Dark Sky
Page 14
“No wonder you’re so skinny.” He winked at her in a reassuring way. “Sure you’re okay?”
She nodded.
“See you around, then.”
After he left, Wendy realized her teeth were chattering. She touched her lips. Cold. It wasn’t just the October weather, she decided. It was nerves. Psychological trauma. Even when she was trying not to think about yesterday, all of a sudden she’d remember Bobby Tatro whispering awful things to her through Juliet’s bedroom door.
She stared at her apple and tightened her jaw muscles to keep her teeth from chattering.
His words were like a physical wound. Hadn’t her father told her that, as a way to help her understand what she might go through in the next few days, even weeks?
An amputation, she thought, not of an arm or a leg—of her innocence. Her faith in people. Her belief in her ability to navigate a big city—to navigate life.
She plopped under the apple tree, tucking her feet against Spaceshot’s chunky frame, wishing she’d brought her journal with her. Her mother had told her that writing poetry when bad things happened—when she was just feeling bad—was therapeutic.
Maybe later, after she’d finished picking apples and had made her applesauce and apple crisp, she’d forget about her college essays for a while and write a poem.
“The Amputation of Innocence.”
She said the title out loud and nodded, liking it. It would be a private poem. She didn’t need to show it to anyone.
Feeling better, not so alone and out of control and crazy, Wendy carried her basket to another tree and reached for a misshapen but otherwise perfectly good apple.
She had four lines of her poem set in her head when she saw her father walking up the lane. Spaceshot actually got up and stretched, then wobbled toward him.
Wendy could tell something had happened. Something new.
He put out his hand, and Spaceshot pushed his head under it, wanting to be petted. But her dad’s eyes were on her. “I just talked to your aunt in New York,” he said. “There’s been a development. Something you should know.”
“I’m picking apples.”
“Wendy—”
“I don’t want to know anything.”
“All right,” he said. “It can wait. Need some help?”
“Not really.” But she saw the hurt and worry in his eyes, felt tears brim in her own eyes, and changed her mind. “Actually, yes. I’d like it if you could help. I was—remember when you used to put me on your shoulders so I could reach the apples?”
“You remember that?”
She nodded, relieved at the spark in his eyes. “It was such fun.”
They filled the half-bushel basket to overflowing, and Wendy didn’t protest when her father picked it up to carry it down to the house. She was tired, her eyelids heavy—she hadn’t slept well.
As they walked slowly back to the house, the wind picking up, rustling in the tall grass and the bright leaves, he told her that Juan, the doorman, wasn’t who he said he was. That it was unlikely he’d been killed because he was trying to protect Wendy.
“Then who was he?” she asked.
“We don’t know.”
“Why was he killed?”
Her father shook his head. “We don’t know that, either.”
“Are you working on the investigation?”
“No. I’m here for you, Wendy. That’s it. You’re my only concern.”
“Aunt Juliet—”
“I’m not worried about her.”
But he was—Wendy could see it in his eyes.
She thought up another line to her poem. When they reached the house, she left him in the kitchen with the apples and ran up to her room, wanting to start her poem while it was still fresh in her mind.
She grabbed a pencil and paper and sat in her window seat, but no words came. She stared at the hills, the brightly colored leaves, unaware she was crying until a fat, hot tear dripped onto her hand.
Twelve
Ethan pushed open the door to the car he’d rented at Lubbock airport and sat there in the driveway of his childhood home, breathing in the warm evening west Texas air. New York might have been on another planet. Juliet Longstreet might have been an alien sent to tempt him.
The front room of the sawn-wood-and-stone house where he’d grown up was lit. His older brother, Luke, had a place on the property, where he lived with his wife and two boys, five and seven. Ethan hadn’t seen them since Char’s funeral.
He wondered what his life would be like now if he’d never left home for West Point.
The ranch was five thousand acres of mixed terrain—mesquite flats, open prairie, rolling hills, canyons. Some of it was planted with wheat, some fenced off for cattle and horses. His brother was into native grasses. A springfed creek ran through the east end of the property, but fresh drinking water was scarce and a constant issue.
Off to the west, the silhouette of a solitary windmill stood out against a fiery-yellow setting sun and orange sky.
Jethro, the family’s ancient coonhound, slowly picked himself up off a cool spot on the rock driveway and wagged his tail. Ethan got out of the car. “Hey, old boy.” He scratched the dog’s bony head, felt Jethro’s recognition. “Yeah. It’s me. I’m home.”
The dog went to the car and peered into the open door.
Ethan felt a pang of physical pain. “Sorry, fella. Char’s not here.”
The hound looked around at him.
“You’re right. It’s my fault.”
There was no one home. His folks were in Denver on ranch business. The lights were on an automatic timer, which amused Ethan because the ranch was isolated, the closest neighbors miles away. The closest neighbors being the Carhills.
He walked through the country kitchen into the living room with its huge stone fireplace and tall windows that overlooked cottonwoods and cedar, the sky darkening, no city lights or skyscrapers to mask the coming of night.
