“Would that be connected with the pin the Fielders’ neighbor had on his shirt pocket?”
“I couldn’t see him. Describe it.”
“A bleeding lamb superimposed over a cross.” Eli made a face. “Of course, the lamb is white.”
“Maddy told me about a girl who lived out by her, just thirteen, who was pulled out of her house and whipped by men who claimed she was a witch. They belonged to that Society of the Lamb.”
Eli looked really grim. “This kind of ignorance is what we have to fight all the time,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. Our founder was devout, most of us are devout, and we would never …”
I knew why he’d trailed off. Yes, you would. You do it all the time, I thought. He’d been about to say, We’d never use magic for evil. But what had I seen during our trip to Mexico? Wizards using magic for evil. Because I defined evil as “trying to kill me and Eli,” and there had been plenty of that. They’d almost succeeded.
“What do you think Iron Hand Security has to do with this?” I said. “I guess you know what’s in the crate, and maybe your grigori organization was who sent it here. How did Iron Hand get involved?”
“While you were out on your own yesterday I sent a telegram, but of course I had to put it in the most general terms.”
“Heard back yet?”
“No. I told the telegraph office I’d call back in today.”
That sounded very familiar.
It wasn’t the time of day for the tree to be providing shade, and I was tired of tilting my head to keep the glare out of my eyes. I tried to think of something I could do to move us forward. “Rogelio,” I said. “Let’s go get him. You said we’d have to interrogate someone, and now is a good time. Where could we take him?”
“We can put him in the car and drive out of town,” Eli said. “It’s hard to find a place around here that can’t be seen for miles around.”
“And this is a community of farmers, who are liable to be out and about all day. I guess we could find a patch of woods.” I thought of the tall trees cutting off our view, and I didn’t like the idea at all.
“I’ll go scout out a place,” Eli said. “You try to find out where he’s staying.”
“Okay.” I got up, glad to have something to do.
“Be careful.” Eli put his hand on my shoulder. “He may be more dangerous than he looks.”
“The day I can’t take down Rogelio is the day pigs fly,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I was sorry I’d said that two hours later. I’d found Rogelio sitting in another restaurant, having a long drink with lots of ice. He was alone. I’d waited outside, hard put to look natural while I remained out of his sight. He’d come out finally. By that time, I hated him because he had been under a fan having a cool drink while I was sweating.
I set out following him. In a little town like Sally, that wasn’t easy to do. I was real glad when I spotted Eli cruising around in his battered car. Our eyes met, and I jerked my head at Rogelio, who was a block ahead of me. Eli was able to do a U-turn and pull up to the curb beside my former crewmate, who looked over when Eli leaned over to the passenger side and rolled the window down.
“Rogelio,” Eli called. I sped up to box Rogelio in from the rear by then, and he still hadn’t noticed me. Rogelio went over to the window and bent down. I closed on him from behind and stuck a knife to his ribs.
“Get in the car,” I said.
“No.” Rogelio began to push back against me, and I jabbed him.
“You bitch!” he said, and started to wheel around to hit me, but Eli got him with a spell first, contained in some powder he’d pinched from a pocket of his grigori vest. Rogelio went blank and silent.
“I love that,” I said. I opened the passenger door and told Rogelio to get in. He did, without a word. I got in the back seat.
“Smooth as silk,” I said, smiling. I kept the knife in my hand. “How long will the spell last?”
“It’s unpredictable,” Eli warned me. “So don’t relax.”
“As if I would.” I was sitting forward on the seat, my knife almost at Rogelio’s neck. It would only take a second to settle him.
We’d abducted Rogelio just before noon, and the streets were empty. People were home eating lunch, or inside a store shopping. Anything to be out of the sun. Of the few people about, no one had seemed to notice a thing. If they had, they were confused enough about what they’d seen to keep quiet.
We drove north out of Sally and into the countryside, which was gently rolling and cleared for agriculture for the most part. Cows and chickens, the occasional crop of cotton or … something else. I’m not real versed in farming.
