The Fall (22 page)

“Five to one?” Glitsky gave it a moment. “Okay. Let’s make it fifty bucks, though. Make the risk worth my while.”

“Risk, ha!”

The two men shook.

“But you wanted to talk about work?” Farrell asked.

Posey stepped into the batter’s box and Glitsky said, “It can wait an at-bat.”

The at-bat didn’t last long, as Posey slammed the first pitch about twenty rows deep into the left-field bleachers.

“It’s a good thing I don’t use profanity,” Glitsky said as Posey touched home plate, “or I’d be sorely tempted right now.”

“Save it for when he hits the next one,” Farrell said. “But really, now, what about work?”

“Well, that Thirteen Sixty-eight assignment? The good news is that Villanova and Schwartz have tracked down the basic problem. The bad news is that it’s potentially fairly significant.”

“Like how significant?”

“Twelve people.”

Farrell turned in his seat. “I know you don’t like swearing, but you are shitting me.”

“I wish I were.”

“You’re saying that we’ve turned loose twelve crazy violent felons who ought to be in the state hospital? They just walked away from the jail?”

“Not the jail,
really. They get down here from Napa in custody, but one of the clerks who was handling these cases after the hearing—Maricel Santos is her name—evidently wasn’t too clear on the concept of which box to check on the form for their next placement.”

“Next placement after what?”

“After they’re found still incompetent, with a violent felony pending, and after they’ve already done their first three-year stint. The judge orders a Murphy Conservatorship, so they’re supposed to be sent back to Napa. At which point Ms. Santos checks the box for ‘gravely disabled,’ meaning unable to care for themselves. So they go to a halfway house. And when a disabled person walks away from a halfway house, there’s no particular urgency to tell the court or find them. They just wait for them to be picked up on the street, wandering around.”

“So you’re telling me this woman checked the wrong box on a Murphy form twelve times?”

“That I’ve found so far. Maybe she wasn’t well supervised. It also appears her training was somewhat inadequate. In any event, she seems to have gotten more of the hang of it in the past six months or so.”

“But until then, did all of these twelve people just walk away?”

“There’s more good news there. A few were so clueless—we’re talking some truly space-case people here—that they didn’t really get it that they could take a walk away from their halfway house and not come back. As of today, our guys have found six of these people hanging out at the homes where they were delivered. And they’re back in jail, pending commitment to more secure facilities.”

“That’s some kind of good news, but it still leaves six . . .”

“Right,” Glitsky said. “Who have eloped. That’s including Ricardo Salazar, our Minnesota murderer, so it’s really only five. But—bad news time—four of those five were brought in originally on homicides, and they’re now wherever they are, maybe alternating between glimpses of sanity and pure delusion. In any case, probably not much enriching the lives of the people they’re interacting with.”

“Five of them.”

“Only four who have probably killed people.”

“There’s a heartening thought.”

“I know. Isn’t it?”

L
IFE WITH ROYCE
was not working out the way Honor Wilson had planned.

When she’d turned eighteen in early June, she had already all but moved out of McAllister and into the place they’d rented together on Turk in the lower Fillmore District. She was starting to think that the quality of her living quarters should have been her first warning—it was a tired, run-down one-bedroom apartment—kitchen, living room, bedroom, one bath—on the first floor of an ugly six-unit building. The previous tenants had painted the walls dark purple. The wall-to-wall carpet was ancient, stained, and smelly. The showerhead was broken; an apparently permanent rusty ring encircled both the bathtub and the inside of the toilet. Two windows in the living room faced the street and provided feeble natural light, but the rest of the place seemed perennially in deep shade, even with the lights turned on. The windowless bedroom was like a cave carved into the back corner of the building. The entryway to the building had gathered unto itself an impressive pile of debris—newspapers, fast-food wrappers, take-out menus, various containers that once held alcohol. Royce had argued that they take the place furnished, so everything they used, from the furniture to the cookware to the utensils, was old, sagging, broken, depressing.

