The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(37)
Something had nagged at the back of my mind, like an itch I couldn’t scratch, ever since I walked in the door. Glancing around the office, past a motivational poster of a balloon soaring over the Grand Canyon, I spotted the source. A foot-high kachina doll, a masked Hopi warrior in turquoise and black, perched on the shelf behind Meadow. I’d seen them before, mostly as tourist kitsch brought back from Arizona, but none of those blazed so strongly with magic that they left an imprint on my psychic retina. I was too slow to conceal my surprise. Meadow followed my gaze, looked back to me, and grinned.
Nineteen
“Do you like it?” Meadow gestured at the kachina doll. “It’s not authentic, I’m afraid, I made it myself last summer. Arts and crafts are kind of my thing. Not as good as the real ones, but still, not bad for a first try, huh?”
“It’s great!” I told her, feeling my gut clench. I couldn’t tell what the doll was capable of, not without a closer inspection, but it told me one vital fact: Meadow Brand was some kind of magician, just like her coworker Sheldon. The two of them would have to know about each other. The question was, how close were they?
“So,” she said, folding her hands on the desk. “I know what you’re here about, and I’m glad you’re giving us a chance to set the record straight instead of just running off and printing wild innuendo. The truth is, the house in Henderson was purchased for Sheldon Kaufman, our director of finance. Like most of the group’s employees, he was relocated from our home office in Seattle once we launched the Enclave project and established Carmichael-Sterling Nevada as a subsidiary of our parent company. The house was a perk, you could say.”
“Sheldon Kaufman,” I said, nodding slowly and putting on my imaginary reporter hat. “So Artie Kaufman is…?”
“His brother. His estranged brother. The black sheep of the family, for what I hope are obvious reasons. A few months ago, they made an attempt at reconciliation, and since his brother was on the verge of homelessness Sheldon agreed to let him use the house. Sheldon, meanwhile, bought a condo closer to the office and started living there.
“Artie swore to Sheldon that he’d gotten an office job and cleaned up his life. If Sheldon had any idea, any idea at all that anything untoward was happening in that house, he’d have evicted his brother immediately. As it stands, he’s very, very embarrassed by the whole affair, not to mention heartbroken over his brother’s death. I do hope you can respect his privacy, if you decide to go forward with this story.”
I made a show of thinking about it, adjusting my glasses and pretending to make a few notes.
“When you explain it that way,” I said, “I’m not sure there’s even a story worth running. It all sounds pretty cut and dried. I’ll talk to my editor, but I doubt we’ll pursue this any further. Personally, I’d rather be reporting on the Enclave’s progress. This city needs some positive news.”
“I agree wholeheartedly.” Meadow beamed. “Now, I’m not promising anything, but play your cards right and a certain someone might get invited to the preview-night press gala.”
“I’ll be there with bells on,” I said, shaking her hand as I rose from my chair.
The story was solid enough to be legit. I’d have believed it myself, if I didn’t already know the brothers were in dirty business up to their necks together. Of course, the best lies are always wrapped in verifiable truth. It makes the filling easier to swallow.
Out in the parking lot, strolling in the arid sunshine and turning the situation around and around in my mind, I barely noticed the windowless van pulling up alongside me.
Then someone jabbed a stubby plastic wand against the small of my back and hit me with eighty thousand volts of electricity.
Every muscle in my body went rigid, and I flopped like a fish on the pavement, hitting the ground hard. Faces blurred around me, hands lifting me, pushing me forward as the van’s side door flung open. The stun gun hit me again, firing against my hip. I couldn’t control my own limbs, couldn’t fight back as a black canvas bag dropped over my head and rough hands yanked my wrists behind my back, securing them with plastic zip-ties.
Nicky, I thought. Nicky must have found out I lied to him about dropping the investigation. So what happens when you screw over the biggest racket boss in Nevada? A bullet in the head if I was lucky.
Zip-ties clenched my ankles, tight enough to cut off the flow of blood and leave my toes tingling. I felt weak in the wake of the shocks, not in pain so much as exhausted and shaky. I rolled on the corrugated metal floor as the van lurched into gear, only for a pair of hands to hoist me to a sitting position with my back against the wheel well.
“Don’t talk,” a man’s voice growled in my ear, “don’t move, don’t f*cking blink under that hood. If you so much as think about pulling any tricks, you’ll find out what a stun gun against your balls feels like. Understand?”
I nodded. It felt like the safest choice.
“This is so wrong,” moaned a younger woman’s voice. “We shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Shut up, Melanie, nobody put a gun to your head and forced you to come along.”
“And now he knows my name,” she said, “idiot.”
“It ain’t gonna matter,” the man said. I didn’t like the implications of that.