“What about the workmen?” Sheppard asked.
“Nine millimeter. Both of them.”
“Were they shot in the barn?” Sheppard asked.
“The one you found in the tack room was definitely killed in there,” Oglethorpe replied. “The other man was probably shot in the doorway of the barn and managed to stumble back a ways before he died.”
“Wouldn’t the horses have spooked, though? They were in the barn when we got back.”
“They probably did,” King said. “But the stall doors were locked and the black horse didn’t get out until Tess had unlocked it.”
“As you know,” Oglethorpe went on, “there was no sign of a struggle in the cabin, no blood, and we picked up a lot of partial prints. The blood in the barn. . . I believe Agent King told you about that.”
Right. The type A. Since Mira was the only type A on the property last night, the blood was probably hers. “Anything else?”
“Two things, actually,” said Poisten. ‘There were two sets of tire tracks outside the cabin, up close to the trees—those from your van and those from an SUV. The Stevenses don’t have an SUV, so it’s likely the killer is driving one.”
Hey, great, Sheppard thought. The killer and millions of other Americans.
Oglethorpe now spoke again. “Up where your van was parked last night, there were a lot of footprints. We got casts for them.” He opened his briefcase now and removed two lightweight casts of shoes. “Try this on for size, Agent Sheppard.”
Sheppard held it to the sole of his shoe; the fit was perfect. So this cast was from his footprints last night. “Size eleven?” asked King.
“On the nose.”
“What about this one, Kyle?” Oglethorpe passed him the second, smaller cast.
King took it, held it between his fingers. “Size nine or so. A shorter, lighter person.”
Oglethorpe grinned. “Kyle’s got a great eye for details like this. Male or female?”
“Tough call.” King shook his head and handed the cast back to Oglethorpe. “Not enough detail in the cast.”
“Blame the snow for that,” Oglethorpe said. “We were lucky to get what we did.”
“So, gentlemen,” King said, pressing his palms to the table. “That leaves us with a few more details, but no motive.”
“It’s possible that Ms. Morales witnessed the murders,” Polsten said, “and the killer took her because of that.”
“Possible, but unlikely,” King replied. “Why take a hostage? It would be easier to kill her.”
Sheppard suddenly hated these men for discussing Mira in front of him as though she were just another victim. But as soon as he thought this, he realized they considered him a professional—in other words, a man who could detach from his emotions and do whatever had to be done. The door to his heart slammed shut.
Oglethorpe sat forward, his pudgy hands folded carefully on the table in front of him, the backs of them dimpled. His nails were cut neatly, trimly, and seemed inordinately clean, as though he sat around in the evenings picking at them with a nail file. “Had Ms. Morales ever met the Stevenses before?”
“No.”
“Then what could possibly connect Ms. Morales with the Stevenses, Agent Sheppard?”
“Me,” he replied.
2
Annie sat in the barn with Ricki, her legs crossed lotus style, her eyes shut, her breathing soft, even. She struggled to make her mind a blank, the way her mother and Nana Nadine had taught her. She had hay clutched in her right hand that she’d plucked from the barn floor where her mother’s blood had been found. She hoped it would create a connection to her mom, but so far, nothing had happened.
Total silence. It scared her. Even in the worst of times, like when she had gone through the black water mass, she’d been able to connect at some level with her mother and vice versa. She didn’t want to think about what that might mean and hoped it was because of the drug the paramedic had given her last night to calm her down. Drugs screwed up the psychic wires. So did trauma. It had to be that. She refused to accept any other explanation. Maybe when Nadine got here, they would try this together and boost each other’s psychic signal.
Shut up, shut up. Blank your mind.
Gradually her mind became a white screen, but instead of providing information, it grew thick and heavy with dark shapes that she knew were corpses. Jerry’s body. Ramona’s.
A gust of cold wind blew into the barn, chilling her, and Annie’s eyes snapped open. “Shit, shit, it’s not working,” she muttered, and tossed the handful of hay onto the floor.
