LOVER UNDER COVER Page 3

  Quisto wasn't about to quibble with that assessment. Besides, something the man had said was bothering him. "She identified him?"

  Butler nodded. "He had her phone number in his pocket. They didn't have anything else to go on, so they called it. She went over and gave us the positive ID."

  Quisto drew back a little. "Unpleasant," he murmured.

  "Yes. She was pretty shaken up. I think she and the kid were kind of close. He hung out a lot at the Neutral Zone"

  Quisto frowned. "She mentioned that. Some sort of club, or something?"

  Butler nodded again, tapping a finger against the folder. Quisto looked down, and saw a note clipped to the folder, with Caitlin Murphy's name and what he assumed was her address and phone number. Below it was another address, in Marina del Mar, that appeared to be for her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Patrick Murphy. Instinctively he read them, filing the information away.

  "That's what I meant about more guts than sense. She opened the place in an old storefront on Trinity Street East

  . In the middle of one of the worst parts of town. We tried to get her to move it up here to Trinity West, but she insisted the need was greater downtown. We told her she was nuts, nobody down there would abide by her rules, but she wouldn't listen."

  "Her rules?"

  "No booze, no weapons, no drugs."

  Quisto let out a low whistle, and his raised foot came down to the floor. "She have an army of enforcers?"

  "No." Butler shook his head, his expression tinged with more than a little awe. "Just her. What's amazing is that, so far, she's done it. And most of the time, without much help from us. Oh, we were out there a few times the first month or two, but once they knew she meant what she said about the rules, they seemed to ease up. Rumor has it she faced down some of the toughest guys in the neighborhood, one-on-one."

  There was more than just awe in the detective's voice, Quisto decided. Butler hadn't been lying when he said he didn't know Caitlin Murphy as well as he'd like to. For some reason, that didn't dispose Quisto to like the young officer any better, even though he knew his reaction was somewhat childish.

  "So she's a miracle worker," Quisto muttered. "A regular saint."

  Butler laughed. "Caitlin's much too real and far too stubborn to be a saint. She was just determined to give the younger kids on the street down there an alternative to starting with the street gangs and ending up with the Pack. If they survived long enough."

  "What is she, some kind of social worker?"

  Butler shook his head. "She's a teacher. English. Marina Heights Middle school. She opens the Neutral Zone on weekends during the school year, and every day except Sunday during the summer."

  "The Neutral Zone," Quisto repeated absently.

  "Yeah. Sort of her version of a DMZ. A place where there are no affiliations, no colors, no secret hand signals."

  "And no gunfire?"

  "That, too. Oh, it still goes on outside—even Caitlin can't stop that. But inside … well, she hasn't had a shot fired yet, and she's been open nearly a year."

  "From what I've heard," Quisto said wryly, "it's amazing she's still alive, let alone open."

  Butler suddenly looked very serious, his green eyes solemn. "Yes, it is. And I'll tell you, as big a pain as she's sometimes been, and despite the fact that we've tried to get her out of there, there are a lot of people around here who would be very upset if anything happened to her."

  He turned his attention back to the file, digging something out that was fastened on the inside with the same paper clip that held the note with the addresses. He freed it, and handed it to Quisto.

  "That's the first Polaroid from the scene. That your boy?"

  Quisto looked at the photograph, which was eerily bright from a too-powerful or too-close flash. Every part of the grim scene was illuminated all too plainly. Including the wide-eyed, gap-mouthed death's-head stare of the boy whose image had been haunting him ever since Caitlin Murphy brought him the news. There was no immediately visible cause of death, but the photograph was no less grim because of that.

  She'd had to look at this in person? A dead kid, shirtless, his skinny torso showing every rib, propped against a trash bin like some sort of ghastly comment on a disposable society? No wonder she'd been so wound up she slapped him.

  He stared at the photo. Fourteen. So damned young. Still a child, really. Or he would have been, if he lived anywhere else. Here, he'd been older than his years, matured far too early by a life that stole childhood the way the Pack stole cars. Quisto swallowed.

