Author: Dustin Stevens
Category: Suspense
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/dustin-stevens/page,10,565390-office_visit.html
Having lived with that knowledge since the day I met Mira, I can’t help but find the cruel irony in the situation as I pull to a stop in front of Angelique’s. The fifth time easing into the same parking spot in as many days, never have I spent so much time at their home. Not even in the wake of Mira’s father passing, when we were always headed in a dozen different directions, rarely actually sitting down at the house and enjoying some time together.
Damn shame this is what it took to get me over here more.
For an instant, I consider walking up to the door, before thinking better of it. The outing is framed under the guise of going for a drink, but this isn’t a date. Right now, the Mark 23 is stowed just behind my seat, having been relocated from the trunk. My nerves are pulled taut, the still-healing wound on my arm itching slightly as blood pumps through it, a direct result of my elevated heart rate.
And that’s before I even consider trying to stand in front of Angelique and keep a straight face as I tell her I just felt like a nightcap with her son.
Or even worse, trying to lie my way around it when she inevitably asks to come.
Hitting the horn twice, I keep the lights on, shining through the open lot beside them. On the opposite side of the canyon, a pair of eyes glow beneath their glare, a pair of orange and green discs, there and gone in a flash. Most likely a coyote just starting out for the evening, off to find dinner. Or a smaller critter, intent on getting down for the night, before they end up on the receiving end of such intentions.
An animalistic scene unfolding before me I can’t help but notice the pressing symbolism in.
Beside me, the passenger door pulls open, a blast of cool air passing over my body. Not even realizing I was sweating, I can feel it picking at the moisture on my skin, an involuntary shiver passing the length of me.
Going in feet first, Hiram lowers himself into the seat, his bulk rocking the car his direction before it evens out, settling on the springs. Jerking the door shut, he reaches for the seatbelt as I pull away, the low-beams sweeping across the canyon before settling onto the unlined pavement before us.
Glancing to the rearview mirror, I can see the Martinez home growing smaller, the clear silhouette of Angelique standing with her arms folded outlined in the front window.
“She didn’t buy it,” I say. A statement, not a question, as I already know it to be true.
“Does she ever?” Hiram replies.
Glancing over, I can see his expression is much the same as mine. His mouth is pulled back into a straight line, his brow glistening with sweat.
“Where are we really headed?” he asks.
At the end of the street, I make a left, headed toward the freeway. Leaving his question to dangle, I reach into my pocket and extract the same folded piece of paper I took from Mira’s office, holding it between my index and middle fingers and extending it his way.
In my periphery, I can see him matching my glance, giving me a once-over before accepting the paper and pulling it his way. It makes a low crinkling sound as he unfolds it, holding it in both hands before him.
“648 Camino Reine, Chula Vista,” he reads aloud, not bothering to say the phone number jotted down beneath it. “What’s there?”
The truth is, I don’t know exactly. I know what isn’t there, which is the only reason I called Hiram instead of one of my friends.
“Not sure,” I reply. “This listing was in her datebook at work. Every other one had a name and case file attached to it but this one.”
Looking at it again, Hiram remains silent.
“A search on Google Earth showed it is a residential neighborhood,” I add. Glancing over, I say, “And she’s been there five times in the last three weeks.”
Hiram’s eyebrows rise slightly, this last part clearly piquing some of the same thoughts I’d had when I first saw the listings.
“And you think this has something to do with...?”
“Again, not sure,” I reply. “But like I said, she went there five times, but there still wasn’t a single identifying characteristic written down. No names, no nothing.”
Considering it for a moment, a slight sound escapes Hiram’s throat as I hit the on-ramp for the freeway pushing us back toward town. “I mean, that doesn’t necessarily mean...”
“You’re right,” I concede, “but what else could Mira have possibly done that would put her on somebody else’s radar. I’ve never known her to have any lingering enemies from earlier in life, and we haven’t been back here that long.”
This time, he chooses to remain silent, not saying a word. I understand where he might have been going with the comment, but I refuse to acknowledge it any way. There is no way my Mira was involved in anything personally. No way was she being unfaithful, and even if she was, she damned sure wouldn’t have put it in her work planner.
“Look,” I say, again casting a glance his way, “I know this is crazy. And it’s probably nothing. And there’s a decent chance we might show up and have to apologize for scaring the hell out of some little aunty that just immigrated over here. But if there is any shot in hell that what that bastard said the other night was true, there’s no way we don’t at least take a look at this.”
I can feel my pulse creeping ever higher, my voice rising in kind. The temperature control on the dash is pushed all the way to the blue, but still it is getting warmer by the moment.
I don’t care.
Nor, apparently, does Hiram.
“You’re right,” he whispers, his gaze never leaving the four lanes of the freeway before us, red taillights scattered at odd intervals to either side. Raising both hands from his thighs, he slaps them together, his fleshy palms smacking together with a loud snap of skin. “Dammit, you’re right.”
He doesn’t say which part I’m right about, and I don’t press it. Odds are, our thoughts aren’t exactly aligned, but they’re both pointed in the same direction, and that’s good enough.
