Bullseye (13 page)

SEVENTEEN

N
either of them said anything as they collected their keys and left the building. Not until they were alone in the rental car did Mason dare to speak. He started the engine and reversed out of his parking space.

“I’m glad he finally came clean with us,” he told Karina.

“I know.” She retrieved her purse from the floorboard and pulled out her cell phone. “We’d better let Hector know what Alex got mixed up in.”

Mason slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the car jerked to a halt. “Have you lost your mind?” He reached over and grabbed the phone from her hand.

Anger flared in her face. “He’s Alex’s lawyer. He needs to know the truth.”

Shaking his head, Mason gave her a pitying look. “You are way too trusting, Karina. What’s it going to take to convince you that the guy’s as crooked as a bent fork?”

“You don’t know that,” she insisted. “You’ve decided to dislike him for some reason. I know he doesn’t have much experience, but he’s all we’ve got. Maybe if we work
with
him instead of against him, he’ll be able to actually do his job.”

She had a point. Mason had taken an instant dislike for the weak-kneed lawyer. But something that Alex had said just now had confirmed his suspicions.

“Yesterday did you hear what Navarro said to Alex as he left?”

Karina’s face went blank. “That he’d visit with him when he could?”

“No. He said, ‘Do exactly as you’re told and everything will work out okay.’”

She held up a splayed palm. “So?”

“Didn’t you hear your brother just now? That’s what the man who shot José said when he shoved the gun into Alex’s hands. He said everything would come out okay as long as he does exactly as he’s told.”

“The same words,” she whispered, then nodded. “I remember.”

“When he said that yesterday I saw Alex’s face. It was like he’d been slapped. Like he’d been sent a message, and he got it.”

“So Hector really is working for whoever is responsible for these illegal guns?” Her face went pale. “Alex doesn’t have a chance, does he?”

“Well now, I don’t know about that.” Mason took his foot off the brake pedal and the car rolled forward. “We don’t know how high this thing goes. Maybe whoever’s in charge has control of the criminal courts, but not the juvenile courts. They might be transferring him in order to make sure they can be assured of the outcome.” Mason highly doubted it, but they had to consider all possibilities.

“But what outcome is that? Are they going to have him acquitted and released so he can continue working for them? Or send him to adult prison where he’ll be brutalized and…” She slid down in the passenger seat and covered her face with her hands.

While she sobbed quietly, he turned out of the parking lot onto the main road. The details they’d just learned rolled around in his mind, a jumble of facts with very little form. He needed to lay it all out, to talk to someone who could help him make sense of everything. He could arrange a call with Brent and Caleb, his F.A.S.T. partners. This was exactly the kind of thing the three of them were good at, talking things out and making sense where none seemed to exist. But neither of them knew anything about Albuquerque. Plus it was eleven forty-five in Albuquerque, which meant it was one forty-five in Atlanta. Brent was at work, and Mason had bugged him a lot lately. Being a top executive for a giant corporation, he probably couldn’t spare an hour or so for a personal meeting until this evening, after he left the office.

There was one person, though, who could help him.

The car glided to a stop at a traffic light, and Mason shifted in his seat to slide his cell phone out of its case on the waistband of his jeans. “I’m going to call Parker. Maybe he can help us make sense of this mess.”

He thought Karina might object, but she nodded approval of his plan. Probably too frightened to argue with him. Her eyes were abnormally large, making her look more like a vulnerable little girl than the spitfire woman he knew so well. As he punched in Parker’s number, he managed to give her what he hoped was a comforting smile.

* * *

Thirty minutes later they were seated in a corner booth with one long curved bench at a busy diner not far from the hair salon. Karina’s handbag lay on one end of the bench, which forced her to sit closer to Mason. The opposite bench was left free for Parker. She could have placed the purse between them as a barrier, but she needed the strength of his presence at the moment and the closer the better. Occasionally when he moved, his leg brushed against her and sent a comforting wave through her tense body.

The diner’s door opened.

“There he is.” Mason’s voice held a hint of relief that bothered Karina even more than his usual sarcasm. He must be really worried, which meant her own fears weren’t unfounded.

