Nine Days: A Mystery Page 20

  “I thought they were all dead.”

  “He’s never gone into specifics about it with me,” Mike said, looking away. “Too dangerous.”

  I gaped at him. “We nearly got ourselves killed and you don’t know why?”

  “Hector and I have been friends for almost twenty years,” Mike said. “He asks for help, I give it to him.”

  I leaned back in my seat, speechless.

  The sun was down and the big sky was filling up with stars when Mike dropped me off at the apartment. We hadn’t said much else on the drive back to town from Richard’s, and as I got out, he broke the silence. “Look, I know it don’t make any sense to you—”

  “You’re damned right it doesn’t,” I said, reaching in to pick up the Kahr, which was lying on the passenger-side floor where I’d dropped it. My head spun as I touched the gun’s polymer grip. I shoved it into my pocket and straightened up. “If Hector doesn’t want to get picked up by the feds, why’s he so willing to go to prison for Teresa’s murder? It’s the same difference.”

  “Not quite,” Mike muttered, putting the Jeep in gear. Before I could say anything else, he popped the gas and shot off down the driveway. I watched him fishtail into the street, wondering how long until the first really bad wreck. Maybe he’d already had it.

  VI

  It was going on ten by the time I’d settled down enough to hear myself think. Mike’s last remark was still pinballing around in my head, and I got to work on figuring why, which didn’t take long: if Hector went to jail for killing Teresa, it would be because the malquis stayed out of it. He was trying to hide them, not himself, which meant that they must be evidence in the feds’ case against whomever he was related to.

  Around eleven thirty, my phone rang. I let it go to voice mail, then dialed in and listened to the message. It was Tova. She wanted me to come see her at the hotel in the morning.

  As I set the receiver down, I heard footsteps on the porch. They went up the rear stairs and across the ceiling of my bedroom; then a door opened and closed.

  I put the Kahr back in my pocket and my feet back in my shoes.

  The wide hall on the second floor opened into a lofty foyer at the front of the house, with a grand staircase winding down into it. There were two doors on either side of the hall, and the one closest to the foyer had a tin letter B nailed to it.

  Jesse answered my knock with a cigarette hanging from his lips, dressed in a wife-beater and a pair of absurdly tight black jeans. When he saw me, he stepped back, taking the door with him. It opened into the kitchen, which was essentially a sink and a hot plate alongside a small section of laminate countertop. Through an archway to the left was the main room, looking out over the town and beyond. There was a foldaway futon, not folded away, and a comfortable-looking chair. Everything else seemed to be stored in piles.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” Jesse said through a cloud of tobacco smoke, gesturing toward the chair. He folded up the futon and sat down, rolling the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

  “I ran into Richard earlier today,” I said, staying in the archway.

  Shock leaped onto Jesse’s face. “Jesus Christ. That was you?”

  He’d heard it from someone other than Richard, or else I’d certainly have been identified. That gave me more navigating room than I’d expected.

  While I thought about what to do with it, Jesse got up and went into the kitchen for another cigarette, lighting it from the one he’d just finished. He took a deep draw, throwing the butt in the sink, and crossed back over to the big windows. His bony shoulders rose and fell heavily as he stood there looking out at the featureless darkness. There was a long silence.

  Finally, he turned toward me again and said, “I’ve got everything I own tied up in this Milestone deal. I can’t afford to let that crazy bastard fuck it up.”

  He was looking me steadily in the eye now, and I realized why he did it so infrequently. His gaze had the amoral flatness of a wild animal. There was life in it, but only of the most elemental kind.

  “The owners were selling,” he said, leaning toward me as if whispering a secret. “Everything was moving ahead nice and smooth. But Richard, he can’t just sit back and let me drive—he’s got to get in there and dick around, be a player.” Jesse shook his head, the yellow light from the side table lamp skittering across his sharp chin and collarbone. A sudden realization cut through the murk in my head like stomach acid rising after a bad meal. “You set this whole ransom thing up with those Flat Creek guys, didn’t you?” I said. “To keep Richard under wraps until the council vote. You knew he wouldn’t be able to pay, because Milestone’s got all his money.”

