Dead Aim

by Anne Woodard

  If Tina was here, or had been here, he couldn’t see any sign of it.

  Together, he and Maggie circled the house, checking windows, jiggling door handles. Nothing, and every door they tried was locked.

  When the wall of rock the house was built against stopped further exploration, he went back to the kitchen door and jiggled it again.

  Still locked.

  Frustrated now, cursing silently, Rick cupped his hands around his eyes and took another, more careful look around. Something about the kitchen had bothered him, but he couldn’t figure what.

  This second time around, he saw it. There were dishes in the drainer by the sink. He squinted, shifted for a better angle. Two glasses—he could see those clearly. A couple plates. A fry pan. Silverware upended in the holder.

  He stepped back, then glanced at Maggie, who was standing at the edge of the flagstone patio, studying the surrounding forest. Her slender body was poised in the relaxed alertness of someone in total control of herself, yet intensely aware of her surroundings and prepared to react instantly, if needed.

  Just as she had last night in that alley.

  “Hey!” he called. “The DEA teach you anything useful except how to make coffee and shoot people?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What more could you possibly need than that?”

  “How are you at picking locks?”

  That brought her around. Moving with the distracting, confident grace that was so natural to her, she crossed the patio to him.

  “Picking locks?” she said.

  Rick caught himself watching her, watching the slight sway of her hips with each step and the way her long legs moved. With an annoyed curse, he dragged his attention back to the matter at hand.

  “Yeah. There are two glasses in the dish drainer by the sink, not one. I want to see what other interesting things might be around.”

  “That’s called breaking and entering.”

  “That’s right. But that’s not what I asked.”

  She eyed him, then the gleaming brass doorknob. “I don’t suppose you have one of those pocket knives with a million different tools on them, do you?”

  Three and a half minutes later, she let out the breath she’d been holding, handed his knife back to him, and pushed the door open.

  “If we’re lucky,” she said, “no one will ever notice those little scratches on the lock.”

  She stepped through, moving quickly but silently. Rick followed her, every sense on the alert. A quick search confirmed the downstairs was as empty as it seemed.

  They moved more cautiously upstairs, working their way room to room, with the same results.

  “No one,” Maggie said, glaring at the empty bunk beds in the last bedroom.

  “Not now.”

  It was only when he saw the release of tension in her shoulders that Rick realized just how tense and stiff he’d been. Or how much he’d hoped the result would have been different.

  “Which doesn’t mean no one’s been here.” Her eyebrow arched. “You’re absolutely sure that truck came from here?”

  He didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “All right then,” she said. “We go back, room by room, and see what we can find. There may be something, some clue that might be useful.”

  They found that two beds—in two separate bedrooms of the six the house had to offer—had been slept in, then tidily made up. The vast Jacuzzi in the master bathroom had a uniform coating of dust along the top, which meant there hadn’t been any interesting games held in it any time lately. There were also not-quite-hardened blobs of blue-white toothpaste on one of the bathroom sinks, used towels in the laundry-room hamper and several cans of chili, tuna and green beans in one of the kitchen cabinets. The refrigerator was empty except for a bit of lettuce that had stuck to the rim of one of the crispers and a couple of cans of concentrated orange juice in the freezer.

  There was a book on Indian temple art half-hidden under a chair in the empty living room, as though someone had dropped it by the chair, then inadvertently kicked it aside when they’d gotten up. Tina’s name was written in a precise, elegant handwriting in black ink on the inside cover.

  Maggie stared at the book, desperately wishing she hadn’t found it. She didn’t want to see the expression on Rick’s face when she handed it to him.

  She found him in the study. He was standing by the desk, grimly studying some odd, dark, twisted thing in his hand. When she walked in, he set it down on the desk.

  “I found that under the desk, at the back. Looked like someone was aiming for the trash basket and didn’t realize they’d missed.”

  The thing was obviously broken off from a painted statue of some sort. The surface was glazed black enamel over what looked like a hollowed out plaster of Paris core. Judging from the smooth finish and fine detail visible on this remaining chunk, the original piece must have been quite striking.

  Whatever the statue had represented, it hadn’t been a human being.

  The figure’s head, one half of the trunk and everything below the waist were gone. What was left was two arms and the stump of a third that sprang from what would have been the figure’s rib cage. The two hands that survived held curiously wavy, red-tipped gold daggers. Around what remained of the neck was a necklace of grinning, gold-eyed human skulls painted black as the rest.

  Maggie grimaced. The figure was…unsettling.

  “What is it?”

  “A statue of Kali, the Hindu goddess of death.” He frowned, then prodded the piece with the tip of one finger, making it rock slightly. “Tina had a replica on her desk last year. It had eight arms, all twisting around it like snakes, and that same damned necklace of skulls. Made my skin crawl just looking at it. She thought it was gorgeous.”

  Maggie picked it up. The thing looked even less appealing up close. The golden, sightless eyes of the skulls glinted in the light.

  “It’d give me the creeps to have something like this around,” she said.

