The Council of Shadows s-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Giselle Demarcio was in her fifties, with a taut, dry, ageless appearance and a slight East Coast accent, dressed in a mildly funky Santa Fe look, silver jewelry and a blouse and flounced skirt.

  Sort of a fashionista version of what my great-grandmother wore around the house, Salvador thought cynically.

  His family, the Spanish part, at least, had been in Santa Fe since the seventeenth century.

  Everything old gets new if you wait long enough. Rich Anglos get off the bus and live in pimped-up adobes and you end up in a double-wide on Airport Road.

  There was a dash of Irish in his background too, on his mother's side, and the indio part of the Salvador line had probably thought, There goes the neighborhood, when the conquistadores showed up asking about those gold mines the pueblo down the river had sworn existed around here.

  She had a white mark on her finger where a wedding ring would go, and she fit in perfectly with the airy white-on-white decor of Hans amp; Demarcio Galleries. He was not, he noticed, being invited back to her office; this was a semipublic reception room. The art on the walls was something he could understand, at least-actual pictures of actual things. Not the cowboy-pueblo-Western art a lot of the places on Canyon Road had either, mostly older-looking stuff. There was a very faint odor of wood smoke from a pinon fire crackling in a kiva fireplace. The whole thing screamed money. It had been a very long time since Canyon Road attracted artists because the rents were low.

  Santa Fe, the town where ten thousand people can buy the state and fifty thousand can't afford lunch, he thought.

  "Jeanette, take care of the Cliffords, would you?" Demarcio said to a sleek-looking assistant. Then: "Coffee, Detective?"

  Wait a minute, Salvador thought. She's not really hostile. She's scared for some reason. Not of me, but scared silly and hiding it well .

  "Thank you," he said, and took the cup. "That's nice."

  It was excellent coffee, especially compared to what he drank at home or at the station, with a rich, dark, nutty taste. He enjoyed it, and waited. Most people couldn't stand silence. It wore on their nerves and eventually they blurted out something to fill it. Salvador had learned patience and silence in a very hard school.

  "I'm worried about Ellen," the older woman said suddenly.

  The detective made a sympathetic noise. "Ms. Tarnowski worked for you?" he said.

  "Works. She's my assistant, even if she didn't show up this morning, that's understandable with the fire and all. Not a secretary, she's an art history graduate from NYU, and I was bringing her in on our acquisitions side. I'm…She's a sweet kid, but she's gotten mixed up in something, hasn't she?"

  "You tell me, Ms. Demarcio," Salvador said.

  "I never liked that boyfriend of hers. She met him playing tennis at the country club about a year ago and they, well, it was a whirlwind thing. He gave me this creepy feeling. And then his sister showed up-"

  Salvador blinked. The sister…the woman who was with Tarnowski?

  "Boyfriend?" he asked.

  "Adrian Breze."

  "Ah," Salvador said.

  As he spoke he tapped the name into his notepad's virtual keyboard and hit the rather specialized search function. He'd long ago mastered the trick of reading a screen and paying attention to someone at the same time.

  "Now, that's interesting. Do you have a picture of him?"

  It was interesting because Salvador didn't have a picture; or much of anything else. Usually these days you drowned in data on anyone. There was nothing here but bare bones, a Social Security number, a passport number and an address way, way out west of town. Just out of Santa Fe County, in fact. A quick Google Earth flick showed a big house on a low mountain or big hill, right in the foothills of the Sangres, nothing else for miles and miles and miles and miles. The state real property register was a mess, but a check on that showed what seemed to be a single parcel of several thousand acres at least, a chunk of an eighteenth-century grant.

  Not even a passport picture to go with the number, and he owns ten square miles of scenery. Someone likes his privacy, he thought, looking at the address. Then: Hey, if you had enough pull, could you blank yourself out? Nah, nobody can evade the Web.

  Demarcio hesitated, then pulled a framed picture out of a drawer. The glass was cracked, as if someone had thrown it at a wall.

  "She told me she was going to break up with him. Couldn't take the emotional distance and lies anymore. Then she didn't show up to work yesterday."

