone in Hollywood does it, it's that, whatcha call it, peer pressure.
I've sold coke a couple times. Not hard to make a profit when it's free. And that bag felt like it was mostly full of cash, anyway. Pawn the gun. Not a fan of Glocks, myself, but I like a good Sig Sauer. We've got similar sized hands, I should just get all my favorite models.
Robbie suddenly went very still. Eli braced himself, gripping the wheel hard and sitting deep into his seat. When it came, Robbie's tackle hit like a truck, like a hurricane wind, like a rogue wave. Eli rode it out, vision flaring and blurring. Careful, boy. Pax in the car, wouldn't want to crash.
The pressure faded as suddenly as it had risen. Robbie's silence was a little eerie. Eli waited, glancing down at the boy's phone. They were still on a course to the dealers' next stop, a house on a cul-de-sac in Arcadia. If Robbie were feeling cooperative, it would be so simple to blaze up, open a portal, and run down some Dangerous Game in the hills. But with one of them fighting the transformation, going Ghost Rider was entirely impossible.
He'd have to drive them to the national forest physically.
Eli could...probably overpower these guys. Robbie was in decent shape, and Eli had ghost strength. He wouldn't get another chance at a kill for a while; the kid was wise to him, keeping up better on his sleep, and getting sneakier at kicking him out, with practice. Even now, he was recovering from his panic attack. Eli wasn't sure he'd make it to the mountains. No way he'd have time to play with them when he got there. He changed lanes and gunned the motor.
The engine fucking died in the middle of the freeway. It gave a horrific clunk and froze. Eli stomped on the clutch and glided forward while a minivan rear-ended him, whiplashing everyone in the cabin. The bent steel hurt like having his fingernails peeled off. Eli frantically twisted the key in the ignition, but it wouldn't start, the fucking kid wouldn't let it start, and then Robbie lashed out from within the car while he was distracted, senses shuttering like a bag over his head, and it was over.
Fuck you, Robbie sneered. Started the ignition, downshifted, roared away, leaving a pile-up behind him.
"Everyone okay?" he asked.
"Yeah. Yeah. What was that?"
"Engine trouble. I'll take a look as soon as I get home. You guys want to get another driver?"
"No, no," Simon said, cradling his neck. "Junior, you good?"
"Man, I just want this day to be over."
"Alright, we got two more stops and then we'll sack out."
They arrived at the cul-de-sac house in Arcadia.
"Hang on, I'll get your bag for you," Robbie said, sparking up and leaning under the steering wheel so the pax couldn't see what he was doing. Fucking Eli cooperated with him, because he didn't like the feel of the bag thumping around inside the front tire any more than Robbie did. He shoved his arm into the car and pulled the bag out. Junior opened it up and inventoried it again.
"Man, you're a life-saver," he said. "That was above and beyond. I love Uber."
"Don't mention it."
They finished the deliveries without Eli murdering Robbie's pax. A banner day. Robbie dropped them off at the same modest adobe house they'd started from. "I don't know how to thank you, guey," Simon said, shaking his hand. He gestured at Robbie's crumpled rear bumper. "And what happened to your car. I mean. I feel awful. Such a classic, and they're rare, right? Hollywood crashed most of 'em shooting action movies?"
"I can fix it," Robbie said wearily.
"Junior, gimme the bag," Simon said. He pulled out an envelope full of money and handed Robbie a wad of twenties. Five of them.
"Thank-you sir. Have a wonderful day."
"I'll do my best." As they turned to leave, Robbie lifted his head and squared his feet. "Hey, wait."
Simon turned around, looked him up and down with a closed-off expression. Junior paused and looked over his shoulder.
"I don't know what you do," Robbie said, "and it's not my business. But don't do it in Hillrock Heights."
"I appreciate the save, man, but after that tip I just gave you, you don't get to go around making demands," Simon told him. "Go home."
Robbie shrugged, rested his hand on the roof. "Ever hear of La Leyenda?"
Junior swallowed, nudged Simon in the elbow.
"I'm just telling you," Robbie continued. "He's real. He's particular about that neighborhood. Be a shame if you wound up in traction."
"Yeah, whatever," said Simon, with a curious look at Junior. They disappeared into the house. Robbie stared down at the car's aching bumper for a long time.
Come on. Ghost up so we can fix it. This shit hurts.
I know.
Robbie drove home, his right rear fender stabbing into his tire at every bump.
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Robbie kept the Rider stuffed down for eight days.
He took the bus to and from Canelo's, claimed he was cleaning out the carburetor, then that he was waiting on a rare part. Couldn't let the guys at the shop see the damage; they already thought he was losing it.
He pounded the errant edge of the right rear fender with a hammer so it stopped cutting his tire. Then, hands shaking, he left it like that. Picked up pax like that. Ate, worked, read comics with Gabe, slept like that, with the rear bumper and the quarter panels and the frame all bent and off-kilter.
What're you doing, kid, Eli hounded him. You proving a point? This is hurting you as much as it hurts me. Maybe more.
The silent treatment, okay. Fine.
Come on. You gotta light up sooner or later.
He developed phantom pains all over his body. Or real pains, some of them—he limped, and because of the limp, his opposite hip ached, and because of his hip, his back seized up, and because of his back, he got migraines. He tossed and turned at night, feeling the creak and whine of tension in the tortured metal. His right foot went numb whenever he sat down.
Pop an aspirin, Jesus.
Food sat in his stomach. He ate unseasoned pasta and little bites of rotisserie chicken.
You, me, and this car, we're one and the same, Eli had told him multiple times. He wondered, as he waited for a pax to stagger out of a sports bar, if the car was the only real body he had left. He rubbed his fingers where engine grease had gunked itself deep into his calluses. Eli had never shown any real talent for healing. His body just...burned away and reconstructed itself, mint condition. His hair still grew. He'd tattooed himself one day, just a sewing needle and a dot of ink from a Bic pen, a tiny X inside one elbow to see if he could. It stuck around. But maybe his hair just grew because he expected it to. Maybe he was just a mass of ghost goo wrapped around dry, charred bones, playing at life.
His phone chimed. Not Uber. Facebook. One of Alex Northwick's friends had accepted his friend request. Robbie set his phone down. He'd briefly forgotten Candace in his fight with Eli. He sent some other requests to the friends of Alex he hadn't yet covered.
You've made your point, Eli said after a night of poor sleep for both of them.
Remind me what that was. I have a headache and it's hard to concentrate.
Smartass little shit. Okay. No killing people you don't approve of.
Because?
Because you are a fucking masochist and I am not.
I'm so glad we understand each-other.
Now can you please put on Cop Radio and find us someone to beat on.
Just as soon as we finish this fare.
"Sonrisa," 4.4, and her two girl friends stumbled out of the bar. "You my Uber? I'm Sunny."
"Eliot."
"Omigod, what happened to your car?"
"Long story."
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Cop Radio didn't give them anyone to beat on, but Ghost Rider never needed an excuse to go blasting through quiet suburbs at three in the morning, shooting flames a hundred feet in all directions and going 120 in a 25 mile per hour zone. Except for the post-Ghost hangover, all Robbie's physical symptoms disappeared overnight.
Two days later, while taking his tenner at Canelo's, Robbie checked his phone and saw that two more of his friend requests had been accepted. Armed with three points of contact, he finally sent a request to Alex Northwick. When he left, he checked his phone one last time and saw to his surprise that Alex had friended him only a few hours later. He rushed home so he could research Alex on his laptop instead of using up precious data.
Hello, Alex Northwick, MD, FACS. Half a million bucks of medical and surgical training packed into his head. Kid, the only fees that high go for world leaders. That shows you how stupid killing him would be.
Lemme concentrate.
Alex Northwick's profile pic showed himself, shirtless, with a mountain peak in the background. He had a runner's rangy build, a full head of wavy reddish-brown hair, a wide mouth, and deep crows-feet at the corners of his eyes. His banner showed a male Bighorn sheep silhouetted against a cloudy sky. Like Candace's banner, an amateur shot. Alex was forty-one years old to Candace's twenty-six. Graduated from Dartmouth College in 1999, then UC Irvine School of Medicine in 2003. That left a long gap until he started his surgical fellowship at East Los Angeles Medical Center in 2009. His profile didn't help fill it. As Robbie scrolled down through reblogs, musings, and photos, looking for March 11, he noticed that Alex had a pretty active vacation schedule for a guy whose fiance had just died. Maybe he was trying to distract himself from his grief.
His scrolling landed on Alex seated next to a dead brown bear in the middle of the woods. Alex was almost unrecognizable in camo paint. Propped up against the bear was a compound bow and a quiver of arrows.
Guy's got some brass balls.
-Anchorage. Smooth flight. Classy waitstaff. Great to be back in rough country! Peace—A.
The photo was from August. There were a smattering of likes, and a couple comments about the size of the bear.
Further down, more photos. Views taken from the flight, looking down on high mountains. A shot of a woman's calf in low heels and black nylons against industrial carpet—a flight attendant.
-I call this one Stacy. All grown up—don't need the mom—A.
Back and back. A shot of a cloud Alex thought looked like Serena Williams. A dead, bristly wild hog hanging out of the back of an Escalade next to a grinning, short-haired dog in body armor. Two more dead, bristly wild hogs, Alex between them, giving them a hug like passed-out drinking buddies, and a different armored dog. A bathroom selfie of Alex unironically posing shirtless in bicycle shorts, showing off a tattooed arm-cuff of animal claws. A dead raccoon in the back of the Escalade. An extreme close-up on a pair of jade cufflinks. A dead spider, lovingly spread out on a paper towel in Alex's palm. Weird, opaque memes about going to the gym, and memes whose pictures were derived from porn. A dozen iterations of "It's so fucking big."
And then:
-Alex Northwick and Candace Gutierrez are no longer in a relationship. March 15, 2016, 8:17 PM.
That was all. An automated message and a broken heart icon. The date was three days after Candace's body was logged at the hospital, and a couple days before Mrs. Gutierrez remembered being called about Candace's effects.
Hear-say. It's just Iris's word what her mother said she was told.
Now they were back in time to when Candace was alive.
Another dead pig in the back of the Escalade. Dated February 25.
Where was Candace?
There. There. Posed on a balcony overlooking the city, Candace smiling up at the camera in a beaded, low-cut yellow gown, one leg peeking through a Jessica Rabbit thigh-high slit. Elbow-length white satin gloves. Bust up, one arm on one cocked hip, the other trailing gracefully over the railing.
Nice shot.
I don't want to hear it.
No. Listen. Nobody looks that good in a photo by accident. This has got to be one of twenty different shots of this girl. I bet all the other photos are the same.