  He pointed to the hollow center. “Handy place to stash something you didn’t want customs to find.”

  “Yeah. Illegal drugs and gems, especially diamonds, often come into the country this way. The smugglers can’t get quite as much in as if they just shipped it in in packets, but it’s also a lot harder to find.

  “Wouldn’t that sort of thing show up on an X ray?”

  “It would,” Maggie admitted, setting the broken piece back on the desk. “But that’s assuming someone has the time and resources to look, which customs generally doesn’t. If you had a thousand of these things packed in heavy crates, with maybe a couple hundred in the middle that were stuffed with drugs, there’s not much chance anyone would spot the drugs unless they knew in advance to look for them.”

  “Who would bother to import that much junk?”

  “You’d be surprised. And this is pretty high-priced junk. Some of the stuff Jerelski’s business carries sell for hundreds, even thousands of dollars.”

  “To each his own, I guess.” His gaze slid to the book she still held. “What’s that?”

  When she set the book down beside the piece of broken statue, his eyes darkened. “Tina’s?”

  “Her name is written on the inside cover.”

  Silence. A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Doesn’t prove anything, one way or the other.”

  “No. Though Bursey’s people may be able to find something useful on the statue.”

  “Like where Tina is?”

  Growing fear lay beneath the anger in his voice. She could hear it.

  “No,” she admitted. “They won’t tell us where Tina is. That’s something we’re going to have to figure out for ourselves.”

  Chapter 8

  “T his is the best I could do on short notice, I’m afraid.”

  Tina Dornier looked around the living room with its worn, comfortable furniture, the pine-paneled walls, and the shuttered windows, but without really seeing any of it.

  “It’s
fine,” she said. “I’ll be fine here.”

  “You’re sure?” His voice was rough. With worry, she thought. Worry and something else, something she couldn’t decipher and that he wouldn’t talk about.

  “I’m sure,” she assured him. “Don’t worry about me.”

  The look in his eyes said more clearly than words that he worried about her, regardless. And that, as much as anything, frightened her all the more.

  “But I—”

  “Not now,” he said, sharply this time. “We’ll worry about all that later. Right now, I’ve got to go back. To call my office and pick up your things—If I can. I’ll get them tomorrow if I can’t.”

  “But—”

  “Not now, Tina,” he said. He traced the side of her cheek with the tip of one finger.

  The light touch made her shiver.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

  And then he was gone and the only sound was the soft whispering of the pines and the much louder whispering of her own fears.

  Bursey wasn’t any happier to see Rick and Maggie than he’d been last night. He tilted back in his chair, his frowning gaze fixed on them, not the book or the broken statue on the desk in front of him.

  “So, let me get this straight, Manion,” he said. “You want me to spend my department’s money on testing this ugly lump of plaster. A lump that you claim is a possibly crucial piece of evidence you admit was obtained by illegal means and is therefore inadmissible in any court of law in these fifty united states. But you still want me to test it. That right?”

  Maggie didn’t allow herself to so much as blink. “That’s right. Your people have the facilities here. My office doesn’t. And since this is a missing person’s case—”

  “A missing drug dealer,” Bursey snapped.

  “A missing person,” Maggie said firmly, before Rick could interrupt. “Which means it falls into your jurisdiction, not mine.”

  “If you hadn’t gotten in the way, we’d have had her already.”

  Maggie shot Rick a warning look before he could come across the desk at Bursey. He hesitated, clearly angry, then reluctantly sank back in his chair. She turned back to the police chief.

  “Look, Bursey. I know you don’t trust me, and we both know why. But even you can’t deny that my work has helped your department. I can think of at least seven convictions you wouldn’t have had without my help. And that’s not counting a few that are still pending.”

  He opened his mouth to object, but she didn’t give him a chance.

  “Garcia, Roberts, DeLuine,” she said, ticking the names off on her fingers. “Asdrubal, Jorgensen, Mar—”

  “All right, all right.” Bursey angrily waved his arms. “I’ll admit, there’ve been times you’ve been…helpful.”

  Maggie didn’t dare let her satisfaction show in her face, but it was there. She’d won. Bursey would help even though he didn’t want to.

  “So we’ll help you look for your missing person,” he continued. “And while we do, you want my people to dig into tax records to see who owns that little getaway you illegally entered to see if maybe we get lucky and find any interesting connections. That right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want our artist to work with that girl—”

  “Woman,” she said from between gritted teeth. She might have won, but Bursey wasn’t going to make it easy.

  “The woman from the bar who identified the guy in the first place. You want us to produce a sketch for you to use while you run around playing hero. Have I got that right, Manion? You want us to do your dirty work even though you don’t want to help us do our job. Right?”

  She just glared.

  Bursey glared back. “I suppose you know I asked your boss to take you off this case.”

  She wasn’t going to dignify that by admitting anything. Bursey knew perfectly well she did.

  Balked of an argument, Bursey swore, then turned his ire on Rick.