Rogelio seemed to be more aware after ten minutes, and soon after that he was definitely stirring and muttering.
“Hold still!” I said, pricking his neck. “Don’t talk till we’re ready for you to talk.” Our unwilling passenger quieted down for a minute or two, but then he was twitching again, and saying, “No, no, no.” Which was not useful.
“We about there?” I was wondering how long it would be before I had to fight Rogelio, which would not be hard since I was behind him and armed. But we hadn’t had a chance to search him. That made me anxious.
“Yes, here we are.” Eli turned right onto a rutted driveway, very short, which ended in a ramshackle place that had once been—it was hard to say. Maybe a storage shed? Maybe a real small home? Whatever it had been, now it was leaning to the side like it had had too much to drink. There were big trees around it, and the grasses and weeds had had their way with the yard. Pretty much ideal as far as concealment for the car, and there wasn’t another building anywhere in sight.
Rogelio put up a fight when I told him to get out of the car, but Eli was able to give me a hand. “I don’t want to hurt him too bad before you ask him questions,” I said by way of explanation. It felt good to be back at work I understood, but very strange to be doing it wearing a dress. I was all too aware I was getting seeds and leaves and bits of stuff all over the skirt while I was maneuvering Rogelio to the back of the building.
To my relief, Eli had bought some rope. We secured our prisoner and sat him down at the base of a little tree. The high weeds closed in around him, and Rogelio looked like a small man.
I found a stump to sit on while Eli did his “questioning.” I knew it was part of this particular job, but I had no stomach for it.
Rogelio turned out to be a tougher nut to crack than I’d figured. I made myself stand witness. If Eli had seen me shoot many, many people, I could watch him practice pain magic on Rogelio. I tried to figure out what was different about the experience. Magic seemed more personal than a bullet, I guess.
Rogelio groaned and moaned and screamed. In the end he wept and talked. As I’d predicted, it was a threat to Rogelio’s handsome face that broke him.
Eli told him he was going to make all Rogelio’s teeth fall out, and his hair, too. “And every hair will hurt as it detaches from your scalp,” my “husband” promised. “Every tooth will ache and bleed.”
Since Rogelio was already aching and bleeding from a few points on his body, he could appreciate what was in store.
The next time Eli said “Who hired you?” Rogelio began talking.
“The lamb people,” he said. “I don’t know how they got my name, but after Jake took the job of guarding the crate, I got a visitor at my house.”
I didn’t know where Rogelio’s house was, but I assumed it was easier to get to than Segundo Mexia.
“What did your visitor tell you to do?” Eli sat back on his haunches, sweat trickling down his face and plastering a stray strand of hair to his cheek. It was hot, even under the trees, and the bugs and birds were making a ruckus. The country is not quiet, especially farm country.
“He told me that during the journey, someone would try to take the crate, and I should do everything I could to help it happen.” Rogelio was crying, tears and sweat blending on his cheeks in a salty wash.
I nodded at Eli to let him know this was true. I had suspected Rogelio had pretended to be hit worse than he was during the train wreck attack. And he hadn’t gotten in a shot in the earlier attempt, with the two men who’d charged into the car.
“What was the man’s name?” Eli said.
“He didn’t give me one. He wore one of those pins.”
“What did he look like?”
Rogelio’s nose was so runny by now that he had to snort for a moment before he could speak. “He was all dressed up. Good clothes and shoes. He looked rich. Maybe fifty years old.”
“He was on the train, wasn’t he?” It was the first time I’d spoken since we’d left the car.
Eli looked startled, like he’d forgotten I was there.
“Yes, he sat close to the doors.” It was hard to understand Rogelio, because blood and snot were bubbling out of his nose.
“I didn’t see him after the wreck. What did he do?” I bent closer.
“He left the cabin just before.” Rogelio gasped desperately because all the fluids were choking him.
