My phone dinged while I was starting up my computer. I looked over, hoping Henry had had a change of heart and was texting me the name of the murderer.
On my screen was a photo of some park or green space. The message was from a number I didn’t recognize. I touched the photo to make it bigger.
It was the park where I walked Squatter, but from high up, like it was taken from a nearby roof or upper story. In the distance, a person was crouching down. I zoomed in. The person, squatting to adjust a little dog’s leash, was Noah.
A text bubble popped up. Nice family. Then another photo. The park was a blur of green in the background. In the foreground, in sharp focus, was the black barrel of a rifle resting on a windowsill.
I nearly vomited on my desk.
Then I took a breath and forced myself to think. What were my options? Text Noah to get out of there? No. Short of a trapdoor in the grass, he couldn’t get out of range in time. And what if he looked around and this sniper realized I’d warned him?
Call the cops? Which ones could I trust? And they’d take too long anyway.
Buy time.
I wrote back, Who is this?
We have a proposition.
Ok.
After a second, an address came through. Then, Come talk.
I answered, If you keep sending pix. Need to know he’s ok.
If u bring cops/anyone, the response said, he dies.
I got up to leave, then sat back down to scribble a note. If I didn’t get out of this, I was at least going to leave some evidence. I wrote the address down. Then, “If I’m killed, cartel did it, Jackson innocent of Karl, call Garrett Cardozo,” and his number. Then I folded it up, hid it under my keyboard—I didn’t want anyone finding it and coming after me while Noah was still in danger—and left.
The address was in a rougher part of town. Compared to any big city it was nothing, but to us it was the rough side of the Black neighborhood. At every stop sign, I checked my phone. Two more photos of Noah came through.
The house was small and run-down, but someone had kept it neat. Trimmed grass, faded curtains. I parked, ran across the street and up the porch steps, and knocked. Nobody answered. I heard nothing from inside.
A text pinged: Back door.
I looked around. A few cars were parked on the street. It was a sunny morning. Palm trees bent over the gray roof of the shotgun shack next door. If I walked around to the back, I might get invited inside and shot in the head. A proposition could be discussed on the front porch.
I wrote back, Talk out front?
The answer came. Two photos. Noah sitting on a bench with Squatter asleep on his lap. Then the windowsill, with a long, brass-colored bullet sitting on it.
Then a word: Hollowpoint.
The kind of bullet that expanded, or exploded, inside the victim. Maximum lethality.
I answered, Going around back now.
I went down the steps. When I got to the walkway, a thought stopped me: They must know Noah and Jackson were friends.
To buy a second to think, I crouched down and took off my shoe, pretending I felt a rock in it. I knocked it on the cracked cement.
They might think Jackson had told him something, or even that I had. Once Noah had served his purpose by getting me to this house, why would they let him go? What reason did I have to trust them?
I put my shoe back on and stood up. As I walked around the corner of the house and down the side, Ruiz came to mind. He was the law; he had resources. He was a father and a good man. I scrolled back to the first photos of Noah and the rifle and sent them to him. My son in danger, I wrote. Be discreet please! Where would sniper be if this view of park?
I didn’t even know if Ruiz was up yet. I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and prayed to the only being I ever prayed to: Elise. The prayer was two words long: Save him. Save him.
Then I went around to the back of the house. This side was lower than the front, a half basement. The door was slightly ajar. I knocked. It swung open.
At the far end of the room, Terri was standing with her hands up. When she saw me, she yelled, “Run! Just go!”
A deep male voice said, as relaxed as if this were a social engagement, “No, please, come in.”
His voice was familiar. I said, “Morning,” pushed the door the rest of the way open, and stepped inside.
Tony Rosa was holding Terri at gunpoint from about four feet away. In an armchair to the right, Collin Porter sat with one leg crossed over the other, smoking a cigarette.
“Morning, Leland,” he said. “Thank you for joining us. I know you and Tony already know one another, and I took the liberty of inviting your friend along too.”
“You can let her go,” I said, walking over. “If you’ve got a proposition for me, she doesn’t need to hear it.”
He chuckled. “Let her go,” he said, almost to himself, and chuckled again.
Tony said, “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Leland.”
Porter reached into his blazer, and I flinched, expecting a gun. His hand came back out with a pack of cigarettes. He lit one off his own and offered it to me. As I leaned over to take it, a dark shape on the floor behind his chair caught my eye. Terri’s dog. A pool of blood. I thought I saw Buster’s chest rise and fall, just a bit, but he’d clearly been taken down for the count.
“So, the proposition,” Porter said, “has changed. Anthony,