  “Do you really think you’re going to help your sister by breaking the law, Dr. Dornier? Didn’t that little incident in the alley last night teach you anything?”

  “Yes, I do, Chief,” Rick said calmly. “And, yes, it did.”

  Maggie was impressed. He might have been at a faculty meeting, for all the concern he showed.

  On the other hand, considering some of the tales she’d heard about faculty meetings, maybe he was simply inured to arguments and threats.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re getting into, Doctor?” Bursey insisted.

  “I’m getting one or two.”

  “Well?”

  Rick just smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile. It was, in fact, the sort of expression Maggie imagined a grizzly might wear when it was sizing up its next meal.

  Bursey swore, then stood so abruptly he set his desk chair bobbing. “Fine. But if either of you end up bleeding all over the street, don’t call us, all right? We’re too damned busy to run around cleaning up messes like that.”

  Maggie leisurely got to her feet. “We appreciate any help you can give us, Chief.”

  His only response was a growl.

  The wind had picked up by the time they emerged from the stationhouse. It carried an icy edge that stung and warned of the winter ahead.

  Rick paused on the curb outside to breathe deeply, grateful for the cold, fresh air. Maybe it would ease the dull throbbing of his headache.

  Where was Tina? And what in the hell had she gotten herself into?

  Maggie halted beside him to fasten her jacket. “That went well, don’t you think?”

  “Nothing like maintaining good working relations with your colleagues,” he agreed sarcastically.

  “Absolutely.”

  He took another breath. Hunting for grizzlies in the middle of a hundred square miles of wilderness was a whole lot easier than looking for one woman. At least in the wilderness, he knew what he was doing.

  Still, he had to start somewhere.

  And today, at least, he wasn’t completely on his own. He’d had his doubts last night, but now, after that little meeting with Bursey, he was glad Maggie was on his side.

  “I want to meet this Jerelski character,” he said.

  “It’s a start,” she agreed, eerily echoing his own doubts. “Remember, though—you don’t know anything about him, or drugs or the DEA. You’re just looking for your sister, and I’m just a friend who’s helping you, right?”

  “Right,” he said, and stepped off the curb. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll grab him by the throat and wring the information out of him.”

  Maggie shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and followed him toward the truck.

  “Works for me,” she said.

  Jerelski still wasn’t in his office. The professors in neighboring offices hadn’t seen him and didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t due back for classes or office hours until tomorrow. Check back then, they had said.

  Maggie had the feeling that a couple of them didn’t want him back, period. Of course, that could simply be the effect of academic jealousy, not something more sinister. Or they could just plain not like the man, no sinister reason needed.

  The department secretary wasn’t any help, either.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Dornier,” she said, smiling up at him in a way that was rather more friendly than strictly necessary. Maggie might not have existed for all the attention the woman paid her. “Dr. Jerelski has class tomorrow afternoon, with office hours afterward. I admit, I’d expected to see him yesterday, or today, at the very least. But he’s like most of your professors—comes and goes whenever he pleases.”

  She didn’t seem to approve of that.

  “Do you have a phone number where I could leave a message for him?” Rick asked. “A home address, perhaps?”

  The secretary shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t give you that information. The professor’s home phone number is unlisted, and anyway, the university won’t let us. Security, you know. They’re
getting very strict about it these days.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “I understand. It’s the same thing at my university, and believe me, I do appreciate it.” He leaned closer, smiling confidingly, and gave her a wink. “All those students that want to argue about their grades, you know.”

  The woman laughed, clearly charmed.

  Maggie suppressed a stab of annoyance.

  Rick’s smile vanished, replaced by a more somber expression. “The thing is,” he said, “I’m really concerned about my sister. I’m sure you’ll understand. Since she and Dr. Jerelski worked so closely together, I’d hoped…”

  It worked. Three minutes later he was pocketing a slip of paper with an address and phone number written on it. They didn’t need either—the DEA had easily dug up that information long ago—but they’d agreed earlier that it would look odd if he didn’t ask.

  Besides, there’d always been the chance they would learn something useful. They hadn’t so far, but they’d still had to try.

  “Thanks,” said Rick with another of those dangerous smiles. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Just don’t tell Dr. Jerelski I was the one who gave it to you, will you?” the secretary said a little nervously. Now the deed was done, guilt was beginning to war with the persuasive power of Rick’s smile.

  “Of course not,” Rick assured her. “Anyway, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind since it’s for Tina’s sake.”

  Relief washed across the woman’s face. “Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I’m sure Dr. Jerelski wouldn’t object for something like that.”

  Rick gave her one of his business cards with Maggie’s cell phone number written on the back in case Jerelski showed up unexpectedly. The woman tucked the card in a holder already stuffed to over-flowing with scraps of paper and battered envelopes, but she didn’t promise anything.

  They were almost out the door when she called them back.

  “Since it’s for Tina…” She hesitated, then took the plunge. “I just remembered… Dr. Jerelski has a cabin somewhere. A little getaway, you know what I mean?”