No Immunity

by Susan Dunlap

  “You brought the body here because you figured you’d dump it out in the country where we wouldn’t be smart enough to know it was contagious.”

  “Did I bring it from California? Flying in coach? I flew Southwest; maybe I got a ‘friends fly free’ fare.”

  The cords in his neck sprang out, but he didn’t speak. He fingered a small picture on his desk, staring at it as if for control. “You’re a private eye. You got hired out of Vegas.”

  So he’d already done a background search on her, a background search that he’d had to get the sheriff in the county seat to do on his computer, then dispatched five deputies to pick her up. This guy had a lot riding on her guilt. A sensible woman would choose each word with caution. “So I’m disposing of someone else’s dead body, huh? Why would one of your fine citizens hire an out-of-state detective to get rid of a corpse? Surely in Las Vegas you’ve got enough thugs who are expert at that?”

  “You’ve got no local connections. Word’s not going to be all over town before the body’s cold.”

  “But why would I bring it here? This state is ninety percent desert. I could have driven ten miles out of Las Vegas, dumped the body, and made my flight back to San Diego with an hour to spare for the slots. Why would I go to all the trouble of bringing her up here and foisting her on a guy I haven’t seen in years?” She dropped her feet to the floor with a thud. “Just tell me that.”

  Fox’s pudgy face broadened into a smile. It was clear from the strained lines across his jaw that this wasn’t an expression he employed often. “You brought the body here, Doctor, so that you’d have a reason to see Jeff Tremaine again.”

  “So you’re changing your story? I didn’t just drop the body and run, then?”

  His hard-held smile dropped, and for the first time he seemed flustered. The picture frame slid from his fingers, landing facedown on the desk.

  “You know, Sheriff, if I’d wanted to see Jeff, I could have met him and his wife in Vegas for dinner. It would have been easier.”

  “Ah, but that’s just what you couldn’t do. Mrs. Tremaine is a fine woman, much too fine a woman to eat with you. She knows what happened in Africa.”

  Kiernan stared, the game gone flat. The air felt thicker, filled with the stale odor of dust like the dry earth that swept around every door and through the windows in Africa. How could Jeff Tremaine’s wife know about Hope Mkema? Jeff had said just today that he hadn’t mentioned Hope’s name since he left India. There were no other Americans on the project. Surely Mrs. Tremaine in Gattozzi, Nevada, hadn’t been in contact with the British or African doctors from the Lassa fever project. And yet, if Jeff didn’t tell her …She herself certainly hadn’t. And Hope Mkema was dead.

  “Gotcha there, Doctor. Crime always catches up with you. You should have just left Jeff Tremaine alone.”

  Her eyes shot open. “What! Are you crazy? You think that I—”

  “There’s no point in lying now.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  He started to reach for her arm, then seemed to think better of it. “You come in here, dump a body, lie to the sheriff, and now you figure I’m going to believe your word over that of one of the most respected citizens in town?”

  “Sheriff,” she said through tightly clenched jaw, “there’s a lot of accusation without the presence of the accuser going on here. Get Jeff Tremaine and his wife over here and let them speak for themselves.”

  “Out of town.”

  “What?”

  “They’re out of town.”

  “Jeff was just here this afternoon.”

  “And you were in Las Vegas this afternoon.”

  “Fine, then let me speak to the person who says he saw me dumping that body off.”

  “Maybe you weren’t paying attention. I just told you, he’s out of town.”

  She opened her mouth, but there were too many questions to ask, and, she knew, no answers forthcoming. She let her mouth close, and she sat staring from the back of the fallen frame on Fox’s desk to the photograph of the dank and cruel nineteenth-century jail built in the era when accusation and guilt were one and the same.

  Her silence seemed to stump Fox as no previous assault had.

  After a moment she stood up. “Sheriff, I know nothing of this dead woman. I didn’t bring her here. You’ve got no evidence to merit charging me. So call your deputy and have him drive me back to Las Vegas.”

  “The bus comes at seven A.M. Hotel’s two doors down.”

