Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(62)

Ana set her coffee cup on the counter. “She doesn’t want to see me.”

“You sure? Or do you not want to see her?”

“She’s destroying herself. She won’t talk to me about it. I thought maybe you could—”

“Ana, your mother’s a strong woman.”

“With a great reputation in the department. A real role model. Yeah, Etch. I know. Everybody is so goddamn busy protecting her reputation, they’re not helping her. She’s drinking herself to death.”

Mike Flume, the fry cook, was putting orders on the pickup counter, getting a little too close to the conversation. Etch stared at him until the nervous bastard’s freckled red face disappeared back into the kitchen.

Ana sat forward, took Etch’s hands, which made him uncomfortable as hell. “Etch, you’re her best friend. You’ve got to talk to her. Please. Find out what’s wrong.”

“She’s a police officer. She has a lot of stress. You should understand—”

“This isn’t stress. Something’s eating her up from the inside. Something specific. For the last . . . I don’t know . . . couple of years, it’s been getting worse. She needs therapy, or—”

“Therapy?” Etch pulled his hands away. “You think she’s crazy?”

“No. I don’t mean that. But there has to be some reason—”

“I’ll talk to her,” Etch promised. “But Ana, seriously, you need to go see her yourself.”

Ana nodded morosely. Etch knew she had no more intention of seeing her than he did of talking to Lucia about her drinking.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said.

He left her at the Pig Stand counter, cradling her cup and staring out the window, looking so much like Lucia that Etch began dreading the day Ana would wear an SAPD uniform. He hoped the academy trainers were right. He hoped Ana made some plainclothes division in record time. He did not want to see her in the same uniform her mother wore.

Ana had gotten every break Lucia never had. Lucia had sacrificed so much for her, and Ana had made a mockery of that by marrying Arguello.

Not only that—she was proud of it. She was happy. She balanced a family and a career.

Etch and Lucia never got that chance.

He raised his nine, took careful aim.

There would be no winning. But there might be justice, and justice was different than the law. Nobody understood that better than a cop.

Don’t, Lucia said. Walk away, Etch.

He shot his last round into the freezer door, opening a hole in the olive green metal at the level of a human forehead.

“LIEUTENANT?”

Etch spun, his gun still raised.

Kelsey stood ten feet away, staring down the barrel of the nine. He raised his hands slowly.

Etch lowered the gun.

His face burned. He felt like a damn amateur, getting startled like that.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Kelsey put his hands down. He pointed with his chin toward the target refrigerator. “Fucking major appliances, huh? I got a washing machine I should shoot.”

“Yeah,” Etch said. “It’s therapeutic.”

He was grateful to Kelsey, trying to defuse the situation, but he started to realize how wrong it was for Kelsey to be here.

Kelsey’s eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t changed clothes since last night, which meant he’d never been to sleep. And he had never come to see Etch at home unannounced before, even for the most urgent cases.

Kelsey picked up a clip from the picnic table, turned it in his fingers. “You didn’t answer the front door so I, uh, poked my head into the living room. You moving out, sir?”

“Travel,” Etch said. “Life on the road.”

“Must be nice.” He didn’t meet Etch’s eyes.

Across the field, the sound of the church organ seeped through the stained glass. A recessional hymn. “Joy to the World.”

“Are you going through with the DNA announcement?” Etch asked.

Kelsey exhaled steam. “Public relations signed off on it. The press is already champing at the bit.”

“But?”

“I got some news.”

Etch reloaded his pistol. “About Ana’s condition?”

“About the woman Navarre and Arguello were with yesterday. I think I got an ID on her. She’s Madeleine White.”

For a moment, Etch was too stunned to speak. Then, despite himself, he felt a little impressed. “I’ll be damned.”

“Pretty ballsy,” Kelsey agreed. “But you can appreciate, this changes things.”

“How so?”

“If Navarre and Arguello are working with White, and we make an announcement while they’re under his, uh, protection . . . They won’t last a minute.”

Etch aimed at the refrigerator. He thought about which soda bottle to shoot for. “You ever find Miss Lee?”

“Yeah. I found her.”

Etch shot the Sprite bottle. It ruptured, exploding white foam out the front of the fridge. “And?”

“She let Roe go. She said he was part of a setup. She said the DNA was, too.”

Etch studied him, trying to figure what Kelsey was holding back.

“You see where she’s going,” Etch said. “She’s going to blame you.”