The other photos of Candace were not all the same, but there were plenty of serene, gorgeous, full-body shots of her in different expensive outfits. The other shots of Candace were odd. Close-ups. Just her ringlets, in one, against the blue sky. Her shoulder. Her cheek. Her toes. Parts.
-Nobody touches my cinnamon girl but me—A.
More dead pigs. A dead Bighorn sheep. An elk, killed with a bow and arrow.
There were also shots of other girls. Nameless legs, arms, hair.
-Saw a good one in the Dallas terminal. Think she's part native—A.
Weird rants about gender politics.
-Don't know why young men spend so much time and energy in an attempt to become Alpha. You walk the walk, Alpha will find you—A.
Posts about work.
-Awesome night. Got to sew some bimbo's entire face back on. Fingers crossed that it sticks! Use your seatbelts, kids—A.
Posts about sex.
-When the one so tight—but the other so much tighter! *thumbs-up*—A.
Back and back and back. The same Christmas pictures that Candace had, Alex with his arm around her in front of perfect, professionally decorated trees. Those were the only pictures of Alex and Candace together. All the others were selfies, pictures of Alex with hunting trophies, and meticulously posed or secretive shots of Candace, in whole or in part.
So he's got a predatory personality. He hunts. Some people paint.
You're right. There's nothing here that proves he killed her.
Oh, so you want proof. Mister "what's in the cooler" needs proof. If proof was all you need—we could be taking contracts right now. We could be raking in money and killing scumbags every month. But you want to make this personal. You're just trying to work up a good head of steam so you can finally bust your nut.
That's not what I'm doing.
Well, explain it to me in small words, 'cause that's how it looks from my end.
Outside, there was the squeal of pneumatic brakes, the rattle of a folding door. The bus. Robbie minimized his browser and stalked outside to get Gabe.
By the time he was halfway down the driveway, Gabe was picking his way down the steps on his forearm crutches. The rubber caps on the ends were starting to wear through; Robbie made a mental note to order new ones. "Robbie-Robbie!" Gabe shouted, struggling against the weight of his backpack. Robbie wished, again, that he would take his damn power chair. He hated seeing his happy little brother so shaky when he came home. "In school, I made a book! So did everybody. I made my own comic book! For you. I love you!"
"Wow, that's great, buddy," Robbie said. "Let's get you inside so you can sit down."
"I used the stapler," Gabe said proudly.
"Awesome."
They crossed the threshold and Robbie helped Gabe disentangle himself from his crutches and backpack. Gabe unzipped it immediately and pulled out a sheaf of butcher paper. "I made this for you, Robbie," he said, pressing it into Robbie's chest.
"Thanks, Gabe," he said distractedly. What if Eli was right. What if he was investigating Candace's love life so as to get some sick enjoyment out of finally letting Eli kill someone. In that case, it wasn't about Candace at all, it was about assuaging Robbie's guilty conscience, fooling himself he was a decent person.
He hadn't even found real proof that Alex was a domestic abuser. Was he really going to make Eli kill some surgeon on nothing but a bad feeling and hear-say? Did it even matter anymore? Candace was already dead. According to Iris's story, Alex had taken years to kill Candace, and according to Facebook, Alex didn't have another victim in mind. It might be best for everyone that Alex just...live his life.
If I can prove he covered up her death, that'll be enough. Robbie set Gabe's book down on the table, sat back at his laptop, and opened the folder where he'd kept the forms and records he'd stolen from the hospital.
"Robbie, time to make mac'n'cheese?"
"In a minute." He looked at the Coroner's report. Dead. 3-12-16, vehicular trauma to the head. Everything was there, everything was signed. The medical jargon looked legit.
"Robbie, time to make tamales?"
"We don't have any tamales. My friend from work made them just once."
"Robbie?"
He looked up. Gabe was staring at him, eyes wide, from the chair. He felt dirty. "Why don't you go play with Ninja Wolf for a bit, okay, buddy?"
Gabe nodded and whirred away toward his bedroom, eyes low.
Coroner's report, medical examiner's report, intake report, DOA. Death certificate. Identification of the body. Release of the body for the advancement of medical science. Man, there was a lot of paperwork when someone died. It was all there.
This is all the same handwriting.
Robbie looked closer. Eli was right.
Oh, there were efforts made to disguise the writing. Block print at the top of each page that petered out into the same crabbed, idiosyncratic hash halfway down. Some signatures in choppy style, some in loopy style. None of these signatures was even practiced. You can see where the pen stops and starts. They're not even close to smooth.
He didn't have any help. He just...found the forms and filled them out.
Fudged the witnesses' signatures.
Robbie ran his finger over the screen, the signature for "Ishtar Gutierrez." He couldn't even get his future mother-in-law's name right. Fudged everybody's signatures. He heard Gabe clumping around again on his crutches. Hoped he was keeping busy.
I guess he could have had help. Maybe.
Robbie bit the last bullet he'd been saving and pulled up Candace's medical records. They were sparse, for as many bruises as she'd had, but there in 2014 was a series of entries about a cast, all stemming from a visit for a broken arm. Fell down the stairs, the intake notes read. Injured approximately 20 hours before presentation.
Alex Northwick had been the consulting surgeon. He'd planned the treatment and pain medications, seen the X-rays.
Robbie paged earlier and earlier. Down to 2011 when she'd suffered broken ribs and collarbone in a T-bone collision, and Alex Northwick was listed as the attending critical care physician. And then he stopped.
An exterior door opened and shut.
He knew.
?
He treated her for the arm that he broke. He knew how far he was going.
Well. He did graduate from medical school. He's got to have some concept of cause and effect.
He went back to the release of the body for the advancement of medical science, where someone had signed Esther as Ishtar. Scrolled through long pages of boilerplate. He found a second page with handwritten notes. Checkboxes. Antebrachium+hand was checked, R and L. Elbow was not. Crus+foot R and L were checked, not the knees. Torso was checked, also hip, R and L, and shoulder, R and L. Head was not. There was a note on the box for the head that read discard due to damage. It was the very same jagged writing that filled the rest of the forms.
Robbie closed the PDFs and medical records and returned to Alex's Facebook wall. Deeper down the rabbit hole, more bloody trophies, more bits of women, more posed pictures of Candace like he wanted to preserve her in lucite. More shirtless selfies.
Wait. What was that door?
"Gabe?" Robbie snapped the laptop shut.
No answer.
He rose. Tripped over the power cord. Checked Gabe's room: empty. The power chair unoccupied, the crutches and the backpack missing.
Robbie called Gabe's Jitterbug and heard it ring from under the pillow.
The fire came, distorting his vision and bubbling under his skin. "Eli! "
Wow, Eli drawled. I had absolutely nothing to do with this.
Robbie burned up, panic and haste numbing him to the pain, and in an instant he was a black burning monster of steel and bone, some freakish car-ghost hybrid whirling frantically in his brother's room. He dove through the shadow cast by Gabe's door and into the car, roared into motion, circled the darkening streets, up and down alleys, weaving through red lights, phasing through any cars that didn't get out of his way.
I don't see him. Can you sense him somehow?
Not how that works. How the fuck does Tiny Tim move so fast?
They passed a bus. Eli hit the brakes, throwing up splashes of sparks and burning rubber. When they pulled up alongside, Robbie jumped the Rider out through the roof and landed on the bus, gripping on with two ball-pein hammers jammed through the steel like climbing picks. He scanned the terrified passengers. No Gabe. Dropped flat on his back through the hood of the car. They left the bus behind, widening their circle.
Where did he go. Why did he—
I hate to say this, but we forgot to call the cops.
Right.
They screeched into a service alley full of trash cans and piles of wooden pallets. Robbie rolled out of the car and ripped at his faceplates, closed his vents, tried to snuff himself out. Let out a frustrated, rumbling roar.
Chill. Chill. Deep breaths.
I don't have any fucking lungs!
Fake it 'till you make it.
Robbie coughed out rivers of flame as he kept trying to rip his own face off, working leather-skinned fingers under the steel, vision filling with fire and steam and the crumbling pavement of the alley, because he didn't have any fucking eyelids right now either. He screamed again. Forced his ribs to suck down air, held it, fire still streaming out through his vents and his sockets and the gap behind his clenched teeth.
Breathed again. Again.
At last his body poured back over him, dousing him down, hissing and bubbling against his bones. Flesh filled his gloves. His faceplates shrank down under new skin, leaving nothing but scars. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His real heart raced, his real lungs heaved. He was still inside Ghost Rider's skin, the black racing jumpsuit. His phone was in his real pants. Not the leathers.
Here we go again. One more time. Eli stoked up the fires in the base of his skull, and Robbie boiled away his body again. Punched a crater in the pavement. Concentrate. You need to turn all the way back. You want the phone.
It was less difficult the second time. Robbie's body was weaker, though, and he dropped to his knees and face-planted into his tantrum crater. He rolled onto his back and dug his phone out of his pants.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"My brother is missing. His name is Gabriel Reyes, he's fourteen years old, five-foot-five, ninety-seven pounds, brown hair, green eyes. He uses crutches. He has a developmental disability but he will talk to you. He knows his address, he knows my phone number, he's really trusting and he needs help."
"How long has he been missing?"
Eli?
A nudge. "Ten minutes."
"Have you thoroughly checked your home?"
Yes you half-witted bitch!
"I heard the door open and shut."
"Where was he last seen?"
Robbie gave his address.
"I'll advise our police patrols to keep an eye out for him, but...many of them are occupied responding to a potential supervillain sighting in your area."
"Supervillain? What fucking supervillain?"
"I can't comment on that. I recommend you stay safe indoors and search your home for anywhere you might not have looked. It's very common for children to play hide and seek."
"What—who? What supervillain? "
"I have all your information and I'll notify the police to keep an eye out for your brother, okay, hun?"
She hung up.
Robbie stuffed his phone back in his pocket when he noticed the case starting to melt.
We're the supervillain.
Robbie opened the driver's door and sat down. Drank one of his water bottles.
...We should check the new high-rise across the street from the pharmacy.
Why?
We just should.
Robbie put the car in gear and hummed off, holding the fires down. Wouldn't want to distract the cops.
Gabe had run off only once before, that spring, and that time it was Eli's doing. It was worse this time. Last time, Lisa had been with him and Robbie had had to hold it together for her. Not that he'd done a fantastic job, especially after she'd started to cry. This time it was just him and Eli, who couldn't be trusted not to run over a puppy, and bad memories, and an entire year of chaos and money trouble and gang warfare and being possessed by his evil ghost.
