Nine Days: A Mystery Read online

  The café building’s hatch was the same type as Hector’s, a lift-off cap with no lock or latch. I peered down into the second floor, empty except for an old wooden desk and a long painter’s ladder propped against the wall next to it. What looked like an enclosed stair led down to the alley from the back corner.

  The radar wasn’t giving me any grief, so I swung my legs over the hatch curb and in, getting a good overhand grip. Then I lowered myself until my arms were straight and let go, making sure to bend my knees as my feet hit the floor. It didn’t hurt—much—but it made a lot of noise, and I crouched there for several minutes, listening, before straightening up and going over to the desk.

  There was nothing in it but a single manila folder in the pencil drawer, with the name MILESTONE PROPERTIES scribbled on the tab in Teresa’s signature green ballpoint. I stared, not quite believing what I was seeing, then reached down and opened it. I had just finished reading “Instruments of Incorporation, Milestone Properties” on the title page when I heard a creak. I turned my head, and my cheek ran into something hard and cold.

  “Don’t move,” Richard Hallstedt said.

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4

  I

  “Gonna rip my arm off and feed it to me?” Richard asked with soft mockery, backing up.

  I turned to face him. He was smiling, which wasn’t a pretty sight. Neither was the Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter he was holding, the same kind of gun that had killed Joe. It had a silencer affixed to the end of the barrel, which made it look huge. The door into the stairwell behind him was standing open. He had been behind it, waiting.

  Considering their ubiquity in my life, I’ve always had a relatively dispassionate relationship with guns, classifying them as no more than small machines useful for certain purposes. Now, though, facing one for the first time since taking two bullets in the side and watching a third rip my husband’s head in half, I felt a sharp jab of disgust and outrage punched into me. The urge to lunge forward and shove the pistol down Richard’s throat was almost irresistible.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he was saying. “My car’s parked in the alley. It’s open. If you do anything but walk straight down the stairs and get in, I’ll shoot you. Got it?”

  I nodded, my palms itching. His yellow-brown eyes ran down my body with a sort of prissy lewdness, as if he’d undressed me with his eyes and didn’t approve of what he saw. I noticed that he was wearing athletic shoes now, instead of the tasseled dress loafers that had tried to insert themselves into my doorway on Friday morning. The rest of his apparel was the same: pressed khakis, polo shirt, smug expression.

  He stepped out of my path, flicking the gun toward the stairs. It was a clumsy, unpracticed motion, made by a man unused to handling a firearm. I started down with him following behind, toward the pale side of a car showing through the open door at the bottom.

  “Stop,” Richard said after we’d covered about half the distance.

  He stood there breathing for a little while, probably thinking the same thing that I was: passing through the door into the alley was going to be tricky. I could easily lunge left or right and get the car between us before he could do anything about it. He was going to have to go by me on the narrow staircase. I waited for him to make the mistake all beginning captors make. They usually make it only once.

  “Face the wall,” he said.

  I did it. As he started to rustle past, I pushed myself back, fast and hard. Richard’s slack, reedy body slammed into the opposite wall, the gun clacking against the plaster. I turned toward the top of the stairs and swung my far elbow at the back of his head. It connected, but my foot landed on something pliable and moving, and I went down, landing on my right side against the wooden risers.

  Richard scrambled to his feet above me. “You fucking bitch,” he panted.

  All I could pay attention to at the moment was the pain in my back and side. I was lying against the bottom three steps, on my stomach, my right hand flat on the tread above me.

  Richard stepped down, putting his weight on it, and pressed the muzzle of the gun against my forehead. “Listen. I don’t want to kill you, but I will.” His scratchy tenor had risen a notch, and he sounded scared.

  I believed him, but my left hand had already made the trip up along my side and grabbed hold of his ankle. I yanked, and the Smith & Wesson went flying as he cartwheeled down and slammed against the doorjamb. The gun clattered out into the alley.