  "So she's missing the day before the fire," Salvador said, looking at the picture. "She didn't call in? Just nothing?"

  "Nothing this morning. That's not like her. She's the most reliable person who's ever worked for me."

  Only she's gone and the place she lived in is a scorch mark, which conveniently shit-cans all the evidence.

  The photo beneath the cracked glass showed a youngish man, though on second thought perhaps Salvador's own age. Or maybe somewhere between twenty-five and thirty-five. Dark hair worn a little longer than was fashionable these days, a vaguely Mediterranean-looking face that could have come from anywhere. Handsome, perhaps a little too much so, though not quite enough to be called pretty.

  Androgynous, that's the word. But there's something dangerous-looking about him too. Like a cat, like a snake. Or a weasel, or a razor blade in an apple.

  "He's…" Demarcio frowned. "You know, I met him a dozen times and I listened to her talk about him a lot and I really can't tell you much. He's wealthy…very wealthy, I think. Some sort of old money, but that's an impression, not knowledge. He wouldn't tell Ellen anything about that either, just some vague bullshit about 'investments.' American born but he has a slight accent, French, I think, which would fit with the name. I know he speaks French and Italian and Spanish…and yes, German too, all of them very well. I couldn't tell you where his money comes from, or where he went to university or, well, anything."

  Salvador looked at the photo. Unobtrusively he brought up the composite picture on the notepad. The resemblance to the reconstruction of the man the Lopez family had seen standing motionless outside their house just before the fire was unmistakable. He scanned the picture into the notepad, and the program came up with a solid positive when it did its comparison.

  "Would you say this is Adrian Breze?" he said, and showed her the screen.

  "Absolutely," she said.

  "And this is his sister?" he said, changing to the composite of the woman the Lopezes had seen with Ellen Tarnowski earlier.

  "Well…" The picture wasn't quite as definite; they'd glimpsed the face only in passing and through a window. "Yes, I'd say so. It's a striking resemblance, isn't it? Like twins, only they'd have to be fraternal."

  "Have you seen this man?"

  The composite this time was the older man with the gun who'd frightened the Lopezes out of their home…and probably saved their lives, considering how fast the building had gone up.

  "No, I can't say I have. That is, he's similar to any number of people I've seen, but he doesn't bring anyone immediately to mind."

  Salvador grunted; it was a rather generic Anglo countenance, in fact. Offhand he'd have said Texan or Southern of some sort, there was something about the cheekbones that brought Scots-Irish hillbilly to mind, and the long face on a long skull, but even that was just an educated guess. The corps was lousy with that type.

  "Do you think Mr. Breze is capable of, mmm, violent actions?"

  She paused for a long moment, looking down at her fingers. When she met his eyes again his alarm bells rang once more.

  "I think he's capable of anything. Anything at all."

  "Had a temper?"

  She shook her head. "No. He was always a perfect gentleman. But I could feel it. Sort of a, um, potential."

  Which would be a big help in court.

  "Now, you saw Ms. Tarnowski later that evening?"

  Now Demarcio flushed. "Yes, with Ms. Breze…Adrienne Breze. At La Casa Sena, they were having dinner at a table near min
e."

  That was an expensive restaurant on Palace, just off the plaza, in an old renovated adobe that had started out as a hacendado 's town house. Not the most expensive in town by a long shot, but up there.

  "You didn't speak with them?"

  "No. They, um, didn't seem to want company." Her eyes shifted upward and she blushed slightly. "They seemed sort of preoccupied."

  Ah, Salvador thought. That sort of preoccupied. Is this an arson case or a bad movie? Sister catches her on the rebound from her brother, so brother burns the house down? Where do this sort of people come from? Do they step out of TV screens or do the screenwriters know them and use them for material?

  "You knew Adrienne Breze socially?"

  "No. I'd never seen her before. Didn't even know Adrian had a sister."

  "Then how did you know the woman's name?" he said.

  An exasperated glance. "I asked the maitre d'hotel at La Casa Sena, of course! I'm a regular there. So is Adrian."