But it was going to be their place at last, their very own, and with all its problems it was still a huge improvement over the truly filthy crowded apartment (and bedroom) Royce had been sharing with his five lowlife criminal friends. They’d fix it all up. They’d be making good money, and even with the exorbitant twelve-hundred-dollars rent, Honor figured they’d be able to buy some new stuff and get the place cleaned up and livable in no time.

But now it was six weeks later, and Honor had to admit that the situation
with the apartment—not good to begin with—had, if anything, deteriorated. The first thing that went wrong was that once she had left McAllister Street, her control over the girls began to evaporate. She was no longer on the premises to arrange assignments and follow up on payments, and almost immediately, two of them decided they could make their own arrangements, hooking up with other customers. Another one decided she didn’t really like the work and would rather concentrate on school and try to get a real job when she got out.

So the income was falling. About a month ago, Royce had gone so far as to suggest that Honor take on a few customers of her own to make up for the shortfall. That had been a bad night. Honor considered herself a businesswoman who had discovered a lucrative trade that she could exploit, that was all. She was not about to sell her body to some guy for money. She loved Royce, which was why she was with him. They were building a life together. She couldn’t believe that he could even consider her like one of her girls. She was a cut above, smarter, different. She was his partner, not just his main source of income. They were equals.

He’d hit her again that night, hard, and more than once. He had told her what she needed to do, and she was going to do it, goddammit. Afterward he’d made up with her, or tried to, saying he was sorry. She was right. She shouldn’t ever have to turn tricks. And it wasn’t like she was going to leave him. Where would she go, after all?

But it changed things for her.

And then—hard to believe all these changes happened in a matter of weeks—came the drugs. Royce had always dealt a little weed to augment his spending money, but he’d given that up once Honor had gotten her string of girls steadily producing. With that cash flow slowing down, he had looked up some of his old connections and decided that he could do better than weed by dealing cocaine, for which there always seemed to be a ready market. Since cocaine was available to him, he had started taking the occasional snort or more.

By far the worst of the changes, she thought as she sat in their dirty apartment at eleven-thirty on this Thursday night, was his stepping out on her with a bitch named Lilianne Downs, whom he’d known from his old ’hood and had run into when picking up some powdered product a couple of days ago. Lilianne had called him on his cell three times in the
past two days, as if Honor couldn’t figure out who it was. Honor also knew that he’d called her back only this evening, just before he remembered needing to go meet a guy about a thing; he’d left the apartment a little after seven, telling Honor he’d be back soon.

She didn’t define four hours as soon.

•  •  •

A
T LAST, THE
click of the lock turning.

She started at the sound, immediately and completely awake, and sat up. The built-in clock on the stove read 11:43, and the juice glass in front of her, from which she’d been drinking her wine, was empty.

That son of a bitch.

She got to her feet and made it to the door just as he was starting to push it open. She kicked at it, and it slammed closed with the power to shudder the walls.

On the other side of the door, Royce exploded in a tirade of profanity. He turned the knob again, and she threw her whole body against the door, slamming it again.

“Goddammit, Honor! Open up! Let me in.”

“You’re done here, you motherfucker,” she screamed. “Go on back to your whore! You’re not getting in.” She had her foot pressed against the bottom of the door, but when he came at it next time with all of his might, he pushed that wedged foot back a couple of inches, then threw his arm into the crack he’d forced open. She had no time to reset herself before he slammed his whole body against the door again, opening it another two or three inches. He shoved more of his arm in.

Leaning up against the inside of the door, Honor threw a backhanded fist into his forearm, then threw her body back against him.

He screamed in pain and pulled his arm out but didn’t give back one inch of what he’d gained, holding the door open with the strength of his body, leaning up against it. He kicked the bottom of the door, got his foot through the breach he’d opened, and once more body-slammed it. And again. Another inch. And another.

Finally, he pulled away and charged, knocking her backward and off the door. Unsteady from her drinking, she screamed, stumbled, and went down, and even though she kicked at him and connected two or three times, he was all the way inside the apartment and hovering over her, kicking at her ribs and
then pouncing nearly full length onto her body, holding her down, his knees on her arms up around her shoulders, snapping her head to the left with his right hand, to the right with his left, every breath a swear word as the blows rained down left and right, left and right, left and right . . .

