Rick Riordan: Southtown

But they got Riggs tied up with guitar string and taped his mouth and shoved him, moaning and half-conscious, into the corner of the vestry. Still nobody came.

Elroy stood behind the worktable so anybody coming in wouldn’t see the bloodstains on his pants. C.C. and Zeke huddled around him, staring at the stained glass as if they gave a damn about finishing it. Zeke suppressed a schoolboy giggle.

“Shut up, freak,” Luis said.

“ You shut up, spic.”

Luis started to go for him, but Pablo grabbed his shirt collar.

“ Both of you,” Stirman said, “cool it.”

“We got Riggs’ car keys,” Elroy murmured. “Don’t see why-”

“No,” Stirman said. “We do it right. Patience.”

Pablo didn’t like it, but he got a D-string ready. He curled the ends around his hands, moved to one side of the door. Luis took the other side.

Stirman sat down in his chair, in plain sight of the entrance. He crossed his legs and read through his testimonial notes. The son-of-a-bitch was cool. Pablo had to give him that.

Pablo’s finger throbbed where the pastor had bit it. The copper guitar string stung his broken skin.

Finally he heard footsteps on gravel. The rookie supervisor appeared with a heaping plate of ribs.

Stirman smiled apologetically. “Pastor Riggs wants to talk to you. Prison major came by.”

“Hell,” said the supervisor.

He started toward the vestry and Pablo garroted him, barbecue and baked beans flying everywhere. The supervisor’s fingers raked at the elusive string around his neck as Pablo dragged him into the corner.

The rookie had just gone limp when Grier came in.

Luis tried to get him around the neck, but the old marine was too wily. He sidestepped, saw Zeke’s soldering iron coming in time to catch the blow on his arm, managed one good yell before Elroy came over the table on top of him, crumpling him to the floor, Grier’s head connecting hard with the cement.

Elroy got up. He was holding a broken piece of white glass and a mess of red rags. The rest of the glass was impaled just below Grier’s sternum.

Grier’s eyes rolled back in his head. His fingers clutched his gut.

C.C. slapped Elroy’s arm. “What the hell you do that for?”

“Just happened.”

They stood there, frozen, as Grier’s muscles relaxed. His mouth opened and stayed that way.

Five minutes later, they had his body and the garroted rookie stripped to their underwear. The rookie was only unconscious, so they tied him up, taped his mouth, crammed him and Grier’s corpse into the tiny vestry with the comatose Reverend.

Elroy and Luis got into the supervisors’ clothes. Grier’s had blood on them, but not that much. Most of Grier’s bleeding must’ve been inside him. Elroy figured he could cover the stains with a clipboard. Luis’ clothes had barbecue sauce splattered down the front. Neither uniform fit exactly right, but Pablo thought they might pass. They didn’t have to fool anybody very long.

Elroy and Luis put the supervisors’ IDs around their necks. They tucked the laminated photos in their shirt pockets like they didn’t want them banging against their chests.

C.C., still in prison whites, made a call from Pastor Riggs’ desk phone, pretending he was the Maintenance Department foreman. He told the back gate to expect a crew in five minutes to fix their surveillance camera.

He hung up, smiled at Stirman. “They can’t wait to see us. Damn camera’s been broke for a month. We’ll call you from the sally port.”

“Don’t screw up,” Stirman told him.

“Who, me?”

With one last look, Pablo tried to warn Luis to be careful. He couldn’t shake the image of his cousin getting shot at the gate, his disguise seen through in a second, but Luis just grinned at him. No better than the stupid gringo Zeke-he was having a grand time. Luis threw Pablo the keys to the Reverend’s SUV.

Once they were gone, Stirman picked up the phone.

“What you doing?” Pablo asked.

Stirman placed an outside call-Pablo could tell from the string of numbers. He got an answer. He said, “Go.”

Then he hung up.

“What?” Pablo demanded.

Stirman looked at him with those unsettling eyes-close-set, dark as oil, with a softness that might’ve been mistaken for sorrow or even sympathy, except for the hunger behind them. They were the eyes of a slave ship navigator, or a doctor in a Nazi death camp.

“Safe passage,” Stirman told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

Pablo imagined some Mexican mother hearing those words as the boxcar door closed on her and her family, locking them in the hot unventilated darkness, with a promise that they’d all see los estados unidos in the morning.

Pablo needed to kill Stirman.

He should take out his shank and do it. But he couldn’t with Zeke there-stupid loyal Zeke with his stupid soldering iron.

Thunder broke, rolling across the tin roof of the chapel.

“Big storm coming,” Stirman said. “That’s good for us.”

“It won’t rain,” Pablo said in Spanish. He felt like being stubborn, forcing Stirman to use his language. “That’s dry thunder.”

Stirman gave him an indulgent look. “Hundred-year flood, son. Wait and see.”

Pablo wanted to argue, but his voice wouldn’t work.

Stirman took the car keys out of his hand and went in the other room, jingling the brass cross on the Reverend’s chain.

Pablo stared at the phone.

Luis, Elroy and C.C. should’ve reached the back gate by now. They should’ve called.

Or else they’d failed, and the guards were coming.

In the corner, wedged between the unconscious supervisor and Grier’s body, Pastor Riggs stared at him-dazed blue eyes, his head wound glistening like a volcanic crater in his white hair.

Out in the chapel, Zeke was pacing with his soldering iron. He’d done an imperfect job wiping up Grier’s blood, so his footprints made faint red prints back and forth across the cement.

Stirman pretended to work on the stained glass. He had his back to the vestry as if Pablo posed no threat at all.

Pablo could walk out there, drive the shank into Stirman’s back before he knew what was happening.

He was considering the possibility when Zeke stopped, looking at something outside. Maybe the lightning.

Whatever it was, his attention was diverted. The timing wouldn’t get any better.

Pablo gripped the shank.

He’d gone three steps toward Stirman when the guard came in.

It was Officer Gonzales.

She scanned the room, marking the trustees’ positions like land mines. Stirman and Zeke stood perfectly still.

Gonzales’ hand strayed toward her belt, but of course she wasn’t armed. Guards never were, inside the fence.

“Where are your supervisors?” she asked.

She must’ve been scared, but she kept an edge of anger in her voice-trying to control the situation, trying to avoid any hint she was vulnerable.

Stirman pointed to the vestry. “Right in there, ma’am.”

Gonzales frowned. She took a step toward the vestry. Then her eyes locked on something-Pablo’s hand. He had completely forgotten the shank.

She stepped back, too late.

Zeke crushed her windpipe with the soldering iron as she tried to scream. He grabbed the front of her shirt, pulled her down, Gonzales gagging, digging in her heels, clawing at Zeke’s wrists.

Stirman got hold of her ankles. They dragged her into the corner where they taped her mouth, bound her hands. Zeke slapped her in the head when she tried to struggle.

Pablo just watched.

He was a statue. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

Stirman rose, breathing heavy.

“Bind her feet,” he told Zeke.

“In a minute,” Zeke murmured.