A great wave of fear rose up inside her, tears rolled down her cheeks. Ricki whimpered and moved up closer to Annie, licking her face, trying to comfort her. She wrapped her arms around the dog’s neck and buried her face in Ricki’s silken fur, her shoulders heaving with muted sobs.
Distantly an owl hooted.
Chapter 8
“Hey, can I hitch a ride into town?”
Keith Curry glanced over at the young woman who had opened the passenger door of his VW. A gringa knockout. Her thick blond hair blew in the wind and she caught it with one hand and pulled it to the side so it fell over her right shoulder. Her mouth was probably the most perfect mouth Curry had ever seen, neither too large nor too small, a seductive bow shape that begged to be touched, caressed, kissed. High cheekbones. Blue eyes large enough to swim in. Her skin was tan, but not burned, not abused, not the sort of skin that would look like a wrinkled prune in ten years. She hadn’t been down here long, he thought.
She was thin, with curves in the right places. She wore a halter top, with a cotton shirt over it, a wise move in downtown Panama, where the Latino men figured that a gringa with her boobs hanging out was an open invitation. Instead of the usual short shorts that the boater women wore, this woman wore white Capri pants. Also smart. Not too much leg showing.
“Sure, hop in,” he said.
And she did. She slid into the passenger seat with her large shoulder bag, a bag of laundry, and shut the door. He backed out of the parking space and turned out of the yacht club and headed toward downtown Panama City.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she asked.
He nearly laughed. At the moment he felt fortunate that he remembered how to shift the VW. The spliff he had smoked back on the boat had been Panamanian Red, so potent and yet so mellow that Curry would be perfectly content to sit on a bench somewhere and watch the sun make its solitary journey across the sky.
“Should I?”
“We talked last night.”
And it hit him. This was the woman he had spent hours with at the bar last night, deep in conversation about Christ-knew-what. ‘The bar,” he said.
“Good. Very good.” She smiled. “But my name slipped away.”
“My own name slipped away,” he said with a laugh.
“The dope we smoked on your boat is what did it. I actually stood there watching people drop into Never-Never Land. One guy thought he was Peter Pan and tried to fly. He climbed onto the deck railing, spread his arms, and promptly fell into the water and sank. Someone had to dive in to keep him from drowning.”
Curry had absolutely no recollection of this event. “Was I there when this happened?”
“Definitely. You were going to go in after him, but someone else grabbed your shirt and told you to forget it. Then this French woman opened up a bottle of wine and that was it for me. I left.”
“We talked about Peru. About the Incas. Machu Picchu.”
“Now it’s coming back.” She laughed and brought her beautiful bare feet up against the glove compartment. “You’re Keith and I’m...”
“Faye. You’re Faye. Let’s see. I think you told me you came up from Chile on the Caleuche.” The ghost ship of Chilean folklore permeated the culture of a mystical is land called Chiloe, where the residents believed not only in ghost ships, but in mermaids. “You seemed surprised that I knew about the legend.”
“Not too many A
mericans do.”
“Right after nine/eleven I just wanted to get as far south of the States as possible, so I went through the canal and sailed down the western coast of Chile. Chiloé was my last stop. I spent nearly two months there. I even went out to the bridge one night where there had been sightings of the Caleuche, hoping for a glimpse of it”
“You don’t seem the type.”
“I’m not.” Ghosts and things that went bump in the night belonged to the world his younger brother had inhabited. But there was something about Chiloé’s magic that had gotten under his skin. “When were you there?”
“Last year.”
“So how did you really get to Panama?”
“American Airlines. I’m visiting a friend who’s sailing to the Galapagos. I’ve been staying on his boat at the Balboa.”
“And headed where?”
She shrugged and turned her head toward the open window. The wind blew through her magnificent hair again. “Nowhere. This is just time out.”
“From?”
“Life.