Our enemy had been so close. I could have killed him, if only Rogelio had spoken up. Rogelio himself could have shot the man when he’d come to Rogelio’s house, and been true to his crew. I lost all sympathy for Rogelio in that moment. He’d sold us out. He’d let us be shot, would have let us die, for money. I didn’t understand it.
My eyes met Eli’s for a moment. We were of one mind on the subject of Rogelio. Then Eli looked back at his prey. He asked, “How were you supposed to contact him here?”
“He said he would find me in Sally. That’s why I’ve been out in the streets and cafés so much.”
“You idiot,” Eli said. “Mr. Well Dressed thought you would die too. He never planned to meet you after the wreck. He was sure the gunnies he sent in would kill you.”
Rogelio looked kind of confused and a little shocked, and then Eli snatched his life out of him.
I said some things in my head that people didn’t say out loud very much, and I felt a rush of relief that this episode was over.
Then, since Rogelio had fallen silent forever, I heard a car coming.
There was a good chance it would pass by; our car couldn’t be seen from the road, at least at a quick glance. But I had a bad feeling, maybe because I was half-grigori, maybe just from being cautious.
“We got to get him out of sight,” I said, and when I used that tone Eli didn’t ask any questions. “Open the trunk.” Together we dragged the body over to the car and tossed it inside the trunk, snapping the lid shut.
I looked around at the trampled ground, the marks of Rogelio’s boots, the drops of blood.
“Lie down right there,” Eli said, pointing to the most marked area. Since he was using that voice too, I did so, though I had a twinge of distaste because that meant the damn skirt would suffer even more. Eli was beside me on the ground the next instant. He kissed me like he wanted to compress about ten kisses into one. Not what I had expected at all.
I heard a car door slam, distantly, and then a man cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said apologetically. He also sounded a little amused.
I blinked to clear my vision. Standing a few feet away was a man I’d never seen before—but I’d heard his voice. This was Jerry Fielder’s neighbor, surely, the one so upset about Willa May hitting his mama. The older man with him was the sheriff; I remembered him from the site of the train wreck.
Eli rose from the ground and gave me a hand up. “Gentlemen, good day,” he said. He didn’t explain or apologize in return. No law against having sex with your wife in a secluded spot, right?
I kept my eyes cast down as if I was embarrassed, but I was scanning the ground for any sign we’d just killed someone. We’d done a good job of muddling things up. Maybe we were okay.
“We just spotted your car parked back here, and wondered what business anyone would have behind this old place,” the sheriff said. At least he was being straightforward.
Eli looked doubtful. “Have we done something against the law?”
“No, of course not,” the neighbor said. “I met you at the Fielders’, remember?”
“Norman Moultry,” Eli said, breaking out in a smile. “This is my wife, Lizbeth.”
“Mrs. Savarov,” Norman said, nodding in my direction.
“How is your mother?” Eli sounded genuinely concerned.
Norman said, “She’s well, thank you. Doesn’t remember a thing about the incident. And Willa May never showed back up at our house. We got to find us someone else to watch Mama.”
“I hope you find someone more to your liking.”
Though I made myself look agreeable, I didn’t like the way the sheriff was looking at us. I could see he was doubtful about our story. Maybe he didn’t know why he was suspicious, maybe he thought this was a real odd place to be overcome with passion.
“Are you all just out riding today?” I aimed to sound a little amazed, because truly, unless you needed to torture someone in a quiet place, why would you ride out this way in the heat in the middle of the day?
The sheriff said, “No, ma’am, we’re on our way to Bergen to court. Mr. Moultry here is a lawyer, and I have to testify, so we’re sharing a car.”
That was a lie. Eli squeezed my arm a little to let me know he thought so too. They’d been tracking us somehow. Maybe someone at the hotel had seen us driving out of town, but after we’d gotten Rogelio into the car. They hadn’t asked about him, and I was fairly sure they didn’t know he’d been with us. I could only be glad they hadn’t gotten here twenty minutes earlier.
I would have had to kill them, too. Three bodies to dispose of was a lot.