  She took her time poking her arms into her coat sleeves, hooking her pack onto her belt, glancing at the jail. What had she been thinking to let herself be stranded in a desert village with not even a bus out till morning? She was as trapped as the photo in the overturned frame.

  Idly she reached for the frame, tacitly daring Fox to make a territorial fuss.

  “Sheriff, maybe you don’t realize the potential danger this dead woman puts you in. You and everyone in Gattozzi and beyond. We don’t know what she has, but it could be contagious enough to wipe out anyone downwind. Jeff and I didn’t go near her without protective gear. We’re talking epidemic, bleeding out—”

  “That’s going to be your defense, huh?”

  She bit back her normal retort. This was too important. She leaned her hands on the edge of his desk. “What can I tell you to convince you?”

  “You can confess.”

  She took a final look at Sheriff Fox. The man was no fool. Behind his pudgy face was the mind of a fox, she was sure of it. A fox used to big empty fields where the hens had nowhere to hide. He’d be a fox who didn’t have to scheme any too often. Was he just plain bored enough to break the law for the hell of it? Was the idea of epidemic too awful to consider? That didn’t follow the law of reason, but when you’re the law, the law’s however you want it to be.

  Before she stood, she righted the frame and looked at the photo. “Oh, shit!”

  “Excuse me?” Fox exclaimed with smarmy righteousness.

  In the picture Fox stood smiling in a boozy way, each arm around a plumed and bikini’d chorus girl. In the background was a banner for the Nevada Casino Board. “Sheriff, you can believe me or not, but don’t fool around with this. If you’re thinking of covering up an epidemic so it doesn’t ruin your tourist trade in Nevada, you’re crazy. It’s way too great a risk to take.”

  “For billions of dollars?” he asked.

  “What’s your life worth?”

  “Like I said, bus leaves at seven.”

  CHAPTER 20

  OF COURSE JEFF TREMAINE’S office was closed, Kiernan thought as she stood banging on his door. It was after dark Saturday night. Even if he hadn’t been avoiding her, he’d be gone. He and his too-fine wife, who’d figured Kiernan had seduced him. She glared through the glass door into the reception area. Rats.

  The wind whipped down the mountain snapping her inadequate jacket against her ribs. She couldn’t even figure how cold it was. Snow weather. Nothing was open but a cafe, the saloon where Fox had so generously directed her for the night, and a bar up the street with only the AR lighted in the window. She ran across the street to the saloon. She’d use the phone, get a drink, and get out of here. Spending the night was something she definitely was not doing. If Jeff Tremaine had lied to the sheriff about her, she could hardly count on his veracity about calling Public Health. So far she had met three people in this isolated town, and they’d been ruthless, suspicious, and treated truth like something from an alien dimension. Were they joined in a conspiracy to hide the possible danger from the town? Or was there more to it, more people involved? She needed to get a hold of her own connections in the Centers for Disease Control. Those numbers were at home.

  She tried her cell phone and got an earful of static. “Phone?” she called to the bartender over the jukebox. The bar could have been lifted from a back lot at Paramount—a Western set. Long, wooden, with a brass foot rail, it curved to an end halfway into the long, narrow room. Heads of wolves and cougars, de
er—animals who’d been cornered—looked down at her through their blank glass eyes. All it needed was a jukebox whining “Red River Valley.”

  Two men in jeans, plaid shirts (one red, one blue), and work boots huddled over beer glasses at the bar, and an elderly couple with the look of regulars nursed highball glasses at a table across from the music. The rear was taken up by a pool table and, thank the gods, the phone.

  As long as she had to call Tchernak and listen to him crow about his indispensability, after he’d given her the CDC numbers, he could pull up Nevada car-rental agencies on the computer. He could get one in Las Vegas that delivered. It would cost a fortune, but he was no longer in her employ to remind her of that. She dialed; the phone rang. The answering machine picked up. “Tchernak?” How could he be out, now of all times? “Tchernak, pick up!” Was he truly off somewhere or just sitting back enjoying her discomfort? She took a breath and sounded light-years more businesslike than she felt as she said, “I may be late. Would you take care of Ezra for another day? You can reach me at”—she read off the phone number. “I’ll be home in the afternoon.”

