Nowhere Pure, page 7
Cole decided she had left him in suspense long enough. “Your name is Ernesto Pico, is that right?”
Ernesto hesitated, as if deciding whether or not there was any point in lying. Then he nodded.
“And you’re a student at Cibola?”
He nodded again. “Junior.” His voice was a croak, so he took another swallow of water and cleared his throat.
Cole nodded back, her gaze dropping to the file in front of her. It was an empty file, nothing more than a few pages of legal disclaimers sandwiched between the wings of a manila folder, but Ernesto did not know that. She opened it, making a show of examining its contents.
Ernesto cleared his throat again and shifted in his seat, his gaze flicking to Callaway. “What’s this all about?”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Cole said without looking up. “You’re the one who ran.”
The room fell silent. Ernesto’s thumb began brushing the side of the bottle again.
“I’ll tell you why he ran,” Callaway said. “He knows we know what he’s been up to. He knows we’ve got enough dirt on him to put him six feet under.”
“You’d think he’d talk to us, plead his case,” Cole said.
“Maybe he thinks everything will be alright if he just keeps his mouth shut.” Callaway grunted. “A little late for that, though.”
The ruse worked. Ernesto let go of the water bottle and leaned back, scrubbing at his face with both hands. “Okay, okay,” he said resignedly. “This is about the silos, right?”
Cole’s breath caught in her throat. She looked at Ernesto, doing her best not to show the excitement she was feeling.
“Go on,” she said.
Ernesto glanced to the side and shook his head ruefully. “I never should have done it. But I was just so … so angry, you know?” He glanced back at the agents, searching their faces for understanding.
“Sure,” Callaway said, his tone suddenly reasonable. “We’ve all been there. Hell, there are times when I want to strangle my own partner.”
Uncertainty flickered in Ernesto’s eyes. “How’d you find out?”
Cole hesitated. This was dangerous territory. Thus far, despite the damning implications in Ernesto’s words, he hadn’t actually said anything incriminating. His words didn’t come close to an actual confession, and if Cole revealed the limits of their knowledge, he might grow guarded again and refrain from revealing the true extent of his crimes.
They knew about two murders. How many more people, however, might he have killed?
Callaway spoke up. “You might be slick, but you ain’t perfect. All we had to do was follow the breadcrumbs.”
This answer seemed to puzzle Ernesto further. He glanced from one agent to the other, searching their faces. “Are we talking about the same thing?”
“What are you talking about?” Cole asked.
“Trespassing. Isn’t that what I’m here for?”
Cole’s heart sank. She glanced at Callaway, who was now frowning.
“At the silos,” Ernesto continued. “I know it was wrong, I know it’s private property, but like I said before, it wasn’t my idea. We had to document them somehow.”
“Document what?” Callaway asked.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Cole asked at the same time.
All at once, Ernesto seemed to realize the trick that had been played on him. His lips parted, and he shook his head in disbelief. “I’m such an idiot,” he murmured. “You don’t know a thing about it, do you? You were bluffing this whole time.”
“Maybe so,” Callaway said, “but that don’t change the fact that a confession’s a confession. You’re in the shit now, bucko, and the only way to get clean is to come clean.”
Cole was every bit as puzzled by this conversation as Ernesto seemed to be. She tried to get the conversation back on track.
“What was your relationship to Jesse Vega?” she asked.
Ernesto frowned. “He was my cousin. Why? What does he have to do with this?”
“He listed you as his emergency contact. Were you two close?”
“Fairly close, I guess. Yeah, we hung out now and then. He had almost thirty years on me, but he never treated me like a kid, never talked down to me. Broke my heart when I learned what happened to him.”
“What about Nicole Beck?”
Ernesto fell silent. Then he shook his head. “Never heard of her.”
“Sure you never noticed her in class?” Callaway asked.
“I didn’t even know she went to Cibola.” He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a big campus. There are lots of people I don’t know.”
“So, you’re not aware she was murdered, then?” Cole asked.
Ernesto stared blankly at her for several seconds. Then the color drained from his face. “Oh, my God. That’s what all this is about. Was she … was it the same …”
Cole nodded, studying Ernesto’s reaction. “A nuclear silo, just like your cousin.”
Ernesto lowered his face into his hands.
“I don’t know what they teach in school these days,” Callaway said, “but it seems to me that murder is a bit more serious than trespassing.”
Ernesto looked up sharply, his eyes wide as if he had just been slapped across the face. “I didn’t kill anyone! I’m telling you; you’ve got the wrong guy!”
“Then why were you trespassing?” Cole asked.
“Because some people are trying to get those silos demolished, okay? I was documenting them, doing a video walkthrough. We can’t just … just erase the past like that! Nuclear war is the biggest threat to our generation, and people need to know just how serious it is!”
Cole’s heart sank. “So that’s it? You were on some crusade to preserve history?”
“I’m not the only one. There’s a whole group of us—we’ve got a club, we call it the Historical Preservation Society. Others call us the Nukers, not that we really care for the moniker.” He was talking faster now, his words snowballing into one big confession. Unfortunately, it was not the confession Cole had been hoping for.