They pulled up to the curb at the office building Eli indicated, left the car idling half-way onto the sidewalk.
Elevator up.
They rode all the way to the fifteenth floor, got out into a hallway. No Gabe, just a woman in a skirt-suit and another woman in khakis. Door after door, and Robbie circled the top of the building. A small legal agency. A physical therapist. A graphic design studio. Everything clean and new, smelling faintly of fresh glue and paint. No Gabe.
Guess they finished putting in all the windowpanes. Check the roof.
What the fuck? Robbie bolted to a door that read Roof Access. Locked.
Oh, good.
"Why'd we come here, Eli?" Robbie demanded to thin air in the middle of a crowded elevator going down.
I showed Dumbo a good time here once, Eli replied.
Robbie went still and the other occupants of the elevator backed away from a blast of invisible heat. "Did you make him jump off the roof. "
He had fun. He was fine. He was Ninja Wolf. Remember?
Robbie remembered what happened when you took Eli's evil ghost powers and Gabe's imagination and stuck them in a blender. It was horrifying. But it absolutely could have survived jumping off the roof.
It was months ago. I'm bonded to you now, we're exclusive. Let it go.
Robbie's phone rang. He dug it out. It was Mrs. Valenzuela.
"Hello? " he barked.
"Roberto, I just let the dog out and I found Gabriel hiding under my juniper bushes—"
The call cut off as the phone's battery exploded into flames.
Robbie let out a wheezing breath and leaned his head against the door of the elevator, pointing the phone down and away from himself at the carpet while it shot white-hot sparks of lithium like a five-dollar Fourth of July fountain. He shook with silent sobs of relief. Everyone else in the elevator had crowded against the opposite wall.
Watch it, this bitch is gonna try the emergency stop.
Robbie turned just as a young woman swung her hand toward the button.
"No, " he snarled, catching her by the wrist.
She gasped and jerked away, tried to stick her entire wrist in her mouth. The skin was red.
"Oh, no," Robbie said. "No, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I didn't know. I gotta go get my brother, he was missing. I gotta get out."
"What are you, some kinda mutant?" a man demanded.
"Sure," said Robbie. The phone finally ran out of fuel and he stuck it back in his pants.
The elevator arrived at the ground, and Robbie stormed out the door before anyone had time to ask the security guards to stop him. He burned rubber back to Hillrock Heights, just one block away from the Reyes' house. He pulled in to Mrs. Valenzuela's driveway at a crazy angle, then tried to fling himself out through the door without opening it and hit the window with his head.
Breathe.
Okay.
Gabe did not need him to show up batshit terrified and cooking along at three hundred degrees. Blood ran down his left eyebrow from where he'd split it on the door. He pressed on it with his palm and breathed slow and deep into his other fist. When he felt his heart slow, felt his plates stop trying to push out from under his skin, he opened the door and got out.
He knocked on the Valenzuelas' flat green door. Waited fifteen seconds. Knocked again.
Footsteps, the creak of cheap wood floorboards. The light at the peephole shadowed as someone looked through.
Robbie squeezed his hand against his eyebrow and made himself smile.
Mr. Valenzuela was tall and straight, while his wife was short and round. She drove the bus and did some of the physical therapy offered at the Patrick Welman Development Center. Robbie didn't know what Mr. Valenzuela did. He could tell Mr. Valenzuela didn't like the look of him, as he stared out, backlit, through the door. He was blocking the door from opening further with his foot.
Mrs. Valenzuela called from deeper in the house. "Is that Roberto?"
"Es un gamberro," Mr. Valenzuela growled suspiciously.
Robbie tried to fix his smile so it looked a little less hysterical.
"Jorge! Roberto is a kind, responsible young man! Let him in."
Robbie had never seen the inside of Mrs. Valenzuela's house. The air smelled good, like simmering pork and chiles instead of cigarettes or must, and the furniture was clean and neatly arranged. But not much newer or nicer than Robbie's own house. Just more layered, more thoughtful.
Mrs. Valenzuela was in the kitchen. Gabe was sitting at the table, upright, a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows in front of him. Robbie's eyes blurred with tears of relief and his throat locked up. He waved. Gabe stared back.
"Sit, sit down," Mrs. Valenzuela said. She wet a paper towel in the sink. "What happened to your head?"
Robbie shrugged and pressed the towel to the cut.
"Are you all right? As I understand it, you and Gabe were robbed?"
He stared at her blankly. She spooned cocoa mix into a new mug and poured water in out of the still-steaming kettle.
"He said there was someone else in the house and you were...I couldn't get that part."
"He was on the bottom," Gabe said, still staring at Robbie with hard eyes and making it sound like he'd walked in on Robbie being raped. "He couldn't get up and he wasn't Robbie. He was Conscience."
"What?" Robbie asked weakly. In his head, Eli was alert, silent.
"Like Gipsy Danger," Gabe continued, naming one of the Jaeger robots from Pacific Rim. "But if someone stole her."
Oh. Oh.Heh-heh. Oh, boy. Wow.
"But I was, " Robbie protested, reaching across the table. Gabe drew his hands back. "I was, I was right there—"
"Gabriel, if there was a bad man in your house, you did the right thing by getting to safety," Mrs. Valenzuela interrupted. "Roberto, have you spoken to the police yet?"
"That's not Robbie."
"I am!"
"Has he been getting his seizure medication?"
"I didn't have a seizure!" Gabe yelled. His arm hit the table and the hot chocolate sloshed. "Conscience, go away! I want Robbie!" Gabe started to cry. He'd never been a screamer-and-kicker; he'd always hated to make other people upset. So it was always horrible to watch, to see him draw into himself and fold sideways over the arm of Mrs. Valenzuela's kitchen chair, sobbing into the crooks of his elbows.
Robbie froze in his seat. He wanted to get up, but he couldn't. Eli was a weight in his head, a mountain, a grave—not holding him back, but just being there, teetering. The force and shame of him could crush Gabe if they got near. Mrs. Valenzuela gave Robbie a confused look, and stepped over to rub Gabe's thin back. "Robbie," Gabe sobbed. "I want Robbie."
Mrs. Valenzuela jerked her head at him, and Robbie got up. He knelt on the floor next to Gabe's chair.
"I'm here, Gabe," he said, hoarse, his head spinning. "I'm right here. It's me. I promise. I love you. Please let me hug you."
"Robbie?"
"Yeah."
"Robbie-Robbie?"
"It's me. I promise it's me. I love you so much, buddy."
"Robbie ." Gabe tipped himself out of the chair and caught himself around Robbie's shoulders, his arms wiry, hard from weeks of going to school on his crutches. Robbie hugged back like Gabe could be snatched from him at any moment. How long had he been carrying this, he wondered. How long had he planned this. To sneak out of the house, on his own power because his chair could be stolen, and find the nearest adult he trusted—because he couldn't trust Robbie.
Mr. Valenzuela entered the kitchen, quietly in his sneakers. He handed his wife a crocheted blanket and she wrapped it around Gabe and Robbie where they huddled on the floor.
It was only seven o'clock when they picked themselves up to go home. It felt like days since Gabe had disappeared.
"Were you or were you not robbed in your house?" Mr. Valenzuela asked as Robbie picked Gabe up piggy-back, Gabe's crutches in his hand. Gabe had his face practically stuffed down Robbie's collar. Robbie wasn't ready to give up any physical contact just yet.
"No, sir. I hit my head getting out of my car."
"Are you boys going to be okay?" Mrs. Valenzuela asked. "I really think you should sit up with him tonight. And try to think back on your day for anything that could have triggered this."
"I'll do that. Thank-you so much, Mrs. Valenzuela. I don't know what I—thank-you. For everything."
"Happy to. I'm just glad he's getting home safely."
"Not a baby," Gabe groused.
"No, you're not," Robbie agreed.
He helped Gabe into the car. Relaxed when he felt the warm weight of him in the passenger seat. Buckled him in, drove around the block and home.
When he and Eli had flamed up to go looking for him, their first circle through the neighborhood had completely overshot the Valenzuela house. No wonder they hadn't found him.
For dinner, they ate mac'n'cheese with peas and cut-up bits of hot dog.
"I made a comic in school today," Gabe said, the pasta restoring his spent physical and emotional reserves much faster than Robbie's. "A comic for Robbie. I love you, Robbie."
"Yeah. Yeah, buddy, I wanna see," Robbie said, straightening from where he'd been slumped over his half-eaten bowl. Gabe pointed across the table at the sheaf of butcher paper and Robbie picked it up gently. The front page was a mess of black crayon, not figurative, but more like Gabe wanted the cover to be black paper and couldn't find any. Inside, he expected Ninja Wolf, or "Ninja Wolf's Best Friend." But instead it was a diagram.
Black and silver crayon, with highlights of red and green here and there, and wavy yellow lines denoting airflow.
"Here's the Roots Blower, the air goes to the Supercharger, and the Supercharger makes Boost, see it's all thick here," the yellow line turned squat and fat as a banana, "and the Boost goes to the Intake Manifold—"
It was a diagram of the Charger's air compression system, just as Robbie had explained it months ago when he'd brought Gabe to work with him during the summer. And it was all there. There were gaps, things Robbie hadn't gotten around to explaining, like valves and pistons inside the engine, where Gabe had elaborated and drawn hashes and stabs of yellow fire. Gabe's layout sprawled onto the next page, which folded out like a bonus poster in a comic book—it was thorough, and nothing was crammed together.
His motor skills had improved by leaps and bounds last year; the new meds left him less groggy and eased his tremor, and on paper, when he could slow down and take his time, this kid can fucking draw.
"Gabe, this—wow. This is amazing."
"Do you like it?"
"I love it."
"I put extra pages."
Robbie flipped past the air compression system to, as he had feared at first, Ninja Wolf and his Best Friend, the black-clad steel-skulled supervillain with his head on fire. There, below them, was the Hell Charger, also on fire. After that, the pages were blank.
"Robbie can draw comics, too."
Robbie had never considered himself much of an artist, but if Gabe wanted, he would put his wooden-limbed scribbles on these pages with Gabe's exuberant character drawings—call up some excuse for hope and imagination— "I can draw how a carburetor works," he offered.
Gabe giggled in excitement. Like he'd never been afraid of him at all. "Do it, Robbie! Kya-ha! So cool!"
Robbie got a pen out of the junk drawer and sketched a box and a tube and a funnel. "So the air flows through here and as it passes this bit, it sucks a tiny bit of gasoline into this channel—hang on, I'll get a straw and show you how it works." He got a bendy straw and a glass of water and blew hard over the end of the straw until a thin spray of water crawled out and sprayed over the table. Gabe laughed again. "So now the fuel-air mixture goes into the intake manifold..."
