He wasn’t exaggerating. Two levels below ground, the room had the cool, rather earthy atmosphere of a cave, but the interior was strikingly modern. Examination tables bright with metal tubing, white with cotton-sheeted mattresses and carefully tucked pillows, the linen emitting the pleasantly scorched smell of fresh laundering. Fluorescent lights ranked in rows on the ceiling. Movable curtains to form cubicles for privacy—some cubicles had, indeed, been curtained off. Locked cabinets fronted by heavy glass, through which I could see amber pill bottles of various sizes, with druggists’ labels stuck across the front. Metal cabinets that presumably held bandages, latex gloves, cotton swabs. Aguilara led us here and there in the large room. Vague snapshots of small children were taped to the wall, bedraggled but smiling.
“We can treat dozens of people here in a day, if the need arises,” he said with satisfaction. “Of course, the flow of patients is sporadic, and we are equipped only for the less-serious conditions. Those with severe maladies we refer to Phoenix.” He paused, as if in the grip of some strong emotion, which he managed to control. “The children need us the most. Migrant children, we suspect sometimes, though we don’t ask questions. They get dehydrated in the desert. Sometimes their mothers die there.”
Daly’s eyes were bright and wet.
“Rhea loved children,” she said, and I suppose she was ranging back through her memory to the time when she was a child herself and Rhea had taken her in.
“Yes,” said Aguilara. “Her tender side.”
Sympathy for Daly flashed through me, and perhaps, some other feeling.
“She could be tender,” I said.
Aguilara came slightly up on his toes, the only sign of nerves I ever observed in him. Uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Then his features settled.
“Miss Marcus,” he said, “I believe Mr. Callan needs some time alone. There is a patients’ lounge just up the stairs and to the right. Would you accompany me?”
I exchanged glances with her and her breath caught. For a moment, I was afraid she would object. But she gave a quick nod and fell into step with Aguilara. He towed her through the door and closed it behind them. Their feet scraped vaguely on the steps. I kept my eyes on the door, noting that it was heavy steel with a dead-bolt lock. My belly was queasy, I was sick with excitement, and chills rippled my scalp. Rhea’s funeral had been only three days ago and a century had gone by, my life had gone by—birth, maturity, death—no not death, not yet, though I’d been expecting it, perhaps hoping for it.
A step sounded behind me—a light step—but I did not turn.
“Back from the grave.”
Rhea’s voice was layered underneath with humor. A sob came up in my throat—how our feelings catch us unawares, when our brains have the program all set. Like a child, I wiped my eyes with my coat sleeve, then I swung to face her.
She vibrated with clean strength. She’d caught her black hair in a knot, pulled it back from her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Her skin was olive and sleek and her features were like those of an Egyptian queen—imperious and strong, fired by her deep blue eyes. The silken curve of her neck was the finest in history, painted with the delicacy of a Rembrandt. Her movements flowed and dipped and returned to where they had been, all without effort. She wore a white blouse razored smooth with a hot iron, khaki slacks, patent leather boots. She had stepped out from one of the curtained cubicles. The distance between us was six feet—too far.
“As if you never left,” I said, and I kept my control.
“I’ve missed you, too,” she said, her voice trembling in that low register that made me believe the lie.
“You’ve been worse than usual,” I said. “You’ve must have known I’d take all this personally, you trying to kill me again and again.”
“Oh, you were always understanding.” She laughed in that way that made you want to share the joke. “And you’re such a tough Mick. Probably part of you enjoyed it, and you’ve survived. Look at you, barely a scratch. Bracknall’s still limping.”
I laughed, too, and for just an instant the world moved away. I wanted to stay there, hovering in a warm space, pretending we were two other people.
“You couldn’t kill me,” I said, “and now you come to play on me, for something you want.”
I hoped she’d deny it. Not quickly, so that it seemed false, but with due consideration. But she merely trailed her long fingers along the white curtain next to her, making it ripple and sway. She had the lightest touch, the gentlest touch. I could feel those fingers on the back of my neck, and the hairs there shivered and settled.
“We’re both players,” she said. “And you’re the best I’ve ever seen. I should have cut my losses weeks ago, I’ve always done that before. But you kept me involved, you tested me. You took me where I’ve never been before. And it wasn’t me going after you, not really. It was Bracknall with the car, Bracknall with the dog.”
“Bracknall with the thin loop of wire that erased Sweeney?”
“Well, that was Sweeney,” she said, as if explaining the whole thing. “Sweeney tried hard, but he was always forgetting something or getting instructions wrong, or coming up short. He was supposed to get Daly here—”
The rippling hand paused, then resumed stroking the curtain. The slight hesitation was unlike her. She realized she’d gone too far.
“But he did get Daly here,” I said, and then my mind worked it out. “Not on schedule, though, right? Daly, who looks like you. Daly, who is about your age. Daly, who can be induced to do anything for you, to go anywhere for you, because she thinks you’re the Queen of the Earth. You meant to put her underground in your place. For a crash on a highway, there may be independent witnesses. In fact, you wanted witnesses, and you wanted the corpse to resemble you to help carry off the deception.”