It was the sort of answer that hinted at some personal tragedy or story, a rather common occurrence down here. She removed a joint from her shirt pocket, lit it, offered him a hit, but he shook his head. She stabbed it out in the ashtray and slipped it back into her pocket
“I need to get back to the States, but all the flights are booked because of the holidays, so I figured the least I can do is my laundry.”
“Exactly where I’m headed,” he said, admiring the perfect shape of her legs, her feet, her toes. He had never met a woman with prettier toes.
“Ever eaten at the Caribe?” she asked.
He shook his head. He’d gone drinking at the Caribe and had made a dozen deals at the bar, but no, he’d never eaten there. “Nope, never.”
“My treat,” she said.
What a switch, he thought. Most of the people with whom he ate lunch or dinner or had drinks expected him to pay.
As they entered the traffic nightmare that led into downtown, Curry downshifted and prepared himself for a considerable wait. The wait usually sent his blood pressure soaring. But today he was content to sit back in the company of a beautiful woman, pop a CD into the player, and let the cool air from the AC vents blow in his face.
They both kept their windows shut against the endless clouds of black smoke that spewed from the exhaust pipes of the cars around them. Most of the cars on Panamanian streets were old and battered, had no clean-air contraptions on the engines, didn’t use unleaded gas. Horns blared constantly and no one bothered using blinkers. Cars scraped up against their neighbors or rammed into them from behind, but few drivers stopped. Insurance here was unknown, so as long as no one was hurt, why bother stopping? That only invited the police and trouble.
During the thirty minutes it took them to get into town, they talked about American music and books and movies, about countries they had visited and would like to visit, but neither of them got very personal. That was the boating way. Don’t get too close too quickly. Keep your heart shut up in the closet. After all, the person you slept with tonight could be headed for New Zealand tomorrow.
He parked behind the lavanderia that had been washing and ironing his clothes for twelve years and he and Faye went inside. The air here was hotter than it was outside, a steaming jungle of fabrics and plastic. A window AC unit clattered noisily, emitting a pathetic spray of cool air that the steam rapidly swallowed. A thin layer of condensation covered the counters, the windows, and the faces of the young women who greeted him as Don Keith, as though he were the gringo equivalent of Don Quixote.
Good to see you, Don Keith. Of course we can have your laundry done in an hour, Don Keith. And the young lady’s, too? As always, he passed a generous tip to the laundry manager and to the teenage girl who actually ironed his clothes.
Once they were back on the street, walking to the Hotel Caribe, Faye remarked, “Don Keith. That means you’re a big deal here.”
“Only because I give good tips and I’m a regular.”
“How long have you been here in Panama?”
“Off and on for twelve years.”
“Twelve years? That makes you a genuine expat.”
“Only for five or six months of the year.”
“You don’t have to work?”
What a loaded question, he thought. “I had a chartering business in Miami that I sold for a lot of money. Then I made some good investments during the dot-com boom.” That was true, as far as it went, but he didn’t add that his initial money came from a trust fund his old man had set up years ago. “What about you?”
“I invested five grand in Yahoo when it was in its infancy and sold it during the dot-com boom.”
Good looks, brains, and what else? he wondered. “So what’s next?”
She laughed. “Fun and adventure for now. In January I find out if I got a job I’ve applied for.”
“A job with?”
She glanced at him and he saw twin reflections of himself in her sunglasses. “You ask a lot of questions, Keith. But you don’t offer much information in return.”
He shrugged. “Habit, I guess. What do you want to know, exactly?”
“It was just an observation.”
They reached the Hotel Caribe and the doorman greeted them both as though they were celebrities. “Either this isn’t your first trip to Panama or you come to the Caribe frequently,” Curry said as they entered the hotel.
“Both. It’s my third trip here.”
The Caribe wasn’t the largest, plushest, or most expensive hotel in Panama, but for pure Latino atmosphere, it was the best. Native artwork, most of it by the Cuna Indian tribe, hung on the walls. There were tapestries from Mexico and Guatemala and wooden carvings from Ecuador, Peru, and Colombia. Venezuelan music played softly in the background. Native plants burst from huge day pots, and bougainvillea vines climbed the iron gratings that separated the lobby from the dining room and bar. Everything about the place invited intimacy. But as they sat at a softly lit corner table, Curry suddenly felt like a tongue-tied teenager on his first date.