Amid family photographs atop the old player piano, he spotted Char’s smile on their wedding day. He stood next to her in his dress uniform. It might have been a million years ago, but it was just five.
Ethan remembered how confident he’d been, so damn sure he could handle whatever came next in his life—that he could control it.
Jethro, who’d followed him inside, rubbed against his legs. Ethan hadn’t called his brother, but he expected Luke would be checking on the house and the dog later.
A small framed picture of his parents on their thirtieth anniversary caught his attention. The Carhills had thrown a surprise party for them. Faye and Johnson were in the picture, smiling, good-looking, friends of the Brookers for life. Ham, still in high school at the time, hadn’t attended the party. Ethan didn’t even know if the Carhills had invited their only child.
He stopped fooling himself. He hadn’t come home to make peace with his ghosts.
He’d drive out to the Carhills in the morning.
He was here for answers.
Juliet threaded her way through the content crowd of loud, overweight, drunk men and sat at the same grime-encrusted wooden table where she’d last met George O’Hara. The Bronx bar still smelled of stale cigars and urine.
O’Hara joined her, and she could feel the floor shift under her as he lowered his bulk onto the chair across from her. Tony Cipriani had been to a club to see his comedy act and said he was very funny. “You look tired, Deputy.”
“It’s been a long couple days.”
“I heard about your niece.”
It’d been in the papers and on the news, at least part of the story. Ex-con who threatened a marshal was under arrest for murdering her doorman, breaking into her apartment and attacking her niece. Nothing about Colombia or the clandestine photograph, his artwork. No hint of the involvement of a certain Special Forces officer.
“Wendy will be okay,” Juliet said. “What do you know about my doorman?”
George lifted the collar of his expensive shirt, airing hi
mself. “It’s hot in here. How can you drink coffee?”
“It was a bad choice. The coffee’s lousy. Want to order something cold? Look at you, you’re drenched in sweat.” She studied him a moment. “You’re not scared, are you?”
“Hell, no.”
“Because if you are—we can protect you.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going that route. If I need protection, I’ll hire my own.” He waved a waiter over and ordered a pitcher of iced tea, unsweetened, then looked at Juliet and shrugged. “I’ve got to start somewhere to slim down.”
“Juan the doorman,” Juliet said. “Anything you can tell me?”
“I didn’t know him, but I hear he wasn’t from New York.”
“Where was he from?”
George lifted his massive shoulders and let them fall. “I don’t have anything definitive. Maybe Miami, maybe Texas.”
“There’s a big difference between Miami and Texas.”
“Picky, picky. He was American, or so I hear. He and Bobby Tatro got hooked up after Tatro was released from prison. Looks like that was a mistake.” George paused for the waiter to deliver his pitcher of tea, pour a glass and withdraw. “Your doorman wasn’t the worst of the worst.”
“You say that about everybody.”
“I like most people. That’s why I’m funny.” But he didn’t smile. “I didn’t know about any doorman when we met last time. Not until yesterday.”
“I understand, George. Just give me whatever you have.”
“Your doorman was a vigilante-justice type, too. At least, that’s what I’m hearing.”
“When we met last time, you said Tatro had hooked up with that type. Believe me, if he did, it wasn’t out of any sense of conviction. Not from what I saw yesterday. He had his own agenda.”
“You,” George said.
Juliet didn’t respond.
“He doesn’t like you. Holds a grudge. You knew that, right?”
Juliet nodded. “Yes, I knew.”
George’s eyes flickered with regret. “My people tell me he relished thinking he could pounce on you anytime he picked. He’d watch you come and go.”
“For how long?” Juliet asked, keeping her voice steady.
“He started right after he got out of prison. Kept it up for a week or so, or so I’ve heard. Then lightning struck, so to speak.”
The bartender, about half George’s size, brought an insulated coffee urn and refilled Juliet’s mug. The coffee smelled decent, fresh. After the bartender trudged off, George held his iced tea glass up to the light, grimaced, then took a long drink. Juliet smiled at him. “You’re a big guy, George. How do you manage all the cleaning?”
“I have a good crew now. I just manage them.”
“No kidding.”
He gave a self-satisfied shrug. “As I’ve told you, I make more money running a private cleaning service than you do as a federal agent, Deputy Longstreet.”
Juliet settled back in her chair, not as put off by the nasty odors and atmosphere of the place as she had been. George was easy to talk to, a man with a genuine affection for people. He never discussed what had turned him around, and she never asked.
“Tell me about the lightning striking,” she said.
“Bobby Tatro ran into a turncoat, somebody the vigilantes were after. That’s how he got mixed up with them.”
“What do you mean, a turncoat?”
“A traitor.”
“As in—”
“Treason. This guy turned on his country. Even creeps like Tatro don’t like traitors.”
Juliet had no idea what to make of George’s story. He had an active imagination, and he wasn’t always right. She tried the coffee. This pot was hot, strong and reasonably fresh. “George, what are you talking about? Some traitor walks up to my building while Tatro’s stalking me—” She shook her head in disbelief. “Come on.”