Her black eyebrows quirked, perfectly nurtured, and her hand stroked at the curtain, setting up a rhythm.
“It wouldn’t have worked anyway,” she said, as if reassuring herself she should have no regrets. “She’s dyed her hair green. That would have stood out.” Her fingers swished with supple grace. “It’s funny. Green hair. She was always so conventional. People change.”
“So you found a substitute corpse, or created one. You were in a hurry. Once Daly didn’t appear right away, you didn’t hesitate.”
“Once a plan goes in motion, I keep after it. I’m impatient.”
Now I had to know, so I ventured into the most dangerous place possible.
“Just like you were with me. You saw my possibilities the day we met and you jumped right in. You meant to use me from the start, and nothing ever changed.”
Her face was bright and serene and all-knowing.
“You don’t know what you meant to me . . . what you mean to me.”
Suddenly, I was a coward. I couldn’t go this way any more.
“Who’s buried in your place?”
Perhaps, she, too, was relieved to be back on safe ground, talking merely of murder and deception and cruelty. Thought stilled her eyes and her mind seemed to go elsewhere.
“Oh, some bag woman who died of exposure, I think. Aguilara knows a funeral director in Tucson—and one near here, too. I think he made up a story about acquiring the body for medical students in Mexico. He never told me exactly.”
“You don’t fear me as a witness?”
The absurdity of this shocked her.
“You? The prosecutors would never take you as a witness. You’re an angry man, Michael, and our relationship would tell against you. You’re all emotional, they’d say. You’ve been transporting migrants, they’d say, and, look, one turned up dead. They’d check their chances with a jury. And they’d say, don’t let Rhea go to a jury, she’s wins them over. It’s true. Juries see the good in me.”
She tossed all this off without irony. It was enormously appealing. I wanted to laugh and cry a
nd render her innocent myself. Seconds ago, she’d been leading me on. Now she’d passed over our relationship like an item on a laundry list. Who could fail to admire a woman so careless about the importance of things?
“Surely you didn’t come to the motel to tell Daly you’d set her up for murder.”
Her chuckle was smoky and light, all its meaning hinted-at only, like a jazz riff.
“No, but she wouldn’t have minded. She’s a good girl. She’d die for me. I’d do the same for her.” Absolute conviction rang in the words. “I simply meant to call her off my trail, and I could have done it.”
“But you wouldn’t have approached me.”
She took a half-step forward, startled and almost innocent.
“No, you were after me, not like Daly. And I didn’t want to involve you. It wouldn’t have done either of us any good.”
My skin felt scratchy, and suddenly I was aware of the antiseptic smell in the room—and the loamy odor of the earth, closing in around us.
“But here you are.”
Against all odds, she maintained the innocent look.
“Because you made me. But it doesn’t change anything. I’m leaving tonight, going to California. In a few months, you can come see me, and we’ll do fine. You never should have given up on me, don’t you see?”
She was amazing. Was there another woman like her?
“Los Angeles?”
She didn’t hesitate. “San Francisco.”
“It’s an odd thing,” I said, “but anyone who disappears is said to be in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world.”
She knew how to please me. “The writer.”
“Not this writer. That’s from a smart Irishman, Oscar Wilde. I’ve never been to San Francisco.”
“I have friends there.”
“You have friends here,” I said.
She could have moved toward me then and touched me and done the kind of things she did. I had never been able to resist her, and things hadn’t changed. I hadn’t been able to move on to another story.
“You’re an odd one, Michael,” she said. “You always have been.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I jerked another ribbon-bound legal file from the trunk of my rented Toyota and plopped it next to the others on the simmering parking lot outside the motel. Now five of them were ranked there, bulging, and the minor effort I’d expended in removing them had me slippery with sweat. My head was light and buzzing.
“We caught her in the middle of something,” I said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s got to be stopped. And it’s coming fast. She took a chance of talking us off our pursuit, blew me that smoke about getting out of town because she’s desperate.”
“Why won’t she see me?” asked Daly. She was trying not to cry.
“She’ll see you,” I said, “if you still want.”
That was all I could do to warn her off, it really was. I hadn’t told her how Rhea had planned to shovel her under. I’m done with illusions myself, but I cherish them in others. Daly’s love for Rhea was misdirected, but all love is, in some way.
“I do want,” said Daly.
I jerked one of the files from the ground, so viciously my hand slipped and I tore the ribbon. I was furious, but I wasn’t sure why. After all, this was my goal—the story, bleeding and raw.
“You won’t like what you see, but you’ve come a long way,” I said. “So why not? Not without back-up, though. Rhea took a chance because she thinks she controls us, but she won’t let us walk out of there again. It was crazy to let us walk out once. Help me carry these.”
* * * *
This time we held the council of war in the motel room, the heat pressing into it like a giant hand, my papers spilled over the bed, curtains drawn, a weak overhead light struggling against the dust motes. Robles’ face was a pantomime of skepticism, but I was yammering relentlessly, thrusting documents at him—depositions from forgotten civil cases, immigration files I’d dug up on the sly, transcripts of interviews I’d done with border crossers.