•  •  •

W
AS SHE DEAD?

What had happened? Where was she?

In some sort of bed, but not her own bed in her apartment. She could tell, even in her near-unconscious state, that it was too clean, too tightly blanketed, for that.

And her eyes. She didn’t have to try opening her eyes to tell that she couldn’t. They felt like something heavy was weighing on them, pressing them into her skull. Her arms seemed to be tied to her sides. She had no sense of her face. It was all numb. Maybe she was drugged. That’s right, she was drinking wine, she thought. Something also felt wrong in her jaw. She couldn’t define it, but it was different. Her mouth, too, the inside of her mouth. Were some teeth gone? She couldn’t move her tongue to check.

She was sinking, going under again.

•  •  •

A
WOMAN’S GENTLE
voice. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Hunh.” It came out sounding wrong. She tried again. “Honor.” Her mouth seemed to be wired shut.

“Honor?”

She couldn’t nod, couldn’t blink, couldn’t tell the woman she’d gotten it right. Her eyes let in no light. And the weight on them . . . “Yes. Honor Wilson.” It still didn’t sound like her name.

But the woman repeated it, got it close enough. “Honor Illsun. Is that your name?”

“Yes.”

“Honor,” she asked, “who did this to you?”

Did what? she wanted to say. Everything seemed to be broken. She realized she couldn’t feel her feet. The whole world was black.

All of a sudden, it came back to her. Royce trying to let himself in. The struggle at the door to her apartment, getting pinned down, his knees on her arms. The fists coming at her one after another until . . .

Until she woke up here, wherever she was.

What had happened? How did she get here?

It was Royce, the fucker. Royce, the man she’d loved. Who’d cheated on her, betrayed her. And now she knew with all her soul that he had killed her. She was going to die. That’s why she had no body anymore. No feeling. She would sink again into blackness and never come up out of it.

The voice spoke again, whispering, gentle. “Honor, who did this to you?”

“Royce.”

“Rice?”

“No.” She tried to breathe in, get more air behind what she said. “Royce. Royce Utlee.”

“Rice Sully?”

“No. Ut-lee.” Her tongue could make the T sound. Good. That would be close enough. Rice Utlee. They could identify him from that, and once they started looking, they’d know who had done this to her.

And she would get her revenge for what he’d done. The fists came back to her, the pounding on her. He must have done more after she lost consciousness—her arms and legs, her eyes.

Where had they found her?

Where was Royce?

She was going to take him down. At the very least, ruin the rest of his life. She heard the woman saying something from far away, as though talking to somebody else. Honor forced herself to make a guttural moan.

“It’s all right.” The voice was soothing. “What is it, Honor? Do you want to say something?”

“Yes.” She could say “yes” clearly, and she repeated it. “Yes.”

“I’m right here. Talk to me.”

“Royce Utlee,” she managed, with all the enunciation she could muster.

The voice repeated it almost exactly; she had it now. “Something else about Royce Utlee?”

She drew a breath. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“Also killed Anlya Paulson.”

“Also killed who?”

“Anlya
Paulson. Tunnel girl.”

“Anlya Paulson.” She got it right on the first try. “The tunnel . . . Oh my God! You’re saying ‘the tunnel girl’?”

“Yes.”

Honor didn’t know if she smiled. She couldn’t feel her face. Her heart was glad, though. The woman understood what she’d said. Honor would get back at Royce and give him another murder to explain while he was about it.

Because Honor had long since decided that Royce had killed Anlya to get her out of their business. Back then, that hadn’t been her concern, what he’d done with Anlya. But now it was. Now it would be another bullet in the weapon that would take that motherfucker down.

It was already dark. Her eyes could not open. She let out a breath. It went all the way out to where there was nothing left to exhale. She felt warm and suddenly at peace as she went to grab the next breath, but she found no purchase there as the air ran out and the darkness swelled and settled around her and took her all the way down.