Nine Days: A Mystery Read online

  X

  As soon as I wasn’t using all my time listening to customers, I started nagging Hector to get out of the smoke. He didn’t put up much of a fight.

  “I’ll be in the back if y’all need me,” he croaked, and headed for the office.

  Connie reappeared at the wait station, tray empty, fronds of her wild hair lying damp around the perimeter of her face. “OK,” she said to me with an air of finality. “If you’re serious, you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  I reached across the bar and shook her hand. We both broke into wide grins, and she did a little celebratory shimmy, getting the attention of several male customers.

  “Tova’s already done the title search, from that offer that just fell through,” she said, glancing up at the clock. It was a little after eleven, and I felt a flash of anger at the Amazon. Did she really think the silent treatment was going to improve our relationship?

  “The survey’s only six months old,” Connie continued. “Just let me know when you want to close, and I’ll get Tova to update the paperwork.”

  There was a moist wind kicking up outside, and the eastern horizon had been pulsing with oncoming lightning for the last hour or so. Now an enormous clap of thunder sounded, and a sudden splatter of big raindrops slapped against the front windows, like the sky had sneezed. Then the lights shut off.

  “Damn it,” I heard Connie say. A groan rose from the crowd, and she called out, “Everybody, please, take it easy, OK? I don’t want to have to scrape any of you off the floor. Make love, not war!”

  This was greeted with whoops and whistles. As my eyes adjusted, I saw the people near the front door trickling onto the sidewalk, although it was just as dark out there. It looked like the whole square had lost power.

  “I got it, you guys!” Hector called faintly from the back.

  “Hey, will you go let him know it’s not the breaker?” Connie asked me, coming into the serving pit and feeling around under the bar. She handed me one of two hurricane flashlights; I switched it on and went back to the office.

  The double door was open, and I heard Hector scuffling around in the alley. I went outside and pointed the flashlight toward the noise. He appeared from behind a slimy-looking green Dumpster, his hands, shirt, and jeans covered with something black.

  “Aw, man!” He grimaced, looking down and holding his long arms out away from his body.

  “It’s not the breaker,” I said.

  “No shit.” He looked at my flashlight, then at his filthy hands. “Shine me upstairs, will you, so I can change?”

  Back in the office, I saw that Connie had the other flashlight going in the bar. The place was almost empty. I followed Hector up the stairs, aiming my flashlight a couple of steps ahead of us.

  A plaintive meow came from the direction of the sofa as we went into the apartment, and Luigi trotted over to thread himself around our legs. Hector laughed. “He’s afraid of the dark. You believe that?”

  “I’ll keep him company,” I promised, pointing the flashlight back toward the bathroom. I held it down the short hall until Hector disappeared around the corner, then set it on the floor. It gave enough ambient light that way for him to see what he was doing, and for me to find my way back up front, where Luigi was waiting on the kitchen table.

  I picked him up and carried him over to the big bay window. The wind, which had been gusting hard, suddenly stopped, and the rain dumped down like a dam had failed somewhere. Oddly, the cat didn’t seem to mind this, and sat placidly in my arms looking out the window at the weather with a philosophical air.

  “Man, it is really coming down,” Hector said behind me.

  I jumped, and Luigi sprang to the floor. “Jesus, make a noise or something, will you?”

  “Hey, I can’t help it if you’re deaf.”

  I’d turned toward him with my hand pressed to my chest, my heart pounding from the scare he’d given me. His lips were parted, his teeth showing pearly in the darkness, and he was standing way too close to me. There was no way I was missing my opening this time; I leaned forward and kissed him. For a stunned fraction of a second, he didn’t move. Then his arms came up around and pulled me in.

  Not only was he as good a kisser as a man with his looks should be; our bodies fit together like a continent split by an ancient ocean. Joe had been tall, which always required some adjustments. Hector and I measured up like we’d been made as a matching set. I had just starting thinking about how far it was to the bed when the lights came on again. We flinched apart, and he said quietly, “Damn it.”

