From Val, he got the sense of a well-meaning soul fully committed to improvement. There were so many people who liked to tell you how they were turning their lives around, how they were dedicated to change. But few actually followed through. Val, he could tell, was one of the few genuinely committed individuals.
She sure did talk a lot, though. And he didn’t have time to give her his full attention. He returned to his notepad, wrote TRAITOR beneath WESLEY BOWMAN, circled it.
“At first I thought you were a jerk,” Val said. “Your voice makes you seem gruffer than you really are. You’re just a big teddy bear deep down, aren’t you?”
I killed three men less than an hour ago, Silence thought.
Val traced a fingernail along the tabletop, watched it. “Yeah, this isn’t a bad job for what it is. And I need it. But it definitely has its drawbacks, too. For one thing, there’s this point system they got in the computer. If you hit five points, they fire you. You get one point for being five minutes late. Can you believe that? You get a point if a customer complains, a point for chew-and-screws.”
Silence looked up, raised an eyebrow.
“Walkouts,” she clarified. “When a customer takes off without settling the bill.”
He nodded.
“Anyway, I have four points. One more and Kevin’ll can me. You have a kid, you end up being a few minutes late now and then—tee-ball practice, school cancellations. Before you know it, you have four points. Whatcha gonna do?
“But the points aren’t the worst thing, believe it or not. It’s Kevin. The freakin’ night manager. He’s become the most significant man in my life aside from Toby. Ugh, how sad is that? Complete slime ball. Total creep. He’s disliked me from day one. Well, day two, actually. He hit on me the second night I worked here. Of course, I said no. I mean, the man looks like a garden gnome. And he’s weird. Who comes on to a subordinate on their second day at the job? I was even nice about rejecting him, but he’s given me a hard time ever since.”
She lifted her head from her arms, looked past Silence.
“Annnnnd there he is right now. Watching me. Shocker. See him?”
Silence turned. “Yes.”
Kevin really was a garden gnome—squat proportions carried on an average height, doughy face and pillow arms. Bald on top, cropped close on the sides. Short beard, half-full of gray. His short-sleeved blue shirt bore a name tag on one side and the Bobbie Sue’s logo on the other. He stared at Silence’s booth from the swinging doors leading into the kitchen. When he saw Silence gazing his way, he disappeared, the door swinging behind him, hinges squeaking.
Val scoffed. “Coward. I swear he still has a thing for me. He must think I’m with you.” She gave a wry grin, bordering on salacious. “Not such a bad idea, actually. You’re not married, are you?”
“Engaged.”
“Shame. She’s a lucky lady. Anyone ever told you that you look like Johnny Depp?”
“Yes.”
Val glanced back toward the kitchen. “Kevin can’t give me a point for talking to you. There’s a section in the employee manual about ‘contagiously creative customer service.’ ‘3CS,’ they call it. Blech. I always play that card when I need a moment off my feet. It’s a nice little loophole. Kevin’s just trying to intimidate me, glaring at us like that. I’ll get a lecture later. But I’m gonna keep talking to ya, if it’s all the same to you.”
Silence nodded and went back to his notebook.
Val continued. “I’m getting out of here, Rob. Out of this restaurant, out of this life. I started taking classes over at the community college. Actually, not ‘classes.’ A single class.” She laughed. “Tuesday and Thursday nights. Gotta start somewhere. I’m gonna make a better life for Toby.”
Working hard to create a better life for her son.
Adriana had expressed the same sentiments a short while earlier.
It was a soul-crushing notion to think that so many people had to fight and scratch and crawl to have a good life. Of her many spiritual and intellectual thinkings, C.C. often referred to the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha, particularly the first one, which was incredibly bleak when taken by itself.
Life is suffering.
As Silence looked at his notes, another thing that Val had just said struck a chord with him—the fact that Val said she was attending community college. Wesley Bowman had been taking classes at a community college as well.
Wesley Bowman, the traitor, the one who had sold out his own family.
In the present situation, Adriana, like the Bowman family, had been intercepted on her way to make a protection payment. But her only family member was her son, and he’d been kidnapped.
Or had he?
If the parallels between the situations were so similar, maybe there was another connection in the fact that Wesley Bowman had sold out his own family in an attempt to join the very same criminal organization that had been tormenting them.
Could Benito Ramirez be doing the same thing? Was the kidnapping staged? Was Benito trying to join Lowry’s gang?
Silence drew a line from the TRAITOR bubble below WESLEY BOWMAN, brought it just below BENITO RAMIREZ and stopped.
He made a new bubble beneath the Ramirez bubble that connected to the line he’d just drawn: TRAITOR?
He thought back to the moment Wesley’s treachery was revealed.
Chapter Eight
Utter chaos in the Bowman house. The daughter screamed. The young son bawled. The mother ran to the boy, covered him, shouted something of primal urgency to her husband. It was swallowed by the din of pandemonium.
And Wesley continued to aim the gun at Jake.
Jake slowly raised his hands. “Are you sure this is what you want to be doing, kid?”
“Wesley…” Kip said.
The gun rattled in Wesley’s hands. He replied to his father but didn’t take his eyes off Jake. “I … I had