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The next day, Canelo didn't want him. Robbie called that morning, asked if he could come in and pick up some hours, and Canelo turned him down.
"We're finally staffed up again, but I mighta overshot it," he said. "And Reyes—real talk here. This year, you've been weird and unreliable. First you want more hours. Then you want fewer. Then you try to pick fights with Ramón Cordova. I sympathize with your situation, and if we were booked full today I might have you come in. But this full-time, part-time, full-time bit does not make it easy to employ you."
There was nothing Robbie could say to counter that, except, "I don't have a problem with Ramón Cordova anymore."
Canelo breathed down the line. "That's what people say when they decide to get rid of their problem permanently."
"Jesus! No! I really don't have a problem with Ramón! He made us tamales. They were really good."
"Did you tell him thank-you?"
Robbie hadn't.
He couldn't well pick up Ubers with his phone looking like it'd been microwaved for a YouTube stunt. But as one of the perhaps three genuine strokes of good luck Robbie had ever had in his life, it was a newer model bought with racing money left over after paying off all his debts that spring, and it was still under warranty. He drove to the Android store to get it replaced. With the phone's case gone, no one could tell that the heat that triggered the explosion had come from outside, rather than within. Robbie presented the phone to the chagrined saleswoman.
"I've never heard of this happening with any of our models," she said, turning the device over delicately. She pried open the back, having to peel it a bit where the plastic had melted together. "And this was a stock battery. Did you leave this in a hot car?"
"No, ma'am."
"Good, because that wouldn't be covered. I can order a replacement that will be in next week."
"Is there anything I can get today?" Robbie asked. "I need it for work. It's okay if it's not the same model."
It took some convincing, but he managed to walk out with a refurbished smartphone. They even salvaged his sim-card.
At home, he set the phone back up the way he liked it, then left Uber off. After Gabe got home from school, they spent the evening in the garage leaning under the hood of the Charger, filling out the pages in Gabe's book.
At the end of the day, before bed-time, he called Mrs. Valenzuela.
"I need a favor," he said.
There was a pause while she covered the receiver of the phone, possibly to sigh heavily over her dinner. "Tell me what it is."
"Can I give Gabe your phone number? He already has mine, he knows to call when there's an emergency. He's had a phone since July, and he's only called me a few times. I can delete it if he bothers you."
"No, no. I'm sure he'll be just fine. I'd be more concerned about the opposite, to be frank. What's going on?"
Robbie paced around the living room. "I've been having some...problems. I didn't think Gabe noticed, but he did. He got scared and that's why he came to you. I want him to have an adult he can talk to if he doesn't feel safe."
There was another long pause. "Please give him my number, Roberto."
"Thank-you so much, Mrs. Valenzuela."
"Are you all right? Are you getting help?"
"I—"
"If you need to see someone, please come down to the Center yourself. We'd be happy to help you with paperwork, connect you with resources."
Got an old priest and a young priest? Heh-ha-hah. She's cute.
She's smarter than you ever were. "Thanks. I'll take you up on that."
How?
He hung up. Heard Gabe finish brushing his teeth.
"Hey, buddy," he said, letting Gabe lean against his waist as he left the bathroom. He was shooting up; Robbie had had to lengthen his crutches this fall.
"Hi, Robbie," Gabe said. When he reached the bed and sat down, he gave Robbie a searching look.
"It's me. It's Robbie."
Gabe shuffled sideways on the bed, picked up Aquaman from the nightstand and handed it to him. Robbie straightened the figure's legs and moved his arms back and forth, wondering what Gabe wanted to do. He didn't look like he wanted to play action figures.
"Robbie-Robbie," Gabe said, finally taking off his crutches and relaxing into the bed. Robbie got up to tuck him in.
"Gabe, I need to talk to you." Gabe met his eyes. "I was trying to keep secrets from you and I'm sorry," he said. Gabe grabbed for his hand and he held on. "I didn't want you to know because I knew you'd be scared. I made a mistake."
"What secrets?"
Your "conscience," Eli supplied.
"I have a...Conscience."
"The spirit of justice?"
What the hell did you tell him? Bastard.
You'd rather I tell him the truth? Scare the shit outta the—uh, him?
"Yeah. He...may have...lied and said that was his name. And he, uh, you know how the robots in the movie where they fight the sea monsters, they have two pilots?"
"Crimson Typhoon had three pilots."
God forbid. "Well, people are supposed to just have one. I'm supposed to be the only pilot in here," Robbie said, pointing to his temple. He clutched Gabe's hand and lowered his eyes. "But there's someone else here, too."
"I know."
Of course. "He's not very nice."
"Oh."
"He doesn't want to hurt you. He just doesn't really care. But I love you. So much. And I'm a lot stronger than he is. I want to stay in control all the time so I can take care of you and spend time with you."
"Robbie's fighting?"
"Yeah," Robbie said with a shaky nod. "I'm fighting all the time. 'Cause I love you, little bro. And if you ever get scared. If you think it's not me driving. You can call Mrs. Valenzuela. Don't run off like that again, please. Carry your phone wherever you go. Call her, and she can come get you."
"No," Gabe moaned, gripping Robbie's hand harder. "No, Robbie."
"Please, please, Gabe. I have to know you're safe."
"Don't go."
"I won't go. I won't ever go. Even if the, uh, conscience takes me away, I'll always come back. I would be really, really sad if anything bad happened to you. Please."
"I wish you were friends," Gabe said. "I wish Conscience was a real spirit of justice."
"Yeah. Me, too. Are you going to call Mrs. Valenzuela if you're scared?"
"Okay."
"Promise?"
"I promise, Robbie."
Robbie programmed Mrs. Valenzuela's number into Gabe's Jitterbug, showed him which button to push to call her. Then he kissed him goodnight and shut the light out. Hoped he hadn't just forever destroyed his little brother's sense of personal safety.
What's the bus driver gonna do against me?
It's not her you need to worry about.
I've been under a lot of personal stress, Eli. I don't have a lot of family—just Gabe and you. I also don't have many friends. Career opportunities don't look so rosy either.
If you make me unsafe for Gabe to be around, if you separate us, I could very easily kill us both.
What if I hurt his feelings?
You're misunderstanding me. If I can't take care of Gabe, I have no reason to inflict you on my community. I never wanted to "use our powers for good"or some bullshit. Everything good Ghost Rider has done was a byproduct. Pressure release.
What if I put him on a Greyhound to Chicago?
Then I take a crowbar and smash the shit out of the car, and I go get him.
You need me. Gabe is part of the package. Non-negotiable. You do not hurt him, you do not allow him to be hurt. You do not terrorize him, or neglect him. If Gabe is ever better off without me, then I will take us both to Hell.
Jesus. Okay, you little psycho. I'll be nice to the runt.
Fantastic.
Just as he was dropping off to sleep, Robbie remembered to call 911 to let them know Gabe had been found safe last night.
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As he carried pax and fixed cars later that week, Robbie pondered Alex Northwick. As far as he could tell, Alex had covered his murder, not by hiding the evidence of his crime, but by shuffling Candace in among the other, more expected deaths and then relying on over-worked administrative staff to ignore any anomalies, just like Robbie and Eli had slipped the Hell Charger past Uber's inspection.
I wonder, Eli mused, as Robbie lay on a wheeled creeper under a Pontiac that was leaking brake fluid from somewhere. Something dripped on his forehead, and Robbie wiped it with a shop towel. The morgue has to have security cameras.
You think he let himself get caught on camera?
He hunts bears with a bow and arrow. I think it's worth a look.
They had to go back to the hospital. After finishing their shift, picking up Gabe, making dinner and seeing him safe in bed, Eli made Robbie dig out the sewing kit and tear a paper towel into little squares.
Time for teleportation 101, kid. You gotta be sure of your target. Now with a big portal, with the car, there's some slop factor. Car'll blow anything it manifests inside to smithereens. But with a humanoid body, especially if you're trying for stealth, you need finer control. Two ways to do that: line of sight, and blood.
Blood?
Blood. You notice how easy it is to go straight to the car from wherever you might be—that's 'cause I bled over every single piece of her. Same with this house, and that garage: you probably had a few nosebleeds and injuries once upon a time. So. How I intendedthis ability to be used. Prick your finger, bleed on these bits of towel, and then you plant them where you want to go.
What, plant our DNA right at the crime scene? Are you stupid?
Eli paused. Robbie felt a tension in his sinuses. What? What?This—FUCK this future bullshit.It never fucking ends.Explain this to me, kid. Just. What. What now. Can they read our minds? Smell gunpowder on our hands a week after? Is there a Pre-Crimes squad now? There is. Isn't there. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Okay, we plant the blood where we want to go, and then we pick it back up before we leave. Okay. This is fine.
They still had to go back to the hospital.
Working together, Robbie and Eli managed to con their way past the front desk. They struck up anxiety-small-talk with an uninjured middle-aged woman cradling a potted Amarylis, and got her last name and the name of her daughter, who'd been in a car accident. After security let the woman up into the hospital, they used the bathroom, bought a cheap bouquet and a balloon at the hospital gift shop, and returned to wait on the other side of the expansive lobby. At the desk, they claimed to be the girl's brother. "Dad was...having some issues when he met my mom. But my sister and me, we're close anyway."
They waited, tapping Robbie's foot and paging through a battered Car and Driver , until reception waved them in.
That was the easy part. Neither of them had any clue where the security hub might be. They wandered up and down the halls, stopping whenever a nurse thought they were getting in the way.
"Where are you trying to go?"
"Oncology ward?"
The next floor.
"Surgical ward?"
The next.
"Cardia—Cardiology?"
Getting desperate. They popped the balloon and stuffed it in a pocket.
"Administration?"
Top floor. Around and around and around. Now they really looked lost, wandering around the admin level in Converse and a battered leather jacket, carrying a bouquet. It's your mom's birthday, Eli extemporized. You never knew her. She abandoned you because you were an accident. Now, you've tracked her down. You have a deep, deep void in your heart that you believe only her love can fill, but you're terrified she has none to give! Hence the flowers. Tension is high. Will she take you into her arms? Or will she take one look at your weaselly face and the giant holes in your earlobes—Ah-hah!
They stopped in front of a door labeled Security.
Pick a name. Any name.
Robbie knocked on the door. Waited. Knocked again. A confused-looking woman in a short-sleeved button-down shirt and an uncomfortable-looking utility belt answered the door. Behind her was a bank of computer monitors and a man in a similar uniform. Bingo. Look at the belt, what's she packing?
