“That’s a big maybe.” Becca looked up at the darker upper floors. There was a shutter open up there, too, off the veranda. She thought about the fruit trees that made it necessary to shut those upper floors to keep out monkeys. “All our stuff is up there. If they’re downstairs, waiting…”
“I’m not sure I can climb those trees. Not in the dark.” Shadows hid Wes’s face, but she could hear the frown in his voice.
“I can,” Becca said. “It doesn’t look any tougher than the oak trees at my grandparents’ farm and I’ve been climbing those since I was a girl. And I’m smaller too. Those branches will carry me better. Come on.”
Without waiting to see if he’d object, she kept to the shadows and made her way to the trees in question. The first tree had lower branches, but was smaller; the upper branches wouldn’t hold her weight. But she could use the first tree to get to the second, and from there to the veranda.
Wes took her arm as she shed her shoes and whispered, “Forget the luggage. Just get your passport and tickets. And be careful.”
She climbed onto the first branch. The bark was smooth and damp with dew. She nearly lost her grip as she climbed to the next branch and then from the smaller tree to the larger. Fortunately, the bark of the second tree was knobby and she gained confidence as she climbed. A bird squawked and flapped away. Something else moved in the branches above and scrambled away as she approached.
Becca stopped when she reached the last branch. She strained for any sounds from the house itself, but heard nothing over the wind, surf, and the animals moving through the property. She stretched, grabbed the railing, and then swung her leg over as she let go of the branch. A moment later, she crouched on the veranda. It creaked as it took her weight.
The door to the interior hung open. Cautiously, heart pounding, she slipped into the house and made her way toward the bedrooms. More creaking underfoot. But there was no answering sound in the house, either upstairs or down.
The light was on in her bedroom. There was nobody in the room, but her suitcase lay upended on the floor. Someone had stripped the drawers from the dresser and strewn her clothes about.
Becca went to the bookshelf, bent and pulled out a broken-spined Rough Planet guidebook to Costa Rica. Tucked inside, she found her passport, her tickets, and two hundred bucks in twenties. Thank god for paranoia.
Quickly, she returned to the veranda and climbed back onto the tree branch. It swayed and she scrambled closer to the trunk where it could better hold her weight. Moments later she was back on the ground.
“You get them?” he whispered.
“Yes. But someone’s been in the house.” She told him what she’d seen.
“Shit. We’ve got to warn Javier.”
They stayed in the shadow of Casa Guacamaya, just below the open kitchen window as they rounded the house in the direction of the caretaker’s property. Becca paused as she passed. A strange, metallic smell came from the open window. She took Wes’s arm and leaned up to his ear. “What’s that smell?”
Wes stopped. Without warning, he grabbed the lip of the open window and hoisted himself up to look inside.
“No,” he said as he came down. Again, “No.” His voice was startling after so much whispering.
Wes ran back toward the porch, climbing the stairs two at a time and she could hear him walking through the house and toward the kitchen before she recovered enough to follow. She found him in the kitchen leaning against the counter, hand over his mouth. Staring. Becca followed his gaze.
Maritza Lopez lay on the floor. The right side of her face was a ruin. Blood clotted her hair and formed a pool around her head. Some creeping thing with long, articulated legs probed at the wound. Flies swirled around her head.
An overturned basket lay to one side, surrounded by spilled flowers. Becca could see what had happened. Maritza had brought flowers and surprised someone inside.
“She didn’t do anything,” Wes said. “Why would they—?” His eyes tracked to the fridge where they’d hung Maritza’s pictures. He turned, looking like he was going to be sick.
“Wes,” Becca said, both afraid and horrified. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Wes turned without a word and left the house. He hurried toward the caretaker’s house and Becca struggled to follow him through the dark. They stumbled over another body between the two properties and dragged it toward the light that came from the Lopez’s house. It was Javier, a gunshot wound to his chest. He was still bare footed and without a t-shirt. Dead.
“Oh, god.”
