“A wellness check?”Javi repeated.
While Marion snorted impatiently in his ear, he reopened the car to grab his tablet from the sleeve in the door compartment.He flicked it on and tapped at the screen as he checked his memory.There was nothing about a wellness check on Brian logged.
Which, he supposed, meshed with what Marion was saying.
“They just brushed me off,” she said.The rhythms of her speech shifted into analmostgood-enough-to-recognize mimicry of an officious cop.“They’d been to the address and spoken to the resident, and my‘son’ claimed not to be in distress or need any assistance.For god’s sake, they couldn’t even remember he was my brother.I tried to tell them that hewilllook fine, that he sounds fine.It’s exactly what his old roommates said, right up until he set them on fire.It’s what my parents said, right up until they died.”
Javi’s finger paused mid-swipe.
“Are you suggesting—”
“No.Never.He loved them,” Marion said.“But they never understood that he could be completelyfine95 percent of the time and still be crazy as a shithouse rat 100 percent of the time.”
She stopped and swallowed, the click of spit in her throat audible.
“That’s not how I talk about him,” she said.“I just… Nobody ever listens.”
“I am.”
“Only because it’s too late,” Marion said.“Can I talk to him?”
“Not right now,” Javi hedged.“Did you say youhaveBrian’s address?”
It took a second.Javi imagined that Marion was trying to work out what she could try and get for the information.
“Things could still get worse for Brian,” Javi said.He tried to sound like he had any sympathy for the man.It should have been easy.From what he’d put together, Brian had been a vulnerable target for a sophisticated international cartel.Maybe if Javi got Eric back alive, that would matter.For now, the gentleness in his voice was just a tool.“I’m trying to stop that from happening.Just like you were.”
“Twenty-two Cuyamaca Road,” she said.“Not Cuyamaca Way.It came later, and we never got our mail again.It was…I’m sorry.That’s not what you asked.Twenty-two Cuyamaca Road.It’s our parents’ house.I never sold it, just so he’d… That’s where he’s staying.”
“Thank you,” Javi said.“We’ll keep you updated.”
He hung up before she could push for that updatenowand called Kincaid.
The call dragged out until he expected the flick to voicemail, but with a couple of rings to go, Kincaid picked up.
“Anything?”Kincaid asked
“The sister is probably on her way,” Javi informed him.“She’s in Phoenix.I get the feeling she was expecting some sort of call, so she was ready to go.We’ve probably got about three hours.”
“Isn’t it nice to be back in the fold?”Kincaid said lightly, and Javi could suddenly taste the sourness of “we” on his tongue.Before he could say anything, Kincaid jumped back in.“Older sister?Younger?”
“Older.”
Kincaid sighed.“Enough she was parentified?”
“Not really,” Javi said.“She was anyhow.”
“Shit,” Kincaid sighed.“What did she tell you about Fowler?Anything I can use to get him to talk?”
Javi rubbed the back of his neck.Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the truck driver jump down from the cab and start toward the restrooms.He mentally crossed that off his list of things to keep track of.
“He’s paranoid, delusional, and smart enough to think he’s more likely to be right than most people he meets,” Javi said.“When he’s having an episode, he’s very sure he’s right, but both the administrator at the farm and his sister said he’s vulnerable to anything that feeds into that delusion.In this case, the Horvats were able to use the fact that Eric’s new house was a foreclosed property to trigger—"
Kincaid interrupted him.“So the crazy isn’t just a bit?”he said.“That means that he probably doesn’t know anything real about the Horvats.They’ll have just fed him whatever nutcase slogans needed to trigger him.”
It was what Kincaid would do.
“He still knows where Eric is,” Javi said.“Or was.If you can convince him that you’re on his side, that might be enough to—”
