The Last Flight(47)
I see it all again, that flash of pink at the news conference. For the first time, I let myself seriously consider the possibility that somehow, despite being scanned, Eva didn’t get on that plane.
Eva
Berkeley, California
September
Five Months before the Crash
Let’s switch it up and meet at Chávez Park.
Eva hoped her text to Dex would give the impression she was feeling jumpy. Scared.
César Chávez Park was a giant stretch of grass that sat directly on the San Francisco Bay with a path that traveled around the perimeter. On weekends it was crowded with families flying kites, joggers, and lots of dogs. But at two o’clock on a Tuesday in late September, it was deserted. Eva found Dex sitting on a bench, his back to the sweeping views of the bay, hands shoved in his pockets. When he saw her, he stood.
“Let’s walk,” she suggested when she reached him.
Eva gripped her purse close to her side and reminded herself that Dex was just a regular person. He couldn’t read minds or peer through the side of her purse and see the voice-activated recorder she’d dropped in there before she exited her car, the red Record button illuminated. All he saw was a scared woman in front of him. That would be her advantage. It always had been.
Eva was preparing, the way others might prepare for a natural disaster, storing food and water, mapping their exit routes, packing their emergency kits. Castro would return, and Eva would cast her own net, trading the information she already knew and the information she would soon find out for a new identity. A new life in a new town. Castro could give her a backstory that didn’t include drug-addict mothers, foster homes, and expulsion. She could wipe the slate clean. But first, she’d have to walk a razor’s edge and hope she didn’t slip up.
Together, they began a lap around the park on the cement path. A tall, grassy hill rose in the center of it, blocking their view of the Berkeley Hills and marina. “So what do you have for me?” he asked.
Eva crossed her arms against the wind that whipped up off the bay and said, “Tell me the truth. Is it really over?”
“I told you, Fish took care of it.”
Eva looked at him, incredulous. “How can you possibly think that would be enough for me? They targeted me. Followed me to my house.” Her voice rose, trembling with emotion. “Don’t fucking tell me Fish took care of it and expect me to roll over.”
Long ago, when she was a girl in the group home, Eva discovered that big feelings made most people uncomfortable, and she learned how to use anger or sadness to turn up the pressure, to maneuver people into a position where their only desire was to make the emotion go away. To stop the tears. To fix the fear. To placate the anger. Dex was no different. And Eva didn’t have to reach too deep to find the fear, to make a compelling case for why she might need details to reassure her.
In the distance, two women walked toward them on the path, deep in conversation, and Eva continued. “Everywhere I go, I wonder if I’m being followed. The man in line behind me, the woman on her phone…” Eva gestured toward the two women, closer now. “Even them. How do I know they don’t work for Castro?”
Dex took her arm and pulled her closer, hissing, “Calm down, Eva. Fuck.”
They stepped to the side and let the women pass, and when they were out of earshot again, Eva said, “So tell me. What does it mean, ‘Fish took care of it’? How? Because there’s a difference between a duty officer losing some paperwork and a sergeant or lieutenant calling off a federal investigation.”
Information about how Fish’s people operated inside the department wasn’t Eva’s end goal. It would be useful, but Eva was using it to warm Dex up. To get him to start talking. Like a crack in a wall, it would grow wider with time and pressure.
Dex looked away from her, his voice low, and Eva stepped closer to him. “The woman you met in the park was freelance,” he said. “Your instincts weren’t wrong. She was an addict, trying to curry favor in exchange for a lighter sentence. Fish’s people inside the department have successfully neutralized her as a source. Because you didn’t sell her anything, and no money exchanged hands, they have nothing to go on. They’re gone.”
They’d resumed their slow stroll, shoulder to shoulder, the wind now at their backs, the green hills of Berkeley rising in the distance. Eva picked out the Campanile, the stadium, and the white shape of the Claremont Hotel, and let Dex think she was absorbing what he told her. “So what happened to her?”
“No clue,” Dex said. “Jail or rehab, probably.”
Eva turned to face him, placing a hand on his forearm. “Look, you know me. I’m not prone to hysteria. But there’s no way I’m handing over drugs out in the open like this. Not until things settle down.”
Dex’s eyes narrowed. “You have an obligation. You don’t get to set the terms.”
“I think I do,” Eva said. “I’m the one with the skills.”
Dex peered down at her, anger radiating off him. “This isn’t a fucking game. Brittany might be dealt with, but it isn’t over. Now the cleanup starts, the deconstruction of what happened. Who else was involved, what they knew, and when. You being difficult right now puts me at risk too.”
They walked in silence for a few minutes, the wind whipping and grabbing the edges of her coat, before Eva asked her next question. “What happened to the chemist Fish had before me?” Dex looked at her, surprised. “You told me he was leaving the business. But that wasn’t entirely true, was it?”