Officer Parker Harding stepped into the diner and held the door open for the person behind him. Another uniformed officer followed him into the restaurant. Karina recognized him as Officer Graham, the other man who’d arrested Alex last Friday night.

“What’s he doing here?” Mason asked under his breath before he stood and caught Parker’s attention with a wave.

Officer Graham said something to Parker and then he headed for the restrooms on the opposite side of the diner’s long serving counter. Parker came toward them.

Karina remained seated while Mason shook his hand.

“I thought you’d come alone, dude,” Mason said as he returned to his seat beside her.

Parker slid onto the bench on the other side of the booth. “I would have, but Grierson has us tied at the hip, especially when it comes to anything about you. I don’t think he trusts me.” His head turned toward Karina. “How are you doing? Everything okay?”

The sound of his kind tone sparked a prickle of tears behind her eyes. Sarcasm she could take. Kindness, on the other hand, prodded at a tender place deep inside and made her want to weep. She blinked hard, and managed a nod and a half smile. “Last night was better, thank you.”

“I kept watch to make sure nobody bothered her place,” Mason said.

A chuckle shook Parker’s shoulders. “I know. I saw you sleeping in your car.”

An outraged expression overtook Mason’s features, and he stiffened. “I didn’t fall asleep all night.”

The chuckle became a laugh. “Dude, you were imitating a chainsaw from around one-thirty until I got off at three.”

Karina turned in the seat to give Mason a look. So much for her bodyguard keeping her safe.

He looked a little sheepish, but then rallied in typical Mason fashion. “So I might have drifted off for a few minutes. But if anything had moved, I would have been awake in an instant.”

“Right.” Parker shook his head. “What I couldn’t figure is why you were outside. If anybody broke into that apartment, you’d be able to keep her a lot safer from inside than from a car in the parking lot.”

Karina focused on unwrapping her silverware from the paper napkin, aware of Mason’s I-told-you-so look beside her.

“Long story.” He raised his head, and she followed his gaze to see Officer Graham exit the restroom and begin to thread his way through the tables toward them. “So what about your new partner? Can we trust him?”

Parker half turned to get a look at him. “I think so. He’s pretty quiet. Doesn’t say much about anything. But he didn’t narc us out to Grierson yesterday. He knows when to keep his mouth shut.”

His answer didn’t have the ring of a wholehearted endorsement, and left Karina a little uneasy. She exchanged a glance with Mason. His shoulder lifted a fraction and he said under his breath to her, “We’ll play it by ear.” Then Officer Graham arrived, and Parker slid over in the booth to make room for him.

“Ms. Guerrero.” He nodded a greeting across the table to her, and then turned a slightly more guarded gaze on Mason. “Sinclair.”

The server arrived with four short glasses of water. When they’d been placed on the table, she picked up her order pad from the round serving tray, held it up to shake off a few drops of water and took their orders. Then she disappeared toward the kitchen.

“On the phone you said you needed help figuring something out.” Parker picked up his water glass and held it before his lips. “Has something happened since we talked to you yesterday afternoon?”

Mason shot her a glance with an unspoken question. Should they tell him what they’d discovered? Karina honestly didn’t know. If she’d learned anything in the past hour, it was that she’d been absolutely clueless where Alex was concerned. All this time she’d thought she was a good sister, that they had the kind of relationship that her brother would come to her with anything that bothered him. Obviously, she’d been wrong. And then she’d trusted Hector, even though it was beginning to look like Mason was right about him. For some reason she didn’t feel comfortable telling these two police officers everything they’d learned, but she didn’t trust her own judgment anymore.

Giving a helpless shrug, she nodded for Mason to continue.

* * *

“So that’s the long and short of it.” Mason picked up a French fry from his half-eaten lunch and dunked it in a puddle of ketchup. “We couldn’t get anything else out of Alex because we ran out of time.”

Parker wiped his mouth with a napkin, wadded it into a ball, and tossed it onto his empty plate. Beside Mason, Karina shoved lettuce around in the salad from which she’d only taken a few bites. Graham had stopped eating halfway through his burger, and leaned back to fix an intent gaze on Mason.