  At first, I thought it was about what we were doing, but then I saw that he was looking past me, toward the sofa. The stone wall behind it was running with dirty yellow water. We shoved the furniture out of harm’s way, and then Hector started toward the apartment door.

  “I never went up to clear out those scupper drains,” he admitted shamefacedly.

  “You’re going to do it now?” I said. The plaintive note in my voice drew a smile from him across the kitchen table.

  “Hey, you’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.” He grinned, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “I won’t be long.”

  I watched him clamber up a track of two-by-fours nailed to the landing wall and disappear above the door frame, then went over and joined Luigi on the sofa, trying to think cool, abstract thoughts.

  It had been almost three years since I’d done anything more serious than flirt with a man—I’d forgotten how that hot energy comes up through you, turning you half crazy until you burn it off the way nature intended. I know it’s just a hormonal trick to keep the species going, but right then I was wishing it had an “off” switch.

  The longest fifteen minutes in history passed. Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I left the cat on guard duty and climbed up the ladder to the roof hatch, which was open. It was the old kind, a separate lid that just lifted off a built-up curb. I got high enough to stick my head up and look out.

  The roof sloped from a low peak in the middle to the parapet on either side, forming gutters that led to the scuppers at the rear. Hector was squatting with his back to me, about halfway between the hatch and the alley end of the building. Beyond him, a dark mass of stuff was bunched up in the southwest corner of the roof, blocking the scupper there.

  “You need a hand?” I called.

  He rotated on the balls of his feet, half rising. “Don’t come out here!”

  His movement revealed the pale shape of a human face among the junk at the scupper. My overheated body went suddenly cold. Hector duck-walked rapidly over to me, getting hold of me under the arms as I lost my grip on the ladder.

  “Is—is that—?”

  “It’s Teresa,” he said. “She’s dead.”

  SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3

  I

  “What’s she doing up here?” My voice felt funny sliding out of my throat. It sounded like it was coming from somewhere else.

  Hector shook his head mutely. He’d hauled me out of the hatch, and I was half sitting, half lying against him. I pushed myself away and got up. He tried to hold on to me, but I slithered out of his grasp and stumbled toward Teresa.

  She was lying faceup, her dark hair wadded against the scupper opening. A shallow pool of water had formed around her, and a wood-handled kitchen knife jutted from just below her left collarbone, a white corsage of maggots writhing at the wound. Her eyes were open, clouded over and looking at the sky. They still weren’t friendly.

  I felt someone pulling at me. “Come on, we have to go call the cops,” Hector said.

  We were back down in the apartment and Hector had hung up after dialing 911 before I realized that we were both soaking wet. I noticed then that he was having trouble breathing. He dropped into one of the chairs alongside the plank table and pointed toward the hallway, panting, “Inhaler.”

  I remembered seeing one in the medicine cabinet, and ran back to get it. When I returned to the kitchen, Hector was sitting with his elbows on his knees, head down, fi
ghting for air. He took two hits off the inhaler, then sat up and tilted his head back, eyes closed. His brown sugar skin had gone bluish, and he gulped at the air for a tense few seconds. Then the wheezing faded, and he started pinking back up.

  The jukebox downstairs went off, and several people could be heard coming rapidly up the stairs. Benny was the first to appear on the landing. He took one step into the apartment, his eyes wild.

  “She’s on the roof,” Hector said, still breathless.

  Scherer appeared behind Benny with another cop, a chubby strawberry blond with spots of color high on his pale cheeks. Benny said something to them that I couldn’t hear, then climbed up the ladder. The blond came into the apartment. Scherer stayed on the landing.

  The blond, whose name patch said DAVIS, asked us, “What happened?”

  “I went up to clear the roof scuppers and found her,” Hector said.

  Davis eyed my wet clothes. “You go up there, too?”

  I nodded but didn’t feel moved to say anything. My head was so empty I felt like I was understanding language by cellular osmosis.