  My right side stabbed sharply as I came vertical, and in the split second I paused to wince, Richard lunged and got an arm around my neck. He levered me back against him, arching my spine. It felt like someone had run me through with a spear. My scream was silent, because Richard’s arms were scissoring my throat. He had the strength of desperation, and I was cramped by pain. The last thing I remembered was the sound of his breathless grunts against the side of my face.

  II

  I came to in the backseat of a moving car. My hands were clasped between my knees and tied to my lower legs, which were bound at the knees and ankles, keeping me in a compressed fetal position. The car was running steadily, not starting and stopping, and it was featurelessly dark outside. We weren’t in town anymore.

  My right side stabbed with every breath. Silently, I congratulated Richard on learning from his mistake: disable a captive before attempting to move them. An unrestrained, able-bodied person will always fight. It’s hard-wired in the human brain. It is in mine, anyway.

  The car stopped. Keys jingled out of the ignition and fabric moved across leather as Richard got out. He crunched away, and I heard the unmistakable drum of a guy taking an al fresco leak.

  My best chance would be when he came back to drag me out. If I stayed motionless, he might think I was still unconscious, which would give me an advantage. I waited, listening. Nothing happened for perhaps five minutes; then I heard another vehicle approaching. It stopped near where I’d heard Richard peeing. A car door opened and closed, and then there were voices. I’d just started thinking about taking a peek when I heard them coming my way. I held still, eyes closed.

  The man who wasn’t Richard said, “Whattya mean, you got a job for me? You ain’t paid us for the last one, man.”

  That rangy Texas twang was starting to sound normal to my ears. They were standing just outside the car, above my head.

  “My cash is tied up just now,” Richard replied with what I realized now was his usual undertone of annoyed condescension.

  “I ain’t come all the way out here for nothing,” the newcomer complained.

  A key chunked into the driver’s-side door lock. “You’ll get paid, don’t worry about it. Right now, I need you to—”

  There was a rustle and a faint metallic click, followed by a brief silence. Then I heard Richard’s voice, tense and placating. “Take it easy.”

  “Who d’ya think yer messing with, man? Get the fuck over there.”

  Silence for an instant, then footsteps crunching away. I waited for the sound of a gunshot, but it didn’t come. Instead, I heard car doors slam, at which point I jerked myself up to look out, just in time to see the faint shape of a dark four-door gunning off from under a low tree about fifteen feet away.

  I watched the taillights fade into the distance for an incredulous minute, then rocked myself up to sitting, biting down against the pain in my side. Richard could be telling the guy about me right now. I had to work fast.

  The rope was nylon cord, tied in an almost comical series of complicated knots down near my feet. I could wiggle my fingers but not my hands. I wormed forward and wedged my shoulder between the front seats. It took a couple of tries, and I jammed my already damaged side painfully against the parking brake in the process, but I finally slithered through to the front.

  Working my index fingers out from between my legs as far as I could, I pressed my knees against the dashboard, pushing the cigarette lighter in. When it popped out, I fumbled it around and pressed the hot end against the length of rope
across my knees. It took a couple of passes, and I burned the crap out of my right index finger, but the rope eventually melted apart, and I wriggled free.

  I got out on the passenger side and started walking fast along the gravel shoulder, keeping my ears open. There was wire fence on both sides of the two-lane road, almost hidden in the long grass of the ditches, with pasture and cattle beyond. Up ahead, maybe two miles, I saw a pole light hovering above a small house.

  I’d gone about fifty feet when I remembered the Milestone folder. I turned back, telling myself that if a car appeared, I could dive into the ditch and hide myself in the overgrown grass.

  As I came up on Richard’s champagne-colored Lexus, I saw a shadow at the driver’s-side door handle and realized that it was his keys, hanging from the lock. I didn’t waste any time searching the car. I just got in and started driving.