  She hung up and dialed information and took down five Las Vegas car-service numbers. It took her the better part of half an hour to survey the laughter from the five representatives when she asked for a pickup in Gattozzi on Saturday night. Money was not the issue, the last guy assured her. It would take them six hours to do a round trip to Gattozzi. In that time in Vegas they could make enough to buy Gattozzi.

  She dialed Tchernak again, got his machine again, and replaced the receiver slowly. Bad enough her instructions to the message tape were about to alert the entire bar, but hearing an exchange with Tchernak would provide them amusement all winter. “You’ll be taking the bus?” Tchernak would have howled. “For you a bus is just a slow-moving blockade in your lane.” If she protested, he’d add, “It’s Pavlov’s road law; it pulls out, you honk.” Then he would remind her of the before-today worst day in her life, when she had taken scenic Route 1 going south along the cliff above the Pacific—two lanes, sharp curves, no passing lanes for a hundred miles—and found herself behind a double-wide motor home piloted by an acrophobe.

  Suddenly the saloon seemed louder. In the few minutes she had been on the phone, the patronage had doubled. In a country town like this, 8:30 P.M. was late for regulars to be happening by. These were folks dropping in for the show—herself. Did they know they might have the index case of an epidemic across the street? She wanted to warn them, but who would believe her over their own doctor and sheriff?

  As she moved toward the bar, she scanned them. Which piercing eyes might have spotted the dead woman on her clandestine trip into the morgue? Somebody had to know where she came from. Who had the skinny on Jeff Tremaine? Was the word out that she herself was suspect? Two women in their forties had taken a table across the room. The elderly couple sat silently at a round table, obviously too long married to bother with the pretense of conversation. In a town of limited events, running out of discussion was no shame.

  Kiernan stood a moment longer, listening to the waves and valleys of conversation, again aware how loud it had become. How loud since she had stopped talking.

  Since they had stopped listening.

  She moved to the bar. It was still guarded by the two middle-aged flannel-shirted men, now joined by a woman with short gray hair, jeans, and leather jacket, and a lanky guy in his twenties, swaggering as he held up the chip on his shoulder. The woman stood eighteen inches away from the others, and when the stocky guy moved, she adjusted to keep the distance.

  The shelves behind the bar were surprisingly well stocked. “Dickel and water,” Kiernan ordered. “Is the Dickel the twelve?”

  “Just got the eight. Sorry.”

  She smiled. “I’ll rough it.”

  The bartender nodded and she could tell from his expression that he had slotted her onto a higher shelf. “Over or up?”

  “After today? Up.” She asked without hope, “Is there a car-rental place in town? Or a limo service?”

  “Ma’am, I’m afraid the Dickel is giving you a more cosmopolitan image than Gattozzi deserves. We got the Greyhound in the morning and we’re glad of it. Other’n that, if you’re going to Vegas, there’s the senior bus, runs Tuesdays, and from the look of you, you’d have to wait years to get on that.” He grinned and passed her the drink. He was big enough to have played offensive line with Tchernak, broad-shouldered, but now, at about fifty, broad-gutted too. His fair hair was short, his brush mustache trimmed a mite too short over his surprisingly pink lips, and the eager look on his square face belied his closed-end comments.

  “How about a used-car lot?”

  “I’ll tell you what we do when we want to buy a car. We go to Vegas.”

  “Right.” The gray-haired woman pushed her spiky bangs away from her eyes. The cut might have been thought of as a pixie had it not been for her decidedly unpixielike jaw, a jaw that said, “Any Peter Pan in front of me better be swinging pretty damned fast.” Kiernan liked that. She watched as the woman lifted a brandy snifter that would have better suited the bar in the Del Coronado Hotel. It was about the last thing she’d have expected in her rough, veined hand. But the woman took no notice of her observer. Her caramel eyes were almost shut amid squinty lines, lines from looking long, not peering into the eyes of the person across the glass. “Or, Milo, we get a truck from a friend.”