“What do you need me to do?” he asks.
“You’re the local,” I reply. “You might not look like your sister, but she is your family. It will be easier for you to speak with them, get their guard down so they’ll talk to us.”
Hiram considers it a moment. His head bobs slightly in agreement. “And because we’re headed to Chula Vista and you might need someone to translate.”
For the first time in what feels like days, a faint smile appears on my face. Unable to stop myself earlier, I had pulled off at a gas station and bought a prepaid cell phone. The number was answered by a woman that sounded north of sixty and didn’t speak a word of English.
“Not true,” I reply, not bothering to fill in the rest.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The street has a few more cars lining it than the last time they were here, their previous vantage point now taken by a pickup truck with an array of construction items jutting up out of the bed at odd angles. Splashed across the side is an advertisement for plumbing and painting services, a local telephone number scrawled across the bottom.
“Plumbing and painting,” Gamer mutters, folds of skin furling and unfurling along his chin as he shakes his head. “Why the hell don’t these people just tell the truth? We’ll do whatever you want, so long as you pay us for it.”
Sitting in the passenger seat, Byrdie doesn’t bother responding. It is one of the less offensive statements Gamer has ever made on the matter, but there’s no mistaking the intent underlying it.
The man doesn’t like Mexicans, or immigrants in general. If it was up to him, the border would have a twenty-foot concrete wall the entire length of it. Same with the northern one abutting Canada. And if it was even possible, ditto for the east and west coasts.
Maintaining his silence, Byrdie looks on to see many of the holes along the street have been filled in. People have returned home from work or school, the neighborhood fast resembling a million others like it across the country. Cars parked out front, the smell of supper still lingering in the air, feet propped up
as they watch television in the living room.
That very thing can be seen through the majority of front windows, the faint glows of oversized screens visible from the street. Watching them slide by, Byrdie inventories everything for the second time of the day, filing away which homes are still up and active, which front yards have dogs roaming about. Every piece of information he fits into order in his mind, the plan he is working on coming together one small bit at a time.
Which is the way things like this are supposed to work. Such attention to detail is no doubt why Ringer asked him to be in charge, was likely why Linc had allowed something to go wrong in the first place.
People were in a hurry these days. They focused on the big chunks, on the things that could be gobbled up the fastest, without paying attention to the tiny morsels that dictated success or failure.
It was a maxim that had pushed him as far as he was now. A belief system that would allow him to eventually outlast Ringer and take his place at the top of the club.
“There?” Gamer asks. With his wrist draped over the wheel, he extends one thick digit toward a gap on the opposite side of the street, the opening just barely big enough for the car they’re sitting in.
“No,” Byrdie replies. He doesn’t bother to elaborate. Gamer has proven himself a sensitive sort over the years, and pointing out all the problems with the spot would only hurt his feelings.
Things like the damned spot is facing the wrong way, meaning they would have to turn around, their lights and movement drawing attention. And once they were back in the right position, parallel parking would be tricky. And after all that, people would probably notice when nobody emerged from the car, two men in black vests merely sitting inside and waiting.
To say nothing of the fact that there would be no quick escape from a parking stall with barely six inches of room on either end.
“There,” Byrdie says, using his chin to motion toward the end of the street.
“What about the hydrant?” Gamer asks.
Again, Byrdie doesn’t bother responding. Sitting in front of a fire hydrant isn’t a concern, not tonight. They won’t be around long enough for anybody to notice, and the spot on the corner will make for an easy escape, disappearing into the maze of streets clustered around Camino Reine.
Being on the same side of the street as their target makes things even easier, allowing them to slip out and head straight down the sidewalk. Without having to cross the street, they can avoid the overhead lights, making them almost invisible.
“Alright,” Gamer sighs, pushing the car to the side. Pulling out into the intersection, he reverses into the spot, easing them back along the curb and cutting the lights.
With his head cocked toward the window, Byrdie remains motionless. He checks the house on the corner, the two-story sitting dark and silent, the fronds of the fan palm out front rocking slightly with the breeze.
No signs of the dogs next door, perhaps inside for the night. Still no indication one lives inside the fence of the home they are watching.
“Kill the engine,” he says.
From the driver’s seat comes exactly the amount of huff he was expecting, a loud sigh the first sound heard. “You sure? It’s going to get hot as hell in here.”
“Kill the engine.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
There is only one spot available on Camino Reine as we pull in. Facing the wrong direction, I ease past it and turn into the neighboring driveway, pulling in no more than a half-dozen feet before reversing course and heading back out. Just that small intrusion serves as enough to set the property watchdog into a conniption, his shrill bark echoing out as I nudge the back end into the street and pull forward.
“Nice neighborhood,” Hiram comments as we ease forward to the parking spot. “Reminds me of where we used to live.”
Mira’s love for the home in La Mesa was never questioned. She spoke of it glowingly, the way someone from the south might remember the family farm or how a Kennedy might speak of Kennebunkport. Rarely did she mention the previous stops along the way, using them only as footnotes along the journey her parents had made from immigration to middle class in record time.
