2:21 A.M.
Brendan
The fingers on Brendan’s hand twitch when he dreams of guns.
One gun in particular: the Smith & Wesson 380 Bodyguard. There are loads of bigger ones, but Brendan suspects that big handguns are a sign of insecurity. (As in, big gun, small dick—something he’d never say to Sir, whose weapon of choice is a monster Glock 40.) And anyway, the Bodyguard speaks to Brendan. The way it looks, with the ruggedness of a revolver folded into the sleekness of an automatic. And a laser sight, which is just plain slick.
More than looks, he loves how it feels. The very first time he held it, the Bodyguard’s twelve ounces of polymer and steel nestled into his palm like a puppy’s head. Its sights seemed precisely engineered for his eyes alone, for the exact length of his arm, the trigger waiting for the touch of his finger to send the rounds, powpowpow—dead center into the man’s outline at the far end of the range. Perfect as dropping one in from the three-point line.
But now the dream is turning, as Brendan’s dreams so often do. The weapon in his hand shifts, all on its own. The laser dot jerks away from the paper silhouette to track along the wall, forcing his elbow out, fighting his wrist into an impossible angle. The red spark travels across the other people in the gun range, people with no right to be there—Principal McDonald, Mina Santos, Jock. All of them oblivious to the danger. And still the sharp red light crawls, to the floor, up Brendan’s body, touching his neck, his face.
Until he is looking straight at the Bodyguard’s perfect mouth (knowing that there is one round still in the chamber). The red dazzles his eye. In the dream, his forefinger twitches—
And Brendan jerks upright in the sweaty sheets, throat raw with the fading cry.
2:23 A.M.
Thomas
Tom Atcheson looked up at the ceiling. Brendan?
He should have gone in and dragged the boy out of bed when he went to check on him two hours ago. Control was a tenuous thing, whether with a company in turmoil or a rebellious son. At least the boy was set for the academy next September: a real school would straighten him out.
Depending on others to solve the problem wasn’t a sign of weakness or cowardice. Was it?
No: a man had to prioritize. He’d been right to shut the door and walk away.
This time.
True control—with work, with family—sometimes required an appearance of weakness. Vulnerability could be the leaves covering a trap.
Tom picked up his pen again.
He wasn’t entirely happy with his plan for the 9:00 a.m. board meeting, but he had to admit there wasn’t much more he could do about it now—other than fire the entire board, of course, which according to his useless lawyers he was no longer in a position to do. And no way would he be maneuvered into surrender! What, turn over his business—to say nothing of that gorgeous campus he’d put his heart and soul into building—and take “early retirement”? He’d rather shoot himself.
Sleep might help, but he could tell that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he turned to his notes for the talk at Brendan’s school. “Career Day.” What an exercise in futility! Urging ill-trained children to become entrepreneurs was like telling finger-painters to aim for the Sistine Chapel: those with drive required no encouragement.
But the boy’s principal had asked, and when Thomas Atcheson made a commitment, he kept it, no matter how pressed his day had become or how pointless the exercise might be.
Advice for young people? Obviously he had advice—for people of any age.
Don’t trust your partners.
Don’t marry a harpy with lawyers in her family.
Don’t have a son who fights you at every turn.
And never, ever let people screw you into a corner.
2:45 A.M.
Chaco
Chaco put his head around the dark corner of A Wing, filled with…what was the word? Foreboding. Yeah, so the janitor made him nervous. Gave Chaco misgivings.
Scared the shit out of him.
Far as Chaco knew, Tío wasn’t nobody’s uncle, wasn’t even from Mexico like everybody Chaco knew. Sure, he talked Spanish, but his accent was, like, exotic—from somewhere else. Nicaragua, maybe? El Salvador? Tío was just the limpiador, walking up and down in his dirt-colored uniform and cleaning the floors. Big thrill for the old guy was the day he got to shut off the water in the girls’ baño, stop it running all over the floor. Real hero, man.