  “Ah, Connie, how often does that come up?”

  Kiernan had guessed her to be mid fifties, but then realized she’d been using urban markers to judge: creases in skin from years of wind and sun without the emollients city women take for granted, and gray hair that always adds a decade. This woman was closer to forty than fifty.

  Connie straightened her shoulders. “Guys get sudden needs for cash. It happens. You remember Artie Mayeno, the time he ‘sold’ the cafe twice in one day …”

  “The cafe Mayeno didn’t own,” Milo put in.

  “—and he had to disappear for a month. He cashed in everything he had before he headed for the hills. That old truck of his was the last thing he sold.”

  Kiernan put a hand on her arm. “If you know someone—”

  “You’re real anxious to leave our little town.” The indictment was Milo’s, but it could have come from anyone in the room. The two women had moved to one end of the bar, the elderly couple to the other.

  “No aspersion on the town, but all I’ve seen is the inside of the sheriff’s department.” She wished she could cut through all he already knew, but this, like all games, had its rules. “I was here earlier today as a guest of Jeff Tremaine. We were in medical school together.” She almost added “in San Francisco,” but caught herself in time to avert the danger of a detour into travel talk.

  “Oh, you’re a friend of Jeff’s?” Connie set down her glass. She didn’t add, “and his wife?” but that question hung in the air.

  The room had gone silent. All ears were cocked for her response to “and his wife?” Were they waiting because the answer had so often been no? Was Hope Mkema not the love of Jeff’s life, but merely his first extramarital fling, or not even the first? Kiernan could see Hope again, sweat sparkling on her dark, delicate face, sweat mixed with blood, her hands quivering beyond control. Hope would have died, Jeff Tremaine or no, but it didn’t make Kiernan think any better of Jeffrey Tremaine, as a habitual user of women.

  She had had her own share of lovers, but consecutively. Being straight with them mattered; she liked crisp edges in her life. More than one lover on the way out had called her cold, labeled her unfeminine in her apparent ease of dismissal. Maybe.

  But Jeff Tremaine, he was one guy she had not seen through. Her hand tightened on the shot glass and she pressed the edge of her palm into the bar to keep from jerking the glass to her mouth. “Yes,” she said, just a friend of Jeff’s, not a friend of Jeff’s wife. She took a swallow of mash, not as much as she wanted, but she didn’t know how long this scenario would go on.
If she ended up here overnight, three hours on the Greyhound tomorrow would be bad enough without bouncing along hung over.

  She glanced over the Saturday-night crowd, so seemingly safe here in their isolated town, in their friendly saloon. There was no way to alert them, she knew that. Her head throbbed and her hands were tingling from the tension. If she could find out the truth about Jeff, maybe with that leverage she could make him talk. If she could find him.

  Or maybe the dead body was not contagious at all.

  She couldn’t say, “Has your doctor lost his senses? Is your sheriff a megalomaniac?” She’d have to ease into it. Schmooze. Tchernak would have them eating out of his hand in a minute. But schmoozing was definitely not her strong suit.

  She shifted to her right to open the conversation to the two flannels and the elderly couple on her left. They each gave a nod, a hint of a shrug, but asked no questions. Clearly Connie and Milo, the bartender, spoke for them all.

  “Tell me about the Admiralty of the Sands.”

  “The Vanished Armada?” Milo said laughing. “Boy, you don’t let any grass grow under your feet.”

  “Even if the navy does?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “But what do they do there?”

  He shrugged. “Big secret. They say they use it to store classified records. But I’ll tell you, you come up to the gate, there’s a guard staring in your window before you can roll it down.”

  “So, Milo, what do you think is in there?”

  “My guess, and it’s just a guess, you understand, is radioactive waste.”

  “Makes sense,” the blue flannel agreed. “Only time the feds think of Nevada is when they’re looking for a dump.”

  “Or bitching about the Mafia,” his pal added.