  Jesse came back over and sat down on the futon, his hands sliding up his long thighs. He aimed an innocent expression at me, then showed me his snaky grin, almost reluctantly. “It’s going to be damned hard to prove that.”

  “I’m not interested in proving it. If you and Richard want to play Monopoly downtown, I don’t care. I just don’t want Hector getting sucked into any of it.”

  Jesse kept his feral gaze on me, his smirk slowly dying. “So why the smash and grab?”

  “Hey, if your guys had actually been interested in a deal, none of it would have happened.”

  Jesse sat back, blowing a stream of smoke at the ceiling. After a minute, he twitched forward again. “Damn it!”

  I could feel the ions in the room shifting polarity, and held still, waiting.

  Jesse said, “You’ve got a thing for Hector, huh?”

  He didn’t want an answer, so I just gave him a smile.

  “Tough break,” he said. “Looks like conjugal visits from here on out.”

  “Oh, maybe not. You and Richard might decide that laying off him is the lesser of several evils.”

  Jesse’s wandering eyes came up to my face, the tips of his fangs catching the light. “Hey, I never wanted to lay on to begin with. Richard is fucking nuts. Who in their right mind tries to scare a grown man into selling off his bread and butter with a dried-up old cadaver hand? Dude’s been watching too many reruns of Vincent Price or something.”

  The radar wasn’t picking up any deception, but Jesse was one of those people who knew how to lie convincingly. There are actually two methods: the first is to lie with the certainty that you’ll be caught at it, which relaxes you enough to put it across, and the second is either to tell part of the truth, or believe what you say enough that it feels true when you tell it. Unsure what type I was dealing with, and still not convinced my secret superpowers were in working order, I made the mistake of pressing a little further. “He didn’t tell you some kind of story about why he thought Hector would make a deal?”

  Jesse’s oblique animal eyes shifted at me, suspicious. “What do you mean?”

  At least the superpowers were working well enough to let me know I’d just put my foot in it. If I wasn’t careful, Jesse would figure out what he obviously didn’t know yet—that that dried-up old hand was the kernel of this whole thing. Backing off now wasn’t going to work; I’d have to finesse it.

  “We found another cadaver hand with Teresa’s body,” I said, feeling as if I were jumping out into rush-hour traffic. “Richard must have clipped a pair from the hospital.”

  The look of astonishment that drifted down onto Jesse’s face told me that the existence of the second malqui was completely new information to him. He searched the empty air in front of him, then beamed those lupine eyes at me again. “How come nobody’s heard anything about this other hand?”

  “Maines is keeping it under wraps,” I hazarded, and when Jesse didn’t call bullshit, kept going. “You know, so he can maybe trip somebody up with knowing about it.”

  His face sharpened. “Is that what Richard was keeping locked up in the basement? These hands?” I nodded, and he sat back with a wondering laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned. The son of a bitch actually did it.”

  “After you gave her the roofies, right?” I said. Jesse fro
wned at me, and I added, “If you testified against Richard, you could probably take a lot of years off your jail time.”

  Jesse’s frown cleared, and his man-eating grin returned. “Oh, I’m not talking about Richard.” He slid his right foot forward, wriggling his fingers down into his front pocket. “I found this on the basement floor, right before Richard drove up.”

  He held his fist out toward me, and I stepped forward, taking care to stay out of grabbing range. Then he turned his hand over and uncurled his fingers, displaying a small gold object on his long, pale palm.

  It was Hector’s chakana.

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7

  I

  A slicing shock shot through me, which got my attention more than the thing in Jesse’s hand. Apparently, the radar had really believed that Hector was innocent until that moment. I put on my poker face, but it felt dry and foreign. The eyes that rotated up to look at Jesse felt like oversize marbles riding in their sockets.

  “It’s Hector’s,” Jesse said, turning it over idly. “He must have dropped it when he went in there to get that other hand.”

