She pulled the rental car up to the garage, unable to ignore the dread weighing her down. As they got out and walked over to Bloom’s pickup, her legs felt weak and mushy. She couldn’t think her way out of this. Nothing was coming. Just Mike Bloom with his Glock.
“Get behind the wheel,” he said. “You’re driving.”
She climbed in, then watched Bloom enter. He tossed over the keys, pointing at the desert that began at his driveway and didn’t seem to end.
“That way,” he said. “Now let’s roll.”
She pulled off the gravel into the sand, trying to keep Bloom’s house in the rearview mirror for as long as possible. She checked the odometer, noting the mileage. She could see her fingers trembling as she gripped the wheel. When she tried to say something, he told her to shut up.
They drove in an eerie silence. Pushed forward over the brush, crossing a dried-out stream bed and bouncing over the rough terrain. She knew that her only real chance of surviving was to appeal to Bloom on some personal level. But as she glanced over at him and saw the madness in his eyes, the brutal determination on his face, the hope flickered out and died. About two miles into the desert, she steered the pickup around a hill and came to a clearing.
“This looks like a good spot,” Bloom said. “Pull over and get out.”
Lena did as she was told, watching the man grab a shovel out of the bed and throw it at her.
“Start digging,” he said.
She picked up the shovel and stared at him, calculating the distance between them.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Your eyes are all big. You’re breathing heavy. You’re all revved up because you’re about to die. And now you’ve got that shovel in your hands. You’re thinking maybe this is your chance to take me out. Well, forget it, bitch. It takes one point five seconds for a human being to travel twenty-one feet-the same amount of time it would take me to draw my weapon and fire. It’s called the twenty-one-foot rule. Only you’re more than twenty-five feet away, and this gun’s out and ready to rock and roll. Now start digging.”
She drove the shovel into the sand, keeping her eyes on him as he sat down on a boulder and grimaced. He lit another Marlboro and started rubbing his right leg. If Lena was looking for a weakness, it had to be his leg. There was something wrong with it. A pulled muscle in his lower thigh. Or, maybe a blown ligament in his knee.
She tossed another load of sand out of the hole, feeling the sun on her back. She paced herself-not too fast or too slow-just steady enough to not be noticed and keep things going. Maybe buy enough time to come up with something out of nothing. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t told anyone where she was. Other than Ramira, no one knew that she had left Los Angeles.
“You used the past tense,” Bloom said after a long stretch of silence.
Lena stopped digging and gave him a look.
“Back at the house you used the past tense,” he said. “What happened to her?”
“She was murdered. Wednesday night. Exactly one week ago.”
She watched him take it. She saw him lower his eyes and shake his head. The pain he felt was deeper now. But more important, it seemed real.
“I know that you used to be a cop,” she said.
Bloom met her eyes, but remained silent.
“I looked you up when I found the phone number,” she said.
“How’d you find the number?”
She watched him smoke the cigarette. He’d asked her a question, but didn’t seem to care if she answered it.
“She left it with her doctor.”
“Now I know you’re full of shit,” he said. “Jennifer would never do that.”
“I’m a homicide detective. I’m trying to figure out who she was.”
He shrugged. “Who do you think she was?”
“A prostitute working in Venice. Someone trying to hide what she was doing by using someone else’s name.”
“Is that it?” he asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Then I’d say you know all you need to know. Shut up and dig.”
She got back to work with the shovel. After a while she looked up and saw him whispering something into his cell phone. But the call didn’t last very long, only three or four minutes before he clicked off. When he noticed her looking at him, he waved the gun at her and she turned slightly. Bloom was lifting his pant leg. As he pulled it over his knee, she knew what the problem was and had a better than good idea of what the man had been doing for the past four years.
Bloom had a prosthetic right leg. There was something wrong with the fit around his thigh. Something that required an adjustment. After a moment, he looked over and caught her watching him again.
“Don’t get any crazy ideas,” he said. “I don’t need two legs to shoot a stupid bitch like you.”
Lena shrugged it off. “You were in Iraq. That’s why you left the department.”
He didn’t say anything, still working on his prosthetic leg.
“You signed up?”
He laughed. “Yeah, I bought the lies and signed up. And if I could go back I would. Not for the idiot politicians who started it and wanted it, or the ones who watched and sat on their butts. Not for the chicken shit TV reporters who’ve had their heads stuck up their asses since nine-eleven and don’t give a damn about the truth anymore. Not even for my fucking country because I don’t know what that means right now. But I’d go back if I could for the guys I met and everybody else who got screwed by people like you. I’d go back to help the people who lived there and got fucked. I’d go back to fix the lie and everything else we broke.”
His voice died off. His anger and bitterness seemed to subside as the silence returned.
“Is there a problem with the prosthetic leg?” she asked.
“The leg’s fine,” he said. “It’s the liner. I should have changed it today, but didn’t.”
Bloom fixed his jeans and stood up. Then he planted his right leg in the sand and pivoted his body. The adjustment he made seemed to work. His grimace was gone, and he sat back down on the boulder and lit another Marlboro.
“You need to keep digging,” he said. “It’s okay the way it is, but the coyotes will sniff out anything above three feet. If you don’t wanna be eaten-if you wanna rest in peace-you’ve gotta go deeper.”
She kept her mouth shut. Slamming the shovel into the sand, she lifted out another load. Then she heard his cell phone ring and watched him dig it out of his jacket. He didn’t say much. From what Lena could hear, it sounded like he was answering questions, not asking them. When he clicked off the phone, he stared back at her and smoked that Marlboro. He seemed more nervous now. More edgy. And he didn’t say anything. He just sat there, measuring her progress and smoking.
After another ten minutes and another cigarette, he got up and walked over.
“That’s good enough,” he said. “Get out of the hole.”
She started shaking. Struggling to catch her breath. She stepped out of her grave and gave him a long look-then watched as he reached into his pocket, trading his own gun for hers. She wasn’t sure if she should close her eyes or not. She was thinking about her brother who had been murdered six years ago. Thinking about her father’s death, and the mother who abandoned them. She was thinking about a lot of things that had nothing to do with this murder case or the desert she would end up in.
Bloom stepped closer, gun in hand, everything over. When he finally reached point-blank range, he stopped and tossed the spent Marlboro in the sand. Lena could hear her watch ticking in the silence. Time streaming by.
Then Bloom handed over her gun and reached into his pocket for her ID.
“My sister wasn’t a whore,” he said. “We need to go back to the house and talk.”