Flashback

Nick rubbed his cheek and chin again. “It doesn’t make any sense. Even if Moretti was some sort of deep-cover hit man for the mob—and trust me, K.T., the asshole wasn’t smart enough to be a hit man for anyone. Even the Denver branch of the Mafia, as decrepit and decadent as it is, wouldn’t think of hiring him… much less pay for all those weird plastic surgeries to hide his identity. And why would they hide his identity anyway? Mob hits are two twenty-two-caliber slugs to the skull so they rattle around in there, drop the gun, walk away.”

“Unless someone really didn’t want this to be considered a hit, Nick.”

“Yeah, but the mob doesn’t work that way.”

“I agree,” said the lieutenant. “But you could have.”

Nick didn’t answer. He pawed through the dossiers. “This grand jury stuff is nuts. They have enough evidence here—fake though most of it is—to indict anyone. But there was no indictment. The grand jury was dissolved in April, five and a half years ago, K.T., and this stuff has been sitting around gathering dust since then. How’d you get all this?”

“I called in every favor I ever had and made some promises I hope I never have to deliver on,” she said tiredly. “You asked me to, Nick.” She shoved the entire stack of colored folders closer to him. “But you keep it. If you ever say I know anything about any of this, I’ll call you a motherfucking liar.”

“What am I going to do with this?” asked Nick, stacking the folders. They made a pile almost eight inches high.

“Who gives a shit, partner?”

Nick slammed his fist on the stack. “If Ortega had a grand jury seated and all this evidence piled up through his own department investigators and someone in Internal Affairs in our department, why didn’t he use it? Obviously there was no indictment. Not even a leak to the press. How can you gather so much evidence that one of your Major Crimes Unit’s top detectives is a rogue killer—murdering his own wife and an assistant district attorney—and then just sit on it? That’s obstruction of justice right there.”

“You’ll have to ask Ortega.”

“I will,” said Nick. “Tomorrow morning. In his office.”

K.T. shook her head. “The mayor’s in Washington with the governor and Senator Grimes. Something about more immigration reform or some such. Advisor Nakamura’s supposed to be meeting them there on Monday for testimony for some subcommittee.”

“I’ll go to Washington,” said Nick. He rubbed his tired eyes. What was he thinking? As always, he was forgetting about his son.

How many years had he put his son down the priority list? Lower than his flashback addiction. Before that, lower than his grieving for Dara. Before that, lower than his fucking job as a detective. Before that, lower than his love of his wife. Before that… had he ever put his son at or near the top of his priorities?

Nick had a rush of absolute certainty, as physical as a wave of nausea, that Val would tell him he, Val Bottom, had never been his father’s top priority.

“No,” said Nick. “I’m going to L.A. To get Val. To find my son and bring him back here. I’ll deal with Ortega later.”

K. T. Lincoln stood. “Whatever you do, whomever you do it to, don’t call me again, Nick. I never dug out those grand jury files. I didn’t meet you here tonight. The only time I’ve seen you in the last three years was at the Denver Diner last Tuesday—too many people saw me there for me to deny that, plus I had to give the diner’s number to Dispatch—but that’s also the last place I’ll ever see you. If anyone asks, I’ll say you wanted some money—I said no—and then we chewed the fat for a few minutes about old times, and I decided that our old times together hadn’t been all that hot. Good-bye, Nick.”

“Good-bye,” Nick said absently. He’d opened the accident investigation dossier and was looking at the diagrams and photos from the fire that had killed all five people, including his wife. “K.T… what kind of undercover hit man volunteers to die horribly in a truck fire of his own making? How does that…”

But K. T. Lincoln was gone and Nick was talking to himself in the dirty, poorly lighted space.

Sunday morning and the gray Sasayaki-tonbo whisper-dragonfly ’copter touched down on the flat roof of Nick’s Cherry Creek Mall Condominiums building. Or, rather, a Sasayaki-tonbo whisper-dragonfly ’copter landed there. This one was larger and fancier than the one Nick had flown in down to Raton Pass.

Hideki Sato jumped out and frisked Nick carefully. The ex-detective was carrying no weapon. Sato went through the small gym bag—no weapons there, either, although there were six extra magazines of 9mm ammo—and then removed the unsealed padded mailing envelope. Nick’s Glock 9 was in there, no clip, no round in the spout, and broken down.

“Just like you specified,” said Nick.

Sato sealed the envelope and said nothing. Taking the gym bag, he gestured for Nick to enter the helicopter. Above, the broad, strangely tufted rotors were idling.