I kept drinking.
“Don’t confuse what he looks like with what he is, Noah. You’re not him.”
I’d said as much to Simington through the window, but that had been more of a defense mechanism than true belief. It was hard for me to separate the two.
“I’ve killed people,” I said.
She pulled her legs in and sat up in the chair. “You think that makes you like him?”
“I think it means we share some of the same … abilities.”
“No one has ever hired you to kill anyone. And if they tried, you wouldn’t do it.”
I shrugged, watching the lights bounce off the water.
“You were on the
I wasn’t so sure about that. It seemed trivial to distinguish between right and wrong when a life ended because of something I’d done. I wondered if there had been underlying reasons for the things I had participated in. Had I been more of a willing participant than I’d realized? Maybe sought out those situations to enact some sort of latent feelings I had? I’d killed when I thought my life was in danger, but now I was second guessing whether killing had really been necessary.
“Simington killed for a paycheck,” Liz said. “I did some checking this afternoon. He was a brutally cold killer. Putting a bullet in the back of a head is a barbaric way to take a life. He’s done it. You haven’t. And he did it for no other reason than someone paid him to. He wasn’t making a moral choice. He was doing his job.”
I appreciated her belief in me, and while it didn’t satisfy me, I didn’t want to spend the evening dissecting my screwed-up psyche.
I reached over and held her hand. “Anything interesting in what you found on him?”
She hesitated. “You sure you wanna hear it?” “No. But tell me anyway.”
“What Darcy told you was basically true,” she said. “The arrest reports made him as a hired gun. He drove these two guys out in the desert and took ‘em out. The two vics had just crossed over a few days earlier.”
“Was Simington a coyote? Bringing them over the border?”
She nodded. “At one time, it looks like. But a lot of that was guesswork because Simington wouldn’t give up any names.”
That didn’t surprise me. The stoicism and calm I’d seen in him at the prison weren’t fake. He seemed at ease with where he’d ended up, with no need to take anyone else with him.
“He was also in debt,” Liz said.
“Surprise.”
“Huge debt, though,” she said. “Half a million.” “Wow.”
“Appears he had a nasty gambling habit.” “Darcy mentioned he worked in some casinos.” “Yes, he did. And I did find one interesting consistency.”
“What’s that?”
“All three casinos that employed him are owned by a guy named Benjamin Moffitt. He owns Bareva out in Lakeside and a bunch of others.”
“Any mention of a Landon Keene?” I asked. “Nope.”
I felt her fingers fold into mine, and we lapsed into silence again. The black water rippled in the distance, warped images of the skyline floating on top of the bay.
I didn’t know what Liz was thinking about. But I knew where my thoughts were.
Benjamin Moffitt would be my starting point.
NINETEEN
I slept restlessly, images of Darcy Gill and Russell Simington clogging my mind for the better part of the night. I was out of bed early and did four hard miles next to the water, trying to clear my head and develop a plan. I knew I had to make one phone call to get the ball rolling, and it was the thing I was least looking forward to doing.
I was back at Liz’s, sweating and tired, when I sat down on the front steps and dialed Carter on my cell. He answered with a grunt. “It’s early, I know,” I said.
“Then why the fuck are you making my phone ring?” “Because we’ve got things to do.”
“We?”
I was hoping he still thought of us as a
“Yeah. You interested?”
The line hummed for a moment. Then he said, “What are we doing?”
“Feel like gambling?”
“Vegas?”
“No. Lakeside.”