The weed, he thought. Either he’d smoked too much of the stuff or it had something in it.
In fact, as a waiter came toward them, the entire room listed to the right, everything blurred, and he suddenly felt as though he couldn’t pull enough air into his lungs. Voices, music, all the sound in the room faded, boomed, echoed, and pulsed. Violent tremors seized him, then wrapped around him, picking up speed and intensity until he heard a soft pop—and found himself high in a corner, somewhere near the ceiling, staring down at the table where a man and a woman sat. A second man brought drinks and a basket to the table. A small, ancient woman with a shawl over her head shuffled toward the table, her spine bent like a straw, so she moved huddled over, as if with a permanent deformity. She spoke to them, then leaned forward, looked closely at the man at the table, and raised her arm, pointing directly at the ceiling.
Curry heard another pop and suddenly he was back at the table, inside his body, shocked to realize the man he’d seen was himself. The ancient woman held his chin in a tight, uncomfortable grip. “Now he is with us,” she said in Spanish, and slapped her thigh and emitted a laugh like a witch’s cackle. “Too much loco weed, my friend,” the old woman went on, easing her huddled body into a chair between Curry and Faye. “It does strange things to the mind, no?”
“Keith, this is Milagro, a very good friend of mine and something of a legend here in Panama.”
“She lies,” the old woman said now in heavily accented perfect English. “I am no legend. I am myth.” She laughed again, a noise like lightning crackling through dry trees.
“Legend, myth, whatever,” Faye said with a smile. “Among the locals, she’s known as Soul Seer.”
What a crock, Curry thought, the old woman’s face fading in and out of focus. In a moment when he saw her clearly, he realized that her skin was a rich, deep black, like bitter chocolate, and that des
pite the apparent age of her body, her face was practically unlined. The shawl slipped off her head and her dreadlocks tumbled out. She wore very dark sunglasses and carried a cane. She was blind. He suddenly felt so uncomfortable in her presence that he barely stifled a powerful urge to leap up and run. It wasn’t her blindness that bothered him, but the sensation that despite her blindness, she could see into the very center of his soul.
She pushed the glasses back onto the top of her head. Instead of dark pupils and irises, her eyes were a thick, milky white. “Horrifying, isn’t it?” she whispered. “In the days in Haiti when Papa Doc was in power, the Tonton Macoute were tyrants. They burned my eyes because I refused to tell them what they wanted to hear.” She leaned forward and touched her cool, thick-skinned hand to the back of Curry’s hand, and he felt a kind of electric current racing through him, energizing him. “Now,” she said, removing her hand, “we are connected, you and me.” Then she began to speak in very rapid French, her sightless eyes turned on Curry’s face.
Faye, leaning forward, hanging on the old woman’s words, translated. “We have before us a soul that in several recent incarnations struggled against domination by others. A primary purpose of this life is to gain independence from the very people who dominated him in the past. However, he has taken this purpose to extremes, shirking responsibility for his own actions. Innocent people already have died, and unless he does what is right, there will be more death. There are secrets here, deep secrets carried for many years that must be confronted if the soul is to move forward so that it can fulfill its enormous potential.
“Two women, we see two women, one badly injured, the other powerful and vengeful. No names, we aren’t permitted to see their names. Names are blocked from our sight. Death, vengeance, secrets. Quick. Quick. Choices must be made. A woman from the village of spirits will help unravel the final secrets.. . .”
Curry snapped out of the horror that had paralyzed him and shot to his feet so fast that his chair toppled and crashed to the floor. He ran for the door, the inside of his skull on fire and his legs moving of their own volition, carrying him toward fresh air, bright light, the noise of traffic and humanity, away from the relentless sound of the old woman’s voice.
Total Silence Page 10