Maybe the reason Tío made him nervous was ’cause the dude was so pinche quiet. Tío talked quiet, he didn’t turn on a radio the minute the bell rang—even his cart with all the mops and brooms, the same one the last janitor used, didn’t rattle and squeak so much. And, like, the other day when one of the substitutes shouted some question down the breezeway at him? Tío didn’t just shout back an answer. Instead, he put away his broom and walked over, all polite, to see what the guy wanted.
Funny thing was, the teacher looked a little…Not embarrassed. More like he thought maybe Tío coming at him so quiet (like Angel) meant the old guy had a knife. Edgy, maybe? Wanting to edge away?
Anyway, yeah, Chaco felt a little edgy tonight himself, crouching in back of A Wing, away from the all-night floods, a can of spray paint in his hand. He really, really didn’t want to turn around and find Tío there, looking at him.
Which was stupid. Or—what was that word he’d found the other day?—ludicrous. (Chaco had a private collection of perfect words—words he’d never, ever use out loud.) Tío didn’t spend the night at school, and no way could he just guess who’d done a tag. Chaco knew all about crime labs and forensic science and stuff, so he was wearing a set of his uncle’s overalls he’d fished out of the trash, and his most beat-up pair of shoes, and he’d dump it all on his way home. He’d take a shower in the morning so he didn’t smell like paint. How would Tío know?
Besides, there wasn’t really much choice. He was almost thirteen—and he was family to Taco Alvarez.
So now, at near to three in the morning, Chaco the Tagger crept down the A Wing breezeway, the old rubber on his shoes making a kissing sound against the smooth concrete. Nothing moved, no cars went by. Under the main breezeway, into the entrance arch—and there it was, all shiny and new-looking, hundreds of little chips and tiles with pictures of school things and people on them. He hesitated, just a little, ’cause really, it was kind of dope. Intricate, like. And a man didn’t tag someone else’s art unless it was enemy action. But this was a school, and in the end he had to prove himself to Taco (and Angel) and yeah, to Sofia Rivas. Though she’d probably just give him one of her looks, all arrogant, or maybe condescending.
Chaco’s arm went up to shake the can, making the little ball inside ting back and forth five, six times. He chose his spot with care, right there on the face of the school secretary for his first letter, and—
And as if the pressure of his finger had triggered a lot more than paint, the universe exploded into a blinding glare of flood-light, outlining every tile, giving texture to the grout, showing the cheerful expressions on a crowd of pieced-together figures.
The can bounced and skittered across the walkway as Chaco fled into the night.
5:17 A.M.
Gordon
Gordon ran beneath the waning moon, fighting the need to circle the park.
The fight lay not in the running, but the circling back—although granted, three and a half years ago when he’d first made this circuit, he thought his lungs would explode. He’d been old, then: washed-up, worn-out, ready for the knacker’s gun. Not put out to pasture, though. Men like Gordon Hugh-Kendrick were not generally granted a placid retirement. Men like him ran until they were brought down.
To his astonishment, it turned out he’d merely been tired: bloody tired and older than his years, so wretched he’d made one last mad, whimsical, despairing lunge for shelter—only to hit pure gold. Instead of a farewell tour, he’d found haven, and comfort, and a degree of purpose. The affection of a good woman.
; Forty-four months later, Gordon was…if not at the top of his form, certainly better than he could have dreamed. And surely the low cunning of age counted for more than the dumb muscle-mass of youth?
Which would be fine (he reflected, dodging a fallen crate on the road) but for two problems. One was specific: he’d got sloppy, back in September, and let his name appear where it should not. He couldn’t even blame Linda, not entirely. Despite thirty years of rigid habit, he’d failed to check a list he knew was headed for the police department. And though five months on, he seemed to have dodged that particular bullet, he couldn’t risk a second mistake.
The other problem was more general. With a fit body and faint return of optimism had come restlessness. The familiar itch of being in one place for too long; the inborn need for challenge—his kind of challenge, which was thin on the ground in a sleepy farm community of California’s Central Coast. Hence the hard joy of running a little too fast through a hazard-strewn dark, and the temptation to keep going.