"Can I help you?"
"Hi, I'm looking for Gloria? Gloria Reyes?"
The belt, numbnuts.
She frowned. "You shouldn't be bothering one of the staff while they're at work. Leave a message with reception or I can escort you out."
Robbie looked down at the bouquet in his hand, then back up into her eyes. "No, no, I'm not a stalker. She's my mom. She works here." Wonder of wonders, the guard's eyes softened. "I haven't seen her in years, but I was in town..."
"Sorry, but I don't know her. Raul? You know a Gloria Reyes?"
As she looked back over her shoulder, Robbie examined her belt. It was wide, stiff, rode high around her waist. There was a hand-held radio and a big yellow plastic object—Taser, nice— on the left hip, a row of mysterious pouches across the front, and a pistol in a stout plastic holster on the right hip. Look closer. There's a latch or somethin'—what isthat?
"Nope," said a man from inside the room, probably Raul.
That holster's got a little button, or a latch, theft deterrent. Adorable. Where's the brand name?
Robbie tried to spot a logo on the smooth gray plastic, but the woman was just turning around again. "Sorry," she told him. "You should try HR, down the hall. We're security. We just look at cameras all day."
"Okay," Robbie said. "Thanks anyway."
"Good luck, dude." The woman smiled and shut the door as Robbie made as if to move on.
There you go, everyone loves a mama's boy. Now pick your spot to port in from. A surveillance blind spot, somewhere that doesn't get cleaned.
Robbie found the men's room on the Administrative level, locked himself into a stall, changed his mind, and went to the mirror. He pulled one of his bloodstained squares of paper out of his pocket, and a roll of scotch tape. He wedged it under the lip of the sinks, sharing the space with a dozen multicolored blobs of hardened chewing gum. Looked both ways as he left the men's room, and sighed in relief as he got onto a down elevator. Left the flowers propped up on a chair in the lobby in case anyone else needed them, then got the hell out of there.
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Just after midnight, Ghost Rider rolled down out of a pool of fire and darkness onto the bathroom tile of the administrative floor's men's room. Peeled off the bit of blood and tape he'd homed in on, and ate it, a tiny burst of flame lost in the hiss of his breath..
He stood, turned to the mirror, stared at his reflection burning and glinting in the darkness, until the motion-detector lights turned on. Robbie concentrated, reached for the fires, and pulled them back in. Changing back was hard some days. For an instant, when the Rider's fires started to go out, he always felt like he was suffocating; then his flesh wrapped around hot bones, constricting, alien, agonized. When he wasn't thinking, the change could happen in a flash, sometimes without him even noticing, but over-think, and he burned alive for horrible seconds until it was complete.
Human again, he braced himself against the bathroom counter and breathed hard. Took a drink out of the faucet—the motion-detector kind, so for a second it didn't turn on and then when it did it sprayed all over his face. Grabbed some paper towels to dry off with.
Now who's whining about DNA everywhere? Quit stalling. You'd think you were gonna rob a bank.
Robbie didn't own a lot of hats, wasn't a fan of hat hair. He put on a pair of cheap mirrored sunglasses from Good-Will, secured at the back with a rubber band. No good leaving a witness description reading "Hispanic male, 5'7", one eye green and one orange;" that'd make a real short line-up. He'd left the leather jacket at home—too unique with the white inset design. No watch. Plain denim. Converse, but those were ubiquitous. He had a shop rag with a slit cut in it in one pocket; he tied it tight around his face with the slit open around the glasses, and it crushed his nose but hid the rest of his identifying features. He wore his winter driving gloves, the pair with full fingers.
I looklike I'm gonna rob a bank. With the mirrored lenses sticking out of the shop cloth, he looked like a bug in a burlap bag.
Sometimes it pays to be upfront with your intentions. Let's go.
Robbie left the bathroom and slouched down the dimly-lit hall to Security.
Vague. Casual. But pissy.
I got this. He pounded on the door. "I needta talk to you guys, can you open up a sec?"
One of the monitor guards cursed from within. "Who—what's going on?"
"I gotta talk to you, can you please just open up a sec?"
"Who is this?" The guard sounded annoyed, but closer. The handle began to turn.
Here he comes! Gimme the wheel!
I got this, Robbie wanted to say, but it wasn't true, he hadn't got this. He'd never touched a gun while he was in charge of his own body, and while he'd thrown his share of punches, and been held down to take his share of punches, he'd never been the guy who did the holding. Eli was pushing at his hands, expanding inside his head, and Robbie knew this would go a whole lot smoother if he let Eli take over. That would mean trusting Eli with a gun.
Not happening.
But how hard could it be?
You're 'bout ta find out.
The door swung inward—Stay out of sight behind the wall! Oh, dammit—and a guard, a man this time, dark hair, forties, chin-strap beard to outline a chin long-since swallowed by his neck, looked down at Robbie. "Shit!" the guard said.
Robbie grabbed him by his shirt and tried to shove his way into the room—No! No! Drag him out! That's your hostage!— but the older man had over fifty pounds on him and he wasn't moving. "Miguel!" the guard called to his partner inside. "Some guy in a mask—" Robbie grabbed for the guard's holster, fumbled to push the button they'd noticed on the other guard's holster yesterday, that kept the gun locked in. He was at a bad angle. Couldn't make the button go. "Jesus!" the guard yelped. Now you've done it. The guard shoved Robbie away hard, knocking him against the door post, and then saved him the trouble of getting the gun from the trick holster by drawing it himself. "Stay where you are, hands above your head!" he bellowed, the exact same words and cadence as the cops used on every action show.
Robbie charged right at him. Whenever he looked down gun barrels anymore, it was always as the Ghost Rider. You got him off-balance. Now let me! Let me take his gun!
The guard shot him in the chest.
Robbie kept his momentum, crashed against the guard's belly inside his gun arm. At first he felt like he'd just been punched under the armpit. Then the noise registered, and the pain caught up to him. For an instant, he felt blind, deaf. The world went away under a rush of agony that seemed to come from the entire left side of his body, then retreated back to the injury itself, stealing all his adrenaline with it.
It was off-center, high on his ribcage, a bad spot but far from the worst possible. A broken rib. Weakness in his left arm. Blood oozing out near a little hole in his white hoodie.
"Jesus, did you just shoot him?" the other guard demanded.
Get the gun! Lemme drive! I'll get the gun!
"I didn't—he just jumped right at me—" The first guard spun Robbie around and shoved his face against the wall inside the computer room.
"Was he even carrying anything? A knife or something?"
The first guard reached for Robbie's mask.
No. Robbie swung his elbow back. Pain was a white thunderclap in his head as the muscles of his chest tugged. He spun around and saw the gun, rising again, in his face. Fine. Eli.
You're welcome. Eli grabbed hold of his body and grabbed the guard's gun in a single motion. Wrapped his hand around the barrel, twisted it hard to the side, broke the man's finger inside the trigger guard, and yanked it free. Kicked the guard in the chest to make up some distance, and twirled the gun on one finger and sighted it between his eyes. "Take your belts off and dump 'em on the floor, " Eli ordered. "Or the fat one gets it."
Nobody gets hurt, I told you—
I'mhurt. I hategetting shot. Hell, he deserves to lose his whole hand for his trigger discipline alone.
"This is a stick-up, " Eli continued, grinning so wide Robbie tasted the shop cloth in his mouth. "You make trouble, you go down the incinerator shaft. Got me?"
"Alright, alright," the second guard, Miguel, said, hands raised. The first guard was busy cradling his broken index finger and whimpering. "Look, I'm taking my belt off right now, see?"
"Congratulations, you are smarter than a fifth-grader. Kick it to me."
Miguel shoved the belt, with its radio, pistol, Taser, and mysterious pouches, toward Eli with the toe of his shoe. Eli crouched down, pistol still trained on the other guard, and started disarming it—powered the radio off, unholstered the pistol, ejected the magazine, and racked the slide awkwardly against the heel of Robbie's shoe in case there was a bullet in the chamber. Hurt like hell to do it all with his left hand.
"Now him."
"He's hurt, let me help him—"
"Naw." Eli got the Taser free. It was a chunky, futuristic thing, all black-and-yellow plastic, all its weight in its thick handle, the trigger squared off, with a straight, heavy pull. He shot the first guard in the chest. Needles and wires spiralled out, stabbed in through the guard's layered shirts, and the Taser's handle vibrated with the snap-snap-a-snap of high-voltage alternating current. The guard arched back and convulsed, arms and legs jerking and kicking with each electric crackle. Urine spilled. When the Taser automatically shut-off, the guard heaved in a breath and started sobbing. Eli cackled.
"Pinche cuello!" Miguel made a grab to pull the taser wires out, and Eli shifted the pistol's sights onto him.
"No-no."
"You sadistic fuck!"
Eli!
I love this thing! "Fatty's hand don't bother him no more, see?" Eli tried to give the Taser's trigger another squeeze—for dramatic effect—but Robbie stopped him: the kid was concentrating, trying to peel control away from him. His hand was going numb, pins and needles; the kid was going to make him drop the Taser. That would not improve their command of the situation. The humiliating thing was, whenever they'd fought over the body like this, the kid had eventually won.
This was not what Eli had envisioned for his second life.
"Fine, " he snarled. " See how you manage, you neurotic little bitch." And he let the body go.
Robbie found himself with a gun in one hand and a Taser in the other, trying to juggle two hostages. "Thanks. Eli," he bit out. He took a deep breath, lowered the Taser. Every movement of his left arm made the injured muscles of his chest drag and burn across his cracked rib. He carefully pulled a pack of heavy-duty zip-ties out of his pants pocket. They'd brought equipment and everything, Eli just kept arranging things so they'd have to get violent. "Put these on him," he said to Miguel. Behind the back. Behind! "Behind his back," Robbie growled. When he tossed the zip-ties to Miguel, the gun in his right hand wobbled. Aim! It's not complicated, make the three little dots stand in a row. Not sideways, you look like you're on MTV!
I'm not actually going to shoot him!
This doesn't work if he can tell that by looking at your shitty grip!
Robbie straightened the gun. He didn't actually sight down the barrel like Eli had. He wondered what he was supposed to do with his index finger. Was it supposed to be on the trigger, ready to go? Lower down on the grip? What if he pulled it by accident? These guards didn't deserve Eli tormenting them, or the Ghost Rider working out his frustrations on their bones. They certainly didn't deserve Robbie shooting them by accident because he didn't know what to do with a gun.
Miguel gently rolled his partner onto his stomach and cuffed him with two zipties.