“So Alex didn’t identify the man who shot his friend?” Parker lounged back and looked around the booth.

“No, other than to say he didn’t fit Maddox’s description.” Mason washed the fry down with a gulp of lemonade. “But that’s not surprising. Somebody like Maddox wouldn’t do his own dirty work. He probably has a dozen or more thugs to handle things like snuffing punk kids.”

His former partner’s lips pressed together into a hard line.

Graham finally ended his silence to ask a question. “Why are you so sure Russell Maddox is involved? Do you have any proof?”

Mason used a French fry as a distraction, chewing while he considered the best way to answer. Something about the way Parker’s partner watched him through slightly narrowed eyes, as if he suspected every word he heard, rubbed him the wrong way.

But that’s what a good investigator does. He watches. He questions
.

Was it possible he was jealous of the guy who was his former partner’s new sidekick? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t stop the feeling that the guy was too quiet, too watchful. And apparently Parker wasn’t one hundred percent confident in him, either. For that reason alone Mason didn’t want to play every card in their hand. It might be best if Graham didn’t know he was actively investigating the crime, but thought he was only in town to support his old friends Karina and Alex.

“No physical evidence, if that’s what you mean.” He glanced over at Parker. “But I’ve suspected the guy was involved in something shady for a long time.”

“Since your wife was murdered, you mean.”

Graham’s quiet voice drew Mason’s gaze back to his face. There he found the first emotion he’d seen in the guy’s eyes. Compassion. Mason shifted on the vinyl-covered bench. “Yeah.”

Parker stirred the ice in his glass with his straw. “You didn’t have any proof then, and you don’t have any now. Face it, you’re never going to find anything to connect Maddox with Margie’s murder.”

Mason answered quickly. “I’m not trying to. There’s been a new murder, in case you haven’t heard.” He filled his lungs and blew the breath out. “And even if Maddox isn’t involved, the fact that the boys were running packages to the fitness center where she was killed pretty much proves there’s a connection between the two deaths.”

Both police officers nodded.

“Actually…” Parker exchanged a glance with Graham, who answered with a slow nod. Parker set his glass down on the table and fixed Mason with a direct gaze. “The news of an illegal arms dealer operating in Albuquerque isn’t a complete surprise. There’s been evidence that something like this was going on for several years. It might even have been in place back when Margie was killed, buddy.”

Instead of feeling triumphant, as he could have expected at a confirmation of his suspicions, Mason felt a nearly unbearable sadness. Beneath the cover of the table, Karina slipped a hand inside his. He squeezed it, drawing comfort from the contact.

The server arrived to clear away their empty dishes. An uncomfortable silence fell and continued for a minute or so after she left.

Then Parker leaned across the table, his voice pitched low. “Look, I’ll admit something. Ever since you left Albuquerque, I’ve kept my antennae up for news about Maddox. There’s never a hint of suspicion about him. If he’s involved in anything illegal, he’s so far removed nobody will ever be able to pin it on him.”

The news that his old partner had actually listened to his instincts acted like a tonic on Mason. If he could get Parker’s help in investigating Maddox, they might actually be able to nail the guy. “But everybody leaves a trail. There’s got to be something. What about the crime lab? Have you looked for a connection there?”

Graham bristled at the idea. “That’s a ridiculous suggestion. Why would you suspect the crime lab?”

His vehemence rubbed Mason the wrong way. What, did the guy have a buddy in the crime lab or something? He worked hard to control his features as he answered.

“Because Alex insists neither he nor José were using drugs. Or ever used drugs, in fact. So either he’s being dishonest, or those lab results were wrong. Either by mistake, or on purpose.”

An incredulous expression stole over the guy’s face. “And you believe a teenager over professional lab technicians?”

“I do,” Karina answered instantly. “My brother doesn’t take drugs.”

The patronizing smile he turned on her stomped all over Mason’s nerves. With an iron will he restrained his tongue, tore his gaze from Graham and looked pointedly at Parker. “There’s also the lawyer. Weasel of a guy, so wet behind the ears his collar’s probably damp. He used exactly the same phrase in talking to Alex that the killer did. No doubt in my mind at all that he’s involved.”