But not today.
He’d been honest with Linda from the beginning—well, more honest than he’d been with anyone for many a year. And not only had she lived up to his terms (apart from that one slip), she’d only just begun to sleep through the night again, fifteen weeks after the disappearance of Bee Cuomo. Gordon would cut his own throat before letting her down. Not forever—maybe not even for much longer—but today? Today was important to her.
So this morning he would circle the park and turn back. He would polish his shoes, shave his face, and don the appearance of an ordinary man, to spend the day walking amongst the unsuspecting.
5:34 A.M.
Olivia
The early morning air had just taken on the oddly rich smell of celery when the figure dashed across the road at the limits of Olivia’s headlights. Her hand snapped out to trigger the cruiser’s lights and siren—then her front-brain caught up, canceling the cop’s chase-impulse. No pre-dawn burglar, this, but the same gray-haired Englishman in khaki shorts she saw pretty much every time she was out this early. Linda’s husband, Gordon…something. Not McDonald. Olivia had met the man a handful of times, but she’d seen him all over: Safeway, the library, coming out of a martial arts dojo, mowing his front lawn. Once, weirdly enough, up at the homeless encampment near the levee, squatting beneath the drifting smoke of their illegal cook-fire like some gung-ho anthropologist with a primitive tribe.
So what’s your story, Gordon-not-McDonald?
Back in September, she’d had the excuse to run a background check on him—a legitimate excuse, since his name was right there on Linda’s list of volunteers. His hyphenated name…ah: Hugh-Kendrick, that was it, although he went by just Kendrick. Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, and could you get any more English than that?
He and Linda made for an unlikely couple—the twenty-odd-year difference in their ages; his thin/gray/British and her round/blond/Midwest—but they fit like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. (Even if Olivia suspected that Gordon’s piece belonged to an entirely different picture.)
Still, everyone was entitled to their privacy, and although Gordon Hugh-Kendrick might rouse Olivia’s nosiness (honestly, was there anything that didn’t?), his record was clean as can be, and as a cop she had no right to pry further. Even if she’d wondered, back in September, just what a wider background search might reveal. Wider as in, international. And then in October when the Department was turning the city inside-out for some clue about what could have happened to Bee Cuomo, she’d nearly given in to the urge…
Until she’d looked at what Bee’s disappearance was doing to his wife, and thus to the man himself, and knew that Gordon Hugh-Kendrick had nothing to do with it. And if he didn’t, then running a background check bore a big red stamp of NOT YOUR BUSINESS.
Because even if she wasn’t caught doing a personal search and fired—or best case, officially reprimanded—whatever she learned from it would stand between her and Linda, forever and ever. And Linda McDonald, embattled principal of a perpetually sinking ship, was on her way to becoming a friend—a rare enough thing for a cop to have.
So: no snooping beyond that of any normally inquisitive civilian.
Although perhaps she’d get a chance for one of those normally inquisitive conversations later today. Linda had said Gordon would be there for Career Day, and Olivia was scheduled to be one of the speakers: The Joys of Being a Cop. Unless she’d been buried under an avalanche of paperwork, or summoned to an urgent felony, or (God forbid) dragged back to the Taco Alvarez trial.
She’d already wasted a full day listening to the two lawyers squabble over her right to testify against a man she’d been arresting since he was fourteen. And then yesterday…that gesture Taco made. Should she tell the judge? No one else noticed. Taco’s attorney would claim she was trying to sway the jury. But there it was, a message from Mr. Taco Alvarez: the hand on the table shaping a gun, thumb coming down like the hammer.
Threat, pure and clear.
If her boss were around, Olivia would ask his advice, but the Chief was back East, leaving Olivia Mendez to wear not only her usual two hats—uniformed Sergeant and plainclothes Detective—but also that of Acting Chief.
Didn’t matter. Plenty of time. Taco Alvarez wasn’t going anywhere.
