“Nothing. He fired me.”

Detective Ricohr mulled that over. He let two late commuter buses pass by with their roaring engines and plumes of exhaust.

“If you find the girl, do you find my killer?”

“When I find the girl and talk to her, your killer should become very clear.”

“You hope.”

“You hope,” I corrected.

“We both hope,” he finished and headed into the building.

“Detective,” I called him back. “I’m sorry for not telling you everything ahead of time. And you may not believe it, but I was going to call you after I had spoken to the kid.”

“Save the apology for later,” he said. “I suspect this won’t be the last time you disappoint me.”

Tired as I was, I headed in the opposite direction of my house and drove out towards the Westside. I stopped at a diner just off the 10 freeway and sat in one of the booths by the window. I picked at a tuna melt and fries but mostly I watched the heavy stream of traffic funneling on and off the freeway. There was something hypnotic about it. After the third time I was asked for a water refill, I got the hint and decided to give them their booth back.

Time never moves slower than when you are trying to kill it. I drove aimlessly around the side streets but that was only good for a half hour. I did a couple of tricks of randomly picking destinations and then driving there and back a few times like a runner doing track work. Finally I gave up and drove over to Nelson’s house and parked in one of the few open spots on the street.

I don’t know how long it took because I dozed off a few times but eventually a car appeared and parked in the narrow driveway. Nelson squeezed out of the passenger door and headed for the house with his tatted-up brother at his side. If I factored in all of the wasted time in and around any visit to a police station, the fact that Nelson was home before midnight was a bit of a miracle. Detective Ricohr had kept to his word.

I wasn’t finished with Nelson. He was my one link to Jeanette. I got out of the car, though not entirely sure what I was going to do to get past his brother and over-protective abuelita, never mind what I would say to him to get him to talk to me again. In that moment of hesitancy, I watched Nelson and his brother walk towards the front door and I marveled at the unspoken support emanating from the backs of one person walking next to another in silence. There was no steadying hand, no arm around the shoulder. He didn’t even hold the door for his brother. But Nelson was back with his family and that was a good thing.

I got back in my car, fired up the engine, and headed out for the long ride back to Eagle Rock. The black sedan waited for me in front of my house.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF DYING

I parked in the garage and came out the side door. Hector waited for me on the walkway. We silently made our way inside, and he waited patiently in the center of the living room while I turned on some lights and opened the windows to let in the cooling night air.

“They got another email,” he told me after I stopped buzzing around the room. I made a move to sit down, but Hector made no move at all, so I remained standing. “They want more money.”

“How much?” I asked.

“Three million.”

This time I sat down and thought it over. That was quite a jump from forty thousand dollars. “I assume the email came from Jeanette?” He nodded. “Did you see the actual email?”

“It was sent to Mr. Valenti. I heard him talking to his daughter and Jeanette’s dad.”

“What did you mean by ‘they’ wanting more money?” Hector shrugged his shoulders but I could tell he had some ideas. “The police found the Portillo boy,” I said and explained exactly how they found him, but the mention of the boy didn’t register with Hector. “Who do you think it is?”

Hector deferred to his boss.

“Mr. Valenti said if it was either of them he’d crush them.”

“Either of whom? Meredith and Jeff?”

“He told them when they came to the house.”

It was not a surprise that Valenti had suspicions about his daughter and her ex-husband. He was innately suspicious of everyone when it came to money. I wondered if he thought they were in on it together. Individually, they both had the motive and if I thought about it enough, I could imagine each attempting something like this, or trying it together.

“Sit down,” I instructed. “You’re making me nervous.” Hector shot me a look but eventually took a seat on the couch. “What do you think about this?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my business.”

“Then why did you come here to tell me about it?”

“I thought you would want to know.”

That reason made little sense. He had already pushed the limits of his relationship with Valenti when we were working together, but the act of coming to my house smashed all of those limits in one stroke. He was betraying the confidence of the family to someone whom his boss had dismissed. Valenti valued privacy above almost anything and this impropriety would have repercussions beyond Hector’s mere dismissal from the job he’d held for nearly fifty years.

“You know something that you’re not telling me.”

“I’m not lying.”

“I know you aren’t but you’re also not telling me everything. You’re concerned about something. Otherwise, you would never have come all this way in the middle of the night. What is it?”

“I told you everything.”

“When are they supposed to pay it?” I asked.

“Tomorrow night. We’re gonna get the instructions tomorrow in the morning on where to bring the money.” Hector paused a moment. “I’ll be delivering it.”

“Is the family bringing in the police?”

“No,” he answered but it didn’t sound like he agreed with that decision. From my limited time with Hector, I never got the sense that he was a card-carrying member of the Police Benevolence Society. He was a man who preferred to settle his own disputes in a manner of his choosing. The fact that he had some misgivings about leaving the police out hinted further that he was concerned about something.

“Are you worried what might happen to you tomorrow?”

Hector shifted in his seat into an even more upright position.

“I can handle myself,” he said coolly.

“Then what is it?”

“I think she’s dead.”

The words hit me hard. It was one of those conclusions you ruled out because internally you weren’t prepared for it.

“Why do you think that?” I wanted Hector to defend his opinion so I could shoot it down.

“I saw the email,” he admitted and stared at the floor. “They printed a copy and left it on the desk. I shouldn’t have read it.”

“What did it say?” I asked.

“It said that if Mr. Valenti didn’t pay the money that he would never see the baby alive.”

“That’s it?” He nodded, but I didn’t understand how that sentence meant Jeanette was dead. “I would never bring my baby into it,” he explained before I could ask. “A parent doesn’t do that.”

And there I was again, not understanding the realities of being a parent.

“She’s dead,” he stated. As if even his convinced mind wasn’t quite ready to abandon even a trace of hope, he added, “I think.”

“What does the family say?”

“Mr. Valenti is afraid like me.”

“Why do you say that?”

Again there was a hesitation. After decades of subservience, it didn’t come easy to talk so openly about his boss.

“After his daughter left,” he began, “I saw him in his study. He was crying. I never seen him cry, not for anything. It didn’t look like him. He saw me and I thought he’d yell at me or worse, but he just stared and cried. He told me he couldn’t lose them.”