“Yeah?” I ask, easing past the opening and reversing in.
“Yep,” Hiram replies. “Not that far from here, either.”
This time, I choose not to respond as I bring the front end of the car into the parking spot. With only a few inches on either bumper to spare, I don’t bother trying to straighten up any further, knowing we’ll likely be the first ones out anyway.
I turn the ignition off and pull the keys, glancing to the paper between us one last time, checking the numbers again to make sure they haven’t changed, before moving my gaze to the house sitting two doors up on the opposite side of the street.
“You ready?” I ask.
“I am,” Hiram replies, both of us exiting and stepping out into the cooling night air at the same time. In our wake, the small dog we had offended just moments before continues to bawl his head off, letting it be known that our intrusion is not appreciated.
A sentiment I agree with entirely. Who resides at this home, what their interaction with my wife has been, how any of this could have led to her demise, are all questions I would sooner not be dealing with.
But right now, they are all questions I need the answers to.
Moving diagonally across the street, we pass beneath the filmy glow of an overhead light. On either side, some variation of the same structure is smashed tight into narrow lots, two-story places with front porches or concrete stoops. A handful of ragged palm trees dot the front yards, most little more than dust patches.
Strewn across many are overturned bicycles and children’s toys, all left exactly where they were last touched, ready to be taken up again the next day.
With each step, the previous apprehension I felt begins to fade. My heart rate levels out, my breathing receding. My body falls into a preconditioned state, years of training and muscle memory taking over. All that remains is the heightened sense of awareness I’m under, my eyes flicking over our surroundings, my ears attuned to every sound.
Threading our way between a pair of older model sedans parked on the curb, we make our way to the sidewalk. Checking the house numbers displayed beside each door, we pass a lime green place with a front porch and a pale blue one of a matching style before coming up on our destination.
The place is a two-story, just like most of those spread in either direction, the entire street appearing to have been part of some sort of planned community. Instead of a front porch, it has three short steps leading up to a concrete landing. On either end sits a pair of pumpkins. Above the door, a single bulb throws a cone of yellow light straight down.
Painted light red, the place has white shutters and tufts of grass spread haphazardly beneath a large palm spread. A chain-link fence encircles the plot, a simple gate at the end of a concrete path separating it from the sidewalk.
Reaching it first, I don’t bother to pause. I have no need to take a deep breath, to collect my thoughts. Like so many missions I’ve been on before, this place is a destination, somewhere with information I need.
Reaching out, I flip the latch open and push the gate inward. Using the same hand, I motion for Hiram to enter before following him up the sidewalk.
Faintly in the distance I can hear the sound of the radio playing, an upbeat tune with someone singing in Spanish.
“Good call bringing me here,” Hiram whispers just before he reaches the steps and begins to ascend.
Remaining silent, I follow him up, standing just to the side, making sure I’m in plain sight and appear in no way menacing. Keeping my hands empty and hanging free by my side, I watch as he reaches out and presses the doorbell, the sound of it ringing within echoing out.
Stepping back, he clasps his hands before him, both of us standing quiet, listening.
For a moment, there is no response. There is nothing but the continued playing of the rad
io. After nearly ten seconds, there is a small shift in the house, a floorboard creaking under pressure. An instant later, there is another. Soon, the pattern of footsteps approaching grows clearer, culminating with the inner door swinging open.
The light from within the house is almost blinding, my eyes pinching up tight against it. Not until my pupils dilate am I able to focus, looking through the screened upper portion of the outer door.
Standing behind it is a diminutive woman that – if she is the woman I spoke to earlier – looks to be even older than I originally suspected. Barely standing above the bottom edge of the screen, she has white hair in tight curls around her head, the color a stark contrast to her lined tan skin.
Wrapped in a robe, she clutches either side of it tight, pulling it closed over her chest. “Hafa adai?”
“Buenas noches señorita,” Hiram responds without missing a beat. “Mi nombre es Hiram y este hombre es Kyle.”
The woman’s eyes are large and round, fearful, as she looks from Hiram to me. “Hafa?”
After just a few short words, something clicks into place for me. Memories from a different time align, the phrases falling into place as my lips part slightly in understanding. I had made a mistake. When I called earlier, I had heard that she didn’t speak a word of English, but I hadn’t paid close enough attention to what she was actually saying.
“Lamentamos molestarte...” Hiram begins again, making it just a few short words before I extend a hand, stopping him cold. His brows coming together, he looks my way, falling silent.
“She isn’t speaking Spanish,” I whisper.
It takes a minute for the words to penetrate, for Hiram to actually hear and process what I said. His features twist up slightly with confusion as he says, “What?”
“It’s Chamorran. The language they speak in Guam.”
“Guam?” Hiram asks, his voice raised slightly. “What’s she saying?”
I don’t know the exact words she is using, but I can read the body language enough to know the woman has no idea what Hiram is saying or why we’re standing on her front stoop. Looking her way, I lean forward at the waist, raising my voice slightly. “Mira Clady.”