  A skinny kid in his twenties with bleached spiked hair appeared on the landing and looked in. He was wearing a navy blue raincoat and carrying a field case like the one Benny had brought over the night before. Scherer said something to him, and they stood there and watched us, waiting.

  Benny reappeared, and the three of them held a short conference in the doorway; then Benny came over to the kitchen table. His face looked like it had been chipped out of gray rock. “Was she in the bar tonight?” he asked, feeling for his notebook. His hand stumbled, but his voice was steady.

  Hector and I shook our heads in unison.

  “When’s the last time either of y’all saw her?”

  “Last night,” Hector said, “when you two came over here about that hand business.”

  My eyes jumped to his face. Benny noticed, and I covered quickly, “Same for me.” It wasn’t really a lie. Technically, I’d only heard Teresa on Thursday night, not seen her.

  “So neither of you had any contact with her today?” Benny asked us. We both shook our heads again.

  Scherer and the kid on the landing took a step back, and a lanky man in a tan felt cowboy hat appeared. He was tall and pale, fifty or better, with a high stoop that made him look like he spent a lot of time reading in bad light. The wire-framed spectacles across the top half of his face reinforced this impression, but the rest of him made me doubt he perused anything more complex than the livestock section. He ambled into the room in his round-toed boots, as if joining a party he didn’t really want to attend.

  “Sheriff,” said Benny, his voice brisk and unhappy.

  “Did I hear the call right?” The newcomer’s voice was a mild, quiet drawl, spectacular in its absolute lack of inflection.

  Benny nodded grimly, and the sheriff turned to me. The eyes behind his lenses were a faded teal, almost as colorless as the rest of him. He looked me over for a full thirty seconds, then said, “John Maines.”

  The context told me it was an introduction; otherwise I’d have thought he was simply pronouncing his name out loud to hear how it sounded. He didn’t offer to shake my hand, just looked at me until I told him who I was. After I’d done it, the wet-stone eyes slid down my face, then back up. “Friend of hers, weren’t you?”

  A pigeon-shaped woman in a wrinkled white lab coat puffed up onto the landing, carrying a black leather case. The sheriff saw my eyes move toward her, and he turned. Benny started for the door, but Maines put a hand out.

  “I’ll take it from here, Ramírez.”

  The cop’s bullet head whipped around, his face contorting. “The hell you will!”

  “You know the drill,” the sheriff said, his drawl almost apologetic. “I don’t want nobody getting off on this thing saying her loyal crew messed with the evidence to get a conviction.”

  “You’d rather whoever killed her got off on a nepotism charge?” Benny shot back.

  The sheriff started for the apartment door as if Benny hadn’t spoken. Benny made a disgusted noise and pushed past, gesturing at Davis and Scherer, who followed him down the stairs.

  Maines talked to the doctor and the spiky-haired kid briefly, then motioned down the stairwell. A tan-uniformed deputy came up and into the apartment with him. The two medicos started up the ladder for the roof.

  “Either of you washed or changed clothes since coming back down here?” Maines asked me and Hector.

  “No,” I said.

  It took Hector a couple of seconds to shake his head.

  “Touch the body, either of you?”

  “I did,” Hector said after a short pause. “I couldn’t … I didn’t …” His voice trailed off.

  Maines watched him, silently. He let almost a full minute of silence tick by before he asked, “Anybody go anywhere besides this room?”

  “I went to the back for the inhaler,” I said, gesturing at the canister lying on the table. “Hector had an attack after we came down.”

  The sheriff absorbed this for some seconds, seeming to be thinking about something else. “Show me,” he said finally.

  I didn’t know what he expected to find, but I led him down the short hall to the bathroom and pointed at the medicine cabinet, which was still standing open. He stepped over to it and peered in. He didn’t touch anything, but studied the contents closely, taking his time. He struck me as the kind of guy who’d take his time dodging a runaway train.

