Hard Target

by Barbara Phinney

  Dawna sank back against the chair in her office the next morning, and let the scorching coffee she'd just poured sear her throat.

  It had taken them four hours to crawl down the mountain to Oruro, and then a few more hours to drive back to Cochabamba. She'd spelled Tay off with the driving and then dropped him at his hotel as soon as they entered the city. Since the main staff had already left the embassy for the evening, she went home herself and crawled into bed.

  "You beat me in this morning."

  Dawna peered over the rim of her coffee mug. "And I washed out my mug. Thank you. Now, if you want a coffee, help yourself. I believe Ramos' mug hasn't been thoroughly cleaned in a few weeks."

  Tay smiled. She hid the hint of a returning smile behind her coffee. Like the evening at the restaurant, he'd dressed in casual pants and a sports jacket. "Had two cups at the hotel," he said. "Sleep well?"

  "Like a baby, all night long." Leaning back, she set down her mug. "How did you sleep? You seem the power nap type."

  "I've done my share of power napping, but never on duty."

  "Hah! You weren't a cop on duty for long enough. I did patrol in the north for longer than you were a Mountie."

  Tay sat on the edge of the desk, looking relaxed and obviously unaffected by her scoffing. He lifted his hands heavenward. "What can I say? The military lured me away with a better pension."

  Dawna let out a soft snort. "It's the same public-service pension. Well, as long as you're wide awake now, are you feeling up to an autopsy? The ambassador pulled some strings and arranged it for this morning. In fact, I just got a call from the hospital that Cabanelos has arrived and they're waiting for us."

  "Let me stop and buy some Vicks."

  Dawna laughed. "The smell isn't that bad. Lucy's cats' litter box smells worse. I took care of them once when Lucy went back to Ottawa late last year for a visit."

  Tay frowned as he stood. "She doesn't have any relatives in Canada."

  "She didn't say who she was visiting." Dawna let the smile fall from her face. "You're quite up-to-date on the staff here."

  "The embassy was attacked. Of course I'm going to find out as much as I can about the staff. But there was only so much I could find before I flew down. Lucy's from Ottawa, isn't she?"

  "Yes. She grew up and got married there. I believe her husband died quite a few years ago. They never had any children. What did you learn about me?"

  "Nothing I didn't already know." He met her gaze evenly, his expression revealing no more than hers had with her benign question. "Except that you like Cheez Whiz."

  Dawna rose, smiling smugly at him. "That's where you're wrong. I love Cheez Whiz." Hearing the phone ring in the security office, she walked toward the noise. Marconi was on duty and had just hung up the phone.

  "Sergeant," he said. "Ramos called in sick today. But he left this message for you."

  Tay came up behind her as she accepted the folded note Marconi held out to her. Without opening it, she led Tay into the corridor. "Can you get the car out of the cage? I'm going to pull Ramos' file. We can read it on the way to the hospital."

  Tay glanced down at the folded note, but made no request to read it. Dawna watched him disappear down the corridor to the drivers' room. Last night had been both difficult and yet satisfying. She couldn't explain it, except to say that brainstorming with Tay, even at a high altitude and close quarters, brought her an inexplicable sense of bonding. He was intelligent. If she could just keep their relationship on a business-only level, he would be a valuable asset. They still had far to go in this investigation, but she trusted his instincts. He was good at his job.

  He was also good at other things, but she pushed aside those thoughts as another potent realization struck her.

  So far, she'd learned to trust Tay more than she had expected. And with the trust came that disconcerting satisfaction.

  She looked down the empty corridor, biting her lip. Tay had been here for mere days and suddenly she was ready to trust him again? It almost made real forgiveness possible. And with forgiveness, would she want to rekindle that spark from three years ago? She wasn't sure.

  With a controlled sigh, she opened the note from Ramos.

  'Sergeant,' it read. 'Looked into the blue truck as you asked. A man named Joseph Martin rented it from an agency foreigners use a lot. He used an American passport and is staying at the Hotel D'Oro. The clerk remembered him because when he was looking at the passport, he noticed the man had come here directly from Buenos Aires, but did not have an international drivers license only a US one.'