"Step back, sir," Robbie ordered. Miguel gave him a disbelieving look, then backed against the wall. Robbie knelt by the first guard, felt the zip ties. Seemed a bit loose.
'Bout to fall right off.
He tightened them. "Stay here. Nobody's supposed to get hurt."
"You broke my finger, you fucker," the guard at his feet wheezed. "You tased me."
Robbie couldn't muster a sympathetic response to that. "You shot me."
"I'm sorry."
Robbie lowered the gun toward the floor and jerked his cloth-covered head at Miguel. "I want footage. March 12, 2016. Midnight through eight a.m, from the morgue. Or...wherever the bodies get cut up."
"What?" Miguel demanded.
"March 12, 2016. I want security footage from the morgue and anywhere else that processes dead bodies." You're the guy with the gun now, Robbie! He's stalling you, don't take that shit! " Now , please."
"That's months ago, it's burned to disk."
"I want the disk."
"It's not here."
Candace Gutierrez' butcher was on that disk. Robbie's nostrils flared and the trigger shifted slightly under his finger. "I want the disk now."
"It's in the records room."
"Great. Let's go." He waved the barrel of the gun at Miguel, like in the movies, and Miguel understood and lead the way down the hall to the other end of the administrative floor, where he unlocked a heavy fire-proof door. Inside were racks and racks and racks of DVD-ROMs. Miguel's hand shook as he traced his fingers up and down the columns.
"Here," Miguel said at last. "This what you want?"
Robbie squinted at the little printed label. All security footage between midnight March 12 and midnight March 13. "March 11, too," he demanded. "What format are these in?"
"Uh. MP4s."
"Passwords?"
"Nothing."
"Good." Robbie took the jewel-cases and tucked them into his waist-band, close against his skin. His breath tasted like blood. He had an urge to cough that got stronger by the minute, and he suspected that when he finally did cough, the pain would leave him completely unable to defend himself. "Cuff yourself to that shelf now."
Miguel hesitated. "What are you going to do?"
"Leave."
He kept it together, training the gun roughly at Miguel's head while he zipped his left hand to one of the racks. As soon as Miguel was secure, he dropped the gun. Winced and waited for it to go off when it hit the floor, but nothing happened. Miguel watched him warily.
He can reach the gun with his foot, dumbass. Bend down and pick it up.
What's the point?
The pointis, you do it half-assed, you make bad habits. You get bad habits, you get killed!
Not gonna be a habit.
Robbie clutched his throbbing left armpit and shuffled back to the bathroom, leaving the door to the records room open behind him.
He can yell for help from there.
Wouldn't want him to suffocate.
I should let you suffocate, Eli snarled as Robbie shut himself into the men's room. You're a boy doing a man's job. You'd let me drive, I'd'a got that gun right outta the holster on the first try, commanded the situation, Fatty wouldn'ta even broke his finger. You need to trust me.
"You Tased a man because you thought it was funny!" Robbie exploded. "He could've had a heart attack!"
I never seen that happen.
"I've never jumped off a bridge, but I know it's a bad idea!"
Eli sniggered in his head. Okay. Real talk here. You know what it's like to die from a sucking chest wound?
Robbie had a sudden premonition Eli was about to let him find out. Do you hear sirens? I think I hear sirens.
You feel like you just ran ten miles through Denver, Colorado. Air-hunger. You think to yourself, oh. I'm tired. I'm breathing too fast. Next time I breathe, I'll do it real deep, slow, really get that air down in there. So you shift around. Really open up that chest, throw those shoulders back—hurts, but by this time you got bigger problems. Give it a good four seconds in, four seconds out—that's a joke, you can't make yourself go that slow. And breathing out—damn. Now that hurts. Like a stretch, or a pressure. Presses on your heart. Makes you weak. You get weak, you can't hold the right posture, the air-hunger gets worse. Now here's the thing—it only gets worse. The tightness, and the pressure, and the gurgling deep down where you're trying to inhale your own blood—not too useful, by the way—it goes up and down, but it's worse and worse. Until there's nothing. You can'tbreathe. You're pumped up like an inner tube and there's no more room for your lungs. But that lizard-brain takes over, see, pumps you full of adrenaline, and you keep trying, like an idiot, making the pain worse, hauling those broken ribs up and down, and you wish you'd just pass out and be done with the mess, but noooo...
I apologize for getting shot, Robbie interrupted, stuffing down a twist of guilt. Can we please get out of here before I get arrested, or shot some more?
Well, since you're so polite about it.
They burned up, the pain of the gunshot wound vanishing under the familiar thunderclap of agony as all Robbie's flesh boiled away at the same time. The Rider straightened, spun on his heel toward the bathroom door—there were footsteps in the hall. He snarled, restrained himself, then crouched down under the bathroom sinks and dropped through the shadows into the Charger, parked at the curb two blocks away. They snuffed out.
Well, that's done. Congratulations on getting yourself shot. Now do I get a thanks for pulling your fat out of the fire?
Robbie ground his teeth, rubbed his pain-free left armpit, and dug the disks out from under his shirt. "Thanks," he said, squinting at the dated stickers on the jewel-cases. "I hope these things don't have anti-theft software that'll broadcast our location as soon as I try to watch them."
You worry too much.
"You sound like Alex."
That's harsh.
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Robbie couldn't sleep. He wasn't in the mood to pick up a pax. He booted up his laptop, disabled the LAN just in case, and put in the March 12 disk.
Wow, they crammed a lotta data on here.
Instead of just morgue footage, the disks contained all the footage collected from all the surveillance cameras throughout the hospital during each twenty-four hour period, midnight to midnight. Each camera had its own video file, and they were arranged by number, not the name of the room. He couldn't see any better way to find the morgue than to just open one file at a time, manually. Not the first thing he wanted to try.
Not all the files were videos. Some were spreadsheet data. Those, at least, promised to be search-able. Robbie found a file that logged all security badge usage throughout the hospital and opened it up in Excel, found the Northwick entries. On March 12, his badge had been used at the exterior door at 2:42, the north-east hallway door at 2:48, and the elevator to the basement at 2:51. In the basement, his badge was used at the morgue entrance at 3:02. It was used again, backtracking, at 4:31. Alex Northwick's badge, in and out.
I'm starting to think someone framed this guy. This is...this is appalling.
Nothing left but to brute-force through the video files. Hundreds of them. Robbie hoped they might be organized by floor number, but that would be too simple. No. They seemed to be organized by the date each camera had first been installed. He had to open up each file, look at the scene on the screen, move the slider back and forth through time if it was the kind of camera that scanned from side to side, and try to visually deduce whether or not he had found the morgue. The fact that neither he nor Eli had ever seen the inside a morgue didn't help. The files each took over a minute to load. He tried opening multiple files at the same time, but any more than three would crash his laptop. It was a godawful mess.
At four in the morning, he gave up and had a nap. He had a shift tomorrow.
The next morning, he had a brainwave. He couldn't correlate the cameras to the doors. But there was a camera at each entrance of each hallway, and at the elevator doors. The odds of someone else the same height and build as Alex Northwick passing through a hall door and an elevator at each of the times Alex's keycard had been used were slim. If someone had framed Dr. Northwick, Robbie would at least see the actual culprit.
The hospital had five floors, which meant forty hallway cameras and five or ten elevator cameras. He would need his own spreadsheet for this.
He brought his laptop with him instead of his textbooks the next time Nora hailed him for a shuttle ride. He charged the laptop off the car battery, which gave him eye floaters and a headache until he started the engine back up. It was deeply tedious and Eli handled tedium poorly.
Didn't you used to stalk people yourself when you were alive? Robbie demanded, after switching from Cop Radio to Oldies to Ranchera to Funk to Trap to Reggeaton to Jazz, trying to find something that would keep Eli quiet.
It's worse when it's not me doing it.
Nora had four appointments again. Robbie managed to screen a hundred and fifty videos while waiting for her to return from various hotels and motels. "You've been pretty reliable these few weeks," she said at the end of the night. "I might give you a raise."
Over the next week, he found all the hallway cameras and elevator cameras. In the process, he also found the morgue cameras. He scrolled through each elevator feed to 2:51, then each hallway feed to 2:48.
Some of the views were crowded. But he did find, just after the hallway badge log and just before the elevator badge log, a tall, lean man in scrubs and a surgical mask, his ID badge turned around backwards, pushing a shrouded figure on a gurney.
Candace.
He screenshotted the man and the gurney. He hovered over one of the morgue camera feeds, now nestled in their own sensibly labeled file folder. But he didn't click it.
Instead he looked up the MySpace for DestinyDanger2001. It looked weird, custom-edited, an orange-and-teal border framing the upper left corner of the screen. An old pop song started playing as soon as the page loaded and he had to click the browser tab to turn it off. His cursor shed a trail of electric purple sparkles as he swished it back and forth over the page. Below the banner of three smiling women in blunt bobs, ran a series of text entries that had nothing to do with the early '00s.
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Good day today, 8/10. A's mother called, and we spoke on the phone about the wedding, then she and A talked for two hours. A was in such a good mood after that. You can practically see the clouds lift, and when they do, he's so full of joy. Went out to our mountain and he was like a child seeing the trees for the first time. Kept up with him today—had a hunch and made an extra egg for myself. Cardio is paying off. Came home, talked in the Jacuzzi till midnight about his cases. Days like this I remember how lucky I am. A is so brilliant. He's a problem-solver and a visionary, tenacious and practical, and he's saved so many lives by being who he is. There's a light at the end of this all and I just have to see it through.
5/10. Tried out new move from research, wanted to surprise him, should not have done that. A is very jealous. I can't tell what's jealousy and what's protective instinct. He has plenty of both. He is paranoid. Clinically. And the frustrating thing is that medication is out of the question, it would "fog up his brain." Did not like that suggestion, will not repeat. Attached is the mark. Am almost out of body concealer, weather is heating up. Iron linen skirt. Love my linen skirt—goes all the way to the floor, breathes like CoolMax. Made Coho salmon with wild rice and asparagus today, A very pleased, I also liked it and not too difficult. Recipe follows...
7/10. A needed to sight in 30-06's for boar hunting, only game to scratch his itch this time of year. Both of us went to the range. Lots of A's type around, so he was very content and focused on out-shooting everyone. Still having trouble shooting from the shoulder myself. Rifle is smaller, lighter, kicks harder than Alex's rifles. Cut eyebrow on the scope. I was panicking and Alex looked so worried, but I laughed it off and told him it would make me look tough. He said not so much, makes me look like I can't handle my own gun. "Oh, well," I said. "Someone in this relationship should be humble." That might have been too far but he was in a good mood by the end of the range session because he really can out-shoot most people. Especially me.
