Mission Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

traffic outside.
    “She’s comatose,” Kelsey said. “Chances are she won’t last the night.”
    “Ralph . . . doesn’t know?”
    “We’d love to inform him,” Hernandez said evenly. “He’s nowhere to be found.”
    I stared at the glass apple rotating in Kelsey’s fingers.
    “Mr. Navarre,” Hernandez said, “Sergeant DeLeon was about to press charges in a reopened murder investigation—a cold case from eighteen years ago. Does the name Franklin White mean anything to you?”
    The room started spinning faster than the glass apple.
    I got unsteadily to my feet.
    “Mr. Navarre?” Hernandez said.
    “Would you gentlemen excuse me? I have a number that might help . . . up in my bedroom.” I staggered toward the stairs. “I’ll get it, soon as I finish throwing up.”
    “I’ll come with you,” Kelsey said.
    “I’ll manage. Unless you want to watch me hug the toilet.”
    Kelsey and Hernandez exchanged looks. Apparently I looked as bad as I felt.
    “Two minutes, Mr. Navarre,” Hernandez told me.
    “Lieutenant—” Kelsey protested.
    Hernandez held up his hand. “And Mr. Navarre, this phone number better be
very
helpful.”
    •                           •                           •
    I OPENED THE BEDROOM DOOR AND found myself staring down the barrel of my own .22.
    “Kelsey’s voice,” Ralph muttered, pulling me into the room. “Is Ana with him?”
    I swallowed the dryness out of my throat. I told him what the cops had said.
    Ralph backed into the bed and sat down hard.
    Robert Johnson, never good with empathy, materialized in his lap and rubbed against the gun, demanding attention.
    I figured we had about one minute before Detective Kelsey came looking for me.
    Ralph’s fingers whitened on the pistol grip.
    “Ralph, give me the gun,” I said.
    He stared at the .22.
    “Ralph,”
I said sharply.
    He gave me a look I knew well—Sam Barrera, 7:00 A.M. every morning—a blank slate into which I would have to pour all the names and geography and relationships he’d forgotten overnight.
    “I have to see her.” His voice was ragged with grief.
    “If you give yourself up—”
    “I told you,
vato,
I can’t. They’ll take me in. They’ll never catch the right guy.”
    “Four cops downstairs, Ralph. Give me the goddamn gun.”
    We had about thirty seconds now, tops.
    Ralph’s eyes were molten glass. “I didn’t shoot Ana.”
    “I know that.”
    And I did know. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind.
    But I also knew—given Ralph’s mental state and the mood of the cops—that if I let Ralph go downstairs, somebody was going to die.
    “They mentioned Frankie White,” I said.
    Ralph nodded, unsurprised. “So you understand why I can’t give myself up.”
    “Aw, Ralph—shit.”
    “That fire escape work?”
    Kelsey’s voice from downstairs: “Navarre?”
    “We can’t just run,” I told Ralph.
    “There is no ‘we,’
vato.
I’m going out that window. I’m going to find the guy who shot my wife. Somebody’s going to pay.”
    So simple. So incredibly insane.
    The cat stared at me, his eyes half closed, purring contentedly from his allergic friend’s lap. Robert Johnson’s motto: Never abandon a friend as long as you know you’re bad for him.
    Footsteps started up the stairs.
    Out of time. No options. When in doubt, listen to the cat.
    I slid open the window. “I’m driving.”
    God or the devil was with us. We were a block away in Ralph’s Lincoln Continental before we heard the sirens.
    NOVEMBER 24, 1965
    IF SHE’D LEFT FIVE MINUTES EARLIER, she wouldn’t have been his first victim.
    But she stayed for one last drink, trying to drown the bitterness of her day.
    Above the bar, a black-and-white television played something she’d never seen before—a “Vietnam report.” Ninety thousand American troops had just arrived in this place, halfway around the world. The reporter didn’t explain why.
    Around her,