Cold Springs(94)

“Last time I was in this barn, taking Joey into custody, those hay bales were stacked with fertilizer explosives. Pipe bombs. A box of grenades and an AK-47 Joey'd bought at a flea market. He was planning to blow up his high school—this was six months before the shootings at Columbine. If Joey hadn't gone to Cold Springs, he would've been Columbine. He would've been national news, and dead.”

The barn door creaked open and Mallory instantly tensed, like she was bracing for a blow.

Kindra Jones dragged Pérez inside, still blindfolded and gagged, hands cuffed behind his back.

Chadwick pulled him to the middle of the room and said, “Sit.”

Pérez remained standing.

Chadwick kicked his legs out from under him, and Pérez fell.

Chadwick knelt, stripped off the blindfold. Pérez's eyes blazed like a cornered wolf's.

“You're in the middle of nowhere,” Chadwick told him. “Scream all you want.”

Then he peeled the tape off Pérez's mouth.

Pérez just kept glaring at him.

Chadwick had stripped him of the Kevlar, thrown it into the woods off Highway 90. Now Pérez wore only his camo pants and T-shirt, which had rolled up to his ribs, revealing one of the massive bruises left over from Chadwick's gunshots, like an injection of chocolate under the skin.

“You could've killed us last night in the woods,” Chadwick said. “Why didn't you?”

Pérez let the silence build. The tape had left a thin red rectangle around his mouth that didn't match the square of his goatee. Finally he said, “What happened to the guy I was with—Julio?”

“Dead,” Chadwick said.

Pérez bunched his shoulders, straining against the cuffs. “He was a good man. Had a wife and kids.”

“He torched a building full of schoolchildren. Last night, he shot a fifteen-year-old boy.”

“Julio wasn't going to kill nobody. He was just supposed to pin them down, keep them busy.”

“While you killed me and got away with the girl.”

Pérez shrugged. “You surprised me. Moved too fast.”

Chadwick knew he was lying. Pérez could've had him cold. In the woods. And then again this morning, in the store.

“What about the girl?” Chadwick asked. “You mean to kill her, too?”

Pérez turned hard eyes on Mallory, who instinctively slid closer to Chadwick.

“She belongs with her father,” Pérez said. “I wasn't going to hurt her. I follow Mr. Z's orders.”

“And now?” Chadwick asked.

“What do you mean?”

Chadwick waited until he was sure Pérez wasn't faking ignorance. But his look stayed flat and steady. He really didn't know what had happened in San Francisco during his absence.

“John Zedman is missing,” Chadwick told him. “Presumed dead.”

Chadwick gave him the details, but Pérez seemed to be withdrawing into some memory of his own—some long-ago insult that could still make him furious.

“You son-of-a-bitch.” He struggled to kneeling position, his face beading with sweat from the effort. “You worked it together—you and this nigger bitch, didn't you? You killed him. Now you're gonna pin it on me.”

“Yo, Juan Valdéz,” Kindra said. “You call me ‘nigger' again, I'm gonna tape up more than your mouth. Understand?”

Pérez studied her with contempt, but he didn't try to get up. He looked at Mallory. “They killed your father, and you just stand there? You and that nappy-ass boyfriend of yours—you see what you brought down?”

“I'm going outside,” Mallory said. “I won't listen to this.”

“Yes, you will,” Chadwick said.

Her mouth trembled. She could've been six years old again, accusing a classmate of stealing her dessert.

Chadwick suppressed the urge to let her leave, to protect her from Pérez. Some instinct told him that he needed the two of them in the same room, listening to each other.

“Pérez,” he said, “the person who murdered John is the same person who blackmailed him, the same person who murdered Talia Montrose. I think you came to Texas planning to shoot me, and take the girl back to her father, but you had second thoughts. Something started nagging at you. Something told you I wasn't the right guy.”

“How the f**k you figure that?”

“Because if you didn't have reservations, I'd be dead.”

The fire cooled a little in Pérez's eyes. He sat back on his haunches, still straining against the handcuffs, but as if it were an exercise in frustration rather than getting free.

“I told Mr. Z—when he paid off Talia Montrose, I told him it wasn't her. She knew about the blackmail. She knew who it was. But she didn't have shit for leverage. Real blackmailer was somebody she was scared of.”

“Samuel Montrose is dead. It isn't him.”

“Race.” He turned on Mallory. “That goddamn punk is fractured in the head. I told you—”

“No,” Mallory insisted. “He isn't crazy.”

“You ain't got the sense to see it.”

“You said you would cut him into pieces.” Mallory's voice rose a half-octave. “He brought the gun to school because of you, and got expelled—and then his mom was murdered . . . It's all your fault. You killed her. You killed my father.”