He glanced over his shoulder at her without turning all the way around, looked back at us, and sighed.
“Do you have the property from the crime scene?” he said. “The hard drives and Dr. Bradley's journal?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “They're out in the trunk of our car.”
He nodded. Then he turned to one of the SWAT officers and waved him over.
I watched the officer approach.
“What's going on, sir?”
The officer stood next to Treanor. “I need the keys to your car,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Your keys,” he said, his voice icing over. His expression made it look like he'd just tasted something unexpectedly bitter.
I looked at Chunk, but his face was unreadable behind his surgical mask. Only his eyes flashed, and those only for the briefest moment.
“Detective Harris,” said Treanor, his hand open, palm up in front of me.
I reached into the pockets of my sweatpants and pulled out the car keys and dropped them in his open palm.
He handed the keys to the SWAT officer, who left without a word.
“Lieutenant,” said Laurent, only this time her voice was softer, a note of satisfaction in it that made my blood boil.
Treanor stared at me, then at Chunk, then back at me.
“I've already been in contact with the District Attorney's Office,” he said. “The two of you are under a gag order as of right now. You are to go back to your office, write your Prosecution Guide and your Charge and Disposition Report, and submit them directly to Assistant DA Carnahan. She'll be standing by.
“Once you've turned in your report, you are prohibited from discussing the matter with anyone. Is that clear?”
He kept looking right at me, waiting for me to open my big mouth. Ordinarily, that would have been a sure bet, but this time it didn't pay off. I could read the writing on the wall, as plain as I could see the contempt in Laurent's face. I knew right then that Herrera would never perform an autopsy on Walter Cole's body. I knew that his sacrifice, as insane as it was, had been for nothing. All of it was for nothing. Three people were dead-five if you counted the looters-and not one of their deaths would matter.
I imagined turning over my report to the DA, who would promptly take it to the deepest well she could find and dump it in. It would be like that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the ark is unceremoniously stuffed in a plain wooden box and filed among thousands and thousands of other unknown secrets. My report would be like that, a secret kept by fools, too proud to realize that's what they were.
Treanor was still looking at me, waiting to shut me down when I objected.
“I understand, sir,” was all I said.
He frowned with his eyes. “Well, okay then. Carry on.”
Chapter 27
When everything was reduced to paper and turned over to Assistant DA Carnahan, Chunk and I walked across the Scar's parking lot in silence to our cars. We could have said something about what was obviously going on, but we didn't. We could have talked about the injustice of it all, of the thousands, even millions of lives that Laurent's pride was putting under the hatchet's blade, but we didn't.
As I drove home, my fingers wrapped so tight around the steering wheel you'd have thought I was hanging from it, Chunk's headlights bobbing like corks in a stream in my rearview mirror, I thought about that quote by Edmund Burke, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
I read it in one of my back issues of Vogue, though in Vogue they'd added and women after good men.
I left the crowded buildings of the city and entered the rolling, unlit blackness of the foothills north of town, all the while asking myself if I was doing the right thing. I had knowledge, after all, knowledge of evil things in the making, and isn't knowledge supposed to be power? Was I doing the right thing by turning my back on millions of lives, just so my family and I could go free?
I thought about that hard enough and long enough to give myself a migraine. It worried me that maybe I was on some kind of slippery slope. I used to pride myself on staying away from the black market, and then I bought from it. I had never lied, either expressly or by omission, on any police report I'd ever written, yet I intentionally neglected to mention Isaac Hernandez’ involvement in Dr. Bradley's murder. And now I was planning the ultimate betrayal of my official trust. I was about to turn my back on my oath to maintain the peace and dignity of the City of San Antonio in much the same way as I would snub an ex-boyfriend I'd caught cheating on me. There were good reasons to back me up on all those little sins I'd committed, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't stop to really beat the issue to death.
I had to ask, was I really doing the right thing?
When I pulled into the driveway of my house and turned off my car, I was still torturing myself, wondering about right and wrong.
Chunk pulled in behind me. He got out of his car and popped his trunk. He took out a small black duffle bag and two heavy, stiff blankets that he'd lifted from the SWAT office.
I was still gripping the steering wheel when he walked by my door.
“You okay?”
I nodded, but didn't let go of the wheel.
A sharp square of buttery light appeared at the front door, and then Chunk and Billy were shaking hands.
“Lily?” Billy said.
The car door was open, though I don't remember opening it, or if maybe Billy had opened it.
He held out his hand to me.
“Lily?”
I took it and stepped out of the car.
“Connie?”
“She's asleep,” he said. “She doesn't know anything yet.”
“Good,” I said. That was as we'd planned it. We didn't want her to get any more scared than she needed to be.
At least I could save her from that.
Billy and I already had our bags packed. Connie's too. We'd kept them under our bed since the day Billy had found out about the hole under the wall. Now, as I looked at the three small duffle bags and realized that they contained everything with which we were to start a new life, I balked.
Carmenita's words came back to me. I had made a huge decision with unprecedented ease, and the smallness of the bags, and the scope of the job they were to perform, made me question the sense of what we were about to do.
And then it hit me. It wasn't the moral quagmire of oaths and betrayals and black markets that was bothering me. It was the prospect of starting all over again that scared me. When I looked deep inside, that was the skeletal fear that stared back up at me.
I went to the kitchen and met up with Billy and Chunk. The three of us spoke in hushed tones, like burglars in the night.
“We need to go soon,” Billy said. “We need to use as much of the night as we can.”
“We're ready, aren't we?” I said. I looked from Billy to Chunk and back to Billy, my eyes questioning theirs.
“Everything's set,” Billy said.
“But?”
“But I was telling Billy I need to do something first,” Chunk said.
“What?”
