A month ago. That would have been around the time Noah had mentioned to the comics-store owner Dana Gills that he was worried about payback. That he was scared.
“What did you tell her?” I asked.
“The unfortunate truth. A restraining order won’t help if someone really wants to get to you.”
“Just tell me one more thing,” I said. “Did the women ever use another name for this diablo? A real name?”
“Not that they ever told me. They just called him the devil incarnate.”
“I suspect, Mr. Yeager, they were closer to the truth than you and I can know.”
After we hung up, I pulled out another cigarette and smoked while I ran through scenarios. I imagined Ami fleeing Craze after the police told her they couldn’t do anything to stop him. Erica and Lupita would have joined her. The three of them buried themselves deep inside Denver, far away from el diablo.
And for a time, things were okay. Or somewhat okay. Ami nursed her sick father until his death. Erica and Lupita got busy building new lives. All three women found jobs with Top-A.
Then things started to go off the rails.
It was impossible to know which came first—Top-A Cleaning or the Superior Gentlemen. But either way, Kurt got his friends—Noah, Riley, and Markey—to sign up for cleaning services with Top-A. I recalled Erica’s anger at privileged white men, her hint that she had been sexually harassed. Maybe, as the pickup artists slid into something darker, became Forced Celibates, they decided that targeting undocumented workers who couldn’t risk going to the police was a safe way to gain access to sex.
Except Noah didn’t become a Forced Celibate. Instead, he fell in love with Ami. Grew a conscience. Wanted to get out of the group.
Sometime during all this, Craze showed up.
Craze, furious with Ami’s defiance, had traveled to Denver to find her. The city was a place he knew well—he’d raped here before. Maybe he met the Superior Gentlemen through Noah and his work with the gutter punks—Yaeger had said that el diablo rode the trains.
If so, for Craze, meeting Noah and finding the Superior Gentlemen must have felt like destiny.
He took over the Superior Gentlemen. A serial rapist, he was a lit match to the fuel of the Forced Celibates—formerly isolated loners finding each other in a perfect storm of rage and entitlement.
Noah and Ami fought back. They knew the risk they were taking. It was why Ami had asked about a restraining order. Why Noah had confided to Dana Gills that he was worried about payback.
But they were superheroes. Ami was the Protector. They thought they could win. Against Craze. Against the Superior Gentlemen and their abuse of women.
Only they didn’t win. Noah was killed. And Ami was God knew where.
Placing Noah’s body on a ColdShip car hadn’t been a quirk of fate or a coincidence. Craze had been sending the women a message only they would understand. You can run. Run as fast and as far as you like. But you ColdShip bitches can’t hide. Not from me.
For I am the man who walks through walls. The man who can fly.
I am el diablo.
Another thought struck. What if the final remaining coincidence—the reefer door being jammed open—wasn’t? Damn Fox, I thought. And Street Cred. They could have slipped into the yard at ColdShip and wedged in the pipe. Or paid one of the workers to leave it in place.
No wonder the gutter punks wouldn’t talk. They weren’t just witnesses. They were accomplices.
I shook myself. After Noah, the men went after Donovan. Because Donovan had mattered to Markey’s father in ways Markey couldn’t. Donovan was a Chad. Charming, athletic, easy with women. He was everything Markey wanted to be.
I could not guess at the relationship between Markey and Craze. Not who had led whom into murder. Nor if their reasons for committing murder even aligned. Maybe Markey had an agenda to avenge his wrongs, while Craze simply wanted to destroy. All I knew was what we’d learned from Evan’s analysis of their handwriting. That, at its simplest, one of them was insane. And the other was evil.
As for Riley and Kurt—perhaps they were part of the murders. Part of the plan to kill many more. But I suspected that Kurt, at least, had panicked and gone into hiding when Craze and Markey turned murderous. Maybe Riley, too, had fled.
I found my hand on the butt of my gun. “Who the fuck are you, Craze?”
Behind me, the lights of the Denver Medical Examiner’s office shone like a brilliant oasis in this pasture-and-warehouse area of Denver. In the distance, a motorcycle revved its engine. An owl hooted in the field across the way. As I stared into the darkness, Kaylee’s words swam into my mind.
He tilted his head to one side like he was studying me. Like I wasn’t, you know, human. I thought he’d hurt me.
And in a flash, I had it. The man who’d approached me in the grocery-store parking lot. Who’d asked me out for a drink while he studied me, his head tilted in a way that had seemed menacing for reasons I couldn’t then articulate. But hearing Kaylee, I understood.
He was studying me like I wasn’t human.
I scanned the street—still empty—then ran across to the Tahoe. Inside, I locked the doors and scrabbled through the photos and drawings from Noah’s house until I found his sketch of the yellow-eyed man by the train. And the photo of Craze with the Superior Gentlemen.
They were the same man.
The same man who’d approached me in the parking lot. I’d rejected him. And he had been following me ever since.
Because what these men hated more than anything else was rejection.
Time to get back to the autopsy. To the safety of lights and locked doors and Bandoni.
I stepped out of the Tahoe. Started
