Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Nate held out his hands, a felon at gunpoint, “I’m sorry. I-”

She flew across the room and ripped the diary from his hand. “I can’t believe you. I get that you’re dying and everything, but you can’t just sail in here and start prying around in my stuff and reading my journal .”

“Seriously,” Jason added.

“Can we get this clown out of here?” Nate asked.

“Chillax.” Jason showed him his palms. “I’m leaving.” He kissed Cielle, keeping his eyes on Nate the whole time, a little power move that, on another day when Nate owed his daughter less, might have resulted in a broken nose. And then the kid was gone, thumping down the stairs whistling the chorus from “Paradise City.”

Nate faced his daughter across a floor littered with dirty clothes and torn-out magazine pages.

She glowered at him. “Why are you back here?”

“What?”

“Why’d you come back again? I assume it wasn’t just to read my diary.”

He wanted so badly to be straight with her, to paint the whole picture, taking some of the edges off the gory points, but he wasn’t sure what was best, and Pete and Janie certainly deserved a vote. He cleared his throat to stall, but Cielle was having none of it.

“What were you doing at the bank, Nate?”

Quite a lane change. He heard himself hesitate a beat too long. “Bank stuff. Making a deposit. But I was interrupted by the robbery-” A second late he caught his choice of words.

“ Interrupted? From what? Making a deposit?”

“Yes,” he said.

“In the news you said you were in the bathroom.” Her gaze, steady beneath those long eyelashes. Questions and emotions whirring beneath the surface, slot-machine reels that wouldn’t land. Did she know?

He chewed his cheek, not wanting to lie more but not willing to tell his fifteen-year-old daughter that he’d been planning on killing himself.

Finally she said, “At least do me one favor. Let’s not pretend that either of us doesn’t know you’re lying.”

“Okay.”

Relief showed on her face, though she covered quickly, wiping her nose roughly on her sleeve. More silence.

He started for the door.

“You hate him,” she said.

“What?”

“Shithead Jason. You hate him.”

Nate paused, hand on the knob, trying to switch lanes. The dispute loomed ahead like a pileup. “He doesn’t exactly make a glowing first impression.”

“Jay is a musician. He’s an artist.”

“No. Eric Clapton is an artist. Jason is a mouth breather with a guitar.”

“Who’s Eric Clapton?”

Nate thought, I’m gonna kill myself in earnest.

She was already caught up in her objection. “Who do you want me to date? One of those is-this-gonna-be-on-the-test dorks from my AP classes? I like Jay because he’s different. And you know what else? He’s here for me. Unlike some people.”

“I know you still like me a little.” Nate gestured at the uncovered family portrait in the closet. “You keep the ridiculous picture of us in here.”

She curled her broad shoulders, withdrawing into herself, her hands gone again in her sleeves, turning the cuffs to puppet mouths. “Nowhere else to store it.”

He nodded. They were done here. As he passed her on his way out, his arm brushed lightly against hers, and he realized that this touch of fabric was the first physical contact he’d had with his daughter in years. How had it gotten here? The question weighed on him all the way down to the kitchen.

The smell of burned onions laced the air. Pete paced, circling the island, and Janie sat on the barstool. She was grimacing in pain, her head tilted and one arm stretched low with the wrist cocked back.

“I have an acquaintance who’s a cop,” Pete said. “We have to take this to someone who knows what the hell he’s doing.”

“And say what?” Nate asked. “What proof do we have? A pair of handcuffs in a warehouse? Even the ice has probably melted by now.”

“This is out of our league, Nate. And certainly too much for you to handle. We need to enlist the help of folks whose job it is to deal with people like this.”

“Pete, I researched this guy. He’s a heavy hitter. He means what he says.”

“He made a death threat. On a girl. They can move on him fast, get him behind bars.”

“Investigations take time. A lot of time. And Pavlo Shevchenko is rich and connected.”

“So he owns cops?” Pete’s voice rose, fear and frustration masquerading as anger. “Federal agents? Who will do what? Call to warn him?”

“I work in a cop shop, Pete. It doesn’t take a dirty cop. It takes one clerk with a big mouth. One IT guy willing to search a file. Trust me, I looked stuff up today I wasn’t supposed to.”

Jane lifted her head and pulled her arm across her chest, tugging at the back of her elbow, grimacing.

“I’m talking about one offline conversation,” Pete said. “With someone I trust.”

“Are you willing to take that chance?” Nate stabbed a finger up, aiming in the vicinity of Cielle’s bedroom. “Given what he’ll do to her if you’re wrong?”

Pete stopped pacing, his long face looking even longer. The drain dripped invisibly beneath the sink.

“No,” Janie said. “Not yet anyway.”

“Shevchenko gave me five days,” Nate said. “I have until Sunday.”

“To do what, Nate? Rob a bank?” Pete blew out a breath, ran both hands through his thick hair. “You make messes, Nate. That’s what you do. And other people clean them up for you.”

Janie gripped the top of her head, pulling gently to the side, trying to stretch out the knot she always got on the right side when she was tense or upset.

“Her shoulder. ” The words came out more sharply than Nate had intended.

“What?”

Nate pointed at Janie. “Rub her damn shoulder, Pete.”

A puzzled pause, and then it finally dawned, and Pete stepped behind her, massaging. Janie grimaced against the pain.

Nate took her hands across the island and looked into her scared blue eyes. “No matter what I have to do, I will not let them hurt our daughter. I promise you.”

She gave the slightest nod. He started out.

Pete called after him, “Where are you going?”

“To handle it.”

Nate passed Casper at the front door, gnawing on Pete’s wing tips. He seemed to be enjoying the hot sauce.

The Los Angeles County Department of the Coroner was closing up as Nate slotted the Jeep into a parking spot. The imposing administrative building, a majestic interlace of brick and stone, pinned down a street corner on North Mission at the brink of the USC Medical Center. The building had first been dropped into Boyle Heights, a not-altogether-pleasant East L.A. neighborhood, as the County General Hospital. Ceramic floor tiles still spelled out the original function. Given the surfeit of movies that used the location and the glut of tourists-yes, tourists-it was the only coroner’s office, at least that he’d heard of, with a gift shop. Among the expected macabre paraphernalia, it sold coffin couches and chalk-outline beach towels. A sign by the cash register declared, CHECKS ACCEPTED WITH TWO FORMS OF ID OR DENTAL RECORDS.

It was Wednesday night, so Nate’s favorite coroner, Eddie Yeap, would be toiling into the wee hours. Nonetheless, Nate put a spring into his step before the front door locked. As he had learned in his job: Always start with the body. In this case it was all he had. If he was ever going to figure out a way into Urban’s safe-deposit box, he’d need to find out as much about the man as possible. And finding out as much as possible about the deceased happened to be what Nate was best at.