  Hardly anything suspicious in coming from Buenos Aires, but maybe the clerk had remembered it because it was expected that an American would have an international driver's license. She wasn't sure if it was required or not.

  Rambles didn't say from what state Martin had come. She'd have to ask him to call the agency again to see if the clerk remembered.

  Dawna folded the note again. Seeing Tay and a driver walk out through the back mantrap, she knew she had a few minutes to spare. She returned to her office and thumbed through her address files until she found the number she was seeking.

  "Hello, Jeff," she said when the man she wanted answered. "It's me, Dawna Atkinson."

  "Sweet Dawna, have you come to your senses and given up your job to be my love slave?"

  She laughed. Staff Sergeant Jeff Finch was her American counterpart in the US embassy in Buenos Aires. Embassy circles in South America were quite small and the American embassy had generously provided some of Dawna's training. Jeff had been a course mate and was as subtle as a falling anvil when it came to sex.

  "Jeff, God help the woman you marry. Now, do me a favor, one of the many you owe me for carrying you through that last course."

  Jeff chuckled. "Certainly."

  "Can you run a Joseph Martin through your computer? He's a white male, slim, youngish looking, with brown hair, who recently visited Buenos Aires."

  "I don't have to. I'm guessing that your Joseph Martin is the same one I'm thinking about. Martin's one of the CIA suits here. At least that's the name he uses. Those guys eat up all that spy stuff for breakfast, especially him. Though he's still wet behind the ears." Jeff laughed. "He left two days ago, said he was going on a 'swan'."

  Also hoping that her Martin was the same man, Dawna listened carefully. Jeff had adopted the term 'swan' after hearing her use it to describe an easy assignment. So Martin felt he had an easy assignment? Doing what? And what had he done for the last day? Ramos had written the note yesterday, so Martin had stayed in Buenos Aires one more day than he'd told his embassy. Why?

  "Do you know why he'd be here?" she asked Jeff.

  "Nope. I heard about the explosion, though. Do you think Martin's watching someone at your embassy? Seems a bit odd that you wouldn't have been informed."

  If he knew, Ambassador Legace would have seen to it that she'd been told. That meant Martin was here doing something that was either top secret or of a personal nature.

  That guy didn't look like he was on vacation.

  Dawna clutched at the receiver. A shadow fell over her door and she looked up directly into Tay's curious eyes.

  Maybe Martin's visit was unrelated to the embassy.

  Jeff was still talking. "He's just a kid, a probie as they say on TV, so any assignments handed to him would be simple surveillance stuff, Dawna. If I find out anything else, I'll let you know."

  Tay kept staring at her, his hazel eyes intense, his face craggy and unsmiling. She shivered as attraction rippled through her.

  Who was Martin watching? Who could have just arrived himself-

  She cut off the thought and turned her attention to the phone again. "Thanks, Jeff. I'll talk to you later."

  Chapter Ten

  She thought she could trust Tay, that he wasn't someone who'd deliberately put an embassy at risk. But now, doubt wobbled through her. It was just too convenient for both Tay and Joseph Martin to be staying at the Hotel D'Oro. There wer
e plenty of hotels in the city, and Martin showing up the same time as Tay? None of it felt right.

  She hung up the phone before grabbing her notebook and a small crime scene kit. She hadn't a chance to use it until now. Her movements felt awkward as she put herself on autopilot to follow Tay outside.

  Could Tay have been into something that the CIA sanctioned? The CIA often worked with other countries, even hiring some of their so-called spies.

  Or had he done something that caught the interest of the CIA? Something illegal?

  Bright sunshine bombarded her and she slipped on her sunglasses. Though her instincts told her no, she couldn't rely on just them. And the mental tug-of-war made her head pound.

  One of the embassy drivers took them to the oldest hospital located at the far side of the train station, near an overgrown, dilapidated market. Tay sat wordlessly beside her in the back seat, not asking if the note from Ramos said anything important. For that, she was thankful.

  It was probably a good idea that they not talk about the note. Right now, Dawna needed to focus on the autopsy part of the investigation.