8/10. A was very considerate. Brought chocolate ganache cake. This is A's problem. He thinks he can fix this with cake. Not discipline. He has no discipline, he has never had discipline. I don't know why I bother. I'm deep in the rabbit hole and he's dragging me down with him. He really thought I needed cake. Of course I ate it. This is the only time I'll cheat, is when he's had a tantrum and brings me apology cake. What is my life.
3/10. Attached are marks. Not sure what happened today. Wish A came with error messages.
6/10. Got in at Green Sky when another diner canceled. Threw on scarf and rushed out the door. A very excited. Dinner was educational. Wine very nice, A ordered white which is a nice change. Also ordered roses. A gentleman. My favorite version of A. I had to ruin it getting jealous of the waitress. A's tendencies rubbing off on me—he's clueless, he just talks to all women like that. Damn his father. A wanted to do it in the bathroom but I talked him out of that. Then to get it out of his system he insisted we do it in the garage. He twisted my scarf around his hand. Mark is attached—overlaps. Of course he knows what he's doing. No one can say he doesn't know what the human body can take. People can't help what they want. He has a string of long shifts starting tomorrow so I will have the house to myself.
A dozen entries in and Robbie still hadn't learned anything about Candace. All he'd learned about was Alex. Alex's moods, Alex's games, Alex's wants and needs. Candace was conspicuously absent, in her own diary, except for the clinical self-portraits in blue, green, and red. And then:
3/10. No marks today but I am very angry and A is being a child. Fought about hair. Not A's second mortgage idea—hair. Anyone reading this, you can't see all my Junior High selfies trying to look like J-Lo and Beyoncé—the Internet is only forever if you're a celebrity so I can delete whatever I want. I used to have fun with my hair. Never did anything I couldn't undo, but I used to steal Mom's wigs and buy cheap ones and generally have a hell of a time being whoever I wanted to become in that moment, just with clothes and heavy eyeliner and a hairpiece. The wig is the greatest invention in the history of hairdressing. There are gorgeous pieces out there, "natural" if you want to be classy about it, or blow-your-eyes-out neon Ariel hair, if you actually enjoy life. I could have a goddamn collection nowadays. But A has this wig-phobia. "But I love your natural hair," he says. I tell him my natural hair will be just fine under this wig, in fact it's good sun protection. He refuses to comprehend what I'm saying. I swear he can't focus on anything unless it bleeds. "You should be proud of the body God gave you." Boy, I haven't touched bacon for two years, so don't talk to me about the body God gave me. I didn't say. He wouldn't have reacted well to that. I say, but wigs are fun. He says but it would slip all over the place when we make love and he couldn't bury his hands in my hair. Because of course that's what it's all about with A. Veto, full stop. So I am not buying a wig but I can still shop. Thank God for incognito mode.
Candace . Here was a glimpse of her, alive. Once she'd been a teen like Lisa who obsessed over a nineties R&B group and liked to play dress-up in the mirror and at school. Once she'd had an entire web-page devoted to her obsessions and her imagination. Now she'd...cut away parts of herself. Like that book that had terrified Robbie and Gabe in turn, The Giving Tree .
2/10. I am very tired. I thought A was over these episodes after last time. He broke down the bathroom door. I don't know what to do. If I leave, I'm afraid he might really lose his mind and kill me. I am terrified I will break down one day and finally do it. And whatever happens will be my fault. I love A more than I can imagine ever loving anyone else and he has this spontaneity and confidence that makes me feel on top of the world when I'm with him. But he is a sick man. I just know the world is brighter to have A in it if we can only overcome this sickness.
9/10. New dress caught A's eye and he just lit up when I put it on. Gave him a good show. He wanted me face-down again but my research and shopping trip paid off and didn't feel like I was getting stabbed in the guts the entire time. A once again very happy. Banner day. If every day could be like this.
The entries corroborated Iris' story. Every affront to Candace's dignity came with its explanation.
8/10. Really proud of my menu plan this week. Wish Mom could see me now—Little Miss Homemaker. She never made anything like this when I was a kid. A is very picky about the weirdest things. It's got to be exotic, it's got to have presentation, and flavor definition but not too much flavor, and visual interest, or he won't eat it, he'll just dig the gallon tub of ice cream out of the basement freezer and then moan about the state of his abs, if he doesn't have a fit because he's disappointed. Have pretty much got that problem whipped—keep cycling recipes. As long as it fits in his latest health food craze, he'll at least try it. With the menus and all the ingredients listed ahead of time, I can get all the shopping done in one trip, and then not have to worry about food until after A finishes this string of day shifts. No repeats of Lemon Day. Humiliating.
4/10. A spoils me so much. I don't know why I don't rate today higher, because nothing new has happened. Went to the garage and sat in my Audi with the radio on and the doors locked, like a space capsule. It's tricked out—nothing but the best for his cinnamon girl. He has no idea I hate that song. I knew the first time he asked me out that he was completely, hopelessly clueless and that's just something I have to tolerate. A still hasn't ordered a second garage remote. He forgot. Really there should be three remotes so he can take the Lotus or the Caddy without switching the button from car to car. I can't take the Audi out without punching a hole in the gate. Tempting some days. Cabin fever. Look at me, poor little rich girl.
Still cutting away parts of herself, the parts that could want, the parts that didn't fit this narrow life Alex constructed for her. But at last—early, early, months before these more recent posts:
I need to face the facts. I'm a battered wife—common law. I don't deserve this. A treats me like shit. There's nothing I can do or say that will fix him because he doesn't want to change, and there is no bottom to this pit. I am ashamed I let him treat me this way for so long. I just hope I can find the courage to tell my sister.
She'd surfaced, briefly. And then she'd drowned.
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Robbie cruised around LAX hoping to pick up a pax before heading home for the morning to sleep. He'd just dropped off an uncoordinated and slurring sixty-something man, "Geoff," who spent the entire trip to the airport nursing a tiny energy drink. As he rounded the airport for the third time, he got a ping and hit accept. "Rhonda," 4.8 stars.
He pulled up to the pick-up area and spotted a tall, washboard-ripped Asian-American woman in a red snap-back and a tight crop-top. She spotted his car, jumped three feet in the air (those thighs), and looked down at her phone in disbelief. Much like Robbie was doing to his own phone.
Eli had no snappy comments. He'd been sullen the last few days.
"Uh," Robbie said articulately, as he rolled down the passenger window by hand.
"Robbie Reyes!" Rhonda Rubens exclaimed. "Or should I say. 'Eliot?'"
"Yes. Yes, you should. I'm, uh, there's been some...paperwork?"
"Say no more, Mr. Reyes," she said, one hand skating over the roof-line, never quite touching the skin of the car and raising the hairs on the back of Robbie's neck. "Aaaaah-uh-um. May I get in?"
"Of course."
She took a deep breath that raised up the cords in her neck, and shook out her shoulders. "Ooh-kay." She gripped the door handle firmly, paused, and then swung open the door. Scanned the car top to bottom, sniffed it. Tossed her leopard-print hard-shell suitcase into the backseat, where it landed with a squeak of springs. It must have weighed forty pounds. She handled it like it was made of Styrofoam. Then she placed one foot in the footwell, and gingerly eased herself down.
Her thighs didn't feel soft or bony against the seat like other pax. Thick with muscle, they felt more...alive.
"Long flight?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Conference in Boston. Good to be back, gonna do a shoot at Muscle Beach. West Side, Best Side, yanno?" She shut the passenger door with a reverent clunk and—stroked—she stroked the—she—the glove box—
"How's your Mini?" Robbie asked quickly. "No more alignment issues? Tracking, wobble?"
"Oh, the Mini's gone," Rhonda said casually.
"Gone?"
"Sold it. I drive a Mazda Miata right now—a step down, I know, but I needed something small enough I could deadlift the rear bumper. Got twenty-thousand new subscribers out of that video. Cars come and go. Right now I got my eye on a '71 'Cuda."
"Okay," said Robbie. He'd thought she'd loved that Mini. The world was very goddamn strange.
"Say, when are you gonna hit me up for some gym time? I don't give out those cards to just anybody."
"No time."
"Everybody has time for one of my workouts," Rhonda said firmly. "I can make fifteen minutes feel like two hours. With all the benefits."
"Can't afford it," Robbie admitted.
"Six months free. Special for you."
"Why? " Robbie demanded, narrowing his eyes.
Rhonda twisted in her seat to face him. "Lemme be candid with you?"
"Please."
"Advertising."
Robbie raised one eyebrow.
"Really. Consider yourself...virgin clay. Ninety-nine percent of my male customers come to me with some kind of gym bod already. They just need fine tuning, or a daily power-nap, something to take them from an eight to a ten. Now you—" she reached over, hovered over his bicep for a moment, and gave him a quick squeeze. "I'm willing to bet you never drank a protein shake in your life. Nothing but clean living and working with your hands, am I right?"
Robbie shrugged and kept his eyes on the road.
"You ever bust your knee? Sprain your elbow? Dislocate your shoulder?"
"Broke my hand once. It's fine now."
"Yeah, but no major joints, right?"
He shrugged again.
"Great. See, you got nothing to hold you back. But the face," she made her fingers and thumbs into a picture-frame and squinted through it. "That is a face made for virality. Those eyes pop. People love heterochromia, and with your skin tone—umph. You got unique, tasteful body mods. Nice gauges, they balance your face perfect the way they are, and I love that silver V thing on your forehead. What is that?"
"Uh," Robbie said. He shifted lanes and pressed the gas a little harder than strictly necessary.
"It's mysterious, is what that is. So. Six months free, you post a selfie once a week—I can help you, we want to capture your best angle—hashtag RhondaRubensLighteningFast. You get a body that turns heads as much as this car does, I get the credit for your transformation."
Robbie did enough transforming already. "Thanks. But not interested."
Rhonda narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw, then turned away with a deliberate smile. "Suit yourself." She stroked the glove-box again, the door, the roof-pillar.
"I'm sorry, that's really distracting," Robbie said.
"Whoa," Rhonda snapped. She ran one hand down her torso. "I work harder to maintain this body than you've ever worked for anything in your life—"
Fightin' words.
"—and if you can't reign in your trouser snake, that's your fault you can't appreciate art when it's sitting in front of you."
"No!" Robbie exclaimed, still distracted, and now also feeling embarrassed and misjudged. "No! It's the—dashboard. Fingerprints."