  He hid a smile. I think Ms. Demarcio is a nice lady. She's concerned about Tarnowski. But I also think she's a gossip of the first water.

  "Thank you, Ms. Demarcio-"

  "Well, aren't you going to tell me anything?"

  He sighed. Usually you didn't, but he needed to develop this source.

  "We're investigating the circumstances of the fire at Ms. Tarnowski's apartment, and trying to find where she is."

  Her eyes narrowed slightly; that meant, We think it was torched, without actually saying it.

  "I talked to the Lopez family, and there was a man with a gun."

  He sighed. Santa Fe was a small town. "True. We've got Santa Fe and Albuquerque and the state police all looking."

  She hesitated, twisting her fingers together. "I…I got a call from Ellen today."

  Salvador came alert without tensing.

  "You did?" he said, the sort of polite verbal placeholder you used to keep people talking.

  "She…she called me on a videoconference link. She said she was staying at Adrienne Breze's place in California. That she was…working for Ms. Breze now, cataloging her family's art collection."

  Aha! Salvador thought. And again, aha!

  "We'll need the address," he said.

  "I…I'm afraid I don't have an address. Just a phone number. But Ms. Breze said not to use it very often."

  This is one scared lady, Salvador thought. And I really don't think she's naturally a scaredy-cat.

  He thumbed the number into his phone as she gave it, then spoke:

  "Here's my card."

  He slid it across the low table. "Please let me know immediately if Ms. Tarnowski contacts you again, or you get any other information."

  "Detective," she said as he rose to go.

  He turned, raising a brow, and she went on: "Remember I said Adrian was capable of anything at all?"

  He nodded.

  "Well, his sister struck me the same way. But worse." A swallow. "Much, much worse."

  Outside Cesar met him, and they walked down towards the end of Canyon, then turned right across the bridge over the small and entirely dry Santa Fe River with its strip of grass and cottonwoods. That led to Palace just north of the cathedral, the reddish sandstone bulk of it towering over the adobe and stucco of the neighboring buildings. Salvador jammed his fists into the pockets of his sheepskin jacket and scowled, pausing only to give the finger to a Mercedes that ran the yellow light and nearly hit them. Right afterwards a rusting clunker with the driver's door held on with coat-hanger wire did the same thing.

  Then he keyed the number into the police net, the service that gave you locations…

  Not listed, it said.

  "This is screwy," he complained, after he'd filled his partner in.

  He looked at it again; California area code, south-central coast. But…

  Not listed.

  "You try, Cesar."

  Not listed.

  The next time Eric tried, a string of garbage scrolled across his phone.

  "Now that," he said, "isn't just fucked-up. That is enemy action."

  Cesar raised his hands palms up and made a weighing motion; he wasn't as paranoid as his senior partner. Maybe, it said.

  "But at least we've got names to go with our composites. Adrian and Adrienne Breze," Eric conceded.

  "That is fucked-up, too, amigo," Cesar said cheerfully. "Because the databases are still not giving us anything even though we've got the names. They don't have e-mail addresses; they don't have bank accounts…You did send them out?"

  "Yeah, local, state, Fart, Barf and Itch, and Homeland Insecurity, which means the spooks. It can take a while, even now that they've got the whole system cross-referenced."

  "It shouldn't take a while to get something. Everyone leaves footprints. The question is, my friend, should we be thinking of this as an arson case, or some sort of kidnapping?"

  "A little early for that. According to Demarcio, she's wherever-it-is of her own free will. 'Sorting paintings,' if you know what I mean."

  "Yeah, only we can't reach wherever she is, and anyone will say anything if they're persuaded right. But!"

  Cesar grinned and showed his notepad, a picture of an elderly but well-maintained Prius. "Abandoned car on Palace, ticketed and towed about an hour ago. Registered to-"

  "Ellen Tarnowski."

  "So maybe, it's not so early to think about maybe some slight element of kidnapping."

  Salvador's notepad beeped. "Well, fuck me. Take a look."

  The picture was from the security cams at Albuquerque International Sunport, the airport in the larger city an hour's drive south; the face-recognition software had tagged it.