  "Yes," he said after a moment. "That's him."

  Butler nodded. "Were you working him for something? This maybe clear some cases for you?"

  "No." Quisto let out a sigh, handing the photograph back. "He … helped my partner and me on something, a couple of months ago."

  "Really?" Butler took the photo and clipped it back inside the file. "A snitch?"

  Quisto nodded.

  "Kind of young, wasn't he?"

  Quisto winced at the use of the past tense. He couldn't get past the last time he'd seen Eddie, when he warned him yet again to stay away from the Pack. All the boy could talk about was helping them, becoming a cop himself when he was old enough. And asking whether, if he did good for them, it would make the force overlook the fact that he had a misdemeanor record as a juvenile.

  "We didn't recruit him," Quisto said, for the second time today. "He came to us, with some info on the Pack. And his information was good. So we used it."

  "The Pack?" The detective looked suddenly wary.

  "Yes. They were getting ready to make a move into Marina del Mar. We knew it, but we didn't know where or how. Eddie did."

  Butler's eyes widened. "Wait a minute. Romero. Romero and Buckner, right?"

  Quisto nodded.

  "Hot damn!" Butler exclaimed. "I heard about that! Last year, right? When Rico sent his boys down to pick up that boatload of China White, and you guys were sitting there waiting? I heard that was the smoothest operation the DEA boys had ever seen."

  "No thanks to their presence," Quisto remarked.

  Butler laughed. "Feds," he said, with the disdain most local cops felt for federal officers who intruded on turf and cases they considered their own.

  "Yes," Quisto agreed.

  "I heard something else, about a crack house the Pack tried to set up in Marina del Mar, several years back. Wasn't it Buckner who took that down, too?"

  Quisto nodded. "Seven years ago."

  "I heard that cost him heavy."

  "Yes," Quisto said quietly. "His wife and unborn child. A car bomb meant for him."

  Butler paled beneath his tan. "God."

  "Yes. And that was shortly after his old partner blew his brains out."

  For a moment, Gage Butler turned away. He was still holding the relatively thin file, but his knuckles were as white as if he were trying to compress the paper back into wood. Quisto watched him as he swallowed, heavily; something else was at work here, something that greatly darkened the man's otherwise genial and open demeanor.

  "That's … ugly," Butler finally said, not looking up.

  "Very. He wasn't my partner then, but he was still carrying it pretty close when I started working with him, four years ago." Quisto shrugged. "But he's married now. With a new baby. And so damned happy it makes you want to get away, in case it's catching."

  Butler looked up then. And managed a smile that was as wide as, but lacked the genuineness of, his earlier ones; something about Chance's story had struck a deep chord within this man. "That's good to hear." He smiled again, better this time. "So what's it like, working with the legendary Chance Buckner?"

  "It has its moments," Quisto said wryly. "Especially since he's as all-American-looking as you are." Then his mouth twisted wryly. "But it may not go on for much longer. We took the sergeant's test this morning, and, knowing him, he aced it."

  "May lose him to a promotion, huh?"

  "They'd be crazy not to," Quisto admitted
frankly. "He's the best there is."

  "So I've heard." Butler's smile seemed back to normal this time. "Guess every department has its legend."

  "You mean like Yeager?"

  Butler looked surprised. "You've heard of him?"

  "Every cop in this county's heard of Clay Yeager."

  "Yeah. Too bad he didn't come out of his hell as well as Buckner did." Butler dropped the folder on his desk and changed the subject rather abruptly. "Sorry about the kid."

  "Me too. What's the status?"

  Butler shrugged. "We're waiting for some decisions. His mother went to pieces and wasn't much help in making arrangements."

  That wasn't what he'd meant, but an image of Rosa Salazar formed in Quisto's mind, from the one time he'd seen her, two years ago. She'd reminded him of his own mother, in her fierce love for her wayward young son, and he wasn't surprised to hear that his death had left her devastated.

  "I'll go speak to her. Perhaps I can help."

