Mission Road

Etch checked his gun. One round still chambered.



He thought about Ana lying in her hospital bed, heart monitor bleeping steadily. The more he had tried to love her, help her, see her mother’s qualities in her, the more he hated her.



He remembered a meeting he’d had with Ana, shortly before her mother died.



She’d invited him to coffee. He had gone, feeling a bit uneasy. And irritated.



Ana was twenty-six, just out of college after the Air Force, her first month into the SAPD police academy. By all accounts, she was excelling. There was no doubt she was worthy of her mother’s legacy. There was also little doubt that Ana DeLeon wouldn’t be spending her entire career on patrol.



It rankled Etch every time someone said that, as if the work Lucia and he had been doing since Ana was a little girl was meaningless. A job for the unmotivated.



They’d met at the Pig Stand, down the street from Lucia’s. Etch wondered if Ana had picked the spot as some kind of message. Etch hadn’t been there in almost three years. After Frankie’s death, his old routines with Lucia had slowly unraveled. Everything seemed tainted by the night of the murder.



Ana insisted on buying his coffee, as if with the seventy-five cents, she was proving her adulthood, her independence. Etch never paid for anything at the Pig Stand anyway, but he let her put down the money.



She was only a few years younger than Lucia had been when Etch started patrolling with her. Ana had the same glossy black hair, chopped short in a utilitarian wedge. She had the same plum-colored lips, the same challenge in her eyes, though that look that had been draining from Lucia’s eyes over the last few years.



“I’m worried about my mother,” Ana said.



Etch counted to ten before answering, trying to keep his anger inside.



“Maybe you should go see her,” he suggested. “How long has it been?”



In truth, he knew exactly how long. Six and a half months, since the huge fight when Ana had poured all her mother’s liquor into the river behind her house.



Ana set her coffee cup on the counter. “She doesn’t want to see me.”



“You sure? Or do you not want to see her?”



“She’s destroying herself. She won’t talk to me about it. I thought maybe you could—”



“Ana, your mother’s a strong woman.”



“With a great reputation in the department. A real role model. Yeah, Etch. I know. Everybody is so goddamn busy protecting her reputation, they’re not helping her. She’s drinking herself to death.”



Mike Flume, the fry cook, was putting orders on the pickup counter, getting a little too close to the conversation. Etch stared at him until the nervous bastard’s freckled red face disappeared back into the kitchen.



Ana sat forward, took Etch’s hands, which made him uncomfortable as hell. “Etch, you’re her best friend. You’ve got to talk to her. Please. Find out what’s wrong.”



“She’s a police officer. She has a lot of stress. You should understand—”



“This isn’t stress. Something’s eating her up from the inside. Something specific. For the last . . . I don’t know . . . couple of years, it’s been getting worse. She needs therapy, or—”



“Therapy?” Etch pulled his hands away. “You think she’s crazy?”



“No. I don’t mean that. But there has to be some reason—”



“I’ll talk to her,” Etch promised. “But Ana, seriously, you need to go see her yourself.”



Ana nodded morosely. Etch knew she had no more intention of seeing her than he did of talking to Lucia about her drinking.



“Thanks for the coffee,” he said.



He left her at the Pig Stand counter, cradling her cup and staring out the window, looking so much like Lucia that Etch began dreading the day Ana would wear an SAPD uniform. He hoped the academy trainers were right. He hoped Ana made some plainclothes division in record time. He did not want to see her in the same uniform her mother wore.



Ana had gotten every break Lucia never had. Lucia had sacrificed so much for her, and Ana had made a mockery of that by marrying Arguello.



Not only that—she was proud of it. She was happy. She balanced a family and a career.



Etch and Lucia never got that chance.



He raised his nine, took careful aim.



There would be no winning. But there might be justice, and justice was different than the law. Nobody understood that better than a cop.



Don’t, Lucia said. Walk away, Etch.



He shot his last round into the freezer door, opening a hole in the olive green metal at the level of a human forehead.



“LIEUTENANT?”



Etch spun, his gun still raised.



Kelsey stood ten feet away, staring down the barrel of the nine. He raised his hands slowly.



Etch lowered the gun.



His face burned. He felt like a damn amateur, getting startled like that.



“Sorry,” he mumbled.



Kelsey put his hands down. He pointed with his chin toward the target refrigerator. “Fucking major appliances, huh? I got a washing machine I should shoot.”



“Yeah,” Etch said. “It’s therapeutic.”



He was grateful to Kelsey, trying to defuse the situation, but he started to realize how wrong it was for Kelsey to be here.



Kelsey’s eyes were bloodshot. He hadn’t changed clothes since last night, which meant he’d never been to sleep. And he had never come to see Etch at home unannounced before, even for the most urgent cases.



Kelsey picked up a clip from the picnic table, turned it in his fingers. “You didn’t answer the front door so I, uh, poked my head into the living room. You moving out, sir?”