“I’m so sorry,” Becca said. She looked away.
“He must have heard the gun,” Wes said. His voice was thin. “He came to investigate.”
The lights were on at the Lopez house, which was a half-sized version of Casa Guacamaya, and the doors hung open. Wes rushed through, calling in Spanish. There was no answer and no more bodies, thank god. Becca seized on the wide-open back door. “Maybe they got away.”
“You think?”
“They know the area. They ran into the dark and found neighbors. Got help.”
Wes didn’t answer. He just went back and stared at Javier, slumped where they’d set him in front of the Lopez house. Flies buzzed around the chest wound. Other insects emerged from the night to investigate. Wes brought the body inside and covered it with a blanket to protect it from animals. He went back to Casa Guacamaya to do the same thing with Maritza.
“Wes,” she said when she could stand it no longer. “We’ve got to go.”
#
Wes couldn’t speak as they drove away from La Brisa. He’d wanted to pick a fight with the handful of patrons still drinking and talking loudly around the bar, to scream at the bartender to shut off the damn cheerful music. Instead, they had moved quickly to the Land Rover and drove directly for Puerto Jiménez. The distance passed in a blur.
But as they pulled into the darkened town, Wes emerged from his stupor. “We have to tell the police.”
“That’ll make us suspects.”
Wes said, “We might be suspects anyway. Someone might remember seeing us at the bar and our fingerprints are all over Casa Guacamaya and even the Lopez house.”
“But what if Javier’s son and wife got away? They could clear us. And the Solorios know we were attacked. They could back up our story.”
“They could,” he agreed. “Or they might keep their mouths shut. Again. But even if we’re cleared, we’ll still be—I don’t know—witnesses. Or something. They won’t let us leave the country. Why not go to them, first?”
“But what about Chad Lett? I mean, your uncle?”
In the end, events rescued them from making a decision. As they neared the police station, they saw a car speed off with its lights flashing. Two men loaded a boy with a bandaged shoulder into the back of an ambulance, accompanied by a thick-set woman.
“That’s Lula Lopez,” he exclaimed. “And that must be Javier’s son. Uhm, Jaime, I think. They’re okay!”
Becca let out her breath. “Thank god.”
There was a tense moment as they passed the station and the ambulance, and Wes wondered if someone would shout for them to pull over. It was after one in the morning and there was little traffic, which made their very presence suspicious. But they passed without notice. Hopefully, the woman or her son had got a glimpse of the attackers and they’d catch the bastards.
They continued through the dark streets of Puerto Jiménez as quickly as they dared, then followed the road north. The idea was to round the top of the golfo toward Golfito on the other side.
“You know what,” Becca said minutes north of town, “let’s forget flying out of Puerto Jiménez.”
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“We’ll call in the morning to change our flight, just like we said. But what if we drop the first leg? Someone might be waiting for us at the airport. Or the police might want to talk to us. Instead, we can drive north and catch the flight directly from San Jose.�
��
“What about the rental car? We’re supposed to drop it off in Puerto Jiménez.”
“We’ll figure it out,” she said.
He thought for a moment. It was a good plan. “Can you grab that map from the glove compartment? We’re going to need it.”
And so they continued north. After Rincón, heading toward the Interamericana, the road was paved, but it was old paving, Swiss-cheesed with potholes. It was bone-rattling, jaw-shaking driving and they had to zigzag across the road at ten miles an hour to avoid the largest holes. They couldn’t afford another flat tire. Wes looked regularly in the rear view mirror, but the road behind was dark.
With any luck, their attackers wasted time looking for them in Puerto Jiménez, but if they’d guessed Wes and Becca’s plan to abandon their flight from the peninsula and travel by car to San Jose, they’d be expecting the Interamericana. So instead Wes cut to the coastal highway—mercifully paved—and followed it north. Becca fell asleep while Wes continued north, fighting exhaustion.