“We were going to plant a few Native American artifacts in the area,” he continued. “That would keep them from doing any of the digging necessary to actually demolish the silos. Maybe then they’d turn them into museums available to the public, like we suggested in the letters we sent to our representatives.”
Cole could hardly believe what she was hearing. In the course of one conversation, Ernesto had gone from serial killer to social activist. All of that talk, and the only charge they had him on was trespassing on federal property. There was also his confession about planning to plant Native American artifacts, which would certainly have been a crime, but none of it involved murder.
The silence seemed to make Ernesto anxious. He took a quick breath, looking from one agent to the other.
“When I saw you guys come into that classroom,” he said, “I just figured you must have caught me trespassing—a hidden camera, maybe—and you had tracked me down. I knew that if I was arrested for trespassing, I’d lose my scholarship. There’s no way I could stay enrolled without a scholarship.”
“Your scholarship, huh?” Callaway drawled. “Is that the best lie you can come up with?”
“It’s the truth. I guess I can’t make you believe me, but you can talk with the other members of my group. They’ll explain everything.”
“The Nukers, is that right?”
“I prefer to call it the HPS, but sure.”
Cole drummed her fingers on the table, thinking. “Where were you last night?”
“Last night?” He paused, blinking. “Well, I had class until four—Principles of Biochemistry was the last one. Then I had a game of ultimate frisbee, followed by—”
“Who won?” Callaway asked.
Ernesto seemed surprised by the interruption. “The other team. But it was close. Anyway, after that I went to dinner. I ate with the other members of the HPS, and we—”
“What’d you eat?”
Ernesto shook his head, looking frustrated. “I don’t know. Spaghetti and meatballs.”
“Any vegetables?”
“Broccoli. With cheese.” Ernesto stared hard at Callaway, as if willing him to ask a follow-up question. Callaway, however, remained silent.
“Go on,” Cole said. “You said something about what you and the other members of the HPS were doing.”
Ernesto nodded. “We discussed the silos, as usual. We were going to visit one this weekend, see if we couldn’t figure out the best place to bury an artifact.”
“How were you going to get your hands on an artifact?”
Ernesto hesitated. “Well, one of our group has a dad who likes to make models.”
“Models?” Cole repeated, curious as to where this was going. “What kind?”
“Anything—figurines, little cars, whatever. He’s very patient, and he’s got steady hands.”
“So, what,” Callaway asked, “he was going to make an imitation artifact?”
Ernesto nodded. “A little ceremonial bowl. He thought it was going to be for a class project.” His cheeks colored as he spoke, and Cole had a feeling that despite Ernesto’s desire to prevent the silos from being demolished, he understood just how wrong his plan had been.
“Where were you last night?” Cole asked softly.
“I told you; I was with my group. We finished eating and then we went back to my dorm and had a Mortal Kombat tournament.”
“Mortal what?” Callaway asked.
“It’s a martial arts video game,” Cole said. “My brother used to play it.”
Ernesto raised his eyebrows appreciatively and nodded. “That’s where it’s at.”
Silence seeped into the room. Cole studied Ernesto, unsure what to make of him. Was he telling the truth, or was it all an elaborate lie?
“Please,” he said, “you have to believe me. I can give you their numbers—they’ll all vouch for me that I was in the dorm until, I don’t know, one in the morning?”
“And then?” Callaway asked.
“Then they all left, and I went to sleep.”
He looked from one face to the other, growing more desperate by the second. “You believe me, don’t you?” he asked.
CHAPTER TEN
The Dragon clung to the metal diamonds of the chain link fence, watching the team of high school boys running drills on the other side. He couldn’t help but admire their raw aggression, the angry way they threw themselves at one another as if intent on causing actual physical harm.
There was a loud crack as the helmets of two boys struck together. They fell in a heap, elbows pistoning back as they punched at one another, fingers grasping at face masks.
A sharp whistle sounded as a muscular man in a t-shirt with the team’s mascot—some kind of fish, by the look of it—strode toward the boys. “Alright, break it up,” he said, grabbing one of the boys by the shoulder and hauling him back. The teenager tried to pull free, but the coach got between the two of them.
“Walk it off, Radley!” the coach barked into the teenager’s face.
Radley, a few inches taller than the coach but half as heavy, glowered at the bigger man for a few seconds as if considering his chances of wrestling his coach. Then, with a disdainful shrug, he turned and walked away, ripping off his helmet and tossing it across the field.
The Dragon watched Radley for a few seconds. Then his gaze returned to the coach, who had placed his hands on the other boy’s shoulders and was speaking to him in a low voice.
He’s playing with fire, the Dragon thought. If he thinks he can tame the beast in these boys, he’s a fool. That beast is feral, and it will either dominate or be killed.
The Dragon, as his nickname suggested, had no interest in taming or killing his inner beast. It needed to be trained, certainly, but that was far different. Like a werewolf, there was a time for the beast to hunt and a time for it to rest. But the beast itself could never be broken.
And now, it was time for the beast to hunt once again.