  My memory had already told me that Hector wasn’t wearing the charm when I’d ogled his almost-exposed nakedness on Friday morning.

  “I honestly didn’t think he had it in him,” Jesse was saying, smiling down at the chakana.

  Disoriented, I took a step back toward the kitchen. Jesse got up, and the Kahr came out. He froze in his tracks, staring at the pistol with that mixture of curiosity and terror common to people who don’t spend a lot of time around firearms.

  He got his worldly expression back in place with some effort, laughing softly. “Man, you are something. I got a policy against fucking fat girls, but I might make an exception in your case. I bet you’re a party and half in the sack.” His smile lingered while his eyes wandered down across my chest, but when they flickered back up to my face, he went solemn.

  “Too bad I got a policy against fucking skinny assholes,” I said, moving a couple more steps away so that I could take one hand off the gun without worrying about it. “Toss me that thing.”

  Jesse lobbed the chakana toward me in a low arc. I caught it, sidled over to the door, and slipped out; backed along the hall and ran down the stairs to my apartment, shutting and locking the door. My fingers and legs felt boneless, my head like a dried orange on a peppermint stick.

  Keeping my ears tuned for the sound of feet on the stairs, I threw my box of money, some clothes, and the laptop into my suitcase, then got into the truck and headed downtown, watching the rearview mirror.

  II

  I drove directly to the jail, where the blond kid told me that Hector had been transferred up to Johnson City in preparation for his arraignment the next morning. He added that the sheriff wasn’t letting anyone talk to him except his lawyer.

  I went out and got back into the truck, but I didn’t start the motor. I just sat there trying not to disappear. When I felt like I could do it without leaving the planet, I let my mind slide gingerly over the possibility that Hector might actually have killed the Amazon.

  The idea was unexpectedly tolerable. I poked at it, trying to replicate the reaction I’d had up in Jesse’s apartment. After a few minutes of self-examination, I realized that, holding the gun on him while forcing myself not to drift off onto autopilot, I’d felt a near-irresistible impulse to pull the trigger—to kill him—just because I could. It occurred to me that I might have chosen my life for that very reason. The constant consciousness of danger might be what had kept me functional all these years.

  I sat there sucking air and pumping blood until it was clear nothing else was going to happen north of my collarbone, then got the suitcase and walked over to the hotel. Kathleen was behind the desk, and I asked her to fix me up with a single. I could tell that she wanted to ask questions, but my face was stopping her. If it was anything like the inside of my head, I didn’t blame her.

  I was about halfway through filling out the registration card when I heard a familiar voice.

  “We’re full,” it said. Tova was coming down the wide corridor. She was wearing a white satin robe, her platinum hair down around her shoulders, her face bare of makeup. She shimmered against the dark hall behind her like a ghost.

  Snatching the card out from under my pen, she snapped, “I don’t want your business. You’ll have to find accommodations elsewhere.” I stared at her, dumbfounded, as she ripped up the card and tossed the pieces onto the desk. Her blue eyes were colder than usual. “I don’t care to have criminals as guests in my establishment.”

  My heart froze in my chest.

  “You don’t seriously believe that I would fail to notice a withdrawal of a hundred thousand dollars from my bank account, do you?” Tova said, propping a hand on one of her vine-ripened hips.

  “I didn’t take that money,” I managed, relief making my voice weak.

  “Oh, I know you didn’t,” she said, “but please don’t attempt to convince me that you’re Little Bo Peep and Michael was the Big Bad Wolf.”

  The fairy-tale reference cut in, reminding me of a girlhood when I’d been able to trust myself not to kill anyone. Tova didn’t wait for me to answer. She spun away and strode back down the corridor.

  “I don’t suppose there’s another hotel in town,” I said to Kathleen.

  “San Marcos,” she replied in an apologetic voice.

  Fine, I thought. San Marcos, and to hell with this place.

  Out in the fresh night air, the wash of light from the courthouse showed me the dark front of Guerra’s, and I remembered that Hector’s apartment was empty and still had a broken door lock. In my current state of mind, I didn’t really feel like driving forty miles to overpay for a funny-smelling room, and maybe sleeping with Hector’s pheromones would help me settle down.