  III

  It was about three fifteen when I got back to town. I pulled into the lot behind Guerra’s and tossed the Lexus, without finding the Milestone folder. Then I took Richard’s keys and walked down to the café. The alley door was standing open and the lights were still on—he must have been in a hurry to get out of there, with me hog-tied in the backseat. I gave him silent props for getting me trussed and lifted into the car without help and without being seen. He was stronger than he looked.

  The folder wasn’t in the desk. There wasn’t a good hiding place elsewhere in the bare room, and what would be the point? Either Richard wanted it or he didn’t, which meant he’d have taken it with him, or left it where it was. He wouldn’t have wasted time hiding it. He must have had it with him when his irate associate had taken him away.

  I stood there making up stories about how Richard had gotten into what must have been Teresa’s private records stash, and what the hell he was trying to pull now. The setup with the open attic hatches had obviously been a trap for Hector, but why? Richard couldn’t seriously believe that he’d get away with kidnapping or killing his rival that blatantly.

  I gave the brain a few more minutes, then went back down the stairs. At the bottom, the radar told me to try Richard’s keys in the alley door. One of them fit the lock.

  IV

  A cop I didn’t recognize, a weedy youngish Latino, was at the duty desk in the police station. His name patch said NORIEGA.

  “Can you get hold of Sheriff Maines for me?” I asked him. “I know it’s late, but it’s important.”

  “You can get hold of him yourself,” he said, jerking a thumb toward Teresa’s office with a disgusted look.

  “You’re kidding.”

  Noriega grimaced. “Dude is like a fungus.”

  Maines was sitting in exactly the same position he’d been in the last time I’d come to see him: hat on, head down, heels on the edge of the desk. I was beginning to wonder if the fringe of sandy hair showing around the perimeter of the battered Stetson was all he had, but he hadn’t struck me as smart enough to be vain.

  “Richard Hallstedt just tried to kill me,” I said.

  I waited the obligatory ten seconds while Maines assumed an upright position and got his words in order. “What do you mean, tried to kill you?”

  I gave him a rundown of the evening’s activities, starting with my trip up to Hector’s roof. He didn’t need to know that I’d searched the apartment.

  Maines digested briefly, then said, “In Texas, it’s legal to use lethal force against someone you perceive as a threat to your life or property.”

  “I wasn’t the one with the gun.”

  Maines dropped his head forward, examining the front right corner of the desk. “Richard was sole inheritor of his wife’s estate.”

  I boggled at him silently for a second; then it came together. “Teresa owned the café building?” The sheriff nodded, watching me. “I thought council members were prohibited from owning square property.”

  “She came to the marriage with it. Kept it in her name. He didn’t even know about it until they read the will.”

  I felt the brain grappling, but pulled myself up short. There would be time for that later. Right now, I needed to penetrate the thick skull in front of me.

  “OK, fine, I entered the building illegally,” I said, “but this life and property thing can’t possibly cover tying me up and driving me out to the boonies for God knows what.”

  Maines pursed his lips. “Technically, perceived threat persists into and beyond the legal right of way. Under certain circumstances.”

  I pressed my back teeth together and put my hands on the edge of the desk, leaning toward him. “Listen. This guy that picked Richard up? Richard hired him to do something shifty—maybe kill his wife. If you don’t send somebody out after them, you’re going to have another dead body on your hands shortly.”

  Maines remained motionless, looking at me with no change in expression. I waited a few minutes, giving it plenty of time to sink in. Then he said, “Richard’s kinda weird. I’ll give you that. But he idn’t a killer. Hired or otherwise.”

  I was getting exasperated. “OK, then it was Jesse Reed. Same difference. This guy is still going to do some damage to Richard unless you stop him.”

  “Jesse?” Maines said, frowning. “What in hell does Jesse have to do with it?”

  It amazed me that the man could manage to dress himself every morning. Speaking slowly, I explained, “Teresa got a copy of Milestone Properties’ incorporation instruments last week—that’s what that folder in the desk was. Milestone is Jesse’s real estate company. He and Richard are working together to scare property owners on the square into selling out, by manufacturing this downtown crime wave. Teresa must have found out somehow, and one or both of them killed her for it.”