When he could take it no more, he stopped at a town called Uvita and roused someone at a run-down posada for a room. There was nothing left with two beds, but they had one with a single matrimonial for eighteen bucks. He was so exhausted that it was a surprise that he had a hard time falling asleep.
The room was warm and they slept without blankets or sheets. Light came from the courtyard through the gaps in the threadbare curtains and he watched Becca sleeping, her legs splayed, her breast rising and falling, her dark hair swirled to one side. She was beautiful, really. He reached a hand and touched her face, forgetting for the moment the horror they’d discovered at Casa Guacamaya. At last he fell asleep.
The place looked better once they escaped their shabby room in the morning. There were fruit trees and birds and the posada wrapped around a courtyard where backpackers hung their laundry to dry or relaxed in hammocks or used the computer to check their email. And there was a free breakfast: bananas, papaya, mango, and toast with coffee. Damn good coffee, too.
Wes bribed the owner into letting him make a long distance call to San Jose where they changed their flight to that afternoon. They’d have to drive like hell to get to the airport on time.
He came out of the office to find Becca filling buckets of water in an outdoor laundry sink to splash over the Land Rover to wash off some of the mud. It was far from clean when she finished, but at least he could see out the front and rear windshields.
They hooked back onto the Interamericana. The highway took them over the spine of the cordillera, including the infamous Cerro de la Muerte—the mountain of death. But it was clear, not wet and cloudy, until they drew close to San Jose, and the road wasn’t particularly dangerous, even with trucks passing in the opposite direction and dozens of switchbacks.
They arrived at the airport less than an hour before their flight. Wes had a hurried phone call with an angry person at the car rental place in Puerto Jiménez. He ended up leaving the Land Rover and the keys with a confused person at Hertz, who finally agreed to hold the car until contacted by the other agency. Wes had no time to worry how that would play out. They shoved their stuff into bags and raced into the airport. In the end, they climbed into their seats, tired, dirty, and the last people on the plane, which taxied down the runway minutes later.
“Thank god that’s over,” Wes said.
“You still owe me a relaxing trip to Costa Rica.” She fixed him with a smile, frayed by exhaustion.
He was relieved to see that she hadn’t treated him any differently since the second time he’d come on to her. After that bit in the waterfall, where he’d confessed his feelings—and was there anything more deflating than telling someone you liked them and getting nothing in return?—he’d worried that she’d keep him at arms length.
The accelerating plane pushed him back in his seat. San Jose stretched below, and the green, cloudy mountains that bowled around the city. Behind them, the tropics. Ahead, the snow-covered mountains of Vermont. And his uncle, brain dead, warehoused in a long-term care center for the mentally retarded. His wife, engaged to be married to another man. God, what a horrible way to go. Well, he may be dead, if not physically, then mentally, but there was one thing that Wes could give him.
Justice.
#
Dr. Pardo took care of the bodies. He dragged Carolina and Yamila out the side door one by one, knowing as he did, that he was taking a terrible risk. He stuffed them into the trunk of his car, leaving evidence everywhere. He came back to his office while the bodies stiffened in the trunk, then pilfered cleaning supplies and three rolls of paper towels from the janitor closet. It took an hour to wipe floors, doorknobs, and desktops; janitorial would come in later and clean again.
Once that was done, he returned to his car, intending to drive off, but remembered Yamila’s car. He had to get rid of that, first. Someone would see it, recognize it, and the questions would start sooner than he hoped. Either way, he only had a couple of days before not one, but three missing immigrant women would set the small town of Waterbury on fire. Police would scour every inch of this place, no doubt ask Pardo more hard questions.
He found Yamila’s purse in her car and the keys in the purse. Her car was an older Hyundai with a Mexican flag hanging from the rearview mirror and the requisite Virgin of Guadalupe dashboard effigy. He parked it three blocks away on a side street, then stripped out the obvious Mexican stuff and walked back to his Mercedes. He’d come for the Hyundai later. Wipe off his fingerprints. First, he had to get rid of those bodies.