“Well, honey, shall we go back to town?” Eli was smiling down at me fondly.
“Sure, let’s get some ice cream.” I smiled up at him. I was calculating who I’d have to kill first. The sheriff had a gun. I’d go for him with my knife. Eli could handle Norman Moultry, who looked like he wasn’t used to quick action of any kind.
“We’ll be getting on to Bergen, then. Sorry to interrupt you folks.” Norman turned to go back to the car, a tiny dirty smile on his face. I held my breath until the sheriff turned to go with him.
After we heard their car drive away, Eli’s shoulders relaxed. “I thought we were going to have to kill them both,” he said.
“Me too.”
“Which one were you going to take?” He was asking out of what appeared to be simple curiosity, but I didn’t think it was.
“Sheriff was armed. I’d have taken him.”
“But maybe he could draw fast.”
“Not as fast as I could cut his throat. And he wouldn’t expect a woman to attack, no matter if he knows what I am or not.”
Eli looked down at me admiringly. “You are very cunning,” he said.
“Does cunning mean I’m smart about fighting?”
“In this instance, yes.”
“Okay then.”
I shook out my skirt, trying to rid it of as much leaf and grass debris as I could. I couldn’t see any stains, so I turned my back to Eli and said, “How do I look?”
“You look fine,” he said.
“I mean my skirt! I can hardly wait until I can wear my jeans again,” I said.
“I would never have known that.”
“Okay, I may have mentioned it a few times.”
“Ten or twelve,” he muttered under his breath, as he dusted himself off. “Or twenty.”
“I got your hint.” If my voice was sour, it was not out of ingratitude for the clothes, which had helped me blend into this society. But maybe he thought so? “But thanks so much for getting them for me,” I added with some haste.
Eli bent over laughing.
I shook my head, smiling a little myself. “All right, you’ve had your fun. Let’s think about where to dump Rogelio,” I said.
“If the sheriff and Moultry hadn’t seen us here, this would be a good place,” he said. “I’m
tempted to use it anyway.”
“No, that’s a bad idea. Let’s drive a bit and see if we can find a place that’s better.”
I made sure there weren’t any blood smears on the outside of the car before we took off on the road east, the direction the sheriff had taken, which I assumed would go past Bergen.
We came to a sign telling us Bergen was three miles ahead, but we took a road north before we reached the town. We were in the middle of nowhere, and it was hot, hot, hot. My hair was blowing every whichaway since the windows had to be open, and I felt dust all over me. But I was with Eli, and the country was green, and we had learned something from Rogelio. Pluses.
After a while I spotted a large culvert in a ditch, over which a gravel road had been built to get tractors into the field. We listened and looked, and couldn’t hear or see anyone approaching. To get caught in the midst of moving Rogelio’s body would be a very bad thing.
Eli got out and opened the trunk, and we waited a bit again. When nothing kept happening, Eli nodded. I leaped out of the car, grabbed Rogelio’s feet, and yanked. We went down the side of the ditch faster than we’d wanted to, and nearly all ended up in a heap at the bottom, but we kept to our feet with a struggle. At least, since it hadn’t rained in a while, the ditch was dry.
It is harder to feed a body into a culvert than you would think, and it took more time than we wanted, even with Eli making the body lighter with magic. Our luck held: no passersby. And no snakes, which I’d thought of the minute my unprotected legs were surrounded by high weeds.
When the messy job was done, I scrambled up the slope of the ditch and back into the car. Eli stood by the driver’s door catching his breath before climbing in. We returned to Sally on a road so hot and still and dusty that my mind went numb.
I had to at least wash my face and hands before I did anything else, and Eli agreed.
The car needed gas, so we stopped at a garage and I went into the women’s room with no expectations. It was very clean and had a lock on the door, and I was glad of a chance to wash as much of me as I could and dry those bits with the white hand towel hanging on a rack. There had been towels made of paper in the train toilet, which had been a surprise. Who said travel wasn’t broadening?
A Longer Fall (Gunnie Rose) Page 13