  Maines creaked back in the chair, folding his long hands over his midsection. “If that were the case, Richard’d hardly file a legal document linking him to Milestone.”

  “Then why did Teresa want those records?” I challenged him.

  “She was chief of police. It was her job to be interested in what all went on around town.”

  “So it’s just a coincidence that she was killed a couple of days after she got them?”

  “Me and my team have been through all of her stuff with a fine-toothed comb. Including the contents of that building. If she had proof of anything funny going on, we’d have found it.”

  “Was that folder up there when you looked?”

  Maines came forward onto his elbows again, ignoring my question. “Look. Chief Hallstedt would have smelled this thing you’re talking about coming out of the oven. They’d never have gotten off the ground. Much less carried on for however long.”

  “She knew,” I insisted.

  “There was nothing to know,” Maines pushed back. I made a frustrated noise, and he said, “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say Richard and Jesse are in cahoots, and something in those instruments somehow proves it. They’re public record. Killing her for getting them’d be stupid. It’d just bring attention where it wasn’t wanted.”

  “If there was a cop on the case with half a brain, it would,” I snapped.

  This seemed to bother him for an instant; then his face went blank again. “I ain’t gonna waste my limited time and resources tearing around after some half-assed story from a professional liar.”

  My temper kicked again, harder now. “You think I’m making this up?”

  His mild gaze remained aimed at my face, but he didn’t reply. Blind frustration was making me dizzy. I leaned back off the desk and took a short walk around the office to clear my head.

  “The full forensics report came back this afternoon,” Maines said after I’d finished. “The semen was Guerra’s. Arrest warrant should come through some time tomorrow.”

  I looked at him wordlessly for a few minutes, then said, “It’s amazing. You’re actually dumber than you look.”

  “I ain’t thinking with my gonads,” he replied.

  There was no heat in his calm, affable face, not the slightest tremor of e
motion. I felt like a veritable volcano in comparison. Maybe that was the intent. I got up and headed for the door.

  “Oh, by the way,” Maines sent after me, “I finally got hold of the Marshal’s office. WITSEC is formally terminating their agreement with you. Because of your involvement in Chief Hallstedt’s case.”

  The sensation of rug yanking out from under me was so strong that I nearly stumbled. I turned back to look at Maines, stunned.

  “You’ll be able to keep your new identity and everything, but they want you off their books,” he said. That pale, bloodless glimmer came at me from behind his spectacles again. “You’ve become a bad risk.”

  “I haven’t done anything!”

  Maines replied evenly, “That remains to be seen.”

  A choking fury surged up, and the room dimmed. It quickly cleared, leaving a chill resolution in its wake.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said. My voice sounded calm, even friendly, but something in the sheriff’s face went wary. I turned and left.

  V

  I didn’t sleep well, and woke earlier than I should have. A front had come in during the night, and the air in my shoe-box bedroom was cool despite the bright sunlight flashing through the window.

  Getting out of bed was an interesting endeavor. You don’t realize how many muscles you use to perform the simple act of sitting up until you’ve had them slammed around a little.

  I went into the bathroom and took a look at my side. A purple stripe about two inches wide ran diagonally from my right armpit to the front of my right hip, through a field of mottled red, yellow, and blue. My ribs were sore, but I didn’t think they were broken. My throat wasn’t bad, just a patch of red across the front, and the blister on my finger had broken during the night, leaving the tip crusted and oozing. I put a Band-Aid on it and looked in the mirror.

  Something strange had happened to my face while I slept. I looked uneasy, almost troubled, which I never look, even when uneasy or troubled. It wasn’t just a residual expression or the result of a restless night; the bones under the skin seemed to have shifted. For some reason, it made me think back to the younger, almost unrecognizable picture of Hector I’d found in his apartment.