  "I'd appreciate that. The coroner needs to know where to send the body."

  "What about the investigation?"

  Butler shrugged. "The usual, toxicology and all that, will be back in a few days. Then we'll wrap it up. That's the only good thing about these. They're short and easy."

  "These?" Quisto asked.

  Butler gave him a curious look. "Yeah. I'm not sure yet what he was using. Nothing I recognized right off. But they're mixing some strange stuff together these days. Once I get the report from the coroner's office, then it's just fill in the blanks on the death report. You know how it goes."

  Quisto took a breath. "I'm not sure I do. What exactly was the cause of death?"

  Butler blinked. "Sorry. I thought you knew already. Kid shot up a load of something really nasty. Found him with the needle still in his arm."

  * * *

  Chapter 3

  « ^ »

  "Caitlin," Quisto said patiently, "they found a hype kit, used. Syringe, needle, rubber tubing, the whole gamut of paraphernalia."

  "I don't care," she said. "He wasn't doing drugs. I know he wasn't."

  Stubborn, Gage Butler had said. That, Quisto thought, was a tremendous understatement. He'd laid it all out for her, and she still wouldn't budge, still insisted that Eddie had been, if not clean as the driven snow, at least free of the ravages of intravenous drug addiction.

  "Caitlin—"

  "I told Gage it wasn't an overdose."

  Gage? He couldn't get her past "Detective Romero," despite having used her first name since he'd arrived here. Perhaps they were closer than Butler realized. They'd make a dramatic couple, the tall, tan, good-looking blond man and the beautiful peaches-and-cream redhead. The thought didn't please him. And the fact that it didn't pleased him even less.

  "I told him Eddie wasn't using. Obviously he didn't believe me."

  "How can he? Caitlin, Eddie still had the needle in his arm. His own mother said he'd been gone for two days, hadn't even come home at night."

  "I don't care," she repeated, her expression mutinous, her delicate jaw set.

  She turned on her heel and walked away from him. Quisto sighed inwardly. Stubborn was definitely too mild a word for it. He followed her, slowly, looking around the high-ceilinged main room. The bright yellow of the far wall did a great deal to brighten what could have been a dingy, depressing place.

  It also, Quisto guessed, explained the two specks of yellow paint that marked Caitlin Murphy's sassy, upturned nose, the splatters on her jeans, a drop on a pair of what seemed to be very small white high-top tennis shoes, and the blue T-shirt she wore. He wondered if she'd done all the painting herself; she didn't seem to have any help around.

  And she could use it, he thought. Lots of it.

  He'd found the Neutral Zone easily enough, but that hadn't alleviated his shock when he actually saw the place, and where it was. Butler, if anything, had been kind about the location. Quisto would be wary himself walking down this street, even armed; he shuddered to think what could happen to a woman who, from what the detective had told him, presumably came here alone, and stayed here alone. Especially a woman who looked like Caitlin. Not only was she beautiful, but her pale skin and bright hair would make her stand out even more in this grimy place.

  The neighborhood was beyond run-down, all the way into borderline derelict, far worse than even the poorest part of Trinity West. Only the Neutral Zone stood out as having had any kind of attention at all in the past decade, if not two. It stood out midblock, lights on amid the darkened buildings on either side and across the street, most of them festooned with crisscrossed boards over broken windows. Some lacked even that much care, gaping holes yawning where windows had once been. A liquor store with heavily barred windows at one corner, and a small old Mom-and-Pop-style grocery store at the other, were the only signs of life.

  The Neutral Zone itself hadn't been open yet when he arrived, but he'd found the back door propped open—he'd have to talk to her about that—and Caitlin had answered when he called out.

  "This is an … interesting place you have here," he said, hoping she'd accept the change of subject.

  "It's a place for the kids. The young ones, who haven't gotten sucked up into the street gangs yet. It's a place to get away. To not have to be looking over their shoulders, for at least a while. To let them learn what it feels like to just … be kids."

  "And just how do you manage that?"

  "There are rules here, and the kids all know they're enforced."