“Dead immigrants,” I said. “We’ve been finding them more and more, you recall. Not exposure deaths, killings. Semi-auto rounds to the back of the head. But always one is hacked up with a machete.”
Robles shrugged. “Drug deals gone bad. And none of this says Rhea is involved with drugs.”
“No, it indicates she’s ransoming immigrants. The usual game. Hold them hostage in safe houses in Phoenix. Approach their families, demand a double transport fee—$3,000 for each immigrant, say, rather than the $1,500 that’s already been paid.”
“And they kill the ones they don’t get paid for.”
“Yes,” I said. “And they mostly get paid. But she’s not satisfied with that.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“She wants more money.”
I found what I wanted. Autopsy reports.
He took them, scanned the pages. His eyes were knowing, but no light dawned.
“Gunshot wounds, but deep incised wounds, too,” he said. “Consistent with a machete.” He read on, to where I pointed. “And missing organs. What’s that about?”
Daly spoke from the bed. “We’ve gone over that. It’s UFOs.”
“What?”
She explained patiently, “It mostly happens with cattle. The organs—the udders, the jaw, the tongue, the sex organs—are cut out cleanly, as if a surgical knife did it.”
Robles shook his head as if he’d been splashed with water.
“As to the cattle,” I said, “scientists say the corpses are really being attacked by insects and predators. The bodies decay, and the wounds look clean-cut.”
“As to the humans,” Robles said, “what does the Medical Examiner say?”
“Oddly enough, Dr. V agrees with Daly,” I said. “At least in some respects. He believes certain organs were removed cleanly, as if by a scalpel. But he believes someone on earth did it.”
“Why?”
I squared up the evidence on the bed.
“He doesn’t know why,” I said. “All we know is that Rhea, starting a year ago, got involved in the immigrant-smuggling trade and that she opened a medical clinic. And that suddenly, just before she called for Daly, she felt the need to drop from sight. This was shortly after an illegal named Mauricio Valdez turned up missing vital organs, and his life. Valdez worked for her, or at least for the club with her name on it.”
I began to pack the files. “One other thing,” I said. “I never knew it before today, but Dr. Aguilara’s handshake is quite similar to that of Dr. V.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Daly asked.
I slapped one folder down on another.
“Aguilara’s grip is graceful, precise, and strong. His hand is that of a surgeon.”
* * * *
This was Robles’ best weapon: a Savage Model 10 sniper rifle, caliber .308, its barrel glass-bedded, its stability reinforced by a Harris adjustable folding bi-pod. And, for night action, a Starlight Scope, 3 X 10 X 40 power. He’d trained with it at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s sniper course, gone expert at the Gunsite Training Center, a private academy tucked away in the high desert near Paulden. This was Robles’ rifle, for those situations when bad things happened at long distance.
Robles was a roamer, and the sheriff let him roam and call for troops when things got ugly. I’d known that all along, had known he’d come on my adventure because of Daly. Or perhaps I told myself I’d known it, because it made me feel like God. When you don’t drink whiskey, something else must make you feel like God. My drug was certitude.
“I’ll lose my job over this,” he said. The afternoon was flaming out and the shadows starting as he stood beside his SUV in the parking lot, cracking the rifle’s bolt open, then slapping it closed. The finely
machined parts clicked and snapped with mathematical accuracy, underlining each repetition.
“You can go back into the Marines,” I said.
“I’m too old for that.”
“You don’t sound worried.”
He packed the rifle into its case. “I’m too old for that, too.”
Daly had been standing back, stricken. As Robles turned with the long gun in his hands, he noticed her expression.
“It’s just for cover,” he said. “A last resort. I expect Michael’s mouth will carry you in and out of the situation. And if Michael’s wrong, we’ll all go have a beer. Except for Michael, of course.”
She hesitated. I imagined her boarding the bus in Omaha less than a week ago, smiling at the heads poking above the seats as she shuffled down the aisle. A happy journey for her, now here was the end of it. She drew a long breath and nodded at Robles, trying to trust, and we were ready to go.
* * * *
Daly and I came up through the depths of the last arroyo and saw the shadows of the Escalera Grande’s rear portion reaching out to us. I tapped my chest, and the tap echoed in Robles’ ear two hundred yards away, sent by the microphone he’d taped under my shirt, now spongy with sweat. He’d settled himself on a rise of ground out there with his rifle and his Bushnell binoculars and his end of the wire—an obsolete affair he’d reworked himself—so he could catch the alert from me and call for the cavalry. Or so the plan went.
Daly’s right foot skidded on a stone, she fell hard against my shoulder, and her whisper was furious.
“We’re sneaking in! You said we’d go and meet Rhea.”
A faint light showed on the rear patio from a sconce high on the adobe wall, enough to show me Rhea hadn’t posted an outside guard. It was like her to trust her bullshit, and not the ordinary kind of security.
“We’ll meet her, all right, and we’ll catch her on the spur of the moment. We’ll see what she’s really all about.”
“I know what she’s all about.”
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