  "That's Breze and our mystery man with the gun, all right. Still in the black leather outfit. Nine thirty to San Francisco last night, just opened up and the request got it. Wait a minute-"

  He tapped at the screen. " Fuck me."

  "What's wrong?"

  "They didn't have tickets. Look."

  "Could be tickets under someone else's name."

  "No, there were two vacant first-class seats, according to the ticketing record. But look, when they cleared for takeoff they recorded all the first-class seats as full. But there aren't any names attached to these two. Which isn't supposed to be possible. Breaks three laws and twenty regulations."

  Cesar made a hissing sound of frustration. " Mierda, for a second I thought wed get a name on Mr. Shotgun. What about the other end?"

  "Flight got into San Francisco International…nothing on the surveillance cam there, and it should have gotten them."

  The younger man grinned. "Maybe they got out on the way,?si?"

  "Yeah, at forty thousand feet. So…possible kidnapping, by one or two different parties. Or possibly the Breze twins are acting in concert. One or the other of them's responsible for the burn, I'd bet my cojones on it."

  "Okay, we got her last-known location in Santa Fe. Here. Let's go see how Demarcio's story holds up."

  The building that housed La Casa Sena and several upscale shops was mainly nineteenth-century, adobe-built with baked-brick trim, rising around a courtyard patio that featured a pool and a huge cottonwood. Originally it had comprised thirty-three rooms of living space-workroom-storeroom-quasi fortress that presented a blank defensive wall four feet thick to the outside intended to repel Apaches, bandits, rebels and tax collectors, whether Mexican or gringo. Now there were a wine boutique, several stores selling upscale jewelry and foofaraw, and the restaurant occupying two sides of the rectangle.

  Iron tables stood out under the cottonwoods, vacant this time of year; the flower beds were sere and brown as well. A glassed-in box near the entrance covered the original well that had supplied water to the complex. He glanced at the menu posted beside the door; they weren't open for lunch yet.

  "Ever eaten here?" he asked.

  "Twenty-five for a ham sandwich?" Cesar said, peering at the prices. "You loco?"

  "I had dinner here once. An anniversary, the last o
ne before Julia divorced me and went off to Bali to Find Herself."

  Cesar snorted. "You can't find yourself in New Mexico, you aren't going to find anything different in Cincinnati or damn Bali."

  "Yeah. But the food was actually pretty damn good."

  "Jesus, if lunch is like this, what's dinner for two cost?"

  "About the price of a trip to Paris." Salvador grinned and read the small print: "And the ham sandwich has green chile aoili, ciabatta, aged Wisconsin Gouda-"

  "It's still twenty-five dollars for a fucking ham sandwich. Okay, a ham and cheese. I don't care if the butter was made from the Virgin's milk."

  "Can I help you?" a young woman in a bow-tie outfit said, opening the door. "Lunch doesn't start seating until-"

  They flashed their badges. "The manager, please."

  That brought the manager out quickly. "I'm Mr. Tortensen-"

  After the introductions the manager showed them through to his office, though Salvador felt as if half the contents of his wallet had vanished just stepping over the threshold of the front door into the pale Taos-style interior. Even the office was stylish. The man was worried, brown-haired, in his thirties, lean to the point of emaciation, and licking his lips.

  What sort of restaurant manager is skinny? Salvador thought. Well, probably this far up the scale the customers don't like to think eating can make you fat.

  "What can I do for you, Officers?" he said.

  Salvador leaned back in the chair. He knew he could be intimidating to some. People who'd led sheltered lives particularly. He didn't have to do anything, even if they were people who'd consciously think of him as something they'd scrape off their shoe on a hot day.

  "You had two guests at dinner yesterday," he said. "From a little after five thirty to seven thirty. Ellen Tarnowski and Adrienne Breze. I'd like some details."

  The man started very slightly; then his mouth firmed. "I'm afraid our clients' confidentiality is-"

  Cesar cut in smoothly: "Ms. Tarnowski's house burned down last night, and there's suspicion of arson. Her car was found and towed from a parking spot not too far from here. We have independent confirmation that she was here last night, and she's a missing person with this as her last-known location."