And that was the trick. They’d be found sooner or later. Taking them to his house would put him one search warrant away from murder charges. The best he could think of was to take them into the woods and bury the bodies in the snow, then hope that no one found them before he fled the country.
And then he hit on a better solution. He knew the code to Bill Carter’s gate. He’d wait until morning, when Bill left for work, then simply drive in and dump the bodies in Bill’s tool shed. Once Davis Carter was dead, he’d tell Bill about Carolina and Yamila. And at the same time, he’d show Bill his other evidence and explain Ellen Pilson’s perfidy. He’d tell Bill about the six million dollars apiece that he and Ellen would demand to keep from framing Bill Carter for murder. Let Bill dispose of the bodies.
Pardo entered the dining room the next day after breakfast. Today was Carolina’s day off, so someone else was already scheduled to watch Team Challenge. He didn’t know about Yamila or whether kitchen staff would be shorthanded.
Team Challenge and Team Smile sat in front of the television while the two HTs took turns collecting Dale as he made his way for the exits.
“Can you wheel Chad Lett into my office?” he said to the two women, not knowing which was responsible for Team Smile. His right hand was in his pocket, rubbing his thumb along the bottle of digoxin. “I want to take a final look at that eye.”
“He’s in his room. I’ll take you.” It was the temp, a chubby little girl named Kelly Ann, according to her badge. “His eye is better. The nurse has been washing it about ten times a day and that seems to be clearing it up. I saw it twitching a lot the other night, but it’s not as red.”
Twitching? Pardo knew what that was and it wasn’t twitching. Good thing this girl was too dull to recognize it.
He followed Kelly Ann down the hall, only wondering once he was outside Team Smile’s room why Davis would be in his room and not out front, watching TV with the others. The physical therapist had Davis undressed in his bed but for a diaper and was in the process of moving and massaging the man’s feet and ankles. He’d work his way from one end of the body to the other and Pardo didn’t know if that meant he was just starting or just finishing.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
The man removed the earbuds of his ipod. Like Pardo and the staff dietician, he worked several different care centers and the doctor had lost track of his schedule.
“What�
�s up?”
“Chad Lett has an eye condition. Can you give me a minute or two to check him out?” His fingers worked at the vial of digoxin in his pocket. Push the dropper into Davis Carter’s throat far enough to trigger a swallowing reflex. Repeat until he’d emptied the bottle down the man’s throat.
“Yeah, I saw that last week. Looks a lot better now, though. Wistrom said the eye washes were helping. His eyelid is still twitching, but it’s not as red.”
That twitching again. Pardo’s efforts had brought about the ironic consequence of drawing attention to that left eye. It was only a matter of time before someone came to the same conclusions as Rosa Solorio.
“He was doing it just a minute ago,” the PT said. “Look.”
Only he wasn’t anymore. That eye stared ahead. The eyelid did not move, just the occasional automatic blink.
Of course it doesn’t, Pardo thought as he put a puzzled expression on his face and leaned over the man, as if considering the matter. But you’re not fooling me, Davis Carter. I know what you’re trying to do.
“Anyway, if you could give me a minute,” Pardo said. He removed a pen light from his left pocket, leaving the digoxin in the other.
“Go right ahead. I’ll be working on the feet and ankles for another fifteen minutes here. I’ll just move down and you can do your thing.” And with that he replaced his ear buds and worked at Davis’s feet.
And, naturally, the HT stood over Pardo’s shoulder, watching. So there was nothing left but to make a show of examining first the left eye, then the right. He went to the nurse station and made a notation to Chad Lett’s chart, then went to his office to make doubly sure that he’d cleaned up after the previous night’s ugliness. Unfortunately, it was lunch by the time they wheeled Davis back to the front room, and it turned out the PT would be working his way through the rest of Team Smile in the afternoon. There would be no chance for Pardo to be alone with Davis and it was starting to look odd that he was still in the building. He’d have to come back at night.
His phone rang when he got to the parking lot and was scraping ice from his windshield. It was James.
The Devil's Deep Page 22