  But other thoughts lingered. Ramos had taken a rare day off. He wasn't the kind to get sick, and he was certainly entitled to a sick day occasionally. But rather an odd time to take one...

  She'd call him later, after she'd pulled his file and reread it.

  Tipping her head one way, then the other, she decided she needed a couple of the Aspirin in her attaché case before anything happened. The coffee wasn't cutting it this morning and with her suspicions, her head was beginning to pound.

  Downstairs in the basement of the hospital, Dawna found a soft drink machine that dispensed Coke. "Wait," she told Tay, stopping to shove some coins into the machine. "I need something to wash down an Aspirin."

  Tay's own throat turned dry as he watched Dawna swallow down the ice cold Coke. But he was swimming in caffeine already. He didn't need any more and wasn't feeling up to testing the other exotic soft drinks offered.

  So to torture himself, he watched Dawna twist the cap off the bottle and tip it up. With eyes closed and lashes brushing the skin of her soft cheeks, her full, smooth lips parted enough to drain a good portion of the icy cold drink. Her long, smooth throat bobbed as she swallowed rhythmically.

  He turned away. And shifted restlessly until she was done.

  They found the lab without assistance. Tay could have smelled it a mile away. He hated the odor of chemicals and death, more than he hated the closed-in feeling all basements seemed to emanate.

  As they stepped inside, he scanned the room. Ancient pipes creaked above him, the water being pushed unwillingly to the upper floors. The usual assortment of lab equipment encircled a steel examination table.

  "Hola," the coroner said, his accent not quite as heavy as the doctor they'd met last night. "Come in."

  Tay turned his attention to the men inside. With the lab assistant's help, the doctor pulled Cabanelos from one of the refrigerated units. The whole wall looked like a hundred-year-old ice box. Behind Tay, the door opened and he turned. One of the local policia entered, dressed in his khaki uniform.

  "I also asked him to come," the doctor said, before rattling something off in Spanish to the constable.

  The man nodded and shook hands with Tay and Dawna. The doctor didn't bother with any more niceties. Dawna tried her broken Spanish on the man.

  Tay didn't know what she said, but from the tone of her voice and her composed smile, he doubted it was anything relevant.

  With other autopsies he'd attended, he'd brought a magazine and nose plugs. He had neither now and was forced to listen and watch the examination, all the while breathing through his mouth, trying to use his command of French to somehow translate what the doctor and the constable were saying, and trying not to focus on the assistant drawing blood and other fluid samples.

  Someone had already x-rayed the body and now the assistant was shoving an x-ray of the chest cavity into the Picker light. Alternating arcs of black and white spread out from a larger white area, like a negative image of an insect. The assistant pointed to the center. "Bad," he said to Tay.

  Tay looked to the doctor for meaning.

  "This man had an enlarged heart," the doctor explained.

  "Which means?" Dawna asked.

  The doctor didn't answer right away, but rather proceeded to remove the actual organ from the chest cavity. Tay swallowed.

  "He suffered from chronic altitude sickness. It's common and in his case, had been aggravated by poor diet and cigarettes." He set the organ down on a metal tray and lifted Cabanelos' right hand. "See? Nicotine stains. He smoked cigarettes with no filter."

  "Is the enlarged heart the cause of death?" Dawna asked, standing over the open cadaver and seemingly at ease with the gruesomeness. Tay had to hand it to her. She was doing better than he was.

  The doctor shook his head. "I don't think so." He said something to the assistant, who returned to the far bench where the fluid samples sat.

  Tay looked up at the stretch of darkened window in front of him. It must have led to an office. He could still see what the doctor was doing, but thankfully, the reflection muted the grisly details. The doctor examined Cabanelos' mouth, his stomach and lungs. For a while, the only sounds were of the assistant working at the far bench, smearing some greenish paste on a glass slide. The clock above him ticked away the hours. Tay shifted, halfway turning back toward the table.

  "Tay?" Dawna touched his arm. "You look kind of pale."

  He shrugged. "Not my favorite thing to do."

