“I’m not sure what that would have to do with anything…” I began, hedging. The twins were out, yes, but that was their information to share, not mine.
“Shit, boy, I don’t care who they fuck,” he said, taking in my hesitation. “I’ve got a man at home myself,” he said, winking at me and a tinytinge of pink appearing on his cheeks. “I don’t know you, or your brothers, really, but I did know Mack, and I owe him for saving my ass more times than I can count.”
I held his gaze with my own. Whatever was going on had to be serious for Martinez to be responding like this. A random hit-and-run wouldn’t have caused this kind of a response from a man like him.
Something in my gaze seemed to give him whatever he was looking for, because Martinez leaned under the table and pulled out a crumpled piece of gray paper from a battered medic bag, much like the one sitting under my own bathroom sink. He laid it on the table, and I couldn’t help but see the blood spatters on the paper: My brothers’ blood.
“This trash has been bothering me, but I could get in deep shit for it,” he said, setting the paper face down on the table. “Medics work very closely with law enforcement and I don’t like the idea of anyone, or anything jeopardizing that relationship.”
I reached for the paper, but as my fingers touched the paper he didn’t lift his hands to release it.
“Anything,” he repeated, his gaze holding mine as he raised an eyebrow at me.
“I have no idea where it came from, sir,” I said solemnly.
“Good man,” he said, nodding at me and taking his hand away from the paper, settling back in the chair.
“We found these scattered around the sidewalk where we found your brothers. The cop who showed up didn’t say anything about it, but I noticed while we worked that he was busier picking them up and stashing them in his car than he was assessing the scene,” he said, nodding at the paper.
“The main thing though is…” he continued, his voice dropping, “Son, you may want to keep a close eye on the rest of your family. The driver that hit your brothers would have had to have driven off the road, around a dumpster and then away. With no skid marks, no damage to the building, and no damage to the car.”
I turned the paper over and looked down at the paper in front ofme, the hateful speech pouring across the page, pictures of crosses and Bible verses blaring in the blood-smeared ink.
Martinez’s voice seemed to come from a great distance.
“This was no accident.”
Fuck.
29
Lee
Throughout the morning,Mason had been a rock. He’d fetched and carried so much coffee that he had to have been exhausted. Hell, just after the events of the previous night he should have been a wreck. I tried to talk to him about his panic attack at the community center, but he kept putting me off, turning the conversation back to the boys, saying we could talk about it later.
We were sitting there waiting for news from the docs on Sonny’s leg when my phone beeped.
WEAVER: Hey bro, any news?
ME: Nothing yet. They said it would probably be another hour or two.
WEAVER: Fuck. Working on ER leave. Probably won’t be approved until tomorrow though.
ME: Nothing you could do here anyway, hon.
WEAVER: I know, just feel so damn helpless. How’s our psychic?
ME: Psychic?
WEAVER: Your new boy toy. He kinda nailed it last night, right? Didn’t he freak out about the fam or something?
I’d forgotten Mason’s insistence that I check on the family last night, chalking it up to some kind of self-calming ritual.
ME: Dunno. Hadn’t thought about it.
WEAVER: Well, think about it. Seems kind of weird to me.
ME: Weave, what are you trying to say? That Mason did it? Because that’s bullshit. He was with me. ALL night.