The celery aroma faded, replaced by the vinegary smell from the apple-juice plant, and Olivia slowed to take the pulse of San Felipe. The Kwik Mart was doing its usual early morning business, men in suits ordering pricey coffee drinks for the pleasure of an insult from its tattooed barista. (And talk about stories: that pierced and well-muscled ex–gang member was married to a nerdly accountant, with two little girls she dressed in pink.) Olivia braked for a glance down the adjoining alley (a place she knew a little too well, for a girl who grew up to be a cop) but that light the city got the owner to install remained unbroken, and the space was empty.
She crossed Main Street at the signal, looping around for a survey of the industrial area near the tracks. All quiet here, the air smelling of fresh sawdust from the lumberyard. The sandwich place hadn’t fixed their dangling sign yet, and Olivia made a mental note to have one of the men go by with a deadline. A glance down the street beside the lumberyard—and her foot stamped on the brake, her hand slapping the cruiser’s gearshift into Reverse.
But it was only Señora Rodriguez, self-proclaimed community activist and widely-recognized pain in the ass. One of the Señora’s designated Causes must live down here. Olivia put the cruiser back in Drive, and continued on.
It being February, spring planting was just starting up, and work was slack at the cannery. The guy who ran her favorite burrito truck hadn’t got back from Mexico City yet, and the paleta man—the old guy who went everywhere, saw everything, and who she suspected of sending a couple anonymous tips that led to arrests—wouldn’t sell much ice cream until later in the year.
But wait: old Tío had a real job now, janitor at—yes, Guadalupe, the school that had so dominated Olivia’s life this year. She wondered if he’d show up here in June, selling the kids frozen goodies from his push-cart, or if that shifty fellow with the blaring ice-cream truck would move into Tío’s territory.
She waved to the manager of the sprinkler supply and turned up Main Street. Past the burnt-toast smell from the coffee roaster and the sad windows of the Goodwill and the line forming outside the church’s soup kitchen. She doubled back around the anonymous Women’s Shelter, went by the second-hand furniture shop, the barber, the theater—then again, up at the limits of the cruiser’s headlights, a lean figure in khaki shorts flashed across the street.
For an old guy, Linda’s husband sure could run.
5:45 A.M.
Linda
Linda’s clock was so old-fashioned, it gave a little wheeze before its alarm went off. As usual, she hit the button before the ring started—although this morning she was nowhere near sleep when it wheezed. She had managed a few hours of unconsciousness after Gordon’s soothing, but when he got up for his run, the w
hirring of her mind (which, equally old-fashioned, seemed to have gears instead of silicon chips) started up again.
Career Day? What was she thinking? Just a year ago, her life had been so easy! Sure, the elementary school had its problems, but at least she had an experienced staff, community support, and children that memory tinted as sweetly innocent.
And then the city’s Busybody-in-Chief, Señora Rodriguez, had walked through the principal’s door and pronounced the words Guadalupe Middle School, causing Linda to cower behind her desk. As if wood or metal or anything short of a loaded gun might be an effective defense against Señora Rodriguez.
Guadalupe was the Señora’s most recent Good Cause, a school in desperate need of…everything, really, but beginning with a principal. Seven hundred and twelve students, ages eleven to fourteen. Half child, half adult, all hormones and passion—an age group Linda found problematic as individuals and a nightmare en masse. Even the best of middle schools were cages for the dangerously adolescent. And the bad ones, those that suffered an indifferent staff, poor choices, and school board neglect?
Schools like Guadalupe had been—even before this past grim year?
Better to bulldoze it and turn it into apple orchard.
But no one Linda knew had ever managed to put off Señora Rodriguez when she had the bit in her teeth. So Linda had sighed, and let the woman drag her off to a school with a history of bad grades, truancy, and fistfights, a school with an alarming turnover of newly-fledged teachers, a school whose buildings were a mix of the run-down (library, cafeteria, most of the classrooms) and the ridiculously elaborate (the gym). A school splintered into gangs and cliques, whose corridors would be filled with the hunched shoulders of the beaten, most of whose teachers would have prescriptions for mood suppressants. A school that drove its last principal to suicide.