looking for Valentine’s Day cards, are you? How foolish of me to jump to that conclusion. But that’s what I do. Look before I leap. That’s me. But someone you know is ill.” He offered a look of sympathy. “That’s why I’m here too, actually.”
“Oh?”
The sandy-haired man shrugged humbly. “It’s unfortunate, really. The ways things happen in this life. We do what we do and meanwhile people get hurt, every day, and that’s just the way the universe works.”
“I don’t know if it’s as bleak as all that,” replied Darcy. She noticed the man wore a shoulder-holster. What was that tucked inside, a Beretta? Normally she’d be concerned, but this was Texas. The Second Amendment was as beloved here as any of the Ten Commandments. “God only gives us what we can handle.”
He mumbled something in response, probably in agreement, then looked around the aisle. He suddenly seemed weighed down with despair.
“Who are you getting your card for?” she asked him.
“It’s not someone I know very well. But sometimes the message is really more important to the messenger than to anyone else. You know?”
Darcy reflected on her own semi-selfish reasons for card-shopping. “Yeah,” she said, and felt a bit ashamed.
“The unfortunate part of it is—her condition’s terminal and she doesn’t even know it. I mean, all of us are dying in increments, but…”
“That’s terrible.”
He nodded sadly. “It is.”
He picked out one of his cards and, with impressive dexterity considering the thickness of his gloves, was able to take a pen out of one of his jacket’s many inside pockets and scrawl a message on its inside. All the while his eyes appeared moist. Not from allergies. Darcy wanted to give the man a hug.
“Ah, well,” he sighed.
He returned the pen to its pocket, took out his silenced Beretta, and with it shot Darcy twice in the forehead. He placed the get-well card (a Shoebox Greeting) on her chest and strolled away.
It was Lilly Toro who picked the parking garage for the clandestine meet, not out of any affection for Woodward and Bernstein but because it was, at this late hour, so reliably vacant. She perched on the hood of her VW Beetle and smoked her fifteenth Marlboro of the day.
Spending Valentine’s Day outside of her hometown blew.
Her informant showed up an hour late, but he was a cop, so his tardiness was not entirely unexpected. As soon as his metallic gold Crown Victoria whipped into view, she flicked the nub of her cigarette into outer space and took out her notebook. The guy didn’t like to be tape-recorded. Few snitches did.
He parked across the painted lines. He didn’t leave his car. He motioned for her to join him inside.
With a sigh, Lilly hopped off her VW and wandered to the passenger side of his Crown Vic. So this was how it was going to be.
The cop’s name was Ray Milton. He’d served on the Amarillo Police Department for eleven years. He worked in Property/Evidence and had known two of the slain firefighters personally. He bummed a Marlboro off her an hour before the memorial service.
Five minutes into the conversation, he was bitching about how the feds had stolen the case. Ten minutes into their conversation, they’d agreed to a quid pro quo: Ray would supply her with the leverage she needed to infiltrate the task force (namely, the bit about the shoe boxes). In return, once on the inside, she would funnel back to him updates on the case’s status. If the Amarillo P.D. was going to be benched, it at least was going to get to watch the game.
And so, upon learning from a very gabby receptionist in city hall about Esme Stuart’s impending arrival (11:45 a.m. tomorrow morning), Lilly phoned Ray. She zipped her VW to the meeting spot she designated, the abandoned parking garage, and so, here they were, at 11:45 p.m., in Ray’s twenty-year-old metallic gold Crown Victoria.
Which smelled like cinnamon.
This confused Lilly to no end. She’d expected the familiar tang of slow sweet death she inhaled every time she lit up, but no. Cinnamon. Then she noticed the red cardboard leaf dangling from Ray’s rearview mirror. Ah. Cinnamon. The man probably had kids and didn’t want to reek up the car pool on the way to Little League. Had he mentioned kids? After the memorial service, Lilly had done a background check on her informant just to verify his details, badge number, etc. One could never be too careful. But the data she’d accumulated had