  Luigi was lounging on the big plank table when I came into the apartment. I gave him some kibble and water, took my travel kit into the bathroom to brush my teeth, then stretched out on the sofa. The bed would have been more comfortable, but I didn’t want to risk sleeping so soundly that I couldn’t get up in a hurry if I had to.

  It was turning cool, and I pulled the red and black blanket over me. It had a woolly, animal smell that made me feel like I was bunking down next to a campfire. Luigi sidled up and jumped on top of me, spiraling down into a relaxed curl on top of my pubic bone.

  I lay there for a long time listening to the cat purr and watching time pass. The brain still wasn’t doing much more than filling out the space between my ears. Strings of meaningless content floated across my consciousness like motes on the breeze. I fell asleep watching them.

  III

  Some barely heard sound woke me early. I was on my feet with the Kahr out before my eyes were fully open. When complete consciousness hit, I realized that I was aiming the loaded gun at Hector, who was coming toward me from around the kitchen table.

  He took it out of my hand without slowing down, burying his face in my neck. His mouth came around to mine before I could say anything. There was something almost desperate in the force with which he held me against him, as if pleading with me not to stop him. So I didn’t.

  Afterward, we lay back on the pillows, our skins cooling. The sheets felt good. The bed felt good. Everything felt good. I rolled my head to the side and saw that Hector was watching me with half-open eyes.

  “Four gold stars for you,” I murmured.

  He rubbed a hand across my stomach with a sleepy chuckle. “It’s not me, jeva. It’s us.”

  I was too dopey to argue. I just smiled and let my eyes close.

  Some time later, noises from the kitchen woke me. Hector, showered and barefoot in a pair of faded navy sweatpants, came over to the bed with two cups and passed me one. He was so beautiful in the white light streaming through the bay window that it almost hurt my eyes to look at him. Remembering the chakana made everything else hurt, but at least my gears were working again.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask
ed. “Last I heard, they were going to throw away the key.”

  “Tova talked her way around the judge,” he said. He brought his foot up on the bed and showed me a GPS anklet.

  “Wow,” I murmured. “How’d I miss that?”

  He just smiled at me like a well-fed animal. His face went serious again as he sat down. “Mike says y’all talked.”

  “We did a hell of a lot more than talk.”

  Hector nodded, and I took a swallow of tea to brace myself before reaching down to get the chakana out of my jeans, which were lying on the floor next to the bed. “Jesse Reed found this in Teresa’s basement on Friday morning,” I said, holding it toward him.

  Hector couldn’t decide what to look at, my face or the chakana. Finally he stretched out a hand and took it from me.

  “Richard was keeping the malquis down there,” I said. “Hiding them in plain sight.”

  Hector went over to the sofa and got a cigarette from the box on the table. He sat down, lighting it, and stared into the space in front of him with eyes that seemed to have gone completely black.

  “Maybe I did kill her,” he said after a long time. His voice was wondering, almost childlike.

  He sounded genuinely baffled, and I was back on that razor’s edge of not knowing whether I could trust my perceptions. Irritated and unsteady, I said, “Look, that shit might play to a jury, but please, stop trying to sell it to me, will you?”

  Hector made a evasive motion with his head, like I was a gnat buzzing around his ears. “This morning, listening to the lawyers, I got this weird feeling in my feet, like I was walking on gravel, and then this—not even a memory, just, like—a flash of crossing Teresa’s driveway.” He looked over at the bed, where I was rolling the rim of my teacup along my chin, watching him. “Then I remembered the argument.” His lips flinched, like he was tasting something foul. “I went over there to get the malqui, after we closed the bar, and she said she’d give it to me if I’d have sex with her.”

  I’d been sitting in the bed with my knees drawn up, the sheet tucked under my arms, and I felt a cold thrill run up my bare back. Not that I was surprised. The whole fake affair thing had always struck me as wishful thinking on somebody’s part.