  A hollow clunk told us someone was coming down from the roof. Maines moved toward me, indicating that I should precede him back out into the apartment.

  I held still and said, “I’m a federal witness, in protection. Teresa was acting as my WITSEC contact.”

  At first, I didn’t think he’d heard me. His face remained as expressionless as if I were the wind blowing. I was starting to wonder if he were some kind of idiot savant.

  “Ah, right,” he said after a long pause. His eyes did their frank slide again, down, then up. “Aryan Brotherhood killed your husband, right?”

  I huffed, rattled. “Jesus, is there anybody she didn’t tell?”

  The sheriff’s sandy eyebrows rose, showing above his wire frames. “Your identity’s been compromised?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, and gave him a synopsis of my interaction with Silvia Molina, including my suspicion that she might be responsible for the embalmed hand we’d found the previous night. “Teresa told Hector I was in protection, but that’s all. I don’t know how Silvia found out that I’m a widow.”

  Maines’s flat lenses glinted. He stood there for what seemed an eternity, then gestured toward the hallway with his head. A fence of fine vertical lines had appeared between his eyebrows.

  Back in the front room, the spiky-haired kid was conferring quietly with the doctor on the landing, and the deputy was standing in the kitchen, arms folded across his beefy chest. Maines had a few words with the medical team, then brought the kid with him to the table and addressed me and Hector.

  “Page here will need to take y’all’s clothes, fingerprints, and a cheek swab,” he said. “You both OK with that?”

  I nodded, but Hector was far away, barely responding to his environment. Maines squinted at him, then called over his shoulder. “Liz, would you come in here, please?”

  The doctor, who’d been putting some instruments back into her case, straightened up and strode toward us. Maines nodded wordlessly at Hector, and she went around the table, reaching for his wrist. He jumped up out of his chair and backed away, fists at the ready.

  The deputy hustled over, but the doctor motioned him back, speaking to Hector in a soothing voice. “It’s Doc Harman, Hector. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

  The animal gleam died in Hector’s eyes. “Sorry,” he said, swallowing and wiping his palms down over his jeans. “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” she said, her warm voice patient. “This is a hell of a thing.”

  Page murmured to
me, “You got some other clothes to change into?” I shook my head and he said, “Let me have your keys and I’ll send one of the guys over to your place.”

  There was no way I was letting an unsupervised cop dig around in my stuff. “I’ll find something here,” I told the kid.

  Page looked at the sheriff, who dropped his head forward a fraction of an inch. The kid gestured me to follow him into the bathroom.

  I submitted to his cool-handed ministrations without complaint. He was deft and cheerful, exuding a nerdy pleasure as he combed out my hair, scraped under my nails, and bagged up my clothes. The forensics people on Joe’s case had been the same way. Something about the profession seems to draw the upbeat type. I guess you don’t get much guff from the clients.

  After he’d finished, I started for the chest of drawers in the corner, but he held up a latex-gloved hand. The brain was still cold, dry, and silent, but a vague understanding elbowed its way into my consciousness.

  “I didn’t kill her,” I said.

  “Hey, don’t tell me,” Page said, nodding toward the front room. “Tell him.”

  II

  The doctor had left and Maines was standing at the table talking to Hector, who still looked pretty shell-shocked, but was back on the planet again.

  “… access to the roof?”

  Hector lifted one hand toward the landing. “Anybody who wants to can get up there, from the bar.”

  The sheriff had his long, bony arms crossed over his chest, and was watching the floor while he listened. The hat cast a deep shadow over the top of his face, but from the side I saw his eyes moving behind his glasses, scanning for something.

  “I’m ready for Hector now,” Page said.

  “Forensics will need the building for at least a couple of hours,” Maines told Hector as he got up. “You got another place to stay tonight?”

  “I’m sure Tova can find room for me.”

  Hector’s eyes slid over to me, then quickly away. As he and Page disappeared down the hall, Maines curled a finger at me, moving toward the apartment door. I followed him, not asking where we were going.