  "Enforced? By who?"

  She drew herself up. "By me. You think I can't? I've only had to call the police three times since I opened, over a year ago."

  Quisto held up a hand, as if to stave off her anger, feeling the heat of her gaze, as fiery as her hair. "I never said you couldn't do it. Although I do admit to a certain amount of curiosity as to how."

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, she smiled. Quisto felt an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach, as if something there had contracted fiercely.

  "I don't really know," she admitted, her smile turning sheepish. "It just seemed to happen. The first day I opened, a bunch of kids came in. I knew they were here to test the waters, so to speak. To try and scare off this "rich bitch," as they called me, who didn't have a clue what life was really like down here."

  Quisto could just imagine it. And it wasn't a pretty image; Caitlin, facing down a group of angry young thugs who would no doubt feel no qualms about teaching her a painful, if not fatal, lesson.

  "What did you do?"

  "I showed them some pictures."

  "Pictures?"

  "Of two of my Irish cousins. Handsome boys, barely eighteen. One the son of my father's sister, the other the son of my mother's brother. And then I showed them pictures of what little was left of their bodies, after they were both killed in an IRA bombing. They were on opposite sides, but they were both dead. Padraic probably even set the bomb himself, if the truth be known."

  "And?"

  "I told them there wasn't a damned thing they could teach me about blood and territory that I didn't already know, that they were amateurs at street and guerrilla warfare. My people have been at it for centuries."

  Slowly, Quisto nodded. That was the kind of thing these kids would understand, and they would see her standing up to them like that as a sign of courage or craziness, things deserving of almost equal esteem on the streets. He began to see why they respected Caitlin Murphy.

  "They backed off?"

  "After I hung the pictures up to remind them," she said. She gestured toward the wall opposite the yellow one. "That was the start of the wall."

  She said it in a tone that was almost reverent. He turned his head. When he came in, he'd noticed the mass of photos on that wall, a conglomeration of faces and names, seemingly with only one thing in common: their youth. He turned and looked at her again.

  "Who are the others? Your clientele?"

  "Some. Most were gone before I got here."

  "Gone?"
/>   She gave him a level look. "Dead, Detective Romero. That's what all those kids over there have in common. Every last one of them is dead. Some from drugs, more that were shot, stabbed, run down in the street. And a few suicides, too. They're all there, on the wall. Friends, brothers, sisters, cousins… My kids bring in the pictures and put them up there. So they aren't forgotten, like the world wants to forget them."

  Quisto looked at the wall again, fighting a rising tide of queasiness. You'd think that after eight years as a cop he'd be used to this kind of thing, but the sight of all those young faces hit him hard. There, but for the grace of a determined family and a bit of luck, could be any one of his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews.

  "I think it's that wall that really keeps things in control around here, more than me. The kids have come to think of this place as a shrine as much as a club. And even though they may not have much respect for anything else, they do have respect for the dead."

  He turned to face her again. "And for you."

  "I hope so." He saw her lips tighten. "And now I have to put Eddie's picture up there."

  "I'm sorry."

  "He wasn't on drugs," Caitlin said again, vehemently, spinning away from him. "I saw him almost every day. He helped me around here, more than anyone else. I would have known."

  Quisto didn't dispute it; he knew it would be pointless right now. He settled down on one of the stools that sat in front of the long bar, a rather makeshift affair of some dark, stained wood that was nevertheless polished to a high sheen. Caitlin walked around behind it, then stopped across from him. Quisto watched her face. He could see her wrestling with some kind of internal dilemma. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face him.

  "I'm sorry. I haven't been very polite. Would you like something to drink?"

  Quisto smiled. Widely. "You're the bartender, too?"

  Her answering smile was halfhearted, but it was a try. "Since I only serve soda, coffee and tea, it's pretty hard to mess up."

  "Do you have any root beer?" he asked. She looked startled for a moment, and Quisto let out a dramatic sigh. "It's true. I am ashamed to admit to it, but I have a great weakness for root beer."