As the coach gathered his players in a circle and began speaking to them in a low, urgent voice, the Dragon moved along the fence, closer and closer. The boys gave a half-hearted chorus of grunts—part of some kind of team-building shtick, no doubt—and then dispersed, picking up their gear and heading toward the parking lot. A few glanced curiously at the Dragon in passing, but most ignored him, heedless as children strolling past a coiled cobra.
The Dragon watched them go. One by one, the parking lot emptied until there was only a single vehicle left.
The coach was moving along the field, picking up pieces of trash and stuffing them into a grocery bag. As he finished his patrol and reached the gate, he glanced up and noticed the Dragon, seemingly for the first time.
His eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement. “Can I help you?”
“You shouldn’t interfere,” the Dragon said. “With the boys, I mean. The strong are meant to win. There are no rules in war, no referees, no timeouts.”
The coach chuckled politely. “Good thing they’re not at war, then, huh?” He walked past the Dragon, tying off the bag of trash and dropping it into a trash bin on his way to his car.
The Dragon shadowed him. He did not smell fear yet, but he would. It was only a matter of time.
The coach pulled his keys from his pocket and paused. As if sensing the Dragon’s presence, he looked over his shoulder. A troubled look entered his eyes.
“You know,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here before.”
The Dragon shrugged one shoulder. “Most people don’t.”
This answer seemed only to puzzle the coach more. He lowered the keys and turned so that he was facing the Dragon. His posture was more rigid now, and his chest rose and fell steadily with each breath, as if he were preparing himself for a fight.
“Look, buddy,” he said, “if you got something to say, why don’t you go on and say it?”
The Dragon’s gloved hand fidgeted in his pocket, clenching and unclenching around a damp cloth. Three seconds, that’s all it would take. Three seconds, and this man would go as limp as a cooked noodle.
The coach’s face hardened. He raised a hand, pointing his keys at the Dragon. “If I see you around here again—”
Something snapped inside the Dragon. He batted the coach’s extended arm aside, and in the same motion, he pulled the rag from his pocket and shoved it against the coach’s face. The coach fell back against the car door, his anger giving way to confusion and finally to fear.
Delicious, wonderful fear.
The two men grappled with one another. Had it been a fair fight, the muscular coach might have gotten the upper hand.
It was not a fair fight, however. The coach had only taken one whiff from the chemical-soaked cloth, but it was enough to slow his reflexes. His movements were clumsy, and he blinked as if trying to wake himself from a deep sleep.
As the coach threw himself forward, the Dragon slipped behind him and wrapped his right arm around the coach’s throat, holding him in place while he used the left to clamp the rag over the coach’s face.
The coach fought and struggled, trying to pry the rag away. He threw his elbow back, striking the Dragon hard in the ribs, but the Dragon did not flinch.
Go to sleep, he thought. You’ll be awake again soon enough.
Gradually, second by second, the coach’s movements slowed. Then he slumped against the Dragon, who supported the large man while opening the car door behind him.
As the Dragon dragged his victim inside the vehicle, a sense of unstoppable power rose up inside him. The strong were meant to dominate the weak—it was the way of nature.
And soon, if he had any say, it would be the way of the world too.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Learn anything?” Cole asked as she opened the break room cabinets one after the other, searching for the box of protein bars she had stowed up there earlier in the week. She had written her name on every side of the box, but even so, someone had either moved the box or eaten the bars.
“Ernesto’s friends all say the same thing,” Callaway said, lowering his phone. He leaned back in his chair and tipped his head back, the picture of frustration. “They stayed with him until one in the morning, playing their video games and drinking. Then one of the guys got sick on the couch, and they all decided to call it a night.”
Cole opened another cabinet, growing increasingly annoyed at her inability to find the protein bars. Keeping her body nourished during the workday was difficult enough without coworkers messing with her stash.
“You sound disappointed,” she said. “Were you hoping they wouldn’t back up his story?”
“Weren’t you? It’d make our jobs a whole lot easier if he’d just confess to the whole thing.” He sat up, his chair creaking. “What are you looking for?”
“A snack. Apparently, though, it’s too much to expect others to respect my personal possessions.” She closed the last cabinet and turned around, sighing—just in time to catch a package of crackers that was sailing at her through the air.
“Maybe those’ll tide you over,” Callaway said.
Cole was surprised by the gift. “What are you going to eat?”
He waved his hand dismissively at her. “Oh, I’ve eaten plenty today. Besides, I have some insurance.” He grabbed his side as he said this, as if to demonstrate he had extra pounds to burn off. Cole couldn’t help noticing, however, how very little fat Callaway had on his body. He was a big man, but it was nearly all muscle—not the bulging muscles of a bodybuilder, but the lean, toned strength of a man whose exercise was an integral part of his lifestyle.
“Well, thanks,” she said, raising the crackers in appreciation. She couldn’t help thinking of the last gift he had given her, the St. Anthony necklace she was wearing that very moment. On the back of the necklace, Callaway had had the words “FOR KELLY” engraved. The fact that Callaway shared the saint’s first name only underscored how fitting a gift it was.
Callaway leaned back and stretched his arms out, popping his elbows. “So,” he said, talking through a yawn, “if Ernesto’s out of the picture, where does that leave us?”