  "It is nearly over, señor," the doctor answered. "I have a probable cause of death. Potassium poisoning."

  "Potassium?" Dawna repeated, dropping her arm as she turned.

  "Si. This man was poisoned. A healthy man would have been able to withstand this amount of potassium with a minimum of symptoms, but this man already had an overworked heart. Too much potassium causes heart arrhythmia and sometimes heart failure. This man's heart wasn't strong enough."

  Dawna stared at the doctor. "How was the potassium delivered? Isn't it usually given as an IV?"

  He nodded. "Sometimes, si, a small amount can be used that way. It's also used in euthanasia, but this case is more simple. This man ingested it." He picked up a small vial which held a dark, greenish mush. Immediately, the assistant set down a steel tray with some wilted leaves spread over it. The contents of Cabanelos' stomach, Tay assumed, swallowing down bile.

  The doctor continued, "This is an herb we call tuchuchaw. The leaves have remained fairly undigested and I can see the pattern of them easily. Like coca, they're used to make tea, but unlike coca, it's quite dangerous. Coca leaves are not dangerous. They are chewed and spat out. But with this plant, many people swallow the leaves along with the tea. They have a very high concentration of potassium."

  "Why do they drink it if it's poisonous?"

  The doctor lifted his eyebrows and shrugged. "Why do people smoke, if it is known to kill you? Tuchuchaw is, what do you call it? A folk...remedy? People say it makes them strong."

  "So it wasn't murder? Just a folk remedy?"

  "The man also ate other foods that have potassium in them. He may have not known the food mixed with the tuchuchaw would kill him. The tea is not drunk often, only on special occasions. The plant is scarce and word has spread about how it can poison a person. But still..."

  The lab assistant spoke in rapid Spanish. The doctor sniffed the vial and spoke to the constable. Then he turned to Tay and Dawna. "Perhaps he was murdered. This tea also has perifollo in it."

  Dawna shook her head. "I don't know what that is."

  The assistant retrieved a Spanish-English dictionary, and found the word. "Chervil. A cooking herb."

  She looked at Tay. "I'm not much of a cook, I'm afraid. I still don't know what it is."

  "I think it's like parsley," Tay said. "But it tastes like licorice."

  The doctor nodded. "Si, chervil would disguise the taste of the tuch
uchaw."

  "So he might not have known what he was eating?" Dawna asked.

  "Worse than that. Perifollo also has a great deal of potassium in it. He may not have known he was being poisoned." The doctor handed the vial back to the assistant. "I'll confirm this theory with some more tests. And inform you." He repeated the words to the local constable.

  The constable nodded to them and left. Tay knew there was no point in speaking with him. Neither he nor Dawna were fluent enough in Spanish to ask if this meant a civilian murder investigation would begin.

  "I wish Ramos hadn't decided to take the day off," Dawna announced when they were finally outside and the body and samples were secured. "He speaks better English than some of the interpreters we have."

  Tay inhaled the hot city air. "Any idea where he is?"

  She shook her head. "I plan to call him after I pull his file. I'll ask Marconi to call the policia to see if they plan to investigate this any further."

  Tay squinted as he scanned the busy street. "In this city? I doubt that they'd put a lot of time into it."

  "I know. Not even the fact he was a suspect in the bombing of an embassy would change that much. I imagine they'd simply see it as a blessing he died and close the case." She checked her watch. "Let's go down to the police station, anyway. They may have located Cabanelos' wife."

  Tay caught her arm as she turned away. For a moment, he wasn't even sure he could say anything, but forced the words out nonetheless. "Dawna, we need to talk."

  She looked up at his face, her own suddenly an expressionless mask. "About what?"

  Everything, he wanted to say. About how close they came to kissing last night and how he refused to blame the desire on the altitude. She would, he wagered to himself.

  There was also the urge to tell her what had really happened after she was disciplined by her Commanding Officer. He wanted her to know how he'd slammed his fist down on the CO's desk when the man refused to accept that Tay was fully responsible.

  He wanted to tell Dawna about the resignation he threw at them the next day, and all he'd done since then.