“I’m just repeating what I’ve heard. You’ve got it about right. This traitor showed up at your building one day while Tatro was getting off on spying on you without your knowledge.”
“Was Juan the doorman then?”
“Afterward.” Her incredulity must have showed in her face, because George frowned at her. “I don’t make up these things. I just tell you what I hear.”
She drank more of her coffee, wondering if this time the caffeine would give her the jitters, since everything else in her life seemed to be changing. “Go on, then. How did Tatro find out this guy was a traitor? Someone must have told him. Who?”
“No idea.”
“Not our mysterious doorman?”
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know. Tatro disappeared a day or two after he spotted the traitor.”
“All right. The traitor. What do you have on him? A name, any kind of description—”
“It’s third-hand at best. I hear he’s white and skinny. Wears an expensive black cowboy hat. But supposedly he still looked more like a nuclear scientist than a Texas Ranger.” George smiled. “I don’t mean the ball team. The cops. Chuck Norris had a TV show playing one.”
“Did this description filter down from Tatro?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe the doorman.”
“Any talk on what Tatro did with this supposed traitor after he spotted him?”
“Nothing solid on that, Deputy. Sorry.”
Juliet took George through his story a couple of more times—everything he’d heard, whether it was rumor or umpteenth-hand or something he’d dismissed. He added only minor details. When they called it quits, she tried to pay for his drinks, but he insisted on picking up the tab for both the iced tea and her coffee.
“Come see me being funny sometime,” he said.
She promised she would.
When she arrived back at her apartment, Mike Rivera fell in behind her and followed her into the lobby. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there. I was about to give up on you.”
“It’s not that cold.”
“Maybe not to you Vermonters.” He walked back to the elevator with her, rubbing his hands together as if it were the dead of winter instead of early autumn. “At least there aren’t any protesters picketing to get you out of the building.”
“The ones who want me out don’t need to picket. They’ve got lawyers. You coming upstairs?”
“For a minute.”
Rivera got into and out of the elevator first, as if he wasn’t sure what he’d find and thought he might have to shoot someone. “How is your place?”
“It smells like bleach. I guess it’s an improvement over dead fish and mud. And Tatro’s sweat.”
“You can always sleep on my couch if your neighbors make your life miserable and you need time to find a new place. My daughters are in and out at all hours. That’s the only drawback, but you get used to it.”
“Thanks for the invitation.”
Juliet unlocked her door, cool air and the faint odor of bleach wafted out into the hall from her apartment.
Rivera acted as if he didn’t notice. “No Brooker?”
“He left this morning.”
“You two—”
“There is no we two.”
Juliet could see the chief was skeptical, and he stood in her entry, awkward, until she walked past him and he could laser in on her with a look that reminded her he’d worked his way up the ranks to chief deputy and was known for his intolerance of BS.
“Nate Winter likes you,” Rivera said. “He wouldn’t want to see you burn out.”
Winter was a good ally to have. “I’m not burning out.” She gave him a dry look. “My work is my life.”
“You and that mouth, Longstreet.”
“Made you smile.”
“No, you didn’t. It was a grimace because of the smell in here. You didn’t mix ammonia with the bleach, did you?”
“No.” She was suddenly so tired, she wanted to sink onto her bed and sleep for days. At least the coffee hadn’t given her the jitters—one constant in her life.
“The flight to Bogotá?”
“That’s when we pick him up again.”
“I just got back from meeting with a source.”
When she didn’t go on, Rivera grunted at her. “And?”
As unemotionally as she could, she relayed what George O’Hara had told her about Tatro staking out her apartment and coming upon a skinny traitor in a black cowboy hat.
“Guy’s not pulling your leg?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You know, if it’d been a white cowboy hat—”
She almost cracked a smile. “I thought you’d lost your sense of humor.”
“I never had much of one.” But he narrowed his eyes on her. “You want me to put a security detail on you?”
“No. Come on, Chief. That’d cook my goose for sure. It’s bad enough I end up with a road-rash scar in the line of duty. I’ll never live it down, even if I didn’t save myself from Janssen’s goons. A security detail—” She shook her head, emphasizing her dismissal of his offer. “No way. I can watch my own back.”
He shrugged. “Just thought I’d offer.”
Some of Rivera’s concern she took as genuine; he liked her and didn’t want to see her hurt. The rest was professional. He didn’t want an out-of-control deputy on his hands. That she’d slept with Ethan Brooker and he obviously knew it didn’t boost her claim to exercise good judgment.
“Take a couple of days, Juliet,” he told her. “Transplant orchids, take a walk in the park. Get away from this thing. Come back fresh. There’s nothing you can do here.”
“I was thinking about heading to Vermont in the morning.”
He narrowed his eyes on her. “Why?”
“Chief, what? You don’t trust me? I thought you wanted me to get away.”
“You want to talk to your niece about your doorman.”
“I do, but that’s not why you’re thinking I’m heading to Vermont.”
“We still don’t have a firm ID—”
Rivera didn’t seem to hear her. “It’s the FBI’s investigation right now. You’re personally involved. I’d advise you not to step on Collins’s toes.”