“Travel,” Etch said. “Life on the road.”



“Must be nice.” He didn’t meet Etch’s eyes.



Across the field, the sound of the church organ seeped through the stained glass. A recessional hymn. “Joy to the World.”



“Are you going through with the DNA announcement?” Etch asked.



Kelsey exhaled steam. “Public relations signed off on it. The press is already champing at the bit.”



“But?”



“I got some news.”



Etch reloaded his pistol. “About Ana’s condition?”



“About the woman Navarre and Arguello were with yesterday. I think I got an ID on her. She’s Madeleine White.”



For a moment, Etch was too stunned to speak. Then, despite himself, he felt a little impressed. “I’ll be damned.”



“Pretty ballsy,” Kelsey agreed. “But you can appreciate, this changes things.”



“How so?”



“If Navarre and Arguello are working with White, and we make an announcement while they’re under his, uh, protection . . . They won’t last a minute.”



Etch aimed at the refrigerator. He thought about which soda bottle to shoot for. “You ever find Miss Lee?”



“Yeah. I found her.”



Etch shot the Sprite bottle. It ruptured, exploding white foam out the front of the fridge. “And?”



“She let Roe go. She said he was part of a setup. She said the DNA was, too.”



Etch studied him, trying to figure what Kelsey was holding back.



“You see where she’s going,” Etch said. “She’s going to blame you.”



Kelsey’s ears turned red.



“You and Ana have a history,” Etch continued. “So did you and Frankie White. Lee will say you have a motive for the Franklin White murder. It’s bullshit, but she’ll use it.”



Kelsey’s fingers had whitened on the nine-millimeter magazine. “Ana’s on the mend. She’ll tell us the truth.”



“I hope so. Maybe you should wait on the announcement. If Lee shook you up—”



“She didn’t shake me up.”



“All right.”



“It’s just, if Navarre and Arguello are with White—”



“They’re trying to beat you to the punch. You gave them a deadline. Now they’re trying to hand Guy White his son’s killer early. And it sounds like they’ve settled on you as a patsy. But maybe you’re right. God willing, Ana will come around and tell us the truth. Today. Or tomorrow.”



Etch could tell Kelsey was turning now, aiming his anger back in the direction Etch wanted.



“Anything else Lee said?” Etch prodded, his tone full of concern—the fatherly lieutenant, protective of his people’s welfare. “Anything that might put you in a bad light?”



Kelsey licked his lips. “No . . . no, sir.”



“You want to go ahead with the announcement? It’s your call, son.”



The son did it.



Kelsey stood a little straighter. He set the clip back on the picnic table. “I’ll go ahead with it. We don’t owe Arguello and Navarre anything. Nothing else we can do.”



ETCH STOOD AT HIS WINDOW, WATCHING the parishioners leave St. John’s. The old married couple who always parked in front of his house were just getting into their car. Every year, they got a little more stooped. The old man’s coat got a little more threadbare and his wife’s hair got bluer. But they were still together. Must be pushing ninety.



Etch wished them well. He hoped they died together some warm summer night, holding hands in bed. Nobody should die in winter. It was too depressing. Too cold and impersonal.



He looked down at the windowsill where he’d placed a few of his last possessions—a tiny black velvet box and an evidence bag.



He opened the evidence bag, brought out the vial and syringe—the same glass vial he’d had in his pocket the first time he visited Ana.



Etch hadn’t investigated homicides for fifteen years without picking up a few interesting methods of killing. The vial was a souvenir from a chemistry professor at Trinity University who used his postgraduate research to plan his wife’s perfect murder. If he hadn’t confided in his lab assistant, Etch never would’ve caught him.



Clear liquid. Damn near untraceable. Etch would need one minute to inject, no more. The effects would take maybe an hour to manifest. Coma. Organ failure. Everything you’d expect from a gunshot victim who suddenly took a turn for the worse.



He doubted the ME’s office would run toxicology, but even if they did, this stuff wouldn’t show up on a standard scan.



Etch’s first visit to Ana’s bedside, there’d been too many people. No opportunity. Then Maia Lee had shown up and rattled his nerves.



Etch turned the vial, watched a small air bubble float through the poison.



Maia Lee was becoming a major problem. She’d gotten to Titus Roe. She’d rattled Kelsey. She was putting together Ana’s line of investigation much too well. Depending on how much she’d told Navarre and Arguello . . . Etch needed a way to tie up all the loose ends at once.



He slipped the poison into his pocket. Today, one way or another, he would finish things.



He remembered sitting with Lucia on her porch, a few hours after they cleared the Frankie White crime scene. He’d wanted to tell her why he was late to their shift that evening. He’d been rehearsing in front of his bathroom mirror, practicing what he would say to her, worrying about whether he was doing the right thing.