She stared at him for as long as it took for them to pull out to the avenue. Then she raised one eyebrow, high and quick, like she practiced that in the mirror. She probably did. Probably had a whole facial workout regimen she did while she worked her abs. "You mighta picked the wrong side gig, Robbie Reyes."
"Could be."
"Can't really blame you. This is one...very sexy machine." And she ran one callused hand over the door panel.
Robbie blasted the radio. An AM call-in station.
"How do you listen to this bullshit?" Rhonda yelled, after thirty seconds of talk radio at bone-shaking volume.
"Clears my head," Robbie yelled back.
Rhonda kept her hands over her ears for the rest of the trip to her apartment in Pasadena. She left him a three star review.
I feel violated. She needs to pay. With her life.
Robbie felt frustrated and angry, too, but this was a stretch even for Eli.
"There is something seriously wrong with you."
A pointed silence. Then,
Shit or get off the pot.
"What?"
This Alex Northwick cunt. Either kill him. Which I maintain is a terrible idea. Or let me find someone else to kill.
You think you just need a little more evidence and then you'll be sure, but you're playing God. That's what you're doing. And you're not God. You'll never know if this guy deserved it or not, 'cause in the real world, there's no such thing as "deserve." You're either gonna kill him, or you won't. And if you're not killing him, you're just wasting our time.
"You're setting deadlines, now?"
No. Hurriedly. I have an itch. Like Northwick. Only he gets to shoot pigs all year. You're not even letting me kill pigs! It's unsustainable. My bloodlust will not be denied, I will take every last shred of sanity you have left! You must kill. Wemust kill. You and me, we are one, COME ON, kid.
"Do you want to hunt feral pigs?" Robbie asked wearily.
No! Just watch the fucking morgue footage, if you need a kick in the pants!
Robbie stared at the road ahead of him, driving by autopilot while his thoughts skidded on sand. If he watched that video, he would see Alex Northwick processing Candace Gutierrez' body. He would discard the last scrap of doubt that let him hover in inaction. At that point, he knew on some irrational instinct, Robbie would have no control. Point of no return. To watch that video would be to murder Alex Northwick.
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At home, after seeing Gabe off to school, Robbie lay on top of his blankets with a sock over his eyes in his darkened bedroom. As he waited for the melatonin to kick in, he pondered.
Over the past month, these two people he had never met had become his obsession, in a way that nothing other than Gabe had ever been before. He felt irrationally tied to them. To Candace, who had been murdered, and to Alex, who had gotten away with it.
Alex Northwick saved lives for a living. He repaired wounds. He stopped up bleeding blood vessels. He gave hope to broken people. He did this, going by Candace's off-hand comments and his own trophies on Facebook, because the sight of blood and suffering energized and attracted him—but still. He saved lives.
He was neuroatypical in some vague way: he loved the sights and sounds of suffering in his patients, his game animals, and his lover of four years. He had a peculiar, strained relationship with his parents. He was bad at maintaining friendships and had few people to confide in. He was bad with money. Bad with planning longer than a few hours ahead. Possessed of a resilient, cynical optimism.
Alex had killed one woman, and it had taken him four long years. Now he was four years older. Little by little, he would age out of his targets' social circles. He might never meet another woman who would devote herself to him like Candace had. He might kill a few others, or he might continue to content himself with bears and feral hogs. On balance, how many lives would be saved or salvaged as Alex played his heedless games of blood and death?
Alex Northwick had been loved. Few people had ever been loved as well or as deeply as Alex Northwick had been loved, because Candace Gutierrez had given him everything she had, wholly and innocently, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice. She had uplifted the good he could have been, and she had comforted the monster. Surely, her love, even after her death, demanded respect.
Robbie was hunting a doctor.
He remembered the bag from the cooler as Eli gripped it using his hands. The watery gleam of the blood that pooled in the plastic.
Candace had loved him, and loved him well. But love was a verb. A continual exertion. She could not love him now. She had loved him so well he had killed her for it, and not only killed her: he had taken her apart while she lived. Divided her from her family, from her ambitions, her curiosity, her passions, her own body. Through whining and bullying and robbery and rape, he had stripped her to the bones, alive. Candace may have loved him, but she had not wanted to be cut to pieces. She had tried to escape—in her diary, in her head, in the locked confines of her Audi, and in her mother's house. Candace was guilty of nothing. She had loved purely. She had deserved to live.
Robbie thought of the helicopters that pursued the Charger the night he'd died. When they cornered him, he'd knelt in the searchlight, arms up, surrendering. He'd been innocent of anything deserving death, he'd believed in their good intentions. He knew they would treat him harshly, but he'd believed they followed the law.
They had had no good intentions. Candace, likewise, had submitted to her death and captivity, being loving, and alive, and innocent, and able to hope for that fading glimmer of a tolerable future, that narrowing ledge where she could rest. Robbie might once have been innocent, but now he'd been dead, and his soul was bound up with Eli's. The evil in him refused to submit to the evil in others. He could wear the stains that Candace, devoted to love, would never have borne.
Candace was only one life, yes, and Alex's job was to save lives every day.
But Candace's life was enough.
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Robbie picked a Sunday night to view the morgue footage. Monday and Tuesday, Canelo had no shifts for him. Gabe would be in school. Robbie would have over fifty hours for whatever he began tonight to run its course.
In his bedroom, he booted up the laptop. Hovered over the touchpad as his heart pounded. Double-clicked.
He rubbed his palms hard over the buzzed hair on the sides of his head as he waited for the footage to load. At last, the video player showed him a corner-bird's-eye view of a long tiled room dominated by four steel tables. The video started at midnight. The room was clean, empty. No bodies. No blood.
Robbie scrolled through to 3:02 AM, when Alex Northwick's badge had been used at the morgue's entrance. He waited.
All the security footage was shot at around two frames per second. So when a gurney appeared below the camera's eye, it jerked forward in a choppy, strobing motion. A tall, lean, pale-skinned man in scrubs and a surgical cap propelled it over the tiles, past two tables. He stopped, turned his head toward the door. Another jump, and the gurney was alongside the third table.
The sheet that covered the body splashed into the air, froze in a shape like a child falling. Then the sheet dropped out of view, and Robbie saw Candace on the gurney.
Oh, fuck.
Her head was turned to face the camera, her features unmistakable, eyes open, mouth slack. For weeks, Robbie had memorized her eyes, her jawline, the curve of her forehead in the photos that survived her. Her hair was matted on one side with dark liquid. A broad cut distorted her opposite eyebrow. But there was no bruise, no black eye. It took a beating heart to spill blood behind an eye.
He coulda turned the lights out. Pulled out the wiring for the camera. Coulda sprayed some kinda foamy cleaner on the lens. But no. This stupid-smart arrogant fuck.
Her legs and arms were contorted as if she'd been frozen in time while running, or being startled. When the man scooped her off the gurney and onto the table, shoved the gurney away with his foot, Candace's limbs stayed bent, hands curled toward her throat and legs crooked to the side.
I mean, it's almost too perfect.
Robbie. This could be someone else. A setup. Body-double. It's easier than you'd think, especially when you're trying to interpret camera footage—difficult to judge the target's true height. And she's stiff, see. She coulda come right out of a freezer.
With obvious effort, the man pried each of Candace's arms down to lie at her sides. Then he paced around the morgue while Candace stared sightlessly toward the camera. He returned with a pair of scissors. Cut her clothes off and threw them away, leaving her naked, bruised, on the shining steel.
Then he left. He left her exposed, staring at the camera as he was out of view. Robbie scrolled on, blocking her naked body with his left hand. He wished he could reach through the screen and cover her.
Twenty-three minutes later, the man returned with a pile of papers and a pen, which he spread out over a neighboring autopsy table. He sorted and scribbled and signed, his back to Candace, for another thirty minutes. It was 3:58 when the man finally turned back toward Candace. He put his bare hands in her blood-stained hair.
Doctors wear gloves, Robbie.
He's also a hunter. Why is there so much blood on the opposite side of her head from that cut?
Two head wounds.
Must be deep, if it bled that much and it's so small we can't see it.
He lifted one arm, scratched the back of his cap with his bloody hand. As the sleeve of his smock rode up, the camera caught the edge of an armband tattoo, curved slashes that evoked animal claws high on his bicep.
That could be Sharpie.
I don't think so.
Robbie scrolled back to the moment Alex's hand lifted Candace's bloody hair. Paused it.
What do you think?
Oh, boy.
Small, deep wound to the side of the head to make sure she stays down. Trauma surgeon and hunter would know to destroy the brainstem. A low-energy, small-caliber bullet. Or a screwdriver, scrambled around.
He hit play again. Watched Alex scratch his head, leaving blood on his cap and revealing his tattoo to the camera.
Alex disappeared deeper into the morgue again, and returned, faster, with an armload of stiff plastic bags and a knife in a sheath. He bent low over Candace's face and cupped the back of her head with one broad hand.
Then he began to saw through the base of her neck with the knife.
I'm done stalling, Robbie decided. He closed the laptop. He couldn't speak. We're going to kill him.
Fuck.
...
You're doing this my way. We are not getting caught.
Fine. Great. He has to pay.
Kid, tell me. Of all the hookers and human traffickers and drug dealers and axe-murderers in this trash-fire of a city, why does it have to be him?
You told me, after I...after I killed Yegor Ivanov for you. We're one, now, and I'm going to kill again. Well. This is who it's gonna be. He has to pay.
You said that.
Robbie stared, unseeing, over his desk at his bedroom wall. Alex was not a normal man. But Robbie knew many, many people who were also not normal. Arguably, there was no such thing as normal. But there was such a thing as love. When you loved someone, you did not cage them. When you loved someone, you did not smother their pride and curiosity at every turn until you were the only thing they had left. When you loved someone, you did not choke them, or rape them, or club them in the face and strike a final, surgical blow to make sure they never got up again.
He needs to pay.
Fine. But wewon't pay. Understood? You won't get us caught.
Alex made that look pretty easy.
Eli did a spit-take in the back of Robbie's head. Oh, no. This arrogant sonofabitch didn't even try. He assumed no one would look into him, and he was rightuntil you and your "what's in the cooler" act came along. And why wouldn't he? Everything always turns out alright for this clod. Why do you think all my aliases have gringo names?
You and me, we're gonna have to work for it.
Warnings: Diary entries from a victim of domestic violence and eventual murder, detailing physical and emotional abuse, including implied rape. Near the end of this chapter, Robbie views video footage of the murderer preparing to dismember her body. Victim is an OFC of color.
Robbie threatens Eli with suicide if Eli makes him unsafe for Gabe to be around.
Gun violence. Robbie gets shot by a security guard. Robbie threatens a security guard with a gun.
