“What’s the word, partner?”
“I’m not your partner.”
“Okay, whatever. Are you going to tell me what that was about?”
Roselita drove another quarter mile before she answered.
“They found Blackwell’s dealer.”
“Dealer?” The term didn’t register at first.
“The dealer,” Roselita repeated. “Arnold Blackwell’s partner. He was a midlevel pot dealer named Bobby Turo. C’mon, Dane, he’s the guy you told us to find. Well, they found him.” She sounded almost defensive before adding, “I should’ve been the one to find him instead of being out here with you.”
“Why? That’s great. Did they get anything out of him? Did they find anything that might lead us to William? Wait, you said he was a midlevel pot dealer?”
“Right. He’s dead—along with seven other people, including a woman.”
“What?”
“Those bastards who did Arnold got to them first—killed everyone in the room including a young woman named Bernadette Sellers. The house?” Agent Velasquez wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “Less than ten miles from Arnold’s rattrap apartment. We were right there.”
“Well, shit.” Dane rubbed at his knee. “Hold on, Rose. We got our people there as fast as we could. It isn’t our fault.”
“No, it’s not our fault. It’s my fault. You gave me the lead. I should’ve acted on it right then, instead of—” Roselita pounded her fist against the steering wheel. “Goddamnit.”
“Take it easy. It’s not your fault. How do they even know if the two scenes are related?”
“They’re related. August was right, but I didn’t want to listen. Geoff said the house was attacked by the same two bastards that killed Blackwell.”
“Geoff?”
“Yeah, Geoff—Dahmer. Remember? My partner.”
“He’s the one who tracked her down?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he go alone?”
Roselita didn’t care for Dane’s tone. “I’m sure he didn’t. That’s not the way we do things, Kirby, but I should’ve been there instead of here. I could’ve—”
“You couldn’t have done anything.” Dane checked his own phone for any missed messages from August. There was nothing. “What else did he say?”
“Only that it had to be related.”
“How does he know that?”
“The woman,” he said. “She fought back. She killed one of them.”
“And what makes Dahmer so sure it’s one of the same assholes who killed Blackwell?”
Roselita reached over and popped the glove box. She pulled out an ancient-looking soft pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights with a BIC lighter tucked into the outside cellophane. Dane hadn’t seen Roselita smoke before, and by the way she threw a fit half an hour back about Dane tossing his empty Waffle House cup onto the floorboard of her pristinely kept car, he was surprised to see her light up to smoke in it.
“Because the man she took down was Asian and they’ve got a positive ID from the Cuban kid at the motel. Long Duk Dong. It’s the same guy.”
Dane leaned back in his seat and massaged at his knee a little more. It was cramped inside the small sports coupe. Roselita took a long, deep pull from the Marlboro and tipped the ash out the window.
“They only found one?”
“Are you fucking deaf, Kirby? I said he told me the woman only shot one of them. Seven found dead, but only one murdering piece of shit. Goddamnit. I’m always repeating myself with you.” The sudden anger surprised Dane nearly as much as the smoking, but he let it go. Roselita was clearly rattled about something more than she was letting on.
“Did they find the money?”
“No.”
“Did he mention any sign of the kid being there?”
“He didn’t say anything about the kid, Kirby. If there were any signs of the kid, don’t you think I would’ve told you?”
That was enough. Dane turned in his seat. “Okay, what the hell is your problem, Velasquez? I’m only asking you questions anyone on this case would ask. What’s with all the attitude?”
Roselita tossed the hot-boxed cigarette out the window. She held the steering wheel steady with her knee and immediately began to light another. Her hands were shaking. She pulled in another deep chestful of smoke and coughed it out. She wasn’t a smoker, not anymore anyway, but that phone call had been enough to push her off the wagon. When the hacking fit settled, she held the pack out to Dane.
“No, thanks. Eight years quit. Those things will kill you.”
Roselita tucked the pack into the glove box and took it easy on the second cigarette, not attacking it as she had the first. Dane stared at the glove box and debated the cigarette. It wasn’t like it mattered now anyway, but he decided against it. Roselita tossed her second butt out the window. She was staring out at the road, but she was looking at something else as well, something that wasn’t there. She was squeezing the steering wheel harder than she should’ve been, too. Dane had watched this woman stroll through Arnold Blackwell’s guts the day prior without a second thought, but a phone call about a bunch of dead bodies shook her up this bad? It didn’t make sense. “What aren’t you telling me, Rose?”
“Stop calling me Rose.”
“Goddamnit, Velasquez. For once, try not to be an asshole and just tell me what else is going on with you.”
It took another few minutes of rolling blacktop before Roselita pulled the Infiniti into the parking lot of the McFalls County sheriff’s office. She cut the engine, but she didn’t open the door or try to get out. She just sat there, gripping the wheel, staring through the windshield at whatever that call had put inside her head. Dane sat there, too—still hoping for an answer.
Roselita let go of the wheel. She let go of the image in her mind, apparently, too, and dropped her eyes to look at the building in front of her. She focused on the bronze star mounted to the wall by the front door of the sheriff’s office. “There were eight people killed at that woman’s house.”
“I thought you said there were seven.”
Roselita took her hands off the wheel and dropped them to her lap. “The Sellers woman.”
“What about her?”
“The forensics team found a test kit in the bathroom. They also did a blood test. She was—she—”
Dane understood immediately. “She was pregnant.”
“Yes, the test was positive.”
“Jesus.”
“And the way she died. Gunshot to the belly.”
Dane felt a knot form in his own gut and stared at Roselita, who sat looking down at shaking hands. She repeated herself as if Dane hadn’t heard her.
“A gunshot to the belly.”
Dane could feel his palms getting sweaty. He needed to focus. Now was not the time for another episode. He turned and stared at Roselita. Dane figured Roselita to be in her late twenties. Most of these agents were really just kids. They tried to be hard. The Bureau teaches them to be hard—to push their humanity down deep into a place no one can see it in order to do their job. That had always been bullshit in Dane’s opinion. He had experienced loss. He’d seen the worst kind of ugliness up close. He lived with a thing in his guts worse than guilt—worse than anything most people could ever even imagine—but he’d also allowed himself to feel every bit of it. Sometimes he needed to feel it. He thought that of all people. Pain needs to be processed or it will eat you alive from the inside out. He was lucky. He always had people who cared about him around to help get him through it. He’d had Ned. He had Misty. Folks like Roselita had been taught not to show any of that emotion. It was considered a sign of weakness. Double down on that for a woman. Dane had enough years behind him and not nearly enough ambition in front of him to know all that bravado shit could, and eventually would, do more harm than good.