“Tan shirt, khaki slacks. Yellow hair. For godssakes, you’ve got to get him.”
“Where are you now?”
“Just get him, damn it.” She pressed the end key.
The three blocks to the hotel stretched ahead in a hazy blur of heat. She was still walking fast, glancing over her shoulder every few minutes, watching the people coming toward her, the pedestrians on the other side of the street, half expecting a brown sedan to pull alongside the curb. Then the hotel was in front of her. She crossed the street, hurried past the two uniformed doormen at the entrance, and pushed through the double glass doors before either of them could grab the handle. The air in the lobby hit her like an arctic blast that made her suck in her breath. For a second she thought she might faint. She made herself take a couple of deep breaths before she headed for the elevator.
“Ms. McLeod?”
She turned toward the registration desk. She could feel the hair bristling on the back of her neck. The woman in the black uniform blazer with dark, curly hair waved a white envelope across the desk. No one knew where she was staying, not Marie or Marjorie or Philip. Not even Bustamante. But she had let the desk clerk take an imprint of her credit card—“for additional expenses”—and she understood with a cold certainty she had made a mistake. The kind of mistake that could get her killed. The clerk had assured her the charges wouldn’t be put through until she checked out, and she intended to pay in cash when she checked out. But she had ordered room service last night and the night before—club sandwich, turkey sandwich. Catherine felt as if she were moving through water as she walked over and took the envelope.
She waited until she was in the elevator, the motor humming around her, before she tore open the flap and pulled out the folded piece of paper. Generic envelope, generic paper, the kind you could buy in the office supplies aisle of any grocery store. Her fingers felt stiff and clumsy as she unfolded the paper.
Scrolled across the fold in large black letters were the words: I look forward to seeing you soon. We will want to say good-bye. She had the sense that the floor was rising toward her as the elevator came to a stop and the doors slid open. They were starting to close when she managed to push herself off the brass railing on the back wall and stumble into the corridor.
22
Ten minutes later, Catherine was in a cab crawling down the center lane of a one-way street, lines of cars and trucks flashing past. “Colorado Boulevard,” she’d told the driver. She’d heard the tremor in her voice. She’d stuffed her clothes and makeup kit into the backpack, grabbed her laptop case, and run down the corridor to the elevator, the backpack in her arms, squashed against her chest, laptop case and bag banging against her back. She’d confirmed with the clerk that, yes, a mistake had been made in charging the credit card. Not hotel policy. So sorry, but if there was anything they might do to persuade her to stay— dinner in the restaurant this evening, perhaps?
Catherine had shoved the credit card across the counter. What difference if the card was processed again? He already knew where she was staying. Except that now, he would know she had checked out. She snatched the credit card away and pulled several bills out of the white envelope. The clerk’s eyebrows had swooped upward, but she hadn’t said anything. Just waited while the printer whirred out the receipt, which Catherine stuffed in her bag. Then she gathered up everything and waited inside the door while the doorman summoned a cab. It wasn’t until he had placed her backpack and laptop in the trunk and opened the rear door that she had darted across the sidewalk and into the backseat, her skin prickly with the sense that she was being watched, that he was out there somewhere—in the parking lot across the street, on the sidewalk, at one of the windows of the nearby buildings. Looking down, waiting.
“Colorado Boulevard’s a long street.” The cabdriver tossed a half glance over his shoulder, then jerked the steering wheel to avoid a pickup that cut ahead. “What address you want?” His jaw didn’t move. His voice bounced off the back of his teeth.
Catherine watched the passing traffic and the people on the sidewalks. Is that what she had become? A watcher? Always watching and waiting for him? She leaned forward. “Make sure we’re not being followed,” she said.
And that seemed to flip some switch inside him. He straightened his shoulders and looked back at her. “What is this, lady, the movies? I got a wife and four kids. I don’t need any trouble. You better get out.” He was already changing lanes, pulling toward the curb.
“You don’t understand,” Catherine said. She felt clammy at the thought of being ejected onto the sidewalk again, exposed like a naked woman in the afternoon heat. “It won’t be any trouble for you. All you have to do is take the side roads to Colorado Boulevard. I’ll double your fare.”
He seemed to consider this a moment. The cab slowed down, then lurched forward and turned onto another one-way street. Traffic on Speer Boulevard shimmered in the hazy heat ahead. They crossed the boulevard and began weaving through residential neighborhoods with lines of cars parked at the curbs and little patches of dried lawns crawling out from brick bungalows. Every couple of blocks, Catherine made herself look out the rear window, half expecting to see a brown sedan or some other vehicle with a yellow-haired driver. She felt her jaw clench. He would have a different car now, she realized. He would know that she had spotted the brown sedan. He could be in any vehicle behind them.
The cabdriver was looking, too. She could see him glancing in the rearview mirror and checking the side mirrors.
“Okay, where to now?” he said. They turned into the whir of traffic moving south on Colorado Boulevard. Cars and trucks switching lanes, jockeying for space. There was the thrum of engines, the whine of tires on asphalt. The air inside the cab smelled of exhaust. Sirens were wailing in the distance. A horn blasted behind them, a white sedan sped past and pulled in ahead. The driver jammed on the brakes, rocking her forward against the seatbelt.
“Pull in at the first grocery store, Kmart, or Target you see,” she told him. What she needed was time to focus on what to do next, where to go, without the fear of the yellow-haired man jamming all of her thoughts. There was a boutique hotel not far from where they were now, but wouldn’t he think of that first? He would expect her to seek out a small, quiet hotel. Close to downtown where she was researching the story—the capitol, the library. My God, he could have already left a message there. That was what she had to focus on—what he was thinking. She had to tap into his thoughts and make decisions he didn’t expect, if she was going to stay alive.
She realized they’d made a sharp right turn into a strip mall and were slowing toward the supermarket ahead. They swung into a loading lane directly across from the entrance with an automatic door that swooshed open each time a customer approached. “Wait here.” She opened the door and got out.
“Wait?” The trunk popped and started to lift. The cabbie was out his door and heading to the rear of the cab, shoulders hunched around his head. “I got enough crime on TV, lady. You can get yourself another cab.”
“Please,” she said. “I’ll only be a few minutes. I want you to take me to the Tech Center.” Because she realized now that was where she should go, away from the center of town. She gave him the name of one of the major hotels that served the high-tech and financial businesses in the southern part of the city. “There’s a big tip on top of the double fare, all right?”
He brought a fist down hard on the trunk and slammed it shut. Then he walked back to the driver’s door, taking her in across the roof as he went. It gave her an uncomfortable, edgy feeling, and in that moment, a new plan formed in her head. As far as he would know, he had taken her to the major hotel.
She swung around and went through the automatic door. It took a moment to get her bearings—bakery over there, deli on the right—but within ten minutes she was back in the cab, clutching a plastic bag of hair dye with an auburn-haired model on the front and a turkey sandwich probably made in the deli sometime this morning, the two halves stacked toge
ther and wrapped in plastic.
“One more stop, over there,” she said. The cab was moving along the front of the supermarket. She leaned forward and pointed across the mall toward the shop with Liquor spelled in red letters on the plate glass window.
“Jesus, lady,” he said, but he pulled out of the left turn he was making and shot forward across the mall, weaving past a family sauntering toward an SUV, licking at ice cream cones. The tires gave a little squeal as he pulled up in front of the shop. Catherine went inside and selected an expensive bottle of Merlot. Dinner would be a turkey sandwich and Merlot. Perfect, she thought, wondering who she was now, this woman who ate deli sandwiches and drank wine alone.
Traffic seemed heavier on Colorado Boulevard, and heavier yet on I-25, rush hour in full swing, lanes filled with cars pouring out of downtown and heading to the southern suburbs. She still found herself looking around, checking the other drivers and passengers. Yellow hair wasn’t there, and she told herself to relax. She’d lost him for the moment, and that meant she might be able to sink into her past life for a little while. Odd, she thought, that she considered it past, as if what had once been normal, everyday routine, would never come again.
She fished her cell out of the bag and checked the messages. Marie’s voice: “I’m so worried about you, dear. Call me right away.” Violet at the newspaper: “I think I have something for you. I’m e-mailing you.” Lawrence: “How’re things going, sweetheart? Been thinking about you. Let me know you’re okay.” Philip: “You better call me.”
She pressed the key for Philip’s number. It was a moment before the connection clicked and the ringing started, muffled and far away sounding. Finally, Philip’s recorded voice: “I’m not here. Leave a message.”
“How’s Maury doing?” she said. God, she hadn’t called since this morning. Anything could have happened since then.
They had taken an exit and joined the stream of traffic on the elevated road that crossed the highway. Traffic roared like a cauldron below. A left turn and they were curving through what might have been a residential neighborhood, except that the manicured lawns, flower beds, and sidewalks wound around glass and concrete skyscrapers. They made another turn and pulled into the shade of the hotel portico. The driver was out of the cab, it seemed to Catherine, while it was still rolling to a stop. He lifted her backpack and laptop out of the trunk before she’d counted out the bills to cover the double fare and the tip and gotten out of the backseat. She held out the money, which he snapped from her hand before hurling himself around the cab and getting behind the steering wheel. The cab squealed out of the portico.
Catherine stepped through the revolving door and emerged into a hollowed-out lobby, marble and glass with crystal chandeliers dangling from the ceiling high overhead. The registration desk was across the lobby: two clerks bent over computer screens, a group of men in dark suits leaning on the counter. There was the soft padding of footsteps as another group of businessmen moved through the lobby, subdued tones of conversation floating past. She’d attended several conferences here in the last couple of years, and for a brief moment, a sense of normality came over her, as if she had just arrived for another conference, an ordinary assignment for the Journal, here to cover the keynote address of some celebrity.
She had to swallow hard against the lump rising in her throat. This was not an ordinary day. Nothing would ever again be ordinary. She jammed the wine and hair dye into the backpack, slung the backpack and laptop case over her shoulders and, gripping her bag in one hand, walked over to the marble column on the far side of the plate glass window that bordered the revolving door. From there, she had a clear view of the portico and the drive into the hotel. There were no other vehicles, no sign of anyone. A line of trees had been planted along the street. She waited a moment, looking past the trees for the flash of an oncoming vehicle. Still nothing.
The conference rooms were down the wide corridor on the right, she remembered, and that was where she headed. Moving casually, no need to hurry. She was simply another guest going to her room, except that the elevator to the rooms was down the corridor on the left. Still she might be heading to a conference room. She could see that none of the business people she passed gave her a second thought. A quick once-over from most of the men, but she was used to that, and that’s all it was—a glance—because they were deep in conversations about whatever lecture or meeting they had just attended.
She passed two conference rooms, doors flung open, white-clothed tables in the corridor covered with cans of soda, silver coffee servers, and trays of cookies. Inside the rooms, groups of people were standing about. Others wandered past the doors into the corridor. Oh, she knew how it went. The breaks before the next speakers.
She kept going until she reached the end of the corridor, and here, just as she remembered, were double glass doors that exited into the parking lot in back. She hurried through the doors and walked across the lot and through the trees out onto a street that ran parallel to the street in front of the hotel. It took longer than she’d expected to walk to the small bed-and-breakfast that stood on the corner of a residential street at the edge of the Tech Center, and when she arrived, she was damp with perspiration. Her throat was dry, and the backpack and laptop felt like sacks of bricks.
The bed-and-breakfast might have been a small shop at one time, she thought. It had that look about it: flat-faced brick front, the wide windows on either side of the door. She’d never stayed here, but the Journal had run a feature on the place a few months ago. She remembered the headline: “Executives Step Off Fast Track.” And the story about a married couple who ditched the corporate life and bought a bed-and-breakfast for executives tired of impersonal hotels, looking for a taste of home when they traveled.
And when he found the cabdriver—and he would find him somehow, she was certain. He knew how to do things. He would think she had gone to the hotel. He wouldn’t know about the bed-and-breakfast.
“Guest check-in 3:00 p.m.” said the engraved letters on the bronze plaque on the door. Catherine tried the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. She pressed a gray button next to the door. A jingling noise, like wind chimes, came from inside, then the clack of footsteps on hard floors, and finally, the door opened. A woman about Catherine’s age, tall and fit looking, with brown hair swept behind her ears and intense brown eyes stood in the opening.
“Yes?” she said, a note of surprise sounding in her voice.
“I was hoping you’d have an available room,” Catherine said.
The brown eyes traveled over her: backpack, casual slacks, and blouse and everything about her casual, from the short, dyed sandy hair to the sandals. Hardly a business woman.
Catherine hurried on, trying to block the objections moving through the woman’s expression: “An unexpected trip to Denver.” She shrugged, as if making unexpected trips were part of her routine. “I’m a writer, and the opportunity for an interview came up that I hadn’t expected. A friend . . .” She hesitated. Who was the reporter on the bed-and-breakfast story? “Carey Lewis,” she said, taking a chance, “recommended your place.”
The brown eyes softened. “Oh, yes,” the woman said, hints of recollection and pride moving through her expression. “Great article. Increased our business thirty percent.” She took a step backward, still holding on to the edge of the door. “We’re booked for tonight,” she said, “but one of our regular clients had to cancel. I can let you have his room.” Another step backward, and this time she pulled the door open and waved Catherine inside.
The entry was small and homey—round table and credenza with vases of flowers, silver candlesticks, and tall, tapered candles. Oil paintings of mountain landscapes displayed against the cream-colored wallpaper. The woman leaned over a polished desk across from the door and thumbed through the pages of a small guest book. Next to the book was a silver dish of mints. “One night?” she said.
“I may want to stay longer.”
The woman flipped to another
page. “I think I can arrange that.” She glanced up. “Name?”
Catherine tried not to flinch. Had she flinched? Her name was who she was, and who was she? She wasn’t sure anymore, so much of her had fallen away, like water evaporating from her skin when she came out of a pool. “Mary Fitzpatrick,” she said, forcing a steadiness into her voice, as if this was who she would be now, someone with a name out of history.
The woman was scribbling the name. “From San Francisco,” Catherine added. Then she gave what she hoped was the correct address of a college friend who lived in San Francisco.
The woman set the pen into a crystal holder, closed the guest book, and motioned Catherine toward the carpeted stairway on the right. “I hope you’ll be comfortable here,” she said. “Our clientele appreciate the quiet. They’re always able to work here.”
Catherine followed the woman up the stairs and down a narrow corridor to a room that was an expanded version of the entry—polished wood chests and tables with vases of flowers, upholstered chair and ottoman, four-poster bed with white comforter and pillows, and chair and desk beneath the window. Silky white curtains filtered the late afternoon sun and trailed along the back of the desk. Through the curtains, the mountains looked like an impressionistic painting, a blue haze bathed in golden sunlight. The outside seemed remote and unimportant. She could relax here, she thought. Relax and think and work. Reclaim some part of herself.
Erik sat behind the wheel of the black Pontiac he had rented this morning. He had parked in the garage at Civic Center, sure he would find her in the library. She wasn’t there, but then he’d seen her at Colfax and Broadway. A stroke of luck, and yet—not really. He had known she would be in the vicinity of Civic Center. The sources for her stories were in the neighborhood.
But she had eluded him. Foolish and counterproductive, he thought, to waste resources tracking the guerilla fighter into the jungle. She would only draw you in farther and farther, until you were on her turf, in her line of sight, and she would kill you. Never allow the enemy to take control. He could hear the voice of Colonel